The Cranky Professor

June 29, 2008

I have never written a letter to a liturgy committee.

I have never written a letter to a liturgy committee, but there's always a first time for everything.

The parish has instituted an evening mass at the Colleges' chapel as a year round thing - yay! mass on campus is no longer under threat! However, the music has been pretty - um - minimal. Tonight was a man and woman - he played the guitar. They both had quite nice voices. I didn't like their hymn selections much (we started out with "They will know that we are Christians" and went on from there), but it was the recessional that has me stunned:

"How Great Thou Art" to a harmonica accompaniment.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:06 PM | Comments (3)

June 13, 2008

Talking about . . . religion, education, professors, a core curriculum, Darwin

Go read this interview with a Univ of Chicago professor. All of it. I can't find the heart to comment, but I'll pull out some quotations to tempt you:

And so I specialized in religions that are dead, which has the great advantage that nobody talks back. No one says, “That’s not what I heard last Sunday!” Everybody’s dead. And I like that. Now, I sometimes have to deal with religions that keep going. And they’re more problematic because then you deal with people who believe things. They also find their own beliefs puzzling or challenging or interesting—they’re almost synonyms. So they have not only their beliefs, but their interpretations of those beliefs. And I have my interpretations of their beliefs. Sometimes we can sit like this and negotiate it. Other times it’s in a book or transcript. And then in a third sense you have to run back and forth. You have to represent both sides of the conversation as you try to figure out what it’s all about. You get good at doing that with dead people because you’ll never hear from them because you have to do it all the time. And that’s what a historian does. They run back and forth to make both sides of a conversation happen.

And most people who teach religion have a clear relationship with the religions. I cannot. Obviously, most of them are dead, I would get in trouble with the ASPCA [American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals] if I sacrificed a bull ox to Zeus. I have a friend who recently died, but he actually decided to show kids what a sacrifice looks like, so he sacrificed a lamb at Easter time. “We talk about it so much—here’s what it looks like!” Half the class puked, half the class had angry letters from mommy and daddy. But he did demonstrate that it’s not just a metaphor. It’s a messy and not altogether pleasant process. Since [then] we’ve converted it entirely into an economic question. I ask students the meaning of sacrifice, and they always start talking about “mommy and daddy sacrificing so I could go to college.” We’ve been at war for four years, and I haven’t heard one person yet say some soldier sacrificed themselves. That language is gone. It’s entirely economic.

I was told [curtailing the Core] was done to increase electivity, and I think electivity is a good idea. I also think being told what you should do is also a good idea, as long as there are options. But it turns out that’s not actually how it’s been used. It’s been used to carve out spaces for double majors, to which I am unalterably opposed. One major is bad enough. I would like to abolish majors altogether. So two is unbelievable. And then you find out one is for mommy and daddy and one is for you, so then I thought let’s take this issue head-on and stop this crap. It seems to me that majors ought to be flexible enough that if you were in history and then suddenly said my real interest is in biology, they might say, “Well, why don’t you look into the history of biology”—I mean we’ve got a whole fucking library called the Crerar Library of the History of Science. I mean, they ought to be able to find some way to fit you in.

Now, the thing about a Core is it really has to represent a hard-won faculty consensus. I mean, it can’t be “we’ll put this one in for that group, and we’ll put this one in for that group.” It has to be that of all the books we could possibly inflict on you—only in 10 weeks, and you waste the first week, you waste the last week, so you’ve got eight weeks. If they’re not crazy, they’re going to take two weeks to read a book. So you’re down to four books. Now what that Core really ought to be doing is saying that if there were only these four books in the world—or the other way around, out of all the books in the world, these are the four books you should read. If they’re not prepared to say that, they should shut up shop. That’s my first comment. I find too much politics, too much accommodation. “We can’t get the so-and-sos to join us unless we read this.” And they don’t care what it is, it’s got to be a little bit of this, or the economists won’t join the social science core, or something.

via Prof. Soltan.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:11 AM | Comments (1)

June 9, 2008

Query about a Cardinal? Go here!

Have a question about a cardinal? Go here - the Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church!

The site explains its purpose thus: A digital resource created and produced by Salvador Miranda, consisting of the biographical entries of the cardinals from 1185 to 2008 and of the events and documents concerning the origin of the Roman cardinalate and its historical evolution.

I had a question - did Federico Borromeo, who followed his uncle Carlo into the cardinalate and the episcopacy, ending as Archbishop of Milan, take up the same titular church in Rome - Santa Prassede? The answer, no! Thank you, Mr. Miranda!

Carlo Borromeo:
Cardinalate. Created cardinal deacon in the consistory of January 31, 1560; received the red hat and the deaconry of Ss. Vito e Modesto, February 14, 1560. . . . Opted for the title of S. Martino ai Monti, pro illa vice declared deaconry, September 4, 1560. . . . Opted for the order of cardinal priests, retaining the title of S. Martino ai Monti, restored to the rank of title, June 4, 1563. . . . Opted for the title of S. Prassede, November 17, 1564.

Federico Borromeo:
Cardinalate. Created cardinal deacon in the consistory of December 18, 1587; received the red hat and the deaconry of S. Maria in Domnica, January 15, 1588. Opted for the deaconry of Ss. Cosma e Damiano, January 9, 1589. Opted for the deaconry of S. Agata in Suburra, March 20, 1589. Participated in the two conclaves of 1590. Opted for the deaconry of S. Nicola in Carcere, January 14, 1591.

Priesthood. Opted for the order of cardinal priests, September 17, 1593; the title of S. Maria degli Angeli was assigned to him, October 25, 1593.

Interesting, though, Federico's first titular church was Santa Maria in Domnica, built by the same pope who built Santa Prassede - and given Federico's interest in early Christian and medieval art, especially mosaics, there's no way he wouldn't have known that.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:35 AM

May 9, 2008

Death of an Ecclesial Community

I've been following the end of Seabury-Western Theological Seminary with some interest - it's always luridly interesting for someone like me to see how a board of trustees can fire an entire tenured faculty by declaring financial exigency. Hobart and William Smith has a long relationship with Seabury-Western - our previous chaplain, indeed, left these Colleges for a chair at Seabury-Western. I also have been an irregular reader of AKMA's Random Thoughts, a blog from a Seabury faculty member for a few years.

Here's the board's own position on the closure. Note the wishful thinking in the last paragraph about keeping a doctoral program open. How do you do that without a faculty?

Captain Yips points out a lo-how-the-mighty-are-fallen moment in the affair:

Considering Seabury-Western's collapse, it's worth noting that the Seabury Board thinks that they need $18.7 million, and that this goal "significantly exceeded Seabury’s fundraising capabilities."

It's not a small amount, to be sure, but in the fundraising and nonprofit worlds $18.7 mil is relative chicken feed. There was a time that a more confident and assertive Episcopal Church could have raised that money (in 1890 dollars) over lunch at the millionaire's table at the Chicago Club, from some guys named Field, Armour, Pullman, Shedd, Higginbotham, and Swift - and for this purpose, the older version of TEC would have had a seat at that table. Some of the millionaires were, to be sure, scoundrels, but they were civic minded scoundrels, and the amount needed would have barely dented their resources. Northwestern University's top student charity fundraiser, Dance Marathon, pulls in $700,000 every year. That Seabury doesn't even consider the effort is an interesting marker on the road to collapse.

Really. They didn't try to raise a little less than $20 million to save an institution in Chicago? Admittedly, the alumni/ae of seminaries are seldom sources of large contributions, but whatever happened to all those rich Episcopalians?

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:48 AM | Comments (1)

April 27, 2008

Il Papa on the Jumbotron

I did get over to the Angelus today. The weather was beyond perfect and the crowd was bigger than I've ever seen.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:01 PM | Comments (0)

April 23, 2008

Gimme Gothic

I know all my students climbed the dome of St. Peter's and to the top of the Duomo in Florence, but I prefer my rooftop experiences pointy and Gothic.



I'm standing on the flattish roof ridge of the Duomo in Milan - all marble, all the time.


Milan photoset.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:35 AM | Comments (2)

April 13, 2008

Reform of the reform

One reason I haven't church-hopped much this year in Rome (well, besides this week, when I might have had trouble getting on and off busses to do so or last week when I didn't go to Mass at all because I didn't leave the apartment Saturday, Sunday, or Monday until 3 p.m.) is the 11 a.m. Missa Canta at Chiesa Nuova. They have a small but excellent (to my ears*) schola singing in Latin. The ordinary is in Italian, but the mix is good for my Italian, too. Not an ad orientem mass, but six candles and a crucifix across the altar. Brick by brick.

*I am tolerant of people who don't know much about art but know what they like because I don't know much about music but I know what I like. Toleration does not imply letting people like them on committees to make decisions about buildings or letting me on liturgy committees with control over music. These are not highly transferable skills - many people who do music I like very much like art I find distressing - and they also are willing to do music I find distressing. I'm sure they feel the same about my willingness to coexist with good modern architecture.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:05 PM

March 23, 2008

Resurrexit

So here in Rome it's already Sunday, and He's risen. Yay!

They baptized two babies at the Oratory - and that was quite enough! For a recessional the organist broke into the "Hallelujah Chorus." I suppose I was the only person in the building who knew all the words in the original, for once.

