Liturgy

This should make you feell better about the celebration of the Mass at your local parish

by Jeffrey Miller
written by Jeffrey Miller

Human candle holders.

I am thinking of starting up a campaign to
donate money to the the
Cathedral of Auch in the Diocse of Gers.  Surely their funds
must have run low and couldn’t buy proper candle holders.  At
least that is the most charitable explanation I could think of.

Though my charitable imagination fails at
the other pictures in the
series
at Catholic Church Conservation which are not for the liturgical faint of heart.

 

Giant ball at Mass.

With the last picture in the series I am
really hoping that the ball
shown is the one from the TV series The Prisoner and in this case is being used to pacify liturgical performers.

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Other

Another book meme

by Jeffrey Miller
written by Jeffrey Miller

Mulier Fortis tagged me with yet another book meme.

1)
Which book do you irrationally cringe
away from reading, despite seeing only positive reviews?
Henry Nouwen – Once going to a retreat house I went to their book store
and found books like Hitler’s Pope,  Gary Wills stuff, a bunch
of dissident garbage plus a lot of books by Henry Nouwen.
 Sure it is irrational guilt by associations but there are
lots of books to choose from.

2) If you could bring
three characters to life for a social event
(afternoon tea, a night of clubbing, perhaps a world cruise), who would
they be and what would the event be?
Well the event would obviously be a world cruise since you then would
get to spend the most time with them.   Just off the top of my
head the characters would be Gandalf (great to have around for smoke
rings),  the noble dark-elf ranger Drizzt Do’Urden,
 and Chesterton’s Innocent Smith.


3) (Borrowing shamelessly
from the Thursday Next series by Jasper
Fforde): you are told you cant die until you read the most boring
novel on the planet. While this immortality is great for a while,
eventually you realise its past time to die. Which book would you
expect to get you a nice grave?
Well I have no idea what the most boring novel on the planet.
 Such a novel wouldn’t get much publicity if it was truly
boring.  Even badly written and poorly researched novels like
The Da Vinci Code don’t commit the sin of being boring.  Now
if you have a category of books that would be quite purgatorial than I
think it could be any of Fr. Andrew Greeley’s bodice ripper novels.

4) Come on, weve all
been there. Which book have you pretended, or at
least hinted, that youve read, when in fact youve been nowhere near
it?
I never pretend to read something.

5) Youre interviewing
for the post of Official Book Advisor to some
VIP (whos not a big reader). Whats the first book youd recommend and
why? (If you feel like youd have to know the person, go ahead and
personalise the VIP).
Orthodoxy, if he doesn’t like it I probably would not have wanted to
work for him anyway.

6) A good fairy comes and
grants you one wish: you will have perfect
reading comprehension in the foreign language of your choice. Which
language do you go with?
Too obvious – Latin.  Then I could start a new blog with one
of those cool Latin names.

7) A mischievous fairy
comes and says that you must choose one book
that you will reread once a year for the rest of your life (you can
read other books as well). Which book would you pick?
Well I don’t know exactly why such a fairy would be labeled
mischievous?  If a book isn’t worth reading yearly it probably
is not a good book. There are already several books that I read
yearly.  Orthodoxy, Everlasting Man, Theology and Sanity, The
Hobbit and the LOTR series. Than there are other books that I seem to
have on two or three year cycles.

8) I know that the book
blogging community, and its various challenges,
have pushed my reading borders. Whats one bookish thing you
discovered from book blogging (maybe a new genre, or author, or new
appreciation for cover art-anything)?
One thing I love about St. Blogs is that book recommendations from
various bloggers has opened me up to multiple books that I would
probably never have read.  For some dumb reason I had the idea
that Dean Koontz was a second-rate Stephen King till I heard such good
things about the Brother Odd series and his other books; boy was I
wrong.  From fiction to theology I have been introduced to a
bunch of great books.


9) That good fairy is
back for one final visit. Now, shes granting you
your dream library! Describe it. Is everything leather bound? Is it
full of first edition hardcovers? Pristine trade paperbacks? Perhaps a
few favourite authors have inscribed their works? Go ahead-let your
imagination run free.
Well I would like to have a room with a dedicated library with walls of
shelves with leather bound books instead of having satellite libraries
all over the house.  Though a dream library would also have
one of those big Print-On-Demand machines so I could dial up any book I
wanted.  I would really like the library to have a secret
passage and when you grab the right book opens up to
another library!

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Humor

Hospitality

by Jeffrey Miller
written by Jeffrey Miller

PHOENIX — Football fans struggling to
find a place to stay for the Super Bowl may not be entirely out of
luck: there are still beds available at the local monastery.

