Punditry

FRAMINGHAM — Appeal Committee members continue to check on whether a Communion service at St. Jeremiah Church meets a Catholic’s weekly obligation to attend Sunday Mass after a canon lawyer told them it doesn’t.

Charles M. Wilson, executive director of the Saint Joseph Foundation in San Antonio, told Appeal Committee co-Chairwoman Mary Beth Carmody this week that the consensus among foundation members is Mass is part of the weekly duty.

"The Foundation believes that (Communion) services do not satisfy the obligation and has said so publicly on a number of occasions," said Wilson in an e-mail sent to the Daily News yesterday.

Members at other parishes in vigil in the Archdiocese of Boston told the Appeal Committee that Communion services satisfy a Catholic’s obligation to attend Mass of Sunday, said Carmody.

"I’m still trying to figure this whole thing out," she said. "I take this very seriously, and I want to find out the answer. I know it’s within canon law. The only question is whether it meets the weekly obligation."

Last week, in a statement, Bishop Richard Lennon, the archdiocese’s vicar general, said under Church law all Catholics have an obligation to participate at Sunday Mass unless it is impossible for them to attend.

Communion services do not fulfill one’s obligation to participate at Sunday Mass, Lennon said. [Source]

If a Catholic is unable to attend Mass because of distance, health or lack of availability, then their Sunday obligation is already dispensed. A Communion service might be a good thing to have when there truly is no priest available for Mass within the area – but in no way is it or could ever be a substitute for the Sacrifice of the Mass. To many places see Communion services as a way for lay participation and are robbing the faithful of participation in the Sacrifice of the Mass. Especially since when they do this people don’t take the effort to go to another parish that is actually offering Mass.

A reader sent me a like the the following story

The Rev. Malcolm Himschoot may be the closest thing to a rock star in the world of Protestant ministry: young, brainy, charming, subject of a new documentary, recently married — and transgendered.

Now Himschoot, 27, is coming this summer not only to a theater near you, but also to a congregation: Plymouth Congregational Church in Minneapolis, where in August he begins a two-year appointment as outreach minister.

He’s one of only a few openly transgendered clergy members in the United States and may be the first to serve in the Twin Cities. The United Church of Christ (UCC), which ordained Himschoot, says it became the first mainline Christian denomination to ordain an openly transgendered minister a few years ago.

But that’s not why Plymouth leaders chose Himschoot over other highly qualified candidates, said the Rev. James Gertmenian, Plymouth’s senior minister.
Rev. Malcolm Himschoot and his wife

"It speaks to us of the self-insight and courage that he has, but it was not the driver in our decision," Gertmenian said. "He’s got exceptional academic credentials. … We were impressed he spent a year doing urban ministry in Denver, and he impressed us with the depth of his own spiritual vision."

Plymouth, an independent Congregational church, is a liberal congregation with 1,800 members that is known for its robust ministries in social justice and the arts. It’s the home of VocalEssence, the award-winning choral group founded and directed by Plymouth organist and choirmaster Philip Brunelle.

Really? A liberal congregation – I would never have guessed that.

Himschoot, a Colorado native, graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Amherst College in Amherst, Mass., and was student of the year at Iliff School of Theology in Denver. For the past year he has been associate pastor at Denver Inner City Parish, where he worked with students, seniors and ex-prisoners.

But he has drawn the most attention for "Call Me Malcolm," a documentary about his bodily change from a woman to a man and the cross-country trip he took to find support and acceptance. The film, produced by the UCC and directed by Joseph Parlagreco, won raves at recent film festivals in Los Angeles and Cleveland.

This is funny and sad at the same time. That psychiatric disorders are now accepted, that a deeply confused person is not told that they are confused, but affirmed in their disorder.

"If we didn’t have the courage to hire this young man, what did that say?"

An aspect of courage is telling the truth even when it will deeply hurt someone. This must be done with charity, but not doing it is a sin against charity. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them, of course sometimes a gender mulligan can be called. I wonder if this will be the next tactic of the women’s ordination movement kind of like Richard Raskind who became tennis star Dr. Renee Richards – except in the opposite direction.

Via Just One Minute comes the lie of the week.

