This Blog Has Moved

Kansas City Catholic has a new spot on the internet.

It is now located at www.kansascitycatholic.wordpress.com .

The email address stays the same.

Salve Regina Store--Saint Joseph, MO (Updated with Photos)

If you are in Saint Joseph, MO, soon, then check out this store on the south side of downtown, especially if you are looking for a 1962 missal or a copy of a Douay Rheims Bible, or any other traditional item. Below are a few photographs of the strore's interior. Drop by sometime and say hello to Jeff, the proprietor.

Father Z in KC

The well-known and well-regarded Father John Zuhlsdorf ("Fr. Z") is visiting Kansas City. He offered to meet with anyone that showed up to LatteLand in the Briarcliff area this Saturday morning. A good number of folks showed up to converse with Fr. Z, whose popular blog What Does the Prayer Really Say discusses all things Catholic, especially liturgical matters, and more especially liturgical matters in Latin.

The conversation included persons that drove in from Saint Joseph and Lawrence, SSPX-ers and other traditional Catholics, as well as others. Many topics that one might guess Fr. Z would enjoy were discussed. His great knowledge of all things Vatican was enjoyed by those sipping coffee in this locale so far from Rome. Since I did not ask to quote him on any particular topic, I will not do so here. However, I do not think he would mind me saying that he very much enjoyed meeting Bishop Finn the day before.

Thanks for stopping in KC, Fr. Z.

More on the New Bishop for Springfield--Cape G.

The newspaper down Springfield way had an article about the new bishop in southern Missouri.

You can read it here. It is a good article about an apparently great priest.

The article does, however, have a terribly constructed sentence.

To wit:

Both Knoxville and southern Missouri share some issues that have troubled the Catholic Church, including clergy abuse and calls for a return to the Latin Mass.

Those two issues have no reason to be in the same sentence and a more thoughtful or less hurried writer would have recognized that.

Moving along:

Johnston's country music roots run deep, so he quickly named fellow east Tennesseans Dolly Parton and Chet Atkins as his favorite country artists. But he admitted that he especially enjoys the music of Alan Jackson.

"He has good insight into the human condition," he said.

Jackson's songs may have inspired Johnston, who said he hopes to bring "a ministry after the heart of Jesus Christ ... the heart of compassion and the heart of a teacher" to his new diocese.

As some of you know, the diocese in question includes Branson, MO, the second largest country music destination in the U.S. Is there anything Rome does not think of?

Priest Named Bishop of Southern Missouri Diocese Was Named as Hero by the Federal Government in 2005

On January 24, 2008, the Vatican named Fr. James Vann Johnston, Jr., of Knoxville, TN (far right in photo above) as the new bishop of the Diocese of Springfield-Cape Girardeau in southern Missouri. His consecration as a bishop is to take place on March 31, 2008. By all accounts, this 48 year-old priest seems the answer to many prayers that have been sent up along Interstate 44.

Within his new diocese, "Fr. Vann" (as he is known) will find the Ozarks, a vast area of wilderness with lakes and mountains well-known for outdoor recreation.

Fr. Vann is no stranger to the outdoors. In fact, in 2005 the U.S. Department of Interior gave him (and two of his fellow priests) a rare Citizen’s Award for Bravery for saving the lives of a father and two of his children by pulling them from the rapids of a creek at Glacier National Park in the high country of Montana.

The events surrounding that rescue and its oddly, but happily, humorous aftermath are described below--as earlier reported in Catholic East Tennessee (.pdf)--the journal of the Diocese of Knoxville.

Priests Honored for Rescuing Family

Three Tennessee priests, including two from the Diocese of Knoxville, earned national recognition this month after they saved a father and two of his children from plunging over a waterfall during a hiking vacation in Montana.

Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton presented the Citizen’s Award for Bravery to Father Vann Johnston, Father John Dowling, and Father Kevin Dowling [brothers] on Feb. 2, 2005, at the Department of the Interior’s 62nd Awards Convocation in Washington, D.C.

The award is granted “to private citizens for heroic acts or unusual bravery in the face of danger. Recipients have risked their lives to save the life” of a department employee or anyone else while on department property. Father Johnston is the Diocese of Knoxville chancellor.

