“It’s an imperfect sacramentary for an imperfect people, to be prayed by a celebrant who is also imperfect,” “I respect those who say let’s move forward and get a new sacramentary, before they all fall apart in the sacristy.”
Maybe the hardest part of Mark G. Ackermann's job is reading the letters that come in every day from people pleading for any chance to be close to their pope.
"They're heart-rending stories of people who have been through great tragedy and just want to be somewhere near the Holy Father," he said.
The problem is that there have been more than 180,000 requests for 90,000 total tickets for the six events that will take place in New York when Pope Benedict XVI visits from April 18-20.
[...]
Ackermann is executive director of the archdiocesan Office of the Papal Visit, a temp job that packs a decade's worth of responsibility.
Reporting directly to Cardinal Edward Egan, he is in charge of planning for every papal minute from when Benedict arrives at John F. Kennedy International Airport from Washington on April 18 to when he lifts off on Shepherd One about 8 p.m. April 20, heading for Rome.
It is a unique job that covers everything from planning security with the Secret Service and a litany of government agencies to preparing 550 priests and deacons to give Communion to 58,000 people at Yankee Stadium in 15 minutes.
"We've literally had walk-throughs at the stadium to figure out who is going to be where, how people are going to get out of their row - I was going to say pew - to receive Communion and get back to the same seat," he said in his office at the archdiocese's headquarters.
[...]
It's not surprising that Ackermann believes that Pope Benedict's stop at Ground Zero on the morning of April 20 promises to be the most poignant part of the papal visit.
"The Holy Father will actually go down and touch bedrock, spend a period of private prayer, bless the area and then visit with 24 individuals, some of whom lost loved ones in the attacks on our country," he said.
Ackermann leads a 50-person Papal Visit Task Force that is kicking into high gear for an eight-week stretch that promises to fly by.
He spends about 20 percent of his time on security issues, working with the Secret Service, other federal agencies that he won't identify, the New York City and Yonkers police departments, the papal security team and others.
"New York has been through a lot; this region has been through a lot," he said. "The level of preparedness - people have no idea - when a major event happens is overwhelming."
Then there are the protocol people from the White House, the State Department, the Vatican, city and state agencies.
Then there are the logistics. A database, growing by the day, will include the names of every person ticketed to every event. It's a requirement of the Secret Service.
For the pope's youth rally at St. Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers on April 19, more than 20,000 youngsters from across the region will be bused to Yonkers Raceway. From there, they will be shuttled to the seminary, where Secret Service will be waiting to check bar-coded tickets.
"Nationally known entertainment" is being lined up for both the seminary and Yankee Stadium, Ackermann said.
More than 800 buses will descend on the stadium April 20, bringing representatives from all 195 dioceses in the United States. After hours of waiting, they'll see Benedict celebrate Mass from a stage above second base - assisted by more than 200 cardinals and bishops and some 800 priests.
And that's not all.
About 250 Christian leaders from across the country have to get to St. Joseph's Church in Manhattan on April 18 for an ecumenical prayer service.
A good 2,500 priests, deacons and nuns will fill St. Patrick's Cathedral on April 19, when Benedict becomes the first pope to celebrate Mass there.
Hundreds of volunteers are being enlisted (and checked out) for all the events.
Every step the pope will take - every left turn, every right turn - is choreographed in a big book that Ackermann keeps close at hand. But who's to say Benedict won't get out of line, like when John Paul II popped out of St. Patrick's in 1995 and walked down 50th Street?
"In this post-9/11 world, I'm not sure we'll see that kind of spontaneity, but not every step can be choreographed," Ackermann said.
Ackermann will be near the pope's side the whole time, of course, but he can't be more specific than that. Security reasons.
And when Benedict leaves and the Office of the Papal Visit evaporates? On April 22, Ackermann has to give a speech in Calgary about emergency preparedness for hospitals. He committed to it more than a year ago.
Then he will take a non-temp job with the archdiocese, which he prefers not to identify for now. He has more immediate concerns.
Like the 100,000 ponchos he'll need in case the pope brings rain.
