The Ark and The Dove

It's just good music

From Britain's Catholic Herald (hat tip to Amy Welborn for the article) - England parish's children find traditional sacred music exciting as well as eminently singable.  (Yes, I love talking about music; I enjoyed hearing about this).

A mass of bouncy children appeared at my feet in the main hall of St Wulstan’s in Wolstanton, Staffordshire. They had run down from their choir practice in the organ loft, where they had been rehearsing the plainchant Orbis Factor Mass and a couple of Renaissance motets.
Were they enjoying it, I asked?      “Yes!” they screamed.
And what was their favourite piece to sing?
“Agnus Dei and the Sanctus from the Orbis Factor,” said a couple of the nine-year-olds, quick as a flash.

David and April West...converted from the Anglican faith in 1993 and had no sooner entered their new Catholic community than they had begun to reorganise its musical foundations.
They were trained musicians and were sick of hearing people say there was no decent music in the Catholic Church. “It was crazy to think people actually believed this. I mean, think of all those great Catholic composers,” says David.
So, instead of grumbling, they decided to do something about it.

“We’ve never sung ‘Bind us Together’, nor have we done a single Israeli Mass, nor the [shudder] ‘Gloria, clap, clap,’ ” says David with pride. Contrary to popular belief, these pieces did not have a cachet with the young.

So when the Wests set up a junior choir to run alongside the senior one, they didn’t shy away from the hard stuff – they embarked upon teaching the children serious, unadulterated Church music.
There was to be no talking down to the young’uns; instead, they were to be introduced to some of the finest music ever written. The kids loved it, and were eager to learn.
As a result, they quickly got the hang of the plainsong notation and the Latin, and now have several heavyweight pieces under their belts...

Best or worst Valentine's Day present?

You decide.

Learning Latin - the Pater Noster

Some of my friends whom I taught to chant some of the Mass parts in Latin reported to me that at World Youth Day they celebrated Mass in Latin because the Mass was attended by people from all different countries, and that they were very pleased that they were able to join in the chants.  I was happy that they were able to put what I shared with them to good practical use.

Even though perhaps I could start with something very short to build confidence or whatever, I want to do the Our Father first.  First, because I seem to remember one or more of the popes saying that this should be a part of everyone's minimum repertoire, second, because it's not that hard (not the least because you already know it so thoroughly in English), third, because it's good to know anyway, and fourth, because I found a good resource that compensates for the fact you would ideally be learning this by oral tradition rather than written.

Here is a link to a page I found that has the text and a recording of a priest chanting the Pater Noster, along with sheet music.  If a word-by-word breakdown would help your memory or understanding, you may find one in the extended post. 

P.S. The "short prayer" referred to is the priest's introduction to the prayer (praeceptis salutaribus moniti, et divina institutione formati, audemus dicere, approximately "[having been] taught by the saving precepts and formed by divine instruction, we are so bold as to pray:")

Don't be a macroverbumsciolist!

Another great find for lovers of neat obscure words - Worthless Word of the Day.  I hope this is updated regularly.

Attention potential combox witnesses

The Washington Post is holding an online discussion series entitled "On Faith," which has as the topic for this week the relationship between religion and sexuality.  Judging from the comments, they are sorely in need of your perspective should you have the generosity and patience to leave a comment.  I know the internet is perhaps not as congenial as face-to-face, but it is the modern agora.  I know that of course you will be very polite, but in terms of advice, I would suggest trying to avoid using too many technical terms of Catholic theology without explanation because most readers will probably have a different theological vocabulary than you are used to.

The format is that the paper selects a question from a reader and has a number of panelists write a short essay in answer, upon which readers can post comments, much like on a blog.  Here's the link.

I notice that Anglican Bible scholar Marcus Borg's essay has the fewest number of comments on it but a very interesting slant - he has brought the idea of sacramentality into it.

Artificial brain?

Swiss scientists are working on an electronic simulation of the brain of a rat.

New fad for celebrities

While I suppose it's good that Hollywood celebrities are starting to recognize that they have spiritual needs, unfortunately the trend, according to this article, is that more and more of them are turning to Scientology.

How about praying for them to follow Sly's example instead?

Postscript: hm...why is it that I couldn't find a single MSM article on Stallone's return?  Maybe a religion that "at first glance appears to be a series of self-help courses but is based on the idea that we're all immortal, 75-million-year-old space aliens in transient human bodies" is just more along the lines of the sensationalistic sort of thing the papers are looking for.

Learning Latin

Ok, for the last month or so I'd been thinking on-and-off of some way of getting started that would be maximally helpful while being minimally effort-intensive.  My original idea was to start at the beginning and go through piece-by-piece, but on further reflection that didn't seem to be nearly as practical as I had thought.

Recalling that the point of this is active and conscious participation, I had an idea: why not start with the parts that pertain most to us, the laity - the responses.

Looking at the responses by themselves was really interesting because although they are certainly not dumbed-down by any means, the parts that the people or the people and the priest have together are on the whole a lot simpler than the parts the priest says by himself.  This helps you and me out, because you don't have to be an expert Latinist (or even know that much) to participate actively in Latin.

Think about it in English - apart from the Gloria and the Creed and a few other things, most of them are quite short - Amen, alleluia (these are Hebrew anyway), thanks be to God, etc."  There are 33* responses total in a Sunday Mass, and only a few of them are of any length (nine of them are "amen").  A list is below the fold.  Next post on this topic will talk about one of them specifically.

Bet you didn't see this one coming

This Ephemeris news site never ceases to amaze me.

Though it may be in an unfamiliar language, I invite readers (particularly the ladies, who may be more familiar with the original) to try to figure out or guess what book this is from its famous first line before clicking the link and seeing what it is (here's a dictionary if you need some help).

Verum est ubique agnotum quo plus caelebs locuples uxore careat.

Here's the link.

Look at that -

I was flipping through my news sites on the internet and I happened to notice that Fox News has an article written by a priest explaining from a natural law (there's that again!) standpoint as well as a religious how pornography is bad (and reader responses, with Fr. Morris' comments).

Update: it seems that Fr. Jonathan Morris, L.C., is a regular contributor to Fox News.  What a welcome change from the priests and religious the cable news channels seem usually to tap.