Church mice

Have you ever seen the churchmice in the National Cathedral?

Brian, Riley, and I ventured up to the cathedral for the 11 o'clock Mass yesterday morning. There we viewed two little churchmice....and not far away was a cat watching them!

The front half of the nave was surprisingly full when we walked in at quarter til, so we chose to sit in the south transept. A choir from a Kentucky college sang the prelude.

Worship at the cathedral seems to be less and less "Anglican" every time I go. This time, as we entered the church, we immediately noticed on the crossing altar that there were not two candles as is traditional, but two firepots. I felt very Zoroastrian. Here's a photo of one of the pots as the vergers were removing them from the altar after the service. As the Mass got going, rather than doing the Kyrie, they did the Trisagion from the Eastern Orthodox liturgy. Then, both for the Trisagion and the psalm, they used a cantor Roman Catholic-style, complete with that obnoxious poking an arm in the air to indicate when the congregation should sing. And, of course, instead of putting the choir in the choir stalls where they belong, they are still seating them in rows behind the altar like a bunch of Presbyterians. Sadly, the transcept chairs were all devoid of kneelers, so no one got to kneel during the service and had to stand for prayers. And, also as usual, the liturgy itself was not directly from the Book of Common Prayer, but was some odd little modification (including having the congregation join the priest in saying during the consecration of the Bread and Wine "Sanctify us also that we may faithfully receive this holy Sacrament, and serve you in unity, constancy, and peace; and at the last day bring us with all your saints into the joy of your eternal realm.").

The Men of the Cathedral Choirs provided the bright spots of the morning. They sang "When the Lord turned" by Adrian Batten (1591-1637) as the introit from the back of the nave before the procession. They did "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills" by Ernest Walker (1870-1949), something with which I was not familiar, and that had a strong late Victorian/Edwardian feel to it. "Oculi omnium in Te spirant Domine" by Andrew Parnell (b. 1954) was the communion anthem.

Hymns were In Babilone (Hail, thou once despised Jesus) for the processional, Morning Song (In boldness, look to God for help) for the sequence, The Eighth Tune (We gather at your table, Lord) at the presentation of gifts, Dunedin (O love of God, how strong and true) during post-communion ablutions (and the congregation stood for it!), and finally Es flog ein kleins Waldvögelein (Hail to the Lord's Anointed) for the recessional. Mass setting, what little there was with just Sanctus and Agnus Dei, came from the adaptation of the Schubert Deutsche Mass.

We were disappointed that there was no organ postlude. I guess this is part of their attempt to be "austere" during Lent. Personally, I would have just asked the organist to play something in a minor key. There also was no final blessing of the people at the end of Mass, but a prayer instead and a program note that it "according to ancient custom, replaces the final blessing during Lent." I am not aware of this ancient custom.

The celebrant (who the program calls the "presider") was the warden of the Cathedral College. The preacher was the canon pastor and director of the Center for Prayer and Pilgrimage at the cathedral, who was a very engaging speaker and delivered a coherent, logical talk lasting nineteen minutes. He spoke about the Lord guiding us through all the wildernesses of this life. He also talked about the Church clinging to the past and allowing itself to be embarrassed by science, asking "are those the good old days?" His final theme was one of restorative justice. He told the story of a priest maimed by an African government, and yet who said, "If I were full of hatred and bitterness about this, I would be a victim forever." There are so many people I know to whom that quote applies!

After Mass, we, naturally, went on a quick walking tour of the main level of the cathedral. They are setting up tables with coffee, lemonade, fruit, and cookies in the back corner of the nave now for a rather frenetic and desperately gluttinous "coffee hour." We passed on the freebies and, after strolling through the Bishop's Garden, walked in to Cleveland Park for brunch.

Joyful noise

Yesterday was Laetare Sunday (the Sunday during Lent when the liturgical color changes from purple to pink), so I went to a parish I'll not name for reasons you'll soon see for their 5:30 Mass. The celebrant, incidentally, gave a good homily on the prodigal son, the cultural implications of the robe, ring, and fatted calf in Biblical Jewish society, and a logical application of that parable to us in modern society.

