This may be the last time for La Tavola di San Giuseppe in San José.

From an email I sent a few weeks ago to the San Jose Mercury News:

I am a freelance journalist and photographer, and I hope you can take a look at a story about what might be the last public St. Joseph's Table (La Tavola di San Giuseppe) put on in San José.

It will be held March 19 at 10:30 a.m. at the Italian American Heritage Foundation on 425 North 4th St., San José.

La Tavola di San Giuseppe is an Italian American custom that originated in Sicily. After over 20 years, this may be the last public event of this kind, because the core group of volunteers is in their late 80s!

Hope you can point me to the right editor if you think it could be used.

Best regards,

-Roseanne

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St. Joseph’s Table
By Roseanne Therese Sullivan, OCDS

What does St. Joseph have to do with fava beans, fennel, a famine, and Silicon Valley?

All these elements—except the last (more about that later)—are part of a Sicilian custom, La Tavola di San Giuseppe (St. Joseph’s Table), which honors St. Joseph on his feast day, March 19.

At the Italian American Heritage Foundation hall on 425 North 4th St., San José, doors to their St. Joseph Table will open at 10:30 a.m. Wed. March 19 as they have for about 20 years. The event is free and open to the public.

St. Joseph is prominent in area history. In 1777, the first Spanish settlement that later became the first capital of California and the present city of San José was named El Pueblo de San José del Rio de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe—the pueblo of Saint Joseph at the River of Our Lady of Guadalupe. In 1797, a mission was founded in Fremont and named La Mision del Gloriosisimo Patriarca Señor San José—The Mission of the Most Glorious Patriarch Lord Saint Joseph.


When the Catholic diocese was founded in 1981 in Santa Clara Valley, it too was given his name: Diocese of San José. Of course, Santa Clara Valley is more commonly known these days as Silicon Valley.

Catholics see St. Joseph as a powerful intercessor with God because he was the foster father of Jesus. St. Joseph’s Table originated in Sicily because his intercession is believed to have ended a famine there. St. Joseph’s Table is actually multiple tables loaded with breads, cakes, and cookies in symbolic Christian shapes, such as crosses and staffs. A statue of St. Joseph with the Christ Child stands at the center. Flowers and fruits abound. Gifts to the needy are also part of the tradition. Work to prepare the table is performed as a way to give thanks for favors, make reparation for sins, and ask for future help.

On February 11, I talked about the custom with some second-generation Italian-American grandmothers and great-grandmothers. We met where the ladies gather for coffee after daily Mass, at Rollo’s Doughnuts, across from Holy Cross Church in northside San Jose. Holy Cross started as a mission to Italians in 1906, and many Italians still attend the church.

Eighty-eight year old Mae Ferraro makes arrangements for the Mass that usually is said before the feast. Mae told me that chairperson Rosalie Turturici and volunteers were already at work to prepare and freeze food for the event. The pastor, Fr. Firma Mantovani, C.S., told Mae they cannot say a Mass this year, since the feast falls on the Wednesday of Holy Week, but he will bless the table. Even though the diocese has moved the celebration of the feast to March 15, the group was permitted to host St. Joseph’s Table on the traditional date.

Pauline Ciraulo, Mabel Maninna, and Rose Santanocito spoke about pasta served with a traditional marinara sauce made with fennel (sweet anise), anchovies, and bread crumbs sprinkled on the top. Some say the breadcrumbs symbolize sawdust, because St. Joseph was a carpenter. Because of Lent, no meat is served.

Everyone gets a sack with an orange, and a blessed bun and fava bean. Mae pulled a blessed fava bean out of her purse for me. Pauline told me a few years ago that if you keep one in your wallet, they say you will never run out of money. Rose showed me a card that says if one is in your pantry, you will always have food. The Catholic Church frowns on “lucky charms,” but fava beans can be used in a non-superstitious way, as a reminder to pray.

Several ladies remembered St. Joseph’s Tables in homes. Children, called “the saints,” would dress up as the Holy Family. Mae remembers her brother played Joseph. The three saints would be given a place of honor and a taste of each dish.

Pauline recalled that the saints would knock on doors, and they would be turned away until they reached the third home.

In an interview this week, Chairperson Turturici, another 88 year old, told me that three volunteers are from Santa Clara: Camela Gullo, Bessie Nicocia, and Frances Magio are also in their 80s (“one is 88, and the other is 89”). They worked on “every [table] we have had since Day One.”

Turturici told me, “Every year I’m in a pinch. I decided I could handle it again this year only because my daughter retired and could help me.”

Because the volunteer pool is aging, the custom is in danger of dying out. Four years ago, two groups were still hosting public St. Joseph’s Tables, St. Clare’s Parish in Santa Clara and the Italian American Heritage Foundation. Now only one group is left. If you are interested, this year’s event might be one of your last chances to take part.

Italian American Heritage Foundation
http://www.iahfsj.org/
425 North Fourth Street
San Jose, CA 95112
Phone: 408-293 -7122

Below: The Italian Church Ladies in 2005. Rollo’s owner Paul Keonakhone pours coffee for Mae Ferraro, Mabel Maninna, Pauline Ciraulo, Dolores Spada (recently deceased), and Rose Santanocito



For more about Rollo’s see this article.

For more photos from 2005, see this gallery.

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Postscript: After receiving my pitch, Mercury News columnist Joe Rodriguez wrote me that he was going to write an article himself. Last Thursday or Friday, he wrote me that he wouldn't be able to get to it, and he gave me the name of Linda Zavoral, another contact at the paper. Encouraged, I tried to pitch the article to her as a freelance piece. She wrote me back and said there was no budget for freelancers any more. Sal Pizarro, Mercury News columnist, wrote and asked me a few questions, since he planned to cover it.

Since I couldn't sell it, I might as well post it here, I thought to myself. So here it is, above. Below is the short piece San Pizarro wrote about the event on March 20.

---

Sal Pizarro column:
Younger blood needed to keep free feast going [San Jose Mercury News, Calif.]

Mar. 20--Some traditions die hard, and I hope that's the case for the Italian American Heritage Foundation's annual St. Joseph's Table feast.

Volunteers -- led by the family of Rosalie, Sal and June Turturici -- served fish, pasta Milanese and countless Italian pastries and breads to about 300 people Wednesday, which was St. Joseph's Day.

"We're trying to keep this old tradition alive, but I don't see many younger people here," said Rosalie Turturici, who's in her 80s and has been volunteering at the event for years.

The meal's free for anyone who comes through the door -- you don't have to be Italian or Catholic. And any leftovers are donated to shelters.

But the IAHF's Ken Borelli says he's confident the group can keep it going. "We're going to have it again next year no matter what."

Carmelite Spring Retreat at Holy Hill

This past weekend, I attended a Carmelite retreat at San Damiano retreat center on top of a big hill outside the upscale town of Danville. The Franciscans who run the retreat center refer to the place as "Holy Hill" in their newsletter.

It's warmer there than here where I live in San Jose, and though I see a few harbingers of Spring in my yard at home, with the forsythia putting out tentative little yellow flowers on their buff branches,I was happy to find Spring in full bloom in Danville.

The retreat center has a big sprawling garden, with an amorphous fountain in the middle, which didn't impress me much on a couple of earlier retreats I've attended there.