For the more visual than aural among us, I offer Piero della Francesca's version - the greatest of all Renaissance resurrections. If you don't believe me just click and enlarge.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:33 AM | Comments (2)

March 20, 2008

20th Century Catholic Movements (not very much) in America

I'm reading obituaries for Chiara Lubich, founder of Focolare and clearly a future saint and wondering if there is a another group with such a world-wide presence less present in America.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:14 AM | Comments (0)

March 19, 2008

Class prep + Holy Week = Credit towards Heaven?

Bring on the Doctrine of Works - I'm having a good week!

So I'm previewing my favorite mosaics on the Quirinal Hill this afternoon for class tomorrow - I run by Santa Pudenziana, check on Santa Prassede, and hit Santa Maria Maggiore last - and just in time for the Wednesday after Palm Sunday Stational Mass with Penitential Procession. The presiding bishop was a little frighteningly doddery - I saw him holding his chest at one point while the procession was coming back up the aisle, and I'm not sure he was clutching his pectoral cross. The music was splendid - the kind of thing that having a college of canons can do for you! I made use of one of the Dominicans in the college of confessors, too, while I was at it. Is there a plenary indulgence on offer here? Readers?

I've told my students that unless they really want the vast sea of devotion thing they should evade St. Peter's this week and go to the other great basilicas - especially for the Easter Vigil. For the Easter Vigil myself I'm torn between going to Sta Prassede, as I did in 2003 (when, to be sure, it was within easy walking distance of my apartment) and going next door to Chiesa Nuova. I'm really not much of a church hopper when it comes to mass - I tend to go to the same place over and over anyway. Living next door to Chiesa Nuova has been very nice!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:54 PM | Comments (1)

March 13, 2008

Sabina - the best day-trip ever!

We had splendid weather today for a trip to Sabina - after a week of showers and dicey grey skies we met a bus at Termini and headed north.

By happenstance (sheer small worldism) my colleague Nick Ruth met Nicole Franchini, an alumna of William Smith College (the female half of the Hobart and William Smith coordinate system). Nicole has lived in Italy for more than 20 years, most recently in Rome. She and her family also have a house in the Sabine Hills.

Nicole arranged our trip today - and maybe even the weather!

We started at Farfa, one of the great imperial abbeys of medieval Italy - think of the abbey in The Name of the Rose but a little further south in the peninsula. One of the two Carolingian towers survives with a a bit of the Westwork beside it (and a chunk of painted wall - go look at the pictures on Flickr!). The body of the current church is later and perpendicular to the Carolingian building.

We had a good tour of Farfa and then headed on to Casperia, an incredibly beautiful hill town. There were other incredibly beautiful hill towns within sight, as was Mount Soracte, beloved of Horace, who seems to have had a view of it from his Sabine Farm.

Nicole had arranged a buffet luncheon on a terrace / piazza, then dessert and coffee at the house of the restaurant owners afterwards. We wandered around town for a little while, then back to Rome. The students seemed happy in a stunned-by-the-beauty kind of way. I certainly enjoyed myself!

We have to turn our story in to the Pulteney Street Survey, these Colleges' alumnae/i magazine!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:17 PM

March 12, 2008

"New" Sins

The Daily Telegraph tells us: Failing to recycle plastic bags could find you spending eternity in Hell, the Vatican said after drawing up a list of seven deadly sins for our times.

Of course, that's not what the Cardinal said - see here.

Me, I'm sorry he wasn't saying that not recycling plastic bags will send you straight to hell, because I can manage to avoid THAT one.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:32 AM

March 6, 2008

Meet the blogger...

I also met a blogger today - something that I, who usually live in scenic Geneva, NY, seldom do.

Zadok the Roman invited me to meet him outside the Cancelleria, where he had a class this afternoon. We got caffé, then he showed me the Sala Riario (named after the cardinal who built the palazzo) and the Sala dei Cento Giorni, painted by Giorgio Vasari.

I had never been further than the Bramante courtyard. Here's the best picture I can find on the web of the Sala dei Cento Giorni, which is as good an answer in paint to the question "What is Mannerism?" as the Villa Giulia is for architecture. The name of the room comes from the funniest anecdote in Renaissance art history (a field of striking solemnity and self-importance, I usually find). Vasari, now better known as a biographer than a painter, showed the room to his old master MIchelangelo and bragged that he had completed the work in 100 days. Michelangelo said, "It shows." I rather liked it, but then I have decadent tendencies. Paul III surveying New St Peter's dressed as the Jewish High Priest really made me happy! There was a scene of the distribution of cardinals hats to semi-nude men in advanced states of ascetical skinniness that made no sense at all - that's Mannerism for you!

I enjoyed meeting Zadok. He had to stay for a lecture in the glorious Sala Riario on the Internal Forum from James, Cardinal Stafford. Sad to say, even princes of the Church use PowerPoint. I skedaddled.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:38 PM | Comments (4)

March 2, 2008

This Way to the Miraculous Statue!

I went to Sta Maria in Aracoeli today for the first time this trip - if you've ever climbed those stairs you'll know why I was putting it off until I needed to go for class prep! No pictures of the interior, much as I love it, other than this awful 1960s sign (at least I always think of them as 1960s - maybe they're 50s?) pointing to the chapel with the miraculous statue of the Infant Jesus. It oozes oil or some such and wears a particularly horrid 19th Century crown, but when taken to hospitals there are occasional miraculous cures. Me, I prefer the image of the Virgin on the high altar, but I didn't take a picture of it.

It was a beautiful morning on the Capitoline, though - just gorgeous. Click and see.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:56 PM | Comments (1)

February 25, 2008

The world's ugliest pulpit?

This pulpit at the front of the cathedral in Pisa may be the worst piece of 20th century religious art I've ever seen - and I've seen some doozies! Mind you, it's all marble. To make matters worse, it's within yards of one of the lovelier pulpits, by Giovanni Pisano from around 1300. I do not think this is a kneejerk medievalist reaction in favor of the Gothic (in fact, I don't much like late Gothic Italian sculpture), but look at those horrible shapes in the new pulpit! And the colors? What were they thinking? Oh, well - it looks like it will be easy to remove, someday.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:18 PM | Comments (2)

February 18, 2008

The Bones of St Peter

We had another amazing-layers-of-Rome day today - the excavations under St Peter's, also known as the least pleasant place to try to arrange a tour in Rome that actually purports to be open to the public. Yes, you have to pay in advance. No, you can't necessarily choose the day you want to go. Oh, well. Luckily 1 of my 2 groups had an English speaking tour guide (a PNAC student). I haven't heard how group 1 went, but they had an Italian speaker (though she soundly vaguely Hispanophone to me while she was handing out the tickets).

I think my folks were pretty prepared. I'll put it this way, they had very few questions other than "where is John Paul II buried." That part made me feel cheerful about the semester so far.

Still and all, the tomb of St Peter is pretty amazing for students in a course like this. Folks are welcome to believe that Christ is not God and that these aren't actually the bones of St Peter, but there's just no arguing that there was considerable pilgrimage to this tomb at the traditional site of the burial by the end of the 1st century, within 30-40 years of Peter's death. And the only reason not to be sure it was earlier is that what we have left is the first remodeling of the original tomb. Talk about the hermeneutic of continuity! I still would have preferred to do this before San Clemente, but that's the Office of the Excavations for you.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:50 PM | Comments (0)

February 7, 2008

San Clemente - a very layered site

Yesterday afternoon I got to San Clemente for a preview visit - I'm taking the Layers of Rome class there next week. Here's the basilica's site - go look - it's great! It includes what they're calling virtual reality views - draggable 360 images.

The Irish Dominicans have had the church since the 17th Century, and a Fr. Mulloly got to excavating under the building in the mid 19th C only to find that under the early Christian church was a 1st Century building dating to after the fire of 64 (Nero's fire). They also found a Mithraeum built into that level - underlying the later apses of the churches. There must have been a time when the Early Christian church was operating in one building while in the basement next door people were bathing in bull's blood! Exciting!

When Mithraism was suppressed in the late 4th Century the Mithraeum was filled in - and eventually the church of Saint Clement, the 3rd pope, expanded over it - a bit of architectural triumphalism, if they knew what they were building over.

There are some surviving 9th-11th century paintings in the lower church (they don't allow photography), one of which has an inscription that's a nice bit of early vernacular Italian.

Then there's the upper church, built using the early Christian church as a foundation - they just filled it in and started over on a slightly narrower scale. They reused lots of pieces, but the Cosmatesque floor is amazing.

The apse mosaic is strikingly odd - it's one of the few that doesn't draw on Early Christian models, instead putting a crucifix on a giant field of vine scrolls growing out of an acanthus (see - they're everywhere). The cross beams are occupied by doves. Very odd, like I said.
Then there's the Cyril and Methodius connection - St. Cyril is buried here, and the place is a major pilgrimage spot for Slavs of all sorts.

I'm looking forward to what the Layers class makes of the whole place.

Click over to the photo stream on flickr and see a lot more views of San Clemente.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:28 PM | Comments (2)

February 5, 2008

Flavian Amphitheater - the long axis

Layers of Rome went to the Flavian Amphitheater (the Colosseum) yesterday - I was pretty pleased with how this picture came out as a photograph. The partial arena floor is a restoration made for the 2000 Jubilee; I think it helps understand the building a lot -before the floor went in it was possible to misunderstand the substructure as having been visible. They also had some great models of mechanisms for animal lifting - none of those pictures came out very well. We're looking here down the long axis. The imperial box was to our right and the Vestal Virgins to the left on the short axis.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:24 PM | Comments (0)

There! Sant'Andrea della Valle

There! That was my compensation during the world's longest low mass.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:17 PM | Comments (0)

February 4, 2008

It was the best of masses, it was the worst of masses . . .

