I went to a wedding about a month ago, of two old friends from my college days. It wasn’t a traditional liturgy by any stretch of the imagination; rather, the spirit of Vatican II was readily apparent in everything from the guitar music to the glass chalice to the extraordinary ministers to the audience-participatory blessing. (Also an oddity I had never seen before, wherein the groom appeared to be escorted in by a cadre of altar girls.) It takes a pretty powerful reason to get me to a Mass like that. But strangely, as occasionally happens to me in liturgies of this kind, the contrast between the trappings and the Sacrament itself powerfully intensified the poignancy of the real event in my mind. I found myself praying with a sort of furious urgency, for the couple, for the marriage, for the forging of a family bound together by peace and grace and truth. I asked all my favorite saints to pray for them, and begged the Blessed Mother and St. Joseph to stand as models to them. So great was the intensity of this effort that even the schmaltzy guitar music (which rarely fails to break my concentration) passed over me unheeded.

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Walter Cardinal Kasper is always up to something – in the past, before Benedict’s pontificate, it always seemed to be something very, very bad, something tending to make one think that Kasper thought something contrary to what the Church thinks about the dogma “Roman Catholic Church = Mystical Body of Christ”. Well, he’s still doing things like that, but at other times, he says more encouraging things. And what to make of what is, presumably, his project of receiving the “Archbishop” of Canterbury at Lourdes? Does Rowan Williams hope thereby to repair the already ruined state of ecumenical dialogue between Rome and Canterbury? See here and here for Kasper’s latest.

In an interview with German newspaper, Frankfurter Allgemeine, the head of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Cardinal Walter Kasper said that Catholics should read Luther’s Bible commentaries and “hymns full of spiritual power”. [What?!?! The old, notorious Kasper.]

He also said that Protestantism would do well to return to the faith of Martin Luther, who he said “would have been deeply averse to all of today’s liberal tendencies”, according to Ecumenical News International. Continue reading

A very nice development for those in southwest Florida. Many thanks to Bishop Dewane!

His Excellency Bishop Frank Dewane announced today that the Diocese of Venice in Florida has purchased a church for the exclusive use of the Extraordinary Form of the Mass. This will be the first church to be dedicated exclusively for the Latin Mass in Florida. The church is situated on close to three acres of property and is located at 1900 Meadowood Street, Sarasota. The property previously belonged to Holy Trinity Anglican Church. Significant renovation will be necessary before doors can be opened, including a new roof, renovating the sanctuary and making the nave of the church larger. However it is hoped that the new church will be opened in the near future. Juridically, the building will be erected as a chapel, and at a future date it will be raised to the status of a parish. There will be an open house this coming Saturday afternoon (September 27th, 2008). All are welcome, bring friends!

I’ve been a bit scarce on the blog of late because I’m trapped in the middle of a couple of projects that need to be finished. But I thought for this week I’d throw up a question that bothers me sometimes in my scholarly labors. What am I obliged to do about pious Catholic conventions when writing in an academic context?

There are numerous examples here. Putting “St.” in front of saints’ names. Capitalizing pronouns that refer to God. Referring to Our Lady or the Blessed Sacrament with devotional titles. These are all conventions among Catholic writers, but they are not the convention in academic writing. So, should I use the conventions, or not?

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I saw this at CathCon a little while back. It rather says it all, doesn’t it? I’ll post it again here, in case some of you haven’t seen it, and to remind myself: “eyes down.”

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Earlier this past summer, Ioannes Reginarum and I made a pilgrimage to Lourdes. Both of us participated in the 2006 Pilgrimage to Chartres and since then wanted to come back to France. This year being the 150th anniversary of the apparitions gave us enough incentive to make room in our hectic schedules to travel back to the land of tradition. The Holy Father’s pilgrimage to Lourdes and Paris this past weekend brought back memories of our trip, which I would like to share in this brief account:

The best way to get to Lourdes is a direct TGV from Montparnasse. It takes about six hours, with maybe 3 other stops. It is very comfortable and quiet, conducive for reading. In addition, there are some very nice, panoramic views of the French countryside.

We arrived in Lourdes around 8:30 P.M. and our first gaze upon the great Church at the grotto would be at nightfall.

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It was freshman orientation weekend, and Sunday morning found the basketball arena filled with thousands of students and their parents, all there for the official Freshman Orientation Mass. As is usual for a university event involving parents, the stage was set for a pretty swanky event. A large choir and several instrumentalists milled around to one side of the arena; large colorful banners had been hung; the incense was all ready. On the floor of the arena, faculty and administrators took the places of honor. In the stands sat the incoming students and their families. The students were looking a little droopy-eyed (they’d had a few late nights this weekend) but most were decently dressed. That probably had much to do with the people who trailed behind them, brighter-eyed than their offspring, most of them lapping up the weekend’s display of collegiate grandeur. Bright Future was written in every detail of the orientation weekend.

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I’ve been watching with interest the explosion of indignation on the left following Sarah Palin’s cracks about Barack Obama’s “community organizer” experience. Most famous, of course, is the t-shirt about how “Jesus was a community organizer; Pilate was a governor.” But in addition, blogs and news sites have hastened to publish rhapsodies about how truly wonderful community organizers are, while ordinary citizens have been putting up YouTube videos in hopes of lecturing the Alaskan governor about the importance of this exalted office. It’s amazing how many great people were community organizers, and the rest of us never even knew it! In addition to lefty heroes like Susan B. Anthony and Martin Luther King (two people who wouldn’t have gotten my vote for president) I’ve seen cited Mother Theresa and, of course, Our Lord as excellent examples of community organizers.

So I was thinking about this, and it dawned on me. Barack Obama should not be our next president. He’s much too good!

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An issue came up this week in the comment thread of my previous post. I thought I might as well throw it up as a head post and see if anybody else has thoughts about it. The question is: when, if ever, is it ever okay to vote for a politician who believes that abortion should be legal?

I was pointing out that the Church needs to make it more clear, across the board and not just to particular politicians, that support for legalized abortion prevents one from being a Catholic in good standing, and (according to the CCC) incurs and automatic latae sententiae excommunication. In other words, people who have supported legalized abortion should not be receiving Communion until they have visited a confessional and made things right with God and the Church. And that support need not necessarily take the form of, say, actually working as an abortion doctor or as support staff at Planned Parenthood. It could also take the form of driving a person to an abortion clinic, helping to pay for an abortion, trying to bolster political support for Roe v. Wade, or (as I put it) deliberately voting for a pro-choice politician.

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Is there anything sexier in American politics than having the Church “come after you?” Hard to think what it would be. Everybody loves a rebel, but it’s just so darned hard to be one these days in America, where authority has been so thoroughly denigrated that there’s just not much left to flaunt. This is where liberal Catholic politicians have a real edge. They actually have somebody to answer to when they say heretical things. And not just any old somebody… the Catholic Church, the most favorite bad guy of all time! Just think how jealous those liberal Protestants must be! Most of them probably dreamed, early in their political careers, of taking on the evil conservative establishment in the name of goodness and rightness. But they’d practically have to start sacrificing children before their flabby denominations would say anything about it (oh, wait…), whereas the Catholics can be rebels merely by voicing completely standard liberal views on civilized talk shows. Some people have all the luck.

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