Prayers of the Faithful

One of my personal bug-bears is the sort of wordy, politically correct prayers of the faithful (bidding prayers) that are frequently inflicted upon the congregation at Mass. The worst seem to come from booklets prepared by liturgists, though the "creativity" of liturgy groups and rogue parish sisters (to say nothing of priests who are trying too hard to be trendy) is not to be underestimated. However, I'm inclined to think that the Italians have it slightly worse in this regard. Whilst not normally as 'politically correct' as equivalent prayers in English, they're normally even more verbose and are written in a philosophically pretentious idiom which drips with social angst. Oh, and the response for the people changes from Mass to Mass and is usually too long to easily remember. That's why I got a kick out of this article (in Italian, alas!) by Sandro Magister. I wish I had time to translate the whole thing, but I'll try and convey the gist.
He begins by mentioning that Lent didn't begin in Milan until Sunday 25th of February and not with Ash Wednesday. (He also notes that Advent lasts 6 weeks in the Ambrosian Rite.) He also notes (and this is news to me) that in the Ambrosian rite the Fridays of Lent are aliturgical - Mass is not celebrated and on Good Friday Holy Communion is not distributed!
Anyway, he mentions the Milanese liturgy because even before the post-conciliar reforms, Prayers of the Faithful were offered at the start of Sunday Masses during Lent. A comparison between these Prayers of the Faithful and the offerings of 'pseudo-liturgists' (Magister's expression) is interesting, as the former are 'sober, noble and dealing with the essentials'.
A typical example of the pseudo-litugists' fare is the following:

“Difendi i giovani dalla seduzione del consumismo, dal bisogno di emergere a tutti i costi. Fa’ sperimentare loro la bellezza di un’esistenza generosa, vissuta nella sobrietà e nella condivisione. Preghiamo. Donaci, Signore, coraggio e fiducia!”.
Defend young people from the seduction of consumerism and from the need to get ahead at all costs. May they experience the beauty of an existence that is lived in sobriety and in sharing. Let us pray: Lord, give us courage and faith.
(See what I mean about the angst?)

In contrast, Magister prints (in Latin) some of the Milanese prayers, of which I'll reproduce the 1st set:

Divinae pacis, et indulgentiae munere supplicantes, ex toto corde, et ex tota mente, precamur te. Domine, miserere.
Pro Ecclesia tua sancta catholica, quae hic, et per universum orbem diffusa est, precamur te. Domine, miserere.
Pro papa nostro et pontifice nostro et omni clero eorum, omnibusque sacerdotibus ac ministris, precamur te. Domine, miserere.
Pro pace ecclesiarum, vocatione gentium, et quiete populorum, precamur te. Domine, miserere.
Pro civitate hac, et conversatione eius, omnibusque habitantibus in ea, precamur te. Domine, miserere.
Pro àerum temperie, ac fructuum fecunditate terrarum, precamur te. Domine, miserere.
Pro virginibus, viduis, orphanis, captivis, ac paenitentibus, precamur te. Domine, miserere.
Pro navigantibus, iter agentibus, in carceribus, in vinculis, in metallis, in exiliis constitutis, precamur te. Domine, miserere.
Pro his qui diversis infirmitatibus detinentur, quique spiritibus vexantur immundis, precamur te. Domine, miserere.
Pro his qui in sancta tua Ecclesia fructus misericordiae largiuntur, precamur te. Domine, miserere.
Exaudi nos Deus in omni oratione, atque deprecatione nostra, precamur te. Domine, miserere.
Dicamus omnes: Domine, miserere.
Kyrie eleison, Kyrie eleison, Kyrie eleison.

And on talkative Italian priests...
And while we're talking about verbosity, Amy has a translation of another piece by Magister which (rightly!) complains about those Roman priests who took the Pope's recent Q&A session as an excuse to engage in long-winded speeches about their own pastoral activity. I know many fine Italian priests, but this does seem to be a national failing... they love to talk at great length about themselves and their pet-projects which can make Italian homilies quite unbearable.

Fr Ted Festival...

Fans of Fr Ted will be interested in the Telegraph's reporting of the recent Fr Ted Festival, along with a slideshow of pictures from the festivities.

