Discussion on Liturgical music used during the papal visit

http://insidecatholic.com/Joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3509&Itemid=48

Few thoughts. 1. The prevalence of a lot of bad music in liturgy in the US is definitely indicative of bad music education in the US. If people never hear music that transcends, then how can they want it? Certainly this goes both ways - the church needs to lead in presenting the world with good music. In my town, there are churches that perform a Bach Cantata or hosts an organ recital every single Sunday. It is wonderful, but I am told that no one attends these events. What can we do? It may be a catch-22, but music ministers work with very limited resources in many parishes, including people who are willing to volunteer in making liturgical music.

2. Personally, I am not too keen on the 18-19th century 16-bar hymns that come initially from the Protestant tradition, that we consider "traditional Catholic hymns." We don't have a good excuse not to adopt "Shout to the Lord" and the like based on that argument. Many folksongs have become hymn tunes (Kingsford, O Waly Waly for instance) people now consider "traditional," but I imagine they were people objecting to their use back then. There are good music from other periods, both before, and those from this decade that are equally worthy of liturgical use (Pinkham, P, Bainton). Also, if we should only use music "tried and true" how could we have picked up the 4-part hymn tunes in that last few centuries for liturgical use, which we now consider "traditional"?

3. I am curious as to why people object to the use of a pianoforte during liturgy. Good piano-playing can be just a beautiful as a good organ-playing.

4. Mr. Reilly mentions the liturgy in London. They have a big "advantage" over American Catholics, in that the Anglican musical tradition has kept up some of our solemn liturgical traditions much better than we.

5. There should be more effort made to beautify (or "juice-up"?) novus ordo liturgy - why do not enough of us ever celebrate novus ordo liturgy in Latin, with Latin hymns and all, after all, that sounds like the orginal intent. The celebration of the extraordinary form ("Tridentine") is beautiful, but for many of us who never grew up with it, it feels as foreign as attending Byzantine liturgy (although it is much easier for a newcomer to follow Byzantine or Maronite liturgy than the old Latin rite from my experience). The celebration of Novus ordo in Latin that incorporates all the beauty of old Latin rite may be much more accessible to us young'ens.

Meditation on the 10th Station of the Cross

After reading Clarence Enzler's meditations:

"Jesus is stripped of his clothes."

I need to ask for help in being detached from desires of power, prestige and wealth. I ask myself "but why not?" These are not bad things, but they cannot be ends in themselves. Yet I find myself drawn to these things, even though such desires only cause strife. "I am working way too hard for this little post-doc salary!" "I want to be department chair!" These thoughts definitely don't help, yet i have hard time letting go of them - am I trying to look at my mentor as what I want to be? Rather than as a result of God leading the way? as an end to itself?

Oy.

Communion and Liberation Group

I attended a C.L. meeting to check out the group:

About 13 of us were there. we read a passage from Luigi Guissani's book "How can we live this way?" and discussed it. The meeting was ~1 hr long. The discussion was pretty good. The C.L. movement was started in Italy, so many of the people there were from Italy. Many do medical research, interestingly enough.

Giancarlo Cessani, prof of public health, is giving a talk on the book next Saturday, but I will be in DC.

Would I go back? Sure why not?
Except I feel like I am joining way too many groups without being centered anywhere. I was just asked to be a liturgy person for the Lay Dominican pro-chapter of Greater Boston.

www.stdominics.opne.org

While I am very much led by Dominican way of thought, the CL group seems to fit me better at the moment.

Byzantine Liturgy and leavened bread - valid matter?

I made myself go over to the Melkite Catholic church across the street from work for Thursday noon mass. Other than the priests and the deacons, there were three of us attending. Now, how often do you see key signatures of 2 sharps and 1 flat at the same time? These are "major" keys with flat 6th - giving it very Arabic sound. most music ends on the 2nd note of the scale, adding to that effect.

I was a bit surprised that they used leavened bread for communion, which tasted more like cake.

Upon the checking some web sources, I found:
In the Latin church, one must use unleavened bread. Leavened bread is still valid matter, but not licit. (transubstantiation still occurs, but one is not allowed to use leavened bread). Grape juice, if properly preserved, may be used in extenuating circumstances

Eastern churches have used leavened bread for a while, apparently.

http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=59489
http://www.zenit.org/article-13233?l=english

Now, I have been to celebrations where dinner rolls were used - I left quietly, in protest. Perhaps that was not a correct response on my part? I think I will end up at the same position next year. What to do? I am not sure if going to mass somewhere else is as easy as an option.
Proposed solution 1: buy and bring some unleavened bread.
Proposed solution 2: inform the priest involved
Proposed solution 3: not attend this liturgy
??

