The ideal recessional hymn?

 Humor, Liturgy  13 Responses »
Jun 042013
 

From a priest:

Last Sunday at the end of Mass the musicians chose a song that just wasn’t striking a chord with me. I couldn’t muster the energy required to pretend to be gleeful and sing along. As I looked at the congregation I noticed only a handful were joining in the song. Most looked irritated and bored. I know the GIRM does not require a recessional hymn (90), but and I’m wondering if it’s time for my parish to change our thinking about the “closing” hymn. Your thoughts would be appreciated.

It seems to me that a lot depends on the hymn. Holy God We Praise Thy Name always gets people going. On the other hand, perhaps ACDC’s Highway To Hell isn’t such a good idea. It is nice to have a Marian antiphon appropriate to the season, followed by an organ piece.

What do you think?

(Father Z)

I do wonder what would be the ideal recessional hymn for most parishes?

Judging by what I have seen the ideal recessional hymn would:

  • Be rather short, perhaps only one stanza, and just long enough for the priest to leave the Sanctuary and get close enough to the Narthex.
  • The hymn should not require much breathing to sing properly so that parishioners are not out-of-breath when making the mad-dash to the parking lot.
  • Be rather vague about the Catholic faith. You don’t want anybody to be interrupted with the idea of love of God and neighbor as they cut you off in the parking lot.

“Ite, missa est”, now gentleman start your race cars.

Plus isn’t it nice of so many people to leave before the end of Mass to free up congestion? Maybe we should start giving out ribbons for first, second, and third place in the Nave to Narthex sprint.

I remember being “shocked” in one parish where we got to the end of the second stanza of the recessional hymn and everybody was still there. I was even more surprised at the end of four stanzas people were still there.

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Pulp Catholicism

 Humor  4 Responses »
May 302013
 

I’ve been a fan of the B-Movie Catechism for years enjoying his quirky sense of humor and rubber monster suit catechesis. I have also been in awe of his fairly-recent cartoon series “Pulp Catholicism” which continues to crack me up.  Case in point.

 

Pulp Catholicism 018_thumb[2]

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Liturgical Groundhog’s Day

 Humor, Liturgy  2 Responses »
Apr 012013
 

One of the nice things about praying the Liturgy of the Hours it that it helps you to remember that some solemnities don’t just end when the day is over. Christmas and Easter both have octaves and you are reminded of that as the prayers repeat during that time. Easter as the greatest feast in the Christian life is special in that each day of the Easter Octave is a solemnity.

So what we really have is a form of liturgical Groundhog’s Day. Each day in the Octave we once again celebrate the Solemnity of Easter. Yet we won’t be tempted to smash our alarm clocks despite the psalms being played are the same each day. Unlike Bill Murray’s character we know when the repeating day in the octave is going to end.

Lent also provided us an opportunity as in the movie Groundhog’s Day as to refocus our priorities avoiding those nihilistic paths that might seem to lead to pleasure, but not the ultimate joy of Easter.

So truly celebrate this Octave of Easter and the fact that Friday during the octave is not a day of penance.

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Put a Pope on it!

 Humor, Link  4 Responses »
Mar 232013
 

Within short hours after the Papal election I was already getting email from Catholic stores hawking merchandise with the Pope’s picture on it.

The Crescat has made a most wonderful connection between this and an episode of Portlandia and if you are not aware of “Put A Bird On It”, do yourself a favor and watch it. Growing up in Portland I am a big fan of the sketch comedy show that parodies hipsters and life in Portland (or did I repeat myself?).

The Crescat has done some great commentary on this that I am in awe of while also being annoyed that I didn’t make the same connection.

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Grumpy long before it was a meme

 Humor  2 Responses »
Mar 212013
 

GrumpyJerome

God’s angry man, His crotchety scholar
Was Saint Jerome,
The great name-caller
Who cared not a dime
For the laws of Libel
And in his spare time
Translated the Bible.
Quick to disparage
All joys but learning
Jerome thought marriage
Better than burning;
But didn’t like woman’s
Painted cheeks;
Didn’t like Romans,
Didn’t like Greeks,
Hated Pagans
For their Pagan ways,
Yet doted on Cicero all of his days.

A born reformer, cross and gifted,
He scolded mankind
Sterner than Swift did;
Worked to save
The world from the heathen;
Fled to a cave
For peace to breathe in,
Promptly wherewith
For miles around
He filled the air with
Fury and sound.
In a mighty prose
For Almighty ends,
He thrust at his foes,
Quarreled with his friends,
And served his Master,
Though with complaint.
He wasn’t a plaster sort of a saint.

But he swelled men’s minds
With a Christian leaven.
It takes all kinds
To make a heaven.

From “Times Three” by Phyllis McGinley

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Announcing the Prayerbit

 Humor  2 Responses »
Mar 212013
 

You know you really do want to get into better shape, but really how can you stay motivated? Each Lent you promise to pray more and even if your goal is not “prayer warrior”, you would at least like to get to “prayer tenderfoot.” Yet each year your prayer life gets more flabby and you dispair of ever getting spiritually fit. The yo-yo spiritual life of temporary loss of prayer sloth only to gain it all back later.

You want to be a saint, if only you could stay motivated.

That’s why we created the Prayerbit family of products. By tracking your spiritual life we help you to stay motivated by being able to see your progress and to avoid back sliding.

This Prayerbit wireless tracker, shown in its recharger, helps you to keep track of your daily prayer life. Simply slip it on your clothing and you are all set to pump up your prayer life.

