New Vocations Video?

I was a guest performer for the talent show where I teach. A teacher told me it would be a great vocations video. I am not sure. But it was a blast playing live again.

Question of the day

If you teach, you know you get crazy questions sometimes. Today was the topper of them all and it left me speechless. From a sophomore girl in Sacraments class, "If we eat Jesus in communion, and digest the host, does that mean we poop out Jesus?"

Again, speechless.

The Last Superstition

I highly recommend the book below as the best I have found on the subject of answering the new atheists. Feser presents a readable summary of Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy as the grounding of belief not only in a God, but a God that is worth knowing and loving. His sharp wit and verbal jabs make it enjoyable to anyone who has been offended at the sanctimonious tone of the intolerant unbelievers he addresses directly.

QOTD

“The believer in God has to account for the existence of unjust suffering; the atheist has to account for the existence of everything else.” - Rabbi Milton Steinberg (1903–1950)

On the new translation of the Roman Missal: Comment by Fr. Holtz, O.P.

This comment from the previous post deserves its own post. Thanks Fr. Dominic!
_________

What may be helpful for everyone to remember is that, whatever we may think about the texts themselves, the transition will be awkward at first, and perhaps for a while. Even setting aside the refuseniks who are likely either to continue to use the texts they knew form before (likely privately adapted versions of the official prayers!) or begin their own private work of "adaptation" on the new prayers, people will find themselves slipping into the familiar. This will not be from ill will. Pastors will do it, religious will do it, pious ladies with chapel veils will do it, as will enthusiastic youth ministers on the way to World Youth Day. We will all slip back into what we know, even with our noses planted deep within our new books.

The question is whether we will choose to resent the effort it takes to make these new translations as naturally our own as the ones we have said for 40 or so years or not. It was an effort back in 1970, and even in the 2000s there were a few folks who would slip into the interim translations of 1965-69! Still effort is not convertible with evil and the need to practice is not equivalent to undue burden. Many things worth doing --- learning a new language, taking up and instrument or oil painting, cooking a new cuisine, trying one's hand at a new sport, starting an unfamiliar devotion to our Lord or his saints --- will only come to us through a certain amount of effort, indeed of toil. But, for those who know the rewards of these beatifully human and graced endeavors, and especially the beauty of praying together the prayers of the most holy Sacrifice of the Mass, this is the happy effort, the blessed exhaustion known to every singer, every artist, every athelete, every cook, indeed of every parent or teacher, every son or daughter of God Most High at prayer before the Sacrament.

Since we know this change will require labor, but will only work best if we labor lovingly and without complaint, in silent adoration of our Lord, perhaps a special prayer to St Joseph would be in order?

The new translation of the Missale Romanum

I am pretty enlivened by the prospects and future of the new translation. It gives meaning to the idea of a living Church with an eye always toward the better and not just settling into a comfort zone and believing that we have already done the best work possible. I find myself already studying and thinking about why I say the words that I do and what the new words mean and why we are changing some of them.

I have also heard many complaints about how stupid the translation is and that it is condescending and ridiculous. One of the stranger complaints I heard was how the new translation of the Creed does not use complete sentences. Huh? I have a whole set of internal reasons why people reject the work of the new translation, one being that people are against progress, but the ones who are complaining the most are the most "progressive" people I know. A strange paradox.

I guess I am offically a Traddy as of yesterday

While I have a serious love of the liturgy and am not at all interested in deviating from the liturgical texts and rubrics of the Church, I have also been a supporter of all expressions and practices of the liturgy that are more modern and recent. But one point I am no longer a supporter of: communion in the hand. While celebrating Mass at the parish I help out on weekends, I watched with shock yesterday as an elderly gentleman "took" the host from my hand (don't get me started on that one) and walked off without consuming it. I was in the middle of distributing so I watched him grab his bulletin from the pew and leave.

In all charity, it is my best guess that he was bringing it home to his wife. I hope and pray that that is the case. However, I did talk to the ushers and I will talk to the pastor when he returns, he will not be happy about a situation like this.

I have heard any number of arguments and discussions about this subject, and after my short months as a priest I find it very difficult to support communion in the hand in concept. As long as the Church continues to sanction it, I will never refuse to do it. But my opinion of it is pretty much set, and it has very little to do with being a crazy traditionalist and everything to do with respect for Our Lord in the Eucharist and the furthering of a renewal of what the Church actually teaches about the Holy Eucharist.