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Book Review By James Spencer
The Grunt Padre: Father Vincent Robert Capodanno Viet Nam 1966-67: Servant of God
by Fr. Daniel L. Mode
The Grunt Padre: Father Vincent Robert Capodanno, Viet Nam 1966-67: Servant of God, by Fr. Daniel L. Mode. Published in 2000 by CMJ Marian Publishers, P.O. Box 661, Oak Lawn, IL 60454; (888) 636-6799; http://www.cmjbooks.com/; jwby@aol.com. ISBN 1-891280-08-2 (softcover), 1-891280-17-1 (hardcover); Library of Congress Catalog Card Number #99-069490. 6”X9”, 203 pages. Price: softcover, $15.95; hardcover, $22.95.
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This magnificently written biography narrates the life of Fr. Vincent Capodanno (1929 – 1967), a Maryknoll priest who first served in Far East Missions and then as a Navy Chaplain attached to a Battalion of “grunt” (infantry) Marines fighting in Viet Nam, where he died so heroically that he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor posthumously. He lived his entire life in such a holy way that his cause for canonization has been introduced in Rome and he has been declared a Servant of God.
The book starts long before his birth, telling about the two 19th century waves of Italian immigrations to this country. The first took place from Colonial times until the Civil War. This wave consisted mostly of middle-class Italians seeking greater freedom and opportunity. The second wave began after the 1870 unification of Italy and ran into the early twentieth century. This wave consisted mostly of poorer Italians seeking escape from the corruption and abuse of the new Italian government. Fr. Capodanno’s mother was a descendent of the first wave, while his father, who came to this country in 1901, was part of the second wave. They married in 1908 and moved to New York City, where they lived the rest of their lives.
Fr. Capodanno was their tenth and last child. He grew up in a strongly Catholic family in a strongly Catholic (and Italian) neighborhood. He went through public grade and high school and then worked two years before going into the Maryknoll seminary in 1949. Ordained in 1958, he was sent almost immediately to Formosa as a missionary, where he served until 1964, when he was sent back to the U.S.A. for some R&R. In early 1965, he was sent to Hong Kong. After a few months there, he requested and was granted permission to become an U.S. Navy chaplain. The book, in this chapter on Fr. Capodanno’s missionary service, includes a brief but fascinating history of the work of the Maryknoll priests in the Far East.
He was commissioned a Navy Lieutenant on December 8, 1965. After completing chaplaincy school, he was assigned to the Marines. During the last two years of his life (1966-67), he served the “grunt” Marines in Viet Nam’s worst (and bloodiest) areas. He died from machine-gun fire while trying to rescue an injured Marine. That Marine was severely wounded after moving forward unwittingly to within fifteen yards of a hidden enemy machine-gun nest. When he went to assist him, Fr. Capodanno knew full-well where that machine-gun was, but he went anyhow to help the shot-up Marine. Such a courageous and holy death! In this chapter about Fr. Capodanno’s life as a Navy chaplain, this book gives a short but edifying history of military chaplains.
Throughout the book, the author presents an inspiring picture of Fr. Capodanno’s personality and character. He was kind, quietly sociable, and an excellent “people-reader.” All who knew him considered him a person they could talk to, even open up with. These traits made him an excellent priest, an excellent missionary, and an especially excellent chaplain under constantly life-threatening battlefield conditions.
This book is a page-turner, a book you can hardly put down once you start reading it. Amazingly, it started out as Fr. Mode’s Master’s Thesis! It is so well-written, so captivating, that it must be considered the Master’s Thesis that every college professor dreams of getting -- but never actually gets. I mention this only because some of you readers may be college professors who struggle annually through many a theses that tests both your patience and your endurance. If you’re such a professor, don’t despair. Instead, read this book and pray that you may some day receive a thesis that is even half as enjoyable as this one must have been for some fortunate professor back before it became such a successful book.
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Copyright, 2009, by James B. Spencer. First Serial Rights
Copyright, 2009, by James B. Spencer. First Serial Rights
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Blast from the Past
Holy Card of St. Francis Xavier Cabrini
Image submitted by Stella Gruenbacher
Stella Gruenbacher, a regular reader of Venite Missa Est!, sent this image to be posted. It is a lovely holy card and third class relic of St. Francis Xavier Cabrini. Thank you so much for sharing Stella. Please send your old pictures of first communions, weddings, baptisms, holy cards etc. to share to bumpy187@gmail.com...I'll post them so that we all can share and reminisce.
Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini (July 15, 1850 – December 22, 1917) also called Mother Cabrini, was the first American citizen to be canonized by the Roman Catholic Church.
She took religious vows in 1877 and added Xavier to her name to honor the Jesuit priest, Francis Xavier. She became the mother superior of the House of Providence orphanage in Codogno, where she taught.
Mother Cabrini died of complications from malaria at age 67 in Columbus Hospital in Chicago, Illinois, on December 22, 1917. Though originally entombed in West Park, New York, her body was exhumed in 1931 and is now enshrined in the church's altar at St. Frances Cabrini Shrine, part of Mother Cabrini High School, at 701 Fort Washington Avenue, in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan. The street to the west of the shrine was renamed Cabrini Boulevard in her honor.
