Election day in Honduras

Today general elections are being held in Honduras, representing the triumph of constitutional law and democracy over the ambitions of tyrants, and the pressure from international organizations which have long abandoned democratic principles. This included the US for most of the crisis in Honduras, but enough truth has filtered through that the US has agreed to recognize the outcome of elections. Were it not for American expats writting from Honduras, we would be completely in the dark as to what has really been happening there. The article that follows is an example of the abdication of truth by many US news outlets; and this has been the rule, the notable exception has been the column of Mary O'Grady in the Wall Street Journal, and scattered newspapers.

From La Gringa's Blogicito, this election eve analysis of news in the US:

Where does the news come from?

Reader Roy, who I believe is from Venezuela, left this very interesting comment documenting media manipulation and the 'Chávez Media Machine'. It is a perfect example of how you need to you know who wrote your news and where it came from.

Comment from Roy:

Here is another example of media manipulation...

From Yahoo: "CDA to U.S. Policymakers: Don't Ratify Honduras Elections as 'Free and Fair'"

You can find it in this link (currently second from the top) on the Yahoo News search for "Elections Honduras":

Yahoo news search

This article is not "news" in the sense that it is reporting what is happening or has happened in Honduras. What it is reporting is an OPINION issued by an organization called the Center for Democracy in the Americas (CDA). Yahoo got this piece from PR Newswire. If you go to this organization's website at

PR Newswire

You will see that their business is not reporting news, but in collecting "news" from other organizations and selling the "feed" to other media sources. Following is a quote from their web page: "Leverage our experienced, Washington, D.C.-based Public Interest editorial team that specializes in handling news copy from nonprofit, government, association, advocacy and other Public Interest newsmakers worldwide."

Now, let us look at the original source of the article from the CDA. Go to:

Democracy in Americas

When you look at and read their website, it is an extremely biased mouthpiece for ALBA, Chavez, and his regional political agenda. Note the following quote: "The Center for Democracy in the Americas has country programs for Cuba, Venezuela, and Chile. But its work embraces issues facing U.S. policy toward the region more broadly.

THIS is the original source of what appears to be a legitimate news article published by Yahoo. This is the power of the Chavez Media Machine. It can utilize the mechanisms of the media business to create such an avalanche of "news" and opinion favorable to his agenda that people read it and simply assume that since "everyone" thinks that way, they should as well. This is a highly advanced version of Goebbels "Big Lie" propaganda tool.

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I know that some may think that we are conspiracy theorists and that the news that they read is 'pure' and that CNN is (as they tell us) the most unbiased place to get your news. I think that most who have been in Honduras or have contacts here on the ground have had their beliefs about the media rocked to core. We've not only seen the bias or spin in major media sources but we've seen outright false information reported as fact.

Part of the misinformation may be laziness and the fact that initially and through much of the past 5 months, most news sources did not have anyone on the ground here in Honduras. CNN (Español) cannot claim that excuse as they did have someone on the ground − interestingly a reporter with Sandista and Daniel Ortega ties. Most of the other Honduran coverage came from Telesur, a Venezuelan television station completely controlled by Hugo Chávez. Telesur was caught staging a video of "military repression". CNN did their share of staging and misrepresenting protests, including not covering the much larger pro-government protests.

People need to know where their news is coming from to understand what is going on. I've looked up some of the AP and Reuters "journalists" and in some cases found that they have written other strongly pro-Chavez articles. I've written articles dissecting Ginger Thompson's NY Times articles and the some of the information that she has written was just false, even if you disregard her personal spin. Let me add that I had nothing against the author or the NY Times. It is just one example of many. It is scary and those who believe that we are conspiracy theorists are naive.

ClimateGate

I seem to have missed this recent event exposing the fraud associated with global warming, but where's the surprise; either in the contents of the lack of reporting? Here's a couple interesting articles to wet your whistle:

ClimateGate - Climate center's server hacked revealing documents and emails
Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of 'Anthropogenic Global Warming'?
The warmist conspiracy: the emails that most damn Jones
EDITORIAL: Hiding evidence of global cooling
Junk science exposed among climate-change believers

This is priceless, though:
Climategate Implosion is Bush’s Fault

thanks to Fr. Phillip Neri Powell who is paying more attention than I am.