Each day the Prayerbit assigns a cumulative total of the day’s prayer activity using the standard ACTS model to help analyse possible imbalances.

A – Adoration.. (Worshipping God)
C – Contrition.. (Sorrow for sins)
T – Thanksgiving.. (Thanksgiving to God)
S – Supplication.. (Asking For Our Needs And The Needs Of Others)

  • When praying the Rosary the Prayerbit captures the sound of you fingers slipping from bead to bead. You can also buy our wireless Prayerbit Rosary to make sure you capture every decade! The Prayerbit can also catch each instance of the Jesus prayer.
  • The Prayerbit catches any ejaculatory prayers made throughout the day. The Prayerbit is smart enough to discern a short prayer of this type and profane uses of holy names. In fact the Prayerbit will also record such occurrences and subtract from your Prayerbit total.
  • Connect the Prayerbit to your Kindle or other ebook device and it can discern the amount of or lack of spiritual reading.
  • Using social networking your Prayerbit can automatically Tweet your daily prayer totals or update your status on Facebook. Logging your totals can help to keep you motivated and to encourage others to get spiritually fit also. As you advance in prayer no doubt you will want to enable “humility mode” to only post results when you start to slip.

The Prayerbit is also Holy Water proof, so don’t worry about using this sacramental liberally.

While the Prayerbit is amazing technology, it can not detect everything.

That is why we created the Prayerbit family of mobile apps.

  • Location awareness allows the Prayerbit mobile app to know whether you are at Mass, adoration chapel, praying outside an abortion clinic, etc.
  • Quickly enter information such as level of sacrificial giving, fasting, and acts of charity towards others.
  • Log use of a novena or pray one of our built in novenas for automatic tracking.
  • Users using app versions of the Liturgy of the Hours can opt for automatic tracking or enter in manually use of the four volume set or the Little Office of Our Lady.
  • Bloggers can provide an RSS feed of their blog for monitoring. Warning: Your Prayerbit daily total could take a hit for rash judgments and other uncharitable acts.
  • Spouse audit mode allows your spouse to score actually progress and allows a more objective measure of actually progress in the spiritual life. Those with spiritual directors can share their Prayerbit results and find where they need tweaking in getting spiritually fit.
  • View statistics and reports regarding your progress.

While the Prayerbit can’t guarantee progress in the spiritual life, when used prudentially and in keeping with the sacramental life of the Church it can do wonders.

“There is only one tragedy in the end, not to have been a saint.” Leon Bloy

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Papal Cyber Squatting

 Humor, News  3 Responses »
Mar 132013
 

Shortly after the smoke rising from the Sistine Chapel turned from black to white and Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was deemed the world’s new Roman Catholic leader, hundreds of people took to the Web to register domain names with the new pope’s title.

Web hosting and domain registration site GoDaddy told CNET that it racked up more than 100 domain registrations within the first 10 minutes of the announcement. By the first hour, 479 new domains were registered. And, as of this writing, 647 domain names have been registered at GoDaddy.

“The election of Pope Francis is causing hundreds of new domain name registrations,” a GoDaddy spokesperson told CNET. “Technology and religion came together this afternoon following the announcement of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio as Pope Francis I.”

The newly registered domain names contained keywords such as Pope, Francis, Bergoglio, and Habemus Papam, which is the Latin translation for “We have a pope.” Interestingly, a forward-thinking GoDaddy customer already registered the domain name PopeFrancis.com in April 2010.

…

Most likely those registering domains with keywords relating to the pope, don’t have much to do with the Catholic Church. Known as cybersquatting, anyone can register a name, sit on it, and sell it to whoever will pay top dollar. According to the BBC, PopeBenedictXVI.com was sold for more than $5,000 in 2005. (source)

No doubt this has nothing to do with the faithful, especially since GoDaddy is not exactly the domain name registrar that faithful Catholics would want to use. Maybe there should be a faithful Catholic domain registrar GoPapa.

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ClaveCon 2013

 Humor  1 Response »
Mar 112013
 

What if they ran a Conclave like a Science Fiction Convention? Really they are all dressed up with funny hats anyway. Instead of voting for a Hugo they vote for the pope. Plus the whole ballot burning and the stoves and chimney have a decidedly steampunk flavor. The papabile could set up tables to provide and autograph any books or pastoral letters they have written. Maybe the Cardinals could dress up as their favorite saints. A kind of Cardinal Occupy Sistine play (Cosplay).

Well maybe not.

Really what I would like to see is a ClaveCon where the faithful can get together and wait for white smoke. Again you could have the fun aspects of a Science Fiction convention in dressing up and instead of Klingon’s and Anime characters there is certainly a treasury of Catholic history to pull from. Maybe even dress as your favorite Cardinal that you want to be pope. People trying to break into the Cardinal’s pro-conclave meeting shouldn’t have all the fun. Some large screen displaying the chimney of the Sistine Chapel along with perhaps EWTN’s coverage would be nice. Or maybe a screen with a stream of MSM coverage to laugh at waiting for a “crows ear” moment. Of course praying for the Cardinal-electors and the new pope would be an integral part of ClaveCon.

It would be fun to be surrounded by a group of faithful Catholics when it became time to shout “Habemus Papum!”. What fun when the proto-deacon of the College of Cardinals first says the first name of the new pope and you try to guess the last name based on it. Maybe a pope name pool with minor prizes with the entry fee being of course paid using PayPal (punningly appropriate).

Fun idea, but logistically not possible. We don’t exactly get much ramp up time or ability to plan ahead regarding papal elections and getting a convention center. Still the perfect religious order to arrange this would be Conventual Franciscan Friars.

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