Now, I've heard that music has never been a big emphasis at this service at this parish. The organist/choirmaster does not play or direct this service. They have no keyboard player for either organ or piano to support the singing (and, thankfully, no guitar band), so they use solo instrumentalists to help out.

Then we get to yesterday. The instrumentalist was a young man playing the violin. They had a young cantoress who seemed a little inexperienced and nervous. I don't think they had ever practiced together. What's worse, I couldn't tell if the violinist was sightreading, lacked self-confidence, had terrible stage fright, or was a beginning level violinist. It was a disaster! The violinist played way, way, way too slowly on the hymns, and there were a lot of sour notes. The cantoress would try to sing at a normal tempo, but he not only didn't keep up, he plodded onward when it was obvious he was two or more measures behind! They ended up singing only one verse of each hymn, because two verses would have been too painful. She plowed through an entire communion hymn, but the violinist only played the antiphon for the congregation and she was on her own for the verses. Then, for the psalm, the cantoress attempted to sing a capella, and that didn't work out too well. She didn't even try to sing the Gospel acclamation, so from that point on, we had a low Mass.

Now, in the cantoress's defense, it is extremely hard to sing a capella, especially in a large reverberant space like the nave of this church when you've a congregation singing along in "group cluster," and especially when the music is weird and has odd intervals (remember how I'm always saying the Catholic contemporary music is unsingable?). I know that if I'd been cantoring this Mass a capella, I would definitely have changed some of the music, on the spot, if need be, to something I knew I could sing and maintain pitch and intervals. Then, when you've got bad accompaniment.....I just felt so sorry for the cantoress.

Obviously, there was no Mass setting and no offertory or communion motet. For the processional, they attempted Passion Chorale (Our Father, we have wandered); for the offertory, a particularly disastrous Duke Street (Take up your cross, the Savior said); for communion, "You satisfy the hungry heart," sung responsorially; and for the recessional, We nur den lieben Gott (If thou but trust in God to guide thee). Oh, for some reason I didn't understand (especially since the hymn had started late and the celebrant had already made it down the center aisle to the narthex), the musicians did the second verse of the recessional hymn, but for the first time in my life, I didn't stay to finish the final hymn, I bolted after the first verse! It was just too painful, and I had to get out of there. Ack!

Now do you see why I didn't identify the parish?

St. Patrick's at St. Patrick's

What do you do with an archbishop, a retired cardinal, four concelebrating bishops, and three dozen assisting priests? Why, you have a big Mass at St. Patrick's Church for St. Patrick's Day!

Yesterday was the official patronal festival service for St. Patrick's Church in downtown Washington. This was my first time in the church, and it was absolutely beautiful! St. Patrick's was the first Catholic church in the District, started around 1792, and the current building was completed in 1884. It's done in the Victorian English Gothic Revival style with lovely architectural details on the exterior and stunningly beautiful Bavarian stained glass windows on the interior. What's more, when they did their post-Vatican II remodeling—the kind that damaged and ruined the architectural integrity of so many churches Catholic and Episcopal—the designers did an unusually fine job of preserving both the beauty and the holiness of the space.

They've also added a lot of nice marble statuary around the side aisles of the church, some of which is quite good. One of the most striking bits of sculpture is the crucifix behind the high altar. Now, most Catholic churches have a big crucifix with Jesus in agony, sometimes quite graphically, hanging on the cross, but here, they've done a negative relief of that crucified Jesus in a Celtic cross, but coming from that Celtic cross is a high relief figure of a risen Christ reaching out for His people—an unusual thing for a Catholic church.

In the choir loft in the back of the nave they have a large display of organ pipes beneath the rose window. They have a 44-rank Lively-Fulcher organ and about a dozen volunteer adult choristers to assist with the music. For this special service, they also had two trumpeters in the loft, a Celtic harpist (who was quite good) in the front of the nave, a bagpiper in the narthex, and a bagpiper outside on the steps in the rain.

The hymns were old Irish classics: St. Columba for the processional, Slane at the offertory, and St. Patrick's Breastplate for the recessional. I would have changed that order around a bit. They needed more music at the begining to get all those clergy in and then incense the altar, so the organist had to improvise for a while. At the end of the service, they had everybody out with the three verses of the first section of Breastplate, then they had the choir sing the two verses in the middle section a capella before going back to the original tune for the final verse with the congregation and organ. This resulted in the congregation emptying out of their pews during the middle section and virtually no one (save me, of course) sang the final verse. Otherwise, though, this congregation is a group of hearty singers.

