"The more barbarous Latinity of a Rhabanus Maurus" : On Ecclesiastical Latin

When taught to translate English into Greek or Latin (something I was never very good at) I was told to use the idioms of a classical author appropriate to the genre of the text. For example, if the text prescribed for translation came from a speech of Churchill, one would go to Cicero or Demosthenes. In many cases any prose writer would do, but if a piece of grammar only occurred in the poets then it was not to be used.  At Merton we all had a terrible time with trying to translate something from Proust.

What would be the equivalent for somebody ordered to provide a translation into Latin of an extract from the works of Blessed John Henry Newman (for example) for his office? In other words what counts as Ecclesiastical Latin? Somewhere in volumes iii or iv of Liturgia Horarum is a sermon by St Leo the Great which uses a grammatical construction not found in classical authors. I'll track it down later but, for the purpose of this post, it is enough to remark that Cicero and co. need not be our only models for writing Latin now.

Leaving aside the question of models – examples of good style – if we want to know if something is Ecclesiastical Latin, what are the sources of the Language? An obvious such source would be the Vulgate and its predecessors – bearing in mind that some constructions are literal translations of the Hebrew. If you wanted to describe something made of individual parts as strongly compacted together, you would not say "cuius participatio eius in id ipsum" (Ps 121(122):3). Later on Jerome rendered that passage "cuius participatio eius simul". Pius xii gave us the elegant "in se compacta tota", but these days the Church has compromised with "sibi compacta in idipsum".

Presumably Jerome's other works are sources, as are those of Tertullian, Cyprian, Augustine and Ambrose. St Irenaeus of Lyons wrote in Greek, but his only works to survive intact do so in Latin translations made during his lifetime. Presumably they could be a model. You would probably include Aquinas, Bernard of Clairvaux and Bernardine of Siena as well as all Papal documents at least up to the middle ages.

Veni sancte Spiritus, the Sequence for Pentecost, was written in the 12th century, probably by Innocent III (ob.1216) or by his friend from the Sorbonne, Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury. I would be inclined to include the acts of the council of Trent (not meaning to exclude anything else up to that point) as well as the Breviary (1569) and the Missal (1570).

Urban VIII (1623-1644), assisted by some learned Jesuits, replaced many of the hymns of the Breviary with new versions in a more Classical language and metre. These survived until 1969. The Catholic Encyclopedia remarks that 

surprise may be expressed at the temerity that dared to meddle with the Latinity of a Prudentius, a Sedulius, a Sidonius Apollinaris, a Venantius Fortunatus, an Ambrose, a Paulinus of Aquileia, which, though perhaps lacking the purity of the Golden Age, has, nevertheless, its own peculiar charm. Even the more barbarous Latinity of a Rhabanus Maurus is not without its archaic interest and value.

But are these Classicised hymns Ecclesiastical Latin? And can they be used as models for modern compositions? Maybe but perhaps, by definition, no. How about the 1917 code of Canon Law? Perhaps. How about the 1983 code, composed from scratch in my lifetime (perhaps a little earlier)? The mere fact that an idiom is in St Leo the Great means it could be used in translating (say) John Henry Newman's sermon on the Roman See. What if it is in Vatican II and nowhere else?

I see very little evidence that any thought whatsoever  has been given to this sort of question. Instead people are left to do their work with whatever Latin they happen to have picked up along the way. We end up with things like this, from the Office of Readings of Padre Pio (23rd September), translated from one of his letters (presumably in Italian):

Gratias, ergo, agite infinitæ pietati æterni Patris, qui sic animam vestram ad salutem deputatam gerit. Cur non gloriari benevolis his optimi ex omnibus patribus adiunctis?

I cannot construe the second sentence. I cannot see how dative plural benevolis his connects with omnibus patribus adiunctis nor what genitive singular optimi is doing unless it is nominative plural and subject of some understood verb. Perhaps somebody believes benevolo is a verb and that benevolis is its second singular.

Edward Peters, mentioned before, gives a list of books for studying Latin, in particular Ecclesiastical Latin. I for one would not turn up my nose at Vincent Huber's Latin for Sisters.

