You Call This a Definition, Fr. Bretzke?

Left: Photo of Fr. James J. Bretzke from when he taught at University of San Francisco and San Jose's Institute of Leadership in Ministry

Authorial Self-Indulgence in a "Latin Theological Dictionary"

Quite some time ago I chanced upon a very odd example of authorial self-indulgence on the topic of Mass celebrated ad orientem in the book Consecrated Phrases: A Latin Theological Dictionary, by Jesuit Father James Bretzke.

Fr. Bretzke started his definition of "ad orientem" with: "Expression used primarily in a recent liturgical dispute . ..." [How completely off the wall is that, just for starters?]

Fr. Bretzke went on to write, "Certain 'traditionalists' allied with Mother Angelica's Eternal Word Television Network, based in the diocese of Birmingham, Alabama, claimed that the only 'true' tradition in the Church was for both the presider and the people alike to face toward the east in celebrating the Eucharist." [Clearly he doesn't like 'traditionalists' or EWTN and seems to think that the station's location in Alabama is a strike against it too. ]

The way Father Bretzke spins it in his "definition," Birmingham Bishop Foley won a judgement against the EWTN "traditionalists" from the Congregation for Divine Worship. The Congregation "rejected the traditionalists' claims ... The Congregation's Prefect, Cardinal Jorge Medina Estevez wrote that it is 'incorrect and indeed quite unacceptable' that anyone should claim that to celebrate toward the apse is the more orthodox choice for the presider."

You should know that Fr. Bretzke egregiously ommitted the fact that the Congregation also wrote that it was incorrect to prohibit the use of the ad orientem posture or for anyone to claim that facing towards the people (ad populum) was the more orthodox choice.

And he also neglected to mention that EWTN was not trying to prohibit the Mass being said ad populum, but only trying to celebrate and televise their own Masses using the ad orientem posture, which had never been disallowed.

Bishop Foley responded to the Congregation's decision by withdrawing his blanket prohibition, which was clearly illegal. But he then took an action that was apparently within his rights as a bishop, and he prohibited the televising of ad orientem Masses.

The way Raymond Arroyo's biography of Mother Angelica, The Remarkable Story of a Nun, Her Nerve, and a Network of Miracles, tells the story, the EWTN friars (an order started by Mother Angelica) had been increasingly alarmed at the inclusive language that was being inserted into the English translations of the Mass. Mother Angelica set her nuns to studying the Vatican II documents, and they discoved that neither the use of Latin or the ad orientem posture had ever been forbidden. So the friars changed the way they said the Masses.

Arroyo's story gives the strong impression that Bishop Foley lost face after the Vatican response. The bishop had forbidden ad orientem Masses completely, but he had to withdraw that prohibition after the Vatican firmly made it clear that he was not allowed to do that.

After Bishop Foley's prohibition of the televised ad orientem Masses, beautiful reverent ad orientem Novus Ordo Masses in Latin continued to be said routinely at the Shrine of the Blessed Sacrament without the cameras turned on. I've been there for a few.

Rome several years later overturned Foley's decree, saying he didn't have the authority to issue it, because he was forbidding what the universal law of the church allows.

Even since Pope Benedict XVI liberalized the use of the traditional Latin Mass, now on ETWN Masses in both forms are celebrated frequently at the Shrine of the Blessed Sacrament with the priest facing ad orientem, towards the East, the Dayspring, the dawn, our salvation, Christ Our Lord.

---

For full disclosure, I have to tell you that Fr. Bretzke and I have a history. I met James J. Bretzke, S.J. when he was moonlighting at the San Jose Diocese Institute for Leadership in Ministry and I was a student there.

Called the ILM for short, the institute is promoted by the diocese in the Valley Catholic newspaper as a training ground for lay leaders who will be able to assume the role of "directors of parish life" and replace priest pastors in the diocese. I only gradually became aware of that purpose, and I am not a supporter of what they are trying to achieve. I believe that they are covertly trying to make an end run around the prohibition of women priests and the discipline of clerical celibacy by creating a new type of pastoral role that can be assumed by anyone, married or not, male or not, celibate or not, educated or not.

If the ILM has its way, these leaders will do everything a pastor can do, except that they will need to hire priests to "provide for the sacramental needs of the parish."

Fr. Bretzke was also a professor at the University of San Francisco at the time I took his ILM course in what I always snidely refer to as either "Moral" Theology or Immoral Theology. Fr. Bretzke in his classes and in his books teaches that a person is morally infantile if he or she accepts the ordinary teachings of the Magisterium on issues such as birth control. He is not alone in this disobedient position, which gained ground in the 1960s and whose proponents apparently never change even in the face of Papal teachings to the contrary. (See Ralph McInerny's books What Went Wrong with Vatican II and his novel The Priest for a description of this exact point of view espoused by 1960s enthusiasts for the pill and their subsequent disobedience to Humanae Vitae.)

Instead of being censured, Fr. Bretzke's teachings are accepted by his peers as normative, and he keeps getting bigger and grander teaching postions at Jesuit institutions.

Fr. Bretzke since has moved on to teach at Boston College.

This article is one I wrote about his teachings on "moral" theology. This blog post describes the connection between another blog post I made about his “moral” theology and my dismissal from the ILM. After two years of enduring bad teachings, my dismissal was the occasion for a big sigh of relief on my part.

Below, Fr. Bretzke as he looks now as a BC professor. I remember him in the ILM classes always wearing the same old sweater.

