Sentire Cum Ecclesia

(Corrected and updated) I’ve just received news that eight priests will be Ordained at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, East Melbourne on Saturday, 8th September 2012 at 10.00 a.m., four for the Archdiocese of Melbourne and four for the Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross.

With Archbishop Denis Hart, The Very Rev Fr Harry Entwistle, +Ordinary, announced today the names of the candidates from the Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross as follows: James Grant, Neil Fryer, Ramsay Williams and Christopher Seton.

The candidates from the Archdiocese of Melbourne are: Andrew McCarter, Benneth Osuagwu, Jerome Santamaria and Kevin Williams.

This is terrific and highly encouraging news. Our prayers are with all the candidates.

I was initially confused by earlier reports, because this ordination will be for more than one jurisdiction. It is an interesting decision to ordain the Anglicans along with this years secular clergy for the Melbourne Archdiocese. I would be interested in your take on this decision.

My family and I (as someone I greatly admire might say) are just coming to the end of watching the opening ceremony for the Olympic Games.

My general feeling was that it was grand entertainment, but nevertheless all over the place. Why on earth did the creators of the opening ceremony chose the industrial revolution and the NHS as causes celebres of English history? And then all that bit with the family and the kids in the house – although I could sort of see an “Englishman’s House is His Castle” theme there…

But the fun was certainly appreciated. I can’t say how delighted I was by the James Bond spoof with Her Majesty – Her REAL Majesty! That was just sooo good.

The “Chariots of Fire” send up with Mr Bean was a good chuckle too.

Lots to like. I know there have been a lot of nay sayers regarding the Games, from Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith of the Catholic Herald to our own Michael Leunig in today’s Age. There is an awful lot of money spent on this, and the “peace and goodwill” theme does sometimes appear to be just a front for big money and power, but hey… There is little in life that is pure unadulterated simplicity and good. The one thing that Games does is bring together people from (almost) every country of the world for a (reasonably) peaceful and friendly event. That has to be a good thing.

I liked the number of hymns that featured in the opening ceremony – Abide with me, Guide me O thou Great Jehovah, even William Blake’s funny song about “those feet in ancient times”. With the Archbishop of Canterbury lined up directly behind the Head of the English Church, it reminds one that Christianity is still deep in the ancient culture of the British. I did wonder if the Tree on the Hill – uprooted by the industrial revolution – was not meant to be the ancient tree of Glastonbury, which would add even a little more to this aspect of the ceremony.

I hope the games in London turn out to be a benefit to the British nation, despite all the negativity. We in Australia know that big events can be big morale boosters – we’ve had our Olympics and our World Youth Day after all. I wish all the athletes all the very best for the next fortnight of events.

PS. I will just add that the quality of the advertisements during the ceremony (another necessary evil of the economic realities of the Olympics) were of a particularly high standard (except the one for Big Brother…). The gold medal for advertising goes to the Commonwealth Bank (money again) for producing a very commendable poem “The Ode to Can”. This is bound to become a classic in pop psychology!

PPS. Just got to the lighting of the lamp – Beautiful!

UPDATE 29/7: One always feels a little more sober in the morning. And a sober analysis of the Opening Ceremony, with a good dose of humour added in, may be found here at Catholicvote.org (HT Fr Z). To whet your appetite for it, Hoopes begins by saying: “Opening scenes: The British people see themselves as having gone from being Hobbits to being Orcs.” Indeed. I wondered myself whether the whole stadium was about to be attacked by Ents when the tree on top of the hill was pulled up. What would Chesterton, Lewis and Tolkien have made of the whole show? They may have approved of Mr Bean, at least (that is the one positive that Hoopes found in the whole show).

Those who know me know that I get my thrills from two-wheeled transport rather than four-wheeled. Four-wheels is for practical, two-wheels is for fun.

So when my old Diahatsu Pyzar (1996, with 285,000km on the clock) finally gave up the ghost last week, I was a bit stuck for what to replace it with (and how, the Schutz reserves not being terribly flush).