Sant'Andrea del Valle is one of my favorite churches in Rome - certainly my favorite of the big Baroque basilicas - here's a nice site with lots of images. I could have sworn I'd already posted a picture on flickr - goodness knows I've taken some! It is the home in Rome at least of the Theatine Fathers, an order with very little presence in America - though they seem to have a parish in Denver. I went to mass at Sant'Andrea on Sunday. Ack!

On the one hand, I understood almost every word the priest said. He spoke slowly and enunciated beautifully (not that most Italians don't - Italian is sometimes like birds singing - but it's often too fast for me!). It reminded me of my favorite news show - the news summary for the deaf with a split screen, one side sign and one side spoken clearly and slowly for the lip readers. THAT I can always follow.

The problem was that he said so many, many extra words. It was slow, deliberate, and so catechetical I could scream. We are the church. We are the poor in spirit. We are a people of the beatitudes. There was talking before mass started, talking before each reading, a long homily, and instructions during the canon. A very low mass took 80 minutes. Lets just say that by the end I'm not sure my disposition was such as one would like to have at mass.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:58 PM | Comments (0)

January 28, 2008

Everything's better in Rome . . .

When, during the fall of 2006 I was deciding about whether or not to apply to co-direct the Rome program this year one of my concerns was that right about now I feared I would be losing my mind because of - um - anticipating certain news. My colleague the baroquista convinced me to go ahead by reminding me that, after all, everything's better in Rome, even waiting to hear the final tenure decision.

She is right.

And I survived the final hurdle - the Board of Trustees decided not to reject various and sundry recommendations and the decision of the president of these Colleges.

I would like very much to thank everyone who helped me and pushed me and prayed for me and such.

Oh - and I got to kiss the arm-bone of St. Thomas Aquinas this evening, too! It's his memorial and I made it through solemn vespers and mass at Sta Maria sopra Minerva without coughing too much and got to venerate the relic - everything's better in Rome!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:27 PM

January 27, 2008

Friday church going

I spent most of Friday afternoon at Sta. Pudenziana, Sta Prassede, and Sta Maria Maggiore, 3 of my favorite churches in Rome. At Sta Pudenziana I got to take this picture of the apse mosaic from the organ loft - it pays to chat up tour guides!

This is the earliest surviving apse mosaic in Rome and quite interesting. Christ is seated on an elaborate, gemmed chair which is NOT an imperial throne (well, if you believe T. Mathews The Clash of Gods argument), but a divine throne similar to the one the Phidian Zeus sat on at Olympia. My students are going to learn it that way, since they brought Mathews with them - one of the big course threads is looking at how unstable and diverse the early images of Jesus are and how they settle down at the end of the period.

Then there's the text in the mosaic, which is also appropriates soemthing from Jupiter/Zeus, this time one of his titles. The pages of the codex Jesus is holding read:DOMINUS CONSERVATOR ECCLESIAE PUDENTIANAE (sorry it's a little hard to read - my details from Friday didn't come out well enough to post). A really clever article a while ago argued really convincingly, and in advance of Mathews on iconography, that the use of CONSERVATOR is a lift from Jupiter conservator urbis and helps us date the mosaic to just after the 410 Visigothic sack.* Someone is paralleling Christ's preservation of churches, which were not sacked, with Jupiter's earlier title. In the context of conservative, pagan Rome that was quite a pointed usage.

*Schlatter, F.W. "The Text in the Mosaic of Santa Pudenziana." Vigiliae Christianae, Vol. 43, No. 2. (Jun., 1989), pp. 155-165. I didn't pull that out of my head - JSTOR is my friend.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:00 PM | Comments (2)

December 30, 2007

Year-end giving opportunity - the Vanderbilt Catholic Chaplaincy!

Looking for somewhere to send a check and get a tax deduction? Father Baker doesn't have online giving set up (hint hint!), but get it postmarked and I'm sure he'll send you all the receipt you'll need:

Vanderbilt Catholic Community
2417 West End Avenue
Nashville, Tennessee 37240

There's this, but it still involves a mailed check.

I'm not going to use superlatives here - it would be ridiculous. Just know that Fr. Baker is doing fine work.

Here an excerpt from the Giving to VanderbiltCatholic page:

Bishop Choby last summer gave me the privilege of becoming the first diocesean chaplain at Vanderbilt University in 35 years. As a native Nashvillian and a graduate of Vanderbilt Law School (1989), I have great affinity for Vanderbilt. As a priest I have a great desire to offer Jesus Christ in the sacraments to this generation and to present to them the fullness of the truth of Jesus Christ embodied in our ancient faith so that these young adults may in their own right choose whom they will follow.

I am writing you because of your love of the Church and your relationship to Vanderbilt. I know that you are aware that a university campus is a cacophony of voices recruiting for all kinds of causes and commitments. It is clear that the Church and serious Catholics have a duty to enter the fray in order to encourage these young people in their faith and to counteract the enormous pressures being brought upon them by the world, the flesh, and the devil, especially in their first years of independent decision making.

The harvest is plentiful at Vanderbilt, even though at present the workers are few. It is estimated that 25-30% of Vanderbilt students are Catholic. I had an active first year on the campus, with six RCIA candidates and five other students confirmed, daily Mass and confessions, and a more active student organization. In order to see how we should grow at Vanderbilt, I had the opportunity to visit some of the most dynamic Catholic campus ministries in the country. Two of the “best practices” that we have the opportunity to bring to Vanderbilt are the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS) and the Awakening retreat program. FOCUS will place four well-trained recent college graduates at Vanderbilt to be missionaries to the campus. The Awakening retreat comes from Texas A&M, which has more graduates enter seminary and religious life than any school in the nation, and is now in place on many campuses.

He does have an online Mass Intention form! Cool, but not fundraising. Send money. I did.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:52 PM

December 7, 2007

Ave atque vale.

Fr. Jim Tucker gives up blogging.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:08 PM | Comments (0)

November 27, 2007

Stational events for Lent

Does anyone know where I can find the list of 2008 papal appearances during Lent? I both wish to participate AND to avoid some! You know how it is. Oh - and I have the regular stational list - it's papal appearances I'm interested in.

Under the Liturgical Year link, the Holy See site doesn't have 2008 posted yet!

Oh - don't try to make fancy html links in the comments - you'll just get moved to the spam file.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:55 PM | Comments (2)

November 25, 2007

I Know there are some funny conversations over dinner tonight at the convent in Nashville . . .

The headline calls the St. Cecilia Domincans Buzzworthy. Well, yes, I suppose they are!

Here's the Washington Post story about the Dominicans and the new Catholic high school they have agreed to staff in Northern Virginia. A paragraph:

But the cheery 42-year-old brings another major layer of buzz to the Arlington Diocese because she is a member of the Nashville Dominicans, rock stars in the world of Catholic religious orders. Although the number of religious sisters in the United States has plunged since the 1960s, resulting in an average age of about 70, there has been an increase in recent years among traditional, habit-wearing orders, including the Nashville-based Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia, which has 226 members and a median age of 35. It recently raised $46 million to expand its chapel because the sisters were spilling into the hall. [my emphasis]

Here's their own website.

Here are my previous posts on the Congregation.

They're Rock Stars! Wouldn't "Members of the Country Music Hall of Fame" have been better? Still, I think you should send them money! You know, end of the tax year and all.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:20 PM | Comments (1)

October 18, 2007

Think Purgatory is a doctrine caused by the rising numeracy and temporalization of Medieval Europe?

Then get a look at this mechanization of the process! The Doctrine of Works goes automatic!

Every Catholic grammar school needs one!

Via Don Jim.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:00 AM | Comments (0)

September 21, 2007

Catholic Nomenclature

Fr. Z at What Does the Prayer Really Say? is running a poll - what to call things?

What should we call Holy Mass according to the 1962 Missal?
* Tridentine Mass
* classical Mass
* Latin Mass
* pre-Conciliar Mass
* Mass of all time
* the true Mass
* extraordinary form/use (forma extraodinaria)
* usus antiquior
* vetus ordo
* older form of Mass
* Mass of Bl. John XXIII
* immemorial Mass
* Mass of St. Pius V
* traditional Mass
* Johannine Mass
* Traditional Latin Mass or TLM

Me, I'm going with vetus ordo.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:11 PM

August 8, 2007

Piles of Dominicans

Via Amy Welborn's new Charlotte was Both I came across a big Dominican post, which took me to the vocations blog for the Dominican Province of St. Joseph (the East). There I noticed they have a 32-year-record incoming class of postulants. I click to read more.

The first is from Geneva, NY. The 7th is from Corning. So two out of the 15 are from the Diocese of Rochester? Interesting.

Congratulations to the St Joseph's province!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:44 PM | Comments (0)

August 6, 2007

Eeeek!

Hit counters all over St. Blogs are gonna feel this.

Go here now.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:35 PM | Comments (1)

July 28, 2007

A new Pugin book

Here's an interesting review of a new book on A.W.N. Pugin, one of the most interesting of the Gothic Revival architects. The review starts:

IN THE SUMMER OF 1852 A 40-year-old man was in a secure room in Bethlem Hospital for the Insane; he recognised no one, not even his wife; his head had been shaved, and he had become what was described as “very dirty in his habits”. This was the man who, six months before, had designed the clock tower now known as Big Ben. His name was Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin.