On Facing Towards the Dayspring from on High

What do you think? When a priest is facing ad orientem (towards the East) during Mass is he "standing with his back to the people"? Or is he facing along with the congregation towards Christ, who is the Dayspring from on high?


Critics always refer to the posture of the priest when he says Mass facing towards the East as "standing with his back to the people," with the implication that the posture is an insult to the congregation.

The current Pope and many others cite this ancient practice as praiseworthy, since the priest and the people are facing the altar, the crucifix, the tabernacle, the East, and ultimately God, and not each other.

We all have experienced the disorientation (pun intended) that occurs when the priest and the congregation face each other. With the priest facing the congregation, there is a well-known tendency to turn the Mass into a performance by the individual priest. And the focus is not so subtly shifted from the Sacred Mystery of the Eucharist to the interaction between the priest and the people.

Some quotes [see below] I recently found from ancient authors strongly reinforce the idea that the priest and the people should be facing together towards the East.

Why the East? It is the direction identified with Christ, and salvation, and, of course, with the dawn. In the Canticle of Zechariah, Christ is called the Dayspring, the dawn, from on high.

Churches were traditionally built with the sanctuary at the East end. The altar was installed on the East wall, so that when you faced the altar you were facing the East.

Turning to the East is turning to Christ

In reading St. Ambrose's On the Mysteries for last week's Dead Theologians Society meeting, I found in Chapter 2 that Ambrose wrote that the person being baptized turns to the east "for he who renounces the devil turns to Christ, and beholds Him face to face."

Atonement Comes From the East

In the Office of Readings one day this week, I found Origen in a homily on Leviticus wrote, "Atonement comes to you from the east. From the east comes the one whose name is Dayspring, he who is mediator between God and men. You are invited then to look always to the east: it is there that the sun of righteousness rises for you, it is there that the light is always being born for you."

This is a good article about ad orientem.

This is another good article.

Notes on The Devastated Vineyard by Dietrich Von Hildebrand [1]

Pope John Paul II called Dietrich von Hildebrand "one of the great ethicists of the twentieth century." Pope Benedict XVI said this about von Hildebrand, "When the intellectual history of the Catholic Church in the twentieth century is written, the name of Dietrich von Hildebrand will be most prominent among the figures of our time." Von Hildebrand's philosophy of personalism influenced the thought of both these popes. His writings on marital love impressed John Paul II when he was a young priest and may have had a role in the development of his own defense of marriage and of the Church's ban on contraception in his writings on the theology of the body.

In 1973, Dietrich Von Hildebrand wrote The Devastated Vineyard. He wrote these chilling words in the Preface, "the active work of destruction [of the holy Church] is in high gear." While many in the Church after Vatican II "were deceived by such slogans as 'renewal,' 'aggiornamento,' and 'come out of the ghetto'," Von Hildebrand was encouraged by seeing that many who were initially deceived were returning to orthodoxy. "Various movements have been formed which are taking the offensive against the destruction of the holy Church and the falsification of the Christian spirit..." But by 1973, the errors had gained much ground, and some errors that were being disputed when he starting writing books about them in 1969 (including the book The Trojan Horse in the City of God) had been widely accepted as beyond dispute in 1973.

He wrote, "The purpose of this book is, first of all, to give a short clear presentation of the principal errors which are being presented today .... Secondly, we shall especially try to unmask those hidden, subtle errors which are usually introduced under beautiful, apparently noble titles, and whose danger is often overlooked even by believing Catholics."

Sad to say, from what I've seen and heard, it seems that the battle for mindshare has largely been lost, and the errors that Von Hildebrand wrote of in his books are pretty much accepted by most Catholics, by the clergy (bishops and priests and religious sisters and brothers), and by the laity (university professors, RCIA directors, practically everyone down to the least educated person in the smallest parish in the least cosmopolitan town in the world). It took me years after I returned to the Catholic Church to find anyone who did not believe the errors Von Hildebrand wrote about, even if they had internalized them and would not be able to call the errors by name.

The past two popes have tried to counter most of the errors, but they are not being respected by the mass of Catholics who have been taught to believe (and believe because it suits them) that those old guys in Rome are out of touch and have no right to be telling them what to do.

I first heard about this book over coffee after Sunday Lauds, which are sung weekly by a few St. Ann choir members at Prof. William Mahrt's condominium at Stanford. Sitting with the others around the table in the little dining room drinking coffee out of one of Bill's sets of fine china cups, I remarked that I kept wondering how the Church could have changed so drastically after Vatican II. Just for one example, I told them that when I left the practice of my faith in 1963, sisters (nuns as we incorrectly called them) were leading lives of self-donation. Dressed in black or white habits with veils, sometimes elaborate headdresses and starched white wimples, with a big plain rosaries hanging from a cord at their waists and crucifixes on their breasts, they lived in simple surroundings. They taught children, took care of the sick, and did everything as humble brides of Christ who were not seeking their own way.

When I came back to the Church in the mid 70s, sisters were either dressing for success, clicking down school corridors in their high heels and good suits, wearing polyester pant suits from thrift stores, or they were shlumping around in sweatshirts and jeans and athletic shoes.

For example below are photos from the Sisters of Providence website: Their founder is in the old habit and the present-day sisters are in their mufti. Other contrasts: eyes no longer modestly cast down, big grins on faces


And one of my first indicators of how drastically things had changed from the days when a religious sister taught only approved Church doctrine was when I happened to glimpse the cover of America magazine on the desk of a priest at a Newman Center. It featured a cover story by a Sister so and so, and the title was something like, "Should Divorce Be a Sacrament?" Another indication was the "dress for success" type sister at my daughter's high school who said, "I don't believe in abortion, but I believe we should provide a safe abortion for women who have made that hard decision." I sputtered at her something about how we don't provide similar amenities for women who might make the "hard decision" to kill their babies after birth, so they don't have to do something as difficult as taking the baby out in the back yard and dropping a rock on its head. And I walked off.

