Post #109

Topics: The Latin Mass Society: Free 2010 Ordo...National Shrine: First Traditional Mass in 45 Years....Mary Daly: Dissident Theologian....Catholic Scholars: Who Aren't Catholic ....Fire at St. Joseph Church in Ost: Side Altar Destroyed....Prayer to St. Michael: Oratio ad Sanctum Michael...What It's Like: Assisting on the Altar

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Dearest readers. Long time no write! The Christmas break turned into a month long vacation, a much need vacation but now life is back to the usual predictable grind. This is actually very good for me as I am prone to daydreaming and contemplation (youngest of the family syndrome?) and I always do better with a routine.

That being said, I am going to try really hard to continue this blog and cover the people and events that are important to readers, namely those of the parish of St. Anthony, Wichita. However, there are times when my busy school and work schedule take up entire days from sunup to bedtime and there have been times where I have considered letting this blog end.

I have often wondered if the original intent of this blog has been fulfilled, mainly attracting more people to the Extraordinary Form of Mass and bringing those involved closer. I fear that neither of these mission statements have been met.

My proposal to you good readers is this: I will try to keep this blog limping along with no guarantees that I will have the time and/or perhaps one or more of you fine folks will want to take it and run with it. This blog has great potential but as I prepare to enter my 3rd year of school at WSU, I may have to drop this blog in favor of realizing my own potential.

...and now the Necessaries

Please note: St. Anthony Catholic Church is one of two local churchs 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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Free 2010 EFLR Ordo

Mr. James Spencer informed me by email that a free 2010 EFLR ordo is available in PDF file format from The Latin Mass Society compiled by Gordon Dimon Principal Master of Ceremonies

ssisted by William Tomlinson.

Go to http://saiden.page.ph/fidem/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Extraordinary-Form-Ordo-2010.pdf adn do a File > Save As.

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Pope Benedict's Anniversary to be Marked at America's Largest Catholic Church by a“Traditional” Latin Mass

Vatican’s Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos Will Celebrate the
First Traditional Mass at the National Shrine’s High Altar in 45 Years

Washington, DC- The Paulus Institute announced today that on Saturday, April 24, 2010, at 1 p.m., the fifth anniversary of inauguration of Pope Benedict XVI will be commemorated in the Great Upper Church of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Washington DC, by a Pontifical Solemn High Mass in the “Extraordinary form”—commonly known as the “Traditional Latin Mass” or “Tridentine Mass”—celebrated by the Vatican prelate Darío Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos of Colombia.

This will be the first such Mass said at the Shrine’s High Altar in nearly 45 years. All Catholics are invited, many of whom may never have another opportunity to attend such a Mass. Cardinal Castrillón is the President Emeritus of the Vatican’s Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei (Church of God), where he assisted Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI in facilitating this form of the Mass.

In July of 2007 Pope Benedict issued the apostolic (papal) Summorum Pontificum (of the Supreme Pontiff), in which he confirmed the permissibility this Mass. It is one of the two uses of the same rite of the Eucharistic Liturgy, along with the Missal of Pope Paul VI in 1970 (the “Ordinary” form). Evolving since the early days of the Christian Church, the Mass was essentially in place by the 6th Century during the papacy of Pope St. Gregory the Great and codified by Pope St. Pius V in the 16th Century. It was last changed by Pope John XXIII in 1962 and so used during the Second Vatican Council. In 1984 Pope John Paul II permitted use of the Missal of John XXIII, and further facilitated it in 1988 and 1992. Pope Benedict noted that the Latin liturgy of the Church in each century of the Christian era “has been a spur to the spiritual life of many saints and reinforced many peoples in the virtue of religion and [facilitated] their piety,” adding, “What earlier generations held as sacred remains sacred for us too.”

