Holidays

My Faithfully readers, like our good friend Stephan, I am also traveling for my holidays.
Unlike Stephan and his adventurous trip to Europe, my trip is down to New South Whales.
Sorry about the lack of posts on my bit, life's a bit hectic and de-motivational. When I return which will be around the 2nd of October, I hope to resume posting, with fun photos from the trip.
Just to keep you happy, a nice photo from my "liturgical adventures" as Stephan puts them in the Ukrainian rite of the Catholic church.

Mother Teresa's

Mother Teresa is great example of a saintly nun, one thing most lefties frequently forget is that she was well Catholic, not a commie. She did love thy neigbour and she did it like Christ, but she also was fully in line with the church's teachings and shared some very traditional views, here's just one.

"I will tell you a secret, since we have just a thousand close friends together, and also because we have the Missionaries of Charity with us...

"Not very long ago I said Mass and preached for their Mother, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, and after breakfast we spent quite a long time talking in a little room. Suddenly, I found myself asking her -- don't know why -- 'Mother, what do you think is the worst problem in the world today?' She more than anyone could name any number of candidates: famine, plague, disease, the breakdown of the family, rebellion against God, the corruption of the media, world debt, nuclear threat, and so on.

"Without pausing a second she said, 'Wherever I go in the whole world, the thing that makes me the saddest is watching people receive Communion in the hand.'"

- Father George William Rutler, Good Friday, 1989 in St. Agnes Church, New York City (a precise transcript taken from a tape of his talk available from St. Agnes Church)

I mentioned this to a worker at St Vicent de Paul and he told me "boy, the world has bigger problems then that". Interesting, some people, view everything as a cafeteria, picking what they like and leaving anything they don't. Ie taking social justices and leaving the divinity of Christ.

8th of september Birthday of Our lady

The 8th of September, the Birthday of Our Lady, a greater feast of the church's calender and a "big day" at Marian Valley. His Grace himself, Archbishop Bathersby celebrated Mass at the shrine in honor of Our Lady.The Archbishop prayers the opening PrayerFr Prior proclaims the Gospel. A Bishop assisted by two of his priests is a very moving sight.In the words of Fr Prior, "we are in for a treat, we get to see Br Luke's renewal of Profession."His grace honors Our Lady by incensing here statue.The source and summit of the mass, the consecration.After mass Father gave a brief talk (which took 15mintues!) on Our Lady. Meanwhiles his Grace had to unfortunately leave us.
After Father's talk we had a Eucharistic procession to the grotto of Our Lady of Fatima.Which was followed by benediction.

This truly was a great celebration of this feast of Our Lady.

Off to Rome

To let you all know, I will be flying out to the USA next week and then spending time in Spain and finally in Rome. I hope that Roman will keep you entertained with his liturgical adventures, I will be checking up on progress. Meanwhile after spending secular time in California, I will be gradually update you on churches and liturgical practices that I observe in Spain and Italy, in between shopping in ecclesiastical department stores for Roman and myself! I will have heaps of information to blog with including heaps of pics and a few movies when I get back.

The Ukrainian rite of the Catholic Church

Today I took up a kind invitation of my star vestment maker, William Lawrence to learn how to serve the divine liturgy of st John chrysostom
The Ukrainian rite is the second largest rite of the church and has even earn t the title of church of the martyrs, due to a large number of Ukrainian catholics being martyred for the faith during soviet times. The liturgy was very interesting a quite a change from both forms of the roman rite that I attend. The prayers were sung in Ukrainian (being polish i understood some of it) and from the English translations that i have read were quite beautiful. Down in Melbourne I had a discuss with JP about noise and the thurible, quite right the censing in the divine liturgy is very noise and very obvious. Another interesting part was the offertory at the start of mass, that allowed me as one assisting at the liturgy to offer some bread for specific intentions. Finally consecration was very diffrent for a Roman, the servers sign them selves and then touch the ground once the consecration is complete. Looking forward to more liturgies in the future.

Riverfire Tonight

In Brisbane in September we have a fireworks festival called Riverfire. The highlight is when the local F111 fighter jets do a fuel burn over the city. This is a picture taken by a friend of a friend of a friend last year.

Terminologies

There are quite a few strange terminologies that are creeping in though liturgies that I have attended lately. Some people might be able to enlighten me on some of them.

Eucharist
The trend has been from "celebrating Mass" to "celebrating the Eucharist" to now "celebrating Eucharist". The idea of removing the term Mass was for a number of reasons:

• the perception that the word Mass came from the word "Missa" whihc referrred to the dismissal at the end of Mass" and not really what happens in the Mass
• a move away from Catholic terms to a more protestant friendly term.

Mind you this seems to be a term used only in the English speaking world, other places eg Italy only use Messa or Sancta Messa (or Holy Mass)

I cannot understand why "the" has now beeen dropped. I suspect it might have been to give a bigger emphasis on the community celebrating (like we have "lunch" not "the lunch"). I think this is an attempt to make the meal aspect of the whole liturgy a lot stronger. Not a good trend.

Gathering Song

I think this is traditionally called the introit or "entrance". Where did gathering come into it? I thought that the gathering happens before this when the people gather in the church prior to the commencement of the liturgy. The GIRM calls it the entrance and the the music accompanying it the "entrance chant". Again the use of the word "song" creeps into local usage. This has been condemned by the Congregation for Divine Worship, as this does not refer to a liturgical act, and the word song does not appear in GIRM.

Presentation of the Gifts

This is another way of saying offertory. However, the intent is that it emphasises the people presenting the gifts whihc has a sense of "horizontality" in it. Offertory is presumably avoided as it is a priest action and accentuates the "verticality" of the liturgy.

Presider

This is the real odd one. The term presiding has been used since the early church. However, it appears to be used now to emphasise that it is the congregation does the liturgy and the priest merely presides over or chairs the proceedings. The problem stems from the GIRM n30-33, whihc talks about the priest presiding over the assembly "in the name of Christ" and "as the one who presides, prays in the name of the Church and the assembled community". This of course points strongly to an orientation that he faces towards the people; quite different to the extraordinary form where the priest prays in the "name of the people" and is not presiding over anything that the community actually does.

Thesea re all terms which I feel uncomfortable about. However, the seeds of them are all there in the GIRM and have been used effectively by the people who would push us towards protestantism, where a priesthood is not present.