The Mundelein Psalter

An interesting project with connections to an old friend Fr. Samuel Weber O.S.B. who I know from my Saint Meinrad College days and who I once gave a six hour ride to in Florida many moons ago.

The Mundelein Psalter

Plus a review at the New Liturgical Movement.

There is a Line in the Big Lebowski...

Your "revolution" is over...,
Condolences!
The bums lost!

This thought comes to mind when I read reviews by critics of the scholarship of the pope.

Quotes from the Pope's Jesus of Nazareth

Luke transmits to us the same saying, but at the end he adds: "And no one after drinking old wine desires new; for he says, 'The old is good'" (Lk 5:39). There do seem to be good grounds for interpreting this as a word of understanding for those who wished to remain with the "old wine." (page 181)

Now, to anyone who claims this is going back to before the Council, I challenge them to find this kind of interpretation back then (by a conservative that is). One of the things that bothers so many progressives in the Church is that both Pope John Paul II and the current pope defy the limitations of the labels placed upon them--they are seekers of the Truth, and not some ideology created in their own image and likeness rather than the image and likeness of the one true God. Another reason, why this is truly a "great book"...

Immitation

Quotes from the Pope's Jesus of Nazareth

"Both Evangelists designate Jesus' preaching with the Greek term evangelion--but what does that actually mean?" (page 46).

"The term has recently been translated as "good news." That sounds attractive, but if falls far short of the order of magnitude of what is actually meant by the word evangelion. This term figures in the vocabulary of the Roman emperors, who understood themselves as lords, saviors, and redeemers of the world. The messages issued by the emperor were called in Latin evangelion, regardless of whether their content was particularly cheerful and pleasant. The idea was that what comes from the emperor is a saving message, that it is not just a piece of news, but a change of the world for the better.

When the Evangelist adopt this word, and it thereby becomes the generic name for their writings, what they to tell us is this: What the emperors, who pretend to be gods, illegitimately claim, really occurs here--a message endowed with plenary authority, a message that is not just talk, but reality, (pages 46-47)."

Now, there is something to think aboutthe next time you here the Gospel--the evanglion proclaimed at Mass...

Cardinal Clarifies His Comments in Time Interview

From Catholic News Agency:

Nevertheless, in statements to Carlos Polo, reproduced exclusively by the Catholic News Agency, Cardinal Maradiaga, who is in Aparecida participating in the V General Conference of the Latin American Bishops’ Council, said his comments to Time magazine should be reformulated “in light of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith teaches in its document, ‘Worthiness to Receive Communion’.”

“A politician who publicly supports abortion, he excommunicates himself. It’s not question of receiving Communion or not; he has already done serious harm to the communion of faith of the Church, to the communion of moral life, and therefore that person himself is doing an act that is inconsistent with what he says he believes,” the cardinal said.

“That is, we’re talking about a person who has become a broken-off branch of the tree of life of the Church, a dry branch that has lost its vital sap and is doing something that is a lie. One who is against life and who is clearly opposed to the message of the Lord Jesus, as is an abortion supporter, cannot be in Communion with Holy Mother Church,” he stated.

“Therefore, if one uses the desire to receive Communion as a justification, it is the worst manner of doing so, because one is doing an act that contradicts what one says he believes,” the cardinal said.

“In addition,” he continued, “a recent declaration of the Holy See clearly states that when
all precautionary measures have not had their effect or in which they were not possible, and the person in question, with obstinate persistence, still presents himself to receive the Holy Eucharist, the minister of Holy Communion must refuse to distribute it.”

“This is the current law of the Church and it would be best if these people who know it do not try to receive Holy Communion because they are committing an act that is completely immoral and inconsistent with truth,” he said in conclusion.

Left at Caution Light to Abbey Entrance

Congratulations to my friend Father Seamus Malvey who was solemnly professed yesterday at the Abbey of Gethsemane. Directions to the monastery always include the last direction...either left or right at caution light--depending upon what direction you are coming from...very symbolic. When you leave the Monastery you have to turn left or right at the red light, depending upon where you are going.

What the piece below doesn't mention about the former "Jim" Malvey is that he arrived at the monastery on September 11, 2001.

I know him from the days we were in school together between 1983-1986 before he was ordained a priest for Palm Beach. I ran into him a few years ago when I was messing with the video equipment in the welcome center--neither of us recognized each other at first (time has a way of doing that) but both recognized the other's voice.

From the Palm Beach Post:

When Seamus Malvey takes his final vows as a Trappist monk today, he will be entering a third phase of his religious evolution.

