Church

• Eye candy from NLM. Click the photos to enlarge them. Holy Apostles Seminary in Connecticut, the Pontifical Mass of Cardinal Brandmüller in the Santuario di Campocavallo di Osimo, Ancona, and Russian Orthodoxy: the Patriarch and bishops in Assumption Cathedral in the Kremlin (today they’re celebrating Byzantine theology’s three founding fathers, SS. Basil, Gregory Nazianzen and John Chrysostom). With these two small revivals, Pope Benedict’s Western Catholic one and the Orthodox one in Eastern Europe after the fall of Communism, there’s much good going on.
• Fr L: One of the weaknesses of our day is spoiled, sappy, soft, sweet, sentimentalist Catholicism. I’m all for Jesus the friend of sinners, and gentle Jesus meek and mild, I’m all for love and forgiveness and not being judgmental, but I’m also for Rooster Cogburn Catholicism. Sometimes we also need backbone and some true grit. Remembering that Jesus kicked the moneychangers out of the temple and he’s the stern Pantokrator of icons and not like the piety Fr L criticises. Part of being the Lord.



• That said, viva Italia. Bocelli sings. I like the hymn at the beginning. From Fr Finigan.
• Pronouncing Church Latin. Hearing it spoken the traditional English way (venite as venighty for example) would be interesting but the ‘new classical’ way is ugly.
• It’s Not About Latin™. Fr Z: much of the older, traditional form of the Latin Church’s rite of baptism can be done in English. Ronnie Knox did it in Latin because the devil understands it and the baby doesn’t understand English yet.
• That ‘Confession’ iPhone app (I don’t have an iPhone): well, duh and silly media hype. It’s nothing new! It’s an examination of conscience like the traditional ones based on the Ten Commandments, printed in the back of your Key of Heaven or St Joseph’s Missal, to prepare for Confession. (So, even though it’s not print, just like them it has an imprimatur: wonderful!) Of course the media are being silly and sensationalistic making it out to be ‘a sacrament by iPhone’ to tease you into reading the story. From T1:9.
• English diocese: ordinariate expectations put downsizing on hold.
• Hooray! The deaconing of Edwin Barnes.
• You win some; you lose some. ‘No, thanks, Holy Father’: David Virtue talks to Bishop Ackerman. Much of this is about differences between English and American Anglo-Catholicism (Novus Ordo and would-be RC vs loving old forms and being non-papal). From Dr Tighe.

Labels: Anglicanism, Eastern Orthodoxy, England, music, Russia, the Catholic faith