Tag: Worship

Oprah vs. Rev. Wright in Newsweek

This blogger was wondering where he’d seen this item before:

[Oprah] Winfrey was a member of Trinity United from 1984 to 1986, and she continued to attend off and on into the early to the mid-1990s. But then she stopped. A major reason—but by no means the only reason—was the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Even the published source looked familiar:

Oprah’s decision to distance herself came as a surprise to Wright, who told Christianity Today in 2002 that when he would “run into her socially … she would say, ‘Here’s my pastor!’ “

Then it clicked.  This piece on one my favorite blogs that ran in all its glory on March 17, seven short weeks ago, is where I read:

“She has broken with the [traditional faith],” [Rev. Wright] says. “She now has this sort of ‘God is everywhere, God is in me, I don’t need to go to church, I don’t need to be a part of a body of believers, I can meditate, I can do positive thinking’ spirituality. It’s a strange gospel. It has nothing to do with the church Jesus Christ founded.”

From Christianity Today of 4/1/02.  Yes. The item drew 585 “views,” or hits, since then, for roughly a dozen a day, by far the second-highest draw of my 1,385 posts.  (Highest is this, about Rev. Donald McGuire, the convicted molester, as retreat-giver, with 615 hits.)

Good catch, Newsweek!

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Seeing and believing: the light shines

“Fill your horn with oil,” God told Samuel.  He was sending him to Bethlehem, where one of Jesse’s sons was to be king. 

God didn’t leave such matters to chance.  In the story of his people, he was calling the shots — for their own good, needless to say.  He was a benevolent despot.  They had to learn to trust him. 

He was not capricious, however, demanding to be placated, not one to be feared, period.  We have to compare him to other gods of the day.  “Compared to what?” is the key question here, as in most other places.

This time Samuel, sent to find the new king, got a lesson in substance compared to mere appearance.

As Jesse and his sons came to the sacrifice,
Samuel looked at Eliab [one of the sons] and thought,
“Surely the LORD’s anointed is here before him.”

He had to think again:

“Do not judge from his appearance or from his lofty stature, [God said]
because I have rejected him.
Not as man sees does God see,
because man sees the appearance
but the LORD looks into the heart.”

So the pleasantly appearing hotshot is not necessarily the one.  It does not rule him out, however.  The son who is chosen is

ruddy, a youth handsome to behold and making a splendid appearance. The LORD said, “There-anoint him, for this is he!”

Go figure.  The lesson seems to be that we should look before leaping, hold our judgment in abeyance sometimes, wait for guidance, in this case divine.  I like that. 

This son — the youngest, called in from his sheep-tending after Samuel has seen the others — is the least likely candidate for anointing from that oil-filled horn.  Splendid appearance or not, he was chosen in apparently a judicious manner.  It was David, of course.

So much for the first (Old T) reading for this past Sunday, the 4th of Lent, A-cycle.  Now chimes in Paul in a snippet from his letter to the Ephesians about light (good) and darkness (bad), warning against the “fruitless works of darkness” which are “shameful even to mention.”

We may consider God here as one who “looks into the heart.”  Yes, that’s God, and that’s also the honest man or woman, who is implicitly urged here to take a second look, and a third, etc., in any case to avoid fooling himself or herself.

We may also consider “shameful,” which is a description that does not come easily to our lips, we being 21st-century Westerners.  “Have you no shame?” lawyer Welch asked Joe McCarthy 50–plus years ago, and his words reverberated in article, column, headline, TV news clip.

We learn morality by being shamed, argues Lee Harris in his Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam’s Threat to the West.  We are shamed into behavior required by the tribe or by the community that inevitably is part tribal.  This by Harris is one of two book-length essays on this general subject since our 9/11 catastrophe.

On to the 3rd reading, from John 9, which is surely what you heard about Sunday from the preacher if you heard a preacher.  It’s the story of the man blind from birth whom Jesus used as launch pad for a sharp rejoinder to the Pharisees: he’s not blind because the parents sinned, as they said.

“Neither he nor his parents sinned;
it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him.
We have to do the works of the one who sent me while it is day.
Night is coming when no one can work.
While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

That’s a seminal, almost modernizing comment, lifting affliction from the realm of blameability — seminal because it tears us with ears to hear out of the ever-threatening superstitious approach to life.  A preacher could spend some time on this point, speaking up for reason as Jesus did and doing what he or she could to undercut un-reason. 

We don’t usually look to a miracle-worker for that, but miracles imply a discernible order in things, something to be investigated.  If there were no investigatable nature of things, it would be silly to claim a miracle; the word would have no meaning.

