B-A-A-C-K!

Might post on the vacation some time - some interesting family dynamics! Short of it: Spent the first weekend with my brother, my son, his wife, his son, and my stepmom, nobody got hurt, and we spent an interesting day going through my Dad's and Granddad's mementos. Short of it part 2: Second weekend was supposed to be four days of Kim and me getting off somewhere by ourselves. Due to an ongoing sequence of medical emergencies involving her mom, who lives with us, we scaled back to 2 nights at her mom's (unoccupied) condo instead, and frequent visits to the hospital.

Interesting mass this past weekend - went to Old St. Mary's in Greektown, some serious high churchin' going on. Sang out of Worship III. Beautiful pipe organ, built by my friend Dave Wigton. Saturday mass in Greektown is apparently ALL visitors - people seemed flummoxed by the song selections (melodies included KING'S WESTON and ST COLUMBA, neither of which I've ever used) and mostly unfamiliar acclamations. I fumbled along best I could. Two serious strikes: (1) They kept their altar rail, and use it. Directly against archdiocese directives (which speak against kneeling to receive the eucharist, though maybe forgivable on the weekend St. Paul gave us "...at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow..."), but we were allowed to receive in hand, eucharistic ministers were used, and we were offered the precious blood. In other words, by-the-book Vatican II, except for the rail; (2) we were treated to an organ concert during communion. Partial credit, though, for the hymn of praise immediately following communion. Still puts communion on the wrong foot though. IMO.

Old St. Mary's is a beautiful old church, lots of statuary, stained glass, soaring ceilings. And the organ sounded wonderful! Felt very weird going straight from the mass to the casino, though - so we had a cooling-off time at the New Hellas Cafe first - bread, saganaki, greek salad, THEN went gambling (we cut our losses at $42), then returned to New Hellas for flaming sausage, spinach pie, dessert, and coffee.

Begging your indulgence

On vacation for the next couple of weeks, including travel to Sequim, WA, the most beautiful place on the planet, to help settle Dad's estate. May not be posting much, but I'll be back.

Mean time, attended a beautiful mass at Lapeer, MI's Immaculate Conception parish this weekend. Very good organist, mostly trad song selections, but Schutte's "Here I Am, Lord" was used at communion. They use the old Boston Archdiocese "Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs" - they rebound all their copies a few years ago when they couldn't find anything new they liked, but have since also purchased Gather Comprehensive. Priest's homily was about sin - didn't give us a good tie-in to the readings, though it should have been easy enough. I think he just wanted to talk about sin. So much for "opening up the Gospel".

Quote of the Day:

"Freedom of the press belongs to him who has one!" - Steven Riddle, quoting somebody else, on the ongoing brouhaha over at Mark Shea's. See link below.

Especially those in most need of Thy mercy

Check out Mark Shea's excellent defense of the Holy Father's forgiveness of the perpetrators of the World Trade Center tragedy at Catholic and Loving It. Make sure you catch the rolling discussion in the related comments - 32 posts and growing.

Reader Alison (with one L) calls me to task on my claim below that hunger kills more kids than abortion. At first I thought she might be limiting her scope to the US, where it's certainly NOT true (few hunger deaths here), but when I set forth to gather numbers for her, I quickly found that (a) it's really hard to find world abortion statistics, and (b) the US abortion numbers are FAR higher than I had imagined.

Here's what I've found so far:
World hunger deaths: about 6 million
US abortion deaths: about 1.2 million

Given the prevalence of abortion in other countries, and comparatively small US population (about 4% of the world population), it appears Alison may be on to something.

So, apologies for overstating my case, or for stating it without corroboration. Still looking for a clear picture. And thanks again to Alison.

A September 11th Offering

My friend and colleague, Louis Canter, composed a six-movement Gloria last year. It was still in progress in September. The fourth movement, "We Worship You", came to him shortly after the horrific events of September 11, 2001. In a December concert, Louis described his vision as (paraphrased) "...the victims of the attacks silently joining the ranks of the heavenly choir, just in time to sing this."

