A Brother responds to a pacifist

In his Band of Brothers, Stephen Ambrose relates the aftermath of World War II for many of the men of Easy Company. One was Cpl. Walter Gordon, who, after parachuting into Holland near the town of Eindhoven in the infamous "bridge too far" Operation Market Garden, had been shot and paralyzed in Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge (he eventually made a full recovery). A incident the book describes, from long after the war's end, made me chuckle:

In December, 1991, Gordon saw a story in the Gulfport Sun Herald. It related that mayor Jan Ritsema of Eindhoven, Holland, had refused to meet General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, because the commander of the UN forces in the Gulf War had "too much blood on his hands." Ritsema said of Schwarzkopf, "He is the person who devised the most efficient way to kill as many people as possible."

Gordon wrote to Mayor Ritsema: "On September 17, 1944, I participated in the large airborne operation which was conducted to liberate your country. As a member of company E, 506th PIR, I landed near the small town of Son. The following day we moved south and liberated Eindhoven. While carrying out our assignment, we suffered casualties. That is war talk for bleeding. ... In spite of the adverse conditions, we held the ground we had fought so hard to capture.

"The citizens of Holland at that time did not share your aversion to bloodshed when the blood being shed was that of the German occupiers of your city. How soon we forget. History has proven more than once that Holland could again be conquered if your neighbors, the Germans, are having a dull weekend and the golf links are crowded.

"Please don't allow your country to be swallowed up by Liechtenstein or the Vatican, as I don't plan to return. As of now, you are on your own."

Armistice Day

From Glenn Gray's The Warriors:

How does danger break down the barriers of the self and give man an experience of community? [It is] the power of union with our fellows. In moments [of danger] many have a vague awareness of how isolated and separate their lives have hitherto been and how much they have missed... . With the boundaries of the self expanded, they sense a kinship never known before.

This Sunday at St. Thomas

Sung by the St. Ann Choir today at St. Thomas Aquinas church:

Jean Mouton, Ave Maria
Josquin des Prez, Tu solus qui facis mirabilia

I'm back... and mad

My blogging had taken what they call in music a "grand pause", a fermata of undetermined duration. I wasn't sure if I'd ever start up again. It's darned time-consuming, and I don't have the gift of just banging out acres of lovely and fiery English prose like, say, Karen Hall.

But I've experienced something so infuriating here in the diocese of San Jose that I'm back at this blog now, and I don't think I'm going away again.

Stay tuned.

'Catholic' education teaches yet another student what's really important

The Palo Alto Weekly runs a little feature, appropriately called Streetwise, in which they pose a question of current interest to people on the street. The issue in today's paper was: "What was particularly memorable about your high school graduation?"

Among the five people interviewed was Caitlin McCarthy, a classmate of my daughter at Woodside Priory School through middle school and high school, whose mission statement says it is "an independent, Catholic, preparatory school in the Benedictine tradition. [The school was founded by Hungarian Benedictines who fled to the west after the anti-Soviet rising of 1956, but few if any monks remain on the faculty.] Our mission is to assist students of promise in becoming lifelong learners who will productively serve a world in need of their gifts."

Sounds nice, right? Well, get a load of what Ms. McCarthy told the Weekly's reporter:

The survivor from the plane crash in the Andes was going to speak at our graduation, but instead we got a monk who basically talked about how abortion was bad. I was pissed that we were supposed to have this cool guy and got a crappy one.

Good job, Priory! In seven years, you really imbued that young woman with a profound understanding of what matters, didn't you? After all, focusing on something that has killed an average of a million American children a year is so boring compared with a rollicking good story of escape from an airline crash. I mean, after all, what would St. Benedict choose?

Christ the Hero

Recently, President Bush awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor posthumously to Navy SEAL Michael Monsoor. Monsoor, 25, died in in a firefight in Ramadi, Iraq when he threw himself on a grenade to save the other men in his unit. He was a practicing Catholic.

One of the most telling bits to be published in the reporting of the very emotional medal presentation was from his chaplain, Fr. Paul Halladay:

"So when it came to laying down his life for his friends, his faith life allowed him to do that without a moment's hesitation."

There's nothing more Christlike than this sacrifice of one's own life to save the lives of others. Our Lord is not the "gentle Jesus", passive and effeminate, that he has often been portrayed to be in recent centuries. He was a warrior -- a spiritual warrior, that is -- the greatest that has ever lived, or will ever live. He threw himself on the grenade of our race's guilt and well-earned punishment, and took the blast Himself. That's a hero, the kind any man -- and I say "man" advisedly -- could follow proudly.

The Church desperately needs to draw real men back to itself. Men follow heroes. Christ is and will always be the Hero who never disappoints, who looked a horrifying death in the eye and walked right into it to save us all. That's the Christ whose face we should recognize more often, whose desperate but calm expression we might also have seen in Michael Monsoor as he made his decision in that moment in Ramadi.

The Earth Day guilt merchants

At a local middle school here in Palo Alto today, in observance of Earth Day, students who arrived at school on foot or on bicycles were shunted over to a table where they were given a treat. But those students who had been driven to school were "greeted" by a parent volunteer holding a large black balloon, who harangued each disembarking kid with the news that this balloon represented the volume of carbon they had just shamefully dumped into the air during their drive, and why didn't they walk or bicycle like they had been encouraged to do?

What a nice way to start a kid's day.

It's another example of environmentalism gone nuts. Obviously, if a kid's parents say they're going to drive the kid to school, does Balloon Lady really expect the kid to stamp his feet and scream until mom agrees to let him walk? And she has probably also not considered that a lot of students at this particular school were coming from Los Alto Hills, and walking or biking just isn't safe from the distance they'd have to come, and across the crowded, fast-moving expressways they'd have to cross. Nope, the only thing on Balloon Lady's mind is the these kids' heinous offense against the fashionable Earth-worship that has displaced ordinary religion for a lot of the good citizens of this burgh.

Freakishly good news from South Bend

Diogenes published this photo today which should be very very encouraging to anyone who has despaired of the Catholic future in this country. Not only are those two young men spontaneously kneeling as a Eucharistic Procession went by -- they're doing it at Notre Dame!

What I'd like to know is: where did these guys get so well catechized that they knew to kneel as the monstrance passed them?

Uncle Di also makes this observation:

Devotion acquired in counter-cultural circumstances is more likely to thrive than devotion acquired as an act of conformity, and it is less likely to weaken in the face of hostility or contempt.

Wise words indeed. And if devotion has weakened in the last forty years, is it not because our Church has been taken in a direction of cultural conformity? We dropped almost everything externally distinctive about ourselves -- from chant, to fish on Fridays, to priests in cassocks -- and tried to look and sound as much like the culture around us as we could. And then we reinterpreted ourselves to de-emphasize Catholic truth, in the name of ecumenism. And we highlighted every social teaching of the Church that could seem to conform to the leftist political culture -- often in the universities we were attending or teaching at -- that so many of us wanted to fit in with. And with JFK, we declared that if Catholic doctrine clashed with the growing insistence to a secular public square, we would be good secularists first, and then see if there were any irrelevant nooks and crannies where our Catholicism could still be accommodated.

Truth is, Catholicism rightly understood will always be countercultural. The better we remember that and play it up, the more often we'll see young men kneeling in public as Our Lord passes by.

Last Sunday at St. Thomas

Sung by the St. Ann Choir at St. Thomas Aquinas last Sunday (4/20):

Byrd, O quam suavis est
Victoria, Quam pulchri sunt gressus tui

The Nationals Stadium Mass

Just finished watching EWTN's coverage of the papal Mass at Nationals Stadium. I have to say I agree with Fr. Neuhaus about the mishmash of musical selections, which I recall him describing as "preening" and "self-indulgent." Pretty clearly, the extreme variety of music was meant to mirror the multiculturalism of the United States, which in influential circles is seen as something extraordinarily virtuous.