And of course, we can’t miss this light-darkness contrast, echoing Paul to Ephesians in the 2nd reading.  In a world of electrical appliance, we have no idea how impenetrable darkness can be.  My friend Charlie stood on a Himalayan high spot and saw moon and stars as if he could touch them.  He was living in a Nepali village in the course of his Jesuit missionary years.  With no city lights, even in the distance, he saw the dark, as it were, clearly.

That clay made of dirt and spittle to heal the blind man was a Sabbath violation.  Accused, Jesus lived up to another pivotal announcement, in Mark, “The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath.”

My.  Again the modernizing statement, in its call for the second look, the inquiry, the reassessment.  It’s somewhat like God tutoring Samuel in his choice of a king from Jesse’s sons.  We are supposed to be thoughtful.

Ah, but all in all, it’s a great story, this blind man’s buffet of pictures and dialog, and more power to the preacher who can retell it lovingly — and thoughtfully, shedding light where there is at least semi-darkness.  That would be nice.

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Hands off!

Hot item here about saying mass, about Vatican ruling that would be widely violated, sez I:

Stricter rules for Mass including disallowing taking Communion in the hand and time limits on homilies may soon be initiated by the Vatican.

Aimed at “extravagancies.” says Divine Worship honcho in La Stampa. 

In sermons too:

Provisions include restricting to 10 minutes homilies and ensuring they be exclusively based on the Gospel readings.

This will call for urgent dispatching of grief counselors to rectories worldwide.  No more beginnings followed by a succession of middles-without-end, no more rhetorical flights about the world scene.

Who do they think these preachers are, “blocks, stones, worse than senseless things”?  O tempora, O mores!

As for communion:

“The Vatican wants the host placed directly into the mouths of the faithful so they don’t touch it (with their hands) because many don’t even realize they are receiving Christ and do this with scant concentration and respect,” Archbishop Ranjith said.

The anti-in-hands rationale, soon to be repeated in further rollbacks of post-Vatican II innovations:

Ranjith said the practice was “illegally and hastily introduced by certain elements of the Church immediately after the Council”.

. . . .

“Ranjith said the measures to bring back “dignity and decorum” to Mass celebrations were in line with Pope Benedict’s wishes.


But the archbishop backed off:



“The article published on Monday by Turin daily La Stampa contained a collage of phrases citing him (Ranjith) that led to conclusions which were out of place,” a Vatican Radio broadcaster said.

Archbishop Ranjith has now denied any plans are afoot, saying instead on Vatican Radio “the hope is that the existing norms will be regularly applied and that the Eucharist be celebrated with devotion, seriousness and nobility.”


A collage of phrases, eh?  Out of place, eh?  Will have to remember that one.

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Some bishops not cooperating?

Implementation of the Pope’s call for openness to old-style Latin masses has been uneven, with some bishops issuing rules that “practically annul or twist the intention of the Pope,” Msgr. Albert Malcolm Ranjith, secretary of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Divine Cult [sic] and Discipline of Sacraments, said recently, according to the Vatican’s missionary news agency FIDES.

Such reactions amounted to a “crisis of obedience” toward the pontiff, he was quoted as saying, although he stressed that most bishops and other prelates had accepted the Pope’s will “with the required sense of reverence and obedience.”

Oh.  When maverick priests hung with the Latin 40 years ago — Gommar DePauw comes to mind — they were shot down summarily.  The reformers were in the saddle, and no quarter was given.  It was like Elizabeth I’s Cecil demanding conformity 400 years earlier.  The joke was, what’s difference between a liturgist and a terrorist?  Ans.: You can negotiate with a terrorist.

Of course, after Elizabeth came Bloody Mary, and rolling of heads.  Not predicting or wishing anything, mind you.  Just taking note.

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What’s in the face look?

“When they changed the mass from Latin to Spanish, it was a blessing for me,” says a member of St. Odilo parish in Berwyn who is not happy with the restoration of the traditional Latin mass.  

“It meant a fuller participation in the mass between the God, the priest and the people. Why would we want to look at the back of his head?”


With all respect to the lady with her genuine concerns, why would we want to look at his face?


This is a very good Chi Trib piece today by Margaret Ramirez about Fr. Anthony Brankin, St. Odilo, and the newly revived Latin mass.

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It wasn’t so hard after all

This priest went along with parishioners who wanted an old-style Latin mass, analyzing his elitism in the process.

As a promoter of the widest range of pluralism within the church, how could I refuse to deal with an approved liturgical form? As a pastor who has tried to respond to people alienated by the perceived rigid conservatism of the church, how could I walk away from people alienated by priests like myself—progressive, “low church” pastors who have no ear for traditional piety?

He tells about it in “My Second First Mass: On presiding at a Latin liturgy” in the latest America.