...But Robinson’s election, important as it is in this drama, is really only secondary to the woes besetting the Episcopal Church — and, indeed, Anglicanism world-wide. To couch it in theological language, we may call Robinson the efficient cause of Anglicanism’s fracturing. But he is not the formal cause. Strange as it sounds, the formal cause is nothing less than the demise of the British Empire and with it the ineluctable evaporation of a definite British ethos.
In 1559, Queen Elizabeth I, much more a practitioner of real-politic than her father Henry VIII, dealt with feuding Christian factions by encompassing them within the same state church. Puritans and Catholics, “high” churchman and “low,” woke up one morning to find themselves beneath the same tent. That didn’t mean disputes ceased. The English Civil War (1642-1651) attests to how bloody theological contentions could turn. Still, by the late 17th Century, with a common prayer book and the King James Bible, the lineaments of Anglicanism had emerged — much more a cultural ethos than a confessional church such as existed amongst the Lutherans and Calvinists on the continent.
Elizabeth’s actions had another result. In suspending theological squabbles, she inadvertently suspended corporate theological reflection. For over 400 years the Anglican ethos remained pretty much a late medieval view of God and the human person, suspended in linguistic amber of dazzling beauty. Thus “protestant” and “catholic,” Platonist and even the odd agnostic all found themselves harmonizing after a fashion in the same choir.
What kept this ethos from evaporating like mist? Not the Archbishop of Canterbury. (He has never held authority analogous to the pope.) Nor the creedal statements of Anglicanism. (Like a wax nose these have always been shaped pretty much by whoever was doing the interpreting.)
What grounded this Anglican ethos was the very English culture from which it arose. For example, two Anglicans may, and did, vehemently disagree on a biblical text’s meaning, but they both shared a common culture that took the Bible as normative. Their differences became blended into the soil they share. With the significant exception of nonconformists, to be an Englishman was to be an Anglican, to be an Anglican was to be English. Cultural stability ensured theological consensus.
[...]
For anyone brought up in the mid-20th Century, the Episcopal Church still radiated certain Englishness. We resonated to the rhythm of the old prayer book, the sonorities of T. S. Eliot and the urbanity of W. H. Auden. Ours was the church of C.S.Lewis, Dorothy Sayers, and Vaughn Williams. Those mid-century decades possessed a spirituality of informed and stylish moderation.
Even then, though, had we been more attentive, we would have heard a distinctly nostalgic, even elegiac, tone in all this. But few of us are ever explicitly aware of the under-currents of real change in our lives. It’s not that the Episcopal Church scrapped the old prayer book, nor was it somehow infiltrated by dastardly liberals. Simply, it underwent what happened to most Protestant traditions imported to these shores: As the English ethos slowly dissipated, the Episcopal Church was finally being transformed into an American denomination.
What does this mean? To use the most glaring example: Where once heterosexual marriage was integral to the social and civic ecology of America, it is no longer. And the spiritual ecology of American denominations cannot but adapt accordingly, if they are to be credible. American culture determines the agenda for American denominationalism.
[...]...I am certainly not ringing the death knell of the Episcopal Church. Indeed, when these disputes are finally settled, I suspect the Episcopal Church may prove an attractive option to many Americans nostalgic for some sort of a spirituality.
[...]
American history’s answer has always been power-plays, cloaked in theological rhetoric — followed by yet another, new denomination. Let’s wait and see.
Read the complete article here.
I think that as American Catholics, we need to take Fr. Stokes words to heart and see that something quite similar is happening in the Catholic Church. Have we moved from the Roman Catholic Church to the American Catholic Church? When we desire to assimilate into American culture, that is exactly what we are doing. I am a member of the Roman Catholic Church. There was a time where Catholics wouldn't dare to eat meat on Fridays, now Catholics don't give it a second thought to eat meat on any Friday, even during Lent. I hear Catholics say that they don't want to stand out or do anything which will reveal their faith. We are to be signs of contradiction, not signs of assimilation. So what if someone looks at us funny when we don't go along with the rest of society. Notice how well Christ blended in?
The Liturgical Judgment
127. The question asked by this judgment may be stated as follows: Is this composition capable of meeting the structural and textual requirements set forth by the liturgical books for this particular rite? Hmmm, good thought which I think many musicians fail to consider.
