What Does The Prayer Really Say?

REMINDER: Bp. Trautman’s jihad against the new translation

frz@wdtprs.com (Fr. John Zuhlsdorf) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 03:04:10 +0000

I want to bring back to your minds that His Excellency Most Rev. Donald W. Trautman will try to derail the new translation during the upcoming meeting of the USCCB in Baltimore (16-19 Nov.).

I wrote about that here.

I have a WDTPRS POLL.

I asked for your e-mail feedback.

I invited other bloggers to write about this issue.

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During the November '09 plenary USCCB meeting should the bishops follow Bp. Trautman's lead and reject the translation for the sake of forcing a review of the whole project?

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REMINDER: Bp. Trautman’s jihad against the new translation

Veterans & Remembrance

frz@wdtprs.com (Fr. John Zuhlsdorf) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:24:46 +0000

Post from: WDTPRS

Veterans & Remembrance

Martinmass

frz@wdtprs.com (Fr. John Zuhlsdorf) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:20:35 +0000

"Martinmass" by John Clare written on 11 Nov 1841.

    ‘Tis Martinmass from rig to rig
    Ploughed fields and meadow lands are blea
    In hedge and field each restless twig
    Is dancing on the naked tree
    Flags in the dykes are bleached and brown
    Docks by its sides are dry and dead
    All but the ivy-boughs are brown
    Upon each leaning dotterel’s head

    Crimsoned with awes the awthorns bend
    O’er meadow-dykes and rising floods
    The wild geese seek the reedy fen
    And dark the storm comes o’er the woods
    The crowds of lapwings load the air
    With buzes of a thousand wings
    There flocks of starnels too repair
    When morning o’er the valley springs

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Martinmass

Thanks due to readers

frz@wdtprs.com (Fr. John Zuhlsdorf) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:53:16 +0000

Many thanks are due to some of you readers who have not only use the donation button, but who have also used my amazon wish list to send things for my recent birthday and other.

MA sent a volume of an English translation of St. Augustine’s newly discovered Dolbeau and the Etaix sermons. This is a helpful research tool!

I don’t know who sent Vol. 8 of The Complete New English Hymnal music CD, but thanks a million! This is a disk recorded at Keble College, Oxford. I now have 1-5 and 8. Some of these CD’s are hard to get or pretty expensive. I did, however, find them on iTunes. If someone wants to send more of this series, maybe designated donations will save money. For example, Vol. 7 is very expensive to buy as a CD, but on iTunes it is far less. Go figure.

TE of NY sent a volume about the ancient Roman writer Cicero on oratory and orators and a bottle of the exquisite colatura! Yum. I brought a couple small pots of parsley into the house before the freezing began, and so with fresh garlic on hand I am all set to enjoy the another kind of power lunch! You can get your own bottle of this stuff here. I chop some garlic and parsley, and put a couple tablespoons of colatura over it all in a bowl to macerate. Then I toss through it still hot but very well drained vermicelli, sprinkling into it red pepper. Easy and very good.

I don’t know who sent the copy of The Reform of the Liturgy (1948-1975) by the late Annibale Bugnini, but many thanks anyway. I can’t say I look forward to reading this, of course. Reading autopsies isn’t exactly fun. But we do need to know what people were thinking when they started to wreck the Roman Rite. In any event, the book came without an indication of who sent it. It will be useful.

Finally, I am grateful to JL who sent my the Windows 7 upgrade. I have detested Vista ever since I got it. Now, however, I will have the terror of going down the Microsoft rabbit hole again, hoping against hope that their upgrade won’ ruin my installation, forcing me to go through the same hell I had a couple months back. Yes… I know… some of you will say "switch to Mac". If I could determine what system to get, I would put that on my wish list too. Until then, it’s repairs with Microsoft’s equivalent of twine and 100 mile an hour tape.

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Thanks due to readers

A few minutes well spent on “ineffable, consubstantial….”

frz@wdtprs.com (Fr. John Zuhlsdorf) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:55:57 +0000

From a reader:

I teach the Confirmation class at my parish and this past class I asked them what the following words meant: ineffable, consubstantial, incarnate, inviolate, oblation, ignominy, precursor, suffused and unvanquished (these were Bishop Trautman’s words he was afraid we didn’t know or could not learn). My class is 12 kids in 8th and 9th grades ranging very widely in their knowledge of things Catholic. I presented each word and asked what they meant. They were close on several words (unvanquished, ineffable precursor and incarnate) and easily understood the rest with a short explanation. I intend to go over these words with them taking no more than 5 minutes each week. Maybe the difference is that I know and believe in these kids ability to grasp the things of God and the language that goes with it.

As I wrote here:

Words such as "ineffable" point to the nature of a mystery.

If a priest, deacon, or lay catechist could spend two minutes to explain what the word "ineffable" means that would be two minutes well spent on the people of God.

Too much to ask?

Post from: WDTPRS

A few minutes well spent on “ineffable, consubstantial….”

Test entry from Blogpress

frz@wdtprs.com (Fr. John Zuhlsdorf) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:22:23 +0000

Here is a little test entry from a new iPhone app: Blogpress.