But the timing of this retreat in Mid-March, on Palm Sunday weekend 2008, put us smack dab in the middle of a profusion of blooming red tulips, yellow and orange and white daffodils, purple irises and more. The clumps of flowers along the paths and roads were a delight to the eyes and to the Lent-sobered and winter-weary soul.

The dear retreat director, Fr. Donald Kinney, told us on the first conference on Saturday morning that he woke up that morning "so happy. The sun was shining. It's so like Him!"

He got a fond laugh from everyone at that; he was feeling as we all must have felt that God was blessing us all by pouring down His sunshine on us that beautiful day.

My room had a great view of an oak tree. I'm going to attach a sketch I did, that is is not complete and is not colored, but you can glimpse how nice a vista it was. Imagine that the hills and the leaves and the grasses are colored in a multitude of God's profligate palette of shades of green and that the sky is blue with white clouds. I especially was moved at the sturdy blades of irises poking up through the ground and the tender baby Spring grass.



The top image on this blog is a quick sketch of some tulips I made while waiting in line outside the sacristy for confession.

I almost didn't get to go to the retreat. The morning before, I had called the retreat organizer to see if I could get my deposit back since I was having second thoughts about going, mostly for financial reasons. [I got laid off in January.] He said he would check to see if anyone had given a scholarship for his group. I found a message from him when I got home later that afternoon that said I wouldn't believe it but a woman had just called and said she couldn't make it, and she wanted to give away her room. So I was able to go for only the cost of the deposit after all.

As Rita Donnelly, who rode up with me, said, "God is good." And as Father Donald and my friend Regina said, "God must have wanted you to be there."

What a great start for Holy Week.

BTW, EWTN is advertising their coverage of the Holy Week services from the Vatican with the slogan: "The Week That Changed the World."

That was the title of a book about the Russian revolution. But how much more fitting a title that is for the week that Christ our God in His humanity took on the punishment for our sins. He died in the most degrading humiliating way imaginable. The Mighty God suffered the death of a criminal on a cross! He loved us that much. Thanks be to God for the saving sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

Christmas in the hotel and in the stable

Dec. 25, 2007, is long past. Just as I thought I'd get a chance to jot down my yearly reminiscences early this time, a series of unfortunate events occurred. The first event was a small fire on my dining room table on the 4th Sunday of Advent, three days before Christmas. I lit the four candles on my Advent wreath, said a few prayers, and then left the wreath unattended when I went off to sing with the choir. After my son woke up three hours later, he found the front rooms of the house pitch black with soot. He couldn’t see anything, and it was broad daylight! He found the source of the smoke and extinguished it. When he got over the shock of how close he came to possibly dying of smoke inhalation, he took photos, which show the soot damage throughout the house. Above is a photo of what was left of the Advent wreath.

I thank God my son didn’t get hurt, and that the house didn’t burn down. The dining room table is the only thing that actually burned.


Liberty's room had two closed doors between it and the smoldering fire, so his room was livable, while my room, which is just off the dining room, was not. A few days later, a fabric restoration company took my clothing, curtains, and bedding for cleaning, an electronics restoration company took my electronics, a fire clean-up company started washing the structure, and I moved into a hotel.

As a result of my pleading about what I really wanted for Christmas, Liberty joined me at Midnight Mass and sang with the choir. We came back to the house around 2 a.m. and opened stockings together, sampled some of the traditionally weird foods I’d picked up as stocking stuffers (gummy rats, for one), played with a little blue wind-up penguin and laughed. I went back to the hotel around 3. I sang again at noon Mass on Christmas Day.

Then I got the sad news a few days later that my Uncle Raymond had died. Uncle Ray was my father’s sister Agnes’s husband, and Ray was the closest I ever came to having a father after my own father died when I was two. I am very grateful for the home he and my aunt and my grandmother provided for us. While my aunt worked nights, he helped us with our homework. I especially remember his sailor stories, that he taught me how to draw perspective and how to swim. Liberty and I flew to Boston for his wake on New Year’s Eve and funeral Mass the next day. We attended with my sister, Joe-anne, two of her daughters, and four of their children.


When we returned, I moved back into the same hotel.

Last Monday, the 14th, I moved back into my house after the fabric restoration company returned my bedding and clothing. Painting and wallpapering and carpet and curtain replacements still need to be arranged. The disorder is getting to me. I miss the order of hotel living, and the heated pool, which I had pretty much to myself as I swam laps every night before bed.

After this litany of really good reasons why I didn’t write anything yet this year, I need to finish up this letter before the official end to the Christmas season occurs in a few minutes at the end of Candlemas.

My pre-Christmas meditations were mostly about the stable. The one that Christ was born into. The one that He lives in, in my heart.

These meditations were partly fueled by a story that was sent to me before Christmas by Hilary Rojo. (Hilary and her husband Mac organized the pilgrimage I took to Israel three years ago.)

Hilary's story was about the couple's experiences as they went to Bethlehem to attend Midnight Mass one unspecified Christmas Eve. They had gotten tickets months in advance, and they looked forward to the chance to celebrate one of the holiest nights of the year in one of the holiest spots in the world.

As I had found out when I was there, Bethlehem is Palestinian controlled. Our Israeli-driven bus had to be parked in a garage on one side of the border. Then we had to walk down a street and through a security checkpoint in a building where rifle-armed guards strolled on open catwalks over our heads. When we exited the building, we were in Bethlehem. We had to get into a Palestinian-driven bus and continue our journey to the Church of the Nativity.

When the Rojos got to Manger Square in front of the Church of the Nativity that Christmas Eve, the din was hellish. As more and more people poured into the square, the press of bodies was so intense, it sometimes was hard to breathe. The way Hilary told it, the Palestinian soldiers who provided security stood by and laughed among themselves at the tourists as they pushed and shoved each other trying to get to the head of the line. A flying wedge of Germans elbowed by them. Young Palestinian children pushed into the crowd to pick pockets.

The Rojos were dismayed even further when then they saw the soldiers only allowed dignitaries and their entourages to enter the church doors. The Rojos stuck it out, mostly because there was no escape, and no place else to go. Their tour bus was locked in a garage. After a long wait, it seemed their persistence had been rewarded when they got as far as the church door. They were briefly relieved, until the guards suddenly announced, “The church is full, go away!” and BANG, the big wooden doors slammed shut.

Just as suddenly they spotted another opening, the famous Door of Humility, which some say was bricked over at the top and one side to keep the Crusaders from riding their horses into the church. In any case, the door keeps you humble because you must bow your head to enter.

Below: Door of humility
The Rojos rushed over to the door, and suddenly Hilary recognized Mahmoud Abass, the former president of the Fatah movement. She looked him in the eye, and then she and Mac got in line and drafted through the door on his figurative coattails.

Abass and his entourage were escorted to a reserved seating area in the adjacent church of St. Catherine of Alexandria, while the Rojos melted into the crowd somewhere behind him in a press of bodies that was as packed as the square outside had been. They couldn’t even see the altar. People began to faint and throw up all around them. Chunks were actually flying through the air. In the heat and unpleasantness, the stench and the fear, Hilary complained to God, “Is this what Christmas is all about in Bethlehem? Is this what I get for coming half way around the world to honor your Son?””

She went on to write that as soon as she had finished her lamentations, “the room became mysteriously quiet for me. I suddenly felt at peace and then felt a warmth encircle me. A thought/voice questioned me in a soft and loving tone, `What do you think it was like 2,000 years ago? Didn’t you want to experience the birth?’”

