Casinos, Taco Bell, and the Church

The Casino and the Cathedral: On Recovering Our Abandoned Culture

“Today’s pagan temples and chapels—capitalistic institutions bent on money making no matter what—have appropriated Catholic styles, symbols, art, liturgy, and rubrics just as Catholics have lost confidence in them. They are winning and we are not. It’s time for Catholicism to become newly aware of the richest of our own symbols lest we lose out completely.

[…]

“The claim of the Mass of the Catholic Church is more impressive than that offered by any other institution. “Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” Would someone walking into Mass for the first time be convinced that we really believe and teach this?

Let not our symbols and rituals be taken from us and made to serve mammon. We can make them our own again, not to win superficial games but win souls and the whole world.”

Read the rest of Jeffrey Tucker’s article over at Crisis Magazine.

You might need me to play for your funeral…

“O Salutaris Hostia” Palestrina

Students and faculty at The Liturgical Institute form a small schola for the 2013 summer session.

Click here for more information about The Liturgical Institute.

St. Alexis – July 17

Saint Alexius or Alexis of Rome or Alexis of Edessa was an Eastern saint whose veneration was later transplanted to Rome. The relocation of the cult to Rome was facilitated by the belief that the saint was a native of Rome and had died there. This Roman connection stemmed from an earlier Syriac legend which recounted that during the episcopate of Bishop Rabbula (412-435) a “Man of God” who lived in Edessa, Mesopotamia as a beggar, and who shared the alms he received with other poor people, was found to be a native of Rome after his death.

While the commemoration was removed from the Roman Calendar in 1969, St Alexius is mentioned in the Roman Martyrology under 17 July in the following terms: “At Rome, in a church on the Aventine Hill, a man of God is celebrated under the name of Alexius, who, as reported by tradition, abandoned his wealthy home, for the sake of becoming poor and to beg for alms unrecognized.” (Credit to the Catholic Encyclopedia)

On leaving Mass early…

 

I think I’ve heard all the excuses. “I don’t want to stand in line, I want to get out of the parking lot first, I want to get a seat at the restaurant (really), I have other things I have to do, I don’t sing, I don’t like the last song, I, I, I….” My personal favorite: “I already got Jesus, so why do I need to stick around?” (Sure, but you might have missed the point…)

Maybe we’ve all offered one of these excuses at some point. There are so many reasons this is wrong, but first let’s look on the bright side. Here are 5 reasons for staying until the end of the Mass:

1)   Show Jesus how important he is to you. You just received Holy Communion. You’ve received Jesus’ entire life, death and resurrection for the salvation of the world. Spend a couple minutes thanking him for this incredible gift he suffered for you. Show him this is the most important part of your day and week. He hung on the cross for 3 hours, you can wait with him for 3 minutes.

2) You have just been united in Christ with the entire Church, here on earth, in purgatory and in heaven by participating in this Sacrament. Yes, the Eucharist is a Sacrament every time. Show your unity and respect to the members of the Church that have gone before you.

3) You have united yourself in Christ with your parish community. To leave before everyone else is a sign of your disunity with your community. Even our responses to prayer and the dismissal are signs of our unity. Unite yourself with your community.

4) We pray together.  The prayers at the end of Mass are great. Don’t believe me? The entire Mass is based on Sacred Scripture, up to the very end. The words of Scripture, the words of Mass are sacramental, that is, they make present the reality of Christ. Why would you walk out on the Word of God?

5) We sing together. The hymn can be a prayer, if your parish sings a thanksgiving hymn after communion or a recessional hymn. If you skip out when there is half a verse left, or just before the hymn, you miss praying together with one voice. If you don’t sing or don’t think you know the song, look at it at least. Pray the words. Unite your heart to the prayer of the whole Church.

There are a million more reasons I could give you. Remember who the very first person to leave Mass early was…there is a reason they call this the “Judas shuffle.”

If you’re confused about whether it is a sin or not: no, it is not seriously sinful, but it is extremely disrespectful, even more so if it is habitual. Are you only concerned about the bare minimum?

Besides, if you cut out early, you’ll miss important things happening in the parish community, and also the goodies when we have them after Mass…

Choir singers ‘synchronise their heartbeats’ – from the BBC

Choir singers ‘synchronise their heartbeats’ – from the BBC

The speculation is that singing is beneficial for you…

Cardinal Burke: Attention to liturgical norms “an act of profound respect and love for Our Lord”

Catholicism Pure & Simple

 

Here is a selection of quotations from His Eminence Raymond Cardinal Burke’s June 28th address “Liturgical Law in the Mission of the Church” at the Sacra Liturgia conference in Rome:

“The difference in the approach to the Sacred Liturgy from my first days in the seminary in the Fall of 1962 to the time of the post-Conciliar reforms was, to say the least, extreme, if not violent.”

“The post-conciliar period and accompanying euphoria manifested a general disdain for the Church’s perennial discipline.”

“Given the radical reform of the liturgical ties, a certain antinomian mentality easily led to a great deal of liturgical experimentation which was completely divorced from the discipline which had formerly governed the celebration of the Sacred Liturgy.”

“The right understanding of the Sacred Liturgy is, in fact, the key to the understanding of every dimension of life. That right understanding is safeguarded by the law, the discipline, which safeguards…

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Words Matter

Words matter. Especially in the liturgy. Every word can be richly symbolic and expressive of our faith (if we don’t mess with them). We have to remember that the words, even pronouns like “his”, really do matter.

If you feel a rant coming on…you probably know me in real life. But bear with me as I explain… One of the things that really bugs me is not only when people decide on their own to change the words of the Mass (which is one thing) but also to teach other people the incorrect words, going so far as to give reasons why their words are better than those given to us by the Church! There are so many things wrong with this, including poor liturgical theology, that we can’t get into all of them here. Let us examine just one example and see why the change does not make sense.

Here is one part of the Mass I notice quite often people change the word “his” to “God”:

May the Lord accept the sacrifice at your hands, for the praise and glory of his name, for our good, and the good of all his holy Church.

Okay, step back and look at the prayer of the priest right before it:

Pray, brethren, that my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to God, the almighty Father.

First, notice that this prayer is addressed to God the Father. We are speaking about a specific role for this specific person of the Trinity, whose role is associated with male characteristics. This does not mean God the Father is anatomically male, but that he has characteristics of ontological male-ness, that is, the truth of his being has qualities of male-ness. Both man and woman are created in the image and likeness of God, and I am not suggesting that we ignore that, but I am saying they are different. Despite what secular culture wants you to believe, men and women are not the same at a fundamental level of their being. In this particular instance, we are saying something about God as Father, and that is an important distinction. There are other times when we properly express other qualities of God. The words of the liturgy are completely interconnected, and to arbitrarily change “His” to “God’s” because you want to remove the male pronoun actually means you just didn’t listen to the prayer right before it.

Secondly, it becomes a grammatical error. We don’t want to imply that “Lord” and “God” are two different entities, which is what it often sounds like if you change these words. That would be a serious problem.

Finally, a very important principle to remember, which is reiterated in the Second Vatican Council (SC 22), is that no person, not even a priest, may change the Mass. This would include the words.

Think this week about the specific words you are praying, how they relate to the rest of the liturgy (as each prayer does not exist in a vacuum) and how these words express the different facets of our faith.