Via New Advent, Msgr Daniel Gallagher – apparently the successor to Fr Reggie Foster as one of the Pope's Latinists – discusses the return of Latin in the Church.

Where got'st thou that Geese Book?

Via the Chant Café, behold the Geese Book, a Gradual from 1510, prepared for a parish in Nuremberg and now in New York.
A multisensory work of the past is explored through multimedia technologies of the present. A team of experts headed by Volker Schier and Corine Schleif opens the Geese Book to scholars and provides a window for broader audiences. Completed in 1510 for the parish of St. Lorenz in Nuremberg, this large-format gradual preserves the mass liturgy that was sung by choir boys until the Reformation was introduced in 1525. Provocative and satirical illuminations include the one from which the book takes its name. Many medieval manuscripts are too valuable and vulnerable to be handled. Digitally, however, these 2 volumes can now be touched by everyone.
This is an example of the sort of thing I meant when I said that once upon a time parishes would spend their income on a proper celebration of the liturgy, not on grandiose side projects.

Life in the Russian wilderness

A family of Russian Old Believers, who fled to escape the Bolsheviks in 1936, are discovered by a party of geologists in 1978.
A helicopter sent to find a safe spot to land a party of geologists was skimming the treeline a hundred or so miles from the Mongolian border when it dropped into the thickly wooded valley of an unnamed tributary of the Abakan, a seething ribbon of water rushing through dangerous terrain. The valley walls were narrow, with sides that were close to vertical in places, and the skinny pine and birch trees swaying in the rotors' downdraft were so thickly clustered that there was no chance of finding a spot to set the aircraft down. But, peering intently through his windscreen in search of a landing place, the pilot saw something that should not have been there. It was a clearing, 6,000 feet up a mountainside, wedged between the pine and larch and scored with what looked like long, dark furrows. The baffled helicopter crew made several passes before reluctantly concluding that this was evidence of human habitation—a garden that, from the size and shape of the clearing, must have been there for a long time. It was an astounding discovery. The mountain was more than 150 miles from the nearest settlement, in a spot that had never been explored. The Soviet authorities had no records of anyone living in the district.
The youngest daughter of the family, Agafia Lykov, born in 1943, is still living there.

Breaking news: Australian federation abolished

In stunning news, the "indissoluble Federal Comonwealth under the Crown" of Australia has been suddenly dissolved by act of media. It has had the effect of making the Australian Senate subject to election by the Australian people as a whole. This can be shown by the announcement the Julian Assange is to stand for the Senate with no mention of in which state he will stand.

NB: If this is otherwise shown to be false then replace the previous paragraph with the following.

In boring non-news, the Australian media are thick and lazy and leave out important pieces of information.

Both Fairfax and News Ltd use the same unadapted AAP story.
JULIAN Assange will run for a Senate seat in the 2013 federal election and his mum reckons he'll be awesome. "He will be awesome," she said.
In other news, my Mum says I am cool, so there.
Christine Assange has confirmed her son's candidacy, after WikiLeaks tweeted the news … Queensland-born Assange, who founded the secret-leaking website WikiLeaks, announced his Senate ambition last December from Ecuador's London embassy.
Possibly he will stand in Queensland. It presumably depends on where he is registered to vote. The last I heard he was going to stand in New South Wales or Victoria. If the former then I will get the indubitable pleasure of putting him last.
He said last year he would run as a Senate candidate under a yet-to-be-formed WikiLeaks party banner and was recruiting others to stand with him. The election will be held on September 14.
Glad they included that last sentence. I might have missed it.

Apparently Star Wars got something wrong

The London Daily Telegraph today has a story illustrated by a picture with the following caption: "The "hyperdrive" featured in Star Wars enables Han Solo's Millennium Falcon spaceship to take short cuts between stars through a higher dimension of space."  I am sorry to say that I know that of all the space ships in the picture, none of them are the Millennium Falcon.

That said I was shocked, shocked, I tells you, to discover that the stretched stars from many scenes in those films are total fantasy.

