No Dancing Tonight. . . .

It's midsummer, classes are off for a few weeks, and there is no dancing tonight. I'm reduced to television or messing about on the internet and dancing vicariously. I chose the latter. So here's a another version of the Eightsome Reel with some ceilidh dancers and music by John Mason's Scottish Fiddle Orchestra.

July 28 -- Bl John Soreth, O.Carm.

Another Carmelite-calendar-only feast today: Blessed John Soreth, sometime Prior General of the undivided Carmelite Order, is celebrated today.

This is what we had to say about him a few years ago. In particular, this bears reprinting:

“In sermons dealing with sin, Soreth reproves first of all the sins of the merchants. Sermons 25 through 31 as well as 33 and 34, deal specifically with economic questions, especially with usury. The first of these uses trade mainly as a metaphor, but no. 26 attacks the question straight on. Since goods need to be carried from place to place, Soreth says, there must be merchants, but the life of a merchant is spiritually dangerous: Dame Avarice waits for him. Merchants should only work to support their wives and children, and to give to the poor, not in order to gain ‘grans estas.’ He enumerates the sins of merchants: breaking the Sabbath and feasts, charging more than a just price, speculating on the resale of goods, swearing false oaths, using false weights and measures, selling fraudulently in dark places, cheating in negotiation, selling tainted food and drugs, speculation in exchange rates, and taking long trips without their wives, so that the marriage debt is not paid.”

Quotation taken from this lecture on Bl John's sermons here.

The Whys of Murder

From Peggy Noonan:

About 15 years ago, a TV interviewer noted my concern at the damage I thought was being done by the highly violent, highly sexualized nature of our culture, of our movies and TV and music. It will make us more brutish, I'd argued, and some will imitate what they see.

The interviewer was good-humored but skeptical: Hollywood makes a lot of comedies. Why don't we see the country breaking out in laughter?

Violence is different, I said, because there are unstable people among us, and they are less defended against dark cultural messages. The borders of the minds of the unstable are more porous. They let the darkness in. You can go to a horror movie and be entertained or amused: "This is scary, I love getting scared, and I love it because I know it isn't real." But the unstable are not entertained by darkness. They let it in. They are inspired by it. Sometimes they start to live in the movie in their heads. "I am the Joker," the shooter is reported to have told the Aurora police.

More.

From Theodore Dalrymple:

By a strange irony, alleged Aurora mass murderer James Holmes was a doctoral student of neuroscience—the discipline that will, according to its most ardent and enthusiastic advocates, finally explain Man to himself after millennia of mystery and self-questioning.

But what could count as an explanation of what James Holmes did? At what point would we be able to say, "Aha, now I understand why he dyed his hair like the Joker and went down to the local cinema and shot all those people?" When we have sifted through his biography, examined his relationships, listened to what he has to say, and put him through all the neuropsychological and neurological tests, will we really be much wiser?

More.

From me:

Original sin.

July 27 -- Bl Titus Brandsma, O. Carm.

The Carmelite calendar honours the Ancient Observance Carmelite Blessed Titus Brandsma today. The Inn has mentioned him almost every year on his feast day; he seems more relevant to our situation every year.

Here is one year's post with the text of his 2d lesson from the Carmelite propers. It includes a broken link to the biography posted by the Carmelite Province of the Most Pure Heart of Mary. However, those excellent pages are still on line here. They include the texts of some of his writings and a good many pictures.

Some Piping for the Weekend

Fin Moore on the border pipes and Andrea Beaton on fiddle playing a knockout set of strathspeys and reels.

July 24 -- St Declan

St Declan was an early (5th century) abbot and bishop of Ardmore in Waterford. . .even before St Patrick say some of the sources. This is what Mrs D'Arcy has to say in her "Saints of Ireland":

Fosterage was an educational system practiced in ancient Ireland whereby a youth was sent into the home or family of an outstanding person whose virtues he was to emulate. Declan, a prince of the Decies and one of the four pre-Patrician bishops, was given into fosterage to a Christian guardian. He went to Rome to study, was ordained and consecrated bishop there. Patrick later confirmed Declan in his seat at Ardmore, in Waterford, which it is claimed was a bishopric before Patrick came to Ireland.

Ardmore is rich in memorials of its former glory. Declan's resting place is his own 9' by 13' oratory, reroofed in 1716. The cathedral, a very ancient building that evidences much repair and alteration, has an 11th century nave and a 13th century Gothic choir, together with scriptural and other sculptures and many other curious much older features. Within it are two Ogham stones, one with the inscription "the loved one". The round tower, 95' high, is perhaps the best surviving example of this type of architecture n the whole country. Another group of buildings includes St Declan's Well and the ruins of a church.