In practice, multiculturalism means that every event has to be culturally pot-luck, because we wouldn't want to say we actually prefer one over the other. Whatever the benefits may be of having everyone contribute something of their own, we've all been to pot-lucks that were gastronomic disasters. Musically, this Mass was like sitting down to a dinner of dimsum, pemmican, doughnuts and creamed corn. At such a dinner, it's true that each diner might find something to his liking, but if you have to eat it all -- well, pass the Alka-Seltzer.

Given Benedict's well-known preference for Gregorian Chant, Renaissance polyphony and classical settings of sacred texts, it would have been more polite to let him offer a Mass with music that made him feel comfortable. That's what we do with guests, isn't it? Make them feel comfortable? Instead, the powers that be made him preside over a Mass that made them feel comfortable.

On the other hand, it shouldn't have come as a surprise, I suppose. Those same powers have been shoving their style at us for forty years now, and insisting that we better like it.

Last Sunday at St. Thomas

Sung by the St. Ann Choir at St. Thomas Aquinas last Sunday:

Josquin des Prez, Tu pauperum refugium
Heinrich Isaac, Ego sum pastor bonus
Pierre de la Rue, O salutaris hostia

Good news from Minneapolis

I was surprised and happy to see the following in a newspaper article quoted over at The Cafeteria is Closed:

But similar changes are taking place across the [Minneapolis] archdiocese, which is getting new, conservative leadership from Co-adjutor Archbishop John Nienstedt, who will shortly succeed Archbishop Harry Flynn.

I'm hoping this will be good news for Fr. Robert Altier. Flynn removed Altier, a popular young orthodox priest, from St. Agnes' parish a couple of years ago, silenced him, and stuck him away as the assistant chaplain at a retirement home. Altier had been too effective, and too pointed, at exposing the flaws of the new sex-education program which Flynn was implementing at diocesan Catholic schools. (More details here). Flynn even demanded that the parishioners who had painstakingly recorded and transcribed Altier's homilies remove the transcripts from an independent website, no matter the subject; obediently, they did so, not without protest.

Flynn tolerated, meanwhile, some really interesting liturgical abuses at several parishes, appearing to take action against them only after Nienstedt was appointed.

Maybe priorities are finally getting straightened out in Minneapolis.

In California, your kids are the state's

An appellate court in Los Angeles has ordered a California couple to stop homeschooling two of their children and send them to public school. While I don't yet know much about the particulars of the case, some of the language in the court's decision should alarm anyone:

We agree [with the California legislature]… 'the educational program of the State of California was designed to promote the general welfare of all the people and was not designed to accommodate the personal ideas of any individual in the field of education.'

So, if you have ideas about how your child should be educated that don't agree with the current views of the state, shut up. Just send your kid and your tax money, and shut up.

Then there is this:

The appeals ruling said California law requires "persons between the ages of six and 18" to be in school, "the public full-time day school," with exemptions being allowed for those in a "private full-time day school" or those "instructed by a tutor who holds a valid state teaching credential for the grade being taught."

The credential requirement sounds great, doesn't it? Sounds like it ensures that the child's teacher will really know the subject, and be able to confer that knowledge to the child.

Until you understand that much of the California credential program isn't about ensuring subject-matter proficiency; it's about ensuring that teachers toe the Department of Education line (well to the left of even California's average) about sexual values. My wife recently waded through this morass to get her single-subject credential, so I've heard about it from someone who has seen it firsthand, and recently. The propositions you must buy into -- and I know she only told me about a fraction of the things she heard -- showed me that I could never be a credentialed teacher here. I simply couldn't keep my mouth shut for the length of time it takes to get through the program. If you have any sort of traditional value system -- like, say, the values of the Roman Catholic Church (are you listening, bishops?) -- you simply have to stay quiet. Your work concerning these topics must parrot the official line. Dissent is simply not tolerated.

Catholics in California will doubtless greet this news, if they even hear it at all, with a yawn. After all, it's homeschooling that's being targeted, not private schooling. It'll never come to any sort of censorship on the teaching of Catholic morality in Catholic schools.

Just you wait, folks.

In a few brief years, California's radical education establishment has gone from allowing public schools to take independent action to teach the homosexual agenda, to requiring it. Now it's homeschooling that they're angling to influence, if not eradicate. How long do you think it'll be before they find a judge who's willing to say that Catholic schools must teach nothing that casts doubt on the views that that establishment wants firmly planted in every California child?

Warm up the baptismal pool again

CWN tells us that the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has weighed in on that radical-feminist-inspired variation in the baptismal rite that's so popular in some dioceses: "In the name of the Creator, and of the Redeemer, and of the Sanctifier." (Instead of that horribly patriarchal, male-chauvinist "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit").

Not valid, says the CDF.

Were you "baptized" with that renegade formula, which Fr. Cool and Bishop Trendy insisted on? Then get baptized "again" -- because you weren't actually baptized the first time.

This is an amazing display of backbone on Rome's part. And it's all the more delicious because they've checkmated the opposition by going right back to the words of the Gospel of St. Matthew: Jesus himself, they point out, is the one who told us to baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

The dissidents are always telling us how we ought to return to the practices of the early Church. Well, dissidents, it seems that a straightforward reading of Matthew tells us that "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" was the practice of the early Church, at least if you assume that the disciples did what Jesus told them. And since that formula was OK for two thousand years, it looks like they did. It was fine with every generation of Catholics until you and Gloria Steinem came along.

So warm up the jacuzzi again.

And this time use the right words.

It's the history, stupid

It was probably 20 years ago that I first encountered this statement by Pope Pius XI, on the masthead of The Wanderer:

No one can be at the same time a sincere Catholic and a true Socialist. (Quad. Anno, 1931)

It wasn't until I'd gotten a couple of chapters into the new book above that I really understood why Pius was so adamant about it. Every Catholic needs to know about the ugly depths where Progressivism -- the current fashionable name for American socialism -- came from, and why its claims are ultimately so hostile to Christianity. Because the confusion that Pius was trying to dispel 75 years ago is very much with us Catholics again in this election season.

That "seamless garment" line we've been fed by Catholic libs for decades? Made of the same material as a certain emperor's new clothes.

Today at St. Thomas

Sung by the St. Ann Choir at the noon Mass today at St. Thomas Aquinas:

Palestrina, Commissa mea pavesco
Victoria, Domine, non sum dignus
Lassus, Aude benigne conditor

Window: Jesus with Martha and Mary

From the chapel at Sacred Heart School, Menlo Park, CA

Even better Sundays at St. Thomas

Sung on the past two Sundays at the noon Mass at St. Thomas Aquinas:

Lassus, Miserere mei
Hassler, Christe, qui lux es et dies
Morales, Inter vestibulum et altare
Lassus, Ne reminiscaris
Lassus, Audi benigne conditor
des Prez, Tu solus qui facis mirabilia
Palestrina, Domine quando veneris
Lassus, Domine, convertere

I'm also delighted to note that our noon Mass is now a full Latin Novus Ordo, with the vernacular only where it is supposed to occur in that rite. I can hardly believe, sometimes, that this is happening in my otherwise felt-banner, immersion-baptism, gather-us-in Palo Alto. When I ask myself how this could have come to be, at last, I'm inclined to think that it must be God's reward to us who are blessed to be here now for the faithful way in which a dedicated few maintained the beauty of Gregorian chant and Renaissance polyphony here for the past four decades.

I came very late to this vineyard, but I'm really grateful to take my denarius with the rest.

Quid pro quo

The Catholic faithful are basically still willing to be the sheep of the fold, but they think it's reasonable to expect that their shepherds won't fleece them and then turn them over to the wolves.

Homily holiday?

The always-worthwhile Diogenes has once again delighted, this time by demolishing some recent homiletic nonsense by the (let's face it: apostate ) Fr. Andrew Greeley. According to Greeley, the Transfiguration didn't really happen the way the Gospel says, but was instead a "narrative" (a word ripe for the proscription list) developed later by early Christians to dress up an otherwise mundane moment of self-realization in Jesus' life. Judging from some of the comments, homilies like Greeley's are not uncommon.

So I have a proposal: ban homilies in American churches for ten years. Instead, the priest may, if he wishes, read an excerpt from a papal encyclical, speech, article, or book, without comment.