When I was done repeating my tales of woe, Professor Mahrt then mentioned that philosopher Dietrich Von Hildebrand had written this book. I asked if I could borrow his copy, and Bill said yes, but then he told me during a later Lauds coffee time that he had looked through his piles of books and couldn't find it.

I finally found it about a month ago in the catalog of Santa Clara University library.

I'll list some of the principal errors mentioned by Von Hildebrand here. As I have time, I will create other blogs with notes from my reading of this book, where I think Von Hildebrand made some good points.

However, I still am looking for the book or books that will explain from a spiritual point of view how almost everyone in the Catholic Church moved from the at least superficial orthodoxy I witnessed in my childhood to acting out a set of beliefs that contradicted traditional doctrines. Von Hildebrand's book lists the errors, but it doesn't explain the values shift that occurred that made it possible for well-meaning Catholics to embrace philosophies that directly contradict what they previously believed, and how they did it without losing their faith in the Church.

I repeat again what I've written elsewhere: I don't understand how someone who believed in the teachings of the pre-Vatican II church could believe that the Church had been wrong for 1960 odd years until some theologians and bible scholars (I use the words theologians and scholars for these debunkers of the faith with a sneer, I am sorry to say) came along and figured out how wrong the Church had been. With that point of view, what's left to believe in? Why do they stay Catholics at all?

According to Von Hildebrand's book and to others I've read, such as Ungodly Rage, many unbelievers stay Catholic either as a fifth column that is consciously trying to destroy the Church from within, or as zealots who think they have the truth and work to "transform the Church into something which completely contradicts her meaning and essence." p. xii.

Von Hildebrand quotes Henri de Lubac, S.J. "in the name of a 'new' Church, a 'post-concilar' Church, some people are atempting to found another Church than that of Jesus Christ: an anthropocentric society, which can be drawn into a movement of general surrender under the cloak of rejuvenation, ecumenism, or adaptation.'" p. xiii.

Some of the Principle Errors

"[T]he theories of the arch-heresiarch, Teillard de Chardin"
"[T]he legend or myth of 'modern' man, and historical relativism"
"[T]he apostasy from the true Faith, which is not conceded to be apostasy by those who proclaim it but is interpreted instead as aggiornamento .... "[This apostasy is evidenced by T]he pluralism of [Karl] Rahner ... Schillebeecks's denial of he imorality of the soul ..."
"[T]he false idea of a middle way between extremes"
"[T]he illusion that our time represents progress in comparisonwith earlier times"
"[T]hat Divine Revelation should be changed to adapt it to the spirit of the age


To be continued.

Trying to understand the last 50 years

I finally located a copy of Dietrich Von Hildebrandt's The Devastated Vineyard. I started to try to find the book about three years ago after Prof. Mahrt mentioned it it one Sunday morning over coffee after Lauds at his home. I had posed to Prof. Mahrt this question that nagged me, "What could account for the radical changes that happened between when I left the Church in 1964 and when I returned in 1976 or so? Especially, why did so many seemingly pious priests and religious go along with the changed ideas about morality?"   Bill told me that Von Hildebrandt had written on that topic. When I asked if I could borrow the book from him, Bill said he would be willing to lend it to me. But then when I asked him about it after another Lauds, he told me he was not able to find the book. 

That was plausible, Bill Mahrt has hundreds of books that at that time stood in hip-high piles around his condominium on the Stanford campus. (He since then cleared out his guest bedroom, had the floor reinforced and filled it with book shelves.) 

My own search for the Von Hildrebrandt book led to a dead end when I found that the only copy I could locate at Amazon was priced close to $100. When I was at Santa Clara University library a few weeks ago for Paul Mariani's talk on Gerard Manley Hopkins, I found The Devastated Vineyard in the catalog. 

After all this wait, I'm plowing through it now, but I'm not greatly impressed. It's certainly not answering the question of why Catholics' definition of morality changed so radically. But luckily a new prospect of understanding what happened the Church after Vatican II presented itself to me in the writings of Ralph McInerny, who died the day before I went to the Mariani talk. 

In reading articles lauding McInerny that I chanced upon that day, I first heard of McInerny's autobiography, and so I was able to locate it at the same library catalog that night. The title itself speaks volumes to me: I Alone Have Escaped to Tell Thee. 

 I have often thought to write a novel about a religious sister who was full of the faith I had been raised on and describe what her life was like and the dismay and persecutions she must have suffered after all the changes happened after Vatican I. McInerny, as it turned out, got to the topic first. His first two novels were about two priests facing the fallout from the council. 

The first, The Priest, was about a young priest.  It was set in 1968 and the central character was a young priest, Frank Ascue, just returned from Rome to begin teaching moral theology at the Fort Elbow, Ohio, seminary. The question I had put myself was: what is it like to be a young priest today when the Church seems to be reeling in post-conciliar factionalism?  