Father John Dowling is pastor of St. John Neumann Parish in Farragut, and the other honoree—his younger brother—is a military chaplain at Barksdale Air Force base in Louisiana as well as pastor of parishes in Hohenwald, Centerville, and Waynesboro in the Diocese of Nashville.

The priests, longtime hiking companions, had visited Glacier National Park before and began a Sunday morning in August 2002 at Many Glacier with a simple goal of hiking three and a half miles to Iceberg Lake.

The hikers encountered a family of five about an hour into the walk. Father John Dowling passed the father on the trail and needed to look up to the tall man’s 1-year-old daughter, perched high above the trail in a baby backpack carrier.

“I just looked at her and said, ‘Wow, little girl, you’re way up there, aren’t you?’ He was about 6 foot-4 or -5, so she was higher up than I was.”

Nearby were the man’s wife and the couple’s two other children, a son and daughter who were about 8 or 9 years old. Father John Dowling continued toward a hilly perch over Ptarmigan Falls, sat down, and opened a granola bar. Father Johnston approached, with Father Kevin Dowling about 100 yards behind. The family remained near the steep bank of the creek.

The older Father Dowling was having a conversation with a furry friend when the boy fell in the creek.

“I was sitting up there, and there was a little chipmunk that was in the praying, begging position,” he said. “I looked over as I opened the granola bar and said, ‘You’re not going to get any of this.’

“As soon as I said that—here I am, talking to a chipmunk—I hear this scream and look up, and this kid’s on his back going down the creek.”

With the falls about 50 feet ahead of the boy, his father made a natural spur-of-the-moment decision: he jumped in to rescue his son. In doing so, however, he brought a third person into the water: his infant daughter was still in the carrier on his back.

The priests also reacted instantly, forming a human chain, with Father Johnston on shore and the sibling priests in the water.

“We didn’t really think that much about it because we were the only ones there,” said Father Johnston. “Very often we stop at that place when there’s no one else around. It was very providential that the three of us were there so that we could help.”

With slick rocks in the creek bed and nothing to hang on to on the shore, footing was difficult.

“I was hanging on to Kevin, and I tried to keep at least one foot on something that was not slick,” said Father Johnston. “One foot was on the bank, and the other was partially in the water. Kevin was also hanging onto John and trying to stabilize the whole mass of people that was in the water.”

The father managed to reach the boy first, with Father John Dowling close behind and trying to maintain his own leverage so he could pass the boy along the line to his mother on the bank.

“I reached my right hand over the right shoulder of the man,” he said. “The baby girl was screaming in my ear, and the boy was frantic. The father was trying to hold his daughter so she wouldn’t fall out of the pack. We moved for a while, but then we got wedged in.

“I was trying to pull this young boy out. We put him up on the bank and then kind of pushed the daughter and father up so they wouldn’t fall. Vann was wedging in Kevin, and Kevin was wedging in me while I was wedging the man and the girl.”

The father’s efforts to save his son were hampered once he realized his daughter was still in the carrier. “The father stopped the boy from floating, and then the father started slipping,” said Father Kevin Dowling. The boy ended up about 20 feet short of the falls.

Five others, like the priests nominated by the National Park Service, also received bravery awards at the convocation. Overall, the event recognized the service of more than 100 Interior Department employees, private citizens, and groups in a number of categories.

“Those being honored today have made all of us proud,” said Secretary Norton in her opening remarks at the Sidney Yates Auditorium. “They have gone beyond the decision to serve. They have made their choice their calling.

“For some the choice was made in a heartbeat. They stepped up into a firestorm or jumped into a rescue.”

News of both the awards and the Washington ceremony came to the priests with less than two weeks’ notice. Each speculated that the letter announcing the honors might be a hoax because it stated the awards would be presented by Bruce Babbitt, who was Secretary of the Interior under President Clinton.

The priests told relatively few people about the event, which they said made them wonder how the Department of the Interior got wind of it. The fact that the department’s awards convocations are not held very often—the last was in October 2002—accounted for the large gap between the rescue and the recognition.

