New Mass Texts

ICEL has asked the source from which I obtained the new translation of the Credo, and all people posting Mass texts from the new Missale Romanum, to remove them. So, I pre-emptively removed the new translation of the Creed from this blog. I understand that it has all been done very nicely and courteously. Since the Missal seems to have been made public a bit early in South Africa, nobody was doing anything intentionally wrong or on the sly. So, we wait until World Youth Day in Sydney, when the Holy Father will publicly celebrate Mass in English using the new English translation of the Missale Romanum.

Bono & Tom Waits recite Bukowski

Despite Bukowski's repeated references to "the gods", this is intense stuff, not beautiful exactly, just intense. Pater Tom's chief criterion for music (as a monk he had penchant for jazz) as well as poetry was "Does it have any damn life in it?" Bukowski's poetry certainly does, life that at times is as beatific as some scenes from Kerouac's On the Road, and life as an existential horror. Of course, the 1987 film Barfly, starring Mickey Rourke and Faye Dunaway, was based on the life of Charles Bukowski.

Grace for a Monday

"Grace, she takes the blame
She covers the shame
Removes the stain
It could be her name

Grace...
It's a name for a girl
It's also a thought that, changed the world
And when she walks on the street
You can hear the strings
Grace finds goodness in everything
Grace, she's got the walk
Not on a ramp or on chalk
She's got the time to talk
She travels outside of karma, karma
She travels outside... of karma

When she goes to work, you can hear the strings
Grace finds beauty in everything

Grace...
She carries a world on her hips
No champagne flute for her lips
No twirls or skips between her fingertips
She carries a pearl in perfect condition

What once was hurt
What once was friction
What left a mark
No longer stings...
Because Grace makes beauty
Out of ugly things

Grace finds beauty in everything"

For more of Bono on karma and grace link over to Deep Furrows, which is well worth a daily visit anyway.

(Lyrics by Bono)

The secret of The Secret is not a secret

Emily Stimpson, writing for Our Sunday Visitor, tells the simple truth about The Secret, in her piece New Age Philosophy: Best-selling book and DVD make individuals bear the blame for bad things that happen. So easy is exposing the truth about The Secret that a one page article is sufficient for the job. The success of The Secret is proof-positive both of the need, even in our society, for transcendental meaning, and how shallowly we probe for meaning. Lo and behold, here comes a transcendental philosophy that urges us to embrace our gluttonous consumption, that affirms that self-servingly getting what we want is the way to happiness and fulfillment. We must keep in mind our current rate of consumption comes both at the expense of our sisters and brothers, who make up the poor of the planet and who out-number us by billions, and the environment that sustains life.

"Want to learn how to fly?," is the question with which Stimpson begins her piece, "Peter Pan knows the secret. 'You just think lovely, wonderful thoughts and they lift you up in the air,' the perennial man-child advises Wendy in J.M. Barrie's classic play.

"But what if you want a shiny new car, flashy boat or hefty raise? According to author-producer Rhonda Byrne, Peter Pan's secret will help you obtain those goodies as well: Just think lovely, wonderful thoughts, and whatever you desire will come your way." Thinking happy thoughts is also how Harry Potter conjures his patronus, a mystical stag, when faced with the fearsome dementors of Azkaban. Rather than buy into The Secret, I'd rather close my eyes, think a happy thought, shout some pigeon Latin, and wait for my mountain cabin to appear.

Life in Zion

The Deseret Morning News, front page, Thursday, 26 April 2007:

"The devil is sticking his pitchfork into the nation's immigration politics. At least that's what one of Utah County's Republican delegates thinks. Don Larsen, a district chairman, has submitted a resolution equating illegal immigration to 'Satan's plan to destroy the U.S. by stealth invasion' for debate at Saturday's Utah County Republican Party Convention. Referring to a plan by the devil for a 'New World Order ... as predicted in the Scriptures,' the resolution calls for the Utah County Republican Party to support 'closing the national borders to illegal immigration to prevent the destruction of the U.S. by stealth invasion. In part, the resolution states, 'There are ways to destroy a nation other than with bombs or bullets. The mostly quiet and unspectacular invasion of illegal immigrants does not focus the attention of the nation the way open warfare does but is all the more insidious for its stealth and innocuousness.'"

Then, in the wake of the V.T.masscre, comes this gem:

Brent Tenney

Utah only state to allow guns at college


SALT LAKE CITY - Brent Tenney says he feels pretty safe when he goes to class at the University of Utah, but he takes no chances. He brings a loaded 9 mm semiautomatic with him every day.

"It's not that I run around scared all day long, but if something happens to me, I do want to be prepared," said the 24-year-old business major, who has a concealed-weapons permit and takes the handgun everywhere but church.

Thank God for sanity of the variety exhibited when Archbishop Niederauer was here and, when asked about how banning guns from Catholic churches would stack up against Utah's liberal gun laws, said something to the effect, that he didn't require the Utah Legislature's permission to assert the Constitutional right of freedom of religion. It is by asserting this right that Brent has to check his gun at the door of the Church. Here's to hoping the next lesson is from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, Matthew, chapter five would be good.

Some practical guidance for a Friday

With some inspiration from the cybercell of the imonk and from the Cathedral RCIA class last evening, here are a few things to help keep it simple:

-Use devotional books: Liturgy of the Hours, Magnificat, etc.

-Read meaningful spiritual books (i.e., Merton, Nouwen, Groeschel, Foster, de Montfort, de Caussade, de Sales, Giussani)

-Read these with a group of others who care about the same things

-Turn it all off for a couple of hours every day

-Be quiet

-Chew up, meditate over, digest the scriptures, even if in small portions- use the Mass readings for the day

-Repent (in the sense of turn around, change), especially of things like worrying about the mote in your brother's or sister's eye and neglecting the beam in one's own eye, of undervaluing spirituality and overvaluing being right

Follow the Five Precepts of the Church, which the Catechism tells us, are "meant to guarantee to the faithful the indispensable minimum in the spirit of prayer and moral effort, in the growth in love of God and neighbor" (CCC, 2041). In other words, at least do these five things.

1) Attend Mass and rest from work on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation
2) Go to confession
3) Live in a manner that enables you to receive communion worthily (if you fail see precept 2)
4) Observe days of abstinence (Fridays) and fasting (Ash Wednesday/Good Friday)
5) Contribute to the material support of the Church

Remember spirituality is not something we do in our spare time. It is a manner in which we seek to live all the time. Let us use the circumstances of our everyday lives to acquire virtue, by cultivating good habits

Reasoning vs. venting

Over on the First Things blog Observations & Contentions, Robert T. Miller, with whom I have had a few disagreements, comments on the latest proof that, to paraphrase Philip Jenkins, anti-Catholicism is the last acceptable prejudice in our society. The object of Miller's critique is the cartoon above, published in the Philadelphia Inquirer last Friday and drawn by Tony Auth.

Fortunately, Mr. Miller leaves "aside the anti-Catholic slur in Mr. Auth’s cartoon because I find more worthy of attention the way in which he attempts to make his point. Faced with a serious disagreement about a matter of public concern, Mr. Auth makes no arguments on the point in dispute. Rather, he says, in effect, that the people who disagree with his view are doing so because of an unjust desire to impose the peculiar norms of their religion on others."