His Excellency the archbishop gave them special dispensation to waive the Friday Lenten fast and abstinence requirements and also permitted them to sing the Gloria during Lent for this service. They did a responsorial Gloria by Calvert Sheck (1940-2005) that had very modern choral verses that were a little too ambitious. The rest of the Mass setting was the standard Proulx A Community Mass. During the responsorial psalm, Psalm 23, of course, the organ accompanied the antiphon and the Celtic harp accompanied the cantoress for the verses.

For the offertory anthem, the choir sang "How Amiable Are Thy Dwellings" by Colin Mawby (b. 1930), another modern music work. At communion, after a short responsorial marching hymn (not many parishioners sing it here, either), the choir sang an arrangement of the hymn Christus redemptor gentium (Christ is the world's redeemer).

The archbishop's homily gave tribute to St. Patrick and the Irish in America. I'm starting to get the impression after seeing the archbishop a few times that he's really quite the schmoozer with the wealthy and important congregants, as not only did he do his usual handshaking with certain people as he came down the aisle (holding up the procession), but he walked over to personally administer communion to some special guests from Ireland and the Irish Embassy. I'm sure the archdiocese will be having a big capital campaign sometime soon,and I'm sure he'll be quite successful.

The rain all day required a few logistical changes. They were going to have Irish dancing outside, but they ended up moving them from before Mass to after Mass, and put the girls in the narthex with a piper's accompaniment. Everyone enjoyed watching them as they shook hands with the clergy on their way out.

Breaking in the new priest

Sunday at St. Stephen Martyr we had a new assisting priest celebrate and preach. He was just ordained last summer, but he's a middle-aged man who previously had a career as an attorney. Now he's in Washington working on a degree in canon law at the Catholic University of America, so he's been assigned to help out at St. Stephen. His prior legal education has suited him well, because he freely admits that they did nothing in seminary to prepare the new priests to be liturgists or properly to chant the Mass. I thought he did okay for a newbie, though, so I'm sure his learning curve won't be that steep.

Father preached about the old "why do bad things happen to good people" theme started by St. Augustine in the fourth century in his book The City of God and recently resurrected by the mid-20th century evangelist Norman Vincent Peele. Between that topic and some of the music Sunday, I felt like I was at a funeral! LOL

Hymns Sunday were Passion Chorale ("Our Father we have wandered") for the processional, Repton for the offertory, and In Babilone for the recessional. The communion hymn the congregation didn't sing with the cantoress was a responsorial ditty with the Wilcock "My soul is thirsting for you, O Lord, my God" antiphon.

The choir did a very nice job with "Thou knowest, Lord" from Henry Purcell's Funeral Sentences for Queen Mary as the communion motet. Mass setting was as in previous weeks, with the difference that for the Kyrie, they mixed Proulx's A Community Mass with choral extentions from Mass for Three Voices by the 16th century John Taverner.

Robert met me at the church for Sunday's service. We actually hadn't planned on going to St. Stephen, or even, really, going to church at all (Robert especially, since he'd been out late Saturday night partying), but dear Michael really, really wanted to go to St. Stephen's (he recently moved to the neighborhood), and he's been trying for several weeks to organize something that fit into everyone's schedules. So, we acquiesced to going Sunday. And then, you know what? Michael didn't show up! He did, eventually, wander by the church, and we found him standing around on the sidewalk by the door after Mass, dressed in an old polo shirt and faded blue jeans looking like a transient. He was not contrite in the least! :-P

Baptists can legally engage in same sex fellatio

Yesterday, an Oklahoma state district judge in a non-jury trial acquitted former Southern Baptist pastor, Oklahoma Baptist Convention secretary and Southern Baptist Convention executive committeman Lonnie Latham of charges that he offered to engage in an act of lewdness when he asked an undercover officer for oral sex outside an Oklahoma City gay hotel resort in January 2006.

Latham's attorney (an old friend of mine) made the novel argument that since Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003), it is not illegal for consenting adults to engage in private homosexual acts; thus, an oral request to engage in such an act is not illegal.

