Angelology

So, this is rather strange.

A publicist from Penguin contacted me through the blog and offered me a free copy of some book called Angelology, some sort of mystery thriller involving a nun, I think. I haven't done to much research because I want to read it fresh, without any outside opinions or preconceptions.

The idea is that they hope I'll review it once I read it and, I guess, they hope it will get publicity that way. For some reason they think that my audience would like it. Or, perhaps, they hope my audience will find it disagreeable and controversial and so will complain and word-of-mouth will spread virally that way (like with The Da Vinci Code, which became only more popular from the controversy).

I accepted the offer and the book should arrive soon. But I will try not to be a whore. Hey, free stuff is free stuff, right? I feel rather accomplished, this blog is finally paying off, lol...

[Update: Well, she never sent the book, so I don't know what happened. Oh well, it probably wasn't that great... ]

Antiphons

Update: I have added even more antiphon research charts to this page (October 2013).

I was very surprised to learn originally that the antiphons of the psalter were butchered and confused in an entirely arbitrary seeming way under Pius X, with little or no explanation; so I did a little research and made some charts (links to download these charts are included) comparing. 

Pre-1911, there were 141 unique antiphons in the psalter. Post-1911, there were 220. Yet, when compared, only 66 antiphons are recognizably the same between the two sets; and even then, sixteen are of those changed by expanding them, adding words, or removing words or clauses, or both. Many of the overlapping ones are just the ones for the special seasons (Advent, Lent, Passiontide), not the per annum ferias. So there were 75 antiphons unique to the pre-1911 Breviary that were simply lost, and 154 unique to the post-1911 Breviary that were simply introduced to the liturgy with no explanation as to their origin.

In total, between the two psalters, you can find 295 unique antiphons (just in the psalter; not counting Propers and Commons, which thankfully didn't change). All this massive change disturbs me. I've seen the Pius X changes deconstructed and critiqued, but the massive changes to the psalter antiphons (which in the chanted Office form a significant part, hence the "Antiphonale")...I've never seen discussed. The traditional Roman antiphonary seems quite destroyed by 1911. 

I have made a chart to explore what happened to the 75 antiphons that disappeared in the 1911 reforms and how they interact or conflict with the post-1911 antiphons. In comparing pre-1911 and post-1911 I had already determined that there were 295 unique antiphons between the two psalters. In the post-1911 psalter there are 247 unique psalms, divisi, and canticles (including 49aii and the new Lauds canticles and psalm 94 from the Invitatory which is not strictly included in the psalter, but excluding the repeated psalms at Lauds II).

71 of these 247 have no antiphon uniquely of their own. Specifically, when three psalms or divisi are grouped under one antiphon at the Prime, Terce, Sext, None, and Compline, this leaves 2 without an antiphon (usually the antiphon is a quote from the first of the three, but a few times is actually a quote from the second or third). Add to this the new canticle from Daniel at Lauds II and Psalm 94 from the Invitatory which have no antiphon of "their own" (because it would always be proper) and 2 antiphons x 5 hours x 7 days + 2 = 72 which have no antiphon associated specifically with them as "their own."

This means there are 175 unique "per annum" antiphons in the post-1911 psalter that "belong to" specific psalms, divisi, or canticles (246-71 = 175). This is confirmed by actual counting. In comparing pre-1911 and post-1911 I had already determined that 66 antiphons were shared between the two psalters. 21 of these (going through and counting) are "seasonal" antiphons, meaning 45 "per annum" antiphons are shared between the two. Subtracting from 175, this leaves 130 "per annum" antiphons unique to post-1911.

This is confirmed coming at it in the other direction as well. I had already determined there were 154 unique antiphons post-1911. Going through and counting confirms that 24 of the unique post-1911 are merely "seasonal," which is exactly what would be expected when subtracting the assumed 130 from 154 (specifically, these 24 are the Lauds II ferial antiphons, excluding the 6 canticles). This also confirms (by subtracting from 175) that 45 of of the shared antiphons are "per annum" (and, thus, by subtracting from 66, that 21 are seasonal).

Since 45 are already shared between the two sets, this means that 130 psalms/divisi/canticles in the post-1911 psalter were sites of potential "conflict" with pre-1911 antiphons.

I had already determined that there are 75 antiphons unique to pre-1911. Adding the 66 shared to this, there are 141 present in the pre-1911 psalter. 62 of these 75 are for separate psalms (4 are paschal or variations of alleluias not needed to be associated with specific psalms, five are "alternates" for psalm 62, and 2 are "extra" antiphons from psalm 150 since only one is needed to cover it, and 2 are “extra” from psalm 148 because there is already one for 148 which is shared with post-1911.) By addition, this means that 107 "non-repetitive"/non-seasonal antiphons are present in the pre-1911 psalter.

The question then becomes how many of these 62 pre-1911 "non-repetitive" antiphons conflict with the 130 post-1911 "per annum" antiphons. I knew a lot would conflict, but at least a few would find one of the 72 "free" spaces and therefore not be in conflict.