Traditional Mass Jottings: Positive Article by Valley Catholic Editor About the Traditional Mass Where We Sing

I was flabbergasted and thrilled to see this article in the Valley Catholic, San Jose diocesan paper! It presents the San Jose Latin Mass community and our love of the Latin Mass from the community's own perspective, and the journalist gets out of the way and lets the priests' words speak eloquently about the reasons for the appeal of the traditional Mass.
Left: Father Jean-Marie Moreau and Abbe Eric Majewski (seminarian) at the altar at Five Wounds Church

Father Morgan, pastor of Five Wounds Church in San Jose, who welcomed the Latin Mass that is said at his church at 9:30 a.m. every Sunday, was quoted as saying that he is intrigued by the numbers of young people he sees at the Tridentine* [sic] Mass. “Perhaps they find the formality of this liturgy appealing because they are so used to informality, especially in California.

Tridentine* (which the author used often in the article) is not quite the correct term. The form of the Latin Mass that was allowed to be celebrated more freely by Pope Benedict XVI in his Summorum Pontificum is called the "Extraordinary Form" (EF). The EF is contrasted with "Ordinary Form," which is the New Mass, or Novus Ordo" (NO).
This blog explains more about the terminology.

“People have a great desire to connect with the mysterious which they don’t find in the ‘new’ Mass,” he said, “where there is a focus on community."
Since I sing in the choir, I especially like this quote from Fr. Morgan: “We have a great choir here and they are excellent with Gregorian chant, one of the Church’s and civilization’s great treasures.”

Left: Choir loft; look at all the young people!

Fr. Morgan is a diocesan priest, recently installed pastor of Five Wounds Portuguese National Church where our choir sings every Sunday at 9:15 a.m. High Mass and at other Masses and services. Fr. Morgan has been eagerly learning how to say the Latin Low Mass and to lead Sunday Vespers. As a result of his being a quick study, Fr. Morgan has just begun to offer a low Mass every Wednesday evening at the church at 6 p.m. And he leads the sung Latin Vespers at 3:30 p.m. on the Last Sunday of every month.

And I like this other quote from Canon Jean-Marie Moreau, who is from the Institue of Christ the King Sovereign Priest, the Episcopal Delegate for the Extraordinary Form at St. Margaret Mary Church in Oakland, and the rector of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Oratory in Santa Clara, and who says the High Mass at Five Wounds at 9:15 a.m. in Sundays.
“The liturgy speaks to your senses. The Gregorian chant is beautiful and the high Mass at Five Wounds has a wonderful choir.”

There is one thing I would want the diocese of San Jose to understand from the glimpse in this article of the vibrant set of volunteers who keep the Latin Masses going in the diocese. It is that lay involvement does not mean everyone should be a minister and take the role of the priest--which is one of the often stated goals of the diocese's Institute for Leadership in Ministry, that laity should be trained to assume the role of the priest as pastor. Lay involvement is what we all do! And we do it out of love. We don't need no ILM to know how to serve!

The current Pope is quoted often as having called for a new liturgical movement to counteract the over-the-top liturgical innovation that followed Vatican II. Here is a link to my blog post about the subject, aptly called: Traditional Mass Jottings: Pope Benedict XVI Called for a New Liturgical Movement. I believe we are part of that movement.

Comments on a CNS Comparison of the New Mass with the Traditional Mass

A few comments in response to this article from the Valley Catholic, quoted from Catholic News Service, which seems a bit biased against the Tridentine Mass:

Full participation

Many people who attend the Tridentine Mass feel they are more-fully participating in the Mass in the Extraordinary Form by following the prayers of the Mass in the Missal in a reverent way. Full participation does not require everyone to be a minister, but that everyone prays the Mass along with the priest with hearts lifted up to God.

Latin

The Vatican II document on the liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, did not get rid of Latin. On the contrary it stated that the vernacular should be "allowed" for readings (Epistle and Gospel) with the expectation that Latin would continue to be used for the rest of the Mass. Before the wholesale change to the vernacular, which was not a requirement of Vatican II, everyone followed the Mass with the Missals that were provided in the pews. And anywhere you went in the world, you could always participate fully in the Mass, which was offered in the universal language of the Church. Every religion has a sacred language that is set apart. Why should Catholics abandon their sacred language?

Penitential Prayers

About the implication that the congregation does not participate in the penitential prayers because they do not recite them out loud, I want to point out that the congregation reads the penitential prayers from the Missal. And the "Kyrie Eleison" is/should be said by the congregation.

Ad Orientem Vs. Ad Populum

About the priest praying with his "back to the congregation" [ad orientem], the current Pope and many others cite this ancient practice as praiseworthy, since the priest and the people are facing the altar, the crucifix, the tabernacle, the East, and ultimately God, and not each other. With the priest facing the congregation, there is a well-known tendency to turn the Mass into a performance by the individual priest instead, and the people rather than God become the focus of worship in the round.

Give Us Our Propers

Another change between the old and the new form is the removal from the Mass of many ancient prayers that were intrinsic to the Mass, and that are sung in Gregorian chant in an EF High Mass: the Introit, the Gradual, the Alleluia and verse, the Communion, and the Offertory, and much is taken away when they are omitted.

Gregorian Chant

Sacrosanctum Concilium referred to Gregorian chant as one of the inestimable treasures of the Church.

Abortion's Root Causes: Deification of Sex

Anyone who opposes abortion should address the root causes: the deification of sexual license and the use of contraception. The god of sexual freedom demands human sacrifice and is getting millions of these hideous offerings in the form of aborted children. If, as many people believe, sexual pleasure is the greatest good, then anything that limits it is evil.

The values taught by the Church, celibacy outside of marriage and chastity inside marriage, are the only ways for people to have "safe sex": sex that is safe for their bodies, their emotional happiness, their souls' salvation, the good of society and the good of any children that may be conceived when couples are intimate. I used to support NFP, but I now admire more the many married lovers I have encountered who welcome all children that God intends for their families. God decides when a soul comes into being and loves that person for eternity. How can the children's mothers and fathers do any less?

