Faith and Liturgy

Saints and the creative arts

Saints from Cory Heimann on Vimeo.

Cory is a student at my alma mater, Franciscan University of Steubenville, and filmed this there.

Prayer request: My mom

Update: My mom is doing well. The infection is her leg, but not her knee. She’s on a course of antibiotics and they’re going to keep her in the hospital until her fever breaks, possibly Tuesday. Deo gratias. Thank you all for your prayers.

I’ve just received word that my mom has been rushed to the hospital near her home in Maine with an infection in her leg and a fever. This is particularly serious because she’s had several knee operations, including knee replacement, and has suffered from infections in the knee, which required hospitalization and surgery. They had become so bad that the doctors warned that another infection could cause her to lose her leg or even her life!

So today she called my sister to say that she had a fever and the telltale redness in her leg. The doctor advised her to call and ambulance right away to get to the hospital and so she’s there now. We’re waiting for an update.

Please, if you will, pray for her, for the low spirits she must be in now and for healing of her leg. Thank you.

This is Easter

Proud2BCatholic.com

Catholics Come Home for Easter

Updated: See also the 2-minute version below.

Easter is a perfect time to invite a fallen-away Catholic to come home. Show them this video to inspire them to do so.

Then show them these related testimonials.

The Passion from St. John, chanted in Latin, for Good Friday

A nice way to spend Good Friday, especially if you have to work or you’re housebound, is to listen to The Passion Narrative according to the Gospel of John in Latin Gregorian chant. Paraclete Press allows you to listen to either a streaming version or to download it to your computer. Unfortunately it’s in WMA (Windows Media format), so if you’re on a Mac I think you need QuickTime Pro ($20) to listen to WMA. I might be wrong about that so try it anyway.

I don’t have to work on Friday, but the kids nap between 1 and 3 so we won’t be going out to the parish for Good Friday. I think instead maybe we’ll listen to this and maybe watch “The Passion of The Christ” as well as say the prayers from the Divine Office.

Boston Catholic Men’s and Women’s conferences are coming up April 18, 19

Is it bow or bow?

What is it about today’s first reading at Mass that so flusters lectors? To refresh your memory it’s the story of God’s covenant with Noah and his promise to put a “bow in the clouds” to serve a sign of that covenant.

That’s “bow” as in “rainbow” or “bow and arrow.” It’s not “bow” as in “the front of the boat” or “to bend at the waist.”

Yet for the past several times this reading has been read at Mass, the latter version is how the lector has pronounced it at several different parishes. Are they even listening to themselves? How does that even make sense?

I think it shows that they either don’t understand the reading themselves and/or that they didn’t spend any time reading it before standing at the ambo at Mass. Which, it’s apparent, is an all too common occurrence these days.

Photo credit: Domenico Bettinelli, copyright 2000. All Rights Reserved.

Get ready for Lent

Lent starts this week, on Ash Wednesday, and Aggie Catholics have everything you need to know about Lent on their blog right now: a FAQ, Lenten suggestions, Lenten links, and more.

The Glory, the Beauty, and the Truth of Catholicism

This is the trailer for a new 10-part television series on Catholicism by Fr. Robert Barron, of Chicago, filmed in high-definition and soon to be available on TV and on DVD.

Catholicism Trailer from Nancy Ross on Vimeo.

I suggest you click on the HD button and watch it in hi-def if you can. Also, do you recognize the soundtrack music?

[Thanks to Cardinal Sean.]

More about getting kids to behave at Mass

A couple weeks ago I wrote a post that garnered a lot of attention about the people who glared at my children during Mass, even when they were making a minimal amount of noise. This week, Jen of Conversion Diary wrote about getting kids to behave in church, including a lot of good advice in her post and the comments. Best bit of advice was that good behavior on Sunday depends on how you work with them on good behavior during the week.

And here I’ll throw out my controversial bit: I think one reason our kids are well-behaved at Mass is that they don’t watch TV. Hey, I’m not a “TV is evil” guy. I watch plenty of TV myself. But it’s my opinion, that for my kids, TV isn’t something they need to be watching regularly and I think our experience shows the benefit, not just at Mass, but also in how Iabella plays and reads and entertains herself and behaves.

Again, this is not to say that this applies to anyone but my own kids, but if someone’s looking for advice, this is what I’d suggest.

Please pray for the Dubruiel family

We all received terrible news late yesterday. Michael Dubruiel, husband of Amy Welborn and father to their children, died of an apparent heart attack yesterday morning.

