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February 10, 2012

Unacceptable

The Obama administration has offered what it has styled as an “accommodation” for religious institutions in the dispute over the HHS mandate for coverage (without cost sharing) of abortion- inducing drugs, sterilization, and contraception. The administration will now require that all insurance plans cover (“cost free”) these same products and services. Once a religiously- affiliated (or believing individual) employer purchases insurance (as it must, by law), the insurance company will then contact the insured employees to advise them that the terms of the policy include coverage for these objectionable things.


This so-called “accommodation” changes nothing of moral substance and fails to remove the assault on religious liberty and the rights of conscience which gave rise to the controversy. It is certainly no compromise. The reason for the original bipartisan uproar was the administration’s insistence that religious employers, be they institutions or individuals, provide insurance that covered services they regard as gravely immoral and unjust. Under the new rule, the government still coerces religious institutions and individuals to purchase insurance policies that include the very same services.


It is no answer to respond that the religious employers are not “paying” for this aspect of the insurance coverage. For one thing, it is unrealistic to suggest that insurance companies will not pass the costs of these additional services on to the purchasers. More importantly, abortion- drugs, sterilizations, and contraceptives are a necessary feature of the policy purchased by the religious institution or believing individual. They will only be made available to those who are insured under such policy, by virtue of the terms of the policy.


It is morally obtuse for the administration to suggest (as it does) that this is a meaningful accommodation of religious liberty because the insurance company will be the one to inform the employee that she is entitled to the embryo-destroying “five day after pill” pursuant to the insurance contract purchased by the religious employer. It does not matter who explains the terms of the policy purchased by the religiously affiliated or observant employer. What matters is what services the policy covers. 


For the rest of the letter click here:  Unacceptable

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Singing the Mass

The editor of Sacred Music talks about current trends in liturgical music, his conversion to the faith through Gregorian chant, and what to expect from the new Missal.

BY TRENT BEATTIE

Jeffrey Tucker thought he had heard it all in the world of music. Then he attended a chanted Mass.

Unlike the secular music he was used to, the simple chant he heard raised his mind and heart to God. This life-changing experience facilitated his conversion to the Catholic faith in 1985.

Unfortunately, he was disappointed with much of the music he heard in church. Tucker decided to do something about it. In 2002 he became a member of the Church Music Association of America, and has been the managing editor of the group’s journal Sacred Musicsince 2005.

Tucker is also editorial vice president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, which bills itself as “the research and education center of classical liberalism, libertarian political theory and the Austrian School of economics.”

But as far as the Catholic heritage of music is concerned, the object of Tucker’s most recent enthusiasm has been the assemblage and distribution of a book of chants to correspond with the implementation of the new English translation of the Roman Missal later this year.

You’re a convert to Catholicism. How did your conversion occur?

Every time I tell the story, it is different. I recently realized why: Conversions are too big for full cognition. Too many influences hit us from too many directions to make sense of it all, and there is the element of the divine that surpasses consciousness. So I’m at the point of realizing that I do not and cannot know how or why it occurred.

However, I do know this: Music played a role. I had been a lifetime musician, playing in symphonies and jazz combos and everything in between. But there was something about hearing the Mass chanted with just a few small notes — by an older priest with a tired voice — that transformed me completely. I was about 22 years old and I had never heard anything so beautiful. The total absence of ego and the total absorption in a purpose beyond time enthralled me. I think that these notes unlocked my mind to understand and opened my heart to a kind of love I had never known. Looking back at it, those small notes had a more powerful effect than the shelves of books and the endless hours of studying the faith.

How did your newly-found interest in sacred music proceed from there?

That chant in Mass that I heard from the late Father Urban Schnaus at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception exposed me to something completely new, something words and argument alone could not express. The context mattered too: This wasn’t a music history class. It changed everything. My whole aesthetic outlook changed. Instead of looking for truth and beauty in the avant-garde, I found it in music that was unbound from the temporal world.

From the chant, I moved on to listen to Renaissance polyphony, in which I heard a level of sophistication that I did not hear in much modern music, which seemed strangely superficial and simple by comparison. It’s like comparing a medieval cathedral to a trailer home. Gradually, chant and polyphony took over my brain and hardly any other music mattered anymore.

Of course my fascination with it began as purely artistic, but when I realized that there was a reason for its structure and sound, my appreciation grew. I realized that it is all a form of prayer, and the musical structure amounts to an attempt by mortals to touch a realm of immortality. It was all an attempt to somehow capture and characterize what the ancients called the “music of the spheres,” which is something like a heavenly sound that might be worthy to be presented by angels at the throne of God. The composers and the tradition heard something true and beautiful and the liturgy absorbed it as its own.

