From last week’s bulletin of the Cornell Catholic Community. I thought this was too rich not to pass on for appreciation by a wider audience. Fr. Daniel McMullin asks:

What is your personal experience of the Mass? A comforting routine? A weekly obligation? A ritual of challenge or consolation? I’m sure it is all of this and much more. Our celebration of the Eucharist here at Cornell has the idiosyncracies of a particular diocese, particular priests, and particular community, each with characteristics that inspire as well as irritate. That, however, is the genius of the Incarnation: Jesus Christ is embodied in this local, human community and made explicitly present in the liturgy of the Mass.

So am I getting this right – the genius of the Incarnation is that some of us all of the time are ticked off about the way Mass is celebrated in the Diocese of Rochester, in our particular faith community, on the campus of Cornell University?

As for this “ritual of challenge” nonsense, Franciscus and I play darts at the Chapter House every Wednesday night after Rosary – that’s what I call a ritual of challenge.

In a post not too long ago, I suggested that we owed some applause to Bishop Vasa for being willing to question publicly the truth of evolution. In his column for the diocesan paper, as I understood it, he had been critical of both biological, macro-evolution as well as the geological evolution of the Earth. His questioning of these hypotheses was then mocked by the scientifically minded members of our Society. No one, except for Iacobus, dared come to the Bishop’s defense.

I want to return to the question of evolution and raise one possible way of reconciling the scientific consensus on evolution with the position, based on Revelation, which may seem to be required of us as faithful Catholics.

Continue reading

Are Mormons Christians? I suppose it’s surprising in many ways that I’ve never brought this up before, since it’s one subject on which I am, you might say, unusually qualified to comment. (For those of you who don’t read this blog regularly, I am myself a convert from Mormonism.) Of course, on one level there isn’t much of a debate to be had, at least among Catholics. The Vatican explicitly ruled, five or six years back, that Mormons are not Christians, and that Mormon converts to Catholicism must be baptized absolutely and not conditionally. However, as usually happens when a dubium is answered, the ruling was very short and didn’t give many details. Mormons are not Christians, but there is still some room for filling out the picture as to why they are not. And in fact, this might serve as a very interesting test case. What does it take to be a Christian?
Continue reading

The Doctor and I attended a concert tonight. It was the Cantigas de Santa Maria from the court of Alfonso the Wise, King of Castille (1221-1284), as performed by one of my favorite musical ensembles, the Boston Camerata. If you haven’t heard of this glorious music, that is nothing to be ashamed of, because you aren’t likely to hear it on the radio, or even to find recordings in your local Borders. It is a collection of 400-some sacred songs dedicated to the Blessed Mother, all of which were either written or commissioned by the Spanish king, who had a very intense devotion to Our Lady.The Boston Camerata (who, if you don’t know, is America’s premiere early music performance group) lifted these songs directly from the 800-year-old manuscripts remaining from King Alfonso’s court, and did their best to recreate what they may have sounded like in medieval Spain. Of course, the group had to dilute the devotional nature of the thing by making much of the great amount of mixing and “interfaith dialogue” that went on in medieval Spain, but this was a minor distraction in an otherwise delightful concert.

There were essentially two types of song: hymns of praise to the Virgin, and stories of miracles that she had wrought. The latter were done in a festive style, with help from an ensemble of medieval instruments, and some were rather amusing. (One, for example, told the story of a monastery dedicated to Our Lady that was for years blessed with miraculous visits from the wild goats of the hills, who would come down regularly of their own accord and allow the monks to milk them. One day a brother got greedy and ate one of the goats for lunch. They didn’t come back after that.)
Continue reading

This august Society is again readying a contingent of its humblest pilgrims in anticipation of the Twelfth Annual Auriesville Pilgrimage for Restoration. Although distinctly alarming absences are rumoured in this year’s Saturday delegation, our company shall be fortified by new souls whose penitential zeal will no doubt set us all aflame with charity.

To all those within several hours travel of Fonda, NY, I invite you to think of joining the pilgrimage on Saturday the 29th of September. There’s no charge and no need to register in advance. Upstate New York is about as beautiful as it can be at this time of year, and there’s Mass, singing, preaching and penance to be had. What’s more, the Pope has freed the traditional Mass, the Mass of All Time, the Mass of the North American Martyrs themselves, and it is our duty to offer Thanksgiving!

For those who are unable to attend, we’ll again be posting pictures and commentary soon after we return. Incidentally, I am planning to make the entire pilgrimage, starting on Wednesday, so I’ll have a tale and pictures from then, as well.

Finally, and the reason for my posting: this is the ideal day to begin a novena to the North American Martyrs, whose feast is the 26th of September, the first day of the pilgrimage. I have included below a novena prayer of internet origin.
Continue reading

It is with some trepidation that I enter into a subject that has been one of the most hotly (and sometimes, foolishly) debated on this blog: contraception. Before anyone gets their teeth set in preparation for a fight, let me first say what I am not going to do: I am not planning to say anything at all concerning the question of what constitutes a sufficiently serious reason to justify avoiding pregnancy through Natural Family Planning. Nor will I enter into debates about the number of children one ought to have, nor about the attitude one ought to take towards large or small families generally.