Yes, there was always something a little over the top about Pugin - maybe more than a little bit. His book Contrasts is one of my favorite examples of both Gothic Revivalism and architectural polemic on behalf of any style. He offers the viewer side-by-side views of England before the Reformation and as she was in the 1840s - and it isn't pretty. Dickens makes a nice comparison (one the reviewer draws).

Here's one pair - the Chapel Royal, Brighton and St. George's Chapel, Windsor. Pugin means every bit of it, down to the choice of nomenclature. A 'chapel royal' puts more stress on the royal family - and the personification of royal immorality, George IV, since we're talking Brighton - than on the company of the saints. Pugin also means us to see the contrast between the stage decoration of Brighton - look at the curtains above - and the perpendicular style ceiling at Windsor as the difference between meretriciousness and truth: truth to materials produces truth to style - and is intimately tied to truth in Religion. Pointed Architecture, which is how Pugin mainly designated Gothic, is Christian Architecture.

And here's a more Dickensian point - Contrasted Residences for the Poor - the Panopticon vs. the Almshouse. Did you know there are still almshouses? My friend at mirabilis.ca sent me a link to one she visited once - where she received a pilgrim's badge! The Hospital of St Cross, near Winchester. Click and then follow the link for Brothers to see the badge-men (click, click on 'badge,' scroll to definition #4 - or search for badge-man). Now go back to Pugin's vision of an almshouse. I'm willing to bet cash money that the outfits the pensioners at St Cross wear now are in fact a mid-19th century revival, not a continuous survival.

I'm working on an article on Richard Upjohn, an English immigrant to America who revolutionized architecture here - both by bringing a rigor to the practice of Gothic Revival and by founding the American Institute of Architects. Upjohn had copies of at least 5 Pugin books, including True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture. That fun fact comes from a handy article by Judith Hull, "The 'School of Upjohn': Richard Upjohn's Office," about Upjohn's work as an architectural educator in the days before schools of architecture in America, the first of which (MIT) opened in 1866.

The Victorian architects inspired a lot of derision in the early 20th century, but Pugin inspires devotion today - there's a Pugin Society, devoted to, among other things, saving Pugin buildings.

Click here and see the Pugin pictures (including a great view of Big Ben) from the Gothic Revival group on Flickr. The altar above is a Pugin from the group.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:10 AM

July 8, 2007

In honor of the Motu Proprio we hit bottom in the diocese of Rochester

I was thinking during Mass that I was going to come home and write about this summer's mass setting at St Stephen's Church in Geneva. I like the idea that we stick to one mass setting in the summer so that we learn how to sing it, but this year we've been listening to various small ensembles sing the Canedo/Hurd Mass of Glory - listening, because it's too syncopated for congregational singing. It's a triumph of the soloists over the congregation. Worst of all has to be the Sanctus (pardon me - the Holy), which has a decidedly bluesy sound and is far too hard for congregations. I'm not really sure that's the worst - the Alleluia is too long. I think that many parish music folks forget that these big-name mass settings were written for events, like eucharistic congresses and such. Traveling music (and let's face it, the Alleluia is traveling music for someone to get to the lectern and read) should only take as long as the journey. If a deacon is going to read and therefore gets the priest's blessing first and then moves to lectern (and maybe even censes the book!) we need a long Alleluia with repetitions. In a simple parish mass we don't. So the Holy is worse musically, but the Alleluia is worse to sit through.

But this was my first exposure to the new parochial vicar. He introduced himself before beginning the mass - ordained three years ago (here's the Catholic Courier story). He chanted the preface quite creditably! My heart was lifted.

So, we listened to the Holy. Communion. Final announcement that there would be punch and cookies to welcome the new parochial vicar. Recessional - the old reliable Be not afraid. After two verses a voice broke in on the loudspeaker:

Fr. Bill! We have something to tell you!

And then the pianist vamps a few bars and the choir of men over 60 launches into Consider yourself at home. Yes. From Oliver.

What's wrong with a little good-humored singing?

1. It interrupts the recessional
2. It's secular.
3. It's a SHOWTUNE!
4. In its original context (a context known to everyone in America who's ever been IN it, which has to be a lot of folks) it's a song welcoming a young apprentice to a life of crime!!
5. IT'S COMING FROM THE SANCTUARY.

I almost had a stroke. I'm afraid I muttered something unedifying.

Well, at least the recessional didn't end with meat packers dancing with slabs of beef over their heads. Praise Jesus for small mercies. If someone felt the need to welcome him in song, couldn't it have happened over punch and cookies?

I think it was symptomatic of what needs to be corrected in the Roman Catholic Church in America. Pray for priests and laypeople who wish to do something about the liturgical life of their churches. They'll need it.

further:
Lest anyone engage in any simple causation argumentation, this is a church with Perpetual Adoration. Honest. No one thing will help.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:58 AM | Comments (13)

July 2, 2007

BEEEG Mosaic

Oh my! This is a big mosaic project at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in DC.

The workers will place nearly 2.4 million of the colored glass tiles — each less than an inch in length and width — transforming 3,780 square feet of plain, gray ceiling into a mosaic depicting four scenes from the life of Jesus Christ.

The artwork, which will cover the ceilings of the three domes of the basilica, has been 40 years in the making — from gathering donations, drawing up plans and hiring artists. When completed, the mosaics will fulfill the original vision of Bishop Thomas Shahan, who oversaw the construction of the shrine nearly 85 years ago.

. . .

The first mosaic, covering the ceiling of the Redemption Dome, was completed and dedicated in November after about a year of construction. Artists on May 29 began the second mosaic, which is still under construction, on the Incarnation Dome. Work is expected to begin on the third — and by far the largest — dome, the Trinity, after the current project is completed in November.

via Catholic Light.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:05 AM

June 25, 2007

Prayer for the Motu Proprio

via Fr. Zuhlsdorf, a prayer initiative for the Motu Proprio on the older form of the Mass.* Be humble - you may be the 'hard of heart' without realizing it.

May the hard of heart yield to the Holy Spirit when hearing of Vicar of Christ’s will.
May the eager rejoice graciously and with true thanksgiving to God.
May the ignorant seek first to learn before making judgments.
May the learned offer comments in charity.
May our priests use considered prudence.
May our bishops be generous and paternal.
VENI, Sancte Spiritus, reple tuorum corda fidelium, et tui amoris in eis ignem accende.
V. Emitte Spiritum tuum et creabuntur;
R. Et renovabis faciem terrae.
Oremus:
DEUS, qui corda fidelium Sancti Spiritus illustratione docuisti: da nobis in eodem Spiritu recta sapere, et de eius semper consolatione gaudere. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.

[or for the hard of heart]
COME, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of Thy faithful and kindle in them the fire of Thy love.
V. Send forth Thy Spirit and they shall be created
R. And Thou shalt renew the face of the earth.
Let us pray:
O GOD, Who taught the hearts of the faithful by the light of the Holy Spirit, grant that, by the gift of the same Spirit, we may be always truly wise, and ever rejoice in His consolation. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

*My own position on the older form of the Mass is kind of "eh." I heard the first recent Tridentine Mass said by a priest of the archdiocese of Atlanta sometime in the 90s. It was awful - all the worst of the pre-1966 low Mass. Then I was in regular though not perfect attendance at the monthly masses of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter and hung around with some of those folks. I left Atlanta about the time they got a canonically erected parish, so I never had to make any decisions - monthly was more than enough for me. I always feel as though I ought to like it more. All in all, I'd probably prefer a Novus Ordo mass said by someone like Fr. Tucker or my friend the chaplain at Vanderbilt University (you can tell it's his operation by the devotion to the Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati, who Fr. Baker has single-handedly promoted in the diocese of Nashville). All in all, I'm fine with a perfectly reverent Mass in any language. I've been lucky in our local parish and chaplaincy, especially given the diocese of Rochester. However, I'm praying for a wider application of the older form of the Mass.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:04 PM | Comments (2)

June 21, 2007

Stop him before he digs again!

*Heave a huge sigh*

Remember the story of St. Lawrence? He was the 3rd century deacon who, when told to present the 'treasure of the Church' showed up with the widows and orphans he had the responsibility for feeding.

Some Italian archaeologist is now saying that the treasure he really had was the Grail, and that it's buried under San Lorenzo fuori le mura. He wants to open up a catacomb and find it.

It's a bad sign that he heads something called Arte e Mistero (Art and Mystery).

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:26 AM | Comments (0)

May 9, 2007

Processional Statues and Carnival Badges

It's amazing what you can find on Flickr if you search! I've spent the early morning coffee time being frustrated in what I haven't found in the world of high art - I've been looking for some paintings or prints of later Medieval or early Renaissance processions with a crowned Virgin Mary. I'm sure they're out there and I'm just being obtuse. I began with our Visual Resources Collection and moved out through a pile of image collections - and then I searched Flickr for similar things under a Creative Commons license and found a procession in Hoboken - JUST what I need. Feel free to come see what I do with it on Friday morning at Kalamazoo!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:28 AM | Comments (1)

May 8, 2007

Save the Catholic Schools!

A non-Catholic's call to save the urban Catholic schools in City Journal. The article centers on Rice High School in Harlem but certainly doesn't stop there. Here's a bit:

We almost lost Harlem’s Rice High School a few years ago. And what a defeat that would have been for all New Yorkers, Catholic and non-Catholic alike. For the past three decades, Rice has rescued at-risk African-American boys and turned them into responsible men who go on to college and then give back to the community. Yet despite this academic success, Rice almost succumbed to the demographic changes and financial pressures that have led to the closing of thousands of excellent inner-city Catholic schools and needlessly deepened the nation’s urban-education crisis.