It turned out, when I counted, that the answer was that 15 pre-1911 antiphons are associated with a spot that is "free" in post-1911, meaning these antiphons were simply gotten rid of because the post-1911 design did not want antiphons for those spots (ie, at Prime, Terce, Sext, None, and Compline, where three psalms are under only one antiphon). So (subtracting 15 from 62) this means that 47 conflicted directly. This means the post-1911 psalter just overtly replaced these 47 even though it didn’t have to and could have used the traditional antiphon for that psalm.

Additionally, 5 that found a “free” spot actually did have a new antiphon crafted from that psalm, just drawn from a different divisi. So while it might technically have filled a different niche if we are talking about every divisi potentially having its own antiphon...in practice these 5 also amount to cases of “replacement” because an antiphon already existed, drawn from those psalms, which could have been used as the header for that psalm/group of divisi, and yet a new one was created instead (albeit a new one drawn from a different section of the psalm; usually earlier in the psalm, but in one cases later). Why this was done in these [47+5=] 52 cases is the most interesting historical question.

Subtracting 15 from 72 additionally tells us that there are 57 psalms/divisi that have never, in either psalter, had an antiphon that "belonged to" them specifically in either of the two psalters. While this is understandable for divisi meant all along to be grouped under one header, it’s a bit more surprising for the whole psalms given that there are 295 antiphons and only 150 psalms (and yet some psalms like 7 and 12 still have never had "their own" antiphon).

The Invitatories for the various days of the week were switched around a bit too, oddly. Specifically, the traditional Invitatory for Sunday was simply discarded, and the (albeit similar) Invitatories from Thursday and Friday were moved to Sunday (the first used Pentecost to September 27, the second used September 28 to November 26). Saturday's traditional Invitatory was then moved to Friday, and then totally new Invitatories were composed for Thursday and Saturday. Wednesday's Invitatory was just entirely replaced. Also it seems that, formerly, the Septuagesima and Lent special Invitatories were only used on Sunday, but after the reform were extended to the whole season. A simple triple alleluia on Paschal Ferias was also discarded. Given that only three Invitatories are truly "new" under the reform, I think it would be easy enough to start from the traditional schema and then find places for the three new constructions, perhaps by including them among the seasonal variations (perhaps by reintroducing the Sunday/Ferial distinction during the special Seasons of Septuagesima, Lent, and Passiontide and making them the Ferial antiphon there rather than simply having the seasonal ferias use the regular per annum invitatory).

The Matins Versicles are more convoluted. Prior to 1911, they had an interesting arrangement. There was a unique "Per Annum" antiphon for each of the three nocturns of Matins on Sunday, and for each Feria, but then there were also special versicles for Advent, Lent, Passiontide, and Paschal. These were the same in the First Nocturn (of Sunday) and Monday and Thursday, and then another set the same in the Second Nocturn (of Sunday) and Tuesday and Friday, and then another set the same in the Third Nocturn (of Sunday) and Wednesday and Saturday. The Ferias then had additional versicles for various classes of feasts (which might remain in the Commons post-1911) that likewise were shared Monday/Thursday, Tuesday/Friday, Wednesday/Saturday: One Martyr, Several Martyrs, Martyrs during Paschaltide, Confessor Bishop, Confessor Non-Bishop, Female Saint. On Monday and Thursday there was only one versicle for Confessors (Bishops and Non-Bishops), and on Saturdays there are no versicles for these various classes possible, but only for the Blessed Virgin Mary.

After 1911, with Matins always having three Nocturns possible, changes were made. For the first two nocturns, totally new per annum and paschal versicles have been created, and these are the only two variations; there is a separate per annum versicle for each nocturn at every weekday, but the paschal versicles are the same every day. For the third nocturn (and all three Nocturns on Sunday), the Advent, Lent, and Passiontide versicle variations remain, and indeed the same as traditional (and according to the same weekday split); the traditional Paschal versicles remain here as well according the traditional weekday split, but only on days of three lessons. On days of 9 lessons, there is a third new paschal versicle (that, like those at the first and second nocturns, is the same every day). Except perhaps when called for from the Commons, the inclusion of the variations based on classes of Saints have been done away with in psalter itself.

While the change regarding the Saints makes sense to me, what is surprising and unnecessary seeming, however, is that even at the third nocturn, the traditional per annum versicles have simply been entirely replaced (except at the first nocturn of Sunday Matins). Given that the post-1911 system has space for three per annum versicles every day, and that all sorts of new ones had to be composed to enable that...it seems bizarre that they wouldn't just integrate the traditional one each day (alongside two new ones) but rather composed three whole new ones. It would be my inclination to include the traditional per annum versicle at the third nocturn each day instead (perhaps the new ones can be integrated by splitting the year in two or putting them at some seasonal time, like making a variation for Septuagesima, though this would require creating another new versicle for the first nocturn of Sunday). The distinction between paschal days of 9 versus 3 lessons also seems unnecessary and I might be inclined to get rid of that and keep the new unvarying third-nocturn 9-lesson paschal versicle only (given that the paschal versicle doesn't vary at the other two nocturns, and that the traditional paschal versicles would still be preserved at the three nocturns of Sunday).