Here's a summary of the death-blow to the so-called science of "global warming"
I'm particularly taken with the "physics" of why a greenhouse works, and why atmospheric CO2 won't kill us, (although our government just may, ostensibly to save us from ourselves).

Politics and Greenhouse GasesBy John McLaughlin

A couple more interesting items, one from New Zealand and one from "The American Thinker" (referred to as The American Stinker in the released CRU "Climategate" content)

Uh, oh – raw data in New Zealand tells a different story than the “official” one.

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Evidently, the atmospheric greenhouse problem is not a fundamental problem of the philosophy of science, which is best described by the Munchhausen trilemma, stating that one is left with the ternary alternative

infinite regression - dogma - circular reasoning

Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics

Render to Caesar what is Caesar's, but not what is God's

The following declaration is a worthy read:

Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience


read the declaration to understand why it concludes thusly:

Because we honor justice and the common good, we will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family. We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar's. But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God's.



thanks to Roger Nuenschwander who sent the link.

Rose Hawthorne and a More Humane Vision of Health Care

This article appeared at insidecatholic.com and is well worth a read.

Rose Hawthorne and a More Humane Vision of Health Care
by Edward Short

In his address to Congress on September 9, President Barack Obama recommended his proposed healthcare reform by citing a letter he had received from the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, in which the senator wrote, "What we face is above all a moral issue; at stake are not just the details of policy, but fundamental principles of social justice and the character of our country." Citing Senator Kennedy as an authority on social justice and the nation's character may not have been a winning gambit for all of the president's audience, but he was right to acknowledge that the health-care debate does entail important moral issues.

If reforming health care along the lines proposed by many Democrats results in the rationing and indeed degradation of care, is there any moral justification for such reform? As the Catholic Medical Association (CMA) recently warned, "Giving the federal government the power, and primary responsibility, to contain medical expenditures could threaten the provision of medical care to the most vulnerable, the elderly and the chronically ill." "Misguided legislation," the CMA argued, could only worsen health care.

One New Englander who would have appreciated this was Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose writings are full of cautionary tales about well-meaning reformers. "The Birth-Mark" is perhaps the most brilliant. The tale's visionary hero, intolerant of human imperfection, resolves to remove a birthmark from his wife's face and, in the process, kills her.

For Henry James, Hawthorne "combined . . . the spontaneity of imagination with a haunting care for moral problems. Man's conscience was his theme . . . ." Hawthorne's works corroborate James's point: The Blithedale Romance pokes witty fun at the Transcendentalist conscience that founded the utopian Brook Farm community; The Scarlet Letter anatomizes the obsessive Puritan conscience; The House of the Seven Gables looks at how conscience often operates in families, grappling with the ghosts of ancestral guilt.

But it was in Hawthorne's own family that his moral preoccupations found their full flowering, especially in the life of his daughter Rose, the legacy of whose work exposes grave flaws in the president's proposed overhaul of health care.

Rose Hawthorne (1851-1926) was born in Lennox, Massachusetts, the third and youngest daughter of Hawthorne and his discriminating wife, Sophia Peabody, who once exclaimed: "I hate transcendentalism, because it is full of immoderate dicta which would disorganize society" -- not a sentiment that would endear her to the immoderate social engineers surrounding our current president.

The love that Rose received from her parents helped sustain her throughout her difficult adulthood. Shortly before her marriage collapsed (her husband was an incorrigible alcoholic), she astounded her mostly Unitarian friends and relations by converting to Roman Catholicism. Once embarked on her new life, she dedicated herself to providing care to the cancerous poor, who, at the time, were barred from the city's hospitals and left to rot on Blackwell's Island. After the death of her husband, she founded the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne to advance her sacramental work.