Writing that since this Mass “must be given due honor for its venerable and ancient usage ... let us generously open our hearts and make room for everything that the faith allows.” The pope noted in an accompanying letter that “young persons too have discovered this liturgical form, felt its attraction, and found in it a form of encounter with the Mystery of the Most Holy Sacrifice particularly suited to them.”

The Paulus Institute in Washington DC is sponsoring the Mass. “We are honored that His Eminence Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos will be celebrating this Mass at our invitation, especially on the anniversary of Pope Benedict’s inauguration and at the High Altar of the National Shrine,” said Institute President Paul King. “It is a privilege to recognize the Pope on this auspicious occasion and assist his call to give due honor to the 1500-year old Mass for its ‘venerable and ancient usage.’”

“We are inviting all Catholics to this Mass for the unity of the entire Catholic community, including those unfamiliar with it and particularly young adults and families.”

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As the Flame of Catholic Dissent Dies Out
By Charlotte Allen
The Wall Street Journal
January 14, 2010

Mary Daly, a retired professor at Boston College who was probably the most outré of all the dissident theologians who came to the fore of Catholic intellectual life in the years right after the Second Vatican Council, died on Jan. 3 at age 81. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, which might be called the golden age of Catholic dissidence, theologians who took positions challenging traditional church teachings—ranging from the authority of the pope to bans on birth control, premarital sex, and women's ordination—dominated Catholic intellectual life in America and Europe. They seemed to represent a tide that would overwhelm the old restrictions and their hidebound adherents.

Now, 45 years after Vatican II concluded in 1965, most of those bright lights of dissident Catholicism—from the theologian Hans Küng of the University of Tübingen to Charles Curran, the priest dismissed from the Catholic University of America's theology faculty in 1987 for his advocacy of contraception and acceptance of homosexual relationships—seem dimmed with advanced age, if not extinguished. They have left no coherent second generation of dissident Catholic intellectuals to follow them.

Prof. Daly certainly pushed the envelope. In 1968, she published "The Church and the Second Sex," a book that accused the Catholic Church of oppressing and "humiliating" women by excluding them from its "patriarchal" hierarchy. The title of her most famous work, "Beyond God the Father" (1973), is self-explanatory. At some point afterward, Prof. Daly, despite being raised Catholic and earning degrees in theology and literature from three different Catholic colleges plus the University of Fribourg, left the church to embrace ever more belligerent brands of feminism.

She got into trouble with Boston College, the Jesuit institution where she had taught since 1966, for barring men from her advanced classes in women's studies. In the wake of a sex-discrimination complaint launched by a male student, Prof. Daly and her employer engaged in a round of litigation during the late 1990s that culminated in her voluntary retirement in 2001. She spent her last years promoting vegetarianism, antifur activism, a protest of Condoleezza Rice's 2006 commencement speech at Boston College, and the coining of male-baiting neologisms (an example: "mister-ectomy").

The trajectory of her life story is not unusual among Catholic dissidents. The Young Turk of Vatican II—and pet of the progressive Catholic media of the time—was Hans Küng. A Swiss-born, movie-star-handsome priest whom Pope John XXIII had made a peritus, or theological adviser, to the council, Father Küng swept through a tour of U.S. Catholic universities to accolades in 1963. And his 1971 book questioning papal infallibility—which got him stripped of his license to teach Catholic theology in 1979—turned him into a living martyr among progressives. He is still at Tübingen (last heard from in October blasting Pope Benedict XVI's overtures to conservative Anglicans as "angling in the waters of the extreme religious right"), but he's 81.

The Belgian Dominican priest Edward Schillebeeckx, who had worked unsuccessfully to persuade the assembled bishops of the Second Vatican Council to downgrade the authority of the pope—and who was condemned in 1986 for holding that there was no biblical support for the ordaining of Catholic priests—died in December at age 95. The Rev. Charles Curran, who was a controversial figure at Catholic University as early as 1967, when he was temporarily removed from his tenured position over his views on birth control, and who moved to Southern Methodist University after his final dismissal from Catholic two decades later, is now 75.

