As I said before, saints’ days, most holy days and special topics (movies, books, gender, TC, synod) are and will be collected elsewhere. We’re just plugging away at the months right now.
“Go out to the world”..seriously…*go out* (4/17)
Bishops started anxiously exhorting us to get back to Mass. Why?
Perhaps it would be clearer if you look at the situation, not from the perspective of the administrator anxious about the bottom line, but from the outside.
Perhaps from the perspective of the average person, not “Involved” in much in the parish, who, pre-pandemic did make it to Mass most Sundays, got their kids through at least First Communion and maybe even Confirmation.
What has she been through this past year?
And what has the Church offered her in comfort and assistance, especially if she’s not a known quantity in the parish, if she was pre-pandemic “nothing more” than a name on a registration list? What wisdom, what outreach, what presence, what hint that in her and her family’s suffering, confusion and frustration, Jesus offers, still and now more than ever, his consolation and hope?
Anything?
Has anyone even called her?
Has anyone reached out in a personal way at all?
“What is to prevent me from being baptized?” (4/22)
Post-Vatican II liturgical life prioritized the role and presence of community in celebration. This has, it seems, two unintended consequences: First, to minimize the object nature of the ritual action, and secondly, to ill-equip Catholics to engage in sacramental life when that community life is disrupted.
Traditional Catholic life, as it had evolved over the centuries, balanced this, by presenting a solidly objective sense of the workings of grace through word, matter and action and then allowing culturally-varied traditions and practices to grow up around these rituals.
Educated, not destroyed (4/26)
Secondly, Edman recounts a discussion in which which some Bach was played on a phonograph in a group that included some Very Modern Musicians. Discussions ensued, of course. He concludes:
The arts are the languages of men, and a passionate conflict over a symbol may be as symptomatic as the quarrel over a religious and political creed. But in such matters quarrels become discussions, and the discussions are innocent. Our quarrel over taste divided but educated rather than destroyed us.
To want to learn. To be willing to have your worldview challenged and maybe even blown up. To disagree, as one does, but to seek to learn through that disagreement, rather than to wield power and claim victory?
What a world. What a world.
Day trip to the Fitzgerald Home in Montgomery (4/30)
Charlotte was Both 