This from the latest print issue of the National Review:

Sometimes, abortions go wrong, and the baby survives. (What a sickening sentence.) That is what happened in England recently. Jodie Percival became pregnant with her third child, and, along with her fiancé, decided to have an abortion. Her first child had died of kidney disease, and her second child is now afflicted with such disease. “I was on the pill when I became pregnant,” Ms. Percival said. “Deciding to terminate at eight weeks was just utterly horrible, but I couldn’t cope with the anguish of losing another baby.” So she had the abortion - or thought she had. She felt a fluttering in her stomach, and went to have a scan. “I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “This was the baby I thought I’d terminated. [Such a clinical word.] At first I was angry that this was happening to us, that the procedure had failed. I wrote to the hospital, I couldn’t believe that they had let me down like this. They wrote back and apologized and said it was very rare.” In the end, baby Finley was born, and he is expected to lead a normal life. Yes, sometimes abortions go “wrong.”

She couldn’t cope with the anguish of losing another baby? And so decided to kill the one in her womb. From pregnancy.org, the baby at eight weeks:

At any rate, thank God that the baby survived. But how terrible it must be when as a child (or young adult) such children learn that their parents tried to kill them when they were most helpless and defenseless?

There is one track from Clear Creek’s St. Benedict CD, among four tracks under the heading “The Glory of St. Benedict”, that I think is especially fine. “Inter aeternas Superum” is, as far as I can tell, not available - the words, that is - on the internet. So I’m very pleased to make them available here, from the booklet that came with the CD. As for the music - you’ll have to order it yourself; I don’t think that you’ll be disappointed. I’m no musician, so I can’t put the point well, but I think that the music for “Inter aeternas” has a particularly haunting quality to it. This is partly because it’s a hymn, I suppose, so perhaps the composer was a little more free. Anyway, I’ll share a few thoughts about the elegant Latin words to which the music has been joined.

Īntĕr ǣtērnās Sŭpĕrūm cŏrōnās,
Quās sācrō pārtās rĕtǐnēnt ăgōne,
Ēmǐcās cēlsīs mĕrǐtīs cǒrūscus,
Ō Bĕnĕdīcte.

The translation given in the Clear Creek booklet has some merit: “Gem of the highest, diadem immortal, Cherished forever after sacred struggle, Thou, among many, first in lofty merit, Benedict, shinest.” This is how I would put it (though hardly poetically): “Among the eternal crowns of the saints, which won by holy suffering they keep [forever], brilliant, O Benedict, thou shinest with lofty merit.” Their translation makes it sound like Benedict is the crown or gem - but I guess that if we take it as a metaphor, we could address Benedict as one of the heavenly crowns…. Certainly, the repeated ‘c’ sounds draw our attention to corona, in “coronas”, “sacro”, “emicas”, “celsis”, “coruscus”, and finally “Benedicte”. It’s really quite a beautiful effect, isn’t it?
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So, the Doctor and I have been in our new residence more than a week now, but things are still somewhat at sixes and sevens. Mostly this is my fault, not because I’ve been lazy but because I’ve been… painting. Being in a real house together for the first time has brought out my domestic side and at my insistence the Doctor and I have been transforming the rather dreary rooms of our domicile into much more pleasant ones. It’s amazing, really, what you can do with a little color.

It’s times like this that I think how lucky we are to be academics. Although I have plenty to get done this summer, we at least did not need to report for work the day after we got to town, so we could take care of all the move-in details on our own schedule. And, since both of us are serial movers, we had some idea what this drill would be like. Roughly counting in my head, I believe this is the thirteenth time in my life that I’ve arrived in a new place with the intention to stay four months or more (and if you raise that to “a year or more” it would still be the tenth time.) And I’m not yet thirty. It’s a funny culture we have, in some ways, where a substantial portion of the population lives like us, packing things up every few years and pushing new horizons. It’s no wonder we have so much trouble forming solid communities.

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A number of blogs linked to Bishop Arthur Seratelli’s rather eye-catching column - with quotations from Hamlet, Erasmus, and The Spirit of the Liturgy - in which he hammered liturgy language liberals (if I may use that expression). This wasn’t about using more Latin in the Novus Ordo (unfortunately), but simply about the need for a more refined, more elegant English prose in Novus Ordo in America.

When I went to read his column, I noticed that there was a place for “Feedback/Comments” under which there was a link for emailing the bishop. Well, you can bet that I did! If a bishop puts his neck on the line, even a little bit, for some good cause, what could be better than sending him a brief note of support? And, besides, what could be easier? It takes less than a minute.
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It has been awhile since I last posted in connection with the Breviarium Romanum. Happily, there have been some welcome developments on that front: PCP Books reprinted the 1962 Breviary, and apparently, it was popular; their website says that they hope to have more in stock after June 2008.