Another prominent figure in liberal Catholic intellectual circles is Sister Sandra M. Schneiders, who is famous for her assertions that Jesus was a feminist and that God should be referred to as "she" as well as "he," as well as for her advice that progressive orders of nuns treat representatives of a planned Vatican investigation like "uninvited guests." She is also past retirement age and is listed as "professor emerita" at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, Calif.

So where is the second generation of brilliant progressive Catholic theologians? There are plenty of liberal lay Catholics. The church's ban on artificial birth control is nearly a dead letter, a majority of Catholics say they believe their church should ordain women, and 40% have no moral objections to abortion, according to a 2009 Gallup poll. But dissident Catholicism seems to have lost steam as an intellectual movement, and not only because the issues relating to sex and papal authority that originally sparked Catholic dissidents have not changed in nearly 50 years.

The first-generation dissidents were products of a strong and confident traditional Catholic culture against which they rebelled, one whose intellectual standards grounded them in the faith they later came to question. Sister Schneiders, for example, earned four degrees from Catholic institutions, including the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. Yet most Catholics of her generation have not passed on the tenets of their faith to their children—the offspring of the Vatican II generation tend either to be churchless or not to go to church—or, in the case of academics, to their students. It's hard to rebel when you don't even know what you are rebelling against.

Not that conservative Catholicism is in any better straits; it's a vibrant but niche branch of the religion, and its leading intellectuals—Robert George, Mary Ann Glendon—aren't theologians. But it is fair to note that when Prof. Daly died, she left behind no young Mary Dalys to continue waging her quixotic war against the faith that shaped her, whether she liked it or not.

Ms. Allen is a contributing editor of the Manhattan Institute's Minding the Campus Web site.

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Catholic Scholars Who Aren't Catholic
By Phil Lawler
Catholic Culture
January 15, 2010

http://www.catholicculture.org/comme...otn.cfm?id=597

In an editorial eulogizing the late Mary Daly, the Boston Globe lets the cat out of the bag. Daly “came to describe herself as a ‘radical lesbian feminist’ and a ‘post-Christian,’” the Globe notes. How, then, did she justify her position in the theology department at Boston College: a nominally Catholic school? The Globe has its answer:

Daly was one of many scholars who, through their efforts to use their positions at Catholic universities to pull the church leftward, tacitly acknowledged its central role in the lives of the faithful, and its vast influence in society at large.

Exactly. Like all too many of her colleagues in Catholic theological circles, Daly used her academic post not to build up the faith but to tear it down—or, to be more accurate, to exploit it for other purposes. At a time when St. Josemaria Escriva was urging his followers in Opus Dei to turn the ordinary work of the secular world to the purposes of the Church (that is, their sanctification), leftist professors were encouraging students to turn the work of the Church to the purposes of the secular world (that is, their politicization). The Globe editorial puts it differently, but the message is recognizably the same:

Daly was in the thick of a vibrant debate within the Catholic world over how to respond to the social changes of the era.

In academic life, Daly and her allies had ample opportunity to influence the world: to “pull the Church leftward.” They not only trained the next generation in their classrooms, but by controlling the levers of academic power they determined who would be given the appropriate credentials—the PhDs—to teach the following generations as well.

For years, a fifth column has been active in Catholic academic circles. By the 1970s, the damage they had done was evident enough to a few perceptive Catholic scholars, who began founding a new generation of Catholic colleges and universities explicitly devoted to the teaching magisterium of the Church. But at established schools like Boston College, Notre Dame, and Georgetown, the subversion continues.

The influence of these “post-Catholic” scholars extends beyond academic life, too. The Boston Globe is not ordinarily interested in theology; the editorial tribute to Mary Daly was obviously written by someone who had drunk deeply from those intellectual streams. (Notice the awkward use of the adjective "vibrant," a dead giveaway that the author is a liberal Catholic.) Nancy Pelosi can cite professors at Catholic schools to justify her political stands.