Licentious sex goes after the pleasure of the union and kills the result. The deepest human emotions are trampelled in the process too. "Don't tie me down," is the cry of the sexual predator. From Dorothy Day onward, women have been pressured by their "lovers" to abort a child the "lover" doesn't want, and then the women often find they are not loved either. It is a terrible thing to use another person for pleasure without recognizing the real bond that is created in the act. The religion of sexual freedom seeks to avoid at all costs the full expression of the act that is realized in the creation of a child.

This is all Newspeak. A child is not a "failure of contraception" or a "mistake." It is a human being loved by God. A woman should not be asked to stuff down her emotions of love and attachment to her lover so that she doesn't "drive him away" or "be possessive." And women should not be pressured to murder their children to serve the god of sexual freedom either.

Answering Scandal with Personal Holiness

This is a reprint of an essay I wrote in May 2002 at the crux of the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church. In it, I refute the politically motivated claim that states that the child sexual abuse was caused by celibacy. The root causes go a lot deeper than that.

Roseanne T. Sullivan
Answering Scandal with Personal Holiness

From: "Mary N."
To: "Roseanne Sullivan"
Subject: I added my name to votf today
Date: Wed, 22 May 2002

Roseanne,

I had to tell you this. I hope you don't mind.

I don't know what you think about the Catholic church's scandal of the year erupting on the east coast, but it's something I think about more than I want to admit. What is coming out in the news strikes me as horrible in every sense of the word, and I am saddened by a church that really has done a lot of good in the world making a mockery of itself by all the denials and weasel-wording that seems to be taking place. I just don't get it.

At the same time, I can't walk away from the church, either. At least not yet. It's hard enough trying to be a Catholic these days without all the scandal heaped on top of the day to day living.

I added my email address to Voice of the Faithful's website today. I don't know if you've heard about them, but I think that this new group captures the essence of the possible good that could come out of this. If you're interested in hearing more about them, go to www.votf.org. At times, I've thought about joining Call to Action, but a lot of what they stand for seems too radical even for me. The VOTF people have a chance, though.

---Mary

Date: Wed, 22 May 2002
From: Roseanne Sullivan
Subject: Answering Scandal with Personal Holiness
To: Mary N.

"You don't judge something by those who don't live it, but by those who do."
--Rev. Roger Landry in a sermon dated 2/12/2002: Answering Scandal with Personal Holiness

Hi Mary,

Thank you very much for letting me know what you are going through about the abuse scandals and the coverups.

I never heard of votf until I looked at the web site. I will think about whether I should participate. There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with it, except that it might give more ammunition to the people who are trying to condemn the Church itself, rather than the sinful individuals who are to blame in this scandal. I certainly couldn't support call to action.

The way I think about the scandals is that evil permeates everything in this world, including some people in the Church.

For how to respond to this evil, I look to St. Francis' example. During his time when abuses were rampant in the Church and some bishops lived like secular princes, St. Francis lived his life simply according to the teachings of Christ. And He would even kiss the feet of priests whether they were living good moral lives or not because they had the exalted privilege of consecrating the body of Christ.

In other words, Francis did not condemn or point fingers or try to bring down the current Church hierarchy or start a new religion. He set himself to love God with his whole heart. He also set himself to live completely the authentic teachings of the Church. And his example inspired millions to clean up their own acts.

Luther when faced with the same set of abuses started a new church.

When priests are immoral and false to their calling, it is a great evil and a great shame. And Christ I am certain is grieved that little ones have been molested by priests who are supposed to be acting in His name. There is something much worse than a millstone around the neck waiting for priests like that.

Here are some of the root causes I see. After Vatican II, a lot of people thought that because some precepts changed (such as not requiring people to abstain from meat on Friday), that the whole doctrine and moral teachings passed down from the apostles were up for grabs. What I see in the modern Catholic Church are lots of people who think that Vatican II meant that the Church should conform to the world's ideas of what is right and wrong. The flaw behind that idea is, as it says somewhere in the Bible, the devil is the prince of this world.

As one part of the post-Vatican II attitude, I have noticed that priests seem to have a naive faith in the power of psychologists. If you go to them for spiritual counseling they often tell you to get secular counseling. I believe the Church has the answers, and I don't want to go for advice to someone who is probably an athiest and a moral relativist, like most psychologists I've met.

What I'm trying to say is that the problems we are seeing now are partly from the fact that this generation has put too much credibility in the pronouncements of psychiatrists and psychologists. For one example of how wrong they can be, about 20 years ago, I was acquainted with an older woman getting a PhD in psychology at the U of MN. She was reading in psych journals that echoed Kinsey's position: that sex between adults and children can be good. She didn't practice it herself but she acquiesced because she had a respect for experts. At that time a lot of counselors were having sex with their clients because they believed it was beneficial--for the client. She was one of the clients of a psychologist who thought that way.

Did you know that Kinsey did most of his research on pederasty by interviewing one subject who had abused hundreds and hundreds of children? You can search for Kinsey at google and prove it. That is how he was able to document how early in a child's development a child is capable of orgasms and how many. The pederast took notes! Just think, the fact that Kinsey didn't turn the guy in has never been seen as a coverup. After all, as a psychologist and a scientist, he had to protect the man's privacy, and couldn't reveal his sources.

Kinsey and others have also promoted the idea that a child who has been molested will not be traumatized unless his parents make a fuss.