I suspect all these changes to antiphons, invitatories, and versicles may have something to do with Solesmes and the manuscripts they were using for their musicology during the chant "restoration." There was, of course, the Ratisbon antiphonale in three volumes from the late 19th-century, which could be consulted to see the old melodies for these old texts, but they are very rare books, and anyway would not be restored according to Solesmes, which changed the chant in such a way that many melodies were interpreted very differently anyway (NLM had an article about this with "Simile Est" as an example in 2008). Though I'd tend to agree with most people that this musicological restoration by Solesmes was for the better, the arbitrary changes to the traditional Roman antiphonary are disturbing nonetheless.

I do believe that even the Pius X revisions need to be re-examined. While shortening the number of verses said at Matins (especially on Sundays) and getting rid of the repetition at the Little Hours was very necessary...I think the rigid application of these principles to the other hours was unnecessary, and led to a very untraditional weekly cycle of psalms. I have therefore made a suggestion of a "more moderate" reform of the Psalter here that leaves Lauds, Vespers, Compline (and largely Prime) almost completely intact, and reforms only by removing the repetition of psalm 118 at the Little Hours and allowing Matins to be shortened by "over-flowing" into the freed-up space. I've made a partial proposal for the Antiphons with this hypothetical psalter too (though it would probably take a Vatican commission to complete it and figure out how to fill all the blank spaces or use the remaining antiphons) that would incorporate most of the antiphons from both pre- and post-1911 into the psalter.

I Bet Seminaries Would Love This...

Hey, it looks like there is another way for seminaries to invade people's privacy and tighten the culture of surveillance. Curfews, room searches, and reading their mail are nothing compared to what technology allows:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/02/school-under-fire-for-spying-on-kid-via-webcam-at-home.ars

Apparently, some school district was remotely accessing the webcams on school-issued laptops even while students were at home. The feature was intended to find stolen laptops, but it looks like it was used for more than just that:

According to the suit, Harriton vice principal Lindy Matsko told Blake on Nov. 11 that the school thought he was "engaged in improper behavior in his home." She allegedly cited as evidence a photograph "embedded" in his school-issued laptop.

Now, the full story as to what exactly the "improper behavior" was has not come out yet. Nor has the question of whether the laptop had been (mistakenly) reported stolen. That would be the only reasonable justification for turning on the camera remotely, and even then students should have been told in advance that the possibility existed and signed a waiver for such a situation.

I mean, who knows. It's been suggested that the student could have been using school servers for some sort of illicit underage webcamming activity through the laptop, and that's how the school was alerted to the situation. And if he was using their servers, they'd have a right to punish him for that, of course.

But that seems an unlikely hypothetical. And barring something like that, whatever the "improper behavior" was...is irrelevant. It happened at home, not school, so the school shouldn't have such jurisdiction. At least not to positively punish (though I can perhaps see the argument for taking away privileges, like sports team participation, for drug and alcohol citations, etc).

But even if it was something that directly affected school-work and which they'd normally have a right to punish for if they found out (like something touching on academic integrity; cheating at home is still cheating)...they found still out about it in a totally illicit manner, and illicitly obtained evidence should never be usable. The only thing the remote access to the cameras should be used for is in the case of a stolen laptop. They shouldn't use the information any other way.

Boy, I bet WCC would love something like this for their students. Another way to insert the blessings of Authority into people's lives, right? The scary thing is, they probably could announce it openly, and some people would willingly sign a waiver and enthusiastically submit to the possibility of such monitoring. It just baffles and terrifies me.

Update, from the wikipedia article on the case: "On February 20, 2010, the plaintiffs' lawyer, Mark S. Haltzman of Lamm Rubenstone LLC, told MSNBC Live that the student had been eating "Mike and Ike" candy in front of the laptop assigned to him, in his own home. The attorney said that the school administrator had accused the student of using illegal drugs, after seeing him eating the candy in a webcam image. The lawyer said that his client's laptop had not been reported stolen or lost. The lawyer raised questions about who is deciding when to activate the webcam, and for what reasons."

57,600 minutes! 57,600 moments to fast!

(If my calculations are correct: 40 x 24 x 60)...

A Good Bishop

From here:

There is at least one bishop who has been willing to critique both his fellow bishops and the church culture that helped enable the abuse: Diarmuid Martin, the archbishop of Dublin.

Martin's was an impressive resume, to be sure, but not one generally considered ideal for the kind of prophetic voice necessary to shake up an entrenched church culture -- which is exactly what was needed in Dublin as the first decade of the new millennium opened.

