Topics: October: Month of the Holy Rosary...Why Latin? By James Spencer....Army: Fr. Kapaun Worthy of Medal of Honor....Vatican Humor: The Limo Driver.... Muslim Convert: Urges Catholics to Defend Their Faith....Crisis of Immutability: History, Time Magazine, 1962....Catholic Saint: St. Padre Pio....Party in Winfield: Blue Grass Mass
The Necessaries
This week Jim Spencer is back and has gathered more great insight into the subject of Latin (or more specifically, why Latin in the liturgy). Mr. Spencer was the original writer for Venite Missa Est! and has always been a supporter of this blog. Thanks Jim!
If you would like to contribute to Venite Missa Est! send inquiry to bumpy187@gmail.com.
Please note: St. Anthony Catholic Church is the only local church celebrating the Traditional Latin Mass (EFLR) in the Wichita area. Though this blog is loosely centered around this parish and it's members, Venite Missa Est! is by no means, in any way an official voice of, or for, St. Anthony Parish or the Diocese of Wichita. Venite Missa Est is strictly a private layman's endeavor.
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October, Month of the Holy Rosary
A Moment With Mary
Church tradition tells us that, in the year 1208, Saint Dominic had a vision of the Virgin Mary while praying in his church. The Blessed Mother reportedly taught him to pray the Rosary, telling him to use this weapon to defeat the heretics.
Aflame with enthusiasm, St Dominic called on Catholics and heretics alike to pray the Rosary. By 1213, many Catholic crusaders had followed St Dominic's advice. Devotion to Our Lady of the Rosary spread like wildfire among them.
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Why Latin?
By Jim Spencer
Fr. Emile Kapaun (from the book, A Shepherd in Combat Boots, by William L. Maher):
“Saying Mass before those devout Koreans stirred the young chaplain (Fr. Kapaun). ‘As I said the prayers at the foot of the altar,’ he wrote to Bishop Mark K. Carroll of Wichita, ‘I could not help but think I could not speak the language of these people nor could they speak mine, but at the altar we had a common language. I imagine the people felt the same way.’”
Peter York, S.T.D., in The Roman Liturgy (taken from the book Sursum Corda, edited by David Pietruska):
“. . . Latin is also a symbol of the unity of the Church. As at the tower of Babel the confusion of tongues marked the dispersion of nations, so in the Church unity of speech is a lesson that Christ has joined all men in the bonds of brotherhood. The use of Latin connects us with our fathers in the faith. . . . Thus, like the Communion of Saints, our liturgical language binds together ages and countries the most remote and is a visible sign to all of the unity of the Church of Christ. . . . Moreover, Latin has this great advantage that it never changes. Spoken languages, on the contrary, are never fixed, but the words and phrases in them are always taking on new meanings. Hence, a Liturgy in the spoken language sometimes becomes unintelligible and often positively misleading. . . .”
Pope Paul VI, from remarks made at an audience, April 26, 1968 (taken from the book, Sursum Corda, edited by David Pietruska):
“. . . Without Latin, their (seminarians) higher and complete intellectual, theological, and liturgical formation – which the modern world demands of priests – would be minimized. The Ecumenical Council Vatican II, in the Decree, Optatam totius on the formation of priests, in the Constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium on the liturgy, and in other documents, has repeatedly advised and inculcated the necessity of this study of Latin. It is precisely for its educative and formative value that We desire that Latin should continue to hold a place of honor in our midst.”
Fr. Uwe Michael Lang, in an article appearing in L’Osservatore Romano, 11/15/2007 (taken from the book, Sursum Corda, edited by David Pietruska):
“. . . The Second Vatican Council wanted to address this question (liturgical language) by extending the use of the vernacular in the liturgy, above all in the readings (Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, art. 36, n. 2). At the same time, it underlined that ‘the use of the Latin language . . . is to be preserved in the Latin rite’ (Sacrosanctum Concilium, art. 36, n. 1, cf. also art. 54). The Council Fathers did not imagine that the sacred language of the Western Church would be completely replaced by the vernacular.”
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Vivat Ecclesia Catholica. Ergo vivant Traditiones Catholicae. Ergo vivat lingua Latina.
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Army: Kapaun Worthy of Medal of Honor
By Roy Wenzl
The Wichita Eagle
Father Emil Kapaun, the U.S. Army chaplain who died in a prison camp after saving dozens of soldiers' lives in the Korean War, is deserving of the Medal of Honor, the secretary of the Army has determined.