The first phase consisted of 20 years in the Christian Brothers order. Then he became a priest in the Diocese of Palm Beach, serving nearly two decades at the Cathedral of St. Ignatius Loyola in Palm Beach Gardens, in other parishes and in several diocesan appointments.

His imagination was captured back in high school when he read The Seven Storey Mountain, the memoir of Thomas Merton, probably the most famous Trappist monk of the 20th century. Merton's combination of mysticism and outspoken political activism galvanized the post-World War II generation of spiritual seekers, many of whom followed him to the Abbey of Gethsemani in the hills of Kentucky.

But it wasn't until after his retirement from the diocese that Malvey finally made it to Gethsemani.

"I had always thought of being a contemplative, so I said, let me just write them and at least be rejected."

The monks at Gethsemani range in age from 30 to 92 and usually do not take postulants as old as Malvey, but the monks of the order voted to accept him.

There is a decidedly egalitarian streak at the abbey, where a priest or a Ph.D. may be assigned to do manual labor and abbots are elected by a community vote.

Still, he was surprised when the abbot transferred him from working in the laundry to running the abbey's busy visitor center and bookstore, where busloads of day-trippers and retreat-goers arrive year-round.

The abbey was established in 1848 by the French Cistercian order. From the beginning the abbey was self-sustaining, even built from bricks made by the monks. They still grow their own vegetables and make their own shoes and other necessities. The monastery does a brisk year-round business in its signature cheeses, bourbon-laced fudge and fruitcakes.

With 2,300 acres to oversee, the order even has its own forester monk.

Besides their daily duties in the kitchens and the fields, the monks chant the Psalms seven times a day, starting at 3 a.m., as they have every day since the abbey was founded.

Long periods of solitude produce interesting results, said Malvey.

"I can't pretend I'm humble and holy," Malvey says. "Eventually, it will break down and finally you become yourself. That's when grace takes over. God calls a person, the real you, not the person you would like to be."

Quote's From the Pope's Jesus of Nazareth

"The sign of God is overflowing generosity.We see it in the multiplication of the loaves; we see it again and again--most of all, though, at the center of salvation history, in the fact that he lavishly spends himself for the lowly creature, man." (page 252).

This quote reminds me of another quote from another book, recently published in English which actually would reflect the thought of Father Joseph Ratzinger in the 1960's. There is a quote that actually gives insight into a theory of the cosmos that is tied into scientific fact at a more basic level. Here is the quote:

"The miracle at Cana and the miracle of feeding the five thousand are signs of that superabundance of generosity which is essential to God's way of acting, that way of doing things which in the process of creation squanders millions of seeds so as to save one living one. That way of doing things that lavishly produces an entire universe in order to prepare a place on earth for that mysterious being, man." What It Means to Be a Christian: Three Sermons, (pages 79-80)

Motu Proprio News from CELAM

In an address given by Cardinal Hoyos (Ecclesia Dei):

Intervención sobre Ecclesia Dei-16 de mayo de 2007

Fr. Z has an English translation of the address, I quote one paragraph from his translation:

In Latin America, since it is well-known, we must be grateful to the Lord for the return of a whole Diocese, that of Campos, earlier a Lefebvrian one, that now after five years, presents good fruits. It has been a pacific comeback and the faithful who have registered in the Apostolic Administration are glad to be able to live in peace in his parochial communities; even more, in fact some Brazilian dioceses have made contacts with the Apostolic Administration of Campos that has put at their disposal priests for the pastoral care of the traditionalist faithful in local churches. The project of the Holy Father has been already partially proved in Campos, where the pacific cohabitation of two forms of the only Roman rite in the Church is a beautiful reality. We have the hope that such a model produces good fruits, also in other places of the Church where both catholic faithful live with liturgical diverse sensibilities. And we hope, also, that such a way of living together should attract also those traditionalists who are still far.

Father Euteneuer Invites Congressional Gang of 18 to Leave

The Catholic Church...

From The Christian Wire:

Father Euteneuer said, "It is an embarrassment that a Catholic, much less a member of Congress should make such an absurd statement. Even if this statement were true, the Holy Father answers to a Higher Power than Rep. DeLauro and the Gang of 18."

"The truth is," Father Euteneuer said, "nothing threatens the American experiment more than the legal but unjust killing of human beings by abortion which stands in stark contrast to the very first right enumerated by our Declaration of Independence: The Right to Life. The humanity of the unborn child is no longer even debated. It is a scientific fact. Abortion is murder, and murder is against the law. Like Dred Scott before it, which violated certain citizens' Right to Liberty, Roe v. Wade is bad, dishonest law and will eventually fall."

