Online Edition – Vol. VI, No. 8: November 2000

Update on Chicago’s new liturgical institute

The Archdiocese of Chicago’s new Mundelein Liturgical Institute is proceeding according to plan, says its director,

Monsignor Francis Mannion

, founder and president of the Society for Catholic Liturgy and editor of its journal,

Antiphon

. He also writes a weekly column on liturgical questions for

Our Sunday Visitor.

Students are not due to arrive until August of 2001, according to a four-year plan Monsignor Mannion worked out with

Cardinal Francis George

last summer. But he told

AB

in an interview in October that he’s already gotten a "satisfactory" level of inquiries from students he calls "highly qualified". Active recruitment of students will begin this fall, he said.

This academic year will be spent hammering out curricula and setting up the academic programs. So far, the faculty includes Msgr. Mannion and

Denis McNamara

, an architectural historian from Virginia and a contributor to the

Adoremus Bulletin.

Monsignor Mannion said that the orientation of programs will be toward "what the feminists call ‘dynamic orthodoxy’". He said he wants to foster "respect for the whole of Catholic tradition, not just the first few hundred years".

While declining to comment on the shortcomings of other liturgical programs, Monsignor Mannion said that as a discipline, Liturgical Studies often risks becoming "overly historical and focused on texts, and thus collapsing in on itself". He said he believes that Liturgical Studies needs a strong theological framework.

The Institute plans to offer a Graduate Certificate in Liturgical Studies, which requires one year of study; a Master’s degree in Liturgical Studies, which takes two summers plus an academic year to complete; and a Licentiate in Sacramantal Theology (STL). Courses will include Patristics and Systematic Theology. All programs are due to be in place by the Fall of 2001.

Before his appointment to head the new Institute, Msgr. Mannion was pastor of the Cathedral of the Madeleine in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Saint Paul causes "domestic violence"?

Two Commissions of the Irish Church have published a document
proposing that seven New Testament texts be dropped from Mass
because they may promote domestic violence, the

Irish Times

reported on August 29.

The seven texts are all from Saint Paul’s Epistles, and include the famous passage in Ephesians 5:22-24, in which Paul counsels, "Wives, submit to your husbands". (Under pressure from feminists, the US bishops made this same passage optional in the Second Reading for the 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B.)

The "Domestic Violence document" was prepared jointly by the Irish Bishops’ Commission for Justice and Peace and the Pastoral Commission.

In a joint foreword, Bishops Laurence Ryan of Kildare and William Walsh of Killaloe, wrote that "the Church, like other sectors, has had its learning curve, and there is still a long way to go" on the issue of domestic violence.

Jerusalem Bible News

The original 1966 version of the

Jerusalem Bible

was re-published
by Doubleday early this year. It had been out of print since
1989, when it was supplanted by the

New Jerusalem Bible

,
which uses so-called "inclusive language".

The original

Jerusalem Bible

was the product of the labor of Biblical scholars at the Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem and originally published in French. Biblical scholar

Alexander Jones

of Christ’s College, Liverpool, supervised the translation from the French into English.

The book jacket of the new Doubleday edition of the

JB

proclaims, "In line with Vatican teachings, it retains masculine pronouns when referring to God and avoids the postmodern tendency toward inclusive language".

The original JB was much used in the United Kingdom. Its reappearance means that there are now

two

contemporary English versions in print that are not deformed by "inclusive language".

The other is the

Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition

(RSV-CE), a translation generally considered by scholars to be the most accurate of the modern English translations.

"Catholic Youth Bible" tops 125,000 in sales

The

Catholic Youth Bible

, a version of the "inclusive
language" New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), with added
"multi-cultural" notes and comments, had sold 125,000
copies as of July 2000, six months after publication.

The CYB, published by St. Mary’s Press, Christian Brothers Publications, of Winona, Minnesota, was introduced at the

held in Saint Louis last November. It was given an

imprimatur

in 1999 by

Bishop Bernard Harrington

of Winona.

In 1994 the NRSV was forbidden for liturgical use by the Holy See, and its

imprimatur

was revoked, although Canadian bishops were given

temporary

permission to use a Lectionary they had already published using this defective translation.

A deal in which the Target retail outlet will carry the CYB at 850 of their stores by Christmas means that 200,000 copies will be in print by the end of the year, according to the Littfin-Pratt Agency, CYB’s public relations firm. The National Shopping Club is also running two hundred advertising spots on network and cable stations in New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and San Francisco, beginning in October.

The CYB was reviewed by

AB

in January,

"

‘"

.

Pope: Rediscover riches of liturgy

A letter to liturgists in the name of Pope John Paul II stresses the need for re-education in the meaning of the liturgy.

The letter was sent by

Cardinal Angelo Sodano

to participants in the Italian Liturgical Week, held on the island of Ischia from August 21-25. The letter decried a decline in interest in liturgical education and stressed the necessity "to undertake intensive education again to discover the riches contained in the Liturgy".

The message affirms that the Holy Father hopes that through the opportune formation of the faithful, "each liturgical celebration will be an encounter with the saving mystery of Christ and, consequently, an experience of grace and salvation".

Source: Zenit

Pastor scatters Sacred Host on the ground

Celebrating the successful raising of more than $5 million toward building "a new plant" and acquisition of land for the purpose, the pastor of Saint Jerome’s parish in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, Father John Yockey , published the following announcement in his August 6th parish bulletin:

"We truly ‘christened’ our new property this past June 25th when we carried the Blessed Sacrament in procession there. As I broke up particles of the Sacred Host and scattered them over our 37 acres, I thanked the Lord…. "

The announcement was published on the parish web site, www.stjerome.org , and released to the local media (Oconomowoc is a suburb of Milwaukee). It also said that the parish will begin drawing up plans for "our future parish building" this fall.

"We intend to have a broad consultation with the members of our community at every step of the way so that our new church, school and parish center will carry on our noble tradition and also represtent our shared consensus for the future", it said.

Is it possible that any priest does not know why tearing the Body of Christ into pieces and scattering them on the ground is a sacrilege? Did he think that he was simply making bread crumbs from a mere "symbol" of Christ’s presence, and that tossing the bread crumbs on the ground gave it a symbolic blessing?

What does he intend to do when he consecrates the Host at Mass? What does he or his parishioners believe happens at the Consecration?

Evidently the pastor did not realize his action is a a serious sacrilege against the sacred species. But his remarkable action does seem to show the stunning ignorance of many Catholics today about the meaning of the Consecration, about the nature of the Blessed Sacrament, and about what, precisely, the Church means by "transubstantiation" and the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

It is said that administering Holy Communion on the tongue instead of in the hand came about to avoid sacrilege. Superstitious peasants would retain the consecrated Hosts as magic talismans, touching them to wounds or to sick people or animals or breaking them into pieces to scatter on the fields to assure a good crop.

Third Reconquering Sacred Space conference

The third annual "Reconquering Sacred Space" conference will be held in Rome from December 1-20, 2000. Framed models and projects will be displayed.

Sponsoring groups include the Agency for the City of Rome, the research center Il Bosco e la Nave , and the Institute for Sacred Architecture, Notre Dame.

Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver called last year’s conference, "intelligent, elegant, provocative in its ideas, and a great resource for anyone passionate about renewing sacred architecture and rebuilding the House of the Lord". (1999 catalogs can be ordered by calling 1-800-764-8444).

The 2000 catalog will feature photographs of new traditional churches, an introduction by Francis Cardinal George of Chicago, and essays by noted artists and art historians.

Inquirers can also contact Duncan Stroik at P.O. Box 556, Notre Dame, IN 46556; 219-271-0522 (tel. and fax)

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