Fr. Shady Tree and His Acorns

The Curt Jester describes -- whoops! I mean, SHARES -- his experiences while visiting at another parish:

The Mass was said by an Irish priest who started with what I guess you could call a census (people never learn from King David). "How many of you are from out of town?" pretty much everybody raised their hands. "How many of you are from outside the U.S.?" He then proceeded down the isle extracting country of origin from a number of people who raised their hands. We are no five minutes into the Mass. Next it was "How many are married over 50 years please stand up." Followed by encouragement for applause and then "Stand up if you are a grandparent" Here he inserts mandatory joke about them being free babysitters." Then we had the "everybody introduce yourself to the people around you ." I had heard of this practice at some parishes, but never had to suffer through this false bit of community that has everybody glad handing the other (I though this was reserved for the Kiss of Peace). We are now ten minutes into the start of Mass and we haven't even got to the confeitor yet.

Then, the killer question-slash-reality check:

Now if priests are going to act like a Vegas lounge act can I also be a heckler?

New Glasses for Our Souls

The USCCB has released the text of the Ordo Missae, the new English translation that will be promulgated for use at Mass upon approval of the full revised text of the Roman Missal. The text is being released in advance for study and formation purposes.
As a non-Latinist, I am in no position to offer a full critical analysis of the new text; no doubt there are deficiencies hidden from my unpracticed eye. Still, as a layman with a nodding acquaintance of the English language, I am in a position to state, based on my cursory reading, that the new translation beats the heck out of the one we've all been used to. For one thing, the style is superior to that of the old translation. For another, I see nuances and details in the new translation, the absence of which in the old translation no doubt contributed to the lack of reverence at and understanding of the Mass that is now so widely lamented. Whereas the old translation downplayed the mystical and the awe-inspiring, the new translation conduces to the restoration of humility in the face of the mysteries of faith. The Church is now described, for example, as "holy" and is referred to as "she," rather than as "it." The cup of Christ's blood is now the "chalice." And the priest will exhort us to say the Lord's Prayer as follows: "At the Savior’s command and formed by divine teaching, we dare to say...." If we had been saying that all along, would we now be suffering from the plague of imperious little old ladies grabbing our hands and trying to force us into unwanted intimacy during the Our Father?

It is as though one has been given a pair of glasses after a lifetime of nearsightedness and not realizing, until that moment, that one could not see clearly before. Consider, for instance, the scriptural allusion that for decades has been completely obscured in the short prayer we recite before Communion, but which stands out in stark relief in the new translation:

OLD TRANSLATION:

Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word, and I shall be healed.

NEW (AND MORE ACCURATE) TRANSLATION:

Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.

SCRIPTURAL ALLUSION (MATTHEW 8:5-13):

As He entered Caper'na-um, a centurion came forward to Him, beseeching Him and saying, "Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, in terrible distress." And He said to him, "I will come and heal him." But the centurion answered Him, "Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; but only say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to one, 'Go,' and he goes, and to another, 'Come,' and he comes, and to my slave, 'Do this,' and he does it." When Jesus heard him, He marveled, and said to those who followed him, "Truly, I say to you, not even in Israel have I found such faith. I tell you, many will come from east and west and sit at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness; there men will weep and gnash their teeth." And to the centurion Jesus said, "Go; be it done for you as you have believed." And the servant was healed at that very moment.

I for one am disgusted that, for so many years, we have been deprived of this Scriptural connection by a lousy translation, but happy that it -- along with many other gems and pearls -- is being restored.

Of course it is going to be painful and frustrating to have to unlearn texts that we have memorized over a lifetime of Masses. But since it is necessary to restore the liturgy to its proper dignity, and to restore us to a proper understanding of what is happening at Mass, this is a great teaching opportunity for our priests and bishops. May they make good use of it.

BY THE WAY: See Fr. Z's analysis of Cardinal Arinze's letter to the USCCB's president on the new translation.

A Hair-Raising (and Not Just on Martin Sheen's Head) Movie

It's 1999. The Fourth Vatican Council has just convened; the Church has repudiated, among other things, the Sacrament of Confession, the doctrine of transubstantiation, and the good of the soul over material goods; negotiations are under way to meld Catholicism and Buddhism. This whole house of cards stands threatened by a handful of monks in an island monastery off the coast of Ireland who calmly continue to offer the Tridentine Mass, to which people from around the world flock. And young Father Kinsella (Martin Sheen) has come all the way from Rome to put the kibosh on the whole thing.

Such is the stuff of The Conflict, originally released on television as Catholics, and based on the novel of the same name by Brian Moore, a fallen-away Catholic (who, ironically, died at the beginning of the year in which the story takes place). Martin Sheen, with his big hair, intense stare, Roman-collar-less black shirt and military jacket, looks every inch the messenger of Satan that he in fact is, both objectively and to the monks of Mork Island who have preserved the Sacraments and the Mass in order not to tamper with the people's faith.

Father Kinsella, plenipotentiary of the superior general of the monks' order, cannot convince the boatman sent to ferry him to the monastery that he is a priest, and so must call in a helicopter to drop him off on the island -- the first landing of an aircraft on that island in history. He is greeted by Father Abbot (Trevor Howard), and then by Father Manus (Cyril Cusack) -- first seen offering the outlawed Tridentine Mass on windswept rocks on the mainland, with contraband vessels and vestments -- who, unable to brook dishonesty even in the name of courtesy, lays into the young know-it-all with a prophetic (in 1973) speech about everything that is wrong with a Mass in which the priest turns away from God, talks to the people, and provides an entertainment. The rest of the monks are downright hostile -- none of which matters much to Father Kinsella, who is so much more "with it" than they. Still, he misjudges Father Abbot -- though Father Abbot himself has an Achilles heel that is not without consequences.

The DVD version of this movie is somewhat spoiled by the lousy editing (some scenes that would have been helpful to understanding the plot are cut out of the beginning) and cheesy credits, and the story is limited by its author's lack of faith, particularly in the inerrancy of the Church and the primacy and infallibility of Peter (it is simply unthinkable that Rome itself would turn Protestant). Then there are the silly and completely unnecessary faux pas (e.g., no one is "ordained a monk"; and the name of the order of monks sounds most uncomfortably close to "Albigensian"). Plus, the company that wrote the copy for the disk jacket demonstrates an ignorance of and contempt for a Catholic audience by propping us up to sympathize with liberation-theology-loving Father Kinsella and his diabolical mission. Yet it provokes thought (albeit imperfectly owing to the author's lack of faith) on the reach and limits of obedience, particularly the obedience owed by religious to their superiors; and on the primacy of conscience, that much-misused doctrine upon which so much abuse has rested since Vatican II.

Most of all, in the afterlight of thirty-five years, the movie overall turns out to be astonishingly prescient. There is virtually nothing in Father Manus' predictions about the results of the new Mass that has not in fact come to pass. And Father Kinsella is a walking prophecy all on his own: the very type of the decades of priests who have given up priestly garb; sacrificed the salvation of souls on the altar of materialism; substituted political activism for the Sacraments; and dabbled in transcendental meditation. In short, he is the epitome of many worldly priests with no faith -- polite and civilized, even affable, hanging by a thread over the abyss of Hell, burdened by the weight of the many souls they are dragging down with them. Nice people can and do go to Hell.

Overall, for all its faults, I have to give this movie a thumbs-up. Hat tip to the Caveman, who first recommended it, thereby getting the Redoubtable Marcus Magnus to order it, thereby giving me a chance to see it. It's worth it.