It goes without saying that secular music doesn’t attempt this at all. It is designed to flatter the performers, indulge the composers, entertain the audience, or whatever. There is a place for this approach in the culture at large, but sacred music has a different purpose. To me, to begin to understand liturgical music is to realize this central point that appears in Christian writings from the earliest age: There is a difference between sacred and profane. Many people deny this today, which just amazes me. I consider it so axiomatic that it is not worth debating, only explaining.

Why do people deny it? It has something to do with an embedded agnosticism born of deconstructionist thinking. There is no intrinsic meaning in anything, this view says, so how can we really make such distinctions between what is sacred and what is not?

But you are more than a student or listener; you’re also a practitioner and a director.

I became interested in sacred music as a practitioner because the tragedy of its loss is so undeniably obvious to any practicing Catholic. Given our heritage, given what Catholicism has done artistically through the ages (we invented music notation, for example), given what Vatican II called the “treasury of sacred music,” it is shocking how absent it is from our parishes. But that’s only the beginning of the problem. The real core is the loss of the ideal, the near absence of an understanding that musicians have any serious responsibilities to the ritual. So far as I can tell, this is an unprecedented situation, and it cries out for change.

Many people have noted what a dramatic contrast the reality is from the hope of the Second Vatican Council, which called for the Gregorian tradition to assume first place at Mass.

For the rest of the article click here:  National Catholic Register

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Not That Innocent

by Kathryn Jean Lopez 

“Woe to you if you do not succeed in defending life.”

That was the urgency with which the late John Paul II spoke of the stakes before us in combating a Culture of Death, during his 1993 World Youth Day visit to the United States.

I think I heard John Paul II wail on Tuesday night, the feast of the Holy Innocents, commemorating King Herod’s massacre.

Before the day was through, MTV aired the reality-TV show No Easy Decision, on which Markai Durham, a recent graduate of MTV’s 16 and Pregnant, had an abortion. I assume the scheduling wasn’t intentional, but it was a remarkable coincidence.

The show was dedicated to relaying the impression that the girl is all right, when she clearly isn’t.

Having missed an appointment for an injection of the birth-control shot Depo Provera, Markai found herself pregnant for a second time.

“You will never feel my pain,” she told the father of her two children, one eight months old on the show, one eliminated on it.

Her cry came after she yelled at James for being “harsh” in calling her aborted baby a “thing.” This all came just moments after, while relaying what happened inside the abortion clinic, she insisted: “Don’t call that thing a baby. That’s exactly what it is: a thing.” But she really couldn’t lie to herself. So she went on to naturally look across at her living daughter Zakaria and tell James, “A thing can turn out like that. … Nothing but a bunch of cells can be her.”

For the rest of the article click here:  Not that Innocent

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Interview: Liberal Catholic turns orthodox by embracing Humanae Vitae

by John-Henry Westen

Mon Dec 13 6:02 PM EST

LOS ANGELES, December 8, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - It is often said that the hardest journey to faith is when one approaches it, not from the outside, from atheism or lapsed faith, but from within, with just enough Christian teaching mixed with error so as to be inoculated against authentic faith.

So what does one who has traversed this arduous journey look like?  What does he do, and where does he go with his newfound faith?

In the case of Patrick Coffin, he is now a radio show host on Catholic Answer’s Live, which airs on EWTN, and has authored a book explaining his path to authentic faith. That journey was, he says, primarily about surmounting the stumbling block of Humanae Vitae, which is seen by orthodox Catholics, and even many non-Catholics, as a cornerstone of the Culture of Life.

LifeSiteNews spoke with Coffin about his journey and his new book ‘Sex Au Naturel: What it is and Why it’s Good for your Marriage’.  The book has received rave reviews from philosopher Peter Kreeft, Sydney Cardinal George Pell, Kimberley Hahn, Fr. Frank Pavone, and Ottawa Archbishop Terrence Prendergast, among others.

In addition to tracing his conversion, Sex Au Naturel presents Theology of the Body in an easy-to-understand nutshell, contains a Biblical guide through the proofs for the God’s stance against contraception, and blasts the myths of overpopulation.  Coffin’s wit and style come through loud and clear in the book, on radio and in this interview…

Q. When most Catholics come to the stumbling block of Humanae Vitae, for you it was the cornerstone which led you to fullness of truth.  Why?

