If I had not already once met the hilarious, seriously devout, and surprisingly prudent soul behind The Bad Catholic's Guide to Wine, Whiskey and Song, I do believe I would think he was the product of my fevered imagination, or a partly-digested meat-pie. First, there is the wonderful insanity of the abovementioned book (with its suggestion you celebrate St. Dymphna's day by having over the tin-foil biretta crowd), and now, surprising snippets of la vie Zmirak that have begun to emerge in his column over at takimag.com.

I had a pretty colorful (and, it must be added, very happy) childhood--a Cuban revolutionary grandfather; a lawyer mom who once cross-examined a ventriloquist dummy on the stand, and who also taught me everything I know about art; a father (also a lawyer) whose hobbies have included at various times, archery, pizza-making and teaching himself Homeric Greek; and then there's my stint as a quiz-bowl All-American. But Zmirak's episodic memoirs make my life and times look positively beige, and more power to him for it:

When the alumnus interviewing me for my long-shot, first-choice college asked me what I’d done throughout high school, I truthfully answered: “Not much. Mostly, I just prosecuted my religion teachers for heresy.”

He chuckled. “No, seriously.” Then he saw the look on my face—and whipped out his note pad.

I recounted how I’d compiled a dossier on two of our religion teachers, who’d repaid my parents’ tuition by denying… pretty much everything which any martyr has ever died to affirm—from the virginity of Mary to the authority of the pope, from the bodily Resurrection to the Eucharist. I explained how I’d moved from confronting them in class, to notifying the principal, then the bishop, then at last the Papal Nuncio—the pope’s ambassador to the U.S.

“What did your school do?”

“They threatened to expel me. But I had my attorney draft a letter warning them we’d sue. They backed down after that.”

“Where’d you get an attorney?”

“My mother met him at one of her poker games. You know, at the church.” I told him how at that time in Queens, the diocese made up its deficits by holding all-night, high-stakes poker games at Catholic grammar schools. The Irish cops wouldn’t crack down on them, so the games metastasized, and soon filled up every parish in driving distance. And my mother attended so many, that to this day when I hear phrases like “St. Sebastian” “St. Rita,” “Most Precious Blood” and “Corpus Christi,” my first thought is: “Oh crap, another poker game. We’ll be eating Spam again this week.”

All this took place in the late days of the long-lived, much-loved, semi-retarded Bishop Francis Mugavero—who died in 1991 with a spotless record: He’d never turned down an annulment.

I described how the cafeterias at schools from Astoria to Glendale filled up three nights per week—including Fridays in Lent. On one of these sacred evenings, when the priest who sold the chips started handing out bologna sandwiches, my mother rebuked him: “It’s bad enough you’re having this game two days before Palm Sunday,” she rasped. “And bad enough that I’m here. But now you’re serving us meat?” So the pastor stood up and gave every poker player in the room a “special dispensation” to eat his sandwiches. I described these lunchrooms filled with addicted housewives, compliant cops, and shady gents of Mediterranean background with pointy loafers. The middle-aged attorney was fascinated.

“Were they… Mafiosos?”

I shrugged. “Or wanna-bes. All I know is that whenever they used profanity, my mother would reprimand them: ‘Hey! Watch yer mouth! You’re in the presence of a lady.’

“They’d stare at her, swallow…then apologize. They realized what they were dealing with.”

He must have decided that I offered Yale something… distinctive.

Indeed. In the end, Zmirak concludes, all this exotic potential psychic trauma all has worked out for the best:

Instead of a highly efficient Teutonic machine, my psyche works much more like one of Rube Goldberg’s old inventions, creaking along in the manner of the Habsburg monarchy, with Turks and Croats side by side, with Sigmund Freud and Karl Lueger smoking cigars at the same café. And that’s how I like things, thank you very much.

Keep on creaking, John. If only there were more out there like you. Come the counter-revolution, we will grant unto thee a wealthy sinecure with an amusing