In the early 2000s, as the clergy sex scandals were breaking in the United States, Ireland, too, was beginning to come to grips with its legacy of a suffocating church world whose culture of silence was abetted by the government and social institutions that were de facto partners with the church in running schools and other sectors. Two reports in 2009 were the coup de grace to the Irish church's once sacrosanct status.

Note, he came onto the scene only after all the bad stuff happened and was starting to be revealed:

In 2003, with reports of these abuses beginning to churn in the media, and the then-Dublin archbishop, Cardinal Desmond Connell, isolated and seemingly incapable of responding, Pope John Paul II announced that Martin would succeed Connell within a year or so. It was a thankless task that Martin didn't expect or want, but it turned out he was the best man for the job.

"The church in the past was extraordinarily authoritarian, in some cases one might even say abusively authoritarian, it was actually disrespectful of people's autonomy in many ways," Martin said at a press briefing the week he was installed as co-adjutor of Dublin, a kind of "co-bishop" with right of succession when the incumbent retired. Cardinal Connell hadn't held such a meeting with the media in over a decade, and Irish Catholics were amazed at the appearance and Martin's language. "I think we have to avoid any type of authoritarianism, and also any type of clericalism -- which is some kind of closed idea of a priestly grouping that somehow or other seeks privilege rather than being there to serve the mission of the Church."

The church as authoritarian? Priests ruling as an elite caste? Those were fighting words to many church insiders, and almost revolutionary slogans in an Irish church defensive and entrenched after centuries of persecution under the English, and institutionalized by decades of sharing power with the civil authorities.

But Martin wasn't done. "I think that a Church that is humble in its style will be much more effective in today's world," he said. "I have to find a different style of being archbishop."

He certainly did that.

From the start Martin rejected the common approach of denying problems, or denouncing modern Catholics for bad faith or bad behavior [a common theme that self-righteous "good Catholics" love to hear: how bad their peers are. But he rightly rejected such preaching-to-the-choir], and he accepted the church's responsibility in creating the current difficulties. "It's no longer a question that you just learn your Catechism or your religious education in school and that will take you clearly through life," he said. "We have to have a constant dialogue and deepening of the realization of what it means to be a believer in a world where things change so much for the future." In light of Ireland's tradition of almost reflexive Catholic practice, that was a startling break from the past.

Rather than berating young people for living together, he lobbied the government to enact policies to support working couples, since so many more women were working outside the home than ever before. He made an outreach to Ireland's new immigrants a priority, and insisted children who were not Catholic should not have to receive religious instruction in Catholic schools. "For example, I would have no difficulty with the wearing of the Muslim headscarf in a Catholic school -- as I have no difficulty with nuns wearing a veil or priests wearing a religious habit," he has said.

In a message last year at Holy Week, he acknowledged that "there is a dramatic and growing rift between the Church and our younger generations and the blame does not lie principally with young people. Our young people are generous and idealistic but such generosity and idealism does not seem to find a home in the Church," which he said for many "remains an alien place."

He appointed lay people to positions that had always been reserved for clergy [that I have mixed feelings about. If he's talking about, like, Chief Financial Officer for the dioceses or something, very good. But if we're talking clerical liturgical roles, I'd say the solution is not to appoint lay people qua lay people, but rather to simply open the clergy to more men in the parish, through ordination to at least minor orders, etc], and he sought to make churches handicapped accessible even as he tried to cope with declining revenues and higher costs for maintaining increasingly empty old churches.

And as always, he was accessible to the media -- even if his words sometimes came back to bite him.

During a television interview in 2006, for example, Martin said he would welcome a debate over priestly celibacy, and while he said he didn't see the tradition changing soon in the Catholic Church, his openness on the question stirred controversy. He also said that while he did not expect to see women ordained, he wanted women to be given prominent roles in the Church so that it would not be seen as an "all boys club." [though I'd point out that the "prominent roles" wouldn't need to extend any further than that of Priest's Wife to have great influence and effect]

He also said he has many friends who are gay, and said he understood their feelings or anger and alienation from the church, though again he backed church teaching that marriage is exclusively between a man and a woman. In 2005, when the Vatican announced a policy that seemed designed to bar homosexuals from seminaries, Martin was diplomatic but straightforward in his view: "You don't write off a candidate for the priesthood simply because he is a gay man."

Perhaps the biggest headlines from the 2006 TV piece came when the interviewer asked him if he'd ever been in love. "I would probably say yes," Martin answered, adding, "Sometimes you only realize that afterwards. It's heartbreaking at times." He also spoke of missing the children of his friends in Rome who were like nieces and nephews to him.

Of course a prelate showing such humanity was big news and led to some media exaggerations, all of which irked the archbishop and brought him some grief in church circles, as did his other references to women and gays and the need for the church in Ireland to change its way of doing business.

But it was Martin's response to the sexual abuse crisis that generated the most controversy, and represented his biggest challenge.

Even before Martin took command of the archdiocese, he had begun going through the personnel files that the government commission was also reviewing. On occasion he would become so angry at what he read he would hurl the files across the room. "I was so furious -- you couldn't but be."