Racing through hyperspace at near light speed [past light speed I think, but never mind], the ship's crew sees the stars appear to radiate out from a central point and stretch past them [actually this happens as they enter hyperspace, but, again, never mind]. But in reality, the view through the Millennium Falcon's cockpit window would probably consist of a fuzzy luminous fog surrounding a bright central disc. There would be no sign of stars because the wavelength of their light would be shortened to the invisible X-ray range, say the team of four young scientists from the University of Leicester. … The luminous disc would be due to Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation being shifted into the visible part of the light spectrum. The CMB is radiation left behind by the Big Bang that gave birth to the universe. … One of the students, Riley Connors, 21, from Milton Keynes, said: ''If the Millennium Falcon existed and really could travel that fast, sunglasses would certainly be advisable. On top of this, the ship would need something to protect the crew from harmful X-ray radiation.'' 

So instead of this

it would be more like the artist's impression here:

Traveling at Light Speed Does Not Look Like Star Wars.

Paying for Church music

I used to attend Mass at parish in a suburb close to the centre of a particular city. I nearly called it "inner city" but that would suggest poverty when, in fact, the suburb was inhabited by a number of well-heeled young professionals. The land was valuable and the parish leased off part of it in return for a lucrative income. Some bright spark thought it would be a good idea for the parish to spend some of that income on a drop-in-centre for young Catholics working in the city centre. The idea was that they would come in and socialise after work. It was an unhappy decision. The parish was not far from "downtown", but it was scarcely convenient for anyone to come after a hard day's work and before making their weary way way home. The plasma TV and attached games console were barely used and I think the centre is now closed. It occurred to me that, in the old days (at least as far back as the later middle ages), the money would have been spent on paying for a choir. There would be stipends, and clerks, and funny titles, and the rest of it. By now it would be the name of a style to which learned musicians would allude. It might be a famous choir school. At the Chant Café Jeffrey Tucker has a post on How to Have a Good and Stable Choir in your parish.
You need four strong singers who are committed. If you do not have that, you will not have a consistent provision of liturgical music. That’s just the way it is … People with this skill set are not willing to sing consistently without any pay whatsoever. They might do so for a while but they burn out, feel used, and eventually give up. It is all the more annoying that the priest and others look down on them when they throw in the towel, completely forgetting about the countless hours they have spent in the past without pay.
The whole post is interesting, but what really struck me were some of the comments. First some more of Tucker's post:
If you talk to any professional or just experienced music who knows the world of churches, you will find one consistent complaint about the Catholic Church: it does not pay its musicians. Parishes will sometimes pay an organist (not often a full-time salary) and sometimes pay a nominal fee to a director of music (many parishes even expect this to be done by volunteers). But very few pay singers … It is not necessary to pay ever singer. What every choir needs — and here I’m only reporting what every musician knows but very few priests understand — is four solid singers who can lead each sector. These solid singers are called "ringers" or just "section leaders."
These people also make good solo cantors. These can lead the other singers. This doesn’t mean getting rid of volunteers. The amateurs can be great. In fact, I’m constantly amazed at how good non-readers are at mimicking the sound of those they stand next to. They can’t sing a note alone but sound great as part of a section. They desperately need strong singers around them to give lift to their talents … The parish should employ four singers to play this role, chosen mostly by the director. Each singer can be paid $50 per Mass plus rehearsal once per week. This is terrible pay, to be sure. But it takes the sting out the time commitment. It makes people feel valued. It allows the parish to expect things from the singer. Everyone is happy. The music problem goes away — or perhaps the biggest problems in the music area go away.
One commenter suggests that ringers might encourage laziness and that volunteers are probably the way to go.
But the best solution is also the hardest: a cheerful, welcoming, religious, and encouraging director with the Holy Spirit willing to invest several years to develop, and willing also to be patient with the journey to get there. 
And you hope this Music Director you have been lucky enough to find, doesn't have to move away, get sick, die, lose the faith. Because if any of those things happen you have to try your luck again. Another suggests that Tucker (as the Germans say) sucked this one out of his fingernails.
Have you ever managed college kids at a McD's or KMart? Their work ethic, voice or music majors or not, isn't exemplary. Imagine you've planned and rehearsed all year for Allegri's MISERERE for G[ood] F[riday], and your section leader soprano has the C3 [i.e the top C which occurs several times in that piece, starting just before the two minute mark in the linked video], and you've got the rest of the quire all pumped up to do this high water mark. And Wednesday, she calls you and informs you her mom wants her in Reno on Thursday for Easter weekend. This kind of thing goes on with our volunteers, for sobbing out loud, not to mention kids getting a paltry 50 for Sunday AND a rehearsal? Oh, and they tend to move around a lot, whether in 2 or 4 year programs. Oh, and some of them never pass Theory 1A or sight singing because they've skated by in MS/HS being coached and coddled by teachers who don't teach and parents that know they'll be on and WIN American Idol, the Voice, or the X Factor.
And then there is this.
I have always found it ironic that the church expects musicians to spend thousands of dollars getting trained and then volunteer their services. The guy painting the sacristy is not volunteering ... the plumber? the person who shovels the snow? There is also no expectation on the numerous people the church regularly hires to prepare for two or more hours prior to coming to work today. Maybe if I had to haul my voice around in a truck with a sign painted on it, or bring it out of a special carrying case so that it looked as expensive as it really is. 
Unless your parish has a large stable income through historic real estate acquisition or something (see Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars (1992), passim) the answer is probably monks and lots of them. Mind you that seems to be my answer to everything at the moment.

Uneasy lies the head that…erm…sits on the sede gestatoria

Sandro Magister, The Council in the Intimate Thoughts of Pope John XXIII.
He then referred to his condition as "prisoner of opulence" in the Vatican and to the excessive pomp and ceremony that surrounded his person. "I have nothing against these good noble guards," the pope confided, "but so much bowing, such formality, so much pomp, so much parading make me suffer, believe me. When I go down [to the basilica] and see myself preceded by so many guards, I feel like a prisoner, a criminal; and instead I would like to be the 'bonus pastor' for all, close to the people…The pope is not a sovereign of this world. He recounts how much he disliked at the beginning being carried on the sede gestatoria through the rooms, preceded by cardinals often more elderly and decrepit than himself (adding that this was moreover not very reassuring for him, because ultimately one is always teetering a bit)."

What if Pius XII had spoken out?

At the time, in the 40s, people had a firmer grasp of what was possible. Father Rutler cites The Tablet.
In Belgium at the start of 1943, the Germans would not let Cardinal van Roey publish the Pope’s Silver Jubilee address, and the Italian government banned the film Pastor Angelicus about the life of the Pope. In that same January, the London Tablet commented on the tendency to think that more would have been accomplished by a louder protest from more bishops: "If there exists a vague atavistic memory that once Popes and Bishops spoke, and wicked Kings trembled, that salutary thing happened because the public opinion of the day had a much fuller and deeper sense of the rights and importance of spiritual authority.  Modern men, who have for so long applauded the narrowing down and emptying of that authority as the emancipation of mankind from the thralldom of superstitions, can hardly be surprised if, as a rule, prelates in the modern era tend in prudence to limit themselves to the field indubitably conceded to them by public opinion."
Be careful what you wish for, you might get it. Rutler also gives evidence of Pius' actual policy.
In a letter to Bishop von Preysing on April 30, 1943, Pius XII described with unusual candor the theory behind his subtlety "We give to the pastors who are working on the local level the duty of determining if and to what degree the danger of reprisal and of various forms of oppression occasioned by episcopal declarations…seem to advise caution. Here lies one of the reasons, why We impose self-restraint on Ourselves in our speeches…The Holy See has done whatever was in its power, with charitable, financial and moral assistance." The U.S. diplomat Harold Tittman recorded how anti-Nazi resistance leaders consistently had urged the Pope to follow this policy.
On at least one occasion Catholic Bishops in occupied Europe spoke out against the actions of the Nazi government. This was in the Netherlands and the result was the rounding up of Catholic Jews. On 26th July 1942, the Dutch Bishops had a letter read in all Churches denouncing Nazi policy. On 2nd August, two weeks later, the Nazis began rounding up Catholic Jews, including Edith Stein. By 9th August they were in Auschwitz and by 30th September most of them were dead. When they were arrested they "were told that they were rounded up in direct retaliation of the condemnation of the Nazi "final solution" by the Dutch bishops".

But some would rather be hoodwinked by the KGB.

The framing of Pius XII

In 1938 Pope Pius XII called a meeting of Bishops from all over the world to discuss what to do about Jewish refugees from Germany. The attendees were all sympathetic to the Jews but instead of doing something practical to help, they offered excuses as to why they could do nothing, with the result that we all know. Actually that is not quite what happened. There was a conference, but it was called by someone in a position to make a real difference (separation of Church and state you see), the secular saint Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States of America.
In the summer of 1938, delegates from thirty-two countries met at the French resort of Évian. Roosevelt chose not to send a high-level official, such as the secretary of state, to Évian; instead, Myron C. Taylor, a businessman and close friend of Roosevelt's, represented the US at the conference. During the nine-day meeting, delegate after delegate rose to express sympathy for the refugees. But most countries, including the United States and Britain, offered excuses for not letting in more refugees. Responding to Évian, the German government was able to state with great pleasure how "astounding" it was that foreign countries criticized Germany for their treatment of the Jews, but none of them wanted to open the doors to them when "the opportunity offer[ed]."
I only heard about the Évian conference recently. I knew there had been handwringing and inaction by the leaders of the free world but I did not know they had bothered with an international summit to achieve this.

Scholars speaking in favour of Venerable Pope Pius XII and his wartime record managed to convince a significant number of people that the Pontiff did the best he could to save Jewish lives from the Holocaust, even if they failed to win over the majority of the audience at a recent lively debate in London…Speaking for the motion were the British historian Viscount John Julius Norwich and UN jurist Geoffrey Robertson. Speaking against were William Doino, a leading expert on Pius XII and his wartime record, and Professor Ronald Rychlak, a law professor at the University of Mississippi and also a leading scholar on Pius.
This Rychlak chap is one to watch since,
despite being a defender of Pius XII’s wartime record in saving Jewish lives from the Holocaust, the American law professor at the University of Mississippi was initially skeptical of claims, first disclosed by former Romanian intelligence chief General Ion Mihai Pacepa in 2007, that efforts to blacken Pius’s name were driven by a Soviet plot. Yet after two years of research and regular contact with Pacepa, his perception changed, and he is now convinced that the KGB played a key role in framing Pius XII by promoting The Deputy – Rolf Hochhuth’s 1963 play that gave birth to the "Black Legend" of Pius as a Nazi sympathizer.
Zenit carried an interview with Pacepa.
"In KGB jargon, changing the past was called framing," Pacepa explained, "and it was a highly classified disinformation specialty" which were "like mosaics made up of hundreds or even thousands of tiny pieces fitted together. Only a handful of master designers know how the final image will turn out," he said. "I was peripherally involved in changing the past of Pius XII, but at that time, even I did not know what the final image would look like." He gave examples of how such framing operations worked, such as Stalin’s ruthless methods to falsify historical facts to fit into his own plans in the 1930s, and Pacepa’s own disinformation operations as head of Romanian intelligence in the 1970s. He recalled how he successfully managed to hoodwink Western heads of state, intelligence officers and others into believing that Romania’s dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, was an admirable, pro-Western leader when, in fact, "he was a two-bit Dracula." So effective was this disinformation operation that US President Jimmy Carter described Ceausescu as a "great national and international leader" and Queen Elizabeth II granted him a state visit to Britain in 1978. Pacepa defected soon afterwards, revealing the lies to Carter and the Queen. Ceausescu was executed by his own people in 1989, but Pacepa says that few in the West "looked back to speculate about how they had been so misled."
Part one of an interview with Pacepa on the National Catholic Register.
Stalin took Pius XII’s encyclical [Orientales omnes ecclesias, on the Ukrainian Catholic Church] as a declaration of war, and he answered as was his wont: framing Pius XII as a Nazi collaborator. On June 3, 1945, Radio Moscow proclaimed that the leader of the Catholic Church, Pope Pius XII, had been "Hitler’s Pope," mendaciously insinuating that he had been an ally of the Nazis during World War II. Radio Moscow’s insinuation fell flat as a pancake…The Kremlin’s attempt to frame Pius XII as Hitler’s Pope was rejected by that contemporary generation that had lived through the real history and knew who Pope Pius XII really was. The Kremlin tried again in the 1960s, with the next generation, which had not lived through that history and did not know better. This time it worked. 
Part two covers the second, and successful, attempt to smear Pius xii using Rolf Hochhuth's play, The Deputy, to do so.
Critics say that your evidence of a plot has never been corroborated. Is this true? 
If by "corroborated" you mean a written order signed by Khrushchev or some KGB-written operational plans for framing Pius XII, my answer is a flat: No. We do not have — and to the best of my knowledge, there is no hope to find — such corroborating evidence for any post-1962 KGB framing or assassination operations abroad, even if the KGB archives are someday really opened…We do not have Khrushchev's written order to the KGB to frame Pius XII. Just as we will never find [current Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s written order to the KGB, now rechristened FSB, to assassinate Alexander Litvinenko, who in 2006 was killed in London with radionuclide polonium-210, which was later identified by the Scotland Yard as having been produced by the Russian government. But we have something else which is as good as corroborating evidence: the KGB’s operational pattern. All intelligence operations, framing included, follow predictable patterns generated by the idiosyncrasies of the perpetrator. Soviet espionage, like the Soviet government, had an unusually strong penchant for patterns.

Three metaphors for the price of one

On 4th December 2012 the SMH published A new monarch for Australia? from the AAP. The article discusses the expectations of the child of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.

Although the only way to abolish the Australian constitutional monarchy short of armed revolution is by referendum, and although the Australian people have never voted Yes to a proposal to which they have already voted No, and although the Australian people voted No to a republic in the referendum of 1999, still for some reason our local monarchy-abolishers are supposed to be relevant.
But Australian republicanism might affect the extent of the new baby's ultimate dominion. Republican fever has gone off the boil since the defeat of the 1999 referendum, but is expected to resurface after the end of Elizabeth II's reign.
We have the metaphor of republicanism as a disease causing fever (couldn't agree more), which is now like a cooking pan taken away from the heat while simultaneously a submerged creature of the sea (a Kraken perhaps?). Doug Conway is "AAP Senior Correspondent".

On hating the Sermon on the Mount

Beware the blogroll of the wise – it can lead you far away from where you thought you were going. Through one of the sites in my RSS feeds I stumbled across the blog of Andy Naselli, an Evangelical theologian in (where else?) the United States.

One of his top posts of 2012 was about the reaction of unreligious people to the Sermon on the Mount. He was prompted by a conference talk on Exodus 19 by Timothy Keller, a presbyterian pastor in Manhattan.

During his talk, Dr Keller repeated a story told by Virginia Stem-Owens in her article "God and Man at Texas A&M". In 1987 Stem-Owens was teaching a course on rhetoric at that university and assigned – from the textbook – the Sermon on the Mount in the Authorised Version, asking her students to respond to it. This is a transcription of Keller's remarks introducing the story.
You know nineteenth century liberal theology, and you know people say, would say "oh, the important thing is not what you believe about doctrine or dogma or anything like that. The important thing is that you just live like the Sermon on the Mount, because it's so beautiful: that's what a Christian ought to live like" – They clearly have never read it.* Because when [Stem-Owens'] students read it, this was a couple of things they said "I did not like the Sermon on the Mount, it made me feel like I had to be perfect, and no-one is". Here's another one that said "the things asked in this sermon are absurd, to look at a woman like that is adultery? to be angry and insult someone is like murder? these are the most extreme, stupid, unhuman statements I have ever heard.
*Msgr Knox said the same thing about people who claim to like The Imitation of Christ.

Stem-Owens said: "At this point I began to be encouraged. There is something exquisitely innocent about not realizing you shouldn’t call Jesus stupid."