“We were all very surprised, partly because it happened two and a half years ago,” said Father Johnston. “We didn’t think too many people were even aware of it.”

The priests’ host in Montana—Father Joe Pat Moran, pastor of St. Richard Parish in Columbia Falls—was most enthusiastic about the rescue and may have notified Glacier officials, though.

“When we come home from a hike, we usually sit around the table with the priests and fill them in on our day’s activities,” said Father Kevin Dowling. “They get a kick out of hearing our tales of the wild. We came home and were pleased to give [Father Moran] a little bit of a thrill in talking about what we experienced that day. He lit up.”

The rescue story the trio told their fellow priests at the rectory had at least one lesson in it.

“We told the priests that God was with us,” said Father John Dowling. “I just remember thinking that God put us in a good place where we could help those people.”

The family never knew their rescuers were priests.

“We weren’t dressed as priests,” said Father Johnston. “After we had gotten them out of the water, they were fairly shaken up. They thanked us and decided to go back in the opposite direction, so we didn’t see them again.”

The priests continued with their day’s outing. “We knew they wanted to get out of there, with the kid all wet,” said Father Kevin Dowling. “We went about finishing our hike. Everyone was happy and hugged each other, and we headed for the hills.”

Having three priest-rescuers available on a Sunday morning, of all times, was a bit unusual. The trio had concelebrated Mass the evening before at the park and thus had their typical busy morning free.

“It’s like that old joke about the minister who plays golf on Sunday morning and shoots a hole-in-one—who’s he going to tell?” said Father John Dowling.

The priests do not know the name of the family they rescued. University of Wisconsin sweatshirts gave a hint to the family’s likely home state, and there may have been a revealing clue about their faith.

“The man had a crucifix around his neck,” said Father Kevin Dowling.

Once the rescue was over, Farragut’s Father Dowling resumed the conversation he had been having.

“I went up back on the bank, and there was that little chipmunk with my granola bar,” he said. “He was eating that thing, and I said, ‘You son of a gun. You did get it, didn’t you?’”

Wow!

As the soon-to-be Bishop Vann Johnston said in the article, "It was very providential that the three of us were there so we could help."

Surely, his arrival to southern Missouri will be providential and helpful for the faithful in those environs as well.

Godspeed soon-to-be "Bishop Vann."

More here (Knoxville newspaper article 1/25/08).

And here.

BREAKING: NEW BISHOP for SPRINGFIELD-CAPE G.

This has just hit the web:

From the article hyperlinked above:

Vann Johnston Jr. has been named bishop for the Roman Catholic diocese of Springfield-Cape Girardeau, Mo.

Johnston is chancellor and moderator of the curia for the Knoxville diocese. He has served as priest at the Holy Ghost parish in Knoxville and currently is priest at Our Lady of Fatima Church in Alcoa.

The Missouri diocese covers the southern third of the state and is home to about 66,000 Catholics, with 66 parishes, 19 missions, and two chapels, along with 22 elementary schools and three high schools.

Johnston follows Bishop John Leibrecht, bishop of Springfield-Cape Girardeau since December 1984. Johnston is to be ordained and installed March 31.

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The following is a bio from his present parish:

.

Father Vann Johnston is a Knoxville native. He attended UT and earned a degree in electrical engineering in 1982. He worked as an engineer in Houston, TX until1985. He then attended St. Meinard where he received a Master of Divinity Degree. He was ordained in1990. From 1994 to 1996, he attended the Catholic University of America and earned a Licentiate in Canon Law. Father Vann has been an associate pastor at St. Mary’s in Oak Ridge and at St Jude in Chattanooga. While in Chattanooga he also taught at Notre Dame High School. Father Vann was then moved to Knoxville, where he became the associate pastor at Holy Ghost. He now has multiple responsibilities as Chancellor and Moderator of the Curia at Sacred Heart and Pastor at OLOF. We feel very blessed to have such a gracious and articulate priest to lead our parish.

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From another source: In 2005 he, along with two other priests from Tennessee, received the Citizen's Award for Bravery from the U.S. Department of the Interior for helping save a father and two of his children from plunging over a waterfall in Glacier National Park in Montana.