Kapaun, a native of Pilsen, in Marion County, and a former parish priest there, died of starvation and pneumonia in the prison camp at Pyoktong, North Korea, on May 23, 1951; he was 35. Soldiers who were with him have said that the communist Chinese camp guards murdered him because he rallied fellow starving soldiers to pray, to stay alive and to stay true to their country in the face of relentless brainwashing sessions.
Fellow prisoners of war have pleaded with the military for decades to give Kapaun the Medal of Honor. As a result, Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Goddard, as early as April 2001 asked Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to review Kapaun's eligibility for the honor.
In a letter Tiahrt received this week, Army Secretary Pete Geren wrote, "After giving this request careful, personal consideration, I have determined that Chaplain Kapaun's actions in combat operations and as a prisoner of war in Korea warrant award of the Medal of Honor.
"This brave Soldier clearly distinguished himself by his courageous actions. The Army and our nation are forever grateful for his heroic service."
Tiahrt said Thursday that the decision is not entirely complete. Congress and President Obama must sign off on it.
"But it's the Secretary of the Army who does the research and makes the key recommendation," Tiahrt said. "This is huge, and I'm very happy about this."
Tiahrt himself called Kapaun's remaining immediate family — his brother, Eugene, and Eugene's wife, Helen, who live in Bel Aire. The news stunned Helen, who spoke for her ailing husband.
"We are proud of him, as we should be," she said.
"But I don't think Father Emil would have wanted honors for himself. He would have said, 'Oh, shucks,' and thrown off any thoughts about honors to someone else."
The Roman Catholic Church has for several decades conducted a separate investigation to determine whether Kapaun should be declared a saint. That investigation has gained strength in recent months.
The Vatican earlier this year sent an investigator to Wichita to interview families and their doctors who say their children miraculously recovered from what looked like fatal medical problems after they prayed to the soul of Kapaun. Proving at least two miracles is a requirement for considering sainthood in the church.
The military during the Korean War had already awarded Kapaun the Distinguished Service Cross, its second-highest award. But fellow POWS said he deserved the nation's highest award.
A number of them dictated notarized affidavits testifying to his heroism under fire and in prison. Several fellow prisoners, after they were released at the end of the war, came to Wichita and Pilsen to extol Kapaun's heroism.
Kapaun was a chaplain of the 8th Cavalry Regiment of the First Army Division during the Korean War. Soldiers in that outfit saw him run through machine gun and artillery fire during a number of battles, dragging wounded soldiers to safety.
Four months after the war began, with the communist North Korean Army falling apart and the American army apparently victorious, the Chinese Army suddenly entered the war. Kapaun's 8th Cavalry regiment was surrounded and nearly annihilated by tens of thousands of Chinese soldiers in November 1950.
American soldiers who escaped the battle outside the North Korean village of Unsan said Kapaun refused to leave the wounded even after officers ordered and soldiers screamed at him to leave the battlefield.
In the following six months, on a horrific death march to prison camps and then in two prison camps just south of the Chinese border, Kapaun saved many lives. He escaped numerous times to steal food to bring back to starving prisoners, washed the filthy underwear of sick soldiers too feeble to do it themselves, and made pots and pans out of shredded roofing tin to boil the only clean water soldiers drank in the camps.
Soldiers said he used many skills he told them he'd learned as a farm boy growing up outside Pilsen.
They said he was a devout priest who violated camp rules every night by saying the rosary with fellow soldiers; but he sometimes spoke four-letter-words after confronting vicious guards mistreating prisoners.
When starving soldiers, freezing in subzero weather, began to hoard or steal food from one another, Kapaun would give his own food away and bless it in front of the soldiers as "food we cannot only eat but share."
"By offering pieces of his clothing and giving portions of his own meager rations to his injured comrades, Chaplain Kapaun unwittingly weakened his resistance which, in turn, hastened his untimely death," Tiahrt wrote Rumsfeld in 2001.
Helen Kapaun said she and the family were "shocked" when former POWs came home after the war and told hundreds of stories of her brother-in-law's heroics.
"All we knew of him was that he was a good priest and a good man," she said. "My husband had said that Father Emil was a man who was always religious and always meant what he said."
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Vatican Humor
Tip'O the Hat to Diana DiAmato
After getting all of Pope Benedict's luggage loaded into the limo, (and he doesn't travel light), the driver notices the Pope is still standing on the curb.
'Excuse me, Your Holiness,' says the driver, 'Would you please take your seat so we can leave?'
'Well, to tell you the truth,' says the Pope, 'they never let me drive at the Vatican when I was a cardinal, and I'd really like to drive today.'
'I'm sorry, Your Holiness, but I cannot let you do that. I'd lose my job! What if something should happen?' protests the driver, wishing he'd never gone to work that morning..