A: This is hard to answer succinctly because my “cradle reversion” did not happen in an instant or even a series of instants.  Owing to the fact that I am clever but not wise, I took an abnormally long bit of time to understand the message of Humanae Vitae. 

Growing up under the long shadow of the Winnipeg Statement, which for all intents and purposes made the encyclical into a toothless lion, it was never explained to me how the norms Paul VI was spelling out were actually binding on everyone, not just conservative Catholics.

Sitting down and reading the thing with as open a mind as I could muster was a big first step.  So was discovering the writings of people like Janet Smith, Mary Rosere Joyce, and Servant of God Fulton Sheen.  In the end, I saw that what was at stake was not just an arcane man-made rule (not to mention prudish and unrealistic) but the possible loss of salvation. 

The Church has never wavered, and has only deepened her treatment of contraception.  It’s an ineluctable part of the whole of the deposit of faith.  As I describe in the book, it was like a big game of Jenga, in which the whole structure of the Catholic sacramental life, and of marriage and sexuality, stood or fell with the main “wooden block” of Humanae Vitae; namely that each and every marital act must be open to new life. 

If that principle is false, then I had no consistent ground on which to stay Catholic or even to believe Jesus rose from the dead.  Another discovery was that Paul VI did not make any arguments, per se, about the evil of contraception.  Instead, he bore witness to 2000 years of Christian teaching and practice.  Of course, he also made what we may now call prophetic utterances about what would transpire if the teaching was rejected.

If one is a dissenter - as I have been - what I am saying here probably will not, on its own, make a dent in the dissent.  Acceptance of Humanae Vitae is bound up with the acceptance of the lordship of Jesus Christ. If Jesus is not Lord of our sexuality, He is Lord of nothing.

For the rest of the article click here:  Life Site News

History of the Biretta

Recommended by Father Pisut

This article is from the Catholic Encyclopedia at New Advent website.

Biretta

A square cap with three ridges or peaks on its upper surface, worn by clerics of all grades from cardinals downwards. The use of such a cap is prescribed by the rubrics both at solemn Mass and in other ecclesiastical functions Etymologically, the word biretta is Italian in origin and would more correctly be written beretta (cf. however the French barette and the Spanish bireta). It probably comes from birrus, a rough cloak with a hood, from the Greek pyrros, flame-coloured, and the birretum may originally have meant the hood. We hear of the birettum in the tenth century, but, like most other questions of costume, the history is extremely perplexed. The wearing of any head-covering, other than hood or cowl, on state occasions within doors seems to have originally been a distinction reserved for the privileged few. The constitutions of Cardinal Ottoboni issued by him for England in 1268 forbid the wearing of caps vulgarly called "coyphae" (cf. the coif of the serjeant-at-law) to clerics, except when on journey. In church and when in the presence of their superiors their heads are to remain uncovered. From the law the higher graduates of the universities were excepted, thus Giovanni d'Andrea, in his gloss on the Clementine Decretals, declares (c. 1320) that at Bologna the insignia of the Doctorate were the cathedra (chair) and the birettum.

At first the birettum was a kind of skull-cap with a small tuft, but it developed into a soft round cap easily indented by the fingers in putting it on and off, and it acquired in this way the rudimentary outline of its present three peaks. We may find such a cap delineated in many drawings of the fifteenth century, one of which, representing university dignitaries at the Council of Constance, who are described in the accompanying text as birrectati, is here reproduced. The same 

kind of cap is worn by the cardinals sitting in conclave and depicted in the same contemporary series of drawings, as also by preachers addressing the assembly. The privilege of wearing some such head-dress was extended in the course of the sixteenth century to the lower grades of the clergy, and after a while the chief distinction became one of colour, the cardinals always wearing red birettas, and bishops violet. The shape during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was everywhere considerably modified, and, though the question is very complicated, there seems no good reason to reject the identification, proposed by several modern writers, of the old doctor's birettum with the square college cap, popularly 
known as the "mortar-board", of the modern Englishuniversities. The college cap and ecclesiastical biretta have probably developed from the same original, but along different lines. Even at the present day birettas vary considerably in shape. Those worn by the French, German, and Spanish clergy as a rule have four peaks instead of three; while Roman custom prescribes that a cardinal's biretta should have no tassel. As regards usage in wearing the biretta, the reader must be referred for details to some of the works mentioned in the bibliography. It may be said in general that the biretta is worn in processions and when seated, as also when the priest is performing any act of jurisdiction, e.g. reconciling a convert. It was formerly the rule that a priest should always wear it in giving absolution in confession, and it is probable that the ancient usage which requires an English judge assume the "black cap" in pronouncing sentence of death is of identical 
origin.

