Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols Calls for Catholic Churches to Be Allowed to Reopen Before Others: My Reflections

Harriet Sherwood reports in the London paper The Guardian today that the Catholic archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, is calling on the British government to open Catholic churches before other worship places re-open, because Catholics have special needs that other religious communities do not have. Sherwood's report is entitled "Catholic churches 'should be allowed to reopen before others.'"

Cardinal Collins on Agitation of US Right for Congregational Worship During Pandemic: "Shallow" and "Absolutely Irresponsible"

It’s so strange to hear people lamenting that they are deprived of church now, when many of those same people have been perfectly content for years now to see LGBT people excluded from church, made unwelcome, fired by church institutions simply for being LGBT. /1

— 𝕎𝕚𝕝𝕝𝕚𝕒𝕞 𝔻. 𝕃𝕚𝕟𝕕𝕤𝕖𝕪 🌈 (@wdlindsy) April 5, 2020

I don’t recall having heard any laments from any of the people lamenting now about their exclusion from church when it was “only” the LGBT community that was excluded, run off, deliberately made unwelcome.

We LGBT folks may have some tips for handling the no-church thing. /2

— 𝕎𝕚𝕝𝕝𝕚𝕒𝕞 𝔻. 𝕃𝕚𝕟𝕕𝕤𝕖𝕪 🌈 (@wdlindsy) April 5, 2020

The culture-war battles within the US Christian communities are so old, tired, enervating, aren't they? I regret any time I am pulled into them again — and yet, it's almost impossible not to be pulled into them, when you and people like you are among those being targeted by a powerful sector of Christians in the US.

Mass Suffering and Televised Masses: Watch Me Eat for You! Watch ME!

Coronavirus: A Spanish bishop has hit out at the “bombardment” of the faithful with coronavirus TV broadcast and livestreamed Masses, asking:

“Aren’t we treating believers as if they don’t know how to pray, and should depend on the clergy to do so?"https://t.co/oWX8Vcu6Y2

— Novena News (@novenanews) March 26, 2020

"There Is No Such Thing As Foreign Suffering": Good Friday Meditation Points

Meditation points for Good Friday, all drawn from things I've read over the years, notes jotted down in my journals:

Droppings from the Catholic Birdcage: "I Have Blessed Hope That, I Pray, the Gracious Bishops in This, Our Blessed Nation, Will Graciously Petition to Ask, Humbly"

For National Catholic Reporter, Father Thomas Reese reports that the German Catholic bishops' conference has chosen to table the new Vatican-mandated translation of the liturgy. The U.S. bishops chose by contrast to implement it, despite its cumbersome run-on sentences, its use of the phrase "for many" rather than "for all" during the consecration of bread and wine, its bizarre reversion to fancy-schmanzy pseudo-traditional terms like "chalice" for "cup" or hyperspeak (as opposed to plainspeak) terms like "consubstantial."

A Reader Writes: What's This Foot Washing All About, Anyway (and Is There a Red State/Blue State Divide Here)?

In response to my posting earlier today about Pope Francis's choice to include women among those whose feet he washed in the Holy Thursday liturgy yesterday, a reader bosicO writes:

Beautybeautybeauty! The Reform of the Reform, Liturgy, and the Cessation of Critical Questions

Catholic News Service distinguishes itself again (NOT!) with this bit of shlock touting the virtues of the "reformed reformed" liturgy entitled, absurdly, "The Call of Beauty."

Palm Sunday Music: Gospel Keys Singing "Ride on, King Jesus"

For Palm Sunday, the Gospel Keys group of Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, performing the traditional African-American spiritual, "Ride on, King Jesus."

Catholic Pastor in Illinois Forced to Resign for Liturgical Creativity

And, as top leaders of some Christian churches use their high positions and energies to spread toxic lies designed to assist a particular group of political leaders (and designed to inflict pain and suffering on fellow human beings), pastors within those same churches who are doing what the gospel tells them to do--feeding the hungry, proclaiming the good news, etc.--can find this happening to them:

Droppings from the Catholic Birdcage: Tics, Gesticulations, Swoops, and Flourishes Amidst Liturgical Bedlam

So many droppings, so little time.  I want to frame today's piece with a snippet that a reader sent to Andrew Sullivan recently.  The following isn't the birdcage dropping per se.  Instead, please regard it as the scoop with which I'll then pick up the Catholic birdcage dropping on which I really intend to focus:

One Pastor's Take on the "New" Liturgy: Fr. Nobert Dlabal on New Trans as Akin to KGB Document

Father Norbert Dlabal, pastor of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Goodland, KS, and Holy Ghost in Sharon Springs, KS, weighs in on the "new" liturgical translations at National Catholic Reporter:

Droppings from the Catholic Birdcage: "The Chalice of Benediction"

This from a Facebook page linked to mine, a page belonging to a young home-schooling mother who is Catholic.  And Catholic again.  Catholic added to Catholic.