This means that Southern Baptist pastors all over the state (not to mention Catholic priests) are now free to make requests for oral sex and more to all their congregations.

There is a high probability that the district attorney will appeal this case to the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, since police throughout the state have long harrassed and arrested homosexuals for propositioning undercover officers, especially during election years, and if this case is allowed to stand, it will have a chilling effect on that particular law enforcement technique. This was always a popular assignment for many young rookie cops, many of whom didn't seem to understand that the "crime" was committed with the oral proposition and that they didn't have to let the perpetrator "finish" the job.

This particular case has been national news not only because of Latham's prominence in the Baptist church, but also because of his very outspoken statements against same-sex marriage and in support of homosexuals being able to be "cured" of homosexuality if they joined the Baptist church.

Mass report

Quick Mass this morning at St. Stephen's. Msgr. Filardi was celebrant and homilist and talked about prayer. He had an interesting central premise, that one needed to believe in a deity in order to pray to it.

Mass setting was much the same as last week, except the choir did the communion antiphon this time, and they did the plainsong Agnus Dei with choral extensions from William Byrd's Mass for Four Voices. For the communion motet, the choir sang "O for a Closer Walk" by Charles Villiers Stanford that sounded very nice. I do wish they'd sing their motet at the beginning of communion instead of at the end. They even could do longer motets. Those responsorial communion "hymns" that nobody sings are always so worthless anyway, if some of those got truncated after the ablutions, it would certainly be no loss.

Speaking of which, hymns for today were Swabia ('Tis good, Lord, to be here) for the processional, Jesu dulcis memoria (O Sun of justice) for the offertory, and St. Flavian (Lord, who throughout these forty days) for the recessional.

Theology

You scored as Karl Barth. The daddy of 20th Century theology. You perceive liberal theology to be a disaster and so you insist that the revelation of Christ, not human experience, should be the starting point for all theology. Anselm 53% John Calvin 53% Augustine 53% Karl Barth 53% Martin Luther 53% Paul Tillich 47% Charles Finney 33% Friedrich Schleiermacher 33% Jonathan Edwards 27% Jürgen Moltmann 20% Which theologian are you? created with QuizFarm.com

Following the rules

German rules force man to urinate in bottle in exam
Wed Feb 28, 2007 8:04PM GMT

BERLIN (Reuters) - Exam supervisors at a German university stuck to rules so rigidly that a man with a bladder dysfunction had to urinate in a bottle in front of 120 fellow students because they would not let him go to the toilet.

Overseers at the University of Freiburg in southwestern Germany told the 27-year-old, whose bladder control was impaired in an accident that left him on crutches, that he would be failed if he left the room during the exam.

None of the three supervisors would accompany the man to the toilet despite other students' protests.

Eventually one female student emptied her water bottle so the man could go to a corner of the room and relieve himself.

In a letter written on Wednesday and seen by Reuters, university deputy head Karl-Reinhard Volz apologised to the student, saying the supervisors' behaviour was completely unjustified and "lacking in any normal human sensitivity."

© Reuters 2006. All rights reserved.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUKL2815380820070228

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Why are some people so unable to deal with rules in unusual situations? This is a perfect example of the need for educating and training people to develop and use their higher intellectual function to interpret the purpose and intention of rules in the face of unforeseen events.

Inability intelligently to interpret rules is one of the great problems I have with religious fundamentalists from the Abramaic traditions. Jewish fundamentalists want to take rules written in literature from 3,000 years ago, Christian fundamentalists pick and choose what they like from the old Jewish stuff and take their own rules written in literature 2,000 years ago, and Muslim fundamentalists take rules from literature written 1,500 years ago, and all apply them strictly and literally to modern day culture. While they claim to eschew interpretation viewed through cultural lenses (especially the culture at the time of writing), they all have their own traditions, background, and history with which they interpret archaic rules.

All situations dealing with rules—even religious ones—demand a certain degree of discretion and interpretation, especially when the original rulemakers did not have the foresight to anticipate every potential alternative scenario. Failure to do so can lead to inhumane results, just like the German examination. Intelligent society understands this. What is sad today, though, is that there is so much unintelligent society out there attempting to be in positions of authority. There ought to be a rule excluding them.