Some chap named Paul Zummo has written about Jody Bottum’s white flag essay over at the Catholic Stand. You should all go read it.
But Hey, We Don’t Really Have to Worry About Same Sex Marriage
Speaking of the issue that will single-handedly destroy Catholicism, Erik Stanley provides more evidence that maybe, just maybe, First Amendment rights aren’t so secure in a same sex marriage tolerant regime.
Whoops. My bad. That was Senator Biden. Now that he’s Veep he’s totally cool with such actions.
Few people are talking about common core, but we should be, as it poses a serious threat to American education.
Common Core, now adopted by 45 states and DC, is a set of national standards and goals related on the surface to English and math that have far-reaching implications into who controls curriculum (teachers teaching to the national test), along with implementing data-mining for a jaw-dropping universe of facts provided to the federal government about your children and you. Can I implore you to watch this video of a Common Core creator celebrating the collaboration with Obama’s data team and how to use data to achieve political ends?
Common Core has dismal quality, puts us behind other countries, views teaching as job training and not the development of our children’s minds, and has backers that would make your head swim were you to conduct even a perfunctory search.
Dennis Prager uses the “f” word and so will be ignored, but he shouldn’t be.
Now this is a Professor I Wish I had in College
Mike Adams is a professor in the University of North Carolina system. One friendly reader labelled him the biggest embarrassment to higher education. Why? Because Mike actually believes marriage should be between one man and one woman. Mike wrote an open letter in response to Ed, and it’s truly worth your time to read.
James Taranto takes down a buffoonish article written by Margaret Carlson about the movie The Butler. I think the absolute kicker was this written by Carlson:
“I wish Chief Justice John Roberts and four of his Supreme Court colleagues would see [‘The Butler’], too,” she writes. “Maybe it will help them understand how wrong they got it when they recently decided that we are so far past Jim Crow that we can dispense with a central provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.”
Yes, if only Clarence Thomas had seen a movie about life in the Jim Crow south he’d have been more amenable to upholding Section 4 of the VRA.
Too Much Chant at an Extraordinary Form Mass?
Scott W. sounds incredulous that anyone could complain about too much Gregorian Chant at an EF Mass. I have to admit that at the last EF Mass I attended – one which lasted two and a half hours, and was not the Easter Vigil – at one point I was kind of hoping for the choir to shut up for a minute so that the Priest could continue. Of course that was a polyphonic choir, so perhaps it’s not quite the same thing.
Extraordinarily funny if you’re a fan of the show. By the way, Sunday night’s episode may have been the greatest hour of television I’ve ever watched.
“one which lasted two and a half hours”
You got me there. Even I’d say it’s too much of whatever is making Mass go that long.
To clarify, what this particular complainer was getting at is that there was too much chant displacing the Greatest Catholic Hits of 1956. For him, there are basically about five or six hymns like Salve Regina and Schubert’s Ave Maria that are acceptable for Mass and we were supposed to just cycle through them. As I often say, getting rid of the cloying and mawkish schmalz of the 1970’s is not a solution if it is replaced by the cloying and mawkish schmalz of the 1870’s.
“I have to admit that at the last EF Mass I attended – one which lasted two and a half hours,”
Wow. I must say that I like the old “hunter” low mass of 20 minutes. On special occasions I like elaborate masses, but usually a shorter mass suits my taste. I also tend to get irritated if a priest speaks for more than ten minutes after the Gospel. Some priests have the gift of eloquence but many do not. Many a good and holy priest I have encountered keep their sermons short because they understand this. I sometimes, and I know this is bad of me, feel like holding up a sign saying “Just Here for the Eucharist!”
For the record, it was a special Corpus Christi Mass at my parish. Even at the extended length, it was still beautiful.
There was a rector at St. Mary’s in downtown DC who celebrated the Extraordinary Form Mass every Sunday, and his homilies were regularly about 5-7 minutes. Of course, there’s another priest who regularly celebrates there currently (Msgr. Pope) whose homilies run much north of that time, though he’s the rare exception of being the kind of gifted orator who can get away with it.
If only I had the luxury of complaining about too much Gregorian Chant at Mass. You stand a better chance of hearing Gregorian Chant as background music at a secular coffeehouse than at your local Catholic parish.
Years ago a priest from my diocese said he learned this homily tip from a priest friend: Put a Life Saver in your mouth when you start your homily. When it’s gone, stop. He used that rule of thumb even when he preached the funeral homily of the priest who gave him that advice.