Rose's friend Emma Lazarus, whose lines adorn the Statue of Liberty -- "Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free . . ." -- and who died herself of cancer at the age of 38, introduced her to the needs of the poor by sharing with her the work she was doing on behalf of indigent Jews in New York. After reading a news story about pogroms in Russia, Lazarus told Rose: "I forgot Emerson. I forgot everything except that my people were in need of help." Here was a woman after Rose's own heart.

To fund the homes she set up for her patients on the Lower East Side and, later, in Hawthorne, New York, Rose published appeals in the New York Times, one of which ran: "Let the poor, the patient, the destitute and the hopeless receive from our compassion what we would give to our own families, if we were really generous to them."

Of all the many responses she received, one stood out:

If there is an unassailably good cause in the world, it is this one undertaken by the Dominican Sisters, of housing, nourishing and nursing the most pathetically unfortunate of all the afflicted among us -- men and women sentenced to a painful and lingering death by incurable disease . . . . I am glad in the prosperous issue of your work, and glad to know that this prosperity will continue, and be permanent -- a thing which I do know, for that endowment is banked where it cannot fail until pity fails in the hearts of men, and that will never be.

Throughout his life, Mark Twain was one of Rose's staunchest supporters.

The loving care that the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne continue to extend to their patients could not be in starker contrast to the sort of cheese-paring bureaucratic care that the president and his allies recommend in their proposals. For example, the Congressional Budget Office recently informed Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus that his plan to cut $123 billion from Medicare Advantage -- the program that provides one-fourth of seniors their private health insurance -- would cause some 2.7 million seniors to lose their coverage altogether.

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the president's health czar, looks askance at the very notion of extending end-of-life care. "Covering services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens . . . should not be guaranteed," Dr. Emanuel wrote in a Hastings Center Report. "An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia."

In sentiments such as these, Rose Hawthorne would have seen a return to the mentality that set up the death warrens of Blackwell's Island. It was to reform that mentality that she established her own homes, which are still going strong today throughout the United States and (President Obama, take note) Kenya. One reason for their continued success is the munificence of donors like Twain; but another and perhaps even greater reason is their inherent goodness, for, to quote Pope John Paul II, they are "not merely institutions where care is provided for the sick or the dying," but "places where suffering, pain and death are acknowledged and understood in their human and specifically Christian meaning."

For their compassionate vision of health care, the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne can cite the authority of Pope Benedict XVI, who wrote in his first encyclical:

Love -- caritas -- will always prove necessary, even in the most just society. There is no ordering of the State so just that it can eliminate the need for a service of love. Whoever wants to eliminate love is preparing to eliminate man as such. There will always be suffering which cries out for consolation and help. There will always be loneliness. There will always be situations of material need where help in the form of concrete love of neighbour is indispensable. The State which would provide everything, absorbing everything into itself, would ultimately become a mere bureaucracy incapable of guaranteeing the very thing which the suffering person -- every person -- needs: namely, loving personal concern.

These insights, which describe so accurately the "service of love" for which the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne were founded, should also guide those who wish to bring about truly humane health-care reform.

Edward Short is finishing a book on Cardinal Newman and his contemporaries, which will be published by Continuum.

Polish Friar remembered

A Veteran’s Story

A Polish Friar Remembered
Posted by Fr. Matthew Rzeczkowski, O.P. on November 12, 2009


Fr. Adam Studziński, O.P. at Monte Cassino (Italy), May 11, 2007

This past Veterans' Day, which is Independence Day in Poland, the square in front of St. Giles Church in Krakow was dedicated in honor of Fr. Adam Studzinski, O.P., a late Friar of the Polish Province. Fr. Adam was ordained in 1937. Two years later, at the outbreak of the Second World War, he made his way to Palestine and joined the Polish Army there. He served as chaplain to the troops at the Battle of Monte Cassino and throughout the whole of their Italian campaign. Into his later years Fr. Adam remained active in veterans' organizations and in Polish scouting. In 2006, he was promoted to the rank of general in the Polish Army. Fr. Adam died in 2008 at the age of 97. For further details of Fr. Adam's exemplary life, see his entry on Wikipedia. St. Giles is a small baroque church in the shadow of Wawel Castle. Each Sunday the Dominicans say one Mass there in English and one in Polish.