"Excommunication is a pastoral and medicinal penalty, not a political one. The Pope is well within his free expression of religion guaranteed by the US Constitution—and his pastoral duty—to warn any Catholic when their eternal salvation is jeopardized by their actions" Father Euteneuer said. "This is what the Catholic Church teaches and what Catholics believe. If the Gang of 18 believes otherwise, honesty and integrity requires they find another church that tells them what they want to hear. If they have that much of a problem being Catholic, no one is forcing them to stay. We certainly don't need their hypocrisy."

What is an Acquisitions Editor?

I often get asked this, since it is my job title. Michael Hyatt the President and CEO of Thomas Nelson has a blog and in his description of the publishing process he defines what an "acquisition editor" is and does--thank you Michael!

From Where I Sit:

Hurdle 1: The Acquisitions Editor

Acquisitions editors are the people inside the publishing house specifically charged with finding and developing authors and books that are congruent with the publisher’s mission. Over time, they have developed a “nose” for the right projects. They usually see hundreds of proposals every year. Good editors can review a proposal and decide in sixty seconds or less whether it merits further consideration. If it doesn’t, then it gets tossed into the rejection pile.

Typically, an acquisitions editor has unlimited authority to say “no.” They can reject a proposal without approval from anyone. Conversely, they don’t usually have the absolute authority to approve a proposal for publication. The most they can do is shepherd the proposal through the next step in the process.

This is why your first objective as an author is to sell the acquisitions editor. He’s the “gatekeeper” to the publishing house. If you can’t do that, you’re dead in the water. This is the one place where you have the most control. You must develop a compelling book proposal that gets the acquisitions editor’s attention. You must show that the content is compelling and there is a viable market for it.

I recommend you start with two sources: my article, How to Write a Winning Book Proposal (a PDF), and Terry Whalin’s Book Proposals That Sell. Both of these will help you clear the first hurdle.

Quotes from the Pope's Jesus of Nazareth

"The burning bush is the cross," (page 349).

Now, there is something you can think about long and hard. It'll also help you to understand why this book is so good...

Fr. Z's "Prayer to Say Before Logging on to the Internet"

From WDTPRS:

A prayer before logging onto the internet

Almighty and eternal God,who created us in Thine imageand bade us to seek after all that is good, true and beautiful,especially in the divine person of Thine Only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ,grant, we beseech Thee,that, through the intercession of Saint Isidore, Bishop and Doctor,during our journeys through the internetwe will direct our hands and eyes only to that which is pleasing to Theeand treat with charity and patience all those souls whom we encounter.Through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

In ESPAÑOL

Oración antes de una conexión a la red internet

Oh Dios omnipotente y eterno que nos has creado a tu imagen,
y nos has mandado buscar todo lo que es bueno, verdadero y bello,
especialmente en la persona de tu Hijo Unigénito
y Señor nuestro Jesucristo,
te rogamos, que por intercesión de
San Isidoro, Obispo y Doctor de la Iglesia,
hagas que durante nuestras peregrinaciones en la red internet
dirigimos nuestros ojos y nuestras manos solamente a lo que te es grato
y que tratemos con caridad y paciencia a todas las almas que encontremos.
Por Cristo nuestro Señor.

Amén.

Catholic Dems protest Pope's Abortion Comments

It is time to for a clear, unambigous teaching on this matter...

From USA Today:

A group of 18 Catholic House Democrats publicly disputed Pope Benedict XVI's recent condemnation of politicians who support abortion rights, saying that "such notions offend the very nature of the American experiment."

Some Athletes Choose Abortion Over Losing a Scholarship

This is horrible. Is this the country that we've become, the land of the free?
What does this say about the real price that is being paid by athletes (females, obviously) to play for the NCAA?

From AOL Sports:

A report on ESPN's Outside the Lines this morning contains news that could generate some major controversy regarding NCAA policies with respect to female athletes. According to the report, some schools have written policies saying any student-athlete who becomes pregnant will lose her athletic scholarship, and that many athletes have abortions because they don't want to lose their scholarships.

This is a Great Book

Jesus healing the possessed.

