I've run across this quotation a couple of times in the last few days and pondered it a bit. Credited to Howard Macy, professor out at George Fox University.



<<<<<<< The spiritual life cannot be made suburban.

It is always frontier.

And we who live in it must accept and even rejoice that it remains untamed. >>>>>>>>>>



Worth some thought. We can never be altogether comfortable, can we, considering the radical nature of our dislocation and the urgency of His call.

My mother’s brother, the only one of my uncles that I knew well, was ordained a priest 60 years ago today. The middle of the war. The middle of “fortress Catholicism.” When there were still a large number of “national” parishes drawing their congregations by ethnic group instead of geography, so that the vast numbers of immigrants could have a priest to hear their confessions, and be in fellowship with them, in the language that they had been born to. My uncle’s fluent Italian (and him of nothing but Irish stock) meant that he spent most of his years as a priest in those parishes. A blessing he found it, and not only for the food.



My uncle died nine years ago but, this year especially, I needed to make a gesture to him and in his memory. And so I went on the afternoon of Memorial Day to visit one of the priests of his ordination class, one of his close friends, another Irishman with fluent Italian. I hadn’t seen the Monsignor in some years but, as is always remarked, it’s the short term memory of the elderly that fails most quickly and we had a good visit mostly on things long since. I knelt for his blessing before leaving, which moved him. Which moved me. To a kiss on chrismed hands, now gnarled.



I read somewhere that John Paul II intends his continued ministry despite the ravages of age and the impositions of illness to be in part a mark of solidarity with the elderly, a sacrament of the inviolable dignity of the human person whatever his condition. May it be seen so. There’s so much talk of the “mercy” of euthanasia, so many the faces of the culture of death. We need to develop the daily habit of resistance to that culture. Human and Christian closeness -- that’s the mark of mercy and the real balm for each of us. A source of immense grace while we live and, in Him, of peace at the last.



Because they're such a daily source of blessing for me, I've fallen already into the habit of posting hymn links on the blog. Here, then, one for my uncle and his priest classmates. O God of loveliness.

An addition to yesterday's post about Touchstone Magazine. I should have noted that the editors also post a kind of blog. Thanks to Russ Reeves for his post last Sunday:



<<<<< Touchstone magazine editors are too classy to call it blogging, but they do "comment on the news and events of the day" in Mere Comments. >>>>>



Russ Reeves is author of an incisive blog with the great name Tolle Blogge.

Talented, perceptive, gracious, kind. And now he's got a blog. Drop by and visit James Cordrey at Threshing Floor. Separating wheat from chaff. The first post heralds good things to come :



<<<<<



Esse Quam Videri ::



starting at the only true beginning: being, rather than seeming or appearing . . . a battle against the deficit of authenticity which runs rampant in my heart, and _ i perceive _ the hearts of others . . . a journey to recover truth, faith, art and beauty . . . to recover heart.

>>>>>

A news report that Martin Sheen has been asked to unveil a statue of Mother Teresa on an island off Croatia. He's very sensible of the honor, apparently. So much about Sheen, despite his talent, is exasperating, but sometimes ........



Well, I'll chalk it up to his credit that he's provided an occasion to post a link to what was said to have been Mother's favorite hymn. And, in this year of her golden jubilee, it's good to remember that it was also sung at the wedding of then Princess Elizabeth.

A group of replies in the June correspondence section of Touchstone Magazine (a publication of the Fellowship of St. James) to the editorial Heretical Bibles in the April issue. One of the letters includes a subscription cancellation from one of the translators of Today's New International Version.



The very fine and learned article by Fr. Paul Mankowski in the October 2001 issue, "Jesus, Son of Humankind?" is not, unfortunately, posted among the archives.

A more melancholy day even than it frequently is, this Memorial Day, but a full-throated rendition of America the Beautiful at the end of Mass reminded me of justifiable pride, too. Or not pride so much as a sense of esprit, of fellowship across two centuries and more with those who've died in defense not only of the American idea, but, living John 15:13, in unhesitating defense of their families, their neighbors, their descendants -- all who had given, and would give, that American idea flesh, working freedom into the very soil, singing it out with every breath. And despite the great sin of slavery, that aching and sometimes still bleeding wound, a promise we make to each other without irony.



Not confusing our categories. Not hoping for a theocratic state. But working out in our civic and political life the implications of our beliefs. In all things remembering Him whose atoning sacrifice broke our shackles and stamped freedom on our very soul.

Trinity Sunday, and so a link to Reginald Heber and John Dykes's great hymn. And then a kind a "non Angli sed angeli" week, when we remember Augustine of Canterbury and the Venerable Bede.



And Memorial Day, to remember those who've preserved our freedom, very far from least our freedom of religion and worship.



So much to be thankful for, whatever the headlines.

It was called "whisper down the lane" when I was a kid. Thanks to Minute Particulars for showing how the "Pope Denounces Starlets Jewelry" story was generated.

The wretched sadness of it all. I wasn't going to comment on the news coming out of Milwaukee about Archbishop Weakland (other members of the virtual parish have posted what needs saying), but I do wonder where the Archbishop's confessor and spiritual advisors were. Why didn't they insist that he resign rather than submit, with the faithful's money, to what looks like extortion. Or was it thought that only a Rembert Weakland could guide the diocese of Milwaukee? Too many people forget Charles de Gaulle's dictum that the cemeteries are full of indispensable men.



Well, reports this morning say that the Holy Father has now accepted the archbishop's resignation. May the faithful in Milwaukee not have to wait long for a true shepherd.

Reverence for our past, including its expression in art, architecture and music, and appreciation of its still-living strength, is a widespread theme in this virtual parish, and very rightly. And right-ordered liturgy can be a path to renewal in other areas, just as orders of religious have always found that a renewed commitment to their founding rule and to the Liturgy of the Hours makes the correction of other faults easier. The stupefaction that we feel when hearing horror stories of the kind that Amy Wellborn collected last week isn't born only or even chiefly of nostalgia (the saccharine and muddled and bathetic have always been with us in some measure), it's from the knowledge that an opportunity for prayer and praise is being, if not profaned, then at least trivialized. Enough of it. Amy's right:



"And I think that's the cri de coeur we're hearing from all over in regard to liturgy: Just pray. Just lead us in prayer. Stop standing in the way of our prayer. Just pray."



It's not only in Catholicism, of course. Dr. James Montgomery Boice, who held the pulpit of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia for more than thirty years, long-time host of radio's Bible Study Hour, appalled at the celebration of self that he saw as a growing problem in the liturgy of many evangelical churches, wrote more than a dozen hymns with Dr. Paul Jones in the last two years of his life. They're gathered into a collection called Hymns For A Modern Reformation and, while his theology isn't entirely mine, there is no doubt that they are expressing and teaching a theology, worshipping and praising God.



Open Rev. George Rutler's Brightest and Best and you get a sense of the depth of meaning in the hymns that are, to our loss, no longer a part of the church's worship. Or read the moving stories that lie behind the composition of some widely-known hymns . The stories themselves are sermons.



We aren't content with the watered milk that is too frequently our portion because there isn't nourishment in it, or sustenance.

The feast of Saint Rita, a good day to begin the venture and her shrine in my home city of Philadelphia a worthy first link.



I wanted, though, the first words posted here to be the motto of John Henry Newman, the words and the man both inspirations to me through many years. And through these two great souls we're connected to their patrons: John the Baptist, Augustine, Nicholas of Tolentino, Philip Neri.



How comfortable is the doctrine of the Communion of Saints and how good it is to remember the great cloud of witnesses that surrounds us.

Cor ad cor loquitur.