Then, during those ten years, priests and bishops would have their record of homilies vetted by Rome, and permission to preach would be re-granted by license only after proof of orthodoxy had been established.

I'd miss the fine sermons of the Franciscan who celebrates the noon Mass at St. Thomas (though under my program, he'd be one of the first to come back "on the air"), but I'm willing to make the sacrifice so that in other churches, our Faith will stop being trashed by dissidents like Greeley.

Last Sunday at St. Thomas

Sung by the St. Ann Choir at St. Thomas Aquinas last Sunday:

Pablo Guerrero, Domine meus
Victoria, Senex puerum portabat

This bloog bene welll proofred

I wish every orthodox Catholic blogger would take one tiny step that would vastly increase our credibility in the 'sphere:

After you've poured out your soul to the world in that burst of rapid and inspired typing, re-read your post before you hit the button to publish. Please!

I've seen many, many worthwhile posts sabotaged by authors' careless errors -- mistakes in usage, grammar, even spelling (inexcusable in this era), and utter verbal chaos due to the partial abandonment of previous versions of sentences that later were edited -- that would certainly have been noticed had the blogger done the very thing he/she hopes the visitor will do: read the finished post.

The hostiles out there already think we are poorly educated nitwits. If we're careless about the basics of the way we write, we're just giving them an excuse to keep on thinking that.

This Sunday at St. Thomas

Sung by the St. Ann Choir at St. Thomas Aquinas yesterday:

Orlando di Lasso, Adoramus Te, Christe
Pierre de la Rue, O salutaris hostia

Choir leaders who are looking to introduce polyphony in their parishes could do a lot worse than to start with de la Rue's gentle, solemn setting of Aquinas' O salutaris. Very chordal and easy to sing, but a gorgeous accompaniment to a reverent Communion.

Window: Jesus in the temple

The young Jesus teaching in the temple, before Mary and Joseph caught up with him. From Menlo Park Presbyterian Church, Menlo Park, CA.

I'm sure Notre Dame feels better, but...

From the Catholic League:

According to some news and sports websites, ESPN anchorwoman Dana Jacobson graphically attacked Jesus Christ at a recent roast of her colleagues; she was reportedly intoxicated. At the January 11 event, Jacobson roared from the podium, “F*** Notre Dame,” “F*** Touchdown Jesus,” and finally “F*** Jesus.”

Commenting on this is Catholic League president Bill Donohue:

“When pressed on this issue, ESPN’s response is to e-mail a statement by Jacobson, which includes the following: ‘My remarks about Notre Dame were foolish and insensitive. I respect all religions and did not mean anything derogatory by my poorly chosen words.’

So let's see. Having insulted Jesus and Notre Dame, she chooses to apologize specifically about... Notre Dame? For cryin' out loud, how tone-deaf can you be and still keep your job at ESPN?

I like that bit about "poorly chosen" words, too. Presumably, if she had just put her insults a bit more elegantly, all would have been well.

Just don't try using the same language about Mohammed, Ms. Jacobson. Talk about real trouble!

A new blog from Karen Hall & Co.

I doubt that I have the requisite dozen readers that Karen Hall suggests for helping spread the word about her new Jesuit blog, Some Wear Clerics. But what the heck, I'm going to plug it anyway.

How much do you know about Roe v. Wade?

My new sidebar element, "Test your Roe IQ", will take you to a website where you can find out just that.

Just as in many tests we've all taken in school, once you catch on to the point of view of the test writers, it gets easier to guess the answers you don't know. Mind you, I like the test writers, for the most part -- the Alliance Defense Fund, for example.

I missed one. Best I've done on any test in a good long while.

USF students get quoted about the Walk

From the San Francisco Chronicle's coverage of the West Coast Walk for Life today:

In front of Pier 3, Katy Young, a second-year law student at the University of San Francisco, watched the throngs of disciplined abortion opponents filing by. "This is what we are up against. We live in a bubble here. All these people are going to vote Republican," she said. "I kind of feel sorry for them."

Krista Henneman, her schoolmate at the Jesuit school, said she was shocked by all the children marching against abortion with their parents. "Give them five years, and see how many of them are still out there," she said.

Fine Jesuit institution, that. Turning out the same sort of cynical, lock-step politically-correct students you could find at, say, UC Santa Cruz.

The same story gave no estimate of numbers for the marchers, other than "thousands", but noted that counter-protesters were "300 strong". Don't know if they were reaching for a hint of the Spartans at Thermopylae, but I was there, Chronicle guys, and there were 300 pro-choicers there only in your dreams.

West Coast Walk for Life

A year ago I complained about the enormous disagreement between organizers' and officials' estimates of the crowd at the 2007 West Coast Walk for Life. I suggested a simple method for ending the bickering. This year, I did it. In fact, I've just gotten home from doing it.

I found a location where I could get a little elevation above street level -- the cable car turnaround at Hyde and Beach -- and set up my camcorder on a tripod. I aimed it down at a segment of Hyde which the entire march would pass, and when the head of the march was about to appear, I turned it on. I then did not move it for the entire length of the march, over forty minutes worth.

As soon as I've dumped the footage to my Mac, I'm going to begin isolating still frames of each successive "chunk" of the passing march, with a little overlap from still to still in order to establish that I haven't left anything out.

Then I'm going to count heads. It's gonna take some time, because this march was big. I tried counting people as they passed, but during much of that forty minutes, they were transiting my counting mark (a streetlight pole) faster than I could say the number. Try that. Count 21, 22, 23, 24, and so on, as fast as you can. They were coming faster than that.

Anyone who's pro-life -- heck, let's just say it: anti-abortion -- can take a good deal of heart from this event. Not only was the Walk attended by thousands in this bastion of left-wing orthodoxy, the pro-choice counter-demonstration amounted to not more than a hundred persons. I can say that with some certainty, since they unfortunately collected themselves right at the turn of Beach and Hyde, not a hundred feet from my position. So I had to listen to their chants and taunts and screams while the entire Walk passed by, but I also had plenty of time to count them, too.

I'll post my results here as I analyze the footage.

This Sunday at St. Thomas

Sung by the St. Ann Choir at the noon Mass for the feast of the Baptism of Christ:

Tomas Luis de Victoria, Missa O magnum mysterium

and a lovely motet by des Prez whose title I've forgotten, sadly.

An expert speaks

From Matthew Archbold's Creative Minority Report:

Bill Maher appeared on Conan O' Brien last night and said this of religious people:

“You can’t be a rational person six days of the week and put on a suit and make rational decisions and go to work and, on one day of the week, go to a building and think you’re drinking the blood of a 2,000-year-old space god. That doesn’t make you a person of faith…That makes you a schizophrenic.”

O’Brien, looking a bit uneasy, then asked Maher whether anyone who is religious is schizophrenic. To which Maher replied, “Well, yes, sort of, because they have walled off a part of their mind.”

I knew Bill Maher was a nasty piece of work when I watched the first episode of his show Politically Incorrect, years ago, and discovered that he was actually being completely politically correct, and that the show's title was a big fat lie.

One thing to note, though: the example Maher used with O'Brien. Islam? Judaism? Protestantism? Nope. The way he stated his case, he was specifically attacking Catholicism, since we're the only ones who believe that the Eucharist is really the body and blood of Christ. (Yes, I know the Orthodox also believe as we do about that, but we're by far the better-known target).

And from the bishops, who should be defending our Faith in the court of public opinion? So far, not a peep.

The God of shapes

From Chesterton's The Everlasting Man:

The Creed was like a key in three respects... . First, a key is above all things a thing with a shape. It is a thing that depends entirely upon keeping its shape. The Christian creed is above all things the philosophy of shapes and the enemy of shapelessness.

That is where it differs from all that formless infinity, Manichean or Buddhist, which makes a sort of pool of night in the dark heart of Asia: the ideal of uncreating all the creatures. That is where it differs also from the analogous vagueness of mere evolutionism, the idea of creatures constantly losing their shape.

Our creed is about the God Whose spirit, at Creation, moved over the waters, which were without form, and void. God gives shape, and distinction, to things in every act of the Creation story.