During my visit with my spiritual director, Carmelite Fr. Donald Kinney, in December, I had been telling him about my struggles. As we attempt to grow closer to God, the areas in which we fall short of His perfection become disgustingly vivid to us in the illumination of His Light. Fr. Kinney said in consolation that Christ is with us even then. After all, "Christ was born in a stable," I told him Hilary's story. He nodded, yes that's it.

"It's not a pretty sight, Father!" True, but He is with us any way.

When we create our little manger scenes, we leave out the manure and the flies. But these were surely part of that first Christmas night. City folks may not have experienced a stable first hand, so they don't know. Where you have asses and oxen--and humans--you have excrement.

The spot where Christ was born is covered by marble and a silver star now. You get to it now by going down a narrow stairway under the basilica. Two stone mangers were excavated there in the past frew years, so there really was a stable in that cave.


I remember the shock of my first visit as an adult to my Uncle Ralph and Aunt Irene's dairy farm in Wisconsin. The reek of cow urine permeated even the farmhouses. And as I gradually came to realize, much of the dairy farmers' energy is devoted to shoveling out the manure. Beside most barns in the country in winter is a manure pile sometimes as high as the roof, which will be spread on the fields in the upcoming spring as fertilizer.

While we were still sinners, Christ was born for us, lived with us and died for us. And He resides with us still, in the stables of our hearts, even if the best we can give him for a welcome is a bed in a manger full of hay and a modicum of warmth from a mix of animal breath and steaming manure.

It helps to be reminded of this from time to time, He is with us no matter how high and deep the pile is. Dare I hope that a composting is happening and that spring will bring the time when all that rich composted stuff will be plowed under to prepare the soil for the seed time and the harvest to come?

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After I wrote the previous meditation, I was struck more than even before by the Gospel on January 30, which was the parable about how the sower went out to sow the seed. At first, I saw myself in the image of the seed that fell among thorns:

"Some seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it and it produced no grain." As Jesus said, "Those sown among thorns are another sort. They are the people who hear the word, but worldly anxiety, the lure of riches, and the craving for other things intrude and choke the word, and it bears no fruit."

But then I thought, if my little vision of God's composting comes true, I can also see my future self in this:

"And some seed fell on rich soil and produced fruit. It came up and grew and yielded thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold.” As Jesus said, "But those sown on rich soil are the ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.”

If the composting is going on the way I think it is, then the soil is being prepared for the next time the sower comes by. His mercy is never ending.

All who struggle for years with slavery to sin, don't give up the struggle as Luther and James Joyce and many others have done because it is so hard and seems to be impossible. To give up is to be proud, to believe ourselves to be so bad that we are outside the capacious mercy of God. The truth is the God can use all of it, even the sinfulness, the struggles, the fallings and the risings and turn it all into good.

Speaking more about fallings and risings, my son and I both got laid off recently, Liberty in November, me just last week. A bit overwhelmed by the disruption in our home, it is hard to deal with our job losses, but we bounce from one necessity to another with many digressions, and we manage to make small but steady progress in all areas.

Highlights of the past year:

Six Days of Musical Heaven - the Church Music Association colloquium at Catholic University of America, Washington D.C. in June was six days of practicing and singing chant and polyphonic music in liturgies at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception and at St. Mary's Church in Chinatown with140 singers, composers, and musicians. Words for once fail me except to say that it was one of the best experiences of my life.

I continued my monthly meetings with the lay Carmelites (OCDS) at the Monastery of the Infant Jesus in Santa Clara. I had the privilege of attending the wedding of two fellow OCDS, the ordination of a Carmelite priest, and the funerals of another priest and of an OCDS. Also, I continued to sing with the St. Ann choir. I took a musicology class for choir members, and then was lucky enough to take singing lessons and Latin lessons that have been offered free by choir members. I started to sing when needed in the choir at the Oratory of Our Mother of Perpetual Help in Santa Clara, at their traditional rite High Masses. I continued with more freelance journalism too. Articles and photos by me were published locally in the Santa Clara weekly and nationally in the National Catholic Register. A photo of me appeared in articles about the choir in the Stanford Report and in the San Francisco Chronicle, and I was quoted in the second article.

On a business visit to Alabama last year, during a side trip to the Shrine of the Blessed Sacrament, I met the EWTN vice president, a very dear man who is a Tennessee lawyer and great supporter of Mother Angelica's work, Deacon Bill Steltemeier. I mention that meeting because it bore fruit this year when Deacon Bill followed through on my suggestion that they program an interview Prof. Mahrt, our choir director. The EWTN Live show on which he was interviewed was on Dec. 12. This was my biggest PR coup ever. I was happy to see the word is getting out about the importance of the Gregorian chant and sacred music in reverent worship in the Catholic Church.

Lauren is happy in a nanny job in Philadelphia.

It’s been another good year of Our Lord, under the mantle of Our Lady of Mount Carmel.

Why I missed the Latin class last night. I attended the wake of a saint.

Why I missed the Latin class last night.

A saintly woman at Holy Cross Church, Dolores Spada, died last Sunday at 75, and I attended her wake last night. I told Kevin (our Latin class teacher) that I would stay for the rosary and then come to Susan W's 1/2 hour late for the class, but then it seemed rude to get up and walk out in the middle of the tributes that followed the rosary. Besides, my car was blocked in the mortuary parking lot.

So I stayed and listened, sometimes a bit impatiently, and lingered afterwards to watch a video the family had prepared of family photos as a Christmas gift. One woman from the parish read a generic poem about how Dolores was now in the sunset and the waves and the breeze and would never die as long as she lives on in our hearts. A grandson read a more personal tribute, a poem that didn't quite scan but had lots of feeling. The same poem was printed on the back of a little program they handed out at the entrance to the viewing room along with a bag with a rosary in it for each, and a story of how much Dolores loved and believed in the rosary.

Here is the front of the little program:


The grandson said that relatives had been wondering what he was up to scribbling away during Dolores' last hours, but he met his goal to be able to read the poem to her before she died. t was called, "Almost Time to Dance," and looked forward to Dolores' first dance with her husband in heaven. I note these things merely as a record of how death is celebrated in our times, at least in this corner of the world, in northside San Jose CA.

Yesterday morning in Rollo's doughnut shop after 7:30 Mass across the street, I heard even the most hard-hearted little old lady in her group of friends had positive things to say about Dolores. The most apt was "She taught us how to live and she taught us how to die."

Dolores had cancer years ago and it recurred. The first time, her children were already grown, so when she learned that a younger woman with children at home got cancer too, she told the Lord she would offer herself so that the other woman might live. I don't know what happened to the younger woman, but Dolores had a long remission afterwards.

That first time and then when the cancer returned, Dolores offered up her sufferings in an old fashioned Catholic way for the good of others. But then joining one's sufferings with the sufferings of Christ for the good of the world is an intrinsic part of Catholic doctrine, although it is generally more honoured in the breach than in the observance.

It was a privilege to know her. She never gossiped or was unkind, even though she was surrounded by people who did and were. What amazes me most is that she seemed oblivious to the failings of her friends and family. That old unconditional love thing, she had it down pat. She also had a great devotion to Our Lady and said two rosaries a day.

One of her friends told me that at one point when she was dying, Dolores opened her eyes and said that she had seen the Blessed Virgin with a bouquet of roses. Our Lady was holding the hands of her two little sons who had died. They were waiting for her arrival.

