I wonder if someone of you can help me to see whether there might be a connection between something I read about at Off the Record and these words of St. Gregory the Great. This exemplar pontificum said:

Sunt enim nonnulli qui dum plus terrenam substantiam quam oves diligunt, merito nomen pastoris perdunt: non enim pastor, sed mercenarius vocatur qui non pro amore intimo oves dominicas, sed ad temporales mercedes pascit. Mercenarius quippe est qui pastoris locum tenet, sed lucrum animarum non quaerit, terrenis commodis inhiat, honore praelationis gaudet.

For there are not a few who, while they love worldy fortune more than the sheep, rightly lose the name of “pastor”: for he is not called a pastor but an employee who shepherds the Lord’s sheep, not on account of a deep love, but to gain temporal reward. Indeed the employee holds the place of a pastor, but he does not seek the profit of souls, but longs for worldy conveniences and delights in the honor of preferrment.

From the Off the Record blog:

The journalists go on to report that most priests [in England and Wales], including the heterodox, gave Pope Benedict a high rating on his first year (scoring him 8.9 on a 1-to-10 scale) and quote a respondent who, unconvincingly, chalks it up to careerism:

“We are such creeps,” said one clergyman before giving the Pope a nine. “We’re all thinking of our careers.”

Sorry, pal, if you think an anonymous poll on the pope counts more toward promotion than a publicly permissive stance on condoms, you’ve got it backwards. The two most successful clerical careers in Britain are those of Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor and Dominican Timothy Radcliffe.

And St. Augustine adds this interesting note:

Nec enim mercenarius diceretur, nisi acciperet a conducente mercedem. Filii aeternam hereditatem patris patienter expectant, mercenarius temporalem mercedem conducentis festinanter exoptat; et tamen per linguas utrorumque divina Christi gloria diffamatur. Inde ergo laedit unde mala facit, non unde bona dicit: botrum carpe, spinam cave: quia botrus aliquando de radice vitis exortus, pendet in spinis: multi quippe in Ecclesia commoda terrena sectantes, Christum praedicant, et per eos vox Christi auditur; et sequuntur oves, non mercenarium, sed vocem pastoris per mercenarium.

For he ought not be called a “hireling” unless he has accepted a wage from the employer. The sons of the Father patiently await an eternal inheritance, the hireling desires a temporal wage from the employer and speedily; nevertheless, the divine glory of Christ is spread abroad through the tongues of both. Accordingly, the hireling wounds when he does evil, not when he speaks good: pluck the fruit, avoid the thorn; sometimes when the fruit grows from the root of the vine, it hangs among thorns: many in the Church, to be sure, while pursuing worldly goods, preach Christ, and through them the voice of Christ is heard; and the sheep follow, not the hireling, but the voice of the shepherd through the hireling.

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Sometimes the biographies of saints at the Catholic Encyclopedia leave more than a little to be desired. I recall that the biograph of St. Teresa of Avila is that way. But more often, in my experience, they can be wonderful, even thrilling. The biography of St. Alphonsus Liguori at the Encyclopedia is not only that but a meditation on holiness and life, almost independent of the saint himself. And I have the Catholic Encyclopedia to thank for the esteem I have for this man, St. Fidelis of Sigmaringen.

Iacobus has taught me to enjoy the word “sassy”, and it is just the word we want when it comes to St. Fidelis, the first martyr for the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, and the man whose feast we celebrate today. Sassy, because of the way in which he died.

Father Cuthbert in the Catholic Encyclopedia concludes his report thus:

At Sevis [St. Fidelis] entered the church and began to preach, but was interrupted by a sudden tumult both within and without the church. Several Austrian soldiers who were guarding the doors of the church were killed and Fidelis himself was struck. A Calvinist present offered to lead him to a place of security. Fidelis thanked the man but said his life was in the hands of God.

Outside the church he was surrounded by a crowd led by the preachers who offered to save his life if he would apostatize.

Fidelis replied: “I came to extirpate heresy, not to embrace it.”

whereupon he was struck down. He was the first martyr of the Congregation of Propaganda. His body was afterwards taken to Feldkirch and buried in the church of his order, except his head and left arm, which were placed in the cathedral at Coire. He was beatified in 1729, and canonized in 1745.

The man had some panache. May he intercede on behalf of the Church that she may not forget her mission to convert all nations to the one, true Faith.

Deiparae Virginis et Rosarii cultor eximius, a Deo postulavit, ut pro catholica fide martyr occumberet . . . . [et] cum nulli labori parcens plures haereticos ad Christi fidem convertisset, malorum invidiam subiit.

Look! we wish to be popular today, the Church, I mean, wishes to be popular; popular with the Jews, with the protestants, with the schismatics (I’m speaking of the Easterns), with every part of this world. I posted the other day about my frustration when the Pope won’t call it like it is - but look at the consequence of preaching the Faith, martyrdom. The spirit of the martyrs must return if we are again to preach the Faith. Will there not be martyrs in Europe in the coming years? As one country after another on the Continent succumbs to the Mohammedan horde, the Catholics will be increasingly envied, as it were, invidiam subibunt, to mirror the words of the biography.