Maybe I'm reaching, but I think there's a slim connection here with why I (and lots of others) instinctively dislike the blank, empty interiors of so many contemporary Catholic churches. They'd be fine spaces for the formless goal of Buddhism, or the meaningless non-goal of evolutionism.

They just aren't very good spaces in which to worship the God of shapes -- the God Who Really Is.

As seen on PBS... except in California, that is

Like many Catholics, I suppose, I was genuinely excited to learn from EWTN that the new Christmas cantata The Birth of Christ was being picked up by PBS. What a coup!

Or so it seemed, until I tried to find out when it was going to be broadcast here on one of our two big PBS affiliates in the San Francisco Bay area. Which turned out to be: never.

Oh, it apparently aired on tiny KRCB, which serves the Santa Rosa / Napa Valley area north of the main urban centers of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose. And you were in luck if you lived in the Fresno / Visalia region, out in the hinterlands of the largely agricultural Central Valley.

In other words, if you lived where 75% of the population lives out here, you could just forget it.

Which I might have guessed. The folks who are directing the operations of KQED in San Francisco and KCET in Los Angeles really don't want either the theological message of the cantata, or its social message (Catholic and Protestant choirs in Ireland putting aside their differences and joining forces for the performance). After all, a program like this, produced with very high aesthetic, musical and technical production values, doesn't reinforce the impression of Christianity that the PBS stations here want to convey to their viewers. No dark-robed Inquisitors, crazed albino monks, or slimy televangelists in it, for starters.

So I took the money I was going to send to KQED to reward them for picking up the program, and bought several copies of the DVD to give out instead.

Hey, PBS! Interested in getting me back as a subscriber (which I haven't been for 20 years)? Don't call me; I'll call you.

Epiphany at St. Thomas

Sung by the St. Ann Choir today at the noon Mass:

Orlando di Lasso, Missa sesquialtera

I want to mention something I really noticed only a month or two ago: the Renaissance polyphonic Mass settings that are done here move through the prayers of the Ordinary very quickly, hardly taking more time to sing than it would to speak the texts slowly and with understanding and reverence.

Some of us are aware of "serious" Mass settings mainly through the wonderfully grand works of the Baroque and classical periods, like Bach's B minor Mass, Mozart's Requiem, and Beethoven's Missa Solemnis. But because of their length and elaborateness, these compositions are only suitable for celebrating along with a real Mass on the most splendid of special occasions. The great thing about Renaissance settings is that they really were intended to accompany everyday Masses, and their brevity and directness of expression show that.

They do take a bit more time than just rattling through their English-language equivalents. But perhaps if our Renaissance brothers and sisters in the Faith could slow down enough to savor the Ordinary at this more thoughtful pace, we can too.

Robbed

A few encounters I've had recently with Catholics my own age and younger have impressed on me, again, that we were intentionally robbed of the linguistic, aesthetic, and liturgical traditions that every generation of Catholics before us received, carefully passed down to them. The revolutionaries of the 1960's and 1970's, most of whom are still with us, have much to answer for.

Inviting the wanderer in

The wanderer of this post's title is me. I'm thinking back to the time when I was tentatively making my way back to the Catholic Church after being away for so long (almost thirty years).

When I first walked into St. Thomas Aquinas church in Palo Alto back around 2000, the interior said to me, "You're home."

Now, the interior of this 1901 gothic revival building was superficially not much like the interior of the 1920's-era California mission-style parish church where I had grown up. But the visual continuity of representational stained glass, the statues of Mary and Joseph, the dignity and grace of the altar and detail work, the centrality of the gilded tabernacle, all said: "This is a Catholic church, and could be nothing else."

And I was vaguely aware that the noon Mass featured Gregorian chant and Renaissance polyphony, and though I had grown up without those things, I knew they were unmistakably part of the Catholic tradition that I once again wanted to be a part of. So, when I heard the first strains of that music on that first Sunday, I once again heard, "This is where you meant to come. You're home."

The point here is that I, like most people, respond to visual and aural clues to tell where we are. That response is almost instinctive. I don't know all of what's at work in this, but it's true.

So my theme here is: if you want people to come into the Catholic Church, make parish churches look like what they expect a Catholic church to look like, so they don't spend the first twenty minutes wondering if they've blundered into a Buddhist temple or a Self-Realization Fellowship meeting hall.

Here's one of the few times we can take a lesson from Hollywood. The cost of making TV and movies requires that the viewer "get" the environment quickly and clearly. So, when you see a Catholic church in a movie, the filmmaker chooses imagery that "says" Catholic to most people. So what do you see? Do you see one of those stripped-bare tributes to Modernism (capital M) that we're always being told we must build? No. You see traditional architecture -- gothic or romanesque. You see representational stained glass, not some abstract smear of color you could as likely see in any airport. You see statues. You see a decorated altar. You see the crucifix. You see the tabernacle. You see the racks of devotional candles.

Hollywood knows how to communicate. And so should we Catholics.

The sight and sounds of St. Thomas Aquinas told me I was home, although it wasn't exactly like the church I'd grown up in. Those visual and aural clues were indescribably important in getting me to keep on coming back, so that I could start re-aligning my life to the teachings of the Church.

So I say: three cheers for Catholic churches that look like Catholic churches -- and for the people who were wise enough to keep them that way, or put them back that way, despite the foolish times we are now just emerging from.

Into the ice... and back

We had a quieter Christmas than many in the past, and intentionally, one with fewer presents. One of the gifts that did make it under the tree for me this year was South with Endurance, a magnificent collection of photographs by the pioneer antarctic photographer Frank Hurley. Besides the dramatic black-and-white pictures one might expect from his era, there are also some exquisite color photos made under incredibly difficult circumstances with the then-revolutionary Paget Colour process. We photographers have it awfully easy these days!

Hurley was a member of the crew of Endurance, the ship in which Sir Ernest Shackleton mounted his 1914 attempt to cross the entire continent of Antarctica. Shackleton didn't achieve his ambitious goal, but the way he saved his men -- every one of them -- when disaster struck makes for an astounding story of determination, resourcefulness, and finally raw daring and courage. This tale, told so well in Alfred Lansing's 1959 book Endurance, deserves to be far better known than that of the grim failure of Robert Scott's ill-planned 1912 polar expedition.

If I've piqued your interest in Shackleton, one good place to start is the James Caird Society. Why "James Caird?" Go find out. You will not be disappointed.

Quintessentially Shackleton: "Never for me the lowered banner, never the last endeavour."

Creche vandalism, close to home

From today's San Jose Mercury:

Laura Spoelstra's trying to find Jesus. Baby Jesus, that is. Not once, but twice in one month, thieves have absconded with a Baby Jesus figurine from the front yard of her San Jose home.

The first time it happened the night of Dec. 10.

When Spoelstra woke up the next morning, she noticed the cherished figurine from her nativity scene was gone. She had owned the set for 15 years.

She quickly put out a sign in bold marking, "Who stole Baby Jesus?" - a notice that, ironically, attracted more attention in the neighborhood on Vistamont Drive then the nativity scene itself.

Luckily, the Spoelstras were able to find an identical one, which they bought Sunday. Again they displayed it. But this time, they took it inside before they went to bed and displayed it only during the day. By Wednesday afternoon, however, it, too, was gone. She added an addendum to her sign that read, "Again."

So just who's stealing Baby Jesus, anyway? And, really, is that what Jesus would do?

Spoelstra said her dog began barking loudly around 1:30 p.m. When she went outside, her mail carrier was there, standing and staring in disbelief. He told her that he saw a young man, laughing, jump out of a car, grab the figurine and speed away as another man, laughing, waited in the car.

Whether it's someone truly in need of Jesus or just a childish prank, Spoelstra's not feeling particularly forgiving. She just wants it returned. No questions asked.

"I don't know if they think they're just being funny. But they should at least bring one of them back. They apparently really do need Jesus in their lives, but if they have to steal for it that's not really a good way of going about it."

All right, now I'm imagining whether this story would have been written quite so flippantly if the object stolen had been a menorah or -- horrors! -- some Muslim symbol.