The Benedictine nuns of Our Lady of Guadalupe Monastery in Phoenix are
renting out rooms during Super Bowl week for $250 a night, plus $50
extra for each additional person. That’s not an unreasonable fee,
considering a nearby Super 8 Motel is charging $500 a night.

“It’s a different twist for us in the sense that we’ve never opened the
monastery for an event like the Super Bowl,” said Sister Linda of the
Benedictine Sisters of Phoenix. “It’s just a different clientele than
we’re accustomed to.”

The nuns said they plan to use the money to pay for some property they
purchased adjacent to the monastery.

Though the sisters won’t impose a curfew, lodgers at the monastery will
have to abide by a few rules: no smoking, no rowdy behavior and most
importantly, no alcohol.

Super Bowl fans will have to have their crazy fun elsewhere, but at
least confession is conveniently located.

“I would think that God’s got to be excited about the Super Bowl as
well,” Sister Linda said. “He wants people to enjoy life.”

This makes sense since the rule of St.
Benedict Chapter 53 says:

Let all Super Bowl fans who arrive be
received as Christ, because He will say: “I was a stranger and you took
Me in” (Mt 25:35). And let due honor be shown to all, especially to
those fans of the opposing team to the one you like.

Let the kitchen of the Abbot and the guests be apart, that the brethren
may not be disturbed by the guests who arrive at uncertain times
because of Super Bowl parties and who are never wanting in the
monastery. Let two brothers who are able to fulfill this office well go
into the kitchen for a year to be able to provide the guests with
appropriate snacks such as Buffalo Wings and a tray of cold cuts and
cheeses.

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Punditry

Don't send in the clowns

by Jeffrey Miller
written by Jeffrey Miller

I don’t know whether to call this
liturgical Jekyll and Hyde syndrome,
a liturgically accommodating bishop,  or something else
entirely.  Do a compare and contrast for these
href=”http://slatts.blogspot.com/2008/01/diocese-bishop-opts-for-circus-mass.html”
target=”_blank”>two
href=”http://culbreath.wordpress.com/2008/01/23/how-to-implement-summorum-pontificum/”
target=”_blank”>stories.

Last Sunday, Diocese of Venice Bishop
Frank Dewane celebrated Mass at a Sarasota church accompanied by
priests wearing colorful Ferris wheels, clowns, giraffes, unicycles,
lions and merry-go-rounds on their vestments.

This was the annual circus Mass, Dewane said, honoring the nearly
100-year history of the Ringling family on Floridas west coast and the
importance of itinerant people like circus performers to the Catholic
universal church.

and

Bishop Dewayne of Venice, Florida, requires daily mass in the Extraordinary Form at Ave Maria University:

Due to the demand for the celebration
of
the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, both from Catholics residents
in Ave Maria Town as well as from students, faculty, and staff at Ave
Maria University, and in accordance with Summorum Pontificum, it is
fitting that a Sunday Mass be celebrated on campus in the Extraordinary
Form. In keeping with the same manifest desire, it would seem opportune
that the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite be celebrated on a daily
basis at the University, and at a convenient time. Further, it is noted
that, in accordance with Summorum Pontificum, unscheduled Masses can
also be celebrated by priests on campus, in the Extraordinary Form of
the Roman Rite.

Well I guess priests wearing vestments
like that would be an
extraordinary form of the Mass.  I have never really
understood these circus or clown themed Masses anyway.  For
example for the annual Red Mass they don’t wear vestments with law
books, blind lady justices, bar exams,  or courtrooms.
I am pretty sure Masses celebrated on Navy bases or at sea
don’t have priest’s wearing vestments with various classes of ships,
missiles, carrier aircraft, and various insignia of rank.  So
exactly why is it that a parish closely associated with care of
Catholic working with Ringling Brothers Circus get this kind of
treatment?

I believe the Church involved is
href=”http://www.stmartha.org” target=”_blank”>St.
Martha Catholic Church staffed by the Pallottine Fathers
(shouldn’t that be Pantomine Fathers) which calls itself the
U.S.A. Circus Church. They have a “full-sized, restored and gaily
painted wagon wheels mounted on the wall behind the altar.”  I
do wonder if Catholics involved with the circus like having a liturgy
like this?  It would seem to me that if you worked at the
circus all day the last thing you would want to see is vestments with
clowns and unicycles.  This seems to me something that would
be seen as more fun by the priests involved than the community they are
pastoring.  It does make me wonder if in May they have a
style=”font-style: italic;”>Clowning of Mary.


alt=”Clown Mass Indialantic, Fl Holy Name of Jesus Parish”
src=”http://www.splendoroftruth.com/curtjester/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/clownmass_Indialantic_HolyNameJesus.jpg”>

The picture above is from another Florida parish Holy Name of
Jesus Parish in Indialantic in the Diocese of Orlando.