She was beatified on November 13, 1938, and canonized on July 7, 1946, by Pope Pius XII. St. Frances Xavier Cabrini is the patron saint of immigrants. Her beatification miracle involved the restoration of sight to a child who had been blinded by excess silver nitrate in the eyes. Her canonization miracle involved the healing of a terminally ill nun.
The date fixed at the universal level for Mother Cabrini's feast day is December 22,[2] for the novus ordo and November 13 for the traditional Latin Mass, but other dates may be assigned at a local level.
The housing project in Chicago is named after her, due to her work with Italian immigrants in the location. It has since become a haven for underprivileged and poor people and the MSC sisters still work there.
The Cabrini Mission Foundation is an organization committed to advancing St. Frances Xavier Cabrini's mission and legacy of healing, teaching, and caring around the world.
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The Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles
Submitted by Larry Bethel
Please help us build a monastery for the glory of God, that by our lives, we may be a sign of Christ’s love, a “light shining in the darkness”, and by our prayers draw down His blessing upon you and yours, Holy Mother the Church, the sacred priesthood and the whole world.
Our young and growing community needs your help through prayer and monetary contributions to build a permanent Priory to house 58 nuns. We are almost half that many! You can be part of this historic foundation from the ground up. Please take a look at the exciting—and quickly becoming urgent—plans.
The Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles is a traditional monastic community of women who desire to imitate the Blessed Virgin Mary in the giving of herself to God to fulfill His Will, especially in her role of assistance by prayer and work to the Apostles, first priests of the Catholic Church.Society in these latter days is in obvious dire need of re-evangelization and sanctification through the ministry in particular of the sacred priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church. Although times have changed, the divine mission committed to the first Apostles, as well as the needs of those to whom they were sent, have not. It is our ideal to imitate Our Lady's retirement from the world in quiet seclusion, as well as her apostolic charity. Consecrated entirely to her and filled with her spirit, which is none other than the Holy Spirit of God, we aspire to be, to the successors of the Apostles in our times, what she was to them in the beginning: behind-the-scenesencouragement, assistance and support.
http://www.benedictinesofmary.org/page-home.html
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Fontgombault Abbey Benedictine Monastery
Polish Website (pdf) with Great Pics
http://christianitas.pl/pliki/Duch%20Liturgii%20album%20fragment.pdf
Submitted by Larry Bethel
Fontgombault Abbey (or Abbaye Notre-Dame de Fontgombault) is a Benedictine monastery of the Solesmes Congregation located in Fontgombault in the département of Indre, in the province of Berry, France.
The founding monks at Our Lady of the Annunciation of Clear Creek Benedictine monastery, in the diocese of Tulsa, Oklahoma were all members of this monastic community at Fontgombault, France, or of her daughterhouses Randol, Triors, and Gaussan.
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Can Music Really Be Sacred?
http://www.musicasacra.com/sacred/
From the Winter issue of Sacred Music, volume 135, number 4
Can Music Really Be Sacred?
http://www.musicasacra.com/sacred/
From the Winter issue of Sacred Music, volume 135, number 4
Our liturgical choices depend upon our understanding of what sacred means, particularly in music, because many contend that there is no such thing as sacred or non-sacred music. Many years ago, Msgr. Schuler contended that notes are not sacred, but it is the associations of music which bring to it the connotation of sacred. I would like to explore that notion, placing it in the context of “reception.”
We have two similar words in English, but they have important differences: “Sacred” and “holy;” Latin has similar, but not quite identical words, sacer and sanctus. “Sacred” is a participle, expressing the object of some action; something sacred has been set aside, dedicated to a particular and noble purpose. Holy, on the other hand, refers to the intrinsic aspect of the other, a quality of being whole, complete, perfect, even health-giving, saving. We call a saint holy, but a bishop sacred, the Mass holy, but the liturgy sacred. “Sacred,” then, emphasizes a substantial component of reception—things not naturally taken to be sacred can become so by usage; it concerns things that have been set aside for the service of the holy. But there is another consideration: Some things are more apt for the service of the holy than others; their characteristics are congruent with their sacred use.
The reception of sacred things can be one of two different kinds. Take, for instance, the vestment used for Mass, the chasuble. It was in Roman times a normal outer garment; presumably, it was worn by the priest when he said Mass. In the course of time, it became obsolete as a conventional garment but was retained by the priest celebrating Mass, and so ultimately it became received as an exclusively sacred garment. Thus, something originally secular can be assimilated to a sacred context by gradual reception. This is not all, however; the chasuble is apt for its purpose, because it is an encompassing garment, covering the whole body, symbolizing the transformation of the priest into an alter Christus. Moreover, in the process of sacralization of the garment, it takes on more sacred characteristics: its form becomes more ample, the materials chosen for it become more precious (traditionally silk), and it takes on sacred symbols. This is, then, a matter of the evolution of a gradual reception, a transformation of something secular into something unambiguously sacred.