I think with the release of this book (which I got yesterday and read straight through) the pope is positioning himself to be the St. Thomas Aquinas of our age. How or why do I say this? Because like St. Thomas who answered the objections to the Faith in his day, this pope is doing the same.
A few months ago someone asked me what book I would recommend that they give to their adult children who no longer practiced the faith, without hesitation I named this book as the one. At the time I had only read some excerpts available online from Germany and Italy. It was an act of faith then, now that I have the book I know that my recommendation was justified.
This is a great book, magisterial (even though the pope doesn't want it thought of in that way). It is not just another book about Jesus, it a revolutionary book about Jesus...in that it recaptures why people have had their lives changed by their belief in Jesus for over 2,000 years.
What makes this book so special? It is like a modern Summa (those who know St. Thomas Aquinas will understand me here) in that it answers modern questions of doubt, skepticism and even inquiry on not only who Jesus is, but why Jesus is the most important person anyone has ever or can ever know.
The pope's methodology is to take a scene from the Bible, like the Lord's baptism and then to draw on that scene from the entire Bible, to show what modern scholarship has done to help us to understand the historical context of the scene, tell us how the early Church fathers interpreted the scene, how would it have been viewed in Judaism (he uses the reflections of a Rabbi when discussing the Sermon on the Mount) and then to give the reader the meaning of this event for them. Along the way he answers questions to the many objections modern people bring to their encounter with Jesus.
As someone who has studied theology for a number of years and been exposed to every screwball theology out there, I found this book to be a corrective lens to refocus and correct my vision of who Jesus is and what following him means. What impresses me (and I'm not easily impressed) is that the Pope takes on the "screwball (my term, not his)" theologies in such a way as to making them seem silly (although he is incredibly charitable in his approach).
This book will have a great effect on renewing the Church and centering it on an image of Christ that is Biblical and credible, erasing years of poor and faulty preaching and teaching.
If you are not Catholic, but a Christian you will love this book too. In fact I predict you will be come a big fan of Joseph Ratzinger and will want to read his many published works to encounter someone rooted in Scripture and conversant with modern attacks on it. If you are a non Christian I think you will find in the book an excellent introduction to what Christians believe about the God-man from Nazareth. To all you parents out there who sent your kids to Catholic schools and now wish they would practice their faith, give them this book and reintroduce them to Jesus of Nazareth.

Interview: A Rising Latin American Cardinal

With Honduran Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodriguez Maradiaga, who was high on many lists to be the pope during the last conclave and he is young enough that he'll be high on most lists for the next one if Benedict doesn't live to be over 100 (which given his current stamina could well happen--and hopefully will).
I've met the Cardinal and he is very charismatic, he would bring the good charism of the Latin American church to the universal church. The interview is in Time Magazine, here is a snipet:

Q. Do you agree with the Pope's statement that pro-choice Catholic politicians merit excommunication.

A. It is canon law that everyone who works for abortion is excommunicated. It's not something the Pope invented. If you favor abortion, you are outside the communion of the Church. And it was necessary to say that. There are people in Mexico saying I am Catholic and I support abortion rights. This is a contradiction in its very essence. As a teacher of the Church, the Pope has a responsibility of teaching when something happening is wrong.

Q. Do you agree with bishops who deny giving Holy Communion to the these politicians?

A. This is a different point. For who am I to deny Holy Communion to a person? I cannot. It's in the tradition of moral theology that even if I know a person is living in grave sin, I cannot take a public action against him. It would be giving scandal to the person. Yes, he should not seek (communion), but I cannot deny it from him.

Pope: Make the Word of God Known!

From Zenit:

As a first step, we can respond to this question with another: what is this "reality"? What is real? Are only material goods, social, economic and political problems "reality"? This was precisely the great error of the dominant tendencies of the last century, a most destructive error, as we can see from the results of both Marxist and capitalist systems. They falsify the notion of reality by detaching it from the foundational and decisive reality which is God. Anyone who excludes God from his horizons falsifies the notion of "reality" and, in consequence, can only end up in blind alleys or with recipes for destruction.

The first basic point to affirm, then, is the following: only those who recognize God know reality and are able to respond to it adequately and in a truly human manner. The truth of this thesis becomes evident in the face of the collapse of all the systems that marginalize God.

Yet here a further question immediately arises: who knows God? How can we know him? We cannot enter here into a complex discussion of this fundamental issue. For a Christian, the nucleus of the reply is simple: only God knows God, only his Son who is God from God, true God, knows him. And he "who is nearest to the Father’s heart has made him known" (John 1:18). Hence the unique and irreplaceable importance of Christ for us, for humanity. If we do not know God in and with Christ, all of reality is transformed into an indecipherable enigma; there is no way, and without a way, there is neither life nor truth.