Her five living children and many grandchildren, and great grandchildren were at the wake along with hundreds of others.

The California Tower of Babel experience I so often notice was in full effect. (Since English is a second language for many people around here, I often see people from different parts of the world speaking their own kind of English dialect at each other when they don't share the same dialect and hence don't understand hardly a word the other side is saying.) The biggest manifestation of the Babel phenomena occurred when the parochial vicar, a nice young Scalabrinian priest from Mexico, told the parishioners yesterday morning that the wake would be in the hall and waved towards the back of the church. I wondered why the wake was being held in the church hall, but one of the ladies told me he meant the mortuary, which is about 10 blocks away in the direction towards which he waved.

Not everyone understood. So, at 6:30 last night, the choir that sings at the 11:30 a.m. Sunday Mass (mostly Filipinos) was wandering around the parish hall wondering where everyone else was. When they finally figured out where the wake actually was located, they arrived late with their guitars. They sang On Eagle's Wings, I am the Bread of Life, Oh Lord my God and two abysmally bad renditions of Ave Maria. The distinctive Filipino "a" and "i" sounds were dominant throughout. Winging it without hymnals, the choir seemed to making up some of the words and they definitely made up many of the notes. Each of them seemed to create new arrangements as they went along

Dolores would not have criticized, maybe she would not have even noticed.

Every time I ran across Dolores the past year or two, I was relieved and delighted because at the end of each previous encounter, I had been afraid that meeting might be the last. She took all the treatments available, and she said would be happy as long as she could drive herself to daily Mass. When she could, she would join the ladies for coffee in the doughnut shop afterwards. She did the books and volunteered in the church office as long as she could too. Every time I saw her, I would hug her and kiss her and thank God for her still being around and smiling her cute smile. Now the time has come that I dreaded, and I won't be seeing her on this earth any more.

It did my heart an immeasurable amount of good to know her. We need saints because they show us glimpses of the goodness of God.

Love in Him,

Roseanne

Moral Qualities of a Theologian

I found some interesting quotations about essential qualities of a theologian this morning when cleaning out my bathroom. Really! In a basket of steam-wrinkled reading material that I decided to purge, I found a handout that one of my lay Carmelite brothers gave me, which he had received I believe during a month-long vocation-discerning retreat in a Cistercian monastery.

I don't know much about Gregory of Naziannzus who I quote below. (He is also called Gregory the Theologian and is honored by both the Eastern and Western churches.) But from what little I read, it is not for nothing that this St. Gregory is a Doctor of the Catholic Church. The conference leader, Daniel Hombergen, wrote in the handout:

"Gregory initiates his first Theological Oration (Or. 27) by addressng his opponents {Ed: neo-Arians], whom he attacks for the pride they take in their dialectical skill as sophists and word-gamesters, but who neglect to engage themselves in moral action and ascetic practic with a similar skill. ... Speculating about God, however, is a matter of great delicacy."

I see a lot of pride among the writings of theologians that I have been exposed to. Even if pride weren't a sin of great magnitutude that leads to other sins, their pride is misplaced pride. Their credibility is low and their credulousness is high. I always recall my dismay at a ridiculous article someone at work gave me from a respected theological journal. The theologian who wrote the article had searched the New Testament and cobbled together a series of texts that proved to his satisfatction that the Apostle Paul was a Roman spy.

Back to Gregory. I have a few minutes before a carpet cleaner comes (still another task outstanding from my Advent wreath fire on the last Sunday of Advent).

"O listeners, it is not for everyone to philosophize (phiosophein) about God ... definitely not. This is neither such a matter that can be easily be acquired, nor something for peple cleaving to earth. . .. This is not for all men, but only for those who have been put to the test and who have progressed in comtemplation (theoria), that is, those who have first purified their souls and their bodies, or, at least, those who are purifying it. For if someone is not pure, it is not without danger to take hold of what is pure, as it is for weak eyes to look into a sun ray. What is the right moment then? When we take distance from the mud and the disorder in the outside world, and when the governing part of our soul (hegemnikon) is not confused by evil images wandering in all directions, as if we were mixing calligraphic writing with dreadful scrawling or odoriferous* scent with mud. We must actually be free in order to know God . . ."

I couldn't have said it better :-). Actually, I couldn't have said it at all, just trying to be funny. The wisdom of St. Gregory the Theologisn is the fruit of a long period of self-abnegation practiced by him. It comes from God, not from the cleverness of the writer. Enough said.

* [Ed: Perhaps a more-positive word than odoriferous should have been used here, since the most comon understanding of odoriferous is not pleasant. Perfumed, or fragrant would be better even though they are not as rich in connotations as the positive sense of odoriferous would be]

Notes from Ungodly Rage: The Hidden Face of Catholic Feminism

Ungodly Rage: The Hidden Face of Catholic Feminism
Donna Steichen
Second printing, 1992. 1991 Ignatius Press, San Francisco

It may be hard to believe if you haven't come across this information before, but this book describes rage-filled feminists, some gone madly into witchcraft, among some Catholic women in religious orders and in leadership roles in schools, parishes, and dioceses after Vatican II. In this book, you can also read about how liberal bishops, like the discredited Archbishop Weakland, held "listening sessions," where they sensitively heard out the complaints of rage-filled women as they voiced their demands for "rights" such as abortion. Those same bishops, like every liberal priest I've ever met, were not at all interested in the quieter but firm voices of women who tried to speak out against actual atrocies promoted by hijackers of Vatican II.

It has been my experience that the post-Vatican II proponents of a liberalized Church are big on dialogue, but only dialogue with those who express the voices of the world. They don't want to hear from anyone who asks questions like I did: "How can you believe in a Church that you claim was maliciously and ignorantly teaching error for 1960 or so years until some modern Bible scholars and theologians supposedly figured out what Jesus really meant? And how can you stand up in parishes and leadership institutes and say that the documents of Vatican II said things they never actually said?"

Some of the women described in Steichen's book stayed in their orders and some left but kept jobs in diocesan roles.

According to Steichen's book, some practiced a mixture of witchcraft with free sex thrown into the brew. Even some among those who expressed hatred for everything the Church stands for stayed because they want to overthrow traditional Catholic beliefs from within.

For one example of the distorted thinking they exhibit they have redefined the term virgin. To them, a virgin is not a woman who has never physically had relations with a man, but as a woman whose sexuality is not owned by any man. The way they define virgin, as a woman who demands that no one put any boundaries on her sexual behavior, sounds like the old definition of a whore to me.

I personally was heart sick when I returned to the Church in the mid 1979s, and I found out that goddess worshipper, mad Mary Daly, feminist "theologian" was teaching at venerable Boston College. Imagine my sickness of heart when I chanced upon an article in National Catholic Reporter by a feminist nun who was proposing that divorce should be a sacrament. I had come back to the Church because I had tried my own share of lunatic ideas and found them wanting. I came back because the Church answered all of the questions I had been trying to answer, including What is Truth, and how can I satisfy the deep deisre in my heart for immortality?

I had no idea how far that witchcraft and Church-hating feminist contingent had spread within the Church, until I read this book.