Here's what they sang...

When we remember that the Mass is a foretaste of heaven, and that we all aspire to be part of that choir someday, it may have been quite an accurate call on Louis' part. This movement is hauntingly beautiful, and should only take a couple of minutes out of your day. God bless you all.

BTW, the rest of the Gloria, and information about the Lapeer County Concert Choir, which Louis directs, can be found here.

Louis Canter is Director of Music at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Imlay City MI, as well as adjunct professor of music at Madonna University in Livonia MI, music teacher at Capac High School in Capac MI, and a long-time member of the National Association of Pastoral Musicians (NPM). He has also written a full mass, "Mass of the Innocents".

Check out et cetera, Victor Lams' excellent site, for a story about our gal Jennifer turning tail and running when some young female law students asked her to reconcile her Catholicism with her failure to protect the unborn. It's a tough world, this politics - all you wanna do is flap some jacks, press some flesh, and these people are in your face about murder. Maybe OJ can help her cope with the unfairness of it all...

The Stomach Flu Diet Plan

While I would never recommend it to anyone, it's an ill wind that blows no good. Despite some intense misery over the weekend, and some lingering aches now, I have survived. And lost FIFTEEN pounds in TWO days! Ten of those were pounds I had picked up over the past three weeks (went from 246 to 233 back to 243, now down to 228). It'll be interesting to see where this ends - can't eat much of anything today. Dinner with Andy and Sarah tonight should be interesting. They want to go to Chili's. Maybe I can have some Chicken Fingers or something...

Finally!

I'm really part of St. Blog's. Turns out the last time I applied, Ms. Lively checked my site, found no St. Blog's spinner, and cast my application into the fires of Gehenna, where the worm dieth not. Or something like that. I HAD posted several St. Blog links, but not the spinner in its original form. Glad that's settled.

Meantime, if you have a comment and Enetation is down again (I'm detecting a pattern here), just clieck the "send me mail" link. I'd love to hear from my readers. Both of you. Ba-dum-pum.

Thanks to Gordon Zaft for this link. Nice to see Cardinal Maida take this stand against abortion pandering among the clergy.

Tougher question whether it's possible for Jennifer Granholm (Dem candidate for Governor - she beat my man Dave and former governor Jim Blanchard in the primary) to be a faithful RC communicant and be "pro-choice" (it sounds SO innocuous, doesn't it? Shudder...). I'm SURE she's not alone, there in the pews. Only RCIA converts are required to subscribe to "all that the Church teaches" - I was RCIA class of 1995, St. Blase parish, Sterling Heights, MI - so where do we draw the line?

I remember Cdl. Szoka getting all kinds of flak over his attempts to hold Sr. Mary Mansour in line on abortion issues when she was head of Michigan's Department of Social Services in the '80's. Her defense, quite reasonably, was that she was bound to uphold the law. I have heard (but am not sure) that the ensuing flap contributed greatly to his "relocation" to Rome. Rightly or not. But even then, I don't believe he was pushing for excommunication, but some kind of discipline from her order. Anyone who remembers this better than I do, please email me!

Anyhow, JG's one of ours, we need to set her straight, but I don't believe her political views, even on a life-and-death issue such as abortion, warrant excommunication. I also remain concerned that abortion (and school vouchers - puh-leaze!) continue to be our ONLY issues. Hunger kills more innocent babies than abortion, the death penalty is just as callous and irreverent of life. I believe, FIRMLY, that we continually miss the boat by splitting off abortion as its own issue, or as something we must somehow handle first before we can address these other sanctity-of-life issues.

So, in the mean time, I vote for the Boniors on the rare occasion one comes along, I throw money at my church and at Catholic Relief Services, and argue with my pro-abortion relatives a lot. Please note - no Catholics among the "pro-choice" bunch. Former RCs, but all have left. One more thing to pray about.

Hmmm...

This is about it for Enetation. I'm shopping for a new comment server.