WOODRUFF: Similarly, on the question of gay rights, aren’t Democrats always going to be on the defensive? You now have 11 states that ban gay marriage. Should Democrats think about changing their position?

CLINTON: Well, I don’t know many Democrats who support gay marriage. In fact, I don’t and haven’t for, you know, years before I became a senator. But I support giving people the right to enter into recognized relationships, that whether you call him civil unions or domestic partnerships, enable them to own property, to have hospital visitation. To me, that’s a human rights issue.

From a column by Matt C. Abbott

A Catholic college in Vermont is getting an openly-homosexual dean, according to a story in ‘Out in the Mountains,’ Vermont’s “voice for lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, [and] transgender people.”

The story, written by Stacey Horn, says that “Professor Jeffrey Trumbower, a gay man and a Unitarian, has been appointed dean of St. Michael’s College, a Catholic school established in 1904 by the Society of Saint Edmund, a French order of Catholic priests.

“Trumbower, who holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago Divinity School, currently chairs the Religious Studies Department at St. Mike’s, where he has been on the faculty for 16 years. Though he is not the first non-Catholic to be dean of the college, he is the first openly gay man in the position….

“According to search committee chair and political science professor Bill Grover, ‘We were very fortunate to have two terrific people [apply] and Jeff rose to the top.’ Grover said that religion was not a factor in choosing the dean and that the committee wanted a candidate who would ‘fit with the overall mission of the college.’ Of Trumbower, Grover said, ‘He’s going to be a terrific dean….’

“Trumbower came to St. Mike’s in 1989, after completing his dissertation. He was not familiar with the area before he came, and when he arrived, he ‘started going to the church at the head of church street. I resonated with that community and realized that I was home spiritually.’ Trumbower met his partner here in Vermont. They have been together for ten years.

“Jeff Trumbower… will assume his new position as dean of the Catholic college of St. Michael’s on July 1.”

The teaching of the Catholic Church on homosexuality is as follows:

"Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.’ They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved" (Catechism, no. 2357).

It is getting difficult to write parody when you have real news competing against you. This sounds like the beginning of a bad joke "A gay unitarian becomes a Catholic school president …" Though the joke will likely be on any Catholic students attending. There is a certain logic to a homosexual unitarian though since unitarians deny the Trinity and thus the fact that God is also a family of persons. They wouldn’t have to be concerned about imaging a unitarian God that does not generate the Holy Spirit. That their own lives would be just as sterile as this concept of God.

You just know that in these Catholic schools that everything is tolerated of course except being Catholic. You are encouraged to have an open mind, except towards the Catholic Church. The new evangelization will need to first send missionaries to Catholic schools where the extent of their Catholic indemnity is a blurb in their Mission statement about them having a Catholic identity. Though I suspect they might be treated like some missionaries in the past and the Church will have some new martyrs.

I have noticed that when it comes to discussions on liturgical music and church architecture on my blog and on others that there is a direct correlation between the theological views of the commenter and whether they like or dislike something pertaining to those subjects. Those that accept all Church teaching are usually critical of much of what goes for modern liturgical music and church architecture, while those that disagree with one or more Church teaching are generally approving of these forms.

Why is that? If beauty is suppose to be so subjective and in the eye (or ear) of the beholder, then why does opposing or support develop along theological fault lines? For the sake of shorthand I will use the terms conservatives and progressives even though they are an inexact and mainly political term. Plus maybe it is a little more charitable then dividing it between the faithful and the heretics.

If all of this was just a matter of taste then we should expect to see equal amount of like and dislike for modern liturgical music and church architecture among conservatives and progressives. Why is it that we never see a Bishop Bruskewitz or an Archbishop Chaput tearing up their Cathedrals, removing statues and kneelers, and putting in Mass in the round arrangements? Why is it that it is always the Cardinal Mahoney types that are constructing the Cathedral bunkers? I think it goes much farther then just that conservatives like older more traditional stuff and that progressives like less traditional modern stuff.