Europe long ago became mission territory; St. Fidelis would know how to get us started on the road back.

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I often chat with Phil Fiadino, the Cornell Catholic Community’s resident Peace & Social Justice minister. But that’s not all Phil does - Phil is also a knowledgeable liturgist. When he caught Ambrosius and me while walking across campus on Friday afternoon, we stopped for a little chat, and he made - what I think to be - an excellent point pertaining to the liturgy.

Phil’s a guy none too happy with the trite hymnody of the Oregon Catholic Press and the like. But what Phil noted is that, in general, the recent tradition (say, the past 500 years) of the Roman Church does not call for any hymnody to accompany the Mass. There is an Introit and, at the end, an “Ite, missa est”, but no direct liturgical call for hymn singing. There aren’t hymns, he said, with today’s papal liturgies; just some organ music at the end, and the pope walks out.

But we converts - especially before we’ve been steeped in the Romish religion - often pine for the hymns of our heretical days. I know that the converts from Episcopalianism make much off the hymns they’ve lost, but it was the Lutherans of whom it was said that “they sang themselves into heresy.” Which is only to say that hymns can be very beautiful and, when everyone is singing together, intoxicating - not a bad thing when the hymns have the right doctrinal content.

So is it the case that the Romans have no hymns or proper place for them, while the protestants are singing delightedly (though unto perdition)? But of course not! As Phil wisely pointed out, our hymns, though not found with the Mass, are yet found through the entire day, namely in the Divine Office. And what glorious hymns we have there! Phil’s point was simple enough, I guess, but it hadn’t occurred to me before. The Catholic has at his disposal beautiful and ancient hymnody, but he must open the Breviary in order to find it. At each hour of the day, we find a hymn, some fixed, as at the little hours, and others variable, as at Matins, Lauds, and Vespers. Just consider this one beautiful verse from this Sunday’s Lauds:

Cuius sepulchrum plurimo
Custode signabat lapis,
Victor triumphat, et suo
Mortem sepulcro funerat.

It’s too glorious for words. “. . . the Conqueror triumphs, and in His own grave buries Death.” But it’s not just the pretty image, which fairly often can survive translation, but the tightness of Latin verse; even the arrangement of the words, in some cases, is suggestive - such as “mortem” here buried between “suo” and “sepulcro”. This is great stuff and we have far more reason to be proud of it than protestants of any of their hymns.

But there is a difficulty: it seems that one needs a monastery nearby and a decent knowledge of Latin. The beauty of our Latin hymnody won’t come out without a knowledge of the language. And it helps to have other people there, who know how to sing it, as in the long gone days when monasteries were not so few and far in between. This is an undeniable challenge.

This post is just to say that we should not forget what we have in our breviaries. Perhaps it will be some help when Baronius Press publishes the Latin/English old Breviary, perhaps sometime in 2006. This will at least give traditionalists a chance to get closer to the rich hymnody of the Church, even if they don’t know Latin; at least it’s a start. And for those who are ready for the Latin, it will also be a great resource; right now, it is very difficult or expensive to get ahold of the old Breviary.

For those of you who would like to see it, here is the rest of that hymn for the Lauds of this Sunday:

Aurora caelum purpurat,
Aether resultat laudibus,
Mundus triumphans iubilat,
Horrens avernus infremit.

Rex ille dum fortissimus
De mortis inferno specu
Patrum senatum liberum
Educit ad vitæ iubar.

Cuius sepulcrum plurimo
Custode signabat lapis,
Victor triumphat, et suo
Mortem sepulcro funerat.

Sat funeri, sat lacrimis,
Sat est datum doloribus :
Surrexit exstinctor necis,
Clamat coruscans Angelus.

Ut sis perenne mentibus
Paschale Iesu, gaudium,
A morte dira criminum
Vitae renatos libera.

Deo Patri sit gloria,
Et Filio, qui a mortuis
Surrexit, ac Paraclito,
In sempiterna saecula. Amen.

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This happy birthday day for the city of Rome was marked by a concert which was attended by the Mayor, the Italian President, and the Supreme Pontiff. The CWNews report gives some indication as to the pontiff’s remarks on the occasion. Apparently, his remarks didn’t include some basic pointers about modesty in dress, which speak to such things as see-through garments and necklines diving towards the stomach. Was this soprano (Laura Aikin) also involved in singing the “Ave Verum”?

Pace my dear Ambrosius’ recent post, why does the pontiff say things like the following, that the city of Rome should be “a beacon of civilization and of spirituality for the whole world”? A beacon of civilization, yes, of course, as it has been in the past - but “of spirituality”? A beacon of salvation for the entire world, yes, but a beacon of “spirituality”?

I suppose that I shouldn’t go too far on the CWNews report before I can read the whole of what he said. I hope that it sounds better when taken in toto. I get frustrated, though, with the sugar-coated language; just tell it like it is. The history of Rome is inextricably bound up witht the fact that it is the see of Peter, the home of the Vicar of Christ. When will Rome tell us again who she is, that no man can be indifferent to her on his “spiritual” journey?

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