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The old and the new at a Latin mass in Berwyn

In the latest Chicago Daily Observer:

Interspersed with Today: The Latin Mass in Berwyn
By Jim Bowman

St. Odilo in Berwyn wound up its triduum of old-style Latin masses Tuesday night, Nov. 20, with not quite the 400 people of the first one, two weeks and one week earlier. Maybe 300 this time, parishioners and others who came out on a dark and stormy night to celebrate a divine mystery.  . . . .

more more more

 

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Pastor removed in Baltimore

What would HL Mencken say?

Baltimore’s new Roman Catholic archbishop removed a priest who was pastor of three South Baltimore parishes for offenses that include officiating at a funeral Mass with an Episcopal priest, which violates canon law.

Thus the Baltimore Sun.

Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien personally ordered the Rev. Ray Martin, who has led the Catholic Community of South Baltimore for five years, to resign from the three churches and sign a statement yesterday apologizing for “bringing scandal to the church.”

The bereaved had invited the Episcopal priest.  Martin had been in hot water for a while, having

“received advice and counsel on numerous occasions from the archdiocese, and he has repeatedly violated church teaching,” [archdiocesan spokesman Sean] Caine said. His major offense was not complying with hiring and screening policies, but he also allowed dogs in the sanctuary and did not show up for a baptism, Caine said.

He’s been given time to cool off, straighten up, fly right:

Martin, who has not been defrocked, said he has been barred from celebrating Mass publicly. He will go on an extended retreat and counseling at a monastery in Latrobe, Pa., he said.

It’s going to be a fun retreat, that’s sure.

==============

Later:

Reader D: First dogs — then Episcopalian priests — has he no shame, sir???

Blithe Sp response: In the words of the immortal Sandy, “Arf!”

Also: See latest Homiletic & Pastoral Review article on narcissism among liturgically innovative priests (not yet posted).  It’s actually all about ME, you see.

The article quotes Thomas Day, Why Catholics Can’t Sing, a 1991 book, in which Day picks up on the Happy Improviser who ends a beautiful liturgy by congratulating all who took part, spoiling the effect in his need to inject himself into the service.

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Quiet, mass in progress

16–year-old telling of her Traditional Latin Mass experience in a Catholic camp last summer:

“It’s quiet,” she said. “People are paying attention. In the English Mass, it’s noisy. There are babies crying. But here people are completely focused on God.”

This is a good NY Times piece that is long on appreciation if short on hope for widespread acceptance of the new-old mass.

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Love that Latin

What hath God wrought in and around our nation’s capital?

Since July, when a decree from Pope Benedict XVI lifted decades-old restrictions on celebrating the Tridentine Mass, seven churches in the Washington metropolitan area have added the liturgy to their weekly Sunday schedules

says Wash Times in “Mass appeal to Latin tradition.”

“I love the Latin Mass,” said Audrey Kunkel, 20, of Cincinnati. “It”s amazing to think that I”m attending the same Mass that has formed saints throughout the centuries.”

The new-old mass is

“contemplative, mysterious, sacred, transcendent, and [younger people are] drawn to it,” said the Rev. Franklyn McAfee, pastor of St. John the Beloved in McLean. “Gregorian chant is the opposite of rap, and I believe this is a refreshing change for them.”

A Pius X priest is quoted:

Besides the liturgy”s rich historical content and spiritual significance, the younger generations show an interest in the old becoming new again, said Louis Tofari of the Society of St. Pius X, an order of clergy that opposed the reforms of the Second Vatican Council.

“People who never grew up with the traditional Mass are finding it on their own and falling in love with it.”

This society has been around long enough, by the way, that its young ones are being ordained and service their parishes, as in Oak Park’s Our Lady Immaculate, where born-and-bred Tridentiner Rev. Michael Goldade was relieved on a recent weekend by another young priest who referred to his growing up Tridentine.

The Tridentine Mass helps people in their 20s and 30s who have grown up in a culture that lacks stability and orthodoxy see something larger than themselves: the glory of God, said Geoffrey Coleman of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter”s Our Lady of Guadalupe seminary in Denton, Neb.

This is another group dedicated to Latin liturgy. Its earliest members had belonged to the St. Pius X society but broke when the pope permitted bishops to permit Tridentine masses in 1988.

The Tridentine Mass “detaches me from the world and lifts my mind, heart and soul to heavenly things,” said Michael Malain, 21, of Houston.

Kirk Rich, 21, of Oberlin, Ohio, remembers the first time he attended a Tridentine Mass and recalls thinking that a new religion had been invented.

A Virginia man made a nice distinction:

“The coffee social is after the traditional Latin Mass, not in the middle of it,” said Kenneth Wolfe, 34, of Alexandria. “No one can say, with a straight face, that the post-Vatican II liturgy and sacraments are more beautiful than the ones used for hundreds and hundreds of years.”

The Society of St. Pius X gets up to 25 requests a week from priests looking for instruction, said its spokesman, most of them from priests below the age of 30.

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