The Return of the 'Foundling Wheel'

From the Telegraph:

A Rome hospital that reintroduced a modern version of the medieval foundling wheel, following a spate of abandoned babies, has had its first "deposit".
The device allows women to leave their new-born children in hospital instead of abandoning them in telephone boxes or on doorsteps or, in an extreme case, killing them.
The original wheels were a cylindrical hatch set in the outside wall of a church. Mothers would place their baby in the hatch, close it and then ring a bell to warn the priest or nuns.
The system has been brought up to date with a heated soft bed complete with sensors and cameras to alert staff when a baby has been abandoned.
The wheel, installed at the Policlinico Casilino last year, was used for the first time late on Saturday night, when a three-month-old boy was left there.
The 14lb boy was named Stefano after the doctor who first treated him.

Stigmatic in Italy

An interesting article in the Telegraph about an alleged Italian stigmatic:

Yesterday was supposed to be a chance for as many as 10,000 people, including visitors from Britain, to meet Brother Elia, 45, at the headquarters of the Jesuit movement in Naples. Now that Lent has begun, time is running out to see him before he takes to his bed over April to undergo his annual torment.
Instead, his appearance was cancelled at the last minute by the Catholic Church, which is growing increasingly fearful about the rapid spread of Brother Elia's fame.
"We had to turn away 33 coaches of people," said a spokesman for the Apostles of God, the religious movement established by Brother Elia in 2003. "The whole of the south of Italy wanted to see him, but an order came down from the regional church that the permission for the meeting had been withdrawn."
The Vatican is reported to have asked Brother Elia not to give interviews or to hold any public religious services until it has made up its mind on the veracity of his stigmata.

A cure for what ails you...

William Rees-Mogg gives a history lesson in the Times today, in response to an hysterical column written by Michael Portillo:

The Christian belief was the inspiration in William Wilberforce’s long campaign to end the slave trade. His Bill received the Royal Assent on March 25, 1807, 200 years ago. That was the most important of all the great reforms of the 19th century; essentially it was a Christian reform, inspired by the Protestant conversion of Wilberforce himself. March 25 was the old New Year’s Day; it is also the feast of the Annunciation of Mary, the Mother of Jesus.
We live in an age when modernists regard religion with something approaching panic. It is like the Devil’s attitude to Holy Water. There was a comic example of Christianophobia in The Sunday Times yesterday. Michael Portillo, who used himself to be seen in Brompton Oratory, was hyperventilating at the idea of David Cameron going to church. “I worry,” he wrote, “because men of power who take instruction from unseen forces are essentially fanatics . . . I would be more reassured to hear that the Tory leader goes to church because that is what it takes to get a child into the best of state schools, not because he is a believer.”
Perhaps this neurotic response to Mr Cameron’s habit of going to church reflects Mr Portillo’s recognition that religion is again becoming an important influence on society. Many of the current news stories show that religion is back in public consciousness; for those who feel uneasy about religion, that is unwelcome.
(snip)
The modernist attack on religion was based on the victory of science, and particularly of neo-Darwinism. Yet science was open to the same challenge as religion; it could explain only half the world. The scientists, or some of them, sneered at religion for being unable to explain the developments of nature. Yet science itself was unable to produce a science-based morality for society. Marxism attempted to create a scientific social order that ended in monstrous and bloodthirsty tyranny. Social Darwinism either meant eugenics and the slaughter of babies who were not thought fit to survive, or it meant nothing. The Social Darwinism of George Bernard Shaw, or indeed that of Adolf Hitler, has been rejected by mankind.

The whole article is worth reading as a necessary corrective to the idea that religion is responsible for all the world's evils. Rees-Mogg does fall into the trap of seeming to reduce the role of religion to that of being merely some kind of basis for morality. It's a small step from that position to that of considering Christianity as being a useful sort of morality-tale which promotes good behaviour amongst the lower orders, and leaves open the question of whether religion might not simply be replaced by some sort of secular moral philosophy. But it is a reminder of the centrality of religious thought in establishing what might be thought of as 'civilised values.'