The other kind of reception is of things perceived as always having been sacred, since time immemorial. Incense is an example of that. Incense was already used in the Hebrew temple, and in spite of the theories of some rationalists that its purpose was to cover the stink of animal sacrifice (which it may have done), its stated sacred purpose was to represent the ascent of prayer; see Psalm 140:2, dirigatur oratio mea sicut incensum in conspectu tuo (let my prayer be directed as incense in thy sight). It is apt for its purpose, because it visually ascends; its fragrance is unlike anything else, and so it can be easily recognized as set aside; it is a precious material, the immolation of which constitutes a worthy sacrifice, and its use is ample. There are those who would say that it came to the Western Church from the Byzantine court, which was a secular one; the Byzantine Emperor, however, was received very much as a sacred person, and the use of incense there must also have been sacred.
I draw this distinction between those things always received as sacred and those whose reception evolves gradually, because the same distinction can be drawn with music. Gregorian chant has always been received as sacred; the early fathers of the church jealously guarded the sacredness of the music of its liturgy, and though this is pure speculation, its earliest stages were probably based upon Jewish precedent, also sacred. Over its history, it has maintained the distinction of being exclusively sacred; even though it may be quoted occasionally in concert music, its presence there serves to bring an element of the sacred to the concert. Moreover, its musical style is apt for sacred use: its non-metric rhythm conveys a sense of transcending the temporal limits of the here and now; its unison singing represents a unified voice, suitable to its sacred usage; its most melismatic forms are so ample as to preclude its employment for any mundane purpose; and its intimate link with the texts and actions of the sacred liturgy identify it with the sacred purposes of the liturgy. Its unambiguous sacred reception forms, then, a bedrock of the sacred in the liturgy.
Sacred polyphony evolved out of Gregorian chant, elaborating several voice parts upon the sacred chant melodies. But it had an important interaction with the secular; once the process of elaboration upon chant was developed, whether it was in a cantus firmus style or in thorough-going imitation, it was employed in both sacred and secular contexts. The interaction of the sacred and secular in music came to an important point with the Renaissance Mass, in which a secular piece, whether monophonic or polyphonic, was the basis of a Mass. This is often cited as evidence of a lack of distinction between sacred and secular in the Renaissance, but I would contend that it is evidence of a more important process. A Mass based upon the tune, such as “L’Homme armé,” incorporates that tune in long notes—a cantus firmus, and in an intricate and learned polyphonic texture. It is no longer just the tune, but a part of a larger whole, whose sacred character is unmistakable. Thus, the secular has been sacralized, turned to a sacred purpose through an apt stylistic transformation.
This is entirely appropriate to a Christian world view. The sacred is not something simply merely separated from the world; rather the sacred transforms elements of the world to a transcendent purpose. The Eucharist is the most outstanding example: what was ordinary food for the Hebrews was transformed into the Passover meal; this, in turn was transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ. Bread and wine, elements of natural nourishment, progressively became transcendent, supernatural, saving nourishment. In my study of the Medieval Sarum Rite of England, I concluded that, contrary to the theorists of comparative religion, who looked to the opposition of sacred and profane (in the sense of secular), the medieval (and Christian) sense of the sacred was that the important differences were between the more sacred and the less sacred, and the continuity of these was more important that their opposition.
In music, the transformation of elements of our ordinary world conveys the message that our ordinary lives can also be transformed. The hitch is: what if the incorporation of music into the liturgy does not involve a discernable transformation? What if the use of styles clearly identifiable with worldly and secular purposes retain their identity in liturgical use? Is the message, then, that there is no transformation? that the secular life-styles are all that there is? I would contend that this is the danger of the present use of secular styles, since the instruments they use, their vocal styling, their simplistic musical construction all retain their secular identity. Rather, it is crucial that whatever musical styles are used in the liturgy, there be clear elements of their sacralization, that their incorporation is unambiguously for the sake of transformation into something sacred. The regular use of a few pieces of Gregorian chant and of sacred polyphony can be enough to signal that difference, to inspire a congregation to higher purposes in their participation in the liturgy.
I am reminded of the principal Sunday Mass as a certain Midwestern cathedral; I attended it some five years ago, and there was a typical repertory of music in popular styles, some of the latest compositions for the Ordinary of the Mass, all accompanied by a heterogeneous and not particularly excellent instrumental group—piano, flute, drums, string bass, guitar—that gave a rather “scrappy” tone to the whole proceeding. It was clear that the musicians were dedicated, but the total effect was ambiguous and unfocused. I returned to that Mass last year, and heard an excellent organ in the loft played by an expert organist. The priest sang most of his parts, and a choir provided some worthy attempts at sacred polyphony. Much of the music was the same as the time before, but now the priest’s singing, the organ accompaniment, and the presence of sacred polyphony gave a sense of purpose and focus that was entirely different. It was not the ideal, but in it the ideal was discernable, and in my view, that is real progress, a kind of progress we are now witnessing in many places.
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Professor William Mahrt teaches musicology at Stanford University and is president of the Church Music Association of America and editor of Sacred Music. mahrt@standford.edu
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