Read it all - it's a great article about what can be done - but Stern doesn't skirt the hard issues - money, changes in religious orders, demographic shifts, competition from the public schools.

via Eduwonk, one of my daily reads.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:29 AM

April 30, 2007

Cistercians and High Modern Architecture

There is an interesting piece in Bloomberg.com: Muse today by Colin Amery on a new Cistercian monastery in Czech Republic, the first new Trappist community established in former Communist Europe. The article celebrates the buildings, by John Pawson. No pictures.

Luckily, the community has a website! The Monastery of Novy Dur. I start you with the choose-a-language splash page because some of the best photos are there. Sit and contemplate for a while - let the pictures change.

The best information on the monastery's own site about the buildings is under "Benefactors and donors." The best reading is under "Dedication of the church."

In a trampled, dechristianised and secularized country, one would logically expect the foundation of an apostolical convent having a charitable end; and yet we come with a monastery, a church built from the ground up, an enclosure. Certainly, there is an act of faith in this that not everyone can understand. There is even more: our monastic life, which we strive to live poorly and seriously in a western world, pagan in the east as in the west, consists in the unique praise of God and in the intercession for mankind. A limited comprehension but that we know in faith the extraordinary and mysterious extension. The Constitutions of our Order express this even better: a secret and mysterious apostolical fertility.

–––

In the context of the actual dechristianisation, one often hears: The absolute priority ought to be given, even for the religious, to apostolic work, the contemplative work will come after! This might appear to be a reflection of common sense, but in reality it is a shortsighted judgment that translates for the least pusillanimity of faith. We have known and we know what are societies without art, or even worse, with an art imposed by an ideology. They result in a debased, sterilized people. It is the same for the Church without prayer.

Whoops - I did that without linking to the original story that started me off. Here it is.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:26 AM

April 19, 2007

Pantheon Tales

I'm teaching the Pantheon today in Roman Art & Politics. It is the greatest building in the world.

I haven't seen Hagia Sophia yet, and it might be as great, but that's the only contender I can think of.

The Pantheon is a triumph of simplicity and complexity - and my job today is to get them to see both while understanding the fundamental mystery of the building - we don't really know what it was. For such an amazing building there are precious few references to it in surviving Roman writing. Its name doesn't tell us much, because it replaced a previous building called The Pantheon - hence the inscription naming Agrippa as the builder, even though the building we see was built by Hadrian. That's a stumper.

Oh - and I'll address the second thing out of every student's mouth when walking into the building - "I've heard that when it rains the rain doesn't fall through the hole in the roof."

Nope. There's even a drain in the middle of the floor. Sorry.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:57 AM | Comments (4)

April 12, 2007

My Favorite Church in Rome

I'm in a Rome frame of mine this week. Sometime around NOW every semester - you know, 3 or 4 weeks to go - I get very, very much more interested in something that will happen next year than I am in actually finishing up this year. The combination of flickr play in the last few days and editing my photo collection to clear up some hard drive space had me looking at photos from Rome 2003 and dreaming about Rome 2008. Gosh. Sant'Agnese fuori le mura within striking distance, again. Margaret Visser's The Geometry of Love is out of print. I'll have to teach the church on my own. Not that I mind, really.

I've been in love with this little church since before I knew what it meant. The photo here is inadequate, but it is a start. Let me just point out the purple columns to the left and right of the apse - not the ones holding up the baldachino, but the 3 that show - two left and one right. Yes, there's another one on the right.

You see, the designer chose 4 matching columns from some late antique architectural parts recycling yard in Rome - the Romans were nothing if not practical about their stone - to flank the altar. The rest of the columns on the main level of the building are a serene grey; these four, nearest the altar, are a purple that any self-respecting 7th century Roman would have described as blood-colored to flank the tomb of the martyr Agnes.

Next time I promise i'll take better pictures.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:48 PM | Comments (1)

April 8, 2007

Christ is Risen! (but you couldn't tell it from the weather)

Christ is Risen! But, as my friend the parish-council-type confided to me last night while we were waiting for the fire to be lit, it was warmer and there was less snow at Christmas.

The Easter Vigil went off well (as well as it ever does - we've had more or less the same musical selections other than the mass setting for at least the last 4 years*), my friend took her first communion, I got to sit with another friend and whisper about the anthems. My whispery companion has lived in Europe and South America and had NEVER seen a heated wading pool used for baptisms. She was intrigued and appalled. When the Upstate New York choir swung into "Wade in the Water" during the baptisms she laughed. Then we applauded to welcome the new members of Christ's Church and she couldn't quite believe it.

Oh, well. It was valid and licit and He is risen. I really can't demand all that much more without pitching myself into sacrificial service on parish committees and trying to change things - and I have enough good works on my monthly agenda at the moment.

*The new deacon sang the Exultet - it was quite good. The mass was something by Christopher Walker, 1996, from the OCP folks. It was better than the Mass of the Joyful Heart we did at least the last 2 years. The Litany of the Saints was the awful "all you holy men and women, pray for us" thing by John D. Becker (is Origen REALLY a saint?), though the man who does the solo singing has quite a strong voice. For traveling music during the baptisms, etc., Shutte's "River of glory." Ugh. I got swatted by my French friend for bar-songing that one up - but how can you resist on that last line? Then "Wade in the Water" - an awful thing. Something else new - the only Latin on offer - "Veni, Sancte Spiritus," but in a Taize setting. Better than nothing, but couldn't we sing, you know, a Catholic version? A closing Schutte hymn rounded things off and we were out into the snow.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:57 AM | Comments (3)

April 7, 2007

Easter Vigil

Pray for those entering the Church tonight - like one of my good friends. Better late than never! This will be my 18th Easter Vigil! I find that kind of hard to believe, but there you have it.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:55 AM

April 3, 2007

Who will teach the priests Latin?

It looks like the Motu Proprio on the Mass is coming.

Here's Amy Welborn - who is working on talking points and a tip sheet (a GREAT idea).

Here's an example from Fr. Zuhlsdorf.

One of my frequent plaints - here and in comboxes all over St. Blog's - is who will teach the priests? Who will teach them Latin? Who will teach them to chant? My real point - frequently stated openly - is Let's not pretend that the current clergy, by and large, is ready to do this.

Via Fr. Jim Tucker I find this heartening announcement:

... "We felt this presented a historic opportunity for the nation's largest lay organization supporting the traditional Latin Mass -- Una Voce America -- to collaborate with a clerical religious institute whose priests actually use the 1962 Missal -- the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter," King stated.

He explained that most if not all American seminarians study only the modern liturgy that became normative following the Second Vatican Council. This has left a gap in knowledge of preconciliar liturgy that the priest training program will begin to address.

According to King, both Una Voce and the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter view the faithful's devotion to the Latin liturgical tradition as a "unique charism in support of the new evangelization championed by Pope John Paul II -- a charism that is ever ancient, yet ever new." ...

Well, somewhat heartening. I followed the link and clicked on the link to the PDF for the flyer. Una Voce and the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter have got to be the largest lay-run and largest clerical organizations in America that really know what they're doing about the Latin Mass. This is a great idea! I hope people will contribute to them so that priests who can't easily afford travel to Denton, NE, can go.

But let's not rejoice yet. These two organizations are offering 3 sessions this summer. Each session will accommodate twelve (12) priests. That means that by July thirty-six (36) priests currently not trained in the Mass of the 1962 Missal may have been trained.

This is a start. But people who care for the implementation of the motu proprio had better look into sponsoring many, many more of these week-long seminars. Start raising money to offer free training weeks to current transitional deacons - get 'em while they're early middle aged! Target priests already saying Mass in Spanish -- they'll realize the benefits of loan-words more readily than some of their monoglot colleagues.

I think that of all the diocesan priests I know personally there are precisely two who are both interested in and capable of starting up a 1962 Missal Mass pretty quickly - and I don't think either of them owns a maniple.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:46 AM | Comments (3)

March 29, 2007

Film Version of Hildegard of Bingen? Hmm.

Google news is wonderful - where else would I come across a story from Variety? Not my usual reading. Trotta tracks back to middle ages / Vet to direct Bingen bio. That means that an experienced director is doing a movie on Hildegard! Here's the director's imdb page (or, as Variety calls her, the helmer).

If you don't know about Hildegard I hardly know where to tell you to start, other than DON'T GOOGLE HER. Goodness knows she's been poorly served. Maybe the old Catholic Encyclopedia? It's certainly sound, as far as it goes. There was some very silly stuff done with Hildegard in the 1980s by Matthew Fox, ex-O.P., et al. Part of the problem there is that medieval medicine, in its dependence on classical theory-driven medicine, is a lot like modern new age medicine (or 'traditional healing' everywhere). You know - the power of gems to heal, the life force of plants, etc.* An important reason to reject in the Bear & Co. edition of Hildegard's great Scivias ** (link goes to a better version) is that though the translation was pretty good someone (the publisher? Then-Fr. Matthew?) chose to leave out a lot of chapters. Now I'm the first to agree that there's nothing duller than most medieval mysticism, and the book is over 400 pages without the material, but it was telling which chapters they left out. You see, they printed a list of those chapter headings in the back. And excluded chapters cover LOTS of things about Sin and Damnation and Judgment that didn't line up very well with Matthew Fox's whatever-it-was-he-called-it. Creation Spirituality?

So be cautious using great ones - other ones have piggy-backed on their words.