Wikipedia has a longish article here on St Declan, containing a rich infusion of academic bickering and much intricate and barely comprehensible historical detail.

At this page you'll find a. . .hmmm. How to phrase this? Let's try this: On this page you'll find an early 20th century English translation of an early 17th century Latin translation (and re-write) of a 12th century Irish life of St Declan, who lived in the 5th century.

Or you can look at some pictures of his oratory here.

Processional at the Anglican Use Church of Our Lady of the Atonement

Much grander than our little community in Santa Ana can manage (at the moment).

But today, on the Seventh Sunday after Trinity, the Eighth after Pentecost, the feast of St Mary Magdalen, and the feast of Welsh priest-martyrs Ss John Lloyd and Philip Evans, I am very much looking forward to our Anglican Use Mass this aftenoon.

Hence, this lovely processional at the Anglican Use Church of Our Lady of the Atonement a few years ago.

If only he'd taken up the pipes. . . .

. . . .all this could've been avoided.

Sure, the pipes take more work to master than karaoke but they're much safer. After all, everyone loves the pipes.



What?

Some Piping for the Weekend

Now you have to be paying attention but there is indeed a piper. The uillean piper is right between the pianist and the first fiddler.

But your suspicions are correct. I really put it up because the Irish (for a change) country dancers (as they're almost never called) are having such a great time.

S Elias, Omnium Carmelitarum Dux et Pater

In the Carmelite Calendar today is the feast of St Elias the Prophet, the Father of the Carmelite Order. You can find most of what you need to know about Elias in the third book of Kings (if you're using the Douay-Rheims, the Knox, or any of the other scriptural translations that devolve from the old Vulgate) or the 1st book of Kings (if you're using the KJV, the RSV or similar).

In the Medieval era he was considered well and truly the Founder of the Carmelite Order and the Carmelites the descendants of the sons of the prophets. These days academia likes to have that sort of claim more clearly documented - preferably notarized - so the claim is today a spiritual descent since the Order originated in a place where he lived and had one of his significant triumphs.

A Vesper hymn from the old office:

The lofty peaks of Carmel
With tuneful praises ring,
The anthems of Elias
'Tis our delight to sing.

The glory of our Order,
Our leader, prop, and stay,
From east to west his offspring
Increaseth day by day.

When sorely pressed with famine,
A raven served him bread,
With meal and cruse unfailing,
The widowed hearth was fed.

The boy from death delivered
Is to his home restored,
And light so much desired,
In radiant flood is poured.

Behold the Heaven closeth,
To open at his voice,
And copious welcome showers
The thirsty lands rejoice.

To Father, Son, and Spirit,
Be equal power and praise,
All glory and dominion
Henceforth for endless days. Amen.

A collect:

Almighty God, grant, we beseech Thee, that we who believe that the Blessed Elias, Thy Prophet and our Father, hath been, in a wonderful manner, taken up in a fiery chariot, may, through his mediation, be borne upwards to Heaven, and that we may rejoice in the companionship of Thy saints. Through our Lord. Amen.

[from "The Saints of Carmel" (1896)]

Some Piping for the Weekend

Dublin's St Laurence O'Toole Pipe Band play their medley in this year's - indeed, this month's - All Ireland Pipe Band Championship competition.

Friday the 13th. . . .

. . . .comes on a Friday this month. So you need to be extra careful not to walk under any mirrors or break any black cats or do anything at all with a ladder. And, as always, it's bad luck to be superstitious. . . .especially when Friday the 13th comes on a Friday.

Our First Mass

We - Blessed John Henry Newman Catholic Church of the Ordinarite of the Chair of St Peter - had our first Mass as a parish last Sunday. It was our first Mass as a united community, our priest's first Mass, the first Anglican Use Mass in southern California, and just generally the first time any of us had done exactly this. We were sort of feeling our way.

But it was a beautiful liturgy: traditional Anglo-Catholic, ad orientem, Tudor English, smells-and-bells (yes, I did locate some bells in time), Holy Communion kneeling, a touch of Anglican chant, and no Marty Haugen at all.


We even had quite a nice turn out, especially considering how small a community we are.

You can find more pictures here and Father's sermon here. And you can click on the picture above to enlarge it considerably.