From the Dominican Friars' Blog, Province of St. Joseph

Going 'round the Bend

I spent a few relaxing days at the family house in Bend Oregon. Here's the view of the back of the place from across the pond at Drake Park:



Here's where I sat and read and enjoyed the ducks, geese, and occasional snow flurries:



It was beautiful and sunny on Saturday; Mt Bachelor came out of the clouds and is a nice view from the backyard:



The jewel though, was to get to hear a sung mass at the new St. Francis of Assizi Church in Bend!

Anglican Overture

The following essay is from the Dominican Friars of the Eastern Province.

“De Lisle’s Dream Come True”
An Article By the Very Rev. Leon Pereira, O.P.
Posted by Fr. Brian Mulcahy, O.P. on November 11, 2009

On October 20, 2009, the day on which simultaneous news conferences were held in the Vatican and London, at which the promulgation of a new Apostolic Constitution, Anglicanorum coetibus, was announced, that provides for the reception of members of the Anglican Communion into Full Communion with the Catholic Church in their own "Ordinariates," Archbishop Augustine DiNoia, O.P., the Secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, asked us to convey to his Dominican brothers and sisters that this was the intention for which he had asked them to pray the "Litany of Dominican Saints" back in February 2009. Archbishop DiNoia has now asked that a remarkable article, written by one of our Dominican confreres in England, the Very Rev. Leon K. Pereira, O.P., the Prior and Pastor at the Priory of the Holy Cross in Leicester, England, be shared with our readers. In this article, it is made clear that the Ven. John Henry Cardinal Newman (to be beatified in 2010) had prayed for such a provision that might allow a greater number of his fellow countrymen to find their way back into Communion with the Holy See. His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI, a student and devotee of the thought and writings of Cardinal Newman, has been made aware of this article. With the permission of Fr. Pereira, his article follows below.



Two hundred years ago an extraordinary man was born in Leicestershire, Ambrose Philips de Lisle. He was a scion of the ancient De Lisle family, and the founder of Mount St. Bernard's Abbey. His descendants still come to Mass at Holy Cross. Ambrose de Lisle was a visionary ahead of his time. A convert to the Catholic faith, he dreamed of Christian unity. He wrote a pamphlet in 1876, voicing the idea of a corporate re-union of the Anglican Communion with the Catholic Church, whilst retaining Anglican juridical structures, liturgy and spirituality. When his friend Cardinal John Henry Newman read it, he wrote to him,

"Nothing will rejoice me more than to find that the Holy See considers it safe and promising to sanction some such plan as the Pamphlet suggests. I give my best prayers, such as they are, that some means of drawing to us so many good people, who are now shivering at our gates, may be discovered."

The plan was doomed to be thwarted in De Lisle's lifetime. To console him, Newman said:

"It seems to me there must be some divine purpose in it. It often has happened in sacred and in ecclesiastical history, that a thing is in itself good, but the time has not come for it ... And thus I reconcile myself to many, many things, and put them into God's hands. I can quite believe that the conversion of Anglicans may be more thorough and more extended, if it is delayed - and our Lord knows more than we do."

In our own time, Pope Benedict XVI has rightly been called the 'Pope of Christian Unity'. Two years ago, the Pope said that in the critical moments of the Church's history, when divisions arose, the failure to act on the part of Church leaders has helped to allow divisions to form and harden. He observed, 'This glance at the past imposes an obligation on us today: to make every effort to enable for all those who truly desire unity to remain in that unity or to attain it anew.'

It is with this in mind, no doubt, that Pope Benedict has made this unprecedented and overwhelmingly generous response (N.B. the Pope is responding to a request, not enacting his own initiative) to the many requests submitted to him by Anglicans left in dismay within their own Communion. Already such Anglicans are being castigated as misogynist homophobes - an uncharitable, prejudiced aspersion. Some Anglicans see them as traitors; some Catholics see them as less-than-desirable for our Church.