Anyway, Naselli reproduces what I believe is the whole article by Stem-Owens. It is a good read.

I'll return to my usual diet of Popes, Monks and mocking the media soon.

The change of the year

Alfred, Lord Tennyson In Memoriam Canto 105, published in 1850.

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
     The flying cloud, the frosty light;
     The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
     Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
     The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
     For those that here we see no more,
     Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
     And ancient forms of party strife;
     Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
     The faithless coldness of the times;
     Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
     The civic slander and the spite;
     Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
     Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
     Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
     The larger heart the kindlier hand;
     Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

Msgr Ronald Knox – using the methods that proved somebody else wrote Shakespeare – once proved that In Memoriam was in fact written by Queen Victoria in memory of Lord Melbourne. It is published in his Essays in Satire (1928).

Does the Pope have a pink bathroom?

(There was a splurge post on Pius xii in this place for a few hours this morning which will be edited and reposted later, in case you are wondering). As is now known all over the interwebs Pope Benedict xvi has written an op-ed [registration required] for the Financial Times which L'Osservatoro Romano helpfully reproduces.

At FT.com "the response of Jesus" in the first paragraph (quoting "render unto Caesar") is hyperlinked to Matthew 22 in the God's Word Translation but "the birth of Christ" at the beginning of the fifth paragraph is hyperlinked to Luke 2 in the New International Version. In both cases it is to the text hosted at BibleGateway.com. All three are Protestant institutions. This is not something to do with previous settings because those are the results when I used a browser with a cleared cache.

The following is at the bottom of the article:

The writer is the Bishop of Rome and author of ‘Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives’

Oh you mean that Pope Benedict xvi!

I imagine an Anglican subeditor having had some fun with all this, but I am sure that is just fantasy.

*The post title is a reference to the following sketch from Not the Nine O'Clock News, which I can't find on YouTube. The FT is printed on pink paper.
Reader 1 (Rowan Atkinson): I buy The Daily Telegraph, because it doesn't try to tell me what to think. It just reports the news. 
Reader 2 (Griff Rhys-Jones): I buy the Daily Express, because it informs me quickly, tells me what's going on, and let's me get on with my job. 
Reader 3 (Mel Smith): I read the Financial Times [beat] because I've got a pink bathroom.

I think they must import them on thumbdrives

When I was at Merton, at the end of every Michaelmas term (October-December), the Chaplain organised a Carol service which was usually well attended. One year I heard one of the Chapel regulars remark sadly that a lot of people came to hear and sing the old favourites – Once in Royal, Silent Night ect – only to be disappointed, because this was an Advent carol service as was appropriate, since this was long before even the Great Antiphons, much less Christmas itself.

Apparently the alma mater is keeping up the practice.
The beginning of Advent is celebrated with a particular solemnity at Merton. For its second recording the college choir explores the musical riches that adorn this most special time in the church’s year, centring on a newly commissioned sequence of Magnificat antiphons from seven leading composers.
Naturally, although I heard about this weeks ago, I did not get round to ordering the thing until this morning and so of course I missed my opportunity to have people coming out here for Christmas to bring the CD with them and save on postage.

The OU shop sells it for £14 ($21.48AUD) whereas Amazon UK charges £9.46 ($14.58AUD), both delivered free in the UK. Amazon UK will also let you download the whole thing for £6.49 ($10.01AUD), Amazon.com will give you the same privilege for $8.99 ($8.53AUD), Play.com for £7.99 ($12.32AUD). iTunes in the US offers it for $9.99 ($9.48AUD), in the UK for £7.99 ($12.32AUD) but in Australia for $16.99, i.e. £11.02 and $17.91USD. Of course this is nothing like the grossest example of price gouging on Australian iTunes.

The Lord of the Rings, Appendix B, on your Mac

You can get a barebones anniversary list of events in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings on your Mac. Not immediately obvious how I import it into Calendar.

Slightly more information e.g. what the "cat" command in the terminal means (I know I was dying to know) at The Mac Observer.