We Go to Mass, We Experience the "New" Liturgy, We Leave Shaking Our Heads

And speaking of the "new" liturgical translations (I just did so in my posting about Michael Iafrate's music): as I've just said, Steve and I went to the Christmas vigil Mass with our friend Richard.  We went to the old cathedral, St. Mary's, in Chinatown in San Francisco.  When I last blogged about our highly selective and sporadic liturgy-attending experiences in the past year, we had gone to Mass with Steve's aunts as we took them on a trip to visit relatives around Minnesota.

More Inspirational Music for Christmastime: Michael Iafrate & the Priesthood

More Christmas-season music (and music for meditation and inspiration all year 'round), and this, too, is a resource provided by a wonderful theologian-songwriter-activist to whom Bilgrimage has connected me: at his website M Iafrate (& the Priesthood), Michael Iafrate has links to his various albums, which include links to some of the songs on these albums.  You may already have noticed Michael's name in my bloglist, since it includes his catholicanarchy blog, and I did a posting this past September summarizing Michael's powerful theological reflections on militarism and discipleship, which notes that Michael is a doctoral student in theology at University of St. Michael's College in Toronto, Steve's and my alma mater.

Winter Solstice Celebrations Around the World: A HuffPo Slideshow

And to feed the spirit when hope is challenged: I like this Huffington Post article surveying the way in which cultures around the world commemorate the winter solstice, which is today--though I'm baffled that the article speaks of these celebrations as "pagan."  Particularly when it notes that many of these celebrations in Western cultures are rooted in pre-Christian religious celebrations (as Christmas itself is, and this is why the Puritans in both England and New England sought to outlaw the feast).  And when it mentions that the Talmud takes note of the winter solstice and even has a name for the event.  

The Maccabeats Tell the Hanukkah Story

For Hanukkah: the Maccabeats tell the Hannukah story with verve, style, and humor.  A happy Hanukkah to all.

Declining Empires and Wealth Disparity: Miserere!

That movement to reLatinize the Catholic Mass?  It may not be entirely beside the point:

As this Huffington Post article notes, in a recent article in the Journal of Roman Studies, historians Walter Schiedel and Steven Friesen calculate that the maldistribution of wealth in the U.S. today is actually at a higher level than was the case in the Roman empire as the empire began to fall apart.  As it began to fall apart due to huge disparities between the rich and poor, that is.  We Americans might as well be speaking Latin, because we're becoming the Roman empire in its movement towards decline.

Commonweal Offers Revised Translation of Christmas Cookie Recipe: Advent Humor

And for a bit of fun as the seasonal madness (shop, shop, drop, drop) reaches its peak: whoever crafted the "Christmas Cookies Recipe: Revised Translation" for Commonweal is one highly clever individual.  A highly clever person who has gotten the vastly inflated and entirely misplaced (and totally empty) pomposity of the "new" Catholic liturgical translation down to a perfect T . . . .

The "New" Liturgical Translation and Male Bias: Reflections

Priests Concelebrating Mass

I very much like Michael Peppard's Commonweal blog posting about the "new" (orotund and very Latinate) translation of the Roman liturgy for English-speaking countries.  The big claim to fame of the "new" translation is that it's faithfully Latinate--absolutely, slavishly faithful to the Latin original (though God seems to speak Hebrew in the Jewish scriptures and Aramaic and Greek in the Christian ones, and Latin is almost nowhere in the picture in either set of scriptures).  

Eugene Kennedy on "New" Catholic Liturgical Translations: Beading and Feathering the Audience

Eugene Kennedy's take on the "new" Catholic liturgical translations: as Rome burns to the ground, it's doing some mighty fine diversionary fiddling.
Kennedy writes: