As you know, I have a 2.75-year-old and a little one on the way.  How, then, can I talk about a “First Communion” so soon?  No, the Jesuits didn’t take over my parish (meaning of course only the liberal wing of the Jesuits – no disrespect for the likes of Fr. Mitch or Fr. Fessio!) It’s just that at Mass yesterday morning, my daughter told me she wanted to walk to Communion to receive her blessing.  Since her birth, I have been the one carrying her to Communion.  She’s gotten bigger and my back has gotten sorer each Sunday.  Somewhere 6 or 8 months ago she learned to cross her arms over her chest by herself, instead of having me put them in position for her.

So after we talked about it once or twice during the week, Sunday morning she told me she wanted to walk up by herself, as long as I kept a hand on her shoulder and stayed close behind her.  We were in the Deacon’s line, and he went out of his way to bend over enough to where he could make eye contact with her and she could hear him as he blessed her; when he stood back up to give me the Eucharist, I wonder if he noticed my eyes mysteriously watering….

From the Telegraph comes this story about Papa Ratzinger’s plan to return to more sacred music in Masses at the Vatican.

After reintroducing the Latin Tridentine Mass, the Pope wants to widen the use of Gregorian chant and baroque sacred music.

Gregorian chant has been reinstituted as the primary form of singing by the new choir director of St Peter’s, Father Pierre Paul.

He has also broken with the tradition set up by John Paul II of having a rotating choir, drawn from churches all over the world, to sing Mass in St Peter’s.

He added that a pontifical office could correct the abuses, and would be “opportune”. He said: “Due to general ignorance, especially in sectors of the clergy, there exists music which is devoid of sanctity, true art and universality.”

Okay, I will gladly admit it.  As a guy who came of age in the late ’90s, I do enjoy “praise and worship” style music, but now that I am Catholic I recognize that there are problems with that style of music within the context of the Mass – because it’s not sacred.  It’s nearly rock music.  That having been said, I do have a distaste for some of the vapid, meaningless stuff that’s in the missallette created by the minds of those like Haugen and Haas.  When I have the chance, I would like to attend a TLM, and I will also be interested to see how the mood is different when sacred music and chant are used as opposed to what we have nowadays.  I’m pleased that at my parish, we are somehow able to come off with really reverent renditions of some of the ’70s stuff, thanks to a very talented organist and a choir director who won’t guve up his principals.

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A Republican Senator (Grassley of Iowa) has begun a Finance Committee investigation of several televangelists…folks like Kenneth Copeland, Benny Hinn, Joyce Meyer, Creflo Dollar and Eddie Long ( both from right here in Georgia).  Reasons include Rolls Royces, expensive toilets, cosmetic surgery, and extravagant trips, along with, of course, ridiculously high salaries.  The key question is whether any fund have transferred from each of these peoples’ “churches” to their own personal purses, and if so, whether that has happened tax-free.  As long as these folks are paying their taxes, then what they’re doing, while terribly unethical, is legal.  If they’re not paying their taxes, then they have a problem on their hands.

Politically, one must wonder, why now?  We’re one year away from a presidential election in which the Democrats are currently favored to win (at least the MSM says so) and it’s a Republican starting this investigation.  Typically, of course, the religious types are big Republican supporters.  Interesting to consider why this is being done right now, as opposed to last year, or next year.  We’ll see if it goes anywhere…

My prediction?  It won’t go anywhere because these televangelists have the right legal counsel to keep them just as legal as they need to be.  But, they’ll ultimately answer for the lack of ethics.

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Courtesy of the Daily Mail,

This fiery figure is being hailed as Pope John Paul II making an appearance beyond the grave.

The image, said by believers to show the Holy Father with his right hand raised in blessing, was spotted during a ceremony in Poland to mark the second anniversary of his death.

…

Father Cielecki said he was convinced the picture showed the former pontiff.

“You can see the image of a person in the flames and I think it is the servant of God, Pope John Paul II,” he said.

The skeptic in me says it’s just our minds looking for familiar forms (sort of like the faces we saw in the smoke of the WTC on 9/11/01) but at the same time, it looks pretty clearly defined, and if he’s to appear to us, why not in this way.  Time will tell, as I am sure the Vatican will be investigating.