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News

Pro-choice Dolphins

by Jeffrey Miller
written by Jeffrey Miller

New evidence has been compiled by
marine scientists that prove the normally placid dolphin is capable of
brutal attacks both on innocent fellow marine mammals and, more
disturbingly, on its own kind.
     
Film taken of gangs of dolphins repeatedly ramming baby porpoises,
tossing them in the air and pursuing them to the death has solved a
long-term mystery of what causes the death of so many of these harmless
mammals – but has left animal experts baffled as to the motive.

Another mystery is that the animal ‘murders’ have only been reported in
two parts of the world – along Scotland’s East Coast and in America off
the beaches of Virginia, where even more alarmingly, the victims were
scores of the dolphins’ own young. 

Surely it is because Planned
Parenthood has opened up new chapters for Dolphins off of Virginia and
Scotland.
  Never mind the fact that the U.S. Military were originally
blamed for this.

Dolphins need a spiritual awakening and I
would recommend my book The Porpoise Driven Life.

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News

Here and there

by Jeffrey Miller
written by Jeffrey Miller

Fr. Powell writes:

My senior/grad theology seminar here at
the Univ of Dallas is called Postmetaphysical
theologies.  The class has a blogsite called suppl(e)mental.

A major part of the students grades hangs on doing theology in
public.  My goal here is to
acquaint these budding Catholic theologians with the weirdnesses of
reading, writing, and writing
about Christian theology for an audience outside the academy.

The theologies we will be covering in the seminar are decidedly
non-Catholic, sometimes downright
(though never explicitly) anti-Catholic, and represent some of the best
contemporary theology out
there.  My goal here is to introduce my very, very orthodox
theologians-to-be to the veritable
circus of theological methods, vocabularies, personalities, and schools
that push and pull the
faith of the Church in both creative and destructive directions.

I see myself as something of a Professor of Defense Against the Dark
Arts.

The site is here.

Majorie Cambell posts that 

There’s a new kid in town . . . opening
in
San Francisco on March 7, 2008:  the Cinema Vita Film
Festival.   “The Cinema Vita Film Festival has been
established to encourage young, emerging filmmakers and to showcase
movies about contemporary issues concerning the meaning and value of
life. Coordinated by the San Francisco Archdiocesan Office of Public
Policy, the Oakland Diocesan Respect Life Ministry, Marriage for Life,
and Ignatius Press, the festival is based on the recognition that art,
especially the medium of film, shapes the popular imagination and has a
tremendous influence on culture.

You can find details here.

In other news there will be a Catholic
Writers’ Conference Online from May 2-9 this year.  For those
interested in this online conference you can find details here.

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Pro-life

Censorship for you

by Jeffrey Miller
written by Jeffrey Miller

Dawn Eden reports on Planned
Parenthood
Golden Gate chapter is currently attempting to censor the USCCB’s
pro-life ads.  Jill Stanek has more on this and
truth checks Planned Parenthoods “truth check” of the USCCB’s ads.
 Their email letter to subscribers starts by saying:

Many supporters like you have informed
us
that the antis are back at it again.

Antis is some strange shortcut slang, but
it sounds like something they would call us.  They will never
see that us as pro-life, but anti-abortion so antis is the natural
result.  So since they are against us pro-life supporters I
guest that makes them anti-antis.

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Other

Page meme

by Jeffrey Miller
written by Jeffrey Miller

Clayton tagged me with the Book
Meme Rules.

1. Pick up the nearest book ( of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people

Well the nearest book is The Life of Thomas More by Peter Ackroyd and
the sentences read.

Carthusians and a famous Hall of St.
Mary
which was filled with
tapestries emblazoned with the Virgin’s heavenly splendour.
 At the time of More’s visit the city was seized by a
particularly severe fit of Mariolotry , with a Franciscan monk
preaching
the
good news that whoever recited “psalterium beatae virginis” (by which
he meant the rosary) each day could never be damned.

It is pretty interesting that out of the
whole book which I really liked that this meme zeroed in on one series
of sentences that I didn’t quite agree with.  This would be
considered Mariolotry  if someone strictly believed that this
devotional
practice on its own outside of Christ would lead someone to be saved.
 This should be seen as a bit a hyperbole in that everyone who
is faithful to praying the Rosary as a devotional practice likely will
be saved when there is a conformity of their prayer life to their
actions. 