Clericus Cup

From the Houston Chronicle:

Priests and seminarians from several soccer-loving countries took to a field near the looming dome of St. Peter's Basilica on Saturday for the first match of the Clericus Cup, a tournament fielding 16 teams from Catholic institutes in Rome.
"You are playing in view of St. Peter's cupola, so behave well," admonished Cardinal Pio Laghi before giving the official kickoff at a small arena on a hill overlooking the Vatican.
(snip)
Amid screams from the coaches, pious slogans from the small crowd and T-shirts invoking the protection of the Virgin Mary, a motley crew of Latin Americans, Africans and Asians from the Collegio Mater Ecclesiae (Mother of the Church College) took on an all-Brazilian team fielded by Gregorian University.
In a miraculous upset, the young Mater Ecclesiae players trounced the more experienced but portly Brazilians 6-0 as their fans chanted: "The Mother of the Church wants a goal!"
The game had its share of hard tackles and rough play, with the first goal coming from a penalty kick — the second in the match.
Still, in the end it was all handshakes and smiles between the teams, in what officials and players hope will set a good example for Italian professional soccer, which has been recently marred by fan violence and scandal.
(snip)
The tournament is also a second chance for many clergymen who left promising soccer careers to follow their spiritual calling, said Marco Rosales, a Mexican seminarian who coaches the Mater Ecclesiae team.
"Some on the team had a chance to play professionally, but the Lord called them to His team," he said.
The Clericus Cup will run through June, with the 16 teams fielding 311 athletes from countries including Italy, the United States, Mexico, Papua New Guinea and Rwanda.

Bleg: Free PDF to Word/RTF Converter?

Can anyone recommend a freeware application that converts PDF files into a format that can be edited by Microsoft Word? I'm not interested in creating PDFs, but I do have a number of PDFs that I would like to be able to convert into Word documents so that I can edit them.

Padre Pio Car for Sale

From the Corriere della Sera.
The linked article explains that a 1936 Fiat Topolino blessed and used by Padre Pio (St Pio of Pietrelcino for the pedantic! ;) ) is for sale on Ebay Italia for €950,000 (link to eBay page), i.e. more than US$1,000,000!
The car is being sold by one signora Aloisa Panphili and the provenance of the car is testified to by Giovanna Rizzani. Padre Pio appeared (by means of bilocation) in the Rizzani palace while Giovanna was being born and her father Marquess Giovanbattista Rizzani was dying, on 18 Jan 1905. She would meet Padre Pio, again by bilocation, 18 years later in St Peter's in Rome, and she became his spiritual daughter.
The car itself was blessed by Padre Pio in San Giovanni Rotondo and in it he was brought to hear the confession of a dying man.

Post-synodal Exhortation

Fr Z links to a French site that says that the Pope announced the immanent release of the Post-synoldal exhortation on the Eurcharist. He did so in his annual Lenten mearing with the Parish Priests of Rome. My rusty French tells me that the Pope annouced that it would be a 'Meditation on Various Points'.

Ash Wednesday in Rome...

... and the clergy and seminarians hailing from English-speaking colleges and communities are really easy to spot. In Italy, and most of the rest of Europe, the custom is not to make a cross on the forehead with ashes, but rather to sprinkle ashes on top of the head. So, it's normally only those clergy and seminarians who have been to Mass in their own colleges that have ashes on their forehead today... everyone else just has dirty hair!

New Kennedy Motorcade Footage...

... not of the assasination itself, but taken shortly before the shooting:

The film was donated to the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas and released this week, according to Deborah Marine, public relations manager for the museum.
"We've been amazed at the interest," Marine said. "This started out very much a local and regional story in North and East Texas. It's mushroomed. We've had media inquiries from all over the country, and it's taken on international proportions with calls from BBC, Australia and BBC Latin America."
The public release of the film, stored for more than 42 years in a drawer in the owner's home, created a nationwide buzz Monday and overwhelmed the Web site of The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza. Marine said the museum's Web site, www.jfk.org, can handle 1,500 hits per minute. The Web site went down Monday soon after an Associated Press wire story announced the release.

The linked article includes a link to the footage itself.