Not everyone was of the same opinion. In early 2008, Cardinal O'Connell, now retired, tried to have a judge keep thousands of documents related to the clergy abuse under his tenure from the Ryan Commission. Archbishop Martin, now 65, threatened to sue to ensure the documents would be sent to investigators, and after weeks of negotiations, Connell finally relented.

When the Murphy Report was released last November, Catholics were shocked by the revelations, as Martin had long been warning they would be. Martin held a press conference to apologize, and had a letter to the priests and laity read out at all masses the following Sunday. "The damage done to children abused by priests can never be undone," he wrote. "As Archbishop of Dublin and as Diarmuid Martin I offer to each and every survivor, my apology, my sorrow and my shame for what happened to them. I am aware however that no words of apology will ever be sufficient."

Then Martin went further, and did what no bishop in the United States ever had by publicly calling for several bishops named in the report to hold themselves accountable and even resign.

The bishops initially rejected Martin's pressure, saying they had apologized and that was sufficient. But the archbishop was not satisfied, and said so. "I believe that the people of the archdiocese of Dublin, where this abuse took place, have a right to have these questions addressed today," he told Irish television. "My view is they (the bishops) should publicly come forward and answer the questions to the people where these abuses took place. I would much prefer to be in that situation than to be hunted or pushed."

In the end they had to be pushed. Four of the five bishops named resigned, two on Christmas Eve, while a fifth has refused to step down.

The bishops had their vocal defenders. "These bishops are not recalcitrant teenagers [well, they act like it]; they are intelligent and mature men, so it was pathetic of Diarmuid Martin to use the media to communicate with them," a prominent Redemptorist priest, Father Tony Flannery, said in late December. "It showed scant respect." Many priests of Martin's own clergy were furious with him both for publicly pressuring the bishops and for what they saw as selling out priests that he should have been defending. After a contentious meeting in January with many of the Dublin priests, Martin was ripped by some for being a "divisive" figure.

But he stood his ground, telling the Irish Independent last week, "I believe my reaction was to recognize something terrible happened on our watch. . . . We got it spectacularly wrong," he said of the abuse of children. "We have to admit that, and admit it unconditionally."

All that has led Martin, most prominently among the next generation of Irish bishops, to demonstrate his willingness to open the church to the modern world without compromising her teachings -- to learn from what the secular culture has to offer in hopes of transforming Irish Catholicism into a leaven, again, for civilization.

In several important and closely argued speeches, Martin has rejected the idea that Catholicism should retreat into a defensive crouch, and has highlighted what he says are a number of encouraging signs of spirituality and even religiosity among people who don't consider themselves churchgoers .

"In today's world, a strong faith can only develop within the public square, in a challenging debate and dialogue with the realities of life and progress, with the physical and the human sciences, and indeed with the concrete realities and experiences of the individuals and the interactions of individuals who make up society," Martin said at a February 2009 event honoring Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu, an Anglican archbishop. "The danger to the faith of young people in Ireland is due, in my opinion, as much to the inadequacies of the Church's efforts at evangelizing, as to the dominant atmosphere of university culture or Irish culture in general."

"What is clear to me is that young people in search for faith or in dialogue or even in conflict with the concept of faith, judge individuals and religious institutions in terms of integrity," he continued. "They may feel little identity or affinity with institutional expressions of religion, but they can respect the personal integrity of those who belong to the institution or even those who have leadership within institutions. If however they perceive the Church as an institution standing up for its own institutional interests, then they will be unmerciful in their rejection and hostility."

"A humble and listening Church" was the title of a 2006 address he delivered elsewhere. "When I imagine organized religion in the future, I imagine it then more distant from the structures of power, and thus all the more free to influence power," he said in 2004.

Not that Martin has any illusions about the challenges, nor is he talking about watering down the faith or the notion of the Church as a strong and cohesive community of believers. "People say: 'We will be charitable, we will be good', but can you be a Christian without participating, being a member of a worshiping community and taking part in the Eucharist?" he said in a 2005 interview.

His constant theme is that Catholics ought to be "mature Christians" who can live out their faith in a modern society without falling prey to consumerism or secularism on one hand, or falling back on a dangerous fundamentalism on the other.

Wow. This guy sounds great. He's certainly saying all the right things.

Why Did No One Tell Me?!?

Okay. You may have already known about this. Or you may not be as excited about it as I am. But...

I just found out that, in 1967, a "ferial Lectionary" was approved by the Vatican, which doesn't touch the traditional cycle of readings for the Old Rite (ie, the pericopes for Sundays, Feasts, Lenten Ferias, etc would all still be the same), but which gives a proper Lesson/Epistle and Gospel for all the ferias that didn't have their own previously and which just repeated Sunday's readings. On Third Class Feasts without their own lessons, one could either choose to use the ferial readings, or the usual readings from the Commons.