God is the foundational reality, not a God who is merely imagined or hypothetical, but God with a human face; he is God-with-us, the God who loves even to the Cross. When the disciple arrives at an understanding of this love of Christ "to the end", he cannot fail to respond to this love with a similar love: "I will follow you wherever you go" (Luke 9:57).

We can ask ourselves a further question: what does faith in this God give us? The first response is: it gives us a family, the universal family of God in the Catholic Church. Faith releases us from the isolation of the "I", because it leads us to communion: the encounter with God is, in itself and as such, an encounter with our brothers and sisters, an act of convocation, of unification, of responsibility towards the other and towards others. In this sense, the preferential option for the poor is implicit in the Christological faith in the God who became poor for us, so as to enrich us with his poverty (cf. 2 Corinthians 8:9).

Yet before we consider what is entailed by the realism of our faith in the God who became man, we must explore the question more deeply: how can we truly know Christ so as to be able to follow him and live with him, so as to find life in him and to communicate that life to others, to society and to the world? First and foremost, Christ makes his person, his life and his teaching known to us through the word of God.

At the beginning of this new phase that the missionary Church of Latin America and the Caribbean is preparing to enter, starting with this Fifth General Conference in Aparecida, an indispensable pre-condition is profound knowledge of the word of God. To achieve this, we must train people to read and meditate on the word of God: this must become their staple diet, so that, through their own experience, the faithful will see that the words of Jesus are spirit and life (cf. John 6:63). Otherwise, how could they proclaim a message whose content and spirit they do not know thoroughly? We must build our missionary commitment and the whole of our lives on the rock of the word of God. For this reason, I encourage the Bishops to strive to make it known.

An important way of introducing the People of God to the mystery of Christ is through catechesis. Here, the message of Christ is transmitted in a simple and substantial form. It is therefore necessary to intensify the catechesis and the faith formation not only of children but also of young people and adults. Mature reflection on faith is a light for the path of life and a source of strength for witnessing to Christ. Most valuable tools with which to achieve this are the Catechism of the Catholic Church and its abridged version, the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

In this area, we must not limit ourselves solely to homilies, lectures, Bible courses or theology courses, but we must have recourse also to the communications media: press, radio and television, websites, forums and many other methods for effectively communicating the message of Christ to a large number of people.

Our Lady of Aparecida

Some history behind the image, from Wikopedia:

The history of Our Lady of Conception Aparecida begins in 1717, when news arrived that the Count of Assumar, Dom Pedro de Almeida e Portugal, Governor of the Province of São Paulo and Minas Gerais, would be passing by the village of Guaratinguetá on his way to Vila Rica, today the city of Ouro Preto in Minas Gerais.

Three fishermen, Domingos Garcia, Filipe Pedroso and João Alves were sent out by the local authorities to find fish in the Paraíba River. They went down the river and found nothing. After many unsuccessful attempts they arrived at a place called Porto Itaguaçu.

João Alves threw his net into the water and brought back a statue of Our Lady of Conception, but the head was missing. He threw his net in again and soon reeled in the head of the statue. After that, according to the legend, the fish arrived in abundance for the three humble fishermen and their nets were full.

According to most sources the image had been sculpted by Frei Agostino de Jesus, a monk from São Paulo known for his sculpture. The image was less than three feet tall, was made around 1650, and must have been underwater for years. It is a dark brown color, is covered by a stiff robe of richly embroidered thick cloth, and wears an imperial crown which was added in 1904. Only her face and hands can be seen.

Vatican Denies Hiding Part of Secret of Fatima

From the Times Online:

The Vatican tried yesterday to draw a line under a conspiracy theory that has dogged the Catholic Church for decades – that it was harbouring details of the predicted apocalypse.

The Pope’s second-in-command, Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, denied that the Church was suppressing a vision of the end of the world said to have been revealed by the Virgin Mary to three shepherd children on a hillside at Fatima in Portugal exactly 90 years ago.

The three “Secrets of Fatima” were written down by one of the children, Lucia Dos Santos – who became a Carmelite nun – and sent to the Vatican in a sealed envelope. Two of the “secrets” were made public, apparently predicting the inferno of 20th-century world war and totalitarianism and the eventual reconversion of Communist Russia to Christianity.

Pope John Paul II suggested that the third “secret” predicted the 1981 attempt on his life. He failed to satisfy conspiracy theorists however, with many accusing the Vatican of disclosing only part of the last Fatima secret.