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Missing the point

by Jeffrey Miller
written by Jeffrey Miller

Rich Leonardi notices this article

If meat will be missing from your table this Lent — a 40-day period of prayer, penance and sacrifice for Roman Catholics and other Christians — savory seafood dishes are a great way to replicate the hearty comfort foods you’ll be giving up.

Catholics often observe Lent in part by abstaining from meat on Fridays. This recipe for swordfish with tomato-olive ragu provides the meaty texture and heft you otherwise would miss.

Because Lent is all about giving up things without noticing you are giving up anything.

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Liturgy

Start of Lent

by Jeffrey Miller
written by Jeffrey Miller

This is my annual start of Lent post with Lenten trivia.

As I have said before I greatly admire those bloggers who give up blogging for Lent, but as for me I will continue blogging as a penance for others. I will try to provide you with plenty of punance during this punitential season.

This year I have decided that I will be giving up "giving up things" for Lent.

The capybara kap-i-‘bar-uh, hydrochoerus hydrochaeris, is a semi-aquatic rodent of South and Central America. It is the only species in its genus, which belongs to the family Hydrochoeridae, order Rodentia.

When the Spanish missionaries found the capybara in Brazil during the 16th century, they wrote to the Pope to ask – there’s an animal here that’s scaly but also hairy, spends most of its time in the water but occasionally comes on land; can we classify it as a fish (and thus, the indigenous people could continue to eat it during Lent)?. Not having a clear description of the animal (and not wanting the petitioners to starve), the Pope agreed and declared it to be a fish.

The pretzel has a deep spiritual meaning for Lent. In fact, it was the ancient Christian Lenten bread as far back as the fourth century. In the old Roman Empire, the faithful kept a very strict fast all through Lent: no milk, no butter, no cheese, no eggs, no cream and no meat. They made small breads of water, flour and salt, to remind themselves that Lent was a time of prayer. They shaped these breads in the form of crossed arms for in those days they crossed their arms over the breast while praying. Therefore they called the breads “little arms” (bracellae). From this Latin word, the Germanic people later coined the term “pretzel.”
[Full Article]

The Teutonic word Lent, which we employ to denote the forty days’ fast preceding Easter, originally meant no more than the spring season. Still it has been used from the Anglo-Saxon period to translate the more significant Latin term quadragesima (Fr. car�me, It. quaresima, Span. cuaresma), meaning the “forty days”, or more literally the “fortieth day”. This in turn imitated the Greek name for Lent, tessarakoste (fortieth), a word formed on the analogy of Pentecost (pentekoste), which last was in use for the Jewish festival before New Testament times.

Carnival means "farewell to meat.”

It was thought that misfortune would come to those who married during lent – “Marry in Lent, live to repent” – because lent was a time for abstinence.

Jimmy Akin has a good roundup of Lenten information.

Jimmy also has the guidelines for fasting from the Code of Canon Law.

I have also changed one of my top graphics to this.

The Ox Files has a funny post on a new product for Ash Wednesday.

So I wish you all success in your Lenten cleaning and that this year you will grow closer to Christ.

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Parody

Could it be …

by Jeffrey Miller
written by Jeffrey Miller

 I recently came across an older children’s record player at a
garage sale that had a funky sixties feel to it along with what
appeared at first sight to be some psychedelic sixties records.

Sixties kids record players

Vessels in Clay Lord of light

The record player was no longer functioning, but as
an old electronics technician and someone who tinkered with record
players as a kid, I soon had it working for the most part.  When I tried playing the records I immediately realized that I got something miswired since it was playing backwards.  Strangely though I though I was actually hearing coherent sentences.  Looking more
closely at the two albums I was totally surprised that there were
actually two offerings of the St. Louis Jesuits from the seventies and
eighties.  I soon had a good laugh as I realized that their music
sounded much better played backwards then forwards, but the smile went
away as I again heard more messages.