It was available not just in Latin, but in English too. In fact the English is all I can find, though as long as one has the readings you can always just look them up in a Vulgate for the Latin. I'll type up the verses that make up the cycle once I get it and post that here later.

The only annoying thing is that it gave "Series I" and "Series II" readings for the Epistles (though not the Gospels), which I don't like. Keep it to a definite, one-year cycle, I say. I would have much rather they had spent their time, instead of picking a second series of Epistle reading, simply picking a Prophecy/Old Testament reading to be a third reading each day (and restored the old Roman Prophecy cycle to Sundays and feasts). But, this is a good start.

Letting people choose between the Commons and the Ferial Readings on feasts is a bit odd too. I don't think their should be so many "options," that doesn't bode well for tradition (which involves internalizing a cycle which is the same and predictable from year to year). Rather, I'd have assigned the Common readings to the major prototypical Saint(s) from each Common category (of Abbots for Benedict, of Doctors for the Four Original Doctors and perhaps Aquinas, of Virgin Martyrs for those listed in the Canon, etc) and then specified the ferial readings for all the rest (which is still a lot).

I'm ordering a copy of this book, definitely, to study. I'd really like to try to tease out the logic behind their selections. The possibilities of real expansion and reform it offers the Old Rite, without having to touch the traditional cycle of pericopes (simply supplementing it)...are astonishing. I was actually thinking, for lectio purposes, of writing up my own "ferial lectionary" keyed to the Old Lectionary...but it looks like they've already done most of the work for me! Why start from scratch when their is already a "traditional" precedent to work with?

Ecclesia Dei has recently clarified (Deo Gratias) that the new calendar and lectionary cannot be mixed with the traditional rite. Of course not; the two are totally inimical in spirit. However, this 1967 Ferial Lectionary...might not be a bad idea to make optional. Someone should ask them about that...

It's a Question of Loyalties...

A few people have accused me of believing, based on my last post, that mandatory celibacy some causes priests to act out and abuse children. This isn't true. I think it’s stupid to believe that mandatory celibacy is somehow creating molestors. The men who abused children were already messed up when they came to the priesthood, though certainly it may have been attractive to them as a place to hide their sexuality, justify the fact that they weren't married, and gain access to children.

But I'm certainly not so simplistic as to believe that mandatory celibacy somehow turns men into molestors. What I did say was that the institutional dynamics of mandatory celibacy (revolving around power and sex) are the same ones that caused, not the abuse in itself, but rather its COVER UP, the secrecy, the defensive closing of ranks on the part of the bishops, the instinct of institutional self-preservation, etc.

Without being grounded in families made up of the laity and organically integrated with society at large...the clergy is its own self-contained little social network and power structure. The loyalties of the men in a celibate all male institution are thus primarily homosocial and contained within the clergy itself.

Married men’s first loyalty is usually to their families, their instinct is to protect their family. Institutional celibate bureaucrats, however, are predisposed to be loyal to the bureaucracy above all, their instinct is to protect the Institution which, for them, stands in for a family. Quite literally when the marital analogy is used, as I pointed out 6 paragraphs up from the bottom in my post on seminaries, where I discuss how institutional celibacy functions in the exact same psychosexual space as a sexual relationship, and thus can potentially be abusive in itself.

Not every priest would have to married to solve this problem, but having some of them to help thaw the isolationism and institutionalism…would greatly help. As would, perhaps, giving the laity more say over, if not who their pastor or bishop is, then at least over whether they get paid or not. In other words, maybe we should control the purse-strings in a more democratic fashion instead of just blindly handing over our donations.

Certainly a huge part of the problem was the fact that, when it comes to the sociological structure and the prioritization of relationships...there is a tendency in an all male celibate institution for priests' most powerful bonds of loyalty and inter-personal incentives to lie exclusively within the priesthood itself. This is only exacerbated by a years-long re-socialization in the seminaries which serves to further strengthen inter-clerical ties while distancing them from outside relationships. It's a model that can be extremely powerful, but is also incredibly dangerous.

Married men may be no less likely to abuse, but they are known to be more likely to report it when they find out about it (having children of their own) or, if not the men themselves, then their wives, etc.

On the other hand, with mandatorily celibate priests, even ties to their own flock tend to be diluted by the fact that the flock is so big (and that priests are moved after so many years to keep them "detached"), whereas their relationship to the Old Boys Club is rather concrete and stable (and is their source of income).

Of course, we'd hope that anyone's highest loyalty would be to God and what is Right and Good objectively...but, in reality, it is simply a sociological fact that bonds to concrete visible human beings tend to outweigh ideological considerations when people make a decision.

Disappointed, but Not Surprised...

The Pope didn't call for any resignations at this "smooth things over" Irish abuse summit. In fact, he posed for a nice picture with all of them, all smiles:

Talk about a united front. Or united facade...

I didn't expect him to actually do anything, of course, but I was still holding out some hope (I still am) that we'd get more than words. If this were the American democracy they're always fawning over...heads would be rolling!