Seriously, vandalism of a crèche should be a hate crime. If we're going to have the latter category at all, I want Christianity protected by it.

Christmas Day at St. Thomas

Sung by the St. Ann Choir at St. Thomas at noon on Christmas Day:

Chant for the day, Puer natus est
William Byrd, Mass for Three Voices

Of course, the real treat was at the midnight Mass (which for family reasons I was unable to attend) with the Dominus dixit ad me chant and Orlando di Lasso's Missa Sesquialtera.

Once more, many many thanks are due to Prof. William Mahrt for his long sustained effort to keep the tradition of Gregorian chant and Renaissance polyphony alive here for the past forty years.

A good sign, though inconvenient: they're occasionally running out of chant leaflets these days, because attendance at this "Gregorian" Mass is steadily climbing. A nice problem to have!

Well said

EWTN's Mother Angelica's way of putting things is not always to my taste, but she sure hit the nail on the head this time:

If you give God a pint jar, you can’t expect him to put the ocean in it.

A Christmas scene of perfect plausibility

I was out shopping for a few more Christmas cards when I found a box with this painting by Marianne Stokes, a painter of the pre-Raphaelite school. I have to admit that for the first few seconds, I just thought, "Pretty. Conventional stable scene, childlike cherubim, very nice."

Then I looked more closely. And I nearly burst out laughing, right there on the card aisle at Village Stationers. Then and there, I knew I had to have that box of cards. For here was a scene, heretofore unexpressed by any artist I was familiar with, that really must have happened.

There are the cherubim, gamely strumming a lullaby on their harps, but looking a bit concerned. Because their tunes are not having their expected effect. Mary, apparently completely exhausted by the long trek, her labor, and the spectacular events that followed the birth of her Son, has fallen deeply asleep on the hay. But the Christ Child is bright-eyed and wide awake!

That's the part that will ring true with absolutely every parent who has ever lived through the desperate fatigue of those first weeks with their first newborn. Your baby is supposed to want to nap. You certainly want to nap. But all those guaranteed sure-fire lullabies and other infant sleep inducers you stocked up on, preparing so carefully for this -- naught availeth. Except that they put you to sleep.

Unattested by Scripture? Sure. But I'd bet plenty that it really happened this way.

Starting out as she means to go on

I'm finally getting around to this book, and I'm loving it. Especially for the way she begins the first chapter:

The modern age has witnessed the construction of the most banal and uninspiring churches in history. The attempt to create a church architecture that would meet the needs of the age has resulted in churches that are unfit for any age. Contemporary church buildings, as well as being the ugliest ever built, are also the emptiest.

I suppose I'm particularly sensitive on this issue because when the charming old California-mission style parish church where I spent my childhood -- St. Mary's, in Fullerton, CA -- burned down about 1970, it was replaced with the kind of church that Doorly refers to: white walls, bare concrete, cold and comfortless. And empty.

Doorly ties contemporary church design to the Modernist revolt in aesthetics, typified architecturally by the Bauhaus movement, and ties it to philosophical and quasi-religious trends (such as Theosophy). She notes that the Church is once again behind the times: the secular world has already torn down or blown up some of its first failed experiments in we-know-what's-best-for-you Modernist architecture, e.g., the Pruitt-Igoe Towers in St. Louis. Heck, we're still building the darned things.

For Catholics who are stuck with an ugly Modernist church: take heart in this inspiring photo, of St. Louis' visionary action on Pruitt-Igoe:



Well, OK, it wasn't visionary; when St. Louis finally got around to asking PI's tenants what they wanted to have done to improve the buildings, they said "demolish them". The city just took a great idea and ran with it.

I wonder how many Catholics might give a similar answer if asked about the plain concrete boxes they now are forced to worship in. Now, please don't think I'm advocating blowing up churches; in most cases, a conventional wrecking ball is a much more affordable prelude to the construction of something beautiful, reverent -- and yes, traditional.

"For the sins of others"

As you have probably read, Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles has said he was assaulted on the street back in July or August by "one or more people" irate over the L.A. Archdiocese's payout of $660 million.

A priest in his diocese said that Mahony did not report the attack to police "because he felt he could offer it up in reparation for the sins of others."

"For the sins of others"??

No matter what the Cardinal originally meant or said, this rendition reeks of sanctimony and is another disaster in public relations. The guy who could have stopped the pederasty in L.A., but didn't, is looking around for the sins of others to work on? Puh-leaze!

As Catholics, yes, we're urged to offer up our present sufferings to God, in union with the sufferings of Our Savior. But most of us were taught that we've got plenty of sins of our own to apply our sufferings to, and we needn't be paying any attention to "the sins of others." We don't regard ourselves as such wonderful people that we've worked off our own transgressions just fine, thank you, and have extra sufferings to spread around. God will take care of that bit of spiritual economy, not us.

The Cardinal's reported statement just smacks too much of the Gospel story of the Pharisee who marched to the front of the synagogue to give thanks that he was a just and righteous man, and not like that nasty sinful publican hanging around at the back.

This Sunday at St. Thomas

Sung by the St. Ann Choir at today's noon mass at St. Thomas Aquinas:

Thomas Tallis, Euge caeli porta
Heinrich Isaac, Jerusalem surge
Anon. 15c. French (Meaux Abbey), Veni, veni Emanuel

A new sidebar link

It'll be pretty obvious that I've added a new element to my sidebar, a running count of acts of terror by Islamic jihadists, courtesy of ReligionOfPeace.com (click on the sidebar graphic to go there -- it'll be well worth your time).

It's there because I think it's important to keep in mind the truly horrible things that the enemy is doing while our media are assiduously making sure we know of every misdeed of our troops, no matter how minor, isolated, and contrary to instructions they are. And also because the progress of the struggle between Islam and Christianity will make a very great difference to the return of that Sea of Faith that is the metaphor of this journal's title.

Sounds familiar

From Dinesh D'Souza's What's So Great About Christianity:

Here in the West, there are lots of liberal Christians. Some of them have assumed a kind of reverse mission: instead of being the church's missionaries to the world, they have become the world's missionaries to the church. ...Liberal Christians are distinguished by how much intellectual and moral high ground they concede to the adversaries of Christianity.

Sounds like many (though not all) of the "Spirit of Vatican II" folks to me.

Not too long ago at St. Thomas

I've been... away from the keyboard, so to speak, hence this late post.

Sung by the St. Ann Choir on Sunday, November 18:

Lassus, Domine, convertere
Isaac, Amen, dico vobis

Later that afternoon, Prof. Mahrt gave a talk outlining the recent history of the liturgy, emphasizing the differences between the Tridentine mass and the Novus Ordo mass in Latin as it's done on Sunday noon at St. Thomas, which the parish refers to as a "Gregorian" mass. He also reminded us of something I'd forgotten: from about 1963 through 1970 in the United States, the Tridentine mass was celebrated in English. Though I lived through the period, I had forgotten that.

My only defense is that I was a teenager at the time, and liturgy was not my chief worry.

Laid out on a table behind Prof. Mahrt were a dozen or so missals, one dating back to the 14th century. Quite a tangible tribute to the faithful who have gone before us, and who struggled with many of the same problems we face today.

The third monastery's a charm

Jean-Louis Pagès, the architect for the new monastery building (are you listening, all of you who have monasteries and seminaries closing in your areas?) at St. Michael's Abbey in Silverado, California, speaking at L.A.'s Pacific Club last spring:

After the construction of the two monasteries [that he designed] in Le Barroux [France], I received an invitation to an exhibition in Rome, entitled: 'Twenty years of Christian buildings in the world.' On my invitation card were some words from Pope John Paul II, 'The one who builds the house of God gets a room in heaven.'

Unimpressed by this, my father, 99 years old at that time and knowing me better than the Pope, looked at the invitation and said: 'Maybe for you, even two monasteries are not enough.' Since then the fathers of St. Michael have reassured me and told me 'With a third monastery we think it's OK.'

Off the deep end

At an appearance at Carnegie Hall on Friday, J. K. Rowling revealed that she intended the character of Albus Dumbledore in the Harry Potter series to be homosexual. His love interest, she says, was not Harry (we can be grateful that approval of man-boy love is still a few years off for the elites) but wizard Gellert Grindelwald, the book's shadowy magical rival to Dumbledore.

