No standing invitation

Something tells me they won't invite this student-turned-alumni back for a commencement speech anytime soon. As the Curt Jester points out, contraception, food fights and cohabitation is a strange mix for a graduation speech. But I can see the corollary.

Contraception is selfish and childish, food fights are childish and messy and faculty cohabitation is messy, usually involves contraception and lead to childless unions.

Well good for him anyway. Better than your usual bland where we have been and where we are going pablum.

The president also made a cryptic but encouraging comment regarding his speech

At the same time, the president said, it was also important "to treat one another with respect as we speak and as we listen, regardless of how controversial an issue may be."

The "tolerance as a supreme value" folks usually are only tolerant if you agree with them. Anybody expressing a different opinion gets suppressed. Nobody booed or walked out when the President was getting blasted at a FUNERAL, so a graduation speech upholding Catholic values at a Catholic University isn't even close to outrageous.

The heat turns up

I am going to try to get back in the swing after a bit of time off. I saw this elsewhere too, but the Curt Jester has the full letter from Cardinal Arinze to the US Bishops who are dragging their feet on the requirement that the liturgical translations be fixed to actually resemble the Latin they came from.

Weight of Glory also has a breakdown of it here.

It should be interesting to see the response now.

Oh Boy

Finally! Not being musically inclined and being raised on this pablum, I had a hard time understanding why many people strongly disliked much of the music used in Catholic Masses today.

Yes, some were syrupy and not very inspiring. But I have never heard different, so what is the deal. We are at Mass and we make do. But the people protesting the "G&P" or "Jouney" song books and the "Haugen-Haas" music were people I respected on other points, so I took their critical comments and pondered them. One of the most hated songs, "Here I am Lord" was a personal favorite.

So what is the problem? Then I started to pay attention to what I was singing. I noticed the grand theme was ME. And why I was so great, I myself was the bread of life and the reason for being at Mass. It started to dawn on me that these songs were affirming my "wonderfulness" when I was at Mass to worship God. Slowly I began to detest singing about me.

God loves me. That is a wonderful realization to know. But I don't think I go to Mass on Sunday to proclaim how wonderful I am. God loves me in spite of my shortcomings. He loves me because HE IS GOD and not because I am so wonderful He can't help but love me.

So I kept reading. And trying not to be annoyed at Mass. But I can't help but point everyone who reads this blog to the site, A Liturgical Guitarist Reformed. This musician's conversion is very enlightening. Especially this quote

"What we get instead when guitars enter the sanctuary is what seems, to my non-musician's ears, to be an insipid STRUM-a-strumma-strumma-STRUM-a-strumma-strumma that turns the guitar into a low-rent folk rhythm instrument. And overbearing rhythm instruments have no place in any liturgical celebration, in my opinion. This is just another example of how the 'folk' movement in liturgical music has provided shelter to, and an excuse for, wretched composing and substandard musicianship."
~The Goliard

And Mr. Inman links to this page at the bottom, Ritus Narcissus

A conversation demands that we include the other in the discussion. If someone speaks to you about himself, about you, about himself and you, but never really with you, you would call that person conceited. So have we become in our conversation with God: He humbles Himself to dwell among us under the form of bread and wine, while we ignore Him and sing about ourselves and to ourselves.

Wow!

and thanks Curt Jester for the links.

No agenda

As judges are supposed to be "duty-bound to be an unbiased, fair finder of fact", it is disturbing to note that Judge Greer of the Shiavo case apparently fails that test.

One year after the death of Terri Schiavo, the judge who ordered her feeding tube removed spoke at a right-to-die symposium; something Schiavo’s family calls a disturbing conflict of interests.The two-day event the University of Pennsylvania was titled The Legacy of the Terri Schiavo Case: Why is it so hard to die in America?

Tyical victimized mantra. Poor Terri, she just wanted to die. And those awful parents of her who stood to gain nothing fought so hard to prevent her from dying of marked dehydration. Cruel isn't it. And poor Micheal Shiavo, noblest of men just wanted to fulfill her wishes that she not be kept alive and deprive him of the large sum of mone... I mean deprive him of closure.

Liturgical Anonymous

Another classic Jester parody.

The only downfall is that like AA, the liturgists would have to choose to go on their own.