It's so disappointing, but not surprising at all. I mean, it's worked for the Vatican in the past, why wouldn't it again? Catholics just aren't outraged enough to force a change in the status quo.

Who the hell do they think they are? Sanctimoniously traumatizing the Irish with all sorts of repressive pseudo-jansenist guilt over "dirty thoughts" or touching themselves (Angela's Ashes or Portrait of the Artist, anyone?) and then all the while molesting children or covering it up! These men are sociopaths! Sick, sick twisted men. Not just the molesters, but everyone who gave them a pass. And anyone who gives them a pass.

One also can suspect that part of this is trying to salvage mandatory celibacy and, hence, the justification for a cushy paid full-time priestly bureaucracy (which is really quite unnecessary to run the Church). Not that merely being single and chaste causes people to abuse children, of course, but when you institutionalize it and create a secretive homosocial in-club dedicated to maintaining the pretense that the "requirement" is actually being kept (when it isn't, though usually, at least, it is with consenting adults) by holier-than-thou clerics...then you're bound to attract your share of perverse freaks looking for a convenient place to hide, and even among those who arent, that dynamic nurtures cover-ups and mutual blackmail, so defensive institutional self-preservation and rank-closing is what you'll get.

Some Irish bishops may be shamed into resigning by their own people, let's pray. But if the Vatican isn't going to make them resign, with sackcloth and ashes, even after all this, then maybe there are some other people who should resign too. Ahem.

We should demand it. For the sake of the children, for the sake of the Church, Catholics should demand that their bishops step down. All of them. However, the old wisdom goes, "everyone hates Congress, but loves their own congressman"...most Catholics wouldn't dare demand that "their" bishops and the ones that they "like" step down.

Even though child molestation was covered up, pro-abortion politicians aren't excommunicated, and the liturgy was destroyed. We need a clean slate. There should be a massive overhaul and restructuring of the entire hierarchy or perhaps the clergy in general. They should all be replaced by outsiders, by men who haven't been resocialized into their whole bizarre BDSM game.

Which is exactly what you get whenever the concepts of sex and obedience find their way into the same sentence. Whenever control over peoples sexuality is used as a way to control their lives. It's the same reason you have problems with rape in prison, with hazing in frat houses, with sexual harassment in the military. But at least the military has been doing a lot lately to encourage openness, to keep people anchored in the civilian world mentally, to keep people grounded in their families emotionally and preserving their individual identity. These utterly out of touch men, on the other hand, are still in a spidery world where sex and power are inseparably linked, and that is never going to produce a healthy situation.

And now, they're going to get away with it just doing some vague "penance". Which I doubt will involve any true sacrifices. Like with politicians, they made the problems. It is utterly stupid and naive to trust them with making the solutions.

Shameful. Shameful. Shameful. Cowards.

If something isn't done, soon, the wrath of God will be unimaginable.

Just Bizarre...

This Conspiracy is getting really strange, even since I recently last updated you.

We have had 300 unique visitors, over 1000 visits, and almost 2000 page-views. The percentage of new visitors relatively to old ones is getting bigger, which is a good thing I think, and traffic is starting to pick up, though keep spreading the word please! We had our first visits from Spain, and the average time spent on the blog is increasing.

All normal enough, I hope. However, some truly odd information is also in the data:

For example, six people found us searching on Google for "wyoming catholic college girls jeans," which is rather disturbing (you'll see why if you search that yourself)...and someone found us searching for, "the society of the late saint fred rogers for the conspiracy of kindness," so apparently there is some sort of rival conspiracy!

Just as Authoritarian as Ever

So, a comment on my recent post on Vatican II got me writing, and I thought I might as well turn it into a post. I was asked what I thought of the New Theology, and the question made me realize that, as harsh as I may seem towards Vatican II in my last couple posts, I actually obviously support many of its changes objectively.

I'm more sympathetic to the "new theology" than most traditionalists. I certainly recognize the pitfalls of a legalistic Scholasticism, and very much like Von Balthasar especially, and though some of the other "new theologians" definitely missed the mark, that's bound to happen when you are experimenting with a new philosophical framework.

I'm all for personalism and for replacing (or, rather, complementing) the justice/legal analogy with a more Eastern medicinal or "love analogy" for speaking of God.

But the whole idea of trying to institutionalize that...is counter-intuitive. I mean...trying to legislate non-legalism into existence?? That's irony! Yet it's been the effort of much of the Vatican II agenda for the past 50 years.

Like with the celibacy question, these men in the hierarchy, deeply institutionalized themselves, cannot get past the idea of attempting to "enforce" good things as opposed to simply being tolerant and letting the better way spread by its own merits. They want to make their opinion (however much I may agree with it) into dogma, and so make the Better the enemy of the Good.