Here are the chapter titles:

Chapter One: from Convent to Coven
Chapter Two: The Daughters of Lilith
Chapter Three: Eve Reconsidered
Chapter Four: The Journey Within
Chapter Five: The Domino Effect
Chapter Six: Marching through the Institutions
Chapter Seven: from the Catacombs

Following are some notes I jotted down, because I want to return the book to a friend who loaned it to me. I read it in my quest to understand what happened to cause the radical redefinition of Catholic beliefs that I saw had occurred after Vatican II. When I came back to Catholicism in 1975 or so after leaving it in 1963, I wondered where the Church had gone. I am still trying to understand how such a change for the worse could have occurred.

Just last week, a niece of mine expressed an anti-hierarchical opinion when talking about how her pastor in Dedham Mass had succeeeded in keepng their parish church open when threatened with closing. She believes that the Boston Archdiocese was threatening to close the parish because the pastor would say things the hierarchy didn't like, such as voicing his support for homosexual marriage from the pulpit. See, he wasn't a [what word did she use? slave, patsy, ?] She saw nothing wrong with her pastor, who is an ordained representative of the Catholic faith standing up and opposing official Church teaching, nothing at all. Apparently one can be a Catholic without believing in Catholic teaching, and not only that, one can feel obliged to stand up against the leaders of the Catholic Church if they teach doctrines that are contrary to current mores.

“In March of 1989, at a historic Vatican meeting between American archbishops and curial officials, John Cardinal O’Connor spoke for multitudes of laymen when he described the unintended side effects of the Second Vatican Council as catastrophic. “We are still trying to recover from the chaos of misunderstanding and deliberate distortions,” he said, “Suddenly all the the old certainties seemed to be in question. Many Catholics felt betrayed. They felt the rug had been pulled out from under their most sacred and certain beliefs.

The public face of Catholicism is more altered than anyone would have predicted in 1960.” p.17

CORE IDEA: Deliberate distortion. Betrayal of the intent of the Council.

The trouble arose from “a betrayal of the intent of the Council by midlevel Church professionals, who should have had a strong natural interest in maintaining and enhancing the status of the institution they served. .... “Determined to accept no further magisterial direction toward the kingdom of God, they listened instead to dissident theologians and leftist politicians . ... neo-modernism had been eroding traditional theology, liturgy, and catechetics for some years prior to the Council.” p. 17

“Foreign missionaries today are apt to be so respectful of indigenous cultures that they fail to evangelize, yet the once-vital culture of Western Civilization has been dismantled with brutally callous disrespect for the sensitivities of the American laity.“ p. 18

CORE IDEA: Let's have deep and tender respect for anyone else's religion but not for our own. That reminds me of a young woman I knew who was deeply into animal rights, and admitted that she hated the human race. It leads me to suspect that the devil has to be behind those lines of thinking that lead people into despising their own religion, race, country, class, culure, including their own religion.

p. 19 Most of the errors originated with male theologians, "but they are careful to keep a semblance of Catholic doctrine in their rhetoric.” The author states that women theologians and feminists are much more willing to "discard the entire substance of the faith." My thought is that women don't play the games that men do. Because their core beliefs are inconsistent with the Church's doctrines, they attack her head on, they are not willing to straddle the fence like the males do.

CORE IDEA: “Some [women] had valid grievances, of course. . . .. But far greater harm has been inflicted on them by those who seduced them into the smouldering resentment that poisoned their lives, drew them from their committments and drained away their faith. Their last condition is infinitely worse than their first.” p. 19-20.

Before Vatican II, the women (in and out of religious life) were denigrated and not taken seriously. The “good women” who remain faithful, live lives of self-sacrificial service and hold onto the truth are still ignored, while the more glamourous [sexually up front] feminists have been holding the attention of the clerics.

“shocked by the defection of some ten thousand priests and fifty thousand nuns between 1966 and 1976, Catholics assumed that religious who remained at their posts, at least, were faithful, sane and trustworthy.” p. 20. The author describes how wrong these Catholics were. "Early rumors of excesses among nuns were dismissed as distasteful and flatly incredible, except by the few [like the author] who encountered them frst hand." p. 21. Steichen at first thought she had "stumbled into a uniquely luatice social cul-de-sac. I didn't know it was part of a movement and didn't guess how closely it was entangled with general thological dissent, broader political feministm and epidemic neo-gnosticism. Later investigation revealed that witchcraft is one particularly bizarre manifestation of a widely disseminated decay. Most of he old Catholic culture has been devoured by spiritual termites, leaving behind a structure that looks solide to the eye but crumbles at a touch.

CORE IDEA"
" The post-consilar metamorphosis has been more profound among female religious professionals than any other group, and more instrumental to the misapplication of the "spirit of Vatican II." p. 21

Many orders "adopted policies adversarial towards the Church. As Catherine Victory, a former Dominican, has reported, the old structured convent life changed beyond recognition, and some of those who departed did so not because4 they had lost their vocations but because there no longer seemed to be a community in which to live it. [footnote: Catherin Victory, "Reflections of a Former Nun," Catholic Twin Circle, Nov. 1, 1987, 1.]

The radical feminists practice rituals they don't literally believe it. Many of them don't believe in Satan, yet practice witchcraft and pray to the goddess. They may believe that the goddess is themselves. But they are calling on forces that are real, and that can enslave. They also want to remake the Church to remove patriarchiy, hierarchy, restrictions on sexual practice. They are seemingly trying to recreate Church doctrine according to their philosophy. They don't believe the Scriptures portray true events since they share the widely held belief that is held by many who are holding onto some shred of faith in Christianity while denigrating its doctrine and its documents, that the Scriptures were written by communities with an agenda. They believe that Christianity is "an ammendable human construct." They are trying to construct a New Faith.

Pope Benedict XVI wrote in the Ratzinger Report quoted on p.96:
Christianity is not a philosophical speculation. it is not a construction of our mind. Christianity is not "our" work, it is Revelation . . . and we have no right to reconstruct it. Consequently we are not allowed to change the Our Father into Our Mother;the symbolism used by Jesus is irreversible.; it is based on the same Man-God relationship that he came to reveal to us.

Why did nuns buy into the errors? Chapter Five: The Domino Effect has a lot to say about it. A fair summary might be that the "new theology" sent the religious orders reeling. The damage started with the Sister Formation movement in the 1950s and 60s. John Dewey's secularistic theories, the ideas of psychology all were embedded in American higher education, and the nuns went out and studied in the teachers' colleges while the Catholic colleges were affected by neo-modernism from Europe, which had its roots in rationalistic Protestant Biblical theology. which rejected the historical truth of Sacred Scripture. "The Second Vatican Council was not the cause, but the precipitating occasion, for a revolution already under way." p. 259

Along with the inerrancy of Scripture and the immutability of dogma, the vision of the Mystical Body was dismissed. Pg. 261.

CORE IDEA: The thing I got out of this book for my investigation of what happened, is that whole orders of nuns went bad. Anyone who stood up against the radical changes was ostracized or forced to leave. I imagine there are countless unsung saints among women who were in convents when the 1960s hit. Marginalized, shunned, shamed, belittled, told they were spiritual imbeciles, I wonder how they held the course. For me it is simple, if it once was true, then it always will be true. So i cannot understand those who are able to stay members of the Church when they believe she was so wrong for so many years until some guys in the 1960s were able to set the Church right, finally. How can they stand to be part of an institution that they hate so much and believe such bad things about? Beats me.

San Francisco Chronicle Article on St. Ann Choir and Prof. Mahrt

In this blog is an assortment of information about the front page SFChronicle article yesterday about Prof. Mahrt and the St. Ann choir.