I don’t pretend to have the answers totally for why this is. I can only speak for myself that I don’t think I like Gregorian Chant and for example Romanesque architecture just because it was around before I was born. I am a geek who likes SF and music of the head banging variety, yet I discern that some forms a music are more applicable to worship then others. Sacred means to be set apart and music and architecture that can not be separated from the culture around it does not seem to me to be set apart and sacred. I have often read in defense of modern hymns that the form of music just doesn’t matter. If that is true then why won’t they simply accept chant and polyphony to make peace with those of us who think that it does matter?

One church that I sometimes go to adoration at has a more modern appearance throughout and a 3D mural in the back of the Sanctuary. The church is mainly simple in appearance and yet it helps me to worship. The mural which contains an embedded crucifix as part of it is not traditional but again it helps to turn my thoughts to God. I think that others that consider themselves to be traditionalists would also find beauty in this church. The other argument often made is that it doesn’t matter what our churches look like. Again speaking for myself I need the equivalent of liturgical training wheels to help me in prayer. I am not advanced enough to walk of into the desert and to easily raise my heart to God. I think a specific test of church architecture is that you should be able to identify it as a church and not for example a modern art museum. Too many modern structures seem to be made more to worship the architectural prowess of the architect and not God. If you are thinking this is a daring structure are you really thinking about worship? Looking at the Oakland and L.A. Cathedrals the words beauty just does not come to my mind. Interesting structure perhaps, but are people going to want to get their pictures taken in front of it (other then for Halloween)? Do they elicit the same awe as the churches in Rome or other places? Would the majority of people want to have a screensaver of these structures on their computer?

As for the argument that the structure just doesn’t matter I would whole-heartily disagree with. We are not just spirit and the idea that just as long as the Eucharist is being celebrated that the rest is of no concern. We have fallen natures that need all the help we can get. Our churches to celebrate the incarnation should be incarnational themselves. Sure during times of persecutions the faithful were happy to just be able to celebrate Mass whether it was out in field or secretly in someone’s house. To pretend that whether Mass is celebrated in St. Peters or in a conference room that the faithful will have the same spiritual dispositions I believe is mistaken.

When God instructed Moses on the tent of the offering in the book of Exodus he did not just say "do what ever appeals to you since it just doesn’t matter", but laid out specific instructions on how it was to be built and how parts of it was to be overlaid with gold and even mentioned the type of statuary that it was to be decorated with (two cherubim of gold).

The fact is that there is a divide in the appreciation of liturgical music and church architecture mainly along conservative/progressive lines and I would be interested in the insights that my readers may have for why this is.

Here is a good letter to the editor to the local paper where former baseball commissioner Fay Vincent lived in response to their three days of one-sided coverage. Especially interesting I found was the following quote from Fr. Reese.

Only a few people in this century, like Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Archbishop Oscar Romero and Nelson Mandela have shown that it is possible to love one’s opponents while struggling for truth against injustice.

Notably absent is Pope John Paul II from this list and many others of the literally thousands of Catholics who were martyred during the last century. No mention of Father Maximilian Kolbe or St. Edith Stein who both in their last days were beacons of Christ in showing love and struggling against evil.

The positive thing about Fay Vincent’s resignation and his decline of a honor from a Catholic School is that he really shouldn’t get one in the first place. Especially since he was all for pro-abortion Hillary Clinton speaking at a Catholic School and is also for women’s ordination. Funny I don’t remember that while he was baseball commissioner that he fought for having women’s players? Where is the equality that they are prevented from the holy sacrifice of the bunt or a sacrifice fly?

Imagine a woven wooden basket that’s 120 feet high, broad at the base and curving gently inward as it rises.

Now imagine that basket wrapped in opaque glass. In daylight the glass is a veil, shrouding what’s within; but at night, light seeps out through the basket and the veil, glowing for all to see.

No, no, no I really don’t want to imagine that it might give me nightmares.

That’s the ethereal promise of the design for Oakland’s Christ the Light Cathedral, which marked its ceremonial groundbreaking Saturday. For today’s Bay Area, it’s a uniquely adventurous work of architecture — and the only high-profile one that isn’t by a globe-trotting celebrity architect.