This is what a Pyzar looks like:

That isn’t mine, by the way – mine looked a lot more battle weary than that. (In fact, I sold it for scrap in the end: I had taken it up to our friendly neighbourhood servo for a service and he took one look at it, sewed it up and told me to take it home so it could die in peace). It looks like a 4×4, but don’t be fooled, it’s a little front wheel drive 1.6ltr. But it had the excellent virtue of being able to fit just about anything into the back. I bought a bookshelf in Prahan a few months back and brought it home in the back. Nothing anyone makes today looks even a bit like it. All the small cars have little tiny back hatches that you could barely fit a suitcase in, let alone a bookcase. There were about 10 used Pyzars for sale in the whole country, and most of them with high mileage, so that wasn’t a realistic option.

Our neighbour had a little Mazda 121 Metro, and, while smaller than the Pyzars and of about the same vintage, it fit the bill – big back hatch with lay down back seats to give plenty of transport room. I found one on the iPhone Drive app for sale in Werribee (pretty much the other end of the earth from where I live) but the price was right – under $4,000 – and it was five years younger than my Pyzar with 111,000km on the clock. So I packed my thermos and sandwiches and headed on over to the West, and drove home with my new car:

As you can see, same basic idea, just a 1.3ltr engine instead of the 1.6 and a slightly shorter wheelbase. I’ve just had it up with my own servo getting a checkover, and he says it’s as right as rain. So I’m very happy. I don’t like change much, and with this “new” car, I don’t have much change to get used to – except a clutch that works and an engine that doesn’t use as much oil as petrol!

I am currently going through my Facebook page – WHICH I NEVER USE – and removing a whole lot of “friends”. If you got removed from my “friends” list, don’t take it personally. If you are reading this blog, you are my friend. If you don’t read my blog… you’re spending too much time on Facebook!

Okay, this may sound a little weird, but they do say that necessity is the mother of invention.

As the Government in Australia continues to tax tobacco products at an ever-increasing rate (50g of pipe tobacco now costs between $36-40 here) and also continues to impose new restrictions upon smoking tobacco, one begins to look around for alternatives…

Now, there are illegal alternatives, which have side effects that this little pipe smoker rules out entirely, but there are other herbs that you can “put in your pipe and smoke it” which are perfectly legal, cheap and readily available – if you are willing to experiment.

A little searching on the web has led me to try two such alternatives recently. I have not tried these on their own, but mix them with my pipe tobacco in a 50/50 mix with quite good results.

The first is growing in my garden: Lemon Balm. Dried slightly (not a crumble), lemon balm can be cut up, rubbed and mixed with pipe tobacco for a nice smoke.

But even more successful is (wait for it): TEA!

No joke! A good long leaf ceylon tea, put in a container with a bit of orange peel until it has the same moistness as tobacco, then mixed with regular tobacco produces a very good smoke – which is, I have discovered, even longer lasting than a regular pipe! It has less of a tobacco smell (as expected), and the taste is just slightly bitter compared to pure pipe tobacco. Tea is a cured leaf, so it is perhaps not surprising that it has smokable properties.

One note: I use a meershaum pipe rather than a wooden one for this. I don’t know how these would go in a wooden pipe. It might burn the pipe, or leave an unwanted taste, although I have not noticed that tea burns at a higher temperature than normal tobacco (a little on the contrary, actually). It also has the added benefit of producing a drier pipe than pure tobacco. It seems to pack better too – a looser pack which gives better flow.

Until the Government decides to put an extra tax on tea, it seems that I have found a way continuing to enjoy my recreational smoking at a level that I can afford.