* the relationship between pre-modern non-Western medicines is much more complicated than that, but lemme tell you - if I don't get tenure and I want to stay in Upstate New York (though why the 2nd part of that equation would be true I couldn't tell you) I could make a living in Ithaca selling my knowledge of 4 Humors Healing. "Here, ma'am - give little Johnny leeks for that jitteriness - they'll cool him down!"
** well, besides the fact that I had to buy my copy at an alternative bookstore and it STILL after all these years smells of patchouli

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:50 PM

March 22, 2007

Let's run this college like a business!

Here's what happens when you run a start-up college like a start up business - Tom Monaghan's pet board fires Fr. Joseph Fessio, S.J., from Ave Maria University - and asks him to clear his desk and leave campus the same day. Don't these people understand the 'not in front of the children' principle? Traumatic personnel decisions (as opposed to firing embezzlers) are best left for June, July, and August. Instead, they do it during the month between sending out admissions offers and the due date for deposits for the fall. And if they don't believe that parents notice this kind of thing? With a current enrollment around 100 I don't expect Ave Maria to have a bulging 1st year class of 2011.

The law school furore was not a good sign. I like this entirely non-Catholic-blogsphere coverage.

*Amy Welborn's
entry with lots of comments
*Whispers in the Loggia part 1, with press release. Part 2, with comments from Fr. Fessio
*For semi-insider coverage (well, this is someone who stayed in Michigan), Fumare.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:58 AM

March 16, 2007

Where do we go when we die?

Argh!

Help!

Anyone have a nice medieval or patristic theological reference to the soul escaping through the MOUTH?

You see, Heaven and Hell are irrelevant at this point - I'm dealing with the exit strategy and I thought it would be more clear cut. I'm an art historian (waaah!) and hate finding proof-texts in theology, but that's what I'm looking for.

You see, I'm writing a paper. It wasn't really my idea - but a friend of mine wanted to go to a conference and she didn't want to go alone, so she persuaded me to submit an abstract to a conference on Humor & Laughter in Literature and Film being sponsored by the Binghamton University department of Romance Languages. So here I about to talk in public again about something so late medieval that half the books I looked at to write it have "Renaissance" in their titles.

Still and all, it's fun. The low-hanging fruit in humor is the World Turned Upside Down (which has the advantage of being the keynote speaker's topic, so he might come to our session). I messed with literary devils this summer and fall so I pulled out another one - death bed scenes. André de La Vigne wrote a massive play on the life of St. Martin of Tours for production in 1496 (oh my gosh - they knew where America was already. What am I doing?). It had a cast of 200 and took 3 days. Along with the solemn business of the life of Martin de La Vigne wrote a farce (which I'm talking about) and a morality play - the farce served as an entr'acte and the morality was played at the end. I'll mention it in passing.

So there's a death bed scene in which monks say sad things about Martin and Martin says uplifting things about Heaven. Then there's an expiration scene - Martin's soul, in the shape of a dove, flies up to Heaven. Between the two is the farce!

The farce shows how the devils carry the soul of a wicked miller down to hell. It is an inversion (upside down time) of the saint's deathbed. Now what I'm messing with is this - a trainee demon, who has never attended a deathbed, shyly asks Lucifer from what orifice the soul proceeds at death. Lucifer replies "from the backside." So what we see when the death scene takes place is an angel above the bed waiting for the soul and the trainee demon underneath the bed - it is the canonical deathbed scene distorted (turned upside down).

Take a look at Bosch's 1490 version of the Death of the Miser. There's an angel behind the Miser and a variety of demons - but they're lying in wait especially above the canopy.

Or at Moissac in the 12th century - here's a view of the porch.

Here's a detail of the death of the Miser (Dives) scene - go to the center right and see the bed, the miser dying, the weeping wife, and demons above the bed grabbing the little baby, the soul, coming from his mouth.

See my point?

Yes, it's belabored. Welcome to academe. Can I make it last 20 minutes? Damn straight. I don't really have time to drag in literary sources.

So what the Burgundian folk of Seurre, the town that hired André de La Vigne, saw was Martin dying a bona mors, an entr'acte about a BAD death featuring a demon under the bed (oooh - childhood fears?), then St. Martin's good death and a dove flying up to Heaven.

You'd think I could've found what I was looking for in the works of Caroline Walker Bynum, but no. I'm dim. Call it the end of a week off and help a guy out.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:10 PM | Comments (6)

December 26, 2006

Merry Christmas and Happy St. Stephen's Day!

Good King Wenceslaus looked out on the Feast of Stephen,
When the snow lay round about [not here!] deep and crisp and even...

or in the Walt Kelly version I was unreasonably fond of as a child:

Good King Sauerkraut, look out!
On your feets uneven,
While the snoo lay round about...

What's snoo?

I dunno, what's new with you?

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:11 AM

December 18, 2006

End of year donations

Looking for somewhere to send a check before the end of 2006? What about the Nashville Dominicans? Going, growing, building, and adding schools in news dioceses - what a great cause!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:19 AM

November 10, 2006

Arnaldo Momigliano and me

I'm trying to make all my reading right now do double duty - and since I'm teach 3 chronologically neighboring courses next semester that's not difficult. I just packed a book of Arnaldo Momigliano reprints for the trip down to DC - On Pagans, Jews, and Christians (1987 - most of these are articles from the last 15 years of his life). He was always good on history and historiography - and what he has to say about Judaism in the Roman Empire is useful to me for both the Roman Art & Power course and early Christian (which I call First Christian Millennium - up to but not emphasizing Romanesque). The articles on "The Disadvantages of Monotheism for a Universal State" and "Some Preliminary Remarks on the 'Religious Opposition' to the Roman Empire" are both essential.

If I have time on the way back I'll read more of Ittai Gradel's Emperor Worship and Roman Religion, which is looking very interesting (after about 20 pages).

Both of these authors are interested in what really goes on in Roman religion - and if we can even use the word religion usefully about Romans. Gradel is pretty clear that it's a word with an inherently christianizing meaning - which doesn't mean that it's useless or wrong, but that it must be handled carefully.

Two of the big topics of Roman Art & Power are Augustus's Altar of Peace and the emperor cult. One of the things I'm going to have everyone do this time through is write a short paper about a coin (shades of T.S.Burns, for those of you who've known me too long) and imperial cultus. Last time I didn't require the exercise, but one of the best things I got all semester was a short paper on a coin showing Augustus's wife (or widow, and that was the point - was she the wife or mother of the emperor at the time of the striking?) Livia as SALUS AUGUSTA, which means something like "Imperial Welfare."

This also helps me teach First Christian Millennium by reminding me in considerable detail what it is Christians are refusing to do in sacrificing to the emperor.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:33 AM | Comments (2)

November 1, 2006

All Saints Day - cutting the head off a Zombie Error.

Someone offered me a platform and I'm gonna say something!

The Colleges' organist runs a monthly event at the Chapel called "Music, Meditation and Munchies." She usually plays a selection of seasonally appropriate organ music (occasionally there are other musicians), someone (usually a faculty member) offers a brief reflection, and there are treats. Today is All Saints Day and here's what she's playing (subject to last minute timing revisions):

Jean Langlais--Prelude for a Saints Day
Clarence Dickinson--Joy of the Redeemed (based on O Quanta Qualia)
John Weaver--Sine Nomine (which intertwines the hymn For all the Saints with "When the Saints Go Marching In")

I'm giving the meditation. Mainly I'm showing resurrection, judgment, and entry into Heaven scenes from the tympanum sculpture at Autun, France, and the van der Weyden's Beaune Altarpiece.

However - since someone asked me to say something about All Saints I'm not going to resist explaining that Halloween is not in its origins a pagan festival. Yes, I'm going to play the old "Mediterranean Popes didn't give a damn about local Celtic festivals" card. It won't work, it never does, but there's no honor in letting people believe that medieval people believed the world was flat.

Yes, there were catch-all festivals for otherwise uncelebrated martyrs as early as the 4th Century in the eastern Mediterranean (I think that most of our sources are Syrian Greek or Syriac). That holiday was celebrated in mid-May, as it was in Rome in the 7th century. In 609, the Emperor Phocas gave the Pantheon to the popes as a church (I need to go read whatever the document is for that one!) and Boniface IV dedicated it as St. Mary and All Martyrs on May 13th of that year. By the way, it's a commonplace of people in my end of the Middle Ages, I don't know how well-supported, that this was the first temple building just flat turned into a Church. Oh, well - that shows that a feast of All Martyrs or All Saints was being celebrated by a bunch of non-Celts in the Mediterranean quite early.

Gregory III (who died in 741) dedicated a new chapel in Old St. Peter's to All Saints on November 1 - transferring (at least by implication) the date of celebration in the diocese of Rome (and perhaps Italy) to that day. Gregory IV around 840 extended the feast to the Church in the West, what we nowadays think of as making a revision to the Universal Calendar. Still no sign of Celts or hollow turnips.

So the juxtaposition of Samhain and All Saints Day is just that - a juxtaposition, not an adoption or adaptation by the Church of a pre-existing Celtic holiday, unless you want to think that there were Celtic pagans living in central Italy in the early 8th century celebrating Samhain.

Oh - here's another stake in the heart - the origins of the Christian festival of All Saints is not a metaphorical harvest festival or seasonal transition - especially the harvest of the dead - since the festival was in origins a May festival. Though the 9th century Pope might conceivably have had such an idea (though to believe so you have to also bear in mind the difference between November in Italy and in northern Europe in terms of Labors of the Months), the 4th century Syrians certainly didn't. It's not a bad metaphor (there are plenty of vintage=judgment metaphors in the New Testament), but that's not behind this date.