The treason of Catholic scholars is not news. What is new, in the Globe editorial, is the candid acknowledgement that some Catholic theologians are motivated not by a different vision for the good of the Church, but by a cynical desire to exploit the Church for the sake of their favored social causes. They acknowledge the Church as a potential force for social change, not as the Bride of Christ, the Mater et Magistra. They are opportunists, not Catholic theologians.

Still, rest assured that they will continue cashing their paychecks, and miseducating our children, for as long as we afford them the opportunities.

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Just a Great Pic

I found this picture in a Time/Life book about WWII. The bombed church is being used to administer to the wounded English soldiers.

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The Devil Has No Knees

According to Abba Apollo, a desert father who lived about 1,700 years ago, the devil has no knees; he cannot kneel; he cannot adore; he cannot pray; he can only look down his nose in contempt. Being unwilling to bend the knee at the name of Jesus is the essence of evil. (Cf. Is 45:23, Rom 14:11) But when we kneel at Jesus’ name, when we bow down in service of others, and when we bend the knee in adoration, we are following in the footsteps of the Magi, we are imitating Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Saint Maximilian Kolbe, and all the saints and angels in heaven. Letter of Bishop Thomas Olmsted

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Fire at St. Joseph Church in Ost

By Luke Headley

This side altar was destroyed in a fire at St. Joseph Church in Ost, KS today. They still do not know what caused the fire. This is very sad. The bottom part of the altar from the mensa down was one of the original altar from Conception Abbey. Those that pulled the altars out of the abbey destroyed the reredos or tops of several of the altars. This top was built by parish members. A sad loss.

For a gallery of pics go the the Wichita Eagle website: http://www.kansas.com/photos/gallery/1166779.html

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Oratio Ad Sanctum Michael

Prayer to St. Michael

Sancte Michael Archangele, defende nos in proelio,

contra nequitiam et insidias diaboli esto praesidium.

Imperet illi Deus, supplices deprecamur: tuque,

Princeps militiae caelestis, Satanam aliosque spiritus malignos,

qui ad perditionem animarum pervagantur in mundo, divina virtute,

in infernum detrude.

Amen.

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What It's Like: Assisting on the Altar
PART 1
"As I readied for communion I wondered if I was ever really worthy to receive Him? As I knelt the altar cloth brushed by shoulder. I immediately pondered the suffering woman in Mathew 9: 20-21, upon hearing of Jesus' presence thought "If I shall touch only his garment, I shall be healed...."

Being the youngest of seven back in the olden days of the sixties, I often missed out on several things as a boy because life was just too hectic for my parents to include me in all the activities that were available. Two things I missed out on was serving at Holy Mass and joining the Cub Scouts. Now, obviously, at my age the Cub Scouts are out....but the opportunity to serve at Holy Mass came around and I accepted with alacrity.

To assist the priest as a server is such a great honor and privilege (by the way...if you, or your young men or boys want to serve...step forward please)...but what a daunting prospect!

Firstly Tony Strunk, Master of Ceremonies, calls up and leaves a somber Marine Corp. like message to show up in the sacristy after mass. You assist at mass along side your fellow parishioners, wait for the candles to be extinguished and make your way back into the sacristy. In your run away imagination the sacristy is a secret, dark mysterious place that no one ever ventures except the priest and servers, whispering prayers and vesting in the shadows (perhaps getting a glimpse of an angel flying overhead).

In reality the sacristy at St. Anthony consists of a room (to the right of the altar) with cabinets holding the thurible, incense, charcoal, matches and the controls to the lights and microphones. A stair way leads down into the back of the Sunshine Room. There are two, very old, wonderful pictures of St. Anthony church, one a general shot of the church complete with standing gas lamps and the other (looking very 1940's) of a first communion mass at the Gospel reading.