I’m sure, though, that’s old news. The reason I’m writing now is to offer a copy of the “Rubrics of the Roman Breviary (1962) and Missal” to whomever may be able to put this to good use. It is an English translation of the rubrics to be found at the beginning of the 1962 Breviary; only this is a translation into English, done in 1960, for the aid of clerics whose Latin was not so hot.
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This comes from one of my favorite newspaper columnists, Judith Martin. It seemed to me like good advice in a modernist world, but I’ll leave you all to consider the specific application.

Dear Miss Manners:

I am a baseball fan, but my enjoyment is spoiled by the distasteful TV views of spitting by players, coaches and even umpires.

Please tell your readers (hopefully many players, too) that their habits are gross, not appreciated and a very bad example to kids. Ditto for the probable underlying causes, including chewing tobacco, seeds or what ever else they chew. They can relieve their anxiety or boredom with a stick of gum (not bubble) if necessary. The TV broadcasters could use a little common sense, too, by not capturing the spitting on close-ups. Will you help?

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Yesterday in the mail I received the new - so far as I can tell - St. Benedict CD from Our Lady of the Annunciation of Clear Creek Monastery. It’s now their fourth musical offering; the first three were of the Masses of Easter, the Assumption, and Christmas. These were all recorded at Fontgombault Abbey in France, and are being sold by Fontgombault’s foundation in the New World, Clear Creek, to raise funds for the completion of Clear Creek’s beautiful new monastery and church.

The rationale of the fourth album was this:

The pieces chosen for this CD and grouped into a florilegium come from the Masses and Offices sung for the three annual feasts in Saint Benedict’s honor mentioned in the liturgical books: those of March 21, July 11, and December 4. The feast in March is that of the transitus, the death of St. Benedict, marked as such in the oldest martyrologies we know carrying a mention of the cultus of the Holy Patriarch (8th century). . . . The July and December feasts are more difficult to disentwine for they both seem to have the same object: the transfer of his relics.
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From Cardinal Castillon’s address to the Latin Mass Society of England & Wales, I thought that the following were words worthy of note:

Finally I ask your prayers for those of us called to assist the Holy Father in Rome in this delicate work of facilitating the Church’s ancient liturgical tradition. Please be patient with us: we are very few and there is much work to be done.

Indeed, as I’ve been given to understand, not even Msgr. Camille Perl, the secretary of the Pontifical Commision Eccleasia Dei adflicta, is really, in any sense, a traditionalist - it’s just the job he got stuck with. So there’s Cardinal Castrillon, but how many other cardinals? Perhaps he is the only cardinal in Rome in the number of those who have advancing the Tridentine Rite at heart. And now the battle over whether Archbishop Malcolm Ranjith Patabendige Don will become the next Prefect of the CDW . . . .

Since it’s very easy to become frustrated with Rome, with its slowness, with its often bizarre statements from bizarre councils and commissions (like that goofball pronouncement on Rules of the Road, or whatever it was), we should remember that it’s an uphill battle for those in Rome, including the Holy Father, who are on our side.

An article from another one of the reporters - Sebastian Tong of Reuters - at the briefing with Cardinal Castrillon. He posted an article on the Reuters blog Faithworld today. Some excerpts:

The Colombian-born cardinal, who is head of the pontifical commission Ecclesia Dei for relations with traditionalists, said the new form of the Mass had led to “abuses” that had prompted many to abandon the Church. So, he said, the pope wanted the older form to be offered again in all parishes (not only where a group of parishioners requested it, as originally said). . . .

And Tong’s take on the fireworks between Damian Thompson and the Priest, Prophet, and King at The Tablet, Elena Curti:

Elena Curti, deputy editor of the Catholic magazine The Tablet, said many Catholics like herself were confused at the new emphasis on the old rite. It seemed to diminish the role of the laity, she said, and she asked the cardinal if this was a regression from the reforms of the Second Vatican Council of 1962-1965. The cardinal said no: “The Holy Father is not returning to the past but taking from the past a treasure to make it present today along side the richness of the new rite.”

Curti’s comments sparked a declaration from Damian Thompson, Daily Telegraph religion reporter and editor-in-chief of the Catholic Herald, that he “deplored” her comments.
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On Sunday evening Damian Thompson posted an edited transcript from the reporters’ meeting with Cardinal Castrillon. I’d recommend looking at the whole of it. These are some of the notable passages:

This celebration, the Gregorian one, was the celebration of the Church during more than a thousand years . . . . Others say one cannot celebrate with the back to the people. This is ridiculous. The Son of God has sacrificed himself to the Father, with his face to the Father. It is not against the people. It is for the people . . . . [At this point, Iosephus is chanting: "Hoyos! Hoyos! Hoyos!"]

Damian Thompson: So would the Pope like to see many ordinary parishes making provision for the Gregorian Rite?

CC: All the parishes. Not many – all the parishes, because this is a gift of God. He offers these riches, and it is very important for new generations to know the past of the Church. This kind of worship is so noble, so beautiful – the deepest theologians’ way to express our faith. The worship, the music, the architecture, the painting, makes a whole that is a treasure. The Holy Father is willing to offer to all the people this possibility, not only for the few groups who demand it but so that everybody knows this way of celebrating the Eucharist in the Catholic Church.

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