This reminded me of the old controversies in rock
music of embedded satanic messages of which I was always highly
skeptical of.  After all most of the evil messages in rock music
were actually called lyrics and anything else would be overkill.
Backmasking is the audio technique in which sounds are recorded
backwards onto a
track that is meant to be played forwards. Backmasking is a deliberate
process and is related to so-called subliminal messages in rock music.  I started to wonder if actually a technique like backmasking was
really used in the original albums that became the main stay for so
much contemporary music used in most Catholic Masses in the United
States and elsewhere.

I replayed the records backwards and transcribed
what I was hearing onto paper.  Now some of it was rather strange
such as the repeated phrase “St. Paul is dead…”, surely we all know
Paul is dead so I didn’t exactly understand the point of this
subliminal message.  But other messages were quite shocking and
really explains so much of what has happened with worship in the Mass
with the introduction of this music to church musicians.  Here are
just some examples of the disturbing messages  I heard.

  • The Tabernacle would  look so much better if placed in a small little side room.
  • Pantsuits are cool, habits are hot.
  • Pipe organs must be destroyed.
  • Peter, Paul, and Mary not St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. Mary.
  • Communion rails are a barrier to Jesus.
  • It’s all about me, it’s all about me, look at me (extracted from Here I am, Lord)
  • Gregorian Chant is an carcinogen.
  • The Spirit of Vatican II will set you free, never mind the text.
  • The highest expression of Church art is felt banners.
  • Catechesis, we don’t need no stinkin’ catechesis.
  • Conscience trumps Church teaching.
  • Catholic guilt is a psychological problem that is cured by discounting sin.
  • Marbles and sand belong in a Holy Water Font.

Now as in the case of rock music there were suppose
to be Satanic messages embedded withing.  I didn’t find anything
like that in these recordings, but something much worse.

  • Satan doesn’t exist.
  • There is no Devil.
  • There is not Hell.

Yes, anti-Satanic messages which of course are much more dangerous.

All of this explains so much.  The St. Louis Jesuits themselves
never originally intended there music for liturgical use, so exactly
how did it become such a major part of liturgical music? Was it the
popularity of these records that first got played a and listened to by
so many church musicians and by others involved in the Church that lead
to so many rapid changes in the first place?  I think that this
might be a much more sane and charitable explanation to explain why
people dumped so rapidly centuries and centuries of liturgical music
and other traditions conducive to worship in favor of the banal.

But who was behind this in the first place?  As much as I dislike
the music of the St. Louis Jesuits during the liturgy, were they the
ones behind this subversive plot?  Since as I have mentioned there music was not originally intended for liturgical use I did some digging to find out just who inserted these messages.  I finally found a photo from someone’s Flicker page purporting to be from the various recording sessions from when they recorded their albums.

Devil on a soundboard


Could it be SATAN? Or one of his minions?  I report, you decide.

The other question is are these subliminal messages found in the recordings of other modern liturgical artists? With Lent upcoming I was thinking of testing the work of Marty Haugen and David Haas, but my spiritual director said this would be too penitential.

* A tip of the Jester hat to the blogger at Sterquilinium for sending me a suggestion for a parody along these lines.

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News

If only

by Jeffrey Miller
written by Jeffrey Miller

As much as I wanted the story about parts of the Anglican Communion reuniting with the Pope to be true, the story seemed to me to be rather farfetched based on the real condition. Jimmy Akin reminds us that the writer of the story Ruth Gledhill has quite a track record of frankly horrible and misleading coverage of the religion beat. Looks like she is being consistent with the new story.

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News

Tamper-proof collections

by Jeffrey Miller
written by Jeffrey Miller

NORFOLK, Va. — Parishioners at Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church can load up the collection plate Sunday with confidence their money will support the charities and program for which it is intended.

Stung by financial scandals, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Richmond has distributed tamper-proof money bags to Blessed Sacrament and other parishes throughout the sprawling diocese to ensure donations go where they are intended.

The security measure follows accusations that a retired priest in central Virginia embezzled more than $600,000 from two parishes and the arrest of a church secretary in Richmond shown on video allegedly slipping Sunday offerings into her purse.