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The following is excerpted from an email to WT today from a Knoxville source:

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Fr. Johnston, a bright canon lawyer (and former electrical engineer) is absolutely orthodox and straight-down-the-line in support of Faith and Pope. This has shown up in an unusual way in his practice of correcting (in following responses) any heterodox claims made in letters to our diocesan biweekly.

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This appointment is great news for everyone in Springfield-Cape Girardeau who loves properly and reverently celebrated liturgy, including those who seek the traditional Latin Mass. He has been a warm and encouraging chancery friend of the Knoxville Latin Mass community, and probably was largely responsible for our original indult.

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It is a special loss for the parish where he was just appointed pastor about six months ago, and in that short time the daily Masses I attend have been completely "squared away" (Roman Canon on all feasts and solemnities, etc.), new more traditional hymnals have been ordered, altar servers now wear cassocks and surplices, hold communion patens and receive on the tongue, and discussion has been initiated about moving the tabernacle back to a central position behind the altar.

.

It is gratifying to see a priest like Fr. Johnston plucked out a remote location like ours and appointed to the episcopacy, but his departure will be a personal loss to everyone here who knows him well. Not least in that -- his so clearly being episcopal timber -- so many of us were hoping he would be staying here as our own new bishop.

More here!

Prayer for Priests

Almighty God, look upon the face of Him who is the eternal High Priest, and have compassion on Your priests in today's world. Remember that they are but weak and frail human beings. Stir up in them the grace of their vocation. Keep them close to You lest the enemy prevail against them, so that they may never do anything in the slightest degree unworthy of their sublime vocation.

O Jesus, I pray for Your faithful and fervent priests, for the unfaithful and tepid ones; for those laboring at home and abroad in distant mission fields; for those who are tempted; for those who are lonely and desolate; for those who are in purgatory.

But, above all, I recommend to You the priests dearest to me; the priest who baptized me; the priests who absolved me from my sins; the priests who instructed me or helped me by their encouragement. I pray devoutly for all the priests to whom I am indebted in any other way, in particular for those that have offered me the Blessed Sacrament. O Jesus, keep them all close to Your heart and bless them abundantly in time and in eternity. Amen.

O Mary, Queen of the clergy, pray for us; obtain for us a number of holy priests. Amen.

Any Guesses Which Church This Belfry Belongs To?

Out with the New--In with the Old

The Washington Post reports about a large new church in Gainesville, VA, that is nearing completion.

An excerpt:

Parishioners in western Prince William County will celebrate the opening next month of Holy Trinity Catholic Church, an $18 million, 80,000-square-foot spiritual home and community center for thousands of people in the Gainesville area.

With large stained-glass windows and an Irish Gothic-style design, the church will bring a traditional, Old World look to an area known for new subdivisions. Holy Trinity will serve more than 2,000 families, said the Rev. Francis J. Peffley, its pastor.

There are more pictures at the WaPo website. It is good to see that some sensible Catholic architecture is making a comeback, if that is the case. The Catholic church below is in Collegeville, MN, I believe. I include it here for no special reason other than to wish that maybe it was all just a bad dream after all.

Re: Scapulars

Whenever I hold my one-year old daughter (which is often), she likes to reach her little fingers under my collar and find my scapular. Then she pulls a strand of it out somehow and keeps pulling. To what end? None. But she is stronger than she looks and I think I will be going through more scapulars than usual until she gets bored with this game. She gives no sign that she will move on from it soon.

Today she ripped a scapular that had gotten pretty old. So I went to a drawer full of miscellany and looked around in it. I found another old scapular which had been through the mill, so to speak. Finally, I did find a new one, as shown in the above picture.

Anyway, it seemed to be good time to bring up the subject of scapulars. It is a devotion that my family is keen on, but it is one that many are unfamiliar with.

Below are portions of the entry on scapulars in the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia. (If you go to that entry, scroll down to the part about the "small scapular"--not the monastic ones.)