Michael collapsed this morning at the gym and was not able to be revived despite the efforts of EMTs and hospital personnel.

We are devastated and beg your prayers.

It’s been said many times that the Catholic blogosphere, the so-called St. Blog’s Parish, is like a real parish and in many ways it is: We have priests, religious, and laity. We celebrate the joys of births and marriages and ordinations and religious vows. And we grieve at illnesses and death. We have very real bonds with people we’ve never met in person and when we do meet it’s like meeting an old friend. Melanie and I have experienced much of those highs and lows as our entire relationship has spanned the time I’ve been a Catholic blogger and when Melanie received what would turn out to be a false preliminary diagnosis of cancer a couple of years ago, we felt the power of the prayers of the thousands of people—bloggers and readers alike—who lifted us up.

I pray that Amy and her sons and daughters feel the effects of those same prayers, multiplied. And I pray that Michael would even now be enjoying the beatific vision.

May the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.

Update: Danielle Bean has set up a PayPal link for donations to help Amy. Amy herself has requested that those who would like to help to purchase Michael’s books.

He long ago promised God that he would give all the royalties of The How To Book of the Mass to the children’s college funds, which he did faithfully.  It is in good shape because of that. Buy them, read them, and give them away to others. Spread the Word. That is what he was all about.

Goring someone else’s ox

So, according to the liberal media and various left-wing and Catholic-hostile punditry, if the Pope is supposed to excommunicate (or keep excommunicated) public figures who hold views that are antithetical to the Catholic faith (i.e. anti-Semitism), would those same journalists and pundits be consistent with others who hold views that are antithetical to the Catholic faith?

Like pro-abortion politicians?

Yeah, didn’t think so.

The sin we cannot speak about in Mass

The gatekeepers of liturgical language are so concerned that the average Joe in the pew can’t understand the word “ineffable”, yet we’ve already dumbed down the language into insensibility. Witness today’s second reading, 2 Corinthians 6:18:

Avoid immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the immoral person sins against his own body.

Read at face value, this translation, the New American Bible, seems to say that there are some sins that are immoral and some that are not and that sins committed “outside the body” are not immoral. That makes no sense. But that’s because of the poor translation. The Greek word translated as “immorality” is “porneia”. Look familiar? Look like any English words we know?

This word also appears in several other places in the New Testament. In Matthew 5:32, where Jesus forbids divorce, he says, “Whoever divorces his wife, except on the grounds of unchastity (“porneia”), makes her an adulteress.” It has also been variously translated as fornication or to more specifically refer to homosexuality or bestiality or another sexual perversion. So Paul could be translated as saying, “Avoid sexual perversion. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexual pervert sins against his own body.” While that may be too blunt for a Mass where children are present, it has the benefit of clarity.

Perhaps we could tone it down a bit to “sexual immorality” or even “unchastity.” Oh, but will Joe Six-Pack in the pew be able to understand a subtle word like “unchastity”?

Instead we offer translations of Scripture that obscure meaning rather than convey it because we’re afraid of shocking people with straight talk about sin. Is it any wonder that collectively we’ve lost a sense of sin? Is it any wonder people have abandoned the sacrament of confession?

Photo credit: Arpingstone via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

A glimpse at a media slam on the Church

The Associated Press writes about the effort by the Vatican to re-focus attention on the sacrament of Confession by having some sort of public event at the Apostolic Penitentiary, a kind of ecclesiastical court in which petitions for absolution for reserved sins are heard. It’s a generally okay article, as well as the secular media usually handles such things, and highlights how the sacrament has fallen into disuse. But at the end, the reporter describes the Roman building that houses the Apostolic Penitentiary, the Roman Rota, and the Apostolic Signatura and ends with the usual weird dig at the Church:

Taking up nearly an entire city block, it is just steps away from one of Rome’s most profane piazzas — Campo dei Fiori, filled with bars catering to tourists and college-age Americans studying abroad.

Is that supposed to be humorously ironic? What we’re supposed to walk away with is the impression that despite the best efforts of the old fossils in the Catholic Church, young people are still partying and sinning right under their noses. This is journalism today.

Getting a haircut is like being shriven*

(To shrive oneself: present oneself to a priest for confession, penance, and absolution.)

Trim me, barber, because my hair has grown.
It has been 2 months since my last haircut.
Here are my bangs.
A little shorter than a regular on top, square back, 1-1/2 blade on the sides and back.