Pit oot thy fire til I light mine

A Scottish dialect about to die out - from the Telegraph:

A rare dialect that is only spoken by two elderly brothers is to be recorded for posterity before it disappears.
Bobby Hogg, 87, and his brother Gordon, 80, are believed to be the last fluent speakers of the "Cromarty fisher dialect".
It is said to be the most threatened dialect in Scotland and is to be recorded for an internet-based cultural archive.
It evolved when local fishermen in the town of Cromarty, on the Black Isle north of Inverness, picked up words from English soldiers based in the area in the 17th and 18th centuries.
The fishermen adopted formal words such as thee, thou and thine, but also mispronunciations, substituting "erring" for "herring" and "hears" for "ears".

Its soemthing to wander about

Theirs a turn-up for the books. Nihil Obstat has been inactive for just over a year.

Westminster's Homosexual Mass in the Telegraph

The Telegraph's reportage of Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor's permission for a 'Homosexual' Mass in his diocese is perhaps more interesting for its ineptness than the story itself. It begins:

Homosexual rights campaigners have gained permission from the head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales to hold Mass for gay parishioners.
While the Church has allowed celibate gays to receive holy communion, traditionalist Catholics believe that practising homosexuals should be barred from the sacramental rite because their way of life defies Church teaching.

We see a false dichotomy between the position of 'The Church' who allows 'celibate gays' to receive Holy Communion and the 'traditonalist' position of barring 'practicing homosexuals' from 'the sacramental rite' - whatever that might mean. So far as I can understand it, both the position of 'the Church' and 'traditonalists' is identical - no one in a state of grave sin should be receiving Holy Communion.
Now, there is certainly a disagreement between Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor and some Catholics ('the traditionalists') regarding the propriety of Masses organised by an organization for homosexuals - but this opening paragraph manages to totally miss the point of disagreement and totally mis-state the theological problem.

A statement from the diocese stressed that the move did not represent a shift in Church teaching, which says that homosexual practice is a sin and that non-celibate gay people should not be given communion.
However, traditionalists fear that by endorsing these services the Cardinal has implicitly sanctioned "sacrilegious" Masses and that it may make it far easier for practising homosexuals to take communion in church. It is also thought that the move could act as a blueprint for other dioceses to follow.

Now, maybe we're moving closer to the nub of the issue - I'm not sure whether the quotes around the word sacrilegious mean that it comes from some statement issued by the 'traditionalists' or whether they are simply 'scare-quotes'.
Certainly, I think that there's a valid cause for concern here - groups of the faithful organising Masses for themselves has a vernerable history in the Church - but it should be evident that organizations that are unfriendly to the Church or who obstinately reject Her magisterium should not be facilitated in the organization of Mass as such an activity runs counter to the unity and communion of the Church which should be the presupposition and consequence of every Mass. Is it quite correct to describe a validly & licitly celebrated Mass which is organised by a group hostile to Christian teaching as sacrilegious? I'm not sure that it's technically sacrilege... but nor is it a totally inappropriate use of the word.
I'm also somewhat puzzled by the statement that it may make it far easier for practising homosexuals to take communion in church. Maybe one of these shadowy traditonalists did express that concern, but anyone with an ounce of sense should know that there's no really practical difficulty for a 'practicing homosexual' to 'take communion' (what a horrid term!) at any Mass he goes to. Unless he's a notorious public sinner there is no practical likelihood that any priest or EMHC is going to know that someone who shows up to Mass is a 'practicing homosexual'. Maybe the Telegraph is labouring under the misapprehension that the Inquisition is in the habit of keeping a register of 'practicing homosexuals' and regularly challenges them as they approach the altar for Communion.
In any event, no one can reasonably argue that the proposed Masses make it 'easier' for practicing homosexuals to receive Commuion, but the article suceeds in giving the impression that the Church is regularly in the habit of obstructing homosexuals who wish to receive.

Sources close to the Cardinal said he was keen to authorise the services in order to be more inclusive of the gay community. It represents an attempt to end tension between the Cardinal's office and the Soho Masses Pastoral Council, an influential group of gay Catholics who had campaigned to have their own services formally recognised by the Church.
They will hold their first official service at Our Lady of the Assumption in Soho, London, next month after having met for the past eight years in an Anglican church in west London.