What I do want to discuss is the difference between periodic continence and artificial contraceptives. I’ve been increasingly coming to think that many or most Catholics (even among those who accept the Church’s teaching) do not understand it. And my first decree is: we need to stop explaining the difference by specifying that NFP is “open to life.” In one sense, this is actually true, but it is very misleading, and is causing quite a number of people to misunderstand the real moral justification, both for outlawing artificial contraceptives, and also for condoning the use of NFP in some cases to prevent pregnancy.
Continue reading

Monthly devotions are, I think, one of the wonderful ways in which the Church helps us to sanctify time. Indeed, the old indulgences in the Raccolta encourage us to use prayers for at least a month: many even of the humblest ejaculatory prays are, when we use them perserveringly for a month, under the usual conditions, accorded a plenary indulgence. Twice blessed, then, if you can match a worthy prayer from the Raccolta (and there, aren’t they all worthy?) to the devotion recommended by the Church during a particular month. September, for example, is dedicated to Our Lady of Sorrows.

On this the Feast of the Triumph of the Holy Cross, the day on which the motu proprio “Summorum Pontificum” comes into effect, in the month dedicated to Our Lady sorrowing, in an era when the Supreme Pontiff has long faced attacks from all sides, I thought that this prayer from the Raccolta was worth sharing. I have taken it as my devotion for this month. Of your charity, I ask you to pray it with me today, for the Supreme Pontiff and for the Church:

Most Holy Virgin and Mother, whose soul was pierced by a sword of sorrow in the Passion of thy divine Son, and who in His glorious Resurrection wast filled with never-ending joy at His triumph; obtain for us who call upon thee, so to be partakers in the adversities of Holy Church and the sorrows of the Sovereign Pontiff, as to be found worthy to rejoice with them in the consolations for which we pray, in the charity and peace of the same Christ our Lord. Amen.

Continue reading

And won’t he be welcome in a place like Ithaca! Here we welcome all faiths and belief communities, especially those faiths and belief communities whose sole raison d’etre is the welcoming of all faiths and belief communities. Fr. Robert Smith of the Cornell Catholic Community has been eloquent in praise of Taize. During my first year here, though he never joined us in praying the Rosary, Fr. Bob led a “Taize prayer” meeting one night a week at the same time as we met to pray the Rosary. It never occurred to me until now to ask why it died out, but it did; it didn’t last beyond that year.

When I was studying at Oxford, and even before I was received into the Church, I met a Polish girl who was also keen on the Taize scene. She also appeared, such as my knowledge was then, to be a devout, sincere Catholic. I remember one day that she praised the works of one Fr. Jacques Dupuis, S.J. It sounded suspicious, and lo and behold, when I googled his name, among the first results was a link to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, to a document noting Fr. Dupuis’ doctrinal deviations – if the CDF ever gets as far as that, you know it must be bad!

These are the kind of folks who go in for Taize. I further illustrate with the following. Fr. Bob made at least one disciple here, a David Herman. He writes in this week’s bulletin from the Cornell Catholic Community:

The beauty of Taizé is that it is a place of real doubt, real searching, and real sincerity, and most of the people who go there are down-to-earth and… dare I say it… normal, like you or me. There isn’t a sense of ulterior motives or proselytizing that I think we sometimes detect and mistrust from religion, especially in America. Even if you don’t view yourself as extremely religious (and even if you do), but you like the idea of meeting people from all over the world and are open to talking about religious-themed questions, I recommend that you go — you won’t regret it. The act in itself will be like planting a tiny mustard seed — you will be amazed at what it grows into. [Yes, into rank heresy and apostasy.]

Continue reading

More good news from Angelus Press – actually, they think it’s kind of negative, because they’ve run out of books, and they want to be able to meet the demand before Christmas, so they’re asking for donations to get the books printed in time – but whatever, it’s still a positive sign.

Angelus Press is grateful to the Holy Father for his recent Apostolic Letter Summorum Pontificum which acknowledges that the Tridentine Latin Mass was never abrogated, that every Catholic priest has the right to celebrate it, and that all the Catholic faithful should have access to it.

The speed of the computer has left Angelus Press with the happy problem of a flood of priests and laymen coming to us for books on the Latin Mass, the crisis in the Church, the positions and canonical status of the Society of Saint Pius X, Archbishop Lefebvre, and various liturgical books (such as the Divine Office).What’s serious is that reprinting the most desirable books so soon was not in our 2007 production budget. . . .

Continue reading

Though it’s rather late given how long ago the book was released, I am nonetheless going to offer my review of the last Harry Potter book, and, in a broader sense, on the series as a whole. There will be no spoilers for those still thinking of reading it. I’ll stick more to general observations about the strengths and weaknesses of the series, and about its suitability as reading for children. I will begin by making the following admissions:

1. I have read all seven Harry Potter books.
2. I did, in fact, purchase the seventh book on the night it was released (but at Kroger, not at one of those big bookstore parties).
3. I read it all within the next few days.
Continue reading