I also think law should still be phrased like law, clear and concise, even while spiritually/theology moves beyond law and into love. I was actually planning to write a "book-end" to my Closet Universalist post soon, describing how it is that I am both a Universalist sympathizer AND surprisingly a Feeneyite sympathizer. What it boils down to, though, is that justice is justice and mercy is mercy. That absolute abstract public objective principles are of a totally different nature than the world of the relative concrete private subjective situations of individuals. It's the the distinction between my ideals and my pragmatism. A distinction I think a lot of Catholics still can't make, hence all these attempts to enforce ideals into existence. This mixed up idea that just because something is good, it should thus be required.

Frankly, I'm all for tolerance as my previous posts may imply. I certainly sympathize more with the new, less hostile, less stern approach to say, ecumenism, other religions, free thought (ie, no more Index of Forbidden Books, Deo Gratias), concern with social justice and human rights, etc etc. I don't particularly like the wholesale alliance with and romanticization of American-style democracy (as I wrote about in my post on Globalism)...but, better than fascism.

What I don't like, however, is when people get ideological about these things, as that is to be paradoxically just as intolerant. Trying to "enforce" on the SSPX support of a more nuanced and tolerant view of other religions in our pluralistic society...is ironically intolerant. People are free to disagree on such issues, yet there are people who will burn at the stake those who express sympathy for the old Inquisition!

So for me it's an "I may find distasteful what you say, but I'll fight to the death for your right to say it," sort of thing.

In a deeply troubling way, the Catholic "culture wars" after Vatican II proves that the Catholic Church, while it may have changed its prudential policies on the surface, may pay lip-service to rejection of authoritarianism...is, in its institutional mindset, still Authoritarian to the core. Still utterly entrenched in Feudal models of intra-organizational interaction.

It proves that authoritarianism is more about a certain psyche, not the accidental position or agenda in itself.

Liberalism can be just as ideological and authoritarian in trying to "enforce freedom" or do things "for peoples own good" (communism anyone?)...and, as I hope to demonstrate here, Traditionalism can be tolerant and liberal when it comes to promoting tradition and traditional values.

In other words, the Left does use right-wing methods to enforce left-wing positions. But, on the other hand, the right could use left-wing methods to promote right-wing positions. Yet for some reason, this latter isn't often done as much. For example, this post.

"Cracking down" on right-wingers (however fascist as they may be)...is hardly the way to promote freedom and tolerance! The fact that the cardinal doesn't understand that makes him look ridiculous. "These integrists, they don't support religious liberty! Therefore, we need to limit their religious liberty!" The more things change, the more they stay the same...

It's not that his wariness of "integrists" is wrong...I'd be wary too, especially in Europe which has a history of more extreme political spectrum. But trying to use force to impose a more moderate position on them...is just as authoritarian as they are! And shows that a lot of these Vatican II questions are issues of politics (and therefore debatable) that both sides wrongly try to portray as issues of dogma (and therefore beyond debate).

It's like the French Revolution. Ending Absolutism and all the abuses of the peasants and excesses of the aristocracy was a good goal. But then they went crazy and were JUST as authoritarian and abusive in the Reign of Terror, and went to the childish extreme of iconoclastically destroying churches, relics, etc.

I'm not saying some of Vatican II's goals of having more freedom and tolerance in the Church weren't good. But to try to impose them in an institutional fashion...defeats the whole purpose.

And the Iconoclasm that followed (destroying the old liturgy, renouncing things like the papal tiara, practically condemning medieval Christendom rather than simply saying "times have changed")...was just unjustifiable. It shows that there was no change in methods or attitude of those in power, merely of which particular ideology was in power.

These people haven't learned to have civil debate and disagreement yet. I've read before that as people go through psychological and moral development, as they progress to each new "stage" or schema...they tend to vehemently reject the lower stages of integration (almost out of embarrassment at what they then realize is their past immaturity), and tend to be very harsh towards those who are still at a lower stage. This stark breaking off is perhaps necessary to be able to move on. But at the highest stage (call it "self-actualization" or whatever you want)...people come to be able to see the Whole process as from a mountain top, and appreciate each of the lower stages for their own value, for the tools acquired and lessons learned at those stages, and come to be a lot more tolerant and empathetic towards people who are still in the process of personal growth. As St. Paul says, Milk and Meat. I would tend to agree that a "love" based analogy of religion is a more mature stage compared to a "power" stage. But if the people at the love stage can't also still value the justice stage, and empathize with those who are still there, and instead express disdain or contempt and reject it wholesale, making the Better the enemy of the Good..then perhaps they haven't quite reached the heights of transcendent maturity after all. Though, who has?

There was a time that I might have imagined that, were I in charge, I would ban the Novus Ordo and re-impose the Old Rite on everyone. Now I think that, though I would still make the Old Rite the "Ordinary Form" (inasmuch as there would still be such a concept)...I'd tend to let people do their own thing if that's what they wanted, though I would work to give the Old Rite every advantage and try to level the playing field versus the Novus Ordo. But...in non-essentials, Charity. You can't force people to see beauty, you can only help them see it for themselves. If guitars and clowns really make them happy, then I say let them be happy. Just not anywhere near me...