Sunday

• Dicit Dominus: ego cogito cogitationes pacis; invocabitis me, et ego exaudiam vos, et reducam captivitatem vestram de cunctis locis. We had a Low Mass with hymns (sung in full, a legacy of Fr James implementing the best of Anglo-Catholic practice; I listen) and still had out the catafalque with the black covering and six yellow candles from All Souls. And I didn’t bring a camera today! Printed in ’57, my missal’s table of movable feasts ends in ’87. No saints’ commemorations in ’62.
• St Charles Borromeo, the inventor of the seminary. Trying to reform the church by making sure priests were educated enough.
• Yesterday Donna and I went to a 30th-anniversary party for one of her co-workers, at an ‘independent Bible church’. Renewal of vows. Very sweet as you can imagine (a grandson was a ring-bearer). A bit of the heartland in south Jersey, or not all evangelicals are Southerners even though that’s their turf. The pastor (‘married for 40 years: yes, to the same woman’) gave a great sermon defending Christian marriage, impressive for a kind of Christianity that doesn’t call it a sacrament; could have fooled me. An unliturgical shop but of course we’re liturgical beings so the service had echoes of the Prayer Book. Big plain wooden cross on the apsidal wall and a ‘This Do in Remembrance of Me’ altar front and center. (I understand the funny word order is the King James using the same order as the original Greek.) Anyway, because I notice those things, I saw that the couple have an Irish name and, sure enough, their wedding album showed what looks like a big postwar Northeast Philly parish. Can’t pry but you wonder what went wrong. To be fair, as I like to say, 20-30 years ago, in practice (because of that awful council, in the dark ages before Pope Benedict), the church s*cked. Sad, but that these fine folks turned right and not left tells me their heart is in the right place. God is merciful.
• From Cracked: It’s Not About Latin™ (but I like using it) and the only tradition English-speaking Catholics really have of praying in English is the Rosary (so even the liberals stay Tudor with the Our Father for example), but ‘this just in’: praying the Rosary in Latin is good for your health! (Scroll down here.) Namely your heart. Sweet. Ave Maria gratia plena...
• Peter Kreeft, a Protestant-turned-Catholic, on that kind of ecumenism. The church and the mainstream liberal Lutherans agree that faith vs. works was never the real difference! It’s about authority: infallible church vs. fallible (ironically, claiming more power, to rewrite doctrine, than a divinely instituted infallible church). But... is Kreeft’s face-saving answer for Protestants a protestantized church or does he have a point? Chesterton: the reformer is right about what’s wrong but wrong about what’s right. Confessional Lutheranism’s (the good conservative ones) semi-Catholic.
• The communion of saints. Of course I believe in their invocation but in my opinion ‘it’s just like asking a friend to pray for you’ is enough.
• Funny old world, isn’t it? I hate the ‘Reformation’ (literally forcing people away from the body of Christ: omnes sancti martyres Anglorum, orate pro nobis) but I’m as Christ- and Eucharist-centered as a Missouri Synod Lutheran or Bob Hart Anglican. It’s Not About Latin™ but I worship in Latin; I hate Vatican II but believe in religious liberty and even ecumenism. (But ecumenism’s played itself out, it’s gone as far as it’ll ever go; the sides know what the others really teach and are no longer trying to kill each other. Corporate union is possible with the Orthodox — because sacramentally we’re the same — but probably won’t happen. The way forward is still individual submissions to the church.)