Jean CJ d'Elbée "I believe in Love"

At the recommendation of a friend, I started this book on the teachings of St. Thérèse of Lisieux

Some of the things presented at the conference all led to the topic! There was a Catholic bookstore vendor who had this book with them at the conference. I imagine the book will become very popular.

Chapter 1: I am trying to reconcile with the idea that we give all our sins and pains to Jesus, and he gives us his body. It sounds like a bad deal, but then again that reflects God's love. And certainly, it is so easy to abuse our relationship with God! The book is also forcing me to think about St. Thérèse's contribution besides "the little way." I guess I haven't thought about the fiery intimacy with God as being her contribution.

Communion and Liberation

www.clonline.org
www.godspy.com

At the conference, i met two men from C&L. I just heard of this organization through Godspy.com briefly, but they were pretty interesting. I think I may go check out the group. Angelo Matera, the Godspy.com editor-in-chief, is from this group. I can't quite figure out their charism, but if it is reflected in Godspy.com, then it's cool with me!

Boston Catholic Men's Conference

www.catholicboston.com
www. tsaab.com
www.peterkreeft.com

I arrived at Boston College (the venue for the conference) at 7am, and helped collect tickets - I had a fairly boring job, other than the fact you get to see _everyone_ as they come in - sorts of makes me feel like I got to meet everyone!

I didn't get to hear much of Tarek Saab, but did get to hear all of Peter Kreeft. He spoke of things in his book "Ecumenical Jihad" but also that the "culture war" has been on since original sin, and won't end until the end times. He framed it in an interesting way: Culture of life is a culture that allows itself to be detached from this world, and focus on the next. Culture of death is that seeks happiness in this world alone, and want to create a utopia here. Culture of life actually embraces death ("unless a grain of wheat.."), while the culture of death embraces the continuation of this life. It's like a choice for an egg - will you stay in the shell forever, or embrace the death of the shell and hatch! Unfortunately, logic doesn't really work when we are dealing with the culture of death, because the issue is not that those who live in the culture of death don't understand the arguments, but their metaphysics is different. To fight this "dark magic," we need "white magic.", not arguments. That is, prayer and fasting.

The fight for souls occur most prominently in our education system, especially in the humanities, according to Kreeft. I found that statement inspiring, as a prospective professor, and it helps me affirm my call to this line of work. In my line of work, geriatric and aging research, we encounter two factions: "anti-aging, life extension" people, and people who work in hospice and palliative care. The Gerontological Society of America meetings have sessions on how to deal with this "stay in this world" "anti-aging" movements.

Kreeft also calls the modern professorship "the intellectual prostitution." Where we peddle knowledge for money. and Boston College as his "pimp." This was funny, but it points out that people don't learn to think in college - I realized that after 4 years of engineering, I knew nothing about how the world runs or how to write well. After 7 years of graduate school, I hope I know things a bit better.

Anyway, he put this much more eloquently.

Building consensus

So during my recent short-lived confusion between NCRegister and NCReporter, I noticed an Reporter article on "Catholic Kama Sutra" So I tried to enlighten the discussion in light of the Theology of the Body by commenting on the article. In the process, I noticed some really-out-there articles [shudder]. Regardless, do you think this is a good strategy to foster dialogue between the two camps that tends to stay away from each other?

Interlibrary loan fees

www.countway.harvard.edu/ill
So I was requesting some articles through the Countway Library for articles from journals that Harvard doesn't subscribe to. They charge $18 for each article!!! This is crazy! I requested 7 today, which cost $126 !!! Fortunately, I don't have to pay for this out of my own pocket, but poor students do! I miss my school days when lnterlibrary loans were free..

Developing a science career

I had the opportunity to hear Peter Fiske speak today about career management for those of us PhD scientists. The talk was called "Diversify, Innovate, Create: Lab management from an Entrepreneurial Perspective." Peter Fiske has written career guide books for PhDs, both academic and non-academic areas, as well as career development columns for AAAS.

Couple things I learned: I have to take care of my self! noone else will care as much as me!

Some career development resources:
http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/
http://blog.phds.org/

80:10:10 rule:
80% of your work should be doing your best work, etc.
10% should be spent on career development outside of your immediate work area- go to talks, learn new skills,
10% should be spent on promoting yourself and your work, and networking - conferences, etc.

PhD's have many transferrable job skills that we don't think about.

SBIR grants are sometimes much easier to get than regular grants. If you want to start something "commercial," the US government is still the best choice