128. Structural considerations depend on the demands of the rite itself to guide the choice of parts to be sung, taking into account the principle of progressive solemnity (see nos. 110ff. in this document). A certain balance among the various elements of the Liturgy should be sought, so that less important elements do not overshadow more important ones. Textual elements include the ability of a musical setting to support the liturgical text and to convey meaning faithful to the teaching of the Church.129. A brief introduction to the aspects of music and the various liturgical rites is
provided below in nos. 137ff. Pastoral musicians should develop a working familiarity with the requirements of each rite through a study of the liturgical books themselves. Liturgical knowledge is another area where many liturgical musicians are lacking. It is great to me a master musician, but that it hardly enough.[...]
The Musical Judgment
134. The musical judgment asks whether this composition has the necessary aesthetic qualities that can bear the weight of the mysteries celebrated in the Liturgy. It asks the question: Is this composition technically, aesthetically, and expressively worthy? Just think of "I Myself am the Bread of Life", or "If I Was a Butterfly"135. This judgment requires musical competence. Only artistically sound music will be effective and endure over time. To admit to the Liturgy the cheap, the trite, or the musical cliché often found in secular popular songs is to cheapen the Liturgy, to expose it to ridicule, and to invite failure. Hahahaha! There goes how many songs in the hymnals.
136. Sufficiency of artistic expression, however, is not the same as musical style, for “the Church has not adopted any particular style of art as her own. She has admitted styles from every period, in keeping with the natural characteristics and conditions of peoples and the needs of the various rites.”104 Thus, in recent times, the Church has consistently recognized and freely welcomed the use of various styles of music as an aid to liturgical worship. Ehhh, not too sure about that.
President George Bush's nomination Monday of Mary Ann Glendon to be U.S. ambassador to the Vatican has been criticized as reactionary and subversive by US abortion and homosexual advocates. Glendon is a high profile and pro-life member the president's bioethics council.
Glendon, 69, is known at Harvard for her advocacy of Catholic teachings on a number of issues, including abortion and same-sex "marriage." She will succeed Francis Rooney, who served as envoy to the Vatican for the past two years. Glendon's appointment is for a five year term, and requires Senate confirmation.
Father Richard John Neuhaus, on the influential First Things website, today calls the selection of Glendon "a brilliant choice". He also notes a downside to her appointment in that "Prof. Glendon will be resigning from the editorial board of First Things."
Glendon was a member of President Bush's Council on Bioethics, advising the president on moral and ethical issues related to technological developments in bioethics. She has frequently criticized radical feminism and defended the Church's position on life issues. "The challenge of the church is to keep abreast of changes, but not dumb down its doctrine to the spirit of the age," she said in an earlier interview with the AP. "Contrary to popular stereotype, John Paul II has done a great deal to put women in many responsible positions."
In 1994, Pope John Paul II appointed Glendon to the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. In 2004, Glendon became the highest ranking female advisor to the Church when she was named president of the Academy. She also headed the delegation of the Holy See to the international 1995 Beijing Conference on Women sponsored by the United Nations, where she came under fire for her uncompromising statements against contraception.
US abortion and homosexual advocates have criticized Glendon's nomination. Jon O'Brien, president of the pro-abortion organization Catholics For a Free Choice, stated, "Dr. Glendon's stance on many matters of importance is not representative of Americans' views on these issues, let alone those of American Catholics". He added, "Her appointment comes at a time when the global community needs more critics of the Vatican's policies on sexual and reproductive rights."
Fr. Neuhaus reports that the Boston Globe is also not happy about Glendon's appointment. He quotes the Globe, "Glendon, 69, is an antiabortion scholar and an opponent of gay marriage who has written about the effects of divorce and increased litigation on society. Her 1987 book, "Abortion and Divorce in Western Law," was critical of the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that established a legal right to abortion."
The Globe also reports that Rev. Richard P. McBrien, a University of Notre Dame theologian and leading US dissident Catholic is not happy about the Glendon appointment. McBrien told the Globe, "She has also been an outspoken critic of feminism, tending to write it off as a relic of the 1970s, all of which endears her to conservative Catholics and makes her an ideal choice for President Bush."