Excerpts:

The small scapulars consist essentially of two quadrilateral segments of woolen cloth (about two and three-quarter inches long by two inches wide), connected with each other by two strings or bands in such a manner that, when the bands rest on the shoulders, the front segment rests before the breast, while the other hangs down an equal distance at the back. The two segments of cloth need not necessarily be equally large, various scapulars having the segment before the breast of the above dimensions while the segment at the back is much smaller. The material of these two essential parts of the scapular must be of woven wool; the strings or bands may be of any material, and of any one colour. The colour of the segments of woollen cloth depends on the colour of the monastic habit, which it to a certain extent represents, or on the mystery in honour of which it is worn.

Only at the original reception of any scapular is either the blessing or the investment with such by an authorized priest necessary. When a person needs a new scapular, he can put on an unblessed one. If the investment with a scapular be inseparably connected with reception into a confraternity, the reception and enrollment must take place on the same occasion as the blessing and investment. To share in the indulgences and privileges of a scapular, one must wear it constantly; it may be worn over or under one's clothing and may be laid aside for a short time, if necessary. Should one have ceased wearing the scapular for a long period (even through indifference), one gains none of the indulgences during this time, but, by simply resuming the scapular, one again participates in the indulgences, privileges, etc. Every scapular, which is not merely an object of private devotion (for there are also such) but is also provided with an indulgence, must be approved by the ecclesiastical authorities, and the formula of blessing must be sanctioned by the Congregation of Rites.

Below is a bit about the brown scapular, the entry at New Advent has a bit of history on a great number of other kinds of scapulars:

Also known as the Brown Scapular, this is the best known, most celebrated, and most widespread of the small scapulars. It is spoken of as "the Scapular", and the "feast of the Scapular" is that of Our Lady of Mount Carmel on 16 July. It is probably the oldest scapular and served as the prototype of the others. According to a pious tradition the Blessed Virgin appeared to St. Simon Stock at Cambridge, England, on Sunday, 16 July, 1251. In answer to his appeal for help for his oppressed order, she appeared to him with a scapular in her hand and said: "Take, beloved son this scapular of thy order as a badge of my confraternity and for thee and all Carmelites a special sign of grace; whoever dies in this garment, will not suffer everlasting fire. It is the sign of salvation, a safeguard in dangers, a pledge of peace and of the covenant". This tradition, however, appears in such a precise form for the first time in 1642, when the words of the Blessed Virgin were given in a circular of St. Simon Stock which he is said to have dictated to his companion secretary, and confessor, Peter Swanyngton. Although it has now been sufficiently shown that this testimony cannot be supported by historical documents, still its general content remains a reliable pious tradition; in other words, it is credible that St. Simon Stock was assured in a supernatural manner of the special protection of the Blessed Virgin for his whole order and for all who should wear the Carmelite habit, that the Blessed Virgin also promised him to grant special aid, especially in the hour of death, to those who in holy fidelity wore this habit in her honour throughout life, so that they should be preserved from hell. And, even though there is here no direct reference to the members of the scapular confraternity, indirectly the promise is extended to all who from devotion to the Mother of God should wear her habit or badge, like true Christians, until death, and be thus as it were affiliated to the Carmelite Order.

What is the best thing about a scapular? The Sabbatine Privilege. If you don't know what that is, someday you might wish that you had heard about it.

If you care to, say in the combox whether of not you wear a scapular and, if so, which color/devotion is it dedicated to? As shown above, mine is the common brown scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. The one I buy also has pictures of St. Michael on it, as well as a St. Benedict Medal.

Make a Guess

To which parish in the diocese of Kansas City-Saint Joseph do this tabernacle and window belong? Tell KCC readers in the combox.

Two Items from The New York Times

Two Catholic-related items in today's New York Times caught my eye.

The first was an article about the election of the new leader of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits. The article contained this morsel:

The 468-year history of the Jesuit order has often included stormy relations with the Vatican. Benedict's predecessor, Pope John Paul, believed the order had become too independent, leftist and political, particularly in Latin America.