Passing to the back side of the church you enter the vesting room for the priest. This room is full of dark wood cabinets and drawers consisting of vestments, corporals, altar cards etc. This is the room where the priests vest for mass and you are instructed to generally pass through but not linger. This is a good size room laid out in a traditional manner with traditional vesting prayers on the walls and a sacrarium (defined here) next to the general use sink.

Following the back of the church (along the east wall) is another room where the servers vest. This too is an old room with dark wood closets filled with cassocks, surplices and cinctures. This is where the servers find vestments that fit them and study their rubrics, prayers and overall duties. This room has the back door that opens onto Second Street.

Between these two back rooms and the altar is a small hallway , or more accurately, a passage way that passes from one side of the church to other. This passageway also leads outward toward the front of the church through the curtains you see on both sides of the altar. From this vantage point you can see how the altar is put together, hodge podge style and I have heard that parts of the altar were constructed from the crates that various elements of the church came packaged in. Hanging in the middle is a light switch and a hand written note that reads "tabernacle lights...leave on". Alongside this is a ladder that leads up to statue of St. Anthony and the platform it sits on. During Easter this statue is slid to the rear and hidden behind a curtain while the risen Christ is put in it's place. Bob Wells tells me that in times past one would hug the statue to be replaced (the statues are hollow), and with feet on the ladder and back on the wall, shimmy down. (Bob is a well of great stories). On the north end of this passageway is a small room (to the left of the altar, north wall) used for storage and a small staircase that leads into the upper parts of the church including the attic (see Post #40, Random Thoughts: Human Fragility and Light Bulbs in St. Anthony’s Attic).

The whole back end of St. Anthony's rooms are steeped in wood and past memories. Memories of marriage, joy, sin, atonement, confirmations, holiness, human weakness, triumph and struggle. One thinks about these things when exploring , wondering if you are up to the task to serve at mass and whether or not your service would be pleasing to those who came before you...and when Tony hands you a booklet on how to say the mass and says "learn these prayers and I'll see you next week"...well you pretty much come to the conclusion that, ready or not, your in knee deep now brother!

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God's Great Glory
Crawling Neutrophil Chasing a Bacterium
Thomas P. Stossel (Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School),
http://www.biochemweb.org/neutrophil.shtml

This video is taken from a 16-mm movie made in the 1950s by the late David Rogers at Vanderbilt University. It was given to me via Dr. Victor Najjar, Professor Emeritus at Tufts University Medical School and a former colleague of Rogers. It depicts a human polymorphonuclear leukocyte (neutrophil) on a blood film, crawling among red blood cells, notable for their dark color and principally spherical shape. The neutrophil is "chasing" Staphylococcus aureus microorganisms, added to the film. The chemoattractant derived from the microbe is unclear but may be complement fragment C5a, generated by the interaction of antibodies in the blood serum with the complement cascade, and/or bacterial N-formyl peptides. Blood platelets adherent to the underlying glass are also visible. Notable is the characteristic asymmetric shape of the crawling neutrophil with an organelle-excluding leading lamella and a narrowing at the opposite end culminating in a "tail" that the cell appears to drag along. Contraction waves are visible along the surface of the moving cell as it moves forward in a gliding fashion. As the neutrophil relentlessly pursues the microbe it ignores the red cells and platelets. However, its leading edge is sufficiently stiff (elastic) to deform and displace the red cells it bumps into. The internal contents of the neutrophil also move, and granule motion is particularly dynamic near the leading edge. These granules only approach the cell surface membrane when the cell changes direction and redistributes its peripheral "gel." After the neutrophil has engulfed the bacterium, note that the cell's movements become somewhat more jerky, and that it begins to extend more spherical surface projections. These bleb-like protruberances resemble the blebs that form constitutively in the M2 melanoma cells missing the actin filament crosslinking protein filamin-1 (ABP-280) and may be telling us something about the mechanism of membrane protrusion.

Thomas P. Stossel (Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School), June 22, 1999