open book

Bread of Life in Moscow

A Eucharistic Congress:

The Eucharistic celebration began in a crowded cathedral with faithful from the various Russian and foreign communities that make up the archdiocese. Each group entered the church singing in its native language.

The first to enter were the Sunday School children, then the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking chaplaincy, followed by the Korean community, French-speaking Catholics and the Armenian community.

Archbishop Kondrusiewicz congratulated those present in more than 10 languages for the gift of the Eucharist.

A Eucharistic procession was held around the cathedral, on the streets of Moscow, despite the low temperature. It attracted adults and children who prayed and sang songs.

On Saturday night a deacon of the Spanish-and Portuguese-speaking chaplaincy was ordained, as was a priest for the archdiocese.

Another brief piece

Prop 73

On the ballot in CA, and examined in this piece by Valerie Schmalz:

Although more than 30 states have some form of parental notification or consent law in effect, there are huge portions of the country where no statute is in effect. Thus, in most Western states, in Illinois, and along much of the East Coast, a young girl can obtain an abortion–often with the complicity of her school counselor or other school officials, during school hours–without the knowledge of a parent or guardian, according to Americans United for Life and its ideological opponent, Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Parental rights

That may change in California where an independent group of pro-life advocates led by Jim Holman, publisher of a string of small California Catholic newspapers and of a San Diego alternative newspaper, placed Proposition 73 on the ballot, which the California bishops endorsed in a September 1 letter. Now, Holman is trying to raise awareness by linking to the call-in radio interviews of distraught parents (LINK)on the Yes on Proposition 73 website, even as Planned Parenthood has launched a series of ads blasting parental notification in the final weeks leading to the November 8th election.

The Parents’ Right to Know initiative would reduce under-age abortions by 25 percent, according to an impartial voter information report by the state fiscal analyst.

The Yes on 73 website

American Girls

A while back, I wrote a column, reflecting negatively, on the American Girl phenomenon. It was written after a trip to Chicago in which we visited both (and perhaps even on the same day), the American Girl Place and the national Shrine of St. Therese. American Girl had been a welcome phenomenon in our house - I liked the stories (Katie read them all, of course, and received a small version of Molly, the 1930's girl, as a gift) for their resourceful female characters and historical settings.

But beyond those humble beginnings...I was not impressed. The American Girl Place is simply one more Spending Mecca, and the very pricey accoutrements of Molly, Katrina, etc., are just the beginning. Taking up far more space were the other dolls, for which you could specify hair color and complexion, buy all different sorts of (pricey) outfits, and for whom you could make appointments to get their hair styled. Not to speak of the cafe, the play and the rooms full of other items, including matching (pricey) outfits for you and your dolls.

So yeah, it's a store, and stores sell stuff, but the sight of girls and mothers walking out of there with big shopping bags filled with hundreds of dollars of stuff for dolls was distressing, if not surprising. American Girls = good stories and nice, historically interesting collectible dolls, I suppose. But when American Girls = feeding materialism and consumerism, I get off the train. And I couldn't help but compare and contrast St. Therese and the American Girls.

Oh, I took heat for that piece, I tell you. Perhaps I didn't express myself clearly. Or perhaps people didn't read it carefully, and missed my praise of the initial American Girl spirit. But I was gratified, at least, by one note that informed me that a short time ago, American Girl had been purchased by Mattel, and that correspondent had detected a decided shift in emphasis and tone in the brand since then.

And now American Girl is under fire for its association with Girls, Inc, which quite forthrightly states its support of contraception and abortion access for girls.

Can I say...I told...

No, I won't. Since that wasn't even in my mind when I wrote that original piece.

But...

Return of the Book Report

I have stacks of books to read and report on. Actually, I have several I've read of late, so what we're going to have is, I hope, an almost daily Book Report this week.

First up, Ghost Empire by Philip Marchand, which I read on the way down I-75 on Thursday. I was absolutely taken with this book. Loved it.

Here's the gist: Marchand, of French-Canadian origins, but born in Massachusetts, and now living and working in Toronto, takes us along the route of 17th century explorer LaSalle. So the book is part contemporary travelogue, part history, and part spiritual and theological meditation. Really.

LaSalle, trained by Jesuits and, for a time, one of them (not ordained, but in formation), came to Canada, like most others, to make money in the fur trade, but, being an inveterate explorer, could not sit still. So he ended up traversing present-day Ontario to Detroit, up to Macinack Island, then down the Mississippi to its mouth. On a return trip, intending to find the Mississippi Mouth again, he ended up in Texas instead, where he was eventually killed by one of his own men.

What Marchand is after, as the title indicates, is ghosts - the French hoped to hem in the British east of the Allegheny Mountains, and if they had succeeded, the land claimed by LaSalle would have, at least for a time, remained in French hands. It is the "ghosts" of this empire, this French presence that Marchand is looking for, finding it in obvious places like Ste. Genevieve, MO, and not-so-obvious ones like Monroe, Michigan, where French was widely spoken until the mid-20th century and muskrat was an approved food for Fridays.