Were not the Jesuits well-known--for hundreds of years--for their loyalty to the Roman Pontiff? So, in considering the paragraph above, the mention that the order is 468 years old and that it has had stormy relations with the Vatican and that this "storminess" is evidenced by the papacy of John Paul II, about 435 years are left uncharacterized. This is a rather glaring omission, unless of course one is trying to insinuate that the Church's largest order has a long and proud history of disagreeing with the Holy See and there is no other way to make a point that is not true. The Jesuits, which are about half the size they were in 1965, might be great again when they (corporately) are loyal again.

And then there is a column by Peter Steinfels, a liberal Catholic commentator, who writes about this being a Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.

He states:

Years ago, a study of the drift of Presbyterian baby boomers away from their religious roots highlighted the difficulty parents and leaders of the denomination had in answering a simple question: “Why be a Presbyterian?” One Presbyterian journalist rather unfairly cracked that the question might have been posed as “What is a Presbyterian?”

This anxiety about identity is most evident in a stream of conservative positions taken by Pope Benedict XVI, his predecessor John Paul II, and their Vatican offices. It has been easier to question the wisdom of these measures than to argue that the anxiety behind them is unwarranted.

He admits that creedal drift (if I may coin a phrase--or am I?) causes anxiety and states that this natural reaction is somehow unwarranted. He then admits that a logical response (for some) to this unwarranted anxiety is the desire to re-establish a sense of "identity." He then recommends that such a goal is not wise. His solution to prevent this unnecessary chain reaction? More creedal drift--the very thing that started it all in the first place.

No thanks.

So There I Was . . .

So there I was standing in Terminal A of Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C.

If you fly to D.C. at all, you already know that this terminal is the poor relation of Terminals B and C. Terminal A is the poster child of dated 1970's architecture that resembles, somehow simultaneously, a disco and a prison (not that I am that familiar with either). Like discos and prisons, Terminal A is often full of people. And, adding to its lack of cachet, it also calls to mind many suburban parishes. But I digress.

Anyway, so there I was, in my Brooks Brothers gray flannel suit and a new pair of black wing tips. And I was wondering if I should get a cup of decaf at the coffee bar in the distance (it was evening). I decided against the decaf in favor of calling my wife. I called her and she told me that it was snowing in KC. After I hung up, an older guy from Florida I had been talking to asked me if he had heard me right. "Did you say it was snowing in KC?" "Yeah, that's what the wife says. Its bad for our citrus crop, you know." He thought that was funny and went back to reading his paper.

So there I wondering again about going to get that decaf. I didn't and I was quickly glad.

For as I was standing there in Terminal A in the Brooks Brothers suit and the new wing tips, while I was there thinking about how well my two-hour interview had gone--the one I had been working on for eight months--and about how happy I was to be me, well, that's when I saw something that brought me back to earth. That's when I saw something that made me more happy to be Catholic than self-possessed.

What did I see?

I saw a priest deplane from Gate 6 in Terminal A at Reagan National Airport on the evening of January 16, 2008. He was in a black cassock. He was young. And while he was the picture of orthodoxy and vigor, he was not the picture of pride as he walked through the poor architecture from which the assembled masses were waiting to escape. He was more the picture of purpose, of higher purpose, of a purpose more real and lasting than my simple wish for greater professional altitude.

So there I was standing without a cup of decaf but with a needed lesson about how much more important a cassock is than a Brooks Brothers suit. I thought of this and about how there had been recent decades in which one could probably stand in Terminal A for years and years and never see such a man pass by.

But suddenly one can see such a man.

Pray even for more.

A Quick and Worthy Prayer

Prayer to Prevent One Mortal Sin

O Mary, Immaculate Mother of Jesus, we beseech thee, offer to the Eternal Father the Precious Blood of Thy Divine Son, to prevent at least one mortal sin from being committed somewhere in the world today. Amen.

MLK Jr. Day Festivities at Visitation Parish (KCMO)

As noted on KCC before, Visitation parish has been hailed as a great acoustic space in The Kansas City Star. Now, we learn from the Star that a Martin Luther King, Jr., rememberence was held there on Sunday. The photograph above, taken from the Star story, shows that some find the parish a fine dance hall as well as a great acoustic space.

Who knew?