The attachment is one of the photos you can see at sfgate.com (link further down). Nice photo. It's a bit odd, though, that Susan Altstatt got included as one of the tenors!

You can listen to the podcast, including more quotes from the interview that didn't get into the article and singing at Chronicle Radio:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=5&entry_id=22826

In the interest of musical fellowship.

Roseanne

----------------------------------------------------------------------
This article was sent to you by someone who found it on SFGate.
The original article can be found on SFGate.com here:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/12/23/MN5MTKOJN.DTL
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Sunday, December 23, 2007 (SF Chronicle)
Stanford professor's Palo Alto choir keeps Gregorian chant alive
Carrie Sturrock, Chronicle Staff Writer


Gregorian chant has persisted for more than a thousand years, but some
fear the haunting melodies are in danger of fading away.
That is, unless Stanford Professor William Mahrt has a voice in the
matter. For the past 44 years, this musician and scholar has directed a
choir to keep alive the medieval Catholic tradition he believes is a
pathway to the sacred and divine.
"When you sing it beautifully and when it really works, there's an
absolute still in the church," he said. "That's the kind of silence that's
fruitful and it represents a kind of self-awareness that is also aware of
the wider realities, and that kind of silence is where you have your best
opportunity to speak to God and to listen to God."
It hasn't always been easy. Gregorian chant calls to mind robed monks
singing Latin in a Gothic cathedral, and for hundreds of years that's
exactly what it looked like. Many in the church considered the sonorous
chant a relic and Mahrt's choir odd.
"Sometimes we were treated like a lunatic fringe," said Susan Altstatt,
who has sung in Mahrt's choir in Palo Alto for 40 years. "A lot thought we
were not very 'with it' - as far as being part of the modern church - and
hoped we would eventually dry up and blow away."
But Mahrt, 68, is not just deeply religious, he's also stubborn. He
considers Gregorian chant one of the greatest artistic achievements of
Western civilization. So it's in everyone's best interest to keep it
around - Catholic or no.
"The stuff is so unique that you hear a snatch of it and you say 'What is
that?' " Mahrt said. "It isn't like anything else you've heard."
On a recent Sunday, he stood in the balcony of St. Thomas Aquinas Church
in Palo Alto, his tall, slightly bent frame directing the 20 men and women
- known as the St. Ann Choir - whose chanting seemed at times to have a
mesmerizing effect on the congregation, making everything tranquil and
quiet.
"Dignus est agnus, qui occisus est/ accipere virtutem, et divinitatem, et/
sapientiam, et fortitudinem, et honorem."
"Worthy is the lamb that was slain to receive power, and divinity, and
wisdom, and strength, and honor."
Chanting was common in churches across the world until the early 1960s,
when the Second Vatican Council permitted the Latin Mass to be said in the
vernacular and the priest to face the congregation instead of the altar.
Chant got the boot as churches turned to pop folk music to try to appeal
to a broader audience - music Mahrt says he "wouldn't cross the street" to
listen to. Priests who valued the chant yet didn't use it during Mass have
told Mahrt they feared modern congregations wouldn't get it. But Mahrt
contends that chant is accessible if people are properly introduced to it
and persuaded of its worth.
Now, most folks hear it only occasionally - in movies such as "Becket" or
if they happen to hear recordings by the Benedictine Monks of Santo
Domingo de Silos, who made it briefly popular.
And although Pope Benedict XVI recently announced that the Vatican's choir
would return to Gregorian chant, Mahrt still worries. There aren't many
Gregorian chant choirs in the United States and even fewer that have done
what Mahrt's has: rehearsed and chanted the entire Mass every week for
more than four decades.
Gregorian chant is Latin liturgical texts sung in an unaccompanied melody
- so no instruments. Many scholars believe it dates back to fourth century
Jerusalem, although nothing was written down until the ninth century. For
500 years it endured through memory, which Mahrt considers astonishing
since the chant involves 365 days of the Catholic liturgical cycle. It's
called "Gregorian" because legend has it Pope St. Gregory I, the Great
(540-604), played a key role in arranging the chants.
The chants may be ancient, but Mahrt's motley crew of a choir looks
decidedly modern, wearing everything from Birkenstocks and tie-dye to high
heels and suits. Mahrt would love to spiff them up with robes, but the
suggestion never seems to go anywhere. And not everyone is Catholic - some
chant for the sheer joy of it.
Many view Mahrt as something of a hero, said choir member Roseanne
Sullivan. In an age of instant, ever-changing entertainment, his
dedication hasn't wavered. The confirmed bachelor shows up almost without
fail, always in a tie and jacket, and with a large store of patience. When
he's not there and a substitute choir director takes his place, it's often
because he's promoting chant in other parts of the country and world.
"He's shown up year after year and week after week ... for 44 years," she
said. "Can you imagine?"
Mahrt, an associate professor of music, began his undergraduate education
at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Wash., but graduated from the University
of Washington. He then earned his doctorate at Stanford. Friends say he's
one of the world's foremost authorities on Gregorian chant and one of
Stanford's best music professors.
He guides his graduate students deep into their intellectual arguments
until they've mastered the material and "will invest an almost
unbelievable amount of time into things," said George Houle, a Stanford
professor emeritus. Mahrt has been slow to publish in an academic world
that highly values that practice because, as Houle put it, "everything he
does has that deep perfection and thought" and he wants to own a subject
before writing about it.
Much of his spare income goes to collecting books on Gregorian chant, and
he had to specially brace his extra bedroom's floor when he turned it into
a library with stacks. Friends say his collection, which includes a 14th
century chant book that he likes to show visitors, is more extensive than
Stanford's.
Nothing about his upbringing on a wheat farm in Spokane exposed him to
Gregorian chant, but he did have a devoutly religious mother who required
all her children to take up a musical instrument in the third grade. It
wasn't until Mahrt was an undergraduate at the University of Washington
that he was introduced to Gregorian chant by a Dominican priest in the
community.
He likes to say that someone once defined the sacred as "doing the right
thing at the right time and in the right place." Gregorian chant is just
that, he said: putting to music all these Latin liturgical texts that form
the backbone of the Catholic faith.
"It adds something beautiful," he said. "A religious service ... should be
beautiful because beauty is an attribute of God."

-- To hear the St. Ann Choir perform Gregorian chant, go to
sfgate.com/podcasts.
The St. Ann Choir will chant the Christmas Eve midnight Mass as well as
the Christmas Day noon Mass at St. Thomas Aquinas Church. The church is
located at 751 Waverley St., Palo Alto.

E-mail Carrie Sturrock at csturrock@sfchronicle.com. ----------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2007 SF Chronicle

Wednesday, December 12, CMAA President and St. Ann Choir Director, Wiliam Mahrt, Speaks on Sacred Music and Liturgy on EWTN Live TV and Radio

This coming Wednesday, December 12, CMAA President and St. Ann Choir Director, Prof. William Mahrt is scheduled to appear on EWTN TV and radio on the subject of "Sacred Music and Liturgy." He will be on the "EWTN Live" show with host Fr. Mitch Pacwa at 8:00 p.m. Eastern time. (The show encores: Thur. 12/13. at 1 a.m., Thur. 12/13 at 9 a.m. and Sun. 12/ 16 4 a.m. Eastern time. You can also find the show in the station's archives if you miss it.)