The design for the cathedral and its 2 1/2-acre complex alongside Lake Merritt is by Craig Hartman of the San Francisco office of Skidmore Owings & Merrill. Instead of traditional cathedral architecture, majestic and strong —

evoked so well in the recent Los Angeles cathedral designed by Spanish architect Rafael Moneo — Hartman offers a vision of warm, delicate layers that hint at the mysteries of things unseen. [Source]

So if Oakland and L.A. were having an ugly cathedral contest, who would win?

Based on the aerial view Instead of cruciform we have football form and I have to admit that this design makes me call out Hail Mary!

The sensation will be one of being surrounded by blinds, not a solid wall — each plank set at an angle, with open space between each one. And the planks will serve the same purpose as blinds, letting in sunlight without the glint of direct rays.

Ah that explains it, a case of the blinds leading the blind.

So the outside looks like something from Krypton in the Superman Movie and the inside is strait out of Woody Allen’s Sleeper. It looks like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters exploded inside. Now I am not one to automatically equate modern with ugly and I think modern structures can be built with beauty that point us to God. In my opinion this is not an example of that, though I would defer to Erik Keilholtz on this.

I think my original opinion when the contract was first awarded still applies in that the architect said that architecture is "to inspire and ennoble the human spirit.” Possibly that might be true, but that is not the point of reference in building a church. Having our spirit ennobled sounds to much like the modern version of self-esteem and the point of worship is not to esteem ourselves but God.

Update:

A reader informed me about one of the designs that lost out by Domiane Forte, a graduate student of architecture at Notre Dame

No wonder it didn’t win – it actually looks like a church and we can’t have that you know.

Sometimes I like to watch really bad B movies and I always get a good kick out of the multiple incarnations of Godzilla movies. I like to play the home edition of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and make snarky comments while watching them. I figured NBC six-part series Revelations would be good fodder for this treatment and I certainly wasn’t disappointed. If this show was intended as an outreach to religious people in the red states then I think it would have the same effect as playing minstrel shows to outreach to blacks. Now of course my inner theologian was screaming throughout the whole thing. A baby Jesus being born again and this time without the Angel Gabriel even asking permission. A dissident nun who knows better then the Church is searching for the child and of course once again the anti-Christ is being born which is not surprising since writer/creator David Seltzer also did "The Omen." I could hardly keep from laughing as Bill Pullman plays the skeptic working hard to look skeptical and confused. I guess I was skeptical and confused whether he was acting or still trying to believe the whole stupid script. Though there were some great lines like "If they kidnap the baby, they can hold Christianity hostage." I mean what were they going to do call God the Father and say "We have your son if you love him like you said you did in John 3:16 then you gotta pay a ransom." Of course God would be suitable upset since as 1st Timothy 2:6 says about Jesus "who gave himself as a ransom for all" and God would simply reply to them "been there – done that, besides I know where you are holding him – you know – omniscience and all that."

The last episode pretty much left everything unresolved since they are trying to continue this as a regular series on the Fall schedule. Six parts was penitential enough for me. The only positive thing in the show was that it had John Rhys-Davies in it who I always love to watch, but unfortunately he had only a small part in the series.

Fay Vincent, 67, the former baseball commissioner, has turned down an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Sacred Heart University, and also resigned from the Board of Trustees of Fairfield University, citing the Vatican’s recent firing of the Rev. Thomas Reese, editor of the magazine America.

"
I’ve been a supporter of America for 25 years," Vincent said in an interview from his Greenwich home on Monday. "This thing really bothered me terribly. I have read the magazine carefully and it was always respectful to the church. For me, not taking the degree was a matter of principle."

Well I guess he wasn’t that careful of a reader since being respectful to the Church does not include advocating positions at odds with Church teaching and showing these positions as having equally valid weight. The response to the resigning of Fr. Reese continues to amaze me. I even saw a reference to it in Rolling Stone mixed in with music news. It is amazing that colleges and universities can ignore Church teaching and mock the latest papal encyclical and it doesn’t bother many people. This university also has coed dormitories and this is no longer a shock to anybody but is the practice of the majority of Catholic schools. But if an editor of a magazine is forced to resign because of questionable editorial practices someone will shun an honorary degree. Talk about mixed priorities.

I don’t expect much of something coming out of Stanford, but this article is ridiculously funny and could just as well have been printed in the Onion.