John Barrett, the diocesan finance director, said he recommended the safeguards for all parishes following those two incidents. He wants every parish in the diocese to hold money collected during Mass in the tamper-proof bags until the money can be counted and recorded.

Now if only we could come up with a system for tamper-proof liturgies. We use to have one – it was called obedience.

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Punditry

Brokeback Cathedral

by Jeffrey Miller
written by Jeffrey Miller

Homoerotic art featured at auction held Saturday at Our Lady of the Angels Cathedral to benefit AIDS clinics in Mexico

The AIDS Healthcare Foundation held an art exhibition and auction last night at the conference center of Our Lady of the Angels Cathedral in Los Angeles to raise money for clinics it sponsors in Tijuana and Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

A California Catholic Daily reader who saw a preview of the event on a Los Angeles television program alerted the newspaper via email regarding the event. "They showed some of the items, and it was really gross — men hugging, tops bared, nude males back scenes," said the reader in the email.

The title for the event was “Amigos y Amantes” (Friends and Lovers).
[Via Roman Catholic Blog]

If only a story like this would be hard to believe. Unfortunately with the Archdiocese of L.A. with their rainbow fishes and ordinations of an openly homosexual deacon it has come to be what you would expect. A diocese where culture of death politicians are welcomed with open arms without a mention of any caveat. For example Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez who has been at events in the past with Cardinal Mahony is one of supporters of California’s latest euthanasia bill. He recently said.

Nuñez said he would call Mahony today. But he added: "I think the toughest conversation I’m going to have is with my Catholic mother, who wanted me to be a priest."

Any wonder that the Archdiocese with the largest population is towards the bottom of the list when it comes to most indicators?

I do admit Cardinal Mahony drives me crazy, which is why I pray for him daily both for his sake and my own.

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Punditry

Just a crew of sickly, yet hopeful sinners

by Jeffrey Miller
written by Jeffrey Miller

In response to Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor of allowing fortnightly Masses in his Westminster diocese specifically for homosexuals Amy Welborn posts:

What I would like to know is this:

What, in the present situation, in the Diocese of Westminster is preventing "homosexual people so as to enable them to enter more fully into the life of the Church?" What?

Are persons who experience same-sex attraction being stopped from coming to Mass?

Are persons who experience same-sex attraction being prohibited from praying?

Are they not allowed to purchase or read copies of the Bible or the Catechism?

Are persons with same-sex attraction who dwell in the Diocese of Westminster being banned from the Sacrament of Reconciliation, from access to spiritual direction?

Are persons with same-sex attraction not allowed to visit the sick or assist the poor? Are persons with same-sex attraction not allowed, in the Diocese of Westminster, to pour their lives out in sacrificial discipleship of Jesus Christ?

Great questions and surely ones that will not be answered in any straightforward manner. The first question is rather easy is answer in that the Church does not affirm sexual acts outside of the marriage bond and many rightly understand this. Some outside of the Church seem to know Church teaching better than those inside of it. What about special Masses for adulterers and fornicators – two groups much larger and just as much in need? It would seem to me that if you are going to have outreach to those with same-sex attraction that the vehicle to do that would be in a forum outside of the Mass. Modeled on groups like Courage where both the truth and beauty of Church teaching on human sexuality is explained, not explained away.

Amy continues:

Here is the thing.

I don’t want to worship at Sunday Mass in the midst of a congregation that looks just like me and that shares my particular situation in life, if I can honestly help it. I want to worship, every Sunday, with the most intense, vibrant mix of people around, a concrete symbol of the reality of this thing called Church. Well-dressed, poorly-dressed, old, young, straight, gay, families, singles, every color, with every kind of accent, the clear-eyed saintly lady over to the side near Mary’s statue, and the exhausted sinner, worn out from Saturday night, hunched near the back, hoping, listening, waiting for a clue and just a little more strength.

That’s Church. That’s the Body of Christ. No divisions, no clubs, no identity politics. Just a crew of sickly, yet hopeful sinners, trying to open ourselves just a little bit more this week to the power of that healing, redemptive medicine that we know the Physician has ready for us, as he waits for us, in love.

I mean…isn’t that the point?

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