You can view the EWTN Live show on cable TV; view it or listen to it over the Internet at ewtn.com, or listen to it on Sirius satellite radio. You can call in with a question at 1 (800)221-9460 when the show is on.

To view it over the Internet:
Note: When prompted, select a video player according to your Internet connection speed.
1. Go to http://EWTN.com/tv.
2. Select Multimedia from the top menu and go to Live shows at 8 p.m. Eastern Dec. 12.
3. If you miss it and want to watch it later, select Archived shows.

Prof. Mahrt's more than 40 years work with the St. Ann Choir and his work as president of the Church Music Association of America and editor of its journal, Sacred Music, were lauded recently in two articles:

"Champion of Chant," Stanford Report and "Gregorian Champ," National Catholic Register

In the Bay Area, EWTN TV stations are:

o Comcast digital Ch. 229;
o DISH satellite Ch. 261
o DirectTV Ch. 422
o NOTE: In Palo Alto and Stanford, Comcast airs EWTN on Ch. 74.

What is Professor Mahrt like? Answers to a Reporter from SF Chronicle

A photographer and a writer from San Francisco Chronicle showed up at the St. Ann choir rehearsal and Mass last Sunday (Feast of Christ the King). The writer asked me a few questions outside the church, and she gave me her card and said she would call me. I sent her the following email on Tuesday.

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Tuesday, November 27, 2007 3:24 PM
To: Sturrock, Carrie
Subject: What is Professor Mahrt like? Some thoughts in answer to your question

What is Professor Mahrt like? I have been thinking about this since you asked me Sunday after Mass.

I mentioned his focus and his dedication, that he shows up to lead rehearsal every Thursday night (when he isn’t at conferences or other music events) just as he has pretty much for 40 plus years straight through. Believe it or not, there is some question about whether he even gets paid for the vast amount of work he does directing the choir. I’ve seen a printed quotation in some article or other from someone who knows him who lauded Bill’s uncompensated time- and talent- draining work.

Prof. Mahrt is a predictable sight to be seen at dusk on most Thursday nights, loping across the Stanford campus towards the Braun music building rehearsal room. He is tall (6’1’), white haired, spare. His nose is a bit beak like, and he is ever so slightly stooped. So from a distance his silhouette is a bit reminiscent of Ichabod Crane. But unlike Ichabod, Bill Mahrt carries a large portfolio of chant pages for the next Sunday and a music stand under one arm, and in the other hand he holds a metal briefcase with the polyphonic motets for the week, some hymns, and any Mass settings the choir might be practicing for upcoming feasts.

He almost always wears a buttoned-up shirt, a tie and a jacket.

His conservative polyester apparel is in striking contrast to the mufti worn by the choir. The members’ California spirit of do your own thing is evidenced in the variety of clothes they wear when they sing. Singers straggle into Sunday rehearsal an hour ahead of Mass wearing anything from blue jeans to sweat suits, Birkenstocks to jogging shoes, with a sprinkling of Indian dresses that could have been and quite likely often have been hanging in closets since the 1960s. You know, the colorful rayon kind with the little mirrors . . .. You see lots of shawls. A few of the men sport long grey ponytails. That’s not to say that you won’t see a few suits and men’s oxford shoes, Sunday dresses and stylish high heels on some of the singers. But it cannot be denied that it is a motley group.

Bill’s occasional suggestion that we might consistently use choir robes (instead of only for Vespers) brings rebellious cries from several of the most outspoken choir members, and the idea gets tabled again.

One interesting fact is that a large minority of the choir is not Catholic, and many participate only because they love the music.

Bill Mahrt’s single most appealing attribute for me is his gift for hospitality. At the first rehearsal I attended, he brought refreshments in honor of the birthday of Susan Weisberg, because, as he said, she always remembers people’s birthdays. He poured very good wine from his extensive wine collection into real wine glasses that he carried in cartons with little cardboard dividers. And he walked around the room like an attentive waiter offering a plate of strawberries . . .. I was impressed.

The first Sunday Lauds I attended was one of the last times that the choir was able to sing Lauds in its original home, St. Ann Chapel, which was formerly the Stanford University Newman Center. After a traditional Anglican congregation had bought the chapel from the Catholic diocese, they let the St. Ann choir continue its singing of both Lauds and Vespers there for quite some time. But last year they started having their own Lauds, and there was no room there any more on Sunday mornings.

When I started to get into my car after Lauds that first morning, Bill called to me across the street, rather perfunctorily, but pleasantly enough, “There’s coffee.” So I stayed. He took out of the trunk of his beat up Honda another carton, this time with china mugs, plus two thermos pots of coffee, milk and sugar, and biscotti. One choir member brought a homemade cake. I happened to have a freshly baked bag of corn muffins in the car so I put that out on the brick bench under the tree with the rest of the repast. We stood around drinking coffee and talking until it was time to pack everything up and go to Mass rehearsal. I was impressed again.

Repast, now that’s a Bill Mahrt word. He also uses collation when he talks about the spread that some dedicated volunteers put out for the choir after the noon Mass every week.

Not being able to find any place else to hold Lauds, Bill now opens his home every Sunday morning to the three or four of us who still attend. And serves us coffee afterward on his good china.

Vespers are better attended, but always with more singers in the choir than there are hearers in the congregation (maybe 6 or 7 to 2 to 4). As you may have heard, Susan and John Altstatt host a dinner for the choir every Sunday night after Vespers at their funky home in the Los Altos hills. They push together long folding tables and serve very good meals from restaurant-sized pots and pans to whoever shows up. Bill always brings three bottles of his excellent wine to the dinner.

And when the Altstatts are on one of their frequent camping trips in their big AirStream trailer out in the desert, indisposed, or otherwise unavailable, Bill hosts the dinner at his home.

He is the only man I have ever met who has three sets of dinnerware. One set is Spode china. He puts out cloth napkins and real silverware. And he composes unforgettable meals in his tiny kitchen. One Sunday night one of the choir members confessed she had been dreaming all week about the red pepper sauce Bill had prepared the week before. I still am mentally licking my lips about a meal of shrimp rolled in sole served with tiny baby patty pan squash (all sauced to perfection) and Bill’s perennial risotto that Bill prepared after Vespers a few weeks ago.

One long time choir member told me about a wonderfully handsome graduate student from South America who had once been in the choir, and she said, “All the girls who weren’t in love with him were in love with Bill.” The handsome South American got married and went home, and sadly died young. But in spite of all the choir members who have purportedly loved Bill over the years, Bill never has been married or engaged. One more recent choir member charmingly said about him when I was wondering about Bill’s marital state that “he is a monkdom of one.”

He turned 68 on March 9. He had a heart attack last year, and now watches his diet religiously. And he is one of the vast numbers of men of a certain age living with prostate cancer. I heard him telling a former choir member who showed up for rehearsal a few weeks ago that (in spite of his having the prostate removed) the cancer has metastasized, but the doctors don’t know where to. “They’ll start chemo at some point,” he said, after the blood marker reaches a certain point. And he quoted his father to her, who had prostate cancer too and died in his 90s. With a rueful laugh, he told her, as his father often said, “We’ve all got to go some time.”

We hope that for Bill that “some time” is some time in the far future.

Susan Altstatt said to me last week that it is good that Bill and the music he has so valiantly preserved are getting noticed at this late date. It must be gratifying to him. I agreed and blurted the thought that sprang to my mind, that fame if it arrives at all often comes only after the person is dead.