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As we had a very busy day yesterday, and knew we’d have a busy one today (thus my daughter wouldn’t be taking a nap either day) we slept in a little this morning.  It wasn’t until my daughter toddled into the bedroom that we realized how late we had slept, and we quickly realized we wouldn’t be making it to the 9:30 Mass.  We figured we’d go to the 11:00 Mass instead, and we had plenty of time.

The thing is, later in the morning, there’s a whole lot more traffic, so we knew we’d have to give ourselves more time to get to the parish.  Normally it’s 10-12 minutes when we go to 9:30 Mass, but when we go to 11:00 (this was the first time in probably a year and a half that we’ve been to the 11:00.)

So, as we’re driving, I commented to my wife about how many cars there were on the road.  From the second row of the minivan, we hear a small voice, “Look at all those cars of all those hopeful people going to church!”

“What?” I said.

“I said look at all these hopeful people who belong in church!”

My wife said, “she doesn’t know it, but she just said something really profound.”

And no, we have no idea how she came up with the concept at all.

Again, from the Georgia Bulletin, we feature an editorial from a student at St. Piux X High School in Atlanta (my lovely bride’s alma mater.)

To the Editor:

I am writing this in response to Mr. Sterne’s letter in the Sept. 6 edition of The Georgia Bulletin.

I am 16 years old and a student at St. Pius X Catholic High School. My family has attended St. Francis de Sales Traditional Latin Mass Parish since its inception 10 years ago. I have also grown up in Catholic schools, where I am able to experience the Novus Ordo Rite. I enjoy the morning Novus Ordo Masses offered at St. Pius X High School, but I treasure the solemnity, reverence and piety I see in the Latin Mass at St. Francis de Sales.

You cannot compare the Latin Mass to opera; opera is a form of entertainment, while Gregorian chant is composed strictly for the Catholic Church. There is also a large time difference of the institutions of the two things. They are close to a thousand years apart.

With respect to the willingness and expectations of teens to attend a Latin Mass, I wonder whether it is not so much the language used to celebrate the Mass as much as it is the lack of faith formation. Why is it that so many adults believe that it is necessary to make the Mass more “entertaining” in order to coax teenagers to attend?

At St. Francis de Sales, there are many children and teenagers. We have weekly catechism classes for all ages, confirmation classes, adult enrichment classes and a thriving Scout troop. The teenagers at my church seem to have a deep love of the Traditional Latin Mass and do not mind at all praying the Mass in Latin.

Freely allowing the Latin Mass as Pope Benedict XVI seems to have done this summer is hardly an “eradication” of Vatican II. It is the “Extraordinary Rite.” It is offered at but a single parish in the archdiocese. The Ordinary Rite in English is offered daily at hundreds of parishes throughout Georgia.

Robert Q. Shaffner, Atlanta

Original 

Thanks to the popularity of my post on the Traditional Latin Mass editorial from the Georgia Bulletin, I thought it only fair to include links to the letters to the editor leading up to young Mr. Milukas’s letter.

Letter of Pamela C. Garrett rejoicing the Motu Proprio (8/23/07)

Letter of Carroll Sterne, trotting out the usual tired arguments against TLM (9/6/07)

Letter of Theresa Miller Matt, responding to Sterne (9/13/07)

Letter of Joselyn Schutz, responding to Sterne, identifying herself as the generation of which he speaks (9/13/07)

Letter of 16-year-old Ethan Milukas, in response to Sterne (9/20/07)

I’ll update this post if more is said on this subject in the Georgia Bulletin. I should point out here to those who haven’t gotten to know me very well that I am not a rad-trad. For that matter, I may not be a huge regular attender of the TLM if it’s ever offered in my locality, because I am used to hearing Mass in my own language, and have only even been Catholic for 4.5 years as of this writing. But, I can certainly see nothing wrong with offering the TLM to those interested in attending regularly, and I can also see an effort on the part of liturgists and liberal baby-boomer priests to suppress it. I have been to reverent Novus Ordo Masses, and I have been to “entertaining” Novus Ordo Masses. I much prefer the former, and get really irritated by the latter.