—Posted from my iPhone

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Test entry from Blogpress

REVIEW: Osama

frz@wdtprs.com (Fr. John Zuhlsdorf) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 01:36:43 +0000

Taliban… bad.

Lord of the Flies has nothing on Osama.

Would women rather be dead than live this life?

Bleak doesn’t begin to describe Osama.

Desperate doesn’t begin to describe Osama.

Arresting images of women in pale blue birkas who had dared to protest running from the taliban.

Scruffy boy speaking to the camera. He is in the beginning like a hieratic Greek chorus.

Fear.

Limping children struggling in pillered walkways.

The plight of women under true oppression, their universal plight in time of war.

A mother says: "I wish God had not created women."

Her old mother corrects her saying men and women are equal. They work as hard. They are equally unfortunate.

A 12-year-old Afghan girl and her mother lose their jobs when the Taliban closes the hospital where they work. The Taliban have also forbidden women to leave their houses without a male "legal companion." With her husband and brother dead, killed in battle, there is no one left to support the family. Without being able to leave the house, the mother is left with nowhere to turn. Feeling that she has no other choice, she disguises her daughter as a boy. Now called ‘Osama,’ the girl embarks on a terrifying and confusing journey as she tries to keep the Taliban from finding out her true identity. Inspired by a true story, Osama is the first entirely Afghan film shot since the fall of the Taliban.

In despair they take the daughter cut her hair, put her in pants, make her a boy. They need a male family member who can escort a woman who goes to give health care to the sick for what ever money they can make. They talk about it while braiding her hair.

Like the Chinese King of Masks (much happier, being Chinese) or the Jewish Yenta (much happier being a musical) and also the Chinese Farewell My Concubine (much happier because… well… because…) with its scenes of forcing a choice this movie has its hideous scenario of death or life, to be a girl or be a false boy.

I was reminded of Vittorio di Sicca and Zhang Yimou who made films with non-actors. There is a starling reality to what they produce.

But bleak doesn’t begin to describe Osama. You keep looking for little rays of hope, but they elude you as quickly as you summon them.

The little girl buries her hair with a bit of pigtail sticking out like a sappling, later with the remains of an IV dripping on it. It is a harbinger of annihilation of hope.

The mother of the false boy wants an old war comrade running an apothacary, milk bar of sorts of her dead husband to hire the son who is a daughter. And so the horror begins.

Her identity can’t be hidden and you know it. And you get the sense that the mother knew it and the old woman knew it.

There are some striking moments of film making which clue you in to what is coming.

Little sounds of a scissor in advance before you see it cutting. Scrapping of a metal sittring implement on the bottom of a cauldron.

Distant and ever closer single shot gunfire.

Bare and dry… everything. The cutting of a green ripse watermellon as if it were a head to be devoured.

The prayer chant allah hu akbar during prayer.

The little actress remains obviously a girl which heightens the tension, because we know what the Talbian would do to the women in this scenario.

I was struck, on the intellectual level with a moment of change in the style of language with story telling.

The old woman, grandmother, has the other side of the story, the message that being a man is no picnic.

One wonders if Major Hassan had this in mind as he shot his victims, invoking the name of his god.

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REVIEW: Osama

PARODY SONG ALERT: Gather Us In

frz@wdtprs.com (Fr. John Zuhlsdorf) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:44:51 +0000

A facetious reader sent the following:

"Straight from the pages of Facebook and a group called SLAP (Survivors of Liturgical Abuse in Parishes)"

Gather Us In [...to the tune of, that is!]

Here in this place, our comfortable parish,
All of the statues carried away,
See in each face a vacuous visage,
Brought here by guilt or by R.C.I.A.

Gather us in, by Beemer or Hummer,
Gather us in, so we can feel good,
Come to us now in this barren Zen temple,
With only a shrub and an altar of wood.

We are the young, our morals a mystery,
We are the old, who couldn’t care less,
We have been warned throughout all of history,
But we enjoy this liturgical mess.

Gather us in, our radical pastor,
Gather us in, our unveiled nun,
Call to us now, with guitars and bongos,
Hang up your cellphones and join in the fun!

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PARODY SONG ALERT: Gather Us In

What is your good news?

frz@wdtprs.com (Fr. John Zuhlsdorf) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 20:43:59 +0000

Any reports about good things and graces in your lives? Let us know! Post from: WDTPRS What is your good news?

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What is your good news?

“Ineffable” sighting… in the wild!

frz@wdtprs.com (Fr. John Zuhlsdorf) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:10:59 +0000

His Excellency Most Rev. Donald "Ineffable" Trautman, the Bishop of Erie, is concerned that people in the pews aren’t able to understand words such as "ineffable".

Granted, vocabulary of the new translation of the Roman Missal is no longer his primary method of attack, but it is emblematic of his approach.

The translation is clearly tooo haaard and people are not very bright.

I believe the Erie Bishop is not in touch with the people in the pews if he thinks words such as "ineffable" are tooo haaard.

From a reader:

I play a collectible card game called Magic: The Gathering. This game is targeted to the 13+ crowd, but look at one of the cards I found recently. Wizards of the Coast must think the average 13 year old is smarter than the average Catholic when they use big words like this on their cards.

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“Ineffable” sighting… in the wild!