P.S.

Susan Altstatt said she wanted to tell you that Bill is right off the farm. He often mentions that he was raised on a farm near Spokane. He mentioned once that in high school, he was a trombone player, and he attended Gonzaga University in Spokane on a band scholarship. His interest in things musical evolved. According to Susan, Bill learned Dominican chant while he was at Gonzaga. He came to Stanford originally to work on a doctorate on Mozart in piano performance but when he met mathematics professor William Pohl, the choir’s founder, and started singing Gregorian chant in 1963 when the choir started, he said he realized that was what he wanted to do. He sat down, he said once, and sang through all the ordinary chants for all the Masses. And he has been doing that ever since.

BTW, I have a history he wrote around 1989 if you would find it helpful.

Give me a call if you want to talk more.

I am very happy you are doing this article. It was a pleasure to meet you!

Chant Survivor William Mahrt: Anno quadragesimo quarto

This interview was published in an edited form in "Gregorian Champ," National Catholic Register Nov. 18 -24.


Above: Prof. Mahrt led the women's chant schola at the June 2007 Sacred Music Colloquium

In 1963, William Mahrt was a Stanford graduate student when he joined a new choir just starting at St. Ann Chapel in Palo Alto, California. Today, Mahrt is a professor of music at Stanford and director of the St. Ann Choir. Two years ago, Prof. Mahrt became president of the Church Music Association of America.

Back forty-four years ago, the St. Ann Choir’s founder, the late William Pohl, started a program of Gregorian chant and polyphonic music that the choir has continued to this very day—even while the kind of music the choir sings has been out of favor in much of the Catholic Church for most of the ensuing years.

The election of traditional Church music lover Benedict XVI to the papacy is bringing a thrill of hope to people like Mahrt, the CMAA, and others who persevered in performing this kind of music. These days, the pendulum of Church music appears to be swinging back towards greater inclusion of the traditional forms. Where that pendulum will come to rest is a matter of intense speculation by interested parties on both sides of this issue.

Some definitions: Gregorian chant developed as an intrinsic part of the liturgy of the Catholic Church, and it is unique among all the types of music that can be used in the liturgy because it has always been used only for worship. Some refer to Gregorian chant as “sung prayer.” Purely melodic, it is sung by one or several singers. It does not use harmony, counterpoint, or any accompaniment. Polyphony is unaccompanied multi-voiced music that developed from chant. Gregorian refers to Pope St. Gregory I, the Great (540 - 604), who may have played an important (sometimes disputed) role in the arrangement of the chants. In 1903, Pope St. Pius X proclaimed that Gregorian chant and sacred polyphony were the official music of the Roman Catholic Church’s liturgy.

Quite by coincidence, I interviewed Professor Mahrt about the CMAA on Sept. 3—on the feast of Pope St. Gregory the Great in the revised Roman calendar and also the feast of Pope St. Pius X in the traditional calendar.

Q: What is the CMAA?

The Church Music Association was formed by an amalgamation of the Society of St. Caecilia (founded in 1874) and the Catholic Choir Masters Guide (founded in 1913) shortly after the Vatican II council. So we are quite a longstanding organization.

The purpose of the Church Music Association has always been the cultivation and improvement of music for the liturgy. Its focus is Gregorian chant and the classical polyphony of tradition in the context of the liturgy.

Q: What would you say to people who believe that Vatican II documents mandated that Latin, Gregorian chant, and polyphony, and the organ were no longer to be used?

At the 2nd Vatican Council, the first document was the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, which specified that Gregorian chant should be given pride of place in the Roman rite. One doesn’t see a lot of evidence of Gregorian chant having pride of place in this country.

So, one of our campaigns is to increase the use of Gregorian chant for the regular services.

Another point that comes from the council is that polyphonic music has a special role, a privileged place in the use of the Church.

The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy and the 1967 document “Instruction on Music in the Liturgy,” “Musicam Sacram,” also had this to say:
• The use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites.
• The treasure of sacred music is to be preserved and fostered.
• The pipe organ is the canonical church instrument. It is to be held in high esteem because it lifts up man's mind to God and to higher things.

Q: Does the CMAA want to make chant and polyphony exclusively used?

We want chant and polyphony to have the priority that was mandated by the 2nd Vatican council, not necessarily to be exclusively used.

Q: What is the CMAA accomplishing?

We publish the journal Sacred Music that has been under my editorship for about a year and a half. Sacred Music is a continuation of the journal Caecilia that was started by the Society of St. Caecilia in 1874, so we rather proudly claim that Sacred Music is the oldest continuously published journal of music in North America.

The journal addresses issues of both the tradition and the gradual incorporation of better music into contemporary liturgical practice.

We have a Sacred Music colloquium every summer and that colloquium is growing by leaps and bounds. In 2006 we had something like eighty people. This past June [2007] we had one hundred and forty, and we turned away a hundred. And we anticipate larger numbers next year.

We are moving the colloquium next year from Catholic University of America in Washington, DC to Loyola University in Chicago, where the facilities will accommodate the larger number of people we expect.

Priests, choir singers, congregation members, choir directors, and organists are coming to this colloquium seeking ways in which they can improve the quality and the sacred character of the music they are doing in their churches today.

We also present workshops. For example, this Fall we are holding a seminar for clergy on October 17-19 at St. John Cantius Church in Chicago on how to sing their parts of the Mass. The seminar will include training in singing both the new and old forms of the Roman Rite.

Q: What future aims does the CMAA have?

With Pope Benedict’s initiatives about the liturgy, there is an increased awareness of the importance and the beauty of the Latin church music and of the need for the music to enhance the sacred character of the liturgy.

We hope that the increased interest in the traditional Church music and in the sacredness of music of the liturgy will grow. And we hope that we can assist everyone who needs it to find the appropriate ways of improving their liturgies.

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[It’s probably fitting to let Pope Benedict XVI have the last word:
I am convinced that the crisis in the Church that we are experiencing today is to a large extent due to the disintegration of the liturgy . . .. This is why we need a new Liturgical Movement, which will call to life the real heritage of the Second Vatican Council. Milestones: Memoirs 1927-1977 (SF, CA: Ignatius), p. 149.]


For more information on the CMAA, its colloquium, and its other resources, see the CMAA website

For a collection of quotes by Pope Benedict XVI on sacred music and the liturgy, see: Benedict on Music.

To join in the discussion about the new Liturgical Movement, see The New Liturgical Movement blog.

Roseanne Therese Sullivan is a San Jose writer, photographer, and artist, a secular Discalced Carmelite, and a singer in The St. Ann Choir. You can reach her at the Catholic Pundit Wannabe blog .

Below: CMAA officers and colloquium presenters at breakfast. L - R: William Stoops, Treasurer; Arlene Oost-Zinner, Director of Programs; Professor Susan Treacy, Head of the Music Department, Ave Maria University; Scott Turkington, Chant Conductor, Stamford Schola Gregoriana; Jeffrey Tucker, Sacred Music Managing Editor; Prof William Mahrt, President and Editor of Sacred Music; Rev. Robert Skeris, President Emeritus,Director of the Centre forWard Method Studiesat Catholic University; Horst Buchholz, CMAA Vice President, Director of Sacred Music and Principal Organist at Denver's Cathedral Basilica; Rosemary D. Reninger, chant composer and choir leader, Herndon, VA.