The real issue is one of unity, genuine unity: that those who seek communion with the Barque of Peter should not be left to founder amidst the waves, but be brought safely aboard where Christ is not asleep, but Master of wind and waves, standing on Peter's deck. The Pope has shown that real ecumenism is not about courteous disagreement trying to increase each other's insipidity until one church cannot be distinguished from another in a cosmic-beige mélange. No, the call of the Gospel still holds: one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism. These are our brothers and sisters, shivering at our gates, to be received as brothers and sisters, and not as traitors or second-class Catholics.

The Dominican Order has a small role in all this. On 21 February this year, our brother Fr. Augustine DiNoia, O.P., then Under-secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, asked all Dominicans to pray the Litany of Dominican Saints from February 22 (the Feast of the Chair of St Peter) till March 25 (the Solemnity of the Annunciation) for an at-the-time undisclosed intention - it was for this intention. It is no wonder that in our history people have remarked, 'Beware the Litanies of the Dominicans!'

Fr. Leon Pereira, O.P.

Truth Be Told issue #7 - Newsletter of the Laity of the Province of the Most Holy Name of Jesus

The seventh issue of "Truth Be Told," the newsletter of the Laity of the Province of the Holy Name of Jesus has been posted to the web.

The newsletter is available for download at the provincial web page here:
http://laydominicanswest.org/newsletter/

Anglican overture published by Vatican

Here it is!
Anglicanorum Coetibus


From Robert Moynihan's The Moynihan Report:

first, a letter from Andrew Rabel, a Roman Catholic Australian journalist, and friend of Archbishop John Hepworth, head of the 400,000 member Traditional Anglican Communion:

"This day comes after 400 years of many unsuccessful efforts, to bring about a reconciliation with the Anglican Communion, and the Roman Church.
"Now the Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI has taken the lead with this Apostolic Constitution, Anglicanorum Coetibus (the words are the first words of the Latin text and mean "Groups of Anglicans"), the first Apostolic Constitution in 13 years, since John Paul II's Univerisi Domenici Gregis in 1996 (regarding the updating of conclave procedures in the election of a Pope).
"[Other Apostolic Consitutions in recent decades made Opus Dei a personal prelature (Ut sit, November 28, 1982), revised the Church's 1917 Code of Canon Law (Sacrae Disciplinae Leges, January 25, 1983), established military ordinariates (Spirituali militum cura, April 21, 1986), reformed the Roman Curia (Pastor Bonus, June 28, 1988), insisted on orthodoxy at Catholic universities (Ex Corde Ecclesiae, August, 15, 1990), provided a distinct canon law for Eastern Catholic Churches (Sacri Canones, October 18, 1990), and promulgated a new Universal Catechism (Depositum fidei, October 11, 1992). All these Constitutions regulated Church life, but never dealt with an ecclesial body not in communion with the Church of Rome.]
"Now the Pope has invited members of the Anglican Communion to come back to Rome, and be united but not absorbed, by giving them their own structures.
"Today we are seeing a fulfilment of the words Christ uttered at the Last Supper when He prayed, 'That they may be one as you, Father in me, and I in you; that the world may believe that You have sent me.' (John 17:21)
"England has long been called Mary's Dowry. But a secularized nation and church have caused this gift to be taken from her. She wants it back, and this is the start. Please give a lot of attention to Anglicanorum Coetibus. God bless,
Andrew"

The documents and other information is here

It is clear that the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus provides norms which establish the nature and, in general, regulate the life of Personal Ordinariates erected specifically for Anglicans who wish to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church.In this way a flexible canonical structure has been instituted. Moreover, it is foreseeable that what is contained in the present Apostolic Constitution and Complementary Norms may be adapted in the Decrees of Erection of each individual Ordinariate in the light of particular local situations. As the Holy Spirit has guided the preparation of this Apostolic Constitution, so may he also assist in its application.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE APOSTOLIC CONSTITUTION ANGLICANORUM COETIBUS
BY FR. GIANFRANCO GHIRLANDA, S.J., RECTOR OF THE PONTIFICAL GREGORIAN UNIVERSITY

USCCB calls on you to act!