I bet you many priests and bishops even those who were pure themselves might have swallowed those lines of baloney.

And I have found homosexuals I have known to believe that sexual repression of any sort is wrong and that children should be taught to explore sexuality without any limits. For example, I hung out with Alan Ginsbery and his lover Peter Orlovsky, and they talked fondly about how Peter walked around naked in one family's house and how cute it was that a small child came up and touched Peter's .... I found out before he died that Ginsberg was a member of the Man Boy Love Association. MBLA, and he practiced it himself.

[A man I was once involved with, who since has decided he is a homosexual] at one point mused about how he would like to get a chance to free my children from the sexually-repressive teaching he was sure I was foisting on them.

I don't have any proof, but I am convinced that the almost all the priests who are abusers of boys were practicing homosexuals before and probably after they joined the priesthood. It is going to be hard to be a good priest, I believe, if you have been practicing unloving uncommitted sex for its own sake, hetero or homo, outside of marriage. Just saying some vows won't automatically make you able to resist the impulses you cultivated before you made the vows. And when you secretly or not so secretly believe there is no harm in it, then you definitely won't put up too big of a fight.

At the same time period I knew the PhD student quoting the experts about the beneficial nature of children having sex with adults, my daughter Sunshine was a student at the Children's Theatre Company. When the scandal about John Donohue molesting students came out, many parents rallied to John's defense. I remember I was interviewed by TV news and I told them "Parents have been paying him a lot of money to teach their children, not to molest them." They then interviewed a very modern little girl next to me who confidently spoke to the microphone: "It takes two, you know." Can't you just hear through her what was being said around her house? I've heard the same thought expressed in my own family.

It just crossed my mind that we don't say that the theater industry is evil because of people like Donohue, do we? Donohue was a member of MBLA too. And we don't brand all psychologists as evil because some of them sexually abuse their clients or because some of them promoted rot such as the stuff I quoted earlier.

The Church is Christ's body on earth, a mystical body whose breath is the Holy Spirit. Even though some Catholics close themselves off from the Spirit, the Spirit is alive. God will not abandon His Church, because the Church is His Body on this earth.

I cry about what is happening. There is more to cry about than the sexual abuse of young people, horrible as that is. I pray to God to purge the Church of unworthy shepherds who are not caring for the sheep that God has entrusted to them. And for those who are teaching their own opinions formed by the most cynical of wordly philosophers instead of what God has taught.

Here is what I think of the coverups. Those of the bishops who haven't capitulated to modern mores probably put too much stock in the notion that you can trust a repentant priest to be able to stay away from sin.

I'll call them the "good bishops." The good bishops, being maybe more virtuous than many of us, probably did not understand how hard it is to break the hold of habitual sin. So they might not realize that turning away from sin is not just a matter of deciding to not do something wrong again. They don't know that sin is addictive, and even if a priest is truly repentent, he might not be able to turn away from the behavior just by wanting to. They saw it as their duty to forgive.

And I know the priests that were only outwardly repentant got a lot of mileage out of their superiors' beliefs that they had to forgive and rehabilitate sinning priests.

I know that the notion of turning the sinning priests over to the authorities probably never occurred to the bishops.

I am personally affronted by the fact that some bishops really didn't seem to realize that these activities weren't just (oh well) a result of our sinful fallen human nature. And that they didn't seem to be concerned appropriately with how terrible it was that children were being used for sex. And I'm affronted that the priests who were abusers could allow themselves to do those terrible things. I definitely think there was too much tolerance.

I also think that the good bishops and the others also were bound to try to avoid scandal that might damage the reputation of the Church (as is happening right now). I don't think it was a coverup to save their own skins (like the attempted Watergate or Monica Lewinsky coverups). The motive was to avoid bringing shame on the Church. If they made it public that nice Father Shanley was doing unspeakable things with the altar boys, they would cause a lot of people to lose heart and maybe to lose faith. As is the case right now.

How they could have reassigned these wolves to other parishes and not forced them to leave ministry, even I cannot come up with an explanation for that. How they could promise parents to deal with an offender, and then allow him to keep offending, I don't know about that either. Maybe they were like us all, too busy, finding it hard to put things in the proper priority. Maybe they just let proper action slide out of avoidance for distasteful tasks.

I am glad that the Pope has said that no man who practices such things can be allowed in the priesthood.

Don't bail out Mary.

Here is the title of a sermon written by a very articulate priest after the scandals broke: Answering Scandal with Personal Holiness. He said that even one of Christ's closest friends betrayed him. Don't let these betrayals separate you from the one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church.

Affectionately from your Catholic friend,
Roseanne

Christmas Card 2009

Mary Immaculate ...
This one work has to do
Let all God's glory through ...


Photo: Madonnina* on a Roman wall 2000

The Blessed Virgin
Compared to the Air We Breathe
- Gerard Manley Hopkins

Wild air, world-mothering air,
Nestling me everywhere,
That each eyelash or hair
Girdles; goes home betwixt
The fleeciest, frailest-fixed
Snowflake; that's fairly mixed
With riddles, and is rife
In every least thing's life;
This needful, never spent,
And nursing element;
My more than meat and drink,
My meal at every wink;
This air, which, by life's law,
My lung must draw and draw
Now but to breathe its praise,
Minds me in many ways
Of her who not only
Gave God's infinity
Dwindled to infancy
Welcome in womb and breast,
Birth, milk, and all the rest
But mothers each new grace
That does now reach our raceó
Mary Immaculate,
Merely a woman, yet
Whose presence, power is
Great as no goddess's
Was deemed, dreamed; who
This one work has to do
Let all God's glory through,
God's glory which would go
Through her and from her flow
Off, and no way but so.