So he tells the story of LaSalle - a not uncontroversial figure - with sympathy. part of the sympathy with LaSalle and all he represents is rooted in their shared Catholic faith. And Marchand is no recovering, nuanced Catholic. His faith, as it articulates it, reminds me much of Walker Percy's Dr. Thomas More. It is matter-of-fact, humble, straightforward, and the unifying principle in his life.

In this book, the unifying principle impacts everything Marchand experiences, and links him to the past, and the past to him. He offers reasoned and fair accounts of so many things that seem odd to the modern reader - the passion for evangelization, the sacrifices of the missionaries, LaSalle's insistence on chastity among his men, practices of corporal mortification. And it is often lovely and moving. You might find it difficult not to shed a grateful tear, even, near the end, as Marchand meets a Mississippi man, one of whose far distant ancestors was a baby born on a ship on the Atlantic to one of the group accompanying LaSalle to Texas.  Both of his parents died, one at the Indians' hands, the other through hardship, and miraculously, he survived, in captivity, until he and his siblings were rescued in Mexico.

And today, a man in Mississippi is here because of the strength and small miracles suffusing one life, four hundred years ago. Which reminds us, of course, that all of our lives fall in exactly the same category, and that each of our lives is a miracle, and that wordless gratitude is the honor we owe God and the saints..and sinners of the past.

Of course we are all fellow pilgrims on this earth, and as such all owe each other a warm abrazo. That goes for you, too, Rene-Robert Cavalier, Sieur de la Salle, who could be such a bastard, and who, for your sins, met a violent end and lay unburied on the earth. By now, we trust, your faults have been purged in the fires of purgatory and your soul has found rest. Send a blessing on this book. Help us to realize that nothing in the universe is lost and that our existence is richer than we know.

Food for thought and for the spirit on these days we remember all the saints and all the souls, pilgrims with us on the journey.

Catholics in Hollywood

Clayton Emmer's your man...first, with this new blog detailing the RCIA program he's facilitating (that, I believe, Barb Nicolosi began..right?). Then, with this podcast of a talk Barb gave on "Artists and Sacraments" recently.

And, on a couple more film notes:

Peter Chattaway on a documentary coming next spring:

Will The Passion of the Christ (2004) become the annual Easter event that some predicted? Maybe not, but then again, maybe, sort of. The original film raked in heaps of money at the box office two Easters ago, and then The Passion Recut flopped earlier this year. But the fun isn't over yet! IndieWIRE reports that, next Easter, THINKFilm will release The Big Question -- a documentary shot on the set of The Passion -- across North America.

Peter also links to a news article on Gibson's new Mayan film...

All Hallow's Eve

A brief page, with links, for you.

If there's a positive trend in Life in America today, one of the things I've noticed, at least in our neck of the woods, is a decreasing adult interest in Halloween. It seemed to hit a fever pitch about four years ago - every other house in our neighborhood was decorated. Now...maybe one per block is. Unfortunately, it is usually with those big,huge, blow-up figures that are so hideous and seem, to me, at least, to be prime targets for vandalism. I'm surprised I don't see more of them, simply deflated into a heap. So anyway...that's good.

And as for the ever present story of schools and Halloween? No Halloween party at your school this year? Good. Two more hours to teach them how to read. 

To clarify: I'm not against Halloween - far from it. I'm against adults who can't grow the heck up, which is the way I perceive the adult infatuation with Halloween of late. Masque is one thing, but getting your jollies from dressing up as Raggedy Ann at work when you're a 47-year old guy named Ted is another. I spent too many years working with the overgrown adolescents who populate secondary education, and who were more thrilled by stuff like that than my own 4-year old is,  it's clear.

No, some of my fondest memories of living in Lakeland were Halloween - walking Katie around the neighborhood - which is a real neighborhood of homes built in the 1890's - 1930's, with big front porches - in which folks were sitting on same front porches, relaxing in that still-warm fall Florida air, gathering, having their own adult beverages, and giving candy to the kids.

Ah, the writing workshop

From my son David:

So far this semester, I've read three stories from
completely different people who managed to each write
the exact same story.  No, I don't mean that they're
the same plot, I mean that they're the exact same
story, just a different character name and setting.
They're all about guys getting over his last
girlfriend and end with the guy getting a speech from
his best friend that fixes everything.  I mean it.
All three followed the EXACT SAME STORYLINE!!!

It's amazing but I'm not the only one who's noticed
this.  A friend of mine and I have been talking and
she wrote about her extreme dissatisfaction with the
stories this semester, saying that if she reads
another sob story where everything is fixed by picking
up chicks at a bar, she'd scream.

When I was at the Sewannee Writers' Workshop, someone commented that invariably, young writers focus either on their first romantic experiences, or on their grandmothers. Or in a twist, on their grandmothers' first romantic experiences - especially if there's good Ethnic Spice to be had.

Twin Cities

Fr. Neuhaus on his recent visit to the Twin Cities, echoing the sentiment expressed here, in comments from observers, that, St. Joan of Arc not withstanding, many good things are happening in that diocese under the leadership of Archbishop Flynn.