Well at least that is a bit more
interesting than what was in the second closest book to me “Cocoa
programming for Mac OS X.”

If anybody want to joint in to this meme
in the comment box, fire away.

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Parody

PWTN’s new schedule

by Jeffrey Miller
written by Jeffrey Miller

Progressive Word Television Network (PWTN) which has brought you such hits as Earth Mother Joan Live and Journey from Rome now has a brand new line up of great shows.

Because of the writers strike we have decided to devote our new schedule to reality shows.  We need writers for our regular shows since we write our theology as we go.

Regardless we are sure you will love our newtop of the line show Liturgical Dancing with the Stars!

Liturgical dancing with the stars

The new show pairs a number of celebrities with groups of professional liturgical dancers, who each week compete by performing the latest in liturgical dances with and without banners and other props, which are then given scores by our special panel of judges. Viewers are given a certain amount of time to place votes on their favorite liturgical dancers, either by telephone or Internet. The liturgical dancing group with the lowest combined score (judges plus viewers) is eliminated and does not go on to the next week. This process continues until there are only two or three liturgical dancing groups left, at which point one group is declared the champion.

We also have the greatest group of judges to judge liturgical dancers ever.  Each week you will delight in the acerbic wit of Sister Joan D. Chittister, OSB, the Most Revd Dr Thomas Gumbleton, and the Most Reverend Donald W. Trautman, S.T.D., S.S.L.  Bishop Trautman is a real down to earth guy that will never use any big words to confuse you and when it comes to judging liturgical dancers he will never quench the spirit.

We don’t want to spill the beans too much on what stars we will have this season but the following photo will give you some idea of the A-List talent we have.

Liturgical dancing with the stars

Interpreting Scripture through movement can be done by anyone who can pull on some leotards and wave their arms and body around during Mass, but you will love to see the professionals along with your favorite stars show you how it can be done. Liturgical Dancing with the Stars will kick off with a live show on Feb 28th filmed at the  Los Angeles Religious Education Congress which has been a great showcase for liturgical dance in the past.

Wait it gets even better.  Besides your favorite stars from the state and the screen we also will have as guests some of your favorite liturgical dancers from within the Church.

Jesuit Liturgical Dancer

Such as the famous pirouetting Jesuit Father Saju George S.J.

Dominican-can

And who can forget Br. Angel Mendez, OP of the Southern Dominican Province Canadian Dominican-can dancer who will be appearing.

So make sure to set your TIVO or watch live the next best thing on PWTN with audience participation.  Along with Liturgical Dancing with the Stars we have some other great reality shows that demonstrate the latest in prophetic scheduling.

You will just love our new audience participation show called “Sensus Fidelium (Sorry about the Latin)”. Each week a prophetic panel appears to discuss which direction the church should take on a hot button issue.  After the panel makes their brave arguments for change on issues the audience can then vote on it via their phone or SMS text messaging.  Each weeks results  “Sensus Fidelium (Sorry about the Latin)” will be sent to the Papal Nuncio and the Vatican.

Or how about “Survivor: Diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska” In this show progressive Catholics are isolated in Bishop Bruskewitz’s diocese and must go without internet connectivity and their subscription to National Catholic Reporter and other of their favorite magazines and newspapers.  Each week tune in to see whether contestants can survive Masses celebrated totally in accordance to the GIRM and with exactly zero creative liturgical changes. In one grueling episode the contestants visit a seminary busting to the seams with seminarians who share the same knee-jerk “obedience” to the church as their Bishop does.  A seminary full of young-fogeys is a difficult prospect to face.  If you are a progressive Catholics who thinks they have what it takes for “Survivor: Diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska” then please attend our tryouts.  But it certainly is not for the faint of heart.

After such a grueling show you will be able to sit back and relax to American Catholic Idol where each week amateur contestants belt our classic songs such as “Here I Am Lord”, “Ashes”, “Shine, Jesus, Shine”  and multiple other songs you have come to know and  love at your local Catholic Church. A panel of songwriters from OCP and GIA will judge these performers as to capability and to how well they perform with acoustic guitars, tambourines, and any other hand-held percussion instruments. You will laugh as less than talented singers try their hand at a Marty Haugen song or thrill when a singer nails “On Eagle’s Wing.” Join is for the wild ride of emotionalism in all of your favorite modern Catholic hymns.

There is lots to love this year at Progressive Word Television Network (PWTN) so come an join us!

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