Tuesday, May 14

A couple more:

From Hernan in Argentina:

..yes, I live in Argentina ...yes, we're "craddle catholics" (well..)...yes, we speak spanish...and...

a few months ago, I endured (at mass) the Our Father sung along the music of "The Sounds of Silence" (Simon & Garfunkel) with guitars, of course.



agghhh

Mary Jane of a wonderful site dedicated to a cappella sacred music writes:

Your husband is right - how could I have forgotten "Turn, Turn, Turn" and "Blowin' in the Wind"? Even worse, I now remember Marianne Faithful's "As Tears Go By" as a Communion hymn. I also remember this is the reason I stayed away from the Catholic Church for 20 years, taking refuge with the Orthodox and their immutable liturgy until the
Petrine claims just got the best of me.

And then there's the winner of Best E-Mail Title:

And the Lame Shall Be Sung First (but not exclusively)

My husband enjoyed our list of Lame Songs, but he also felt a certain emptiness inside. Where, he wondered, was Blowin' in the Wind? Turn, Turn, Turn? Surely some of you have experienced those at the Lord's Supper, no?
Gerald Serafin has a comprehensive list of Catholic blogs. At least for today.
Hey! Has anyone else noticed how nicely St. Blog's Parish is shaping up?

Think about it.

We have two priests now. We have a Director of Religious Education. We have music ministers. We have a Spiritual Director. We have a PR coordinator. We have a guy to work on the computers. Always handy. We have at least two guys to teach high school religious ed - always very tough to find. We have someone to help us design the church building who's not totally whacked!

We have someone to lead Scripture Study and someone else to guide us through papal documents. We have Two editors for the parish newspaper and of course, we'll have the most phat parish bulletin in the diocese. We have a good soul to work in prison ministry! We have a fundraiser, believe it or not. Heck, we've got a couple of lawyers not that we'll need them. And a a canon lawyer, too! We even have a parish philosopher to defend us from the Randians when they come a-callin'

And, of course, we have the snarky broad in the back pew telling everyone else what they're doing wrong.

Did I leave you out? That's because I'm not sure what you do in real life. Let me know and I'll add you to the directory.

MAKE IT STOP!

Another new Catholic blog, this time from Tim "I don't need no stinkin' publisher" Drake. Go here to find it. Seriously - Tim's a prolific writer for the National Catholic Register and other places and has written a very successful book on Lutheran converts to Catholicism that he's published and marketed on his own. Check it out.

I received a rather shocking email from a priest the other day: He said he'd given 70 copies of Prove It: Church to young people in his parish. I'm grateful and honored that he thought so highly of the book. That's the kind of motivation a writer needs!
Changed my mind. I'm all for cloning now.

Specifically, I want to clone the Flying Schultz brothers and let them be in charge of the music in every Catholic church in the land.

Read the most recent posts at that Catholic Choir Blog Thing and be grateful that somewhere there's good music happening at a Catholic Church.

Two very funny posts over at Catholic Light on How Not to Begin Mass and Marriage Prep: The Real Story.
Priest shot by alleged vicitm in Baltimore.

By the way, has anyone heard what happened to the man who murdered a priest and a parishioner during Mass a few months back?

Finally updated the Catholic Blog links over there - I'm sure its not complete yet, so feel free to email me with your complaints. Everyone else does. Sigh.

In particular, I hope you'll visit Disputations which just got born yesterday. Tom, the blog's papa, has contributed several witty posts to this page.

A NY Times article about the Chicago Archdiocesan board that investigates sexual abuse charges. There seem to be a few problems, and perhaps the system, which is better than nothing, would work better if the board were truly independent, as Archbishop Flynn of St. Paul-Minneapolis suggets:

Archbishop Harry J. Flynn of the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis, the new chairman of the committee on sexual misconduct established by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, told reporters last month he believed that outside consultants, not church-run boards, should review the conduct of priests.


"We have audits for finances, and they are outside consultants," Archbishop Flynn said. "They come in and look at your books. If we do that for finances, it seems we should do that for people."

Here's an old column in which I set out my general sense of what's wrong with contemporary liturgy and how to fix it. IMHO.
From a reader, more on "chat rooms."



We, also, have avoided the cry room in our church at all costs ever since the Sunday we sat there with our now-11-year-old who was about 2 at the time and very fussy that Sunday. I have no idea what happened during Mass because a parish council member sat in the back of the area with her daughter, who was about 11 or 12 at the time. The two of them talked and laughed loudly throughout Mass. "Angry" comes close to describing my emotions at the time. We kept asking ourselves afterwards "how are we supposed to teach the boy how to behave in Mass when the grownups won't?"



So our strategy changed. We began sitting as close to the front as we could, and walking with the baby/toddler to the back of the church if we had to b/c of fussiness. We only leave the church for the narthex in extreme cases, and that's only happened a couple times. While we were up front with our son (and later his younger brother, and now his one-year-old sister) we would point out from time to time in a whisper in the child's ear the interesting things going on. Current examples: the processional, the bells, her brother the altar server (although this can backfire when she squeals for him to look at her), Jesus on the Cross in the front of the church, Mary to the side of where we sit, singing the various songs.


I recently found a booklet called "Catholic Etiquette for Children at Mass" by Kay Lynn Isca (OurSundayVisitor 2001, 30 pages). You may have mentioned it on your blog before, but I didn't see it. This is a pretty helpful guide to kids at Mass, divided into sections with age-appropriate advice. Among other things, she encourages parents to leave the Cheerios at home and discusses rewards for good behavior.

I'd also recommend Guiding Your Catholic Preschooler by Kathy Pierce and Lori Rowland.