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Catholic Priest Denies Burning Down 17 of the Ugliest Churches Ever Built.
Alas, it’s a joke – as the last para makes clear. Otherwise I could think of a few Canberra Churches that would benefit from a visit by Fr Ash – Ed.
From the Blog “Faith in Our Families”.
“Forensics traced the source of this fire back to the sacristy. That didn’t surprise me at all. There was just so much polyester in there. At night you could hear crackling and literally see sparks as the low quality vestments brushed against each other. The levels of static electricity in that place were OFF THE CHART. Vanpoulles has got a lot to answer for.”
"Polish born Fr Pileov Ash". (Photo: faithinourfamilies.com)
Police are questioning a 38 year old Catholic priest on charges of arson after 17 out of 18 churches he was stationed at burned to the ground over a 13 year period. Polish born Fr. Pileov Ash denies the charges saying that the events are an “unexplainable co-incidence”. (more…)
French Organ Music and La Mission Civilisatrice
We who love French organ music must adapt, in dealing with those outside our circle, the insinuating advice once given to Augustine: Tolle, aude.
by R. J. STOVE
“To create a little of that beauty against which the foe rages!”
– Debussy, debarred from active military service, during World War I
Herewith, some disordered thoughts offered – some “notes on the present discontents” – for anyone who might be interested in the concept of French organ music. Which concept, granted, is scarcely likelier to goad most readers into qualitative assessments than was a long-ago vow by Time magazine to solve the enigma of “the Wittiest Man in Belgium.”
That these thoughts will be incoherent is assured. That they will evoke boredom is probable. But authors should remember, if no-one else does, the advice that Esquire editor Arnold Gingrich gave the increasingly unproductive, indeed dipsomaniacal, Scott Fitzgerald:
I [Gingrich] suggested that he [Fitzgerald] put down anything that came into his head, as automatic writing in the Gertrude Stein manner, or that, if even that were beyond his powers of concentration, he simply copy out the same couple of sentences over and over … if only to say I can’t write stories about young love for The Saturday Evening Post.
From which guidance, Gingrich, and the world, derived several more Fitzgerald classics, including “The Crack-Up” and “Three Acts of Music.” Perhaps it was the Gertrude Stein allusion by which Gingrich secured Fitzgerald’s last fine careless rapture. After all, Gertrude Stein spent years as what a subsequent Esquire staffer called “Our Man In Paris.”
Image: Rowman & Littlefield
Latin as I Please XI – April 2015
| by David Daintree
The Improperia (or Reproaches) are, to my mind, the single most powerful and affecting element in the whole course of the liturgical year It is Eastertide as I write, but the memory remains strong of hearing the Improperia (or Reproaches) sung so movingly in St Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney, on Good Friday. They are, to my mind, the single most powerful and affecting element in the whole course of the liturgical year: their profound pathos is overwhelming. They are also extremely unusual in that they employ the device of having God speak directly to us in his own words, something that never happened in Christian hymnody before Marty Haugen and his ilk came out of nowhere. The Improperia appear to be very early, because of their use of Greek, but they are not certainly identifiable before the Pontificale of Prudentius (Bishop of Troyes 846-861). Thereafter they became fully incorporated into the liturgy of Good Friday. Their setting by Palestrina in 1560 is, I believe, still used every year in the Sistine Chapel. |
Tasmanian Pilgrimage
…Fr Suresh sang a Missa cantata. En route, from time to time we said the Rosary (ten decades each day), sang hymns, conversed and enjoyed the pleasant weather and scenery. …Being a Catholic affair, we quenched our hard-earned thirst and enjoyed a pleasant dinner together in a local pub each evening.
By Joshua
Readers will be aware that Oriens is a bit of a fan of Pilgrimages; some of you will recall that in May 2014 we ran a series of posts on various pilgrimages including the Whitsunday Paris-Chartres pilgrimage, its antipodean “daughter”, the annual Christus Rex pilgrimage from Ballarat to Bendigo – and the Ely to Walsingham pilgrimage inspired by the latter, which might be thought of as a “grand-daughter”.
Today I’m pleased to present a report from our old friend Joshua (you may recall his piece on the TLM in Hobart which we linked in June 2014) on the inaugural Tasmanian “granddaughter” of Paris-Chartres, wherein your humble servant was further humbled, as the chronicles record. (I’ve lifted the report, with permission, from Joshua’s excellent blog Psallite Sapienter which you should have a look at; note especially the St Patrick’s Day post recording the excellent developments in relation to the traditional Mass in Tasmania, with now a monthly (sung!) EF Mass in Launceston in addition to every Sunday (and first Friday) in Hobart.
Editor.
THURSDAY, MARCH 12, 2015
- St Patrick’s, Colebrook (Editor’s photo)
A small group of friends and I spent the weekend on a Lenten pilgrimage: on Saturday, we walked from St Joseph’s Church in Hobart to St John’s Church in Richmond (25 km); and on Sunday, another 28 km to St Patrick’s Church, Colebrook. The three churches mentioned are all historic: St Joseph’s, built 1841, was Hobart’s original pro-cathedral; St John the Evangelist’s, built 1837, is the oldest extant Catholic church in Australia; and St Patrick’s, Colebrook, built 1857, is a perfect Pugin design.
Communion for the Divorced and “Remarried”: a Little Light Shed by W. Shakespeare.
… the real tensions arise from an attempt to separate doctrine from practice; teaching from pastoral action; eternal salvation from earthly “integration’.
By Kerry Mellor
The first session of the Synod on the Family, as it has come to be known, has set up some pretty formidable tensions in the Catholic Church. It remains to be seen whether the second session, due in October of this year, will see those tensions resolved, or, God forbid, intensified.
At the superficial level, that of the newspaper commentary, or the Radio/TV sound bite, the game appears to be a struggle between “Progressives” and “Conservatives”, a.k.a. “the Orthodox”. But the real tensions arise from an attempt to separate doctrine from practice; teaching from pastoral action; eternal salvation from earthly “integration’. In a metaphysical sense, there is a body of theological scientists who are attempting to split the atom. And we know from the physical world where that can lead.
Claudius