Legislation

***ATTENTION***

Bishops Call for Unprecedented, Massive Catholic Opposition to Abortion in Health Care Reform
The USCCB is calling for diocesan and parish based activation on health care reform.
Use the following documents:

Health Care Cover Note to Leaders - pdf

Health Care Bulletin Insert (the one-stop nationwide parish bulletin insert) - pdf

Health Care Pulpit Announcement & Prayer (a how-to for distributing the materials) - pdf

Health Care Ad Saving Lives Flyer (a flyer to be placed on bulletin boards, etc.) - pdf

Action items: * Please ask your pastor if he intends to use these materials. If he is not aware of them - forward them to him. Or, print them out and bring them to him personally. *Perform the action items described in the materials provided in this USCCB bulletin insert. *Pray that health care reform not be passed unless it is truly universal and pro-life. Health care reform could be voted on as early as next week. These materials need to be in the hands of Catholics starting this weekend.

Thank you for your efforts in serving our bishops and getting the word out.

Note especially this Suggested Prayer of the Faithful: "That Congress will act to ensure that needed health care reform will truly protect the life, dignity and health care of all and that we will raise our voices to protect the unborn and the most vulnerable and to preserve our freedom of conscience. We pray to the Lord."

Health care bills with "greatest expansion of abortion since Roe v. Wade" to be on Senate and House floors!

Click here to take action now!
Click here to learn more about this critical issue from the National Right to Life Committee.
Click here for talking points, a prayer and more information and resources from Priests for Life!

The above from Priests for Life: http://www.priestsforlife.org/legislation/index.htm

Bishop Vasa on liturgical changes (part 2)

Liturgical language meant to reflect moment set apart
By Bishop Robert Vasa



BEND — It is my intention to make use, during the course of 2010, of the weekly bulletin notices from my office as a vehicle for instruction related to the upcoming liturgical enrichments. While it is not yet known when the final approved version will be announced nor when it will be published in usable books nor how soon, after publication, it will become the new Official Roman Missal but we can say with certainty that the work is drawing nearer to completion. I think it is fairly safe to say at this point that the end of the process is in view and that, barring major unforeseen difficulties, most of us will live to see the finished product. If I were to put on my prognosticator hat I would guess that a year from now we will have received definitive word about both the dates of publication and implementation. Since I believe this to be true I do want to begin some remote preparation and catechesis regarding this latest liturgical work.

I suspect that the parochial catechesis which I hope to prepare will begin with the same kind of catechetical citations regarding the Sacred Liturgy which I have cited here on other occasions. Since the last time I talked about the Sacred Liturgy I have had the opportunity to review a few more passages which speak very directly to the meaning and purpose of the liturgy. The first of these is from paragraph 1091 of the catechism: “In the liturgy the Holy Spirit is teacher of the faith of the People of God and artisan of ‘God’s masterpieces,’ the sacraments of the New Covenant. The desire and work of the Spirit in the heart of the Church is that we may live from the life of the risen Christ. When the Spirit encounters in us the response of faith which he has aroused in us, he brings about genuine cooperation. Through it, the liturgy becomes the common work of the Holy Spirit and the Church.” The Holy Spirit is identified as the teacher and the artisan of the Sacred Liturgy. In the liturgy, he works to draw each of us into the life of Christ, into the Paschal Mystery of Christ and into deeper union with God. The liturgy is God working in the world, making present again the saving words and deeds of Jesus. Our efforts on behalf of appropriate liturgy are to make this reality more accessible but they are not to create a new or different reality. We, therefore, do not create the liturgy, nor do we technically “plan” it for the liturgy has already been created by God and planned by the Church. It is important that we, as servants of and participants in the Sacred Liturgy prepare ourselves for a worthy participation, a full, active and conscious participation, so that we might derive the fullest possible benefit from that which the Holy Spirit is doing in our midst.