I can't decide what to think of her. Now that she'd absurdly rich, is she pandering to her trendy new friends in the elites? Is she just a modernist PC woman with the usual modernist PC assumptions about morals? Perhaps a little of both.

And besides that, I wonder if there isn't a huge, characteristically PC blind spot operating in her as well. The contemporary worldview has completely lost sight of the possibility of men forming deep friendships without those friendships being, or becoming, erotic. If you find a kindred spirit in another person of the same sex, modern people think, of course you're going to want to go to bed with them. If you think differently, they say, you're just fooling yourself. Find two male friends together? Must be secretly gay. No other explanation need apply.

It's an arid, simplistic view of human nature.

I've defended the Potter novels against accusations of promoting real witchcraft more than once in this space. I still stand by that assessment. But it's clear to me that by choosing to twist the endearing character of Dumbledore this way, Rowling now joins the legions of other modernists hoping to foster a complete acceptance of homosexuality in her many young readers.

Unforgivable.

Won't be seeing any of the upcoming Potter movies. That's about all I can do in the way of protest, since the books are already bought and on my shelves. I'll be curious about the movies, but not curious enough to put another penny into Rowling's already-bulging pockets.

Too bad, really. She was never a very good writer, but she could conceive a good story, and could certainly capture a place in the contemporary imagination. Her hope for lasting literary fame was to remain true to the Christian foundations of her imaginary world. Now that that's gone, she will be, too.

I'll make a prediction: in a hundred years, people will be still be reading Tolkien avidly. But when Rowling's name is mentioned, they'll say: "Who?"

This Sunday at St. Thomas

Sung by the St. Ann Choir today:

Josquin des Prez, Tu solus qui facis mirabilia
William Byrd, Ave verum corpus

This was not a good Sunday to visit St. Thomas, so if you came this noon on the basis of my usually glowing reports, I'm sorry.

I arrived a bit late today to find that Fr. Nahoe, our young Franciscan who is so good at collaborating with Prof. Mahrt in introducing more and more Latin into our Latin Novus Ordo Mass, was absent. In his place was a priest I've seen once before at St. Thomas. On that occasion, too, he reverted to the English Novus Ordo, and interlarded that already-ugly rite with spontaneous, quasi-heretical inspirations of his own. I hate it when priests make up their own stuff. What is so !&%^%$#ing hard about just reading from the Missal? Aarrgh.

Even the choir seemed off today. They wandered so badly in the Offertory chant they had to restart it, which is practically unheard of.

I also had the additional pleasure of reading a lengthy excerpt/summary of the US bishops' statement on the Iraq war in the parish bulletin, assembled by our parish's "Human Concerns" committee (a wholly-owned subsidiary of VOTF and the Democratic Party) in which those mitred paragons of foreign policy expertise declare that we need to get out of Iraq as soon as possible while paying for all the damage caused by the insurgency while asking for nothing in return. Meanwhile, of the insurgents, of the Iranians and the Syrians who have been blowing up Iraqis regularly through their surrogates, they ask nothing at all. Idiots.

Finally, the bulletin also carried the welcome news that the spending of $100,000 to equip St. Albert the Great's sanctuary with an immersion-style baptismal pool is going forward nicely. Wow, we so need that!

I thought of those Peanuts comic strips in which Charlie Brown looks up in anguish to Heaven and cries, "I just can't stand it!"

This Sunday at St. Thomas

Sung by the St. Ann Choir at the noon Mass at St. Thomas Aquinas:

Josquin d'Ascanio, In Te, Domine, speravi
Henry Purcell, Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts

Dear Abby to faithful Catholic parents: shame on you

So now, Jeanne Phillips, the current "Dear Abby" and daughter of the original, has come out in favor of same-sex marriage. That should come as no surprise; she's been hinting at it for years. But then there's also this:

What Jeanne Phillips, aka Abigail Van Buren, finds offensive and misguided are homophobic jokes, phrases like "That's so gay," and parents who reject or try to reform their children when they come out of the closet. [emphasis added]

Catholic parents, that last bit is about you -- if, as the Church teaches you, you encourage your children to live chastely within the bounds of Catholic morality, regardless of their sexual orientation. Oh, I suppose you'll be OK for a little longer, in Ms. Phillips' eyes, if you counsel your "straight" child to avoid sex before marriage -- though I'm sure it's only a matter of time before she lets you have it on that score, too. But if you tell your homosexual child not to give in to his feelings because it can never be pleasing to God to do so, well then, you are offensive and misguided. And by extension, so is the Church that dares to teach as it does now and always has.

The gap between popular culture and the Church on these and other sexual matters was narrow only fifty years ago; today it is wide and getting wider. Watch out. When it grows wide enough, following the Church's teachings will become a crime, and you'll either have to go along with "enlightened" people like Abby, or lose your child. Alarmist? Just you wait.

Or... or we get out there and engage the culture on this issue, and start it back on the road to truth. Which is it to be?

Kindred thoughts

Spoken by one of the characters in Alexander McCall Smith's Espresso Tales, the second novel in his wonderfully evocative series 44 Scotland Street:

I have the feeling that we've seen the dismantling of civilisation, brick by brick, and now we're looking into the void. We thought that we were liberating people from oppressive cultural circumstances, but we were, in fact, taking something away from them. We were killing off civility and concern. We were undermining all those little ties of loyalty and consideration and affection that are necessary for human flourishing. We thought that tradition was bad, that it created hidebound societies, that it held people down. But, in fact, what tradition was doing all along was affirming community and the sense that we are members one of another. Do we really love and respect one another more in the absence of tradition and manners and all the rest? Or have we merely converted one another into moral strangers -- making our countries nothing more than hotels for the convenience of guests who are required only to avoid stepping on the toes of other guests?

They're coming home

The Bovina Bloviator has decided to cross the Tiber!

I wish every Roman Catholic would fully appreciate what a wonderful blessing it is to have so many fine Episcopalians making that choice these days. And what a miracle it is -- a quiet one, but a miracle nonetheless! Remember, fellow Catholics, one of the biggest hurdles they face is the doctrinal and aesthetic mess we have made of the Church here in the United States. Yet they come over anyway. Can anyone doubt that only the Holy Spirit could work such a wonder?

BB, and the many others like him, will become a major force in bringing beauty in language and the arts back into Catholicism here. You just watch. And pray. For us, and for him.

SAY not the struggle naught availeth,

The labor and the wounds are vain,

The enemy faints not, nor faileth,

And as things have been they remain.

If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;

It may be, in yon smoke concealed,

Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers,

And, but for you, possess the field.

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,

Seem here, no painful inch to gain,

Far back, through creeks and inlets making,

Comes silent, flooding in, the main.

And not by eastern windows only,

When daylight comes, comes in the light,

In front, the sun climbs slow, how slowly,

But westward, look, the land is bright.

-- Arthur Hugh Clough

Window: the burning bush

from Menlo Park Presbyterian Church, Menlo Park, California

A symbol this time: the burning bush, with which Moses had that memorable encounter in Exodus 3:2. This is a tiny detail from a much larger window. Traditional stained glass art was full of these little, almost-offhand surprises.

This Sunday at St. Thomas

Sung by the St. Ann Choir at the noon Mass today at St. Thomas Aquinas:

Jean Mouton, Domine Jesu Christe
Heinrich Isaac, Mandasti mandata tua
Pierre de la Rue, O salutaris hostia

To anyone with a choir that's just starting out with polyphony and looking for simple pieces that are also exquisitely beautiful, I'd suggest checking out the last composition.

Chaput on "The Children of Men"

Catholic Culture has published some very interesting remarks by the always-worth-reading Archbishop Chaput of Denver. His takeoff point is the 2001 movie The Children of Men, but really the novel by P. D. James on which the movie was only very loosely based.

As usual, as it turns out, the novel is a whole lot more Christian and pro-life than its Hollywood cinema treatment. I wonder: why do established novelists like James -- and for that matter, Tom Clancy, sell their titles and their names to Hollywood without insisting that at least the main thrust of their work be retained?