   

Recommended Reading

This artilce was posted at National Review Online and written by Jonah Golberg.  It is recommended by Father Pisut.

This Pope Plays It Right 

The world needs more rocks in the river.

In the spring of 2005, Pope John Paul II died. My father, who passed away that summer, watched the funeral and the in

auguration of the current pope, Benedict XVI, from his hospital bed. My dad, a Jew, loved the spectacle of it all. (The Vatican, he said, was the last institution that “really knows how to dress.”)

From what he could tell, he liked this new pope too. “We need more rocks in the river,” my dad explained. What he meant was that change comes so fast, in such a relentless torrent, that we need people and things that stand up to it and offer respite from the current.

I loved the literary quality of the expression “more rocks in the river,” even though the imagery doesn’t quite convey what my dad really believed. Dad was a conservative, properly understood. By that I mean he didn’t think conservatism was merely an act of passive and futile defiance against what Shakespeare called “devouring time.” Unlike human institutions, the rocks do not fight the devouring river of time, it just seems like they do. My dad believed that conservatism was an affirmative act, a choice of prudence and will. In the cacophony of perpetual change, the conservative selects the notes worth savoring and repeats them for others to hear and, hopefully, appreciate.

Over the weekend, the media misreported that Benedict had renounced the Roman Catholic Church’s longstanding “policy” against condom use. I put “policy” in quotes because the media have a tendency to portray all church positions as if they were like rules for trash pickup: easily changed or abandoned upon papal or bureaucratic whim. That’s not how it works.

For the rest of the article click here:  National Review

Recommended Reading

Father Pisut recommended this article from Father Z's blog What Does the Prayer Really Say?

A friend of mine, the great Roman Fabrizio noticed this and sent it along for our opportune knowledge.

The Holy Father, in his “Message” for the World Day for Migrants and Refugees, offered:

” The Church recognizes this right in every human person, in its dual aspect of the possibility to leave one’s country and the possibility to enter another country to look for better conditions of life” (Message for World Day of Migration 2001, 3; cf. John XXIII, Encyclical Mater et Magistra, 30; Paul VI, Encyclical Octogesima adveniens, 17). At the same time, States have the right to regulate migration flows and to defend their own frontiers, always guaranteeing the respect due to the dignity of each and every human person. Immigrants, moreover, have the duty to integrate into the host Country, respecting its laws and its national identity. “

Recommended Reading

This article is recommended by Fr. Pisut

D. of Madision: liberals attacking faithful priests are harming the future of school children

Posted on 5 November 2010 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Here is a sad story from the Diocese of Madison, which includes one of most liberal, in the negative sense, area in the US.

I have met Bishop Morlino and the priests in question.  They are outstanding.

From the Madision State Journal.  My emphases and comments.

Donations plummet following appointment of orthodox Catholic priests in Platteville

By DOUG ERICKSON

St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Platteville, stung by a plunge in donations following the arrival of three controversial priests, has issued an urgent plea for money to keep itsparochial school open.

The 75-year-old St. Mary’s Catholic School is subsidized by the church, which has seen weekly donations fall more than 50 percent in four months, said Myron Tranel, chairman of the church’s finance council.

The school, with 106 K-8 students, has enough money to operate until at least January but needs an additional $200,000 to keep the facility open through the end of the school year, he said.

The financial crisis coincides with Madison Bishop Robert Morlino’s decision in June to bring in three priests from the Society of Jesus Christ the Priest to lead the parish. The group is based in Spain and known for traditionalist liturgy and devotion to orthodox Catholic teaching.

Changes the priests have made, including barring girls from being altar servers, led to a petition last month signed by 469 of the church’s approximately 1,200 members asking Morlino to immediately remove the priests. In a response letter to the parish last week, Morlino said the priests have his full support and will stay.He chastised parishioners for conduct he called “gravely sinful.” [I must agree, though I would say it is the ringleaders who will bear the most responsibility.]

“It grieves me to acknowledge that the reputation of three happy, holy and hardworking priests has been seriously tarnished by rumor, gossip and calumny — lying with the intent to damage another’s good name — by some within the parish community,” Morlino wrote in the letter, a copy of which the diocese provided the State Journal.