Deep ecology: No more ‘people’

What do I mean by “no more ‘people’ “?

The phrase could mean “no more people than we have now” — limiting our population for the sake of other species — or it even could mean “zero people.” There’s a group called the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement with the slogan, “May we live long and die out.”

What I really mean by “no more ‘people’ “ is something that both of these ideas exemplify: no more putting people first. Just as scientific discoveries prompted a shift in paradigms from a geocentric to a heliocentric solar system, discoveries about human relatedness with other species call for a shift in priorities from anthropocentrism to ecocentrism.

This is the heart of a philosophy I like very much: deep ecology. Its tenets include:

The well-being and flourishing of human and nonhuman life on earth have value in themselves.

The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantial decrease of the human population. The flourishing of nonhuman life requires such a decrease.

….Some people find it depressing to think that “humans are just animals.” But if we appreciated the intelligence and importance of other animal species, the view could be, not “Oh, humans are just animals,” but rather “Wow! Humans are animals!”

Deep ecology can be a general return to eastern and earth-based religious practices. I personally don’t believe in “God,” but I certainly believe in the earth (I can see it, feel it, no one asks me whether I believe in it, etc.) and I have good reason to be grateful for it, since it provides for my needs and so forth. Lately, there’s been discussion (e.g. in “The God Gene”) — about our need to worship something. Why not “worship” the earth and the biosphere? Deep ecology is starting to sound like tribal religion.

Well this is deep, like something accidentally stepped in. If humans are just animals then either we can kill other humans for food sources or we have to stop eating animals out of solidarity. In fact we must prevent other animals from eating other animals. We are the more intelligent animal (or is that my human-centrism slipping in) so we must enlighten the other animals to stop this animal cannibalism. We must liberate the lion and tiger from using fellow animals as food sources and introduce them to yogurt, granola, and salads. In fact I nominate the writer of this article to feed her fellow carnivorous animals in this task Especially to hand feed alligators tofu turkeys.

Mark C. N. Sullivan of Irish Elk comments on the lastest Vosko
deconstruction in what is suppose to be renovation of the Cathedral in Rochester, NY.
When he said that the diocese encourages visitors to go on a "Holiness Hunt" in the renovated cathedral I thought that might be a just.
Unfortunately that is the term they use.
Though I think it is the perfect definition for what many have to go through to find the Tabernacle. The level of difficulty in playing Where’s Jesus makes Where’s Waldo simple simple by comparison. Mark links to various picture and articles about the Cathedral’s renovation (which was fought for years by a group of parishioners) including this picture of a comparison old and new.

All I know is that if I walked into this Cathedral after not being there for a couple of years I would immediately call the police certain that thieves had ransacked it and carried away almost all the sacred items. Or possibly request "Beam it back down Scotty!" Speaking of Star Trek, maybe I am too much of a SF geek, but I find the new Bishop’s chair to strike an amazing resemblance to Captains Kirk’s chair.

As with many restorations the Tabernacle has been removed to a side chapel though at least they had managed to rescue a beautiful Tabernacle from a church that had burned down.

The voiceover on this page concerning the box altar said that the Church mandates that the altar with the presider be brought admist the people in this case into the center of the church. This is normally what annoys me the most is that they say that the Church has mandated or called for this type of change. I attended a Mass at one church just before they were to move into their new church. I remember being pretty steamed when the priest said that the Vatican had instructed that they had to move the Tabernacle from the center. Maybe that priest really believed this to be true, but it would have been nice if they had actually looked at the relevant documents before making the decision and passing out mistaken information. He also stated that many had complained about the change, but that there was nothing they could do about it. This was the same church (that I no longer go to) that has 2000 C.E in large letters displayed on their school. Using Common Era on a Catholic School is just one of the silliest things I have seen.

The Eastern Catholic Churches went though an iconoclastic period and corrected it with even more beautiful churches. Mark also linked to an Easter Orthodox Church in the same area. I can only hope that we in the West we make up for our own stark iconoclastic architecture.

My own parish was also recently restored. The difference, as you can see below, is that we didn’t have a beauty-hating architect do it.