'Who's going to tell?' says the Pope with a smile.
Reluctantly, the driver gets in the back as the Pope climbs in behind the wheel. The driver quickly regrets his decision when, after exiting the airport, the Pontiff floors it, accelerating the limo to 205 kph.. (Remember, the Pope is German..)
'Please slow down, Your Holiness!' pleads the worried driver, but the Pope keeps the pedal to the metal until they hear sirens.
'Oh, dear God, I'm going to lose my license -- and my job!' moans the driver.
The Pope pulls over and rolls down the window as the cop approaches, but the cop takes one look at him, goes back to his motorcycle, and gets on the radio. 'I need to talk to the Chief,' he says to the dispatcher.
The Chief gets on the radio and the cop tells him that he's stopped a limo going 205 kph..
'So bust him,' says the Chief.
'I don't think we want to do that, he's really important,' said the cop.
The Chief exclaimed,' All the more reason!'
'No, I mean really important,' said the cop with a bit of persistence.
The Chief then asked, 'Who do you have there, the mayor?'
Cop: 'Bigger.'
Chief: ' A senator?'
Cop: 'Bigger.'
Chief: 'The Prime Minister?'
Cop: 'Bigger.'
'Well,' said the Chief, 'who is it?'
Cop: 'I think it's God!'
The Chief is even more puzzled and curious, 'What makes you think it's God?'
Cop: 'His chauffeur is the Pope!'
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Convert From Islam
Urges Catholics to Defend Their Faith with Firmness
Washington D.C., Jan 17, 2007 / 11:12 am (CNA).- A prominent Catholic convert from Islam told a group this week not to shy away from sharing Jesus with their Muslim neighbors, assuring them that most Muslims respect a clear and well-argued defense of faith and despise weakness and a lack of firmness in apologetics.
During a speech for a seminar called, “What Every Catholic Should Know About Islam,” in Virginia, Daniel Ali, an Iraqi who converted from Islam in 1998, told the more than 400 people in attendance, “The first line of defense is to know your faith.” The baptized should be willing to stand up when their beliefs are being attacked, he said.
When Christians encounter Muslims, “They cannot be silent about Jesus in order to get along with those who profess the Islamic faith. They do not like people who are weak. They have more respect for those who defend their convictions,” Ali said.
He noted that it is very common for Americans “to defend what they believe, but when it’s the Christian faith, people are afraid to speak of it.”
Ali also underscored that there are two kinds of jihad. The “great jihad” is the daily struggle of individuals to live their faith, and the “minor jihad” is the struggle against the enemies of Allah.
Christians and other non-Muslims should be more concerned about the second jihad, Ali added. “It is very sad that tragedy makes us pay attention to the most challenging moment of our time,” he stated, in reference to the 9-11 attacks. “When the Muslims talk about taking over the West, they are not kidding. I know their minds, I think that they really believe what they are saying,” he asserted.
Ali is co-author with Robert Spencer of the book “Inside Islam: A Guide For Catholics,” which describes how Muslims consider Jesus to be a prophet but they deny his death on the cross and condemn belief in his divine nature.
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Crisis of Immutability
Time Magazine, Friday, Nov. 09, 1962
Everything has been ordained by tradition and now you want to change it all, complained Vatican Prefect of Sacred Ceremonies Archbishop Enrico Dante. The prelates of the Second Vatican Council were indeed talking of change, and change in the basic area of the church's public worship.
Reforming the liturgy means in essence revising the solemn, tradition-laden Mass that has stood basically unchanged for 400 years. The structure of ritual is so elaborately linked* that any change is likely to become a crucial change. If Latin were dropped, for example, it might be natural also to drop plain chant, which is awkward in most other languages. "In the last four centuries," says Jesuit Liturgist Hermann Schmidt, "the ideal has become immutability. Certainly God is immutable; but we are men, and we cannot always express ourselves the same. This is a crisis of immutability."
At the heart of the crisis is Latin, the language of the Mass and the language of the council. In exquisite Latin, some prelates have been arguing for the introduction of the vernacular, while others—such as Cardinal Mclntyre of Los Angeles—have in halting Latin painfully defended the ancient language. The arguments of those who favor keeping Latin stress unity, tradition, and the great precision that it provides. Said militant Latinist Francis Cardinal Spellman: "No matter where you go on the face of the earth, the Latin Mass is a sign of Catholic unity." Other supporters argue, according to the official summary, that "because of its concrete phraseology of legal terms, Latin is particularly suited for theology and dogma."