To read the rest of the article click here:  What Does the Prayer Really Say

Recommended Reading

This article was recommended by Fr. Pisut

Friday, October 29, 2010
Turning to the Lord

"Do you think that Jesus turned His back to His apostles when at the Last Supper, He gave thanks to His Father and broke the Bread??" asks a reader in the combox.

This is a very good question, because it raises several important issues about the celebration of the liturgy. First, let me answer the question in its most basic form. "Did Jesus turn his back to his apostles when at the Last Supper, He gave thanks to His Father and broke the Bread?" To answer this question we must try to visualize the seating arrangement for a ceremonial Jewish meal in the first century. Sometimes we think of the Last Supper taking place around a table rather like our idea of a family dinner with everyone facing inward and with one person at the head of the table.

Ceremonial meals in the first century were not like this. First of all they reclined at the table, they didn't sit. Secondly, they all sat on the same side of the table. This was so the servants could access the table from the other side. Consequently, the participants in the meal would all be facing the same way. We see echoes of this in portrayals of the Last Supper like the one above. Many think the artists put them all on the same side of the table in order to show their faces better. It certainly is easier to see their faces that way, but the iconographer is also showing the manner in which the Last Supper was most likely celebrated.

The question therefore does not arise, "Did Jesus turn his back to the Apostles?" No he did not, but then, neither did he sit opposite them as Father would at family dinner, or as the priest does when he celebrates the Mass facing the people.

For the rest of the article click here:  Standing On My Head

Recommended Reading

These articles are recommneded by Father Pisut.

Catechism, not politics, guides bishops on marriage

The decision by Minnesota’s bishops to send a letter and DVD on marriage to Catholic households in Minnesota has generated a substantial amount of media coverage and accompanying commentary in newspapers around the state.


While people — Catholic and otherwise — are certainly entitled to their opinions, some characterizations of the bishops’ initiative have been inaccurate and unfair.

First, the bishops’ effort is not rooted in hate of homosexuals, as some critics have claimed; rather, it is rooted in church teaching about marriage and sexuality. Homo­sexual persons have the same God-given human dignity as heterosexual persons and deserve our Christian love and respect. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states no less.

But the church teaches that sex is something to be reserved for a lifelong union between a man and woman who are open to having children and are committed to raising strong families for the common good of society. Everyone else — whether they are gay or “straight” — is called to abstinence. The church realizes this call can be a struggle, particularly in today’s sex-saturated society, and so it offers information, re­sources and programs as a means of help and support. The bishops’ op­po­sition to same-sex marriage is rooted in this teaching, nothing else.


Speaking out

Second, many critics of the bishops’ marriage initiative have taken them to task for speaking out on an issue that has public policy implications as well as religious ones. But the bishops have every right to enter public policy discussions, as they have for a very long time on both the state and national levels.

For the rest of the article click here:  The Catholic Spirit


Same-sex attraction doesn’t justify redefining marriage


Posted on 10 October 2010 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Here is a CNA story that cuts to the chase.

My emphases and comments:

Same-sex attraction doesn’t justify redefining marriage, Minnesota bishops explain

St. Paul, Minn., Oct 10, 2010 / 07:44 am (CNA).- The Catholic bishops of Minnesota have issued a brief statement on marriage, saying that having same-sex attractions does not deprive anyone of basic human rights but also does not create the right to “marry” someone of the same sex.

The bishops’ catechetical statement, published in The Catholic Spirit on Thursday, urged the state government, all Catholics and those of good will in Minnesota to support marriage.

A constitutional amendment clearly defining marriage as a union of one man and one woman would be one practical measure, but redefining marriage and legitimizing same-sex unions would work against the “socially vital goal” to support marriage between one man and one woman, the bishops said. [A redefinition of marriage would tear at the most fundamental bonds of society.]

Their catechesis also countered the claim that maintaining the definition of marriage as a man-woman union is discriminatory against homosexuals.

“Persons with same-sex attractions are our sisters and brothers, [NB:] and their same-sex attraction does not define them as persons nor deprive them of their authentic human rights, including the most fundamental rights of all — the right to life and the right to love,” the bishops said. “Consequently, we oppose any discrimination against persons based on their having a same-sex attraction.” [A key word there is "authentic". It cannot be argued that a homosexual civil union is a "human right". Something contrary to the will of God can be a "human right". Humans by their free will have the "right" so to speak, to chose to go against God's will or to act against nature. But free will pure and simple isn't the ground for establishing a human right.]

For the rest of the article click here:  What Does the Prayer Really Say?