Cardinal Sean O'Malley, however, praised Glendon in an interview with the Boston Globe. "Dr. Glendon's career is marked with numerous achievements in law, education, and international affairs that provide her exemplary credentials for this post," he said.
In her capacity as a legal specialist in the field of bioethics, Glendon has been a leader in the Catholic opposition to same-sex "marriage," and has acted as an advisor to Governor Mitt Romney's presidential campaign.
This morning, Saturday June 9 2007, President George W. Bush of the United States of America was received in audience by His Holiness Benedict XVI. The president subsequently went on to meet Cardinal Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone S.D.B. and Archbishop Dominique Mamberti, secretary for Relations with States.
In the course of the cordial discussions, the main themes of the international political situation were considered. On the question of the Middle East, particular attention was given to the Israeli-Palestinian question, to Lebanon, to the worrying situation in Iraq, and to the critical conditions being experienced by the Christian communities. On the part of the Holy See, hope was once again expressed in a "regional" and "negotiated" solution to the conflicts and crises afflicting the region. Discussions also turned to the question of Africa and its development, also with reference to Darfur, and there was an exchange of opinions on Latin America.
Finally contemporary moral and religious issues were examined, among them those concerning human rights and religious freedom, the defense and promotion of life, marriage and the family, the education of the young and sustainable development.VIS
The pope and president looked relaxed as they greeted each other and spoke briefly before reporters before their 35-minute private encounter June 9. Bush later held a separate 40-minute meeting with the Vatican’s top foreign policy officials.
[...]
Before the president’s visit, the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, went out of his way to praise Bush for his position on abortion and for “positive initiatives in favor of the defense of life from conception.”
Bush arrived at the Vatican under very heavy security. His motorcade entered St. Peter’s Square from a side street instead of along Via della Conciliazione, the wide avenue leading to the Vatican, which had been cleared of cars and was lined with curious onlookers.
In the sunny St. Damasus Courtyard, the president was greeted by U.S. Archbishop James Harvey, one of the pope’s private secretaries, who escorted him past a picket of Swiss Guards and up an elevator to the fourth floor of the Apostolic Palace for the papal audience.
The pope smiled broadly as he greeted Bush just outside his private library. The two men shook hands, and the pope ushered the president to a large desk. Reporters and photographers were allowed to stay for the first minute of the encounter.
“It’s good to be with you sir,” Bush said as he sat down opposite the pope, crossing his legs and leaning back in a white chair.
“You come from the conference in Heiligendamm?” the pope said, referring to the G8 meeting in Germany.
“I did, your old country. And it was successful,” the president replied.
“Successful? You had some decisions? It’s not so easy,” the pope said. He said it was important for humanity that conferences like this produce decisions.
“It was, you know, a lot of different opinions. But it was good. It was good,” Bush said.
Read the complete article here.
In a 5-4 majority decision penned by Justice Anthony Kennedy, the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the federal partial birth abortion ban which was signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2003.
The law bans "partial-birth abortion," a legal term of art, defined in the law itself as any abortion in which the baby is delivered feet-first "past the [baby's] navel . . . outside the body of the mother," or "in the case of a head-first presentation, the entire fetal head is outside the body of the mother," before being killed.
Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, who have previously voted on the court against the gruesome late-term abortion procedure, voted with the majority. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito who were appointed by President Bush also voted with the majority.
"This will be President Bush's pro-life legacy," said Jim Hughes, Vice President of the International Right to Life Committee. Hughes, also the President of Campaign Life Coalition Canada added: "Thank God for him because what he's doing there is going to affect us greatly here north of the 49th parallel."
Referring to Planned Parenthood and other abortion groups which argued against the ban, Justice Kennedy wrote that they "have not demonstrated that the Act would be unconstitutional in a large fraction of relevant cases."
Kennedy maintained that the current ruling upheld the Roe v. Wade 1973 abortion decision. He said that since other abortion options are available, "it does not construct a substantial obstacle to the abortion right."
A short adjoining opinion written by Justice Thomas and joined by Justice Scalia, said "that the Court's abortion jurisprudence...has no basis in the Constitution." Of note, neither Justice Alito nor Chief Justice Roberts joined that opinion.