The wonder of it all!

For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him might not perish but might have eternal life.
For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.
John 3:16, 17
Have a Merry 12 Days of Christmas
And a Blessed New Year!
My love and prayers are with you.
Roseanne

*Madonninas are little shrines to Mary with the Infant Jesus, which are built into walls and street corners in Italy. Most, like this mosaic icon with its gold background and its flanking marble columns from 1597 are exquisite works of art.

Christmas Letter 2009

Me by me, signed by grand-niece Jadis on my behalf :-)

Thoughts About Celebrating the "Holiday Season"

It seems to me that the "holiday season" is celebrated almost in a frenzy. Besides the frantic "holiday" shopping (which usually includes many personal purchases--retailers count on them!) we engage in the constant creation of, purchase of, and indulgence in "holiday foods and beverages," accompanied by the din of holiday songs.

The intoxication comes to a screeching halt on the actual day of Christmas. As soon as the profit motive dries up, the frenzy stops, and a blessed peace descends.

I don’t have energy to put up a tree any more. The good news is the less I decorate and the more I avoid holiday celebrations, the more I treasure the four week cycle of Advent. I get thrilled by the Advent readings in the Liturgy of the Hours and the Masses, which remind me of the Love that was behind the First Coming and the anticipated Second Coming of Christ.

The partially self-chosen poverty of having an undecorated house, eating a minimum of pre-Christmas treats, avoiding holiday parties and cookie exchanges and the like, all lead me to a deeper joy when the penitential season of Advent is over and when finally we reach the proper time to celebrate the birth of Christ, the Baby God. The Church gives us a long time to celebrate, until Candlemas on Feb. 2. So we can have our decorations and our feasting for 40 whole days. In this and many other areas of life, it seems to me, waiting only makes the satisfaction deeper and more meaningful. And that, after all, might be a very good reason for keeping Advent.

Review of the Year of Our Lord 2009

From the sublime to the mundane, an operation on my right foot January 28, was the start of about eight months of the worst surgical recovery I ever had, and I’ve had more than my share. Trying to navigate around my house with one knee propped on a knee scooter that had the turning radius of a Mack truck and not being able to drive my car for months was only part of the ordeal.
The offending scooter

And after all that frustration, the results for the January 2009 surgery are not much better than the previous foot surgery (on both feet that time) two years before.

The left foot also needs rework, but I’m not about to give any foot surgeon another whack at me! Much to be grateful for, however: once again, some friends brought meals and drove me to Mass after I was able to get out. Dear Liberty helped a lot!

I started work from home two weeks after the surgery and got immersed in a tough project with much stress. I thought I had an infection, but I didn’t have the time to see the doctor while the engineers and marketers kept changing the document I was working on, which dragged out to weeks of day, evening and weekend work. Finally I got antibiotics and recovered. And we got the document out.

I also started following my first cousin once removed Jerry and his wife Gretchen’s reports via email and Facebook about his deployment with the National Guard in Iraq and her adventures in Minnesota alone with three kids, who sometimes act out how much they miss their father. Hooray for Facebook! Who needs soap operas when real life touching dramas are unfolding every day before your eyes?

In spite of the gory story of my return to work after surgery, I still like my job and love my company, Data Domain. Remarkably, we still are getting regular bonuses (in lieu of pay raises). Part way through the year, I started work in the training group creating course materials, and I enjoy the trainers, who have to be more extroverted than tech writers. Data Domain was swept into a bidding war between two backup companies, until huge EMC won us with a 2.1 billion dollar offer that rival NetApp couldn’t match. The purchase had the fortunate side effect of raising a lot of employees’ underwater stock options above water, mine included!

We finally located a doctor who diagnosed a broken vertebra many years after Liberty started having pain in his back at 15 years old. On June 2 this year, Liberty had surgery and is still recovering. We’re hoping that he will now have relief from that lifelong pain and that it will give him a new lease on life.

Liberty had to wear a stylish plastic brace for months after surgery. Also note the lovely post-op stockings.

Continued restoring the house after the Great Advent Wreath Smoldering Ash Blowout two years ago. Just came across receipts from Country Curtains for their oldest style of white narrow ruffle curtains, which look just right in my old kitchen. Found imported lace curtains from Scotland for the living and dining rooms. Put white wooden 3” blinds on the bedroom and back porch windows. Got frames and springs fixed on the Victorian furniture from craigslist that had pretty much fallen apart the day I got it all home. Replaced the dining room table (which had two charred leaves) with a Victorian table, almost immediately regretting the replacement of the sturdy well-designed easily expandable ash table from a great American furniture maker (S. Bent) with what turned out to be a rickety old table from Scotland. Replaced carpet in the LR and bedroom with beautiful stained and finished oak (the finishing was just completed last week).

New floor, finally stained and finished

Now if I could only keep up with the maintenance! Got to get the date palm trees their yearly trim and get a new hole in the fence fixed, replace gutters, plus fix another fence that’s falling down, just for starters.