We'll see how it goes. As anyone who has been watching television lately knows, it's hard to stop a zombie - and even if you do, there are more coming up the street.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:58 AM | Comments (1)

October 24, 2006

Sorry for the hiatus

I apologize to anyone who missed me, but I ran off to a conference and then had to play catch up.

The conference theme was drama in the Middle Ages, and I fell back on "those who don't do, teach" - I gave a pedagogical paper. It went over well, though - I have a good module for handling the high Middle Ages in European Studies 101.

1. Read Rutebeuf's Miracle of Theophilus
2. Study the north transept portal at Notre Dame de Paris, which tells a slightly different version of the Theophilus legend.*
3. Discuss ecclesiastical administration and organization, homage, written contract, Jews in the 13th century, magic, Hell, intercession and patronage, the role of the Virgin Mary, the Ptolemaic model of the cosmos -- the list, as one says, goes on.

It was well-received in the conference sense and, I believe, in the "ooh - I'm going to try that!" sense.

And I'd like to acknowledge Another Damned Medievalist for her two read throughs.

*sorry for the link to someone's flickr site, but I'm queasy about posting copyrighted pictures and am having trouble doing better.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:43 AM

October 18, 2006

Magic Wands and the Tridentine Indult

O.k. - let's assume the new indult will suddenly open the floodgates to masses in the old rite. Who's going to teach 'em Latin? And who's going to teach 'em to chant?

The second is considerably more important than the first. I could teach a seminarian to pronounce (not read, just read aloud) ecclesiastical Latin quickly and correctly in a week if you let me use corporal punishment. We could do Greek in two weeks.

Chant is harder.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:04 AM | Comments (6)

October 17, 2006

Fr. Foster and the Silliness of Modern Spoken Latin

Gosh am I tired of the cult of personality that surrounds Fr. Reginald Foster who has recently been let go from a job for failing to generate revenue - and have been since the first profile I read of him in the New Yorker or the Atlantic or wherever it was and I realized that he was a a classic example (pun entirely intended) of the dissenting Catholic bureaucrat.

This is a man who made his living (and let's not forget that someone let this American live in Rome all these years!) off our tithe money and enjoyed saying shocking things about what he believed.

So he said 'em in Latin. Cute. Let me ask any of his followers - how many of you actually find an opportunity to speak Latin regularly? Me, I read it. A lot. Some of you might do that, too. Me, I read and speak Italian as much as I can - once a week if I'm lucky. If I went to a bit more trouble I could watch the news all the time in Italian (RAI might help me retain linguistic competence, even if it made me dumber by doing so).

Repeat after me - spoken Latin in the 21st century is an indulgence. If Fr. Reggie really loved the poor as much as he loved Cicero he'd be feeding 'em full-time. I don't think there's much wrong with indulgence, but I recognize that the possibility for a man with Fr. Foster's university degrees to wear workman's clothes and sit in the gutter with the poor reflects as carefully crafted a persona as my tweed and service on civic committees. This article suggests that Fr. Foster starts with about 100 students a year. One of the comments in this link suggests that he had an attrition rate of about 50%. This is not someone who is going to change the state of a langauge.

Spoken languages have to be spoken constantly to be real. Go read about the reinvention of Hebrew* to see how it can and did work. Compare that to summer Latin experiences separated by 11 months of monoglottery and get back to us about how much you luv Latin.

We all have our hobbies. Mine is listening to murder mysteries on iPod while I walk the dog. Some people like to talk about rubrics they'll never live out without becoming bishops themselves. Some people spend their energy on an attempt to bring back spoken Latin. Let's not pretend these enterprises are much more than hobbies or hobby horses.

By the way, I have nothing against Fr. Foster - he's evidently an amazing teacher or he wouldn't have generated the cult of personality. But if it were all about spoken Latin for itself, Americans would have responded the same way to that other Carmelite promulgator of spoken Latin, Fr. Suitbert Seidl

*My favorite version of this shocking story is Herman Wouk's in This is my God.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:58 PM | Comments (2)

October 15, 2006

Bible in Art

I hate this time of the semester - I'm choosing textbooks for next semester and suddenly getting more interested in that than this.

On the other hand, I'm teaching the first half of medieval for the first time in 2 years (it's a long story involving a leave and team-teaching for why I haven't lately). I haven't decided yet, but I did decide to look at the handouts I use for Bible Knowledge.

You see, I gave up long ago. None of them know anything about scripture. None of them will have learned anything about scripture since they got to college which would be useful for understanding the cultural deposit. Therefore I have to teach them - or stop and explain every other slide.

So my Art 270, Art of the First Christian Millennium, begins with a Bible Knowledge workbook. I've been doing and redoing this for a few iterations (including the semester in Rome) and it's getting pretty sophisticated. I sat down just now and flipped through my currently favored textbook and checked and am pleased with how closely the images they chose match my list of themes to cover.

Click on extended entry if you want my current list of what will get you through a pre-Renaissance art course.

Infancy – Annunciation
Infancy - Visitation
Infancy – Nativity
Infancy – Visit of the Shepherds, Magi
Infancy – Flight into Egypt
Infancy – Herod and the Innocents
Miracles – healing blind man
Miracles – Lepers
Miracles - Raising of Lazarus
Miracles – Woman with Flow of Blood
Mission – Feed my Sheep
Mission - John the Baptist
Mission – Mary & Martha
Mission - Parables - Shepherds
Mission - Parables - Vines
Mission - Peter & Keys
Mission – Storm on Sea of Galilee
Mission - Transfiguration
Mission - Whoever has done it unto the least of these…
Passion – Christ before Pilate
Passion – Crucifixion
Passion - Entry into Jerusalem
Passion – Garden of Gethsemane
Passion – Lamentation / Deposition
Post-Passion – Ascension
Post-Passion – Doubting Thomas
Post-Passion – Emmaus
Post-Passion – Harrowing of Hell
Post-Passion – Marys at tomb
Acts - descriptiosn of early Church (esp house space)
Acts – Peter and Tabitha (unusual choice)
Acts - Pentecost
Apocalypse – 144,000
Apocalypse – 4 Horsemen
Apocalypse – Devil bound
Apocalypse – Firey furnace
Apocalypse - Heaven – Elders on Thrones
Apocalypse – Matthew version – in the sky
Apocalypse – One Enthroned on Rainbow
Apocalypse – Woman Clothed with the Sun

Marian – Coronation
Marian – Dormition

Genesis - Adam & Eve
Genesis – Cain & Abel
Genesis – Noah
Genesis - Abraham – 3 Visitors, Sacrifice of Isaac
Genesis – Jacob & Esau
Genesis – Joseph
Exodus – Red Sea
Exodus – Bronze serpent*
Samuel – Choosing of David
Samuel – David & Goliath
Samuel – Jesse’s Dream / Tree of Jesse
Kings - Ark of the Covenant
Jonah – under gourd vine as well as Whale bit
Daniel – Susannah and the Elders
Psalms – David as composer
Psalm 1
Psalm 22/23
Psalm 43/44
Psalm 150

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:11 PM | Comments (3)

October 1, 2006

Parish Consolidation

For the occasional reader curious about the Diocese of Rochester and parish consolidation (really, there are a couple!) here's a link to a reasonably detailed story in the Rochester Catholic Courier. Most of the place names will be meaningless to those who don't already know the area, but it gives you some idea of the scope of the priest-personnel-problem facing the diocese.

I didn't submit a new name because the best I could come up with is St. Peter's, which turns out to be the original name of the parish before it became St. Francis de Sales (and before the 2nd Episcopal church in town took it up, too). They switched to SFdS because he was a bishop of Geneva. St. Peter's, by the way, would be appropriate because it's the dedication of the pre-reformation cathedral of Geneva.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:25 PM

July 23, 2006

da Vinci Code

Talk about a waste of two and a half hours! I just went to the da Vinci Code at the Smith Opera House (a 2nd run theater, so I only paid $5). It was as bad as I'd heard - though my colleague Elena Ciletti is right that the scene of the bishops screaming at each other at the Council of Nicaea is almost worth the price of admission. And concessions are cheap at the Smith, too.

Sad sad sad, if anyone takes that kind of tripe seriously enough that his or her 'faith is shaken.'

And if you know someone for whom that's true, send 'em a copy of De-Coding Da Vinci, by Amy Welborn.

Gosh! I don't know what offended me more - the Chick Tracts view of Constantine or the idea that Isaac Newton and the Catholic Church had anything to do with each other. The conflation of the Inquisition and the Witch Hunts? The 'art history'? Oh - I don't know. Tripe. It wasn't worth sitting through even to see what all the fuss was about.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:51 PM | Comments (1)

July 4, 2006

Fr. Daniel Munn, r.i.p.

Please pray for the repose of the soul of Fr. Daniel Munn, founder, pastor, and archpriest of St. Ignatios of Antioch Melkite Catholic Church and parochial vicar of Most Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Church in Augusta, GA, and one of the first three pastoral provision convert-priests. Fr. Munn was not part of the Anglican Use groups (scroll to the last section to read about him).

Augusta Chronicle obituary. "Several grandchildren" is an underestimate. Many! One of whom is one of my godsons.