I do think it behoves us to remember that the Church is called to minister to homosexuals and the whole debate should hinges on whether these Masses are going to be an occasion for the spreading of the Gospel and the assistance of those who strugle with same-sex attraction or whether it's a tacit recognition of unchristian principles and an endorsement of a lifestyle which runs contrary to the teaching of the Church. There are groups out there who minister in a faithful manner to homosexuals. Is this the case in this particular situation?
I'm not encouraged by the fact that they have been holding unrecognised or unoffical services for the past eight years.
[One could start a whole other debate about whether similiar pastoral solicitude has been offered to Catholics attached to the older form Mass, for example... But let's not start that debate now.]
Finally, right at the end of the story, we get something which sheds a little light on what exactly this debate is about:

Senior Catholics fear the Cardinal's decision will upset traditionalists. He had previously received complaints that the unofficial Masses held under the auspices of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement were being used to campaign for a change in the Church's teaching on homosexual practice.
"Homosexuals can attend their own parish church, so having a separate and distinct Mass looks like they are trying to make a statement," said Michael Akerman, of Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice, a traditionalist Catholic group.

At last! An actual quotation from one of these shadowy traditonalists. One has to wonder why we haven't seen anything of the substance of the traditionalists' arguments until the very end of the article. Needless to say, the whole 'spin' of the article is about the political dimesnion - namely the Cardinal's dilemma of whether to offend traditionalists or homosexuals... but the real meat of the story is only obliquely presented in the last paragraph. This isn't about whether practicing homosexuals can physically receive Holy Communion (they can... I'm not aware of them being hauled away from the Communion line...) or whether they should receive Holy Communion (they should not, and the Church's discipline here is unambiguous) but about whether this Mass is a genuine pastoral iniative which will help homosexual people in their struggle to live a Christian life or whether it is some kind of political abuse of the Mass for the sake of promoting a form of 'gay rights' agenda which is antithethical to the Gospel.
It always fills me with huge suspicion when I read religious reportage in the secular press... They seem to miss the point so frequently that it necessarily causes one to wonder how much of anything one reads in the press one should believe.
Addendum:Amy Welborn posts from the diocesan statement and gives her insightful commentary.

Cargo Cult in the Telegraph

There's a facinating story in the Telegraph about one of of the most bizarre 'Cargo Cults' of the South Pacific.

The US's standing in the world may have plummeted under President George W Bush, but a bizarre cargo cult in the Vanuatu island nation holds America in god-like esteem.
The Jon Frum movement celebrated the 50th anniversary of its founding yesterday with a lavish feast in which village men dressed up as US soldiers and marched in front of a giant Stars and Stripes flag on a bamboo pole.
Miniature American flags festooned trees lining the black sand parade ground which forms the focus of Lamakara village, the headquarters of the cult, on the jungle island of Tanna.
(snip)
The origins of the cult date back to the 1930s, when Britain and France jointly ran what was then the colony of New Hebrides.
Tanna's inhabitants bridled at colonial rule and the missionaries who badgered them to embrace Christianity, stop drinking the mildly narcotic drink kava and abandon other customary ways, known in pidgin English as kastom.
Village elders tell of how a mysterious outsider came to their forbears in a series of apparitions, telling them to go back to their traditional ways. The idea of a messiah-like outsider was given a huge boost during the Second World War, when hundreds of Tannese men were recruited by the Americans to build roads, airstrips and bases. They were impressed by the large amounts of cargo – tanks, weapons, medicine and food – brought by the US military. The shadowy spirit figure they already believed in gradually assumed a name and a nationality – Jon Frum is believed to be a contraction of John From America, a reference perhaps to a soldier who showed particular generosity.

I had to double-check that it wasn't the 1st of April today.

The woman I have been taking to bed recently...

... but I assure you that it's all perfectly innocent! I've just recently discovered how relaxing to the eyes it is to have someone else do my reading late at night, and that's why I've been downloading Maria Lectrix's audiobooks and playing them after I've said my Night Prayer. In particular, I'm enjoying Chesterton's The Everlasting Man and Freeman's wonderful Edwardian forensic science novel The Red Thumb Mark.