TLM News from Near and Far

News came this week that the traditional Latin Mass will soon be regularly celebrated in two cities in the southern part of Missouri: Stockton and Springfield. More can be learned at a new blog, Missouri Latin Mass Community, set up to promote the TLM in the Diocese of Springfield and Cape Girardeau. This development has been in the works for decades. KCC will have more news about this soon.

The TLM continues to make news elsewhere. An fairly new FSSP priest is noted in an article in the Herald-Tribune of southwest Florida. St. Martha's parish in Sarasota has a growing congregation.

Some excerpts:

The Latin Mass, rarely used in public for more than 40 years, is thriving at St. Martha Catholic Church in Sarasota, one of about only 15 churches in Florida that offers a Latin Mass. Father James Fryar, who trained with a seminary solely dedicated to preserving the Latin or "traditional" Mass, leads services at noon daily, including a Sunday high Mass featuring a choir performing classic a cappella works.

St. Martha is the only Southwest Florida church to offer a daily Latin Mass, though Sacred Heart in Bradenton has begun a monthly Latin Mass. St. Martha is also home to Fryar, the only priest practicing in Florida from the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, a 10-year-old seminary dedicated entirely to preservation of the traditional Latin Mass.

Surprisingly, Fryar said, the majority of those attending Latin Mass services are of a younger generation than the one that was raised with a Latin traditional Mass. Fryar himself is only 33, the average age of all of the priests at his seminary.

A little further north in the Tampa area, an article reports that the TLM has found another home in the Sunshine State.

An article in cooler climes notes that the TLM was celebrated today in Bailey Harbor, Wisconsin, for the first time in 45 years.

And all of this is happening as others report that the Holy Father will celebrate the Mass of Paul VI facing "liturgical east" (facing the same direction as the faithful) on the Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord. This will happen in the Sistine Chapel, which is where a pope first said Mass versus populum (facing the faithful). This is rather unexpected and very welcome.

Our Lady of Clear Creek Monastery

Our Lady of Clear Creek Monastery (Benedictine, traditional Latin Mass) is featured in an article in The Tulsa World today. The focus of the article is how they are constructing a monastery and community that will survive a 1,000 years. That's looking ahead.

An excerpt:

HULBERT -- A vision born 35 years ago on the campus of the University of Kansas and nurtured in a monastery in France moved closer to reality this week, as monks at Our Lady of Clear Creek Monastery moved into their new residence building.

The building is the first part of a monastic complex that will include an 80-by-180-foot church with a 110-foot bell tower.

"This is a dream come true," said the Rev. Phillip Anderson, the prior, or leader, of the Benedictine community living at the monastery.

"All of a sudden, after all these years, it's happening," he said.

To a visitor driving the gravel roads of rural Oklahoma east of Lake Fort Gibson, the new monastery emerges suddenly from the landscape, tall and imposing.

The idea of establishing in the United States a contemplative community, where monks would live a cloistered life in a monastery, was inspired in the early 1970s among a group of KU students by a Catholic professor.

P.S. Photo from Tulsa World.

Consecration Bells versus Tambourines

I have no crystal ball, of course. But my observations of the present and a fleeting glance to the recent past tell me that the following (taken from The Cleveland Plain Dealer) is not true. The usual reasons apply.

There are a lot of differences between the late Sunday afternoon Mass at St. Ambrose Catholic Church and the regular morning Masses throughout the Cleveland Catholic Diocese.

The first, of course, is the time: 5, which is preferred by young people who like to sleep in or have other activities such as sports teams during the day. The most significant difference is that teens and young adults are everywhere in the packed church in Brunswick.

They greet churchgoers. They lead the procession into the church. They read and bring the gifts for the priest to prepare the Eucharist. They help distribute Communion.

And they play in the band, which during the closing hymn encourages their peers to raise their arms and move to the music.

Congregations such as St. Ambrose are the future of the Catholic Church in the United States, say prominent church observers and researchers.

Holy Is Thy Name

From the Litany of the Holy Name, the devotion to which January is dedicated.