He was a great man. Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine. Et lux perpetua luceat ei. I apologize that I don't know how to put that in the wonderful and wacky Melkite combinations of languages, but it'll have to do.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:29 PM | Comments (2)

April 15, 2006

The Alterante Year Vigil Plan

One of the joys of the two-parish church-Catholic Community model we live with here in Geneva is that the big services like the Easter Vigil alternate from building to building. This year, sadly, is at the violently restored St. Francis de Sales. The exterior is a quiet 1880s brick gothicky-with-a-touch-of-romanesque-revival pennies of the immigrants church. The interior is the worst of the early 90s - lots of pastel wall painting, inclluding the worst Resurrection Jesus on the altar wall that I have ever seen. Really. And I'm a professional - I've seen a lot of 'em. Maybe I'll go down there for confession this afternoon (it is marginally further than St. Stephen's (the 1910 arts-and-crafts-gothic-english-parish-church parish) and take a picture to post.

I'm able to overcome distracting interiors usually, but St. Francis de Sales is a little much even for me.

Oh, well - happy Easter everyone! I'm trying :)

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:34 PM | Comments (2)

April 9, 2006

The Gospel according to Judas.

*BIG SIGH*

And I'm teaching the first half of medieval next year. Maybe it's providence, because the last time I taught the course was after the summer of the Da Vinci Code as beach reading. The questions I fielded!

Oh, well. Here we go again.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:24 AM | Comments (3)

April 5, 2006

Subculture humor

Cacciguida sez SSPX SUXX.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:50 PM

March 3, 2006

I'm teaching 1500 miles TOO FAR NORTH

Crawfish and Lent go together . . . .

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:36 PM | Comments (2)

January 22, 2006

What I want . . .

What I want is a 5-10 minute piece of video showing a nice monastic practice of the Office. The music is decidedly secondary for me! I would like best a bit of procession in, chant, standing, bowing, and sitting -- I want to show students the business end of medieval monastic prayer. I'm going to use a chunk of The Name of the Rose tomorrow, but I've never really been satisfied with that depiction. What I'd like best is a little bit of video from a restrained Cistercian house -- there was a PBS thing on Cistercians a few years ago that I can't find anywhere online to order.

Any ideas?

further: The more I think of it the more I seem to remember it being out of the monastery at Mepkin, SC. Hmm.

still further: Here it is. It was adequate, I think. I'll order one. I had no idea it was made for ABC!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:27 PM | Comments (4)

December 24, 2005

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

I'll offer a Christmas prayer for all my readers tomorrow - no children here in the morning, so I don't have to go to midnight Mass! Yay! I'm also offering a prayer in thanksgiving for whoever invented the gift bag.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:14 PM

December 22, 2005

Papa? Santa?

If you want to know what's what with the red hat the pope was wearing, go, of course, to Don Jim Tucker. Here's his initial entry, and here's the photo page with a dozen easily recognizable papal portraits wearing the camauro.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:51 AM

October 26, 2005

Prayer Request

I don't think I've ever done this, but here goes - please pray (or bear in mind, for those of my dear readers for whom that seems the more apt request) for a friend recently diagnosed with breast cancer. She's one of these, by the way.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:42 AM | Comments (5)

September 23, 2005

On teaching Dante

As though 3 courses weren't enough for me this term, I'm doing what is called here at these Colleges a Readers College in Dante. Here's a description of how the process is supposed to work:

Join a group and meet new friends over great readings! Requirements are simple: read books, join the discussions and do some writing. Students who satisfy the leader's requirements receive 1/2 course credit. To sign up for one of the reading groups below simply contact the leader. Welcome back and happy reading!

So far it's doing that pretty well - the 4 students didn't know each other well before the course began but are beginning to do so. So far we've spent more time talking about the structure of the Ptolemaic cosmos than we have doing line-by-line readings, but those are happening, too.

The course is answering a felt need of mine, too -- I wanted to read my way through the whole Commedia again before I tackle teaching Dante in a regular class. It's certainly working for that.

We're using the Mandelbaum translation (though one person is using Mark Musa, so we have 2 texts for immediate comparison). I'm also reading my way through the California Lectura Dantis commentary on the Inferno. It seems they haven't gotten a 2nd or 3rd volume out. I'm also reading the Singleton notes, which are copious. Coooooopppppious. Oh, well - fun will be had by all.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:18 PM | Comments (1)

August 22, 2005

War and the Rumors of War -- literally

He was then sent to Woburn Abbey, where he produced two rumours a day for inclusion in otherwise correct reports.

A throwaway line about war service from one of those splendid British obituaries, this the Daily Telegraph on W.H.C. Frend, whose mid-20th century take on Donatism is considerably less respected nowadays (and considerably more driven by his Low Church anti-papist background) than the author conveys. Frend never met a heresy he didn't suppose was driven by economic or class reasons rather than theological opinon; that's a form of argumentation much like modern political controversialists assuming their opponents to be insincere in their beliefs and very annoying. Well-worth reading, though. He was an important scholar and a fine man.

Here's the Church Times version.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:02 PM

August 7, 2005

Mass of a Joyful Heart

I am a professor at a small liberal arts college in the diocese of Rochester, NY. We are lucky to have Mass on campus each week that school is in session; this is truly an act of charity by the two priests of the Roman Catholic Community of Geneva, who offer 4 scheduled Masses in English and one in Spanish every Sunday -- our Mass makes a 5th English-language Mass 9 months of the year. I usually attend that Mass. I dress relatively simply (no jacket and tie); my first year I wore jacket and tie until some students told me that I made them feel uncomfortable and underdressed. Heaven forfend! I want to maximize mass-going, so dress down a bit.

This makes me the only person in the world who systematically dresses better for summer Sunday Masses than during the rest of the year. Of course, this schema also means that I get to get some use out of my seersucker and poplin suits (all things work together for the good, you know). That's because I get to attend Mass in a lovely 1910 Arts and Crafts Meets Gothic Revival church -- St. Stephen's (the link goes to my flickr photostream -- there are 4 pictures of St. Stephen's).

The music is usually pretty bad even during the school year. The organist is alright, but the selection is the typical round of St. Louis Jesuits and their ilk -- and I can't think about the Easter Vigil right now. Someone had the bright idea this summer of having us use the same mass setting all summer, printing it in fliers, and putting them in the pews -- so far, so good. The missa de angelis? Oh, puh-leeze! We're trying to sing the Mass of a Joyful Heart, by Steve Angrisano and Tom Tomaszek, copyright 1999, Oregon Catholic Press.

My grasp of music is analagous to those people who tell me, a professor of art history, "I don't know much about art, but I know what I like." I think that's a reasonably good starting point. I don't know much about music, but I know what sets my teeth on edge. A congregation attempting to sing the "Holy" in the Angrisano/Tomaszek setting sets my teeth on edge. After May, June, and July we're no closer to being able to sing it than we were at the beginning.

The music makes no sense -- every single "holy" is a different number of notes and the notes are not even (they use what I think are triplets at one point -- I don't think congregations sing triplets very well). The rest of it is banal. B-A-N-A-L. It doesn't sound much like 1999 -- it sounds much more like background music of about 1985. Does it make a difference that both of the authors are specialists in music for "youth"? I think so. Why, then, are we singing it at the Masses of an aging, small-town parish? I have no systematic objection to contemporary music (though in execution I have heard precious little that moves me), but can't we sing something written for adults?

In the end, I can say is that it has made seersucker and summer Mass less of a thrill than in previous summers. Only the combination of banal music and horrific interior at St. Francis de Sales' church (click, scroll down and look to the left) has kept me going to St. Stephen's this year.

Steve Angrisano's site.
Tom Tomaszek's site

further - the horrid triplets are in the "Lamb of God," not the "Holy." Today we had not only that mass setting, but TWO Bob Dufford, SJ, hymns. When I was a Protestant we never sang two hymns by Charles Wesley, say, on a single Sunday. Maybe I won't be so sorry to be going back to Mass at 4 p.m. and an open shirt collar after all.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:55 AM | Comments (4)

July 13, 2005

Fundamental Option as a response to totalitarianism?

Amy Welborn asks a fascinating question about Moral Theology --

H as anyone ever studied the impact of Nazism and the war on Christian theology - not during, but after the fact? Michael took a class from Josef Fuchs, and he said that the moral theology of Fuchs, who had been a pastor in Germany during the War, struck him as very accomodationist...a "do what you can do" as long as your Fundamental Option is in the right direction (Fuchs being the father of much contemporary Catholic moral theology, as you can tell), and it seemed to him that this approach was very clearly reflective of Fuchs' position as pastor in that situation.

I'd very much like to read about this. I don't really care for theology or philosophy per se, but I love intellectual history (which means that I don't care much about the gossip of who-was-a-student-of-whom or the lives of the philosophers).

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:44 AM | Comments (2)

June 19, 2005

Stop the ribbon magnet madness! JPII RIP white ribbon

Click to be horrified.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:59 PM | Comments (4)

New Priest!

Well, at least there's one this year for the diocese of Rochester, which is better than none. And he sounds interesting . . . .

a background article

ordination coverage

Pray for Fr. John Loncle.

Please pray also for the four permanent deacons ordained for the diocese of Rochester. One of them grew up a Baptist!

The Rochester Catholic Courier has two priestly ordination stories about vocations that got away -- two natives of the diocese ordained this week for other New York dioceses: widower to be ordained for Buffalo and 26 year old ordained for New York City. The first applied to a number of dioceses -- I wonder if Rochester rejected him?

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:14 AM

May 29, 2005

Pastoral Posting

Good news on the Geneva/HWS front - Fr. Fennessy will be staying for another year!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at