Thursday, June 8, 2006

Someone in the Vatican — Cardinal, secretary, Swiss Guard? — continues to be interested in St. Colman’s Cathedral.

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At noon I read at Mass:

Remind people of these things and charge them before God to stop disputing about words. This serves no useful purpose since it harms those who listen. Be eager to present yourself as acceptable to God, a workman who causes no disgrace,imparting the word of truth without deviation.
— 2 Timothy 2:14–15

From which I understand that our prize and hope is not words but the Word, our goal not to win arguments but to win heaven.

This was my last day reading at the Church of the Holy Cross. My department is moving downtown to the Alfred E. Smith building. I have a sense of endings and beginnings.

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I have begun to kneel at the start of the period of sacred silence after Communion, when the priest sits and the people who kneel after receiving Communion also sit.

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A most welcome e-mail:

Dear Leo,

I placed a petition with your name at the tomb of Venerable Solanus Casey. The Capuchin friars here at St. Bonaventure Monastery will be praying for all your intentions at the daily Morning and Evening Prayers. God bless you and yours.

Sincerely Yours In Christ,
Br. Richard
Director
Fr. Solanus Guild

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The officially mandated liturgical changes were being implemented as early as 1964 and were largely in effect before the flood of departures from the Church and from the priestly and religious life began. So long as the liturgy was stable, so was Church membership. As with other changes in the Church, the disaffection with liturgy seems to have come about not because the liturgy did not change but because it did.
— James Hitchcock, “The Loss of History,” a chapter from his book Recovery of the Sacred: Liturgy and The Loss of History.

This is another illustration of what Wendell Berry in 1973 remarked was “the most important thing that’s been said to me in the last couple of years&rdquo:

They’ll never do worth a damn as long as they’ve got two choices.

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Phoebe, you obviously don’t understand classical rhetoric.
RP Burke | 06.08.06 - 9:48 am | #