From November until Spring, while I was recovering, three painters that I’ll not so fondly refer to as the Three Stooges (Mendacity, Surly, and Slow) spent a few hours a day (on days when the winter rains weren’t coming down) month after month doing an exterior paint and patch job. I had signed a contract with them for $12,000, thinking they had the expertise to do a number of preliminary projects, such as divert a gutter downspout that flooded the basement, repair the picket fence, and paint concrete steps. They came highly recommended. So imagine my dismay when I discovered that their ineptitude was only exceeded by the mind-boggling level of BS that I heard during every conversation with the lead stooge. Not bitter, much, am I, as I survey the new paint peeling off the concrete, five window panes that they cracked, siding patches that are coming open, not to mention the hole in the fence, while Liberty is still trying to fix the flooding from the downspout? But it still looks nice, if you don't look too close. Liberty came in one day last week and said he overheard two women walking by, "What a beautiful house!"

The white paint I finally picked after agonizing about the choice for months makes my house stand out among the other homes in my neighborhood with their characteristically California-bright colors
A few roses still are blooming in the front of the house in December

Continued with: sponsoring my Godchild, Guadalupe, in Mexico, taking intermittent enjoyable Latin classes with St. Ann choir friends, singing Gregorian chant and polyphony with the schola connected to the Oratory of Our Mother of Perpetual Help in Santa Clara, where the Traditional Latin Mass is said exclusively, reading and writing and thinking and praying about Catholic dogma and about liturgy that uplifts people’s minds and hearts to God, and spending far too much time on Facebook. I love Facebook, because it has connected me with friends I’d lost track of, helped me make some new friends, and keeps me in daily touch with a community of sacred music enthusiasts and others with whom I have many interests in common. And it’s a good place to share my sketches, paintings, photos, short pieces of writing, and links to longer blogs that I write. Plus I get to see photos of my friends and relatives and their children. For example, one friend posts a daily sunrise photo over a Northern Minnesota lake, and a herbalist friend posts photos of plants from her Portola Valley, CA garden and describes their uses. Cousin Jerry posts photos from Iraq and Germany. I did mention all the charming photos of everyone’s kids, did I not?

Started singing with my schola at a weekly Mass at the beautiful Five Wounds Portuguese National Church (only 3 min. from my home in San Jose).
Five Wounds Portuguese National Church in San Jose

Helped get Vespers materials for our schola to sing Vespers at Mission Santa Clara. Also sang with the schola at Mission San Rafael and Mission Santa Clara.

My poster for the Mission Santa Clara Vespers with an Image from Fr. Catala's Grave Stone
Our Traditional Mass at Mission San Rafael

Now I’m helping with a project to create chant booklets for monthly Vespers to start in the New Year at Five Wounds. It’s an answer to prayer for me that the newly ordained diocesan priest who is the pastor has invited us to hold Vespers. I’m also inspired by the zeal of large home schooled families, many of whose children sing with the schola and whose boys serve Mass and processions, with a kind of reverence and intelligent innocence one doesn’t often see in kids these days.

In the choir loft at Five Wounds where we sing. Look at all the young people!

I recently started swimming again (which I had to stop after the surgery)..

Sad to say, my ex-brother in law, Jay Daly, my niece Eowyn’s father, died suddenly in May after surgeries that were supposed to prevent cancer cells from spreading. Poor Eowyn was the one who found him dead. Jay was well enough known for his writing and other achievements that the Boston Globe published a long obituary article about him. Eowyn’s young son, Thomas, will miss their weekly visits, dubbed by his grandfather as Tuesdays with Thomas.

A Tuesday with Thomas at Jay’s

I’m also sad that my dear Aunt Peggy who helped raise me and my two sisters has been hospitalized in Boston after a stroke, and her sons tell me and my sisters that my aunt doesn’t want visitors. My prayers are always with her.

For a birthday present to myself in October, I drove to Santa Cruz and watched the sun setting over the ocean. Another woman watching the sunset told me to turn around, and I was just in time to see the yellow moon rising behind us.

Then in November, for the second year in a row, I flew out to Massachusetts for Thanksgiving. I visited my sisters and their children (except for nephew Aaron and his family, who I unfortunately couldn't get to see).
Most of the family (sans Martha and Aaron) at the New England Aquarium
My sister Martha

Jadis, the eight year old daughter of my niece, Mary, is artistic, so we took a field trip to Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, where we picked out a watercolor pencil kit, and for the rest of my visit, we spent hours drawing together. Gizelle, the four year old daughter of my niece Susan, also drew along with us.

Me by Jadis
Chrysanthemums by me

While everyone was back to school or work my last day in Massachusetts, I drove off on my own to Cape Cod.
Buzzard's Bay Train Station with the Cape Cod Canal Railroad Bridge

In Sandwich, MA, after a lobster dinner and a walk in the dusk on a silvered wood boardwalk, I came to the top of a rise while the red sun set behind me and the moon cast a silver trail on the Atlantic Ocean waves before me. It seemed odd to be looking at the ocean and having the sun setting behind me after years of experience with the Pacific Ocean in the West.

Other news: my daughter Sunshine/Lauren was working as a nanny in Canada for much of this year, but she moved to Cleveland a few months ago. She started a Facebook fan page for herself under the name Chef Raw La La then Sweet Raw La La. She has quite a following at her website, where she blogs and posts photos of herself and recipes and photos of her raw food preparations. Her website is evolving along with her eating, now it’s called Health Exhibitionist, since she has reintroduced some cooked foods into her diet. It’s amazing the gorgeous photos she can take with her Mac laptop. Here’s one:

Sunshine/Lauren

Following are some other images from this year.

May God bless you at Christmas and always.

Roseanne

Linda (my ex sister in law once removed) injured her foot about the same time, so we got together for a cast party
Linda's son, my nephew Jeff and his son Cole came too, and signed my cast.
Coworker Candice came to my home for a remote Data Domain Friday beer bust and snapped this