Window: St. Perpetua

From All Saints' Episcopal church, Pasadena, California.

St. Perpetua, the young mother from Carthage, martyred in 203. She holds a palm branch, a Roman symbol of victory. You can read her story here.

The new barbarians

CNS reports that the crazies on the atheist Left are picking up steam (or at the very least, it's coming out of their ears more visibly now).

Science must ultimately destroy organized religion, according to some of the leading atheist writers and intellectuals who spoke at a recent atheist conference in Northern Virginia. God is a myth, and children must not be schooled in any faith, they said, at the "Crystal Clear Atheism" event, sponsored by the Atheist Alliance International.

Heed that bit about "children must not be schooled in any faith", parents.

Some of the luminaries who spoke at the conference, held at the Crown Royal Hotel in Crystal City, Va., over the weekend, included Oxford professor Richard Dawkins, author Sam Harris and journalist Christopher Hitchens.

These people mean it, they have media clout, and they are gaining ground.

Many of the attendees seemed to have developed an aversion to religion from conservative, Protestant Christians. Several of the atheists Cybercast News Service spoke to complained of living under fundamentalist parents who frowned upon any questioning of the Bible or any activity condemned in Scripture.

This doesn't surprise me at all. The well-meaning but ignorant Biblical literalism that drove away intelligent but misguided people like these rank-and-file atheists is one of the saddest consequences of the foundational heresies of the Protestant Revolt.

How to combat Dawkins and Co.?

• Protestants, come back to Rome. There you'll find the balance between Faith and Reason, and the heritage of scholarship, that your forebears abandoned five centuries ago.
• Catholics, start studying your Faith. Hard. And pick a science, go down to your local library, and start studying that, so that there'll be a reason why anyone should listen to what you say. And start organizing. You'll need every intellectual and spiritual weapon you can master, and all the companions you can gather together, before this fight's over.

These new barbarians are at the gates. Now. They are few, so far, but they come with their advanced degrees, their publicists, and their willing accomplices in the media. If they win, "then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science."

Two cheers for colonialism?

The reports out of Myanmar are not good. Hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of Burmese killed -- by other Burmese -- for opposing their government.

The title of this post reflects a question that I first encountered in the pages of Look magazine when I was 12, and that comes back to me now and then: is it always better for a people to rule themselves, to be independent? Or may it not sometimes be objectively better for a people to be ruled by outsiders who are better, or at least less bad, at it than they are themselves? And how does one tell the difference?

In its relatively short run, the current military dictatorship ruling Myanmar has already racked up a list of atrocities against its unhappy people that appears to me to eclipse the record of occasional cruelties that it took the British over a century to compile during their domination of India and Burma. The incident usually considered the most extreme example of the latter, the 1930 Qissa Khwani Bazaar massacre in Peshawar, is still strongly resented in India because as many as 400 civilians were killed.

But the Myanmar generals have exceeded that British tally many times over. I can't help but ask myself: if the British were still in charge in Burma, would we be hearing of British troops mowing down hundreds of Burmese demonstrators and Buddhist monks, with the British government trying to lock down communications to conceal it? And would Myanmar have endured the years of oppression and misery their own generals have inflicted on them?

And is Zimbabwe better off under its bloated tyrant Mugabe, just because he's African?

I don't think so. Maybe being ruled by your own countrymen isn't a panacea for the world's ills, after all.

Window: the baptism of Jesus

The baptism of Our Lord by St. John the Baptist in the river Jordan. Artist unknown (so far). From Our Lady of the Rosary, in Palo Alto, California.

Last Sunday at St. Thomas

Sung by the St. Ann Choir at the noon Mass yesterday at St. Thomas Aquinas:

Thomas Mudd (c. 1560-1632), Let Thy merciful ears, O Lord, be open
Heinrich Isaac, Tollite hostias from choralis constantinus

Window: Our Lady of Perpetual Help

I don't normally care much for the dalle-de-verre style of stained glass window construction that gained prominence in the 1950's, and is employed in the window shown above. Instead of being composed of pieces of fairly thin flat glass that had the details painted onto them, as was common for centuries, dalle-de-verre used blocks of glass three and four inches thick that were heavily faceted with hammer blows, and eschewed most painted details. I usually find the resulting images rather forbidding and clumsy-looking compared with the long tradition that went before. But in order to see what the style could sometimes achieve in spite of its limitations in the hands of a master, you need to go to St. Stephen's in the Sunset district of San Francisco.

St. Stephen's was the parish church of Karl Huneke, a German immigrant stained-glass artist whose Century Studios equipped more than 80 churches, large and small, throughout California. Most of his work is in the traditional style, at which he was completely adept, but he was clearly fascinated with trying to develop and improve the then-new dalle-de-verre style when he tackled the windows for his own parish. You can imagine that he put out his utmost artistic effort.

I wanted to use this window in particular because it shows how he was careful to take into account the light that would strike the windows. In this case, if you visit the church on a sunshiny morning, you'll see the most amazing effect which, I admit, you can't get with traditional flat glass. Huneke carefully faceted the glass blocks forming the infant Christ's halo in such a way that the full light of the sun is caught and refracted toward the viewer. It is literally dazzling -- you can't look at it directly for more than a few seconds.

The photo above is intentionally underexposed to reveal the faceted surfaces of the glass; the shot below conveys a bit more of the brilliant visual impression.



Though the dalle-de-verre style isn't my cup of tea, I have to admit that if the purpose of religious art is to give us a foretaste of Heaven, this blinding halo does the trick.

No more silence, and why

I love the quotation from St. Catherine of Siena that Karen Hall has recently placed so prominently on her delightful blog:

"We've had enough of exhortations to be silent! Cry out with a hundred thousand tongues. I see that the world is rotten because of silence."

It seems that whenever there's a discussion about some wrong that needs righting, inside or outside the Church, you can count on someone chiming in with the advice that the best thing we can do about it is to pray. Their unspoken subtext is often, though not always, that we should do nothing else. That we should, indeed, maintain the kind of silence that St. Catherine found so deadening.

Such an attitude sounds pious, but it ignores something important. God has given us the gift of causing things to happen in two great ways, and we need to use both, all the time. C. S. Lewis succinctly described them in his little essay Work and Prayer (collected in God in the Dock).

First, there's the arena of natural action, by which we can make things happen in the material world according to laws that we've gradually come to understand better and better as knowledge has increased. This is the everyday world in which we can, for example, get the dishes clean if we assemble a container, soap, and water and use them in the right way. If we meet all the conditions, the dishes get clean every time.

And then there's the arena of supernatural action, which we enter through prayer. There, the rules we're familiar with in natural action -- do action X, always get result Y -- don't apply, because God judges with His infinite wisdom our requests (which may be good or not so good) in light of the best possible path for events to take to accomplish His will (which is the only will that matters). As Lewis wrote:

Prayers are not always -- in the crude, factual sense of the word -- 'granted'. This is not because prayer is a weaker kind of causality, but because it is a stronger kind. When it 'works' at all, it works unbounded by space and time. That is why God has retained a discretionary power of granting or refusing it; except on that condition, prayer would destroy us. ... Had He not done so, prayer would be an activity too dangerous for us and we should have the horrible state of things envisioned by Juvenal: 'Enormous prayers which Heaven in anger grants.'

People sometimes become discouraged when they rely solely on prayer for some outcome that seems good to them, like the removal of a priest, bishop or cardinal who has behaved exceedingly badly. They pray and pray, claim to be relying solely on God, and wait patiently -- and then finally erupt in frustration when God doesn't make it happen.

I'm sure that as Lewis writes, sometimes God doesn't 'grant' our prayers because they are simply not virtuous -- that what we're asking for is just plain bad. But at other times, I think He chooses not to grant them because He wants to teach us to use the other form of action, the other gift of causation, instead. He wants to be asked for his supernatural help, always; but He also wants us to become wise and effective in doing His work with the tools of natural world, which include our skills in speaking and writing, our persistence in the face of indifference and disappointment, our endurance in the face of persecution.