The catechism continues in 1092: “In this sacramental dispensation of Christ’s mystery the Holy Spirit acts in the same way as at other times in the economy of salvation: he prepares the Church to encounter her Lord; he recalls and makes Christ manifest to the faith of the assembly. By his transforming power, he makes the mystery of Christ present here and now. Finally the Spirit of communion unites the Church to the life and mission of Christ.” If one were to ask at this point, “Whose work is being accomplished in the Sacred Liturgy?” it would be necessary to answer, “The Holy Spirit’s.” The language we use in these sacred events needs to be a language that is understandable but it also needs to be a language suitable for the occasion. The language we have used and are using is perfectly understandable but it does lack a certain element of dignity and it lacks, in some instances seriously lacks, an appropriate similarity to the original and official Latin texts. The Spanish translation I have occasion to use makes this difference entirely clear. There is an extended use of adjectives in the Latin and in Spanish which has been largely suppressed in the present English translation. For some this inclusion of additional adjectives in the latest translation may seem like the gratuitous addition of extra descriptive words and yet it is much more than that. First, it is a more determined attempt to be faithful to the original which is a good thing. Next, it is a concerted effort to elevate the language from that which is very common to something that is a bit more uncommon.

This communicates in a very subtle way that the liturgical action to which we are invited is not common at all but rather something unique and wonderful and set apart. I also believe that the use of uncommon language stretches us in ways in which we need to be stretched. Now I need to be clear, we are not talking here of Olde English like that which we might have encountered in some reading of Shakespeare which can often reach the point of unintelligibility.

The enhanced and more accurate translation uses perfectly ordinary and understandable English but it does not shy away from the more colorful and descriptive. Hopefully, this positively draws us to listen more attentively to the words and their meaning, to enter more efficaciously into the sacred action and to participate in it more fruitfully. For instance, and this is purely of my own creation, there is a difference between saying , “Lord, hear me,” and saying, “Most, gracious, merciful, loving Lord, I, your poor servant, beg you, hear me.” Admittedly, they both say nearly the same thing. They do, however, say it quite differently. It seems to me that the second is richer, more descriptive, more cognizant of the lordship of Jesus and the neediness which we experience. It communicates the same basic message but it also communicates so much more. It is my founded hope that this is what the effort on behalf of the new translation will accomplish.

Since, “In the liturgy of the Church, it is principally his own Paschal mystery that Christ signifies and makes present” (CCC, 1085), I do think it is right and just that we seek to give him thanks and praise in the most proper and dignified fashion possible and how we use language and its concordance with the original is tremendously important. I trust we will all be enriched by the enrichment of liturgical language.

Lets not forget; special Indulgences available now

The indulgences available right now!

All Souls Regulations

An indulgence, applicable only to the Souls in Purgatory, is granted to the faithful, who devoutly visit a cemetery and pray, even if only mentally, for the departed. The indulgence is plenary each day from the first to the eighth of November; on other days of the year it is partial.

A plenary indulgence, applicable only to the Souls in Purgatory, is granted to the faithful, who on the day dedicated to the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed [November 2 {as well as on the Sunday preceding or following, and on All Saints' Day}] piously visit a church. In visiting the church it is required that one Our Father and the Creed be recited.

To acquire a plenary indulgence it is necessary also to fulfill the following three conditions: sacramental Confession, Eucharistic communion, and prayer for the intention of the Holy Father. The three conditions may be fulfilled several days before or after the performance of the visit; it is, however, fitting that communion be received and the prayer for the intention of the Holy Father be said on the same day as the visit.

The condition of praying for the intention of the Holy Father is fully satisfied by reciting one Our Father and one Hail Mary. A plenary indulgence can be acquired only once in the course of the day.

the above lifted from http://frpat.com/allsouls.htm