TLM – a new abbreviation around St. Blogs. It means “Traditional Latin Mass.” This is more accurate than calling it the “Tridentine Rite” apparently. Anyway, from the Georgia Bulletin I got in the mail today, comes this letter from one Ethan Milukas of Peachtree City, Georgia, USA. As in my other post this date, the Bulletin hasn’t updated their website, so what you see in the block quote is a direct transcription by me.

I am 16 years old, and for the past 11 months, I have attended the traditional Latin Mass weekly, while still attending the Novus Ordo Mass during the week. Because of this, I decided to address certain points made by Carroll Sterne in the Sept. 6 edition of The Georgia Bulletin. Mr. Sterne speaks about the type of Mass that someones of a younger generation is drawn to, and I thought that a teenager’s point of view might be helpful.

Mr. Sterne in his letter gives voice to the opinion of many of today’s liturgists when he says that no one from a younger generation would be drawn to the Latin Mass (many take this even further and assume that we would not like a reverent Novus Ordo Mass either.). This opinion causes many of those who plan modern liturgies to do veritable back flips in an attempt to draw teenagers and young adults in. Sometimes this works, but it has a side effect: by doing these things, liturgists show that they have absolutely no faith in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass to change the lives of those in my generation. My generation knows about this lack of faith, we are able to see it every time we go to a “teen Mass” and experience priests ad-libbing prayers in an attempt to make them more relevant to us.

This lack of faith backfires; it sends us the message that we also should distrust the power of the liturgy, and it also can turn the Mass into something of a joke. After experiencing this for months, I attended a Traditional Latin Mass and experienced something that I’d never seen before: Here was a priest who expected my life to be changed without adding anything to the Mass in an attempt to bring this change about. This priest had perfect faith in the power of the liturgy, and it showed. It was beautiful. The traditional Mass did more to change my life that any “relevant” teen Mass ever did.

Let not your heart be troubled. This kid knows what he’s talking about and he’s being bravely and bluntly honest – kids can see through these priests trying to put on a show. By the way, a Google search reveals that Ethan has entered into an editorial debate over whether Jesus had siblings, as well as writing the Bulletin over what he saw as an omission to a pro-life story they ran. He’s also an excellent archer.

UPDATE: You can now see Mr. Milukas’s letter in its original context at the GA Bulletin’s Website
Also, I have created a post containing links to all the editorials about the TLM that have appeared in the GA Bulletin.

Mary Major Fan from the Mary Major Blog commented here after reading my coming home story over at the Closed Cafeteria.  In the comment, MMajorFan made a couple of brilliant points about how cradle Catholics don’t have an “ajcithatplas” moment in their lives because to a Catholic every day is a new day to “ajcithatplas.”

You are feeling a bit bemused and bewildered by now, so here’s what ajcithatplas means.  It means, “asking Jesus Christ into their hearts as their personal Lord and Savior.”  This is likely one of the most common Protestant (esp. fundamentalist) expressions, which refers to a single experience of salvation that one must have in order to be saved.  Any time there’s an altar call (or “invitation”) that’s what one’s invited to do.  For cradle Catholics who are brought up in the faith, as well as for folks like me, who’ve always been in Church, there’s not a single moment I can point to when my life underwent a major change because of accepting Christ – He’s always been in my heart.

Of course, 4 years ago my life did undergo a major change when I came home to His Church…

Kudos to MMajorFan for the new acronym!

The Church is working on a Chinese version of the Tridentine rite, just as the Vatican is also working on one for us here in the good old USA.  They’ve already received their decree just as we have in the US, and they’re just awaiting translation, revision, proofreading, etc.  One thing is a little disturbing:

Vatican sources have said that, as a courtesy, the letter would be sent to the Chinese government before it was released publicly. The letter follows a meeting at the Vatican in January on the state of Catholics in China.

Why do they continue to validate a government with such massive human rights abuses?  Sending the letter to the government before releasing it implies that some sort of “approval” is needed by the government…

More here