Weekend Varia

Just a few more notes from the weekend:

*Thursday night in Knoxville.Christopher had told me he was going to be really busy, doing his feature for the Fulmer show, etc, and that he wouldn't be able to stop by Grandfathers. Sure enough, at around 10pm, the phone rings. "Are you all going to be up for a while?" Because he was so busy, he had been out to dinner with a friend nearby, and thought he would say hello. 45 minutes later, he shows up. Oh, and yes, if you were at the game and heard a voice intoning on "Vols in the Pros..." yes, that was my son.

*Had a pretty good dinner Friday night at the Landmark Diner downtown. Service was a might slow because of the hordes of Catholic youth within, as well as a few extra diners there because of the NASCAR race, but I liked it, nonetheless.

*Saturday morning, I took Katie and Joseph on the CNN tour. Not a whole lot going on (the main bit still broadcasting from there is Headline News), but Katie found it interesting. Michael said that when he took the tour about 6 years ago, they gave out mugs at the end. No more. Cheapskates. My favorite CNN Atlanta moment remains that from about 3 years ago, when were in those parts, and looked up, outside CNN, at a huge billboard that hangs over Centennial Park. It was for FoxNews. Heh.

*Mass on Sunday morning at, shall we say, a historic church in Covington, KY that is not the Cathedral. Take your pick. Gorgeous church, still, thank heavens. The homilist was a guest homilist - a Presbyterian minister, I think, and he was dreadful. Awful. The music, as noted below, was from a group of about 12, including several guitars, two kinds of drums, flute and keyboard, none of which bothers me in principle. But, as we can't help but note, ruefully, they did the same kind of music they have probably been doing for at least twenty years. What ticked me off was the second Communion hymn, which was a gorgeously-rendered a cappella piece - a Protestant hymn. Which is fine, because there was nothing theologically contrary to it, etc. But why not, I wondered, take the same effort and work up a good old piece from the Catholic tradition? Oh who knows, maybe they do on other Sundays. It's just odd though, because the last time I was at Mass in Covington, about 4 years ago, at the Cathedral, a great schola was at work, and they, too did a traditional Protestant hymn for Communion meditation. I know - perhaps it's all about the musical traditions of Kentucky or something. But I experience the same thing at my own parish, which has a non-Catholic music director, all the time, so it's peeve I've made my pet. It's not about boundaries, it's about the possibility of continuing to teach and form through pieces that reflect Catholic sensibilities, which can, at times be different than what is expressed in what the Methodists are doing.

No kneelers. No kneeling. When's that going to happen?

Late Words

Catching up a bit on Vatican-related news from the past few days.

A Tablet writer gives some final insight on the Synod doings.

John Allen's Word from Rome from last Friday:

Interviews with Wuerl and Scola about the Synod, among other points:

More seriously, Scola seemed frustrated with the lack of broad interest in the synod's work.

"Two hundred and fifty-six bishops from the entire world, elected by their episcopal conferences, left their dioceses to spend a month together, spending eight hours a day sharing, praying, talking," Scola said. "They succeeded in giving voice to everyone, developing an idea of how to live and give Christian witness in the most diverse places, in India, Mexico, Romania, Africa, Europe, everywhere … it was moving, and extraordinary. They also did some detailed work, producing 50 propositions and a message."

"In what sense," Scola asked rhetorically, "is this not news?"

"The bishops, in very positive fashion, committed themselves to going forward with the liturgical reforms that followed Vatican II, despite the great arguments after the council and despite significant abuses. In what sense is this not news?"

"The synod demonstrated that the Eucharist is at the heart of the Christian people, and in itself it has a social dynamism," Scola said. "That means commitment to resolving conflicts between peoples, such as those we see in Africa, and to cosmological questions such as ecology. … Unlike pagan temples, the Christian cult does not separate the sacred and the profane. Everything is cult.

"In what sense is this not news?"

Scola asserted that the synod was an instance of "substantial democracy which in some ways is more powerful than the formal democracy in civil societies."

Hey! Cardinal Scola! Read this blog! We were interested!

Other tidbits from the Vatican press office, including the text of the Angelus, the condemnation of the horrible beheading of Christian girls in Indonesia, and the statement on terrorism in the Holy Land, as well as the not-surprising statements from some parties in the region about Israel's existence:

Holy See Press Office Director Joaquin Navarro-Valls released the following declaration late yesterday afternoon:

"The serious events in the Holy Land over the last few days are a cause of grave concern to the Holy See which, uniting itself with the entire international community, expresses its own firm condemnation of acts of violence - the terrorist attack on Hadera and the subsequent retaliation - from whichever side they come, and of certain particularly serious and unacceptable declarations denying the right of existence to the State of Israel.

"On this occasion, the Holy See reaffirms the right of both Israelis and Palestinians to live in peace and security, each in their own sovereign State.

"At the same time, the Holy See feels the duty to renew its appeal to the leaders of all the peoples of the Middle East, to listen to the longing for peace and justice that rises from the population, to avoid actions and decisions leading to division and death, and to commit themselves with courage and determination to creating the minimum conditions necessary for dialogue to resume, which is the only way to guarantee a future of peace and prosperity to the children of that land."