Some Piping for the Weekend

Northumbrian small pipes on display this weekend, accompanied by a fiddle, a concertina, and assorted melodeons and accordians in a convivial setting. Set 'em up again for the musicians; I'm buyin'.

[ADDENDUM: Patience! The informative little black rectangle in the middle of the screen goes away after about the 12 count on the number line.]

Mrs G's New Hobby Horse

Ed Willock's little quatrain is as true as ever:

The working man of all his troubles
the social worker rids.
Freud relieves him of his soul.
And Sanger takes his kids.

Although maybe Melinda could replace Sanger without too much damage to the scansion. That first syllable is pretty soft. D'ye think?

At any rate, it looks like she aims to be the 21st century's Margaret Sanger:

July 6, 2012 (C-fam.org) - Love him or hate him, Stephen Colbert doesn’t waste time getting to the point. In last Thursday’s interview with Melinda Gates on the Colbert Report. He asked Melinda about her newest initiative and cut straight to the chase: the new population control movement exists to save lives by erasing lives.

Colbert: “But now you’ve got a new charitable hobby horse you’re on, and it’s not necessarily saving people’s lives, so much as it’s stopping people’s lives from existing. You want to provide family planning to 120 million men and women around the world.”

Melinda Gates: “Right.”

The old population control movement existed for more or less the same reason, to eradicate poverty by eradicating the poor. In fact, the only major difference between the two movements is one of semantics. Today’s newest generation of population control proponents are still billionaires, still from the first world, and are still convinced that the poor are at the center of the world’s woe.

Lifesite news has the rest here.

Bl John Henry Newman Catholic Church

Even more news items and pictures:

Here and here.

The text of Msgr Steenson's ordination sermon.

Well, That Was Fast

No sooner do I complain about the lack of pictures, than Greg sends me a link to same.

Click here for Ordination/Reception pictures.

Thanks, Greg.

Habemus Sacerdotem

I just returned from the priestly ordination of Fr Andrew Bartus at the Basilica of San Juan Capistrano. You can read some of the details if you click on the image of the Ordination programme above.




That's the basilica above. Alas, I have no pictures of the ordination itself. Someone was assigned to that so there should be some on line eventually. I did actually remember to locate the camera before leaving this time but it had decided not to work. Even new batteries didn't help. This left me with only the phone camera, which is useless without brighter light. So no pictures. Yet.

The ceremony befit its setting. It was beautiful. The Tallis Chapel Society sang William Byrd's Mass for 4 Voices, along with some propers from both the Graduale Romanum and the Anglican Gradual. Yes, there was a good bit of Latin involved.

Did I mention that the rest of our community and another entire community from San Diego were received into the church at the same ceremony? And that that included two former Anglican priests? Well, I should have because they were and it did.

The reception hosted by the basilica parish included first blessings and an excellent repast, a.k.a., 'bun fight' ala Fr Barnes. And for me the opportunity to get reacquainted with a classmate of mine I hadn't seen in something like 40 years.

And now to prepare for our first Mass as a community in 5 days. Anyone know where I can get some sanctus bells at a reasonable price before Sunday? (I know The Inn runs on almost unrelieved hyperbole at times but I'm quite serious about that last sentence.)

Nobody Eviscerates Better

Mark Steyn, of course.

E.g.:

Thus, the Supreme Court's Obamacare decision. No one could seriously argue that the Framers' vision of the Constitution intended to provide philosophical license for a national government ("federal" hardly seems le mot juste) whose treasury could fine you for declining to make provision for a chest infection that meets the approval of the Commissar of Ailments. Yet on Thursday, Chief Justice John Roberts did just that.

And this:

. . . Chances are I'm wrong, and the justices are wrong, and the government's wrong, and the consequences of Obamacare will be of a nature none of us has foreseen. But we already know Obama's been wrong about pretty much everything – you can keep your own doc, your premiums won't go up, it's not a tax, etc. – and in the Republic of Paperwork multitrillion-dollar cost overruns and ever-greater bureaucratic sclerosis seems the very least you can bet on. It should also be a given that this decision is a forlorn marker on a great nation's descent into steep decline and decay. Granted the dysfunctionalism of Canadian health care, there's at least the consolation of an equality of crappiness for all except Cabinet ministers and NHL players. Here, it's 2,800 unread pages of opt-outs, favors, cronyism, and a $695 fine for those guilty of no crime except wanting to live their lives without putting their bladder under the jurisdiction of Commissar Sebelius.

And lots more here.