Catholicism No 1 Religion in UK

From the Times:

Roman Catholicism is set to become the dominant religion in Britain for the first time since the Reformation because of massive migration from Catholic countries across the world.
Catholic parishes will swell by hundreds of thousands over the next few years after managing years of decline, according to a new report, as both legal and illegal migrants enter the country.
It says that the influx of migrants could be the Catholic community’s “greatest threat” or its “greatest opportunity”.
While in some places the Catholic Church has responded positively, in others it has been “overwhelmed” by the scale of the challenge. The growth of Catholicism in Britain comes as the established Church of England and the Anglican provinces in Scotland, Wales and Ireland face continuing, if slow, decline.
(snip)
The Catholic Church is the first port of call for thousands when they find themselves in difficulty, with up to 95 per cent from countries such as Poland being practising Catholics. Some churches find that they are being used as both job centres and social welfare offices. Most of the migrants settle in London, where some parishes are putting on Sunday Masses from 8am to 8pm to cope, the report, carried out by the Von Hugel Institute at Cambridge, found.
The report calls on the Catholic hierarchy to act urgently to help the migrants and their hard-pressed clergy by investing thousands of pounds in new resources.
Officially the Church is welcoming the migrants, but nearly all bishops and clergy have been taken by surprise by the influx, which took off last year and has yet to be reflected in official Mass attendance and membership figures.
But they acknowledge that the immigration is changingthe face of Catholicism across Britain.
From being an Irish-English church in a mindset of managing steady decline, the Church has within the space of 12 months found itself having to countenance an unprecedented expansion and change in its ethnic make-up.
Figures for 2005 show that there are 4.2 million Catholics in England and Wales, under one fifth the 25 million baptised Anglicans and double the number of Muslims.
But the real Mass attendance figure is higher by many hundreds of thousands. Precise numbers are impossible to obtain because of the irregular status of so many of the migrants, who prefer to keep a low profile. Some would only talk to researchers for the report through their priests, and some clergy even refused to be interviewed for fear of attracting attention.

It is vitally important that the British hierarchy and parishes deal with this influx well... The migrants attitutde to their faith will be influenced by the quality of the welcome they receive.

Rome Blog...

Meredith of Basia Me is in Rome and blogging at Hesperia.

Teacher asks students to make her coffin

From the Telegraph:

A Dutch primary school teacher dying of cancer is overseeing one last project among her pupils: they are making her coffin.
Eri van den Biggelaar, 40, has just a few weeks to live after being diagnosed last year with an aggressive form of cervical cancer.
She asked the woodwork teacher, a friend, to build a coffin for her. "Why don't you let the children make it?" replied Erik van Dijk.
Now pupils who normally plane wood for baskets and place mats have been helping with the finishing touches. They have already sawed more than 100 narrow boards and glued them together. Only the lid needs to be completed.
The coffin now stands in the middle of one of the classrooms.
Although Miss Biggelaar can no longer teach she has looked at sketches of the coffin and is being kept up to date about it by pupils, aged between four and 11, who visit her at home.
"Life and death belong together," she said. "The children realised that when I explained it to them. I didn't want to be morbid about it, I wanted them to help me.
"I told them: 'Where I will go is much nicer than this world.' "

I, for one, approve. Modern society shields itself, and children in particular, from the realities of death. A sober contemplation of mortalilty is central to the Christian wolrd-view.

Office of Readings Podcast

Michael Dubriel has begun a Podcast (subscription page) of the Office of Readings. As he explains himself:

Of all the hours the Office of Readings makes the most sense as a podcast because it largely is made up of two substantial readings-one from Scripture, the other from a Church Father, Saint or Council.

Beautifully clear teaching...

The Holy Father's message to youth this year takes up several of the themes of Deus Caritas Est and is a beautifully clear piece of teaching. The whole thing is worth reading.
Incidentally, it's worth wondering how our parishes are prepared to help any young person whose heart is touched by the Pope's words.

Still alive...

Folks,

Apologies for the irregularity of service... I'm afraid I have no good excuse for not blogging. And I'm going to cheat with this post by simply sharing a few 'Youtube' videos I've spotted on other blogs.

Ephrem links to this wonderful advertisement.


Too funny to pass over is the following from the Laodicea blog, but don't say that I didn't warn you about the very strong language.

Why do I suspect that one of the 'occupational hazards' of the clergy is that particular demon?
And my own contribution is a link to this video of John XXIII, including some wonderful images of the opening of the 2nd Vatican Council.

Those who understand Italian will note a certain 'hermeneutic of discontinuity' dimension to the commentary.