 Term 3, 2012

Anima Education presents

“Catholicism”

An exploration of the Catholic Faith
using the new video series by Fr Robert Barron

Fr Robert Barron recently toured Australia to promote his new 10 part DVD series “Catholicism”. We will watch each program in the series and use it as the basis of further exploration of the Catholic faith. This will be a great opportunity to learn more about our Church, and to bring friends who are interested in finding out more about the Catholic faith. (Nb. The Term 3 course will cover the first five sessions in the DVD series; the last five sessions will be presented in Term 4)

Topics covered in this course:
1. Amazed and Afraid: The Revelation of God become Man
2. Happy Are We: The teachings of Jesus
3. The Ineffable Mystery of God: That than which nothing greater can be thought
4. Our Tainted Nature’s Solitary Boast: Mary, the Mother of God
5. The Indispensable Men: Peter, Paul, and the Missionary Adventure

10 hours of interactive lecture/discussion
(5 x 2 hour sessions)

Monday nights 6:30pm to 8:30pm 
August 6 to September 3, 2012

Mary Glowrey House
132 Nicholson Street, Fitzroy
(opposite Carlton Gardens)

 Total cost $15 per night
($75 for the whole course)

 Enrol and enquiries: 0400 978 938 or dschutz@cam.org.au

 Sponsored by the Anima Women’s Network and the Catholic Women’s League of Victoria and Wagga Wagga

Okay, so now we have a nice new translation of the missal – when are we going to have a revision of the Liturgy of the Hours?

It seems that there is movement at the station (or is that “at the ranch”?) in the US, according to this report on Fr Z’s site.

As the Lutheran Catechism would say “What does this mean for us?”

I don’t know. I note that they say “The International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL) has been consulted regarding its role in producing draft translations of certain elements”, but I get the impression from this that the revision of the LOTH will be a local arrangement rather than an international one as the missal was. This would be unfortunate, I think. Why should not the English speaking Church “pray with one voice”?

What are the elements involved? Mainly the choice of the version of the psalms and scripture. And that links up with the issue of the lectionary. With regard to the Pslams, I think we will be using the new Revised Grail ourselves here in the future, just as the US will be. But we are going to be using the ESV for Scripture, and they are still using their NAB produced by the USCCB themselves.

Then there is the issue of the antiphons. Surely these could be unified? Yet we don’t even know yet what is happening with the antiphons in our lectionary, let alone in the LOTH.

The Collects, of course, should be standardised with the Missal. I expect this will mean that both American and Australian (and English for that matter) versions should be the same. What about the intercessions? They could do with a bit of “fixing up”.

What are your thoughts?

I have now been serving as a regular cantor at St Philip’s in Blackburn North for almost six months. I enjoy the liturgies at St P’s immensely, probably because it is so much like what I was raised on: fully chanted liturgy with sung psalms and hymns (and the occasional opportunity to use a proper chant). The main source of hymns is the excellent “Living Parish Hymnal” that was the staple of Catholic hymn singing in the Australian Church back about forty years ago. One thing I really do enjoy is the fact that we get to sing the hymns in their entirety, rather than the regular Catholic practice of apocopating the hymns down to just a few verses.

In any case, what I am getting around to is this excellent and very funny article by Anthony Esolen in Insight Scoop last week: “Paint-by-Number Hymns”. I was reading it during a session of the Orientale Lumen Conference last week, and found it very hard to stifle my laughter. Click and enjoy!

I like to play Words With Friends on my iphone when not doing anything in particular. Of course, one could more profitably spend this time praying or mentally considering the next step in my PhD thesis, but there it is. I do like the fact that through it I have developed a couple of connections with people in the world whom I would otherwise never meet. One regular playing partner is a nurse from Trinadad working in Manhattan. We come from entirely different worlds, but we have this little game going on our phones… I call it WWCS (“Words With Complete Strangers).

But I do occasionally play WWF with work colleagues, or those whom I know through my various professional networks. One with with my opposite number at the Faith Communities Council of Victoria, Sandy Kouroupidis. Sandy is a bit of wiz at this game. But just recently he had such an amazing win that I rather wondered where he was getting his help from.

This is the final result:

He got every Triple World Score and several doubles on the TW’s by playing all the letters in his hand. I would have been VERY suspicious if his score was just four points higher…

I just saw an ad on the telly for a funeral plan: “Just a couple of dollars a week…”

Here’s my funeral plan.

Put me in a box.
Put me in a hole.
(Don’t burn me!)
Sing a few hymns.
Pray for my soul.
(Don’t mourn me.)