Negro Spirituals. "What has this to do with the Mass?" replied one U.S. bishop. "The Mass isn't a law course; it's a prayer." Those favoring liturgical reform emphasized the necessity of relating the Mass to the people, beginning with the use of a language that the people understand. They argue that unless worshipers can participate in the service, the Mass becomes "mere devotionalism." Liturgy, warns Jesuit Schmidt, "will not exercise any influence on the mass of the people if it is divorced from modern civilization and from the existing social situation."
Although introduction of the vernacular is the most important change proposed by the reformers, many bishops also want to shed some of the "accidental accretions" that were incorporated into the liturgy, in some cases as much as a thousand years after Christ. The reformers argue that some of the symbolism and ceremony that was meaningful to a 12th century Roman is lost on a 20th century African. Mission priests have asked to use more native music and dances as part of the rite; an American liturgist even suggested the use of Negro spirituals in some services. "The Gregorian chant is splendid," said one English bishop, "but the church is neither a theater nor a conservatory of music."
Extending Decentralization. The debate on liturgy might last until Christmas, but most observers believe that the council's final statement will permit the introduction of the vernacular into some parts of the liturgy. Just as important, the council is likely to give the power of decision on liturgical reform and experimentation to local bishops—or national councils of bishops—who now have to appeal to the Vatican for permission to deviate from the ritual. In the past few years, the Vatican Curia has authorized the use of the vernacular in the liturgy of a dozen countries—but only after specific requests and patient appeals.
In this sense, the issue goes further than liturgical reform, since the principle of decentralization of authority, if approved in liturgical matters, could logically be extended to other decisions now in the hands of the archconservative Vatican Curia. Against that possibility Egidio Vagnozzi, conservative Apostolic Delegate to the U.S., urged a gathering of the world's Papal Nuncios to oppose liturgical reforms and "fight for the Curia."
*Parts of the Mass: Prayers at Foot of the Altar, Introit, Kyrie eleison, Gloria, Collect, Epistle, Gradual and Alleluia or Gradual and Tract, Gospel, Credo, Offertory, Lavabo, Secret, Preface, Sanctus, Canon (including Memento of the Living, Consecration, the Elevation of the Host and Chalice, Anamnesis and Memento of the Dead), Pater Noster, the Fraction, Agnus Dei. Pax, Communion, Postcommunion, Dismissal, Blessing, and Last Gospel.
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St. Padre Pio
Feastday: September 23
b.1887 d.1968
Catholic Online
Francesco, named in honor of St. Francis of Assisi, was born to Giuseppa and Grazio Forgione, peasant farmers, in the small Italian village of Pietrelcina on May 25, 1887. From his childhood, it was evident that he was a special child of God. Francesco was very devout even as a child, and at an early age felt drawn to the priesthood. He became a Capuchin novice at the age of sixteen and received the habit in 1902. Francesco was ordained to the priesthood in 1910 after seven years of study and became known as Padre Pio.
On September 20, 1918, Padre Pio was kneeling in front of a large crucifix when he received the visible marks of the crucifixion, making him the first stigmatized priest in the history of Church. The doctor who examined Padre Pio could not find any natural cause for the wounds. Upon his death in 1968, the wounds were no longer visible. In fact, there was no scaring and the skin was completely renewed. He had predicted 50 years prior that upon his death the wounds would heal. The wounds of the stigmata were not the only mystical phenomenon experienced by Padre Pio.
The blood from the stigmata had an odor described by many as similar to that of perfume or flowers, and the gift of bilocation was attributed to him. Padre Pio had the ability to read the hearts of the penitents who flocked to him for confession which he heard for ten or twelve hours per day. Padre Pio used the confessional to bring both sinners and devout souls closer to God; he would know just the right word of counsel or encouragement that was needed. Even before his death, people spoke to Padre Pio about his possible canonization. He died on September 23, 1968 at the age of eighty-one. His funeral was attended by about 100,000 people.
On June 16, 2002, over 500,000 Padre Pio devotees gathered in Rome to witness Pope John Paul II proclaim Padre Pio, Saint Pio of Pietrelcina. The Padre Pio Foundation and many benefactors traveled to Rome, San Giovanni Rotondo, Pietrelcina, Piana Romana and many other holy places to celebrate Padre Pio's Canonization.
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Blue Grass Mass
The Catholic Advance
I was reading my current print issue of The Catholic Advance and came across this picture (opposite from an advertisement for His Holiness Benedict XVI's talks on Relativism) entitle Bluegrass Mass at the Walnut Valley festival in Winfield Kansas.
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Now normally I would insert some caustic remark on the "fruits of VII" and this would lead to some hard feelings and protests from some quarters, but I won't say a thin....
Whoops.....too late.
Makes me wonder if the "altar" was a guitar amp.
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