Jesus, splendor of the Father,
Jesus, brightness of eternal light.
Jesus, King of glory.
Jesus, sun of justice.
Jesus, Son of the Virgin Mary.
Jesus, most amiable.
Jesus, most admirable.
Jesus, the mighty God.
Jesus, Father of the world to come.
Jesus, angel of great counsel.
Jesus, most powerful.
Jesus, most patient.
Jesus, most obedient.
Jesus, meek and humble of heart.
Jesus, lover of chastity.
Jesus, lover of us.
Jesus, God of peace.
Jesus, author of life.
Jesus, example of virtues.
Jesus, zealous lover of souls.
Jesus, our God.
Jesus, our refuge.
Jesus, father of the poor.
Jesus, treasure of the faithful.
Jesus, good Shepherd.
Jesus, true light.
Jesus, eternal wisdom.
Jesus, infinite goodness.
Jesus, our way and our life.
Jesus, joy of Angels.
Jesus, King of the Patriarchs.
Jesus, Master of the Apostles.
Jesus, teacher of the Evangelists.
Jesus, strength of Martyrs.
Jesus, light of Confessors.
Jesus, purity of Virgins.
Jesus, crown of Saints.

Amen.

Catholics Rethink Quinceañera Craze

The Washington Post has a story devoted to a rite of passage common among Hispanic young women.

An excerpt:

DENVER -- On the day she is to become a woman, Monica Reyes sits in front of the church for Mass. Her white dress -- sewn in her mother's Mexican home town -- spills over her chair like an oversized lampshade.

The priest urges her to live as a daughter of God. Her parents give her a gold ring shaped like the number 15. Near the end of the service, Monica lays a bouquet of roses before a statue of the Virgin Mary.

Then she steps through the worn, wooden doors of St. Joseph's, a Roman Catholic parish attended by generations of poor, Hispanic immigrants, and into a 20-seat white Hummer limo that rents for $150 an hour.

Before long, a stretch Lincoln Town Car arrives for the next quinceañera Mass.

An elaborate coming-of-age ritual for Hispanic girls on their 15th birthday, the quinceañera has long been divisive in the U.S. Catholic Church, where it's viewed as either an exercise in excess or a great opportunity to send a message about faith and sexual responsibility.

The latter view won an important endorsement last summer when the Vatican approved a new set of prayers for U.S. dioceses called Bendición al cumplir quince años, or Order for the Blessing on the Fifteenth Birthday.

Consider it an acknowledgment of the changing face of American Catholicism. Hispanics account for almost 40 percent of the nation's 65 million Catholics and 71 percent of new U.S. Catholics since 1960, studies show.

You Have to Admit, Satan Is a Clever Son of a . . .

Who knew Satan was one to have fun with puns. See this news story from The Denver Post:

LAS VEGAS—You could sum up the state of TV at the International Consumer Electronics Show this way: New delivery methods will let people watch pretty much anything, anytime, on gorgeous flat-panel displays.

At the adjoining Adult Entertainment Expo, which opened here Wednesday, the message is: We KNOW one thing people will choose.

Miami-based entrepreneur Estefano Isais is using the adult expo to debut Fyre, which he is billing as the first set-top box to deliver DVD-quality adult movies on demand to home televisions. The Fyre simply has to be plugged into an Ethernet port in a broadband connection. Another plug goes into the TV, and voila.

If it's not your thing, consider at least the technical achievement. A mainstream service from Vudu Inc., which works in a similar way as Fyre, has about 5,000 movies available. Fyre has 20,000 and is still expanding.

The Fyre box (in beta now, officially debuting in April) will be free but require a subscription plan ranging from $10 to $100 a month. Fyre shares revenue with the adult film studios that supply the videos, which are protected from copying by "digital rights management" technology.

You see the joke, don't you. Fyre is pronounced like fire. You call their 1-800 number, you order their service, and tell yourself it is not really a sin and so you never confess it.

And then you die.

And then you get to listen to a recording of yourself saying "I want Fyre" for eternity, with Satan laughing occasionally, "Hey, don't look at me--I'm just giving you what you asked for. Hee, hee."

Over in Saint Louis

The Timman at Saint Louis Catholic has the news about how 2008 is going to start out pretty darn interesting on that end of I-70.