UPDATE: Since the above links might die this is a note at what you do. (1) On your Mac open the terminal in Applications/Utilities. (2) Type:

cat /usr/share/calendar/calendar.lotr.

Don't forget the space between "cat" and "/usr…"

(3) Hit return. (4) Enjoy Appendix B.

My Yoke Is Easy, My Burden Light.

From time to time I have been invited to weddings on Sundays – typically in the early afternoon – at which a Nuptial Mass is celebrated. All Catholics are obliged to attend Mass on Sundays but, by a special rule, one can fulfil one's obligation by attending Mass on Saturday evening. The propers of that Mass (readings, changeable prayers etc.) are almost always the same as those of the Sunday, even though it is on Saturday evening. Mutatis mutandis this applies for those Feasts designated "Holy Days of Obligation" ("Days of Precept" in the old terminology) which happen to fall on a weekday. In Australia such occasions are limited to Christmas Day and the Solemnity of the Assumption on August 15th.

I had always assumed that, to fulfil an obligation to hear Mass on a given day, Catholics must hear the Mass of that day. Wedding Masses have their own prayers and readings, therefore a Wedding Mass on a Sunday would not fulfil my Sunday obligation, and so I would still have to attend Mass elsewhere on Sunday morning or Saturday evening. With the children, and dressing for the wedding, and so on, this can be quite tough.

It turns out my assumption is false. Edward Peters (whom I mentioned the other day) explains things.
…a few folks who correctly remind others that there are two attendance obligations coming up seem also to assert that the type of Mass attended determines which attendance obligation can be satisfied thereat, as in, for example, a Mass of Anticipation for the Second of Advent, celebrated at 5 pm next Saturday, can only be applied toward one’s Sunday obligation, not toward Immaculate Conception. That’s an error arising from confusing the canonical obligation on people to attend Mass with the liturgical obligation on priests to celebrate the Mass called for by the rubrics. The people’s canonical obligation to attend Mass is satisfied by their “assisting at a Mass celebrated anywhere in a Catholic rite on the [day required] or in the evening of the preceding day…” (c. 1248 § 2). The law says nothing about what type of Mass is celebrated, only, that it must be a Mass in a Catholic rite.
A Canon Lawyer on the Catholic Answers forum came to a different conclusion. Peters responds to his arguments (references at the link).
The Church imposes an obligation to attend Mass-on-Sunday (a phrasing I prefer because so many people take the requirement “to go to Sunday Mass” to mean “to go to Mass as celebrated on Sunday with the Sunday readings etc.”, which is to prejudice the very point in question) and recognizes the 24-hour period known as Sunday as being available for one to fulfill that obligation. In that respect, then, not only have we an obligation to attend Mass-on-Sunday, but we have a right to fulfill that obligation within a set 24-hour period. Now, just very recently in Church history, the Church has offered us the option of fulfilling our Mass-on-Sunday obligation during some hours on Saturday. We now have extra time in which to fulfill an obligation, but—and here’s the key—having the option of satisfying one’s Mass-on-Sunday obligation on a Saturday in no way deprives us of the right to fulfill our Mass-on-Sunday obligation anytime during the 24 hours of Sunday. Else, the granting of an option with one hand would be to deprive us of a right with the other. Canon law does not work that way.

Scrooge on the second Sunday of Advent

Yes, deep down, if I had the hide, this is probably me.
When someone says “Merry Christmas” even five minutes before sunset on Dec. 24, remind them that “Advent is a season of penance, fasting and prayer, to remind us of the hopeless misery of the human condition that Christ came to rectify—for those who accept Him. But the path is straight, and narrow, and few do travel it.” Then smile and say “But hey, Merry Christmas!”
This, perhaps not so much:
If you must play host to the family, insist on making this Christmas more authentic. No ham, no turkey, no stuffing—just Middle Eastern foods like roasted goat. No “secularized” Christmas carols, either: just Melkite and Maronite hymns, or (as a concession) a Gregorian chant CD of the Christmas Mass, played over and over again. Pop in a DVD of The Passion of the Christ, reminding the wee ones, “This is the reason for the season.” Then go smoke your cigar on the porch.