Cry out with a hundred thousand tongues, indeed.

Window: the prodigal son

The prodigal son returns.

From Immanuel Presbyterian on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. Almost entirely a Korean-American congregation of recent immigrants, or so it appeared when I visited. We can thank those unsung missionaries who toiled in Korea fifty or a hundred years ago for the Christians who now populate and preserve this beautiful building which, if left to the lethargy of the descendants of its original European-American congregation (or, if it had been a Catholic church, to the whims of a certain renegade Cardinal in need of settlement cash), would probably have been torn down and replaced long ago by just another office building on some of the priciest business real estate in California.

May I have another helping of whitewash, please?

I was thumbing through the PBS video catalog today and noticed a certain... well, attitude toward Islam in this description of the DVD Islam: Empire of Faith:

The riveting story of Islam's first 1,000 years. Watch as Islam sustains the intellectual legacies of Greece, Egypt, and China, and brings Europe immeasurable advances in science, medicine, and the arts during the Middle Ages.

Ah, I see. Islam was merely a movement to preserve the intellectual legacies of other civilizations and selflessly share them out with benighted regions like Europe.

Got it. Thanks, PBS. Good thing we can count on you to spend our tax dollars wisely, as you fearlessly expose the chief impact Islam has had on the non-Islamic world. Which wouldn't be 1,500 years of war, rapine, and religious bigotry, of course. Those were only the regrettable, minor aberrations of a few zealots. Who can blame them, really, if they became understandably frustrated when their humanitarian efforts to broaden the reach of Aristotle's Poetics were so ungratefully misunderstood?

St. Peter receives the keys of Heaven

From the chapel of Sacred Heart School in nearby Menlo Park.

Today at St. Thomas

Sung by the St. Ann Choir today at the noon Mass at St. Thomas Aquinas:

Cipriano de Rore, Sicut cervus
Jacobus Clemens non Papa, Ego sum panis vivus

A Magdalene window

I'm going to start posting more of the many images of stained glass I've been taking over the past few years. This window is from the Church of the Recessional in Los Angeles, and depicts Mary Magdalene with the Beatitude "Blessed are they which are persecuted."

Decision time

Another example of a bishop's defiance over Summorum Pontificum, this time in Italy:

Naples, Sep. 17, 2007 (CWNews.com) - Bishop Raffaele Nogaro of Caserta, Italy forbade the celebrate of the celebration of the traditional Latin Mass on Sunday, September 15, despite the permission granted by Pope Benedict XVI for all priests to use the older liturgical form.

The Italian daily Il Messagero reports that Bishop Nogaro ordered Msgr. Giovanni Battista Gionta to cancel plans for a Mass using the 1962 Roman Missal at the Shrine of St. Anne. Msgr. Gionta, who had scheduled the Mass at the request of local Catholics, posted a note at the shrine to announce that he was changing plans. "I obey the bishop," he explained.

Il Messagero said that Bishop Nogaro ordered the cancellation of the Mass "so as not to set a precedent." The bishop said that he was taking action to help his people pray properly, since "to mumble in Latin serves no purpose."

All right, this is not only defiance of the motu proprio, but the bit about "muttering" displays an ignorance and arrogance about the Latin Mass that is breathtaking in a bishop. But perhaps not so surprising: ordained a priest in 1958, as the rot was taking hold, and made a bishop in 1982, in Pope John Paul II's early years, before he became more careful about the bishops he was appointing.

This is a watershed for the papacy -- and not just the papacy of Benedict XVI. If Nogaro is disciplined publicly, we can look forward to much better obedience to Rome among the other bishops. If, on the other hand, Rome ignores him, or for any reason fails to call him to account, it'll be downhill fast from here on out. The temptation to do nothing will be strong, since Nogaro is only a year or so from the mandatory retirement age of 75.

Back in 1968, Pope Paul VI backed down when confronted by the defiance by some Catholics of his encyclical Humanae Vitae, in which he had reaffirmed the Church's well-grounded and longstanding opposition to abortion, among other things. His decision not to discipline the rebels within the Church cost his papacy much of the impact it might have had in its later years.

But at least one could say that the issue in Humanae Vitae was a big, external one -- asking the faithful to buck some very powerful cultural trends, largely involving their interaction with the outside world and their private behavior. The motu proprio is about a matter of liturgy, exclusively about how things are to be done within the Church. Yet it is intrinsically vitally important to the Eucharistic core of Catholic practice and belief.

If Rome can't or won't enforce its decision on this subject, and bring itself to correct this errant bishop, it will be sad day indeed, and Pope Benedict may see his ability to move the Church out the "spirit of Vatican II" morass much weakened.

A Death Eater at Borders

I've never been one of those people who believe that J. K. Rowling wrote the Harry Potter books as subtle propaganda for real witchcraft. They have way too strong -- and too correct -- a sense of right and wrong and good and evil to have been intended that way. And the kind of witchcraft that inhabits Harry's world is not the occult reality that sadly inhabits our own.

But I have to admit that it never occurred to me that someone might actually want to have the Potter books misunderstood that way. It looks like some enterprising minion of the Dark Lord, in need of muggle cash after the demise of his leader in Book 7, may have found himself a job at the Borders bookstore here in Palo Alto. Because sitting right there on the big display table full of Harry Potter merchandise, in its prime location just inside the door, is the wretched little pile of Witches' Datebook 2008 pictured above.

Whoever you are, over there at Borders, stop it. Stop trying to deceive some young reader into thinking that the world of Hogwarts, where virtue and love triumph over sin and hate, has anything at all to do with the pathetic but dangerous banality of wicca -- or worse.

This I don't get

The European cultural death-wish just keeps rolling along:

Genoa, Sep. 13, 2007 (CWNews.com) - The president of the Italian Catholic bishops' conference has objected to plans by two right-wing political parties to organize a prayer service in opposition to Islamic influence in the country. Archbishop Angelo Bagnasco of Genoa said the "exploitation" of prayer by Forza Italia and Forza Nuova was "inappropriate." The two groups had staged a demonstration against the construction of a mosque in Genoa.

I know there could be more to this story than these few words from Catholic World News. But I'm having a hard time imagining any reason why a Catholic bishop would be so unhappy at the prospect of a little prayer to reduce the influence of a false religion. Especially a religion with such a nasty reputation, earned from the year of its founding to the present day, of crushing every other religion once it achieves power in an area.

I've got an idea for the Archbishop: if he doesn't care for this prayer movement, why not organize one of his own, specifically for the conversion of Muslims in Italy? Unless that's too non-inclusive for him, too.

There's something about Poland

The Poles often show something we usually don't: the courage to tell the truth about Islam.

Warsaw, Sep. 11, 2007 (CWNews.com) - During a Mass celebrated on September 11 to mark the anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the US, the head of the Polish military chaplaincy appealed for a defense of Christian culture, particularly in Europe.

Bishop Tadeusz Ploski, the head of the military ordinariate, said that the Christian heritage of the European continent should be preserved and warned against the development of "Euroarabia."

With representatives of the Polish military leadership in attendance along with Orthodox and Lutheran chaplains, Bishop Ploski issued a reminder that September 11 is also the anniversary of the Battle of Vienna, which he described as “Islam’s greatest defeat.”

Can you imagine an American bishop, even the best of them, putting things so bluntly? I certainly can't.

But we'd better start soon.

Last Sunday at St. Thomas

Sung by the St. Ann Choir at St. Thomas Aquinas last Sunday:

Tomas Luis de Victoria, Ave Maria
Pierre de la Rue, O Salutaris Hostia

Not moving on

That's one of my countrymen, bereft of hope, killing himself by jumping out of one of the upper floors of the World Trade Center on 9/11 rather than waiting for death in the flames. It is unlikely that he was guilty of any crime against Islam greater than getting up and going to work that day. But that was enough for the gallant soldiers of the Religion of Peace to justify ending his life. Just another American kaffir to them, anyway.

Mayor Bloomberg may want everyone to move beyond our grieving remembrances of that terrible day and the terrible crime committed against us all. But I'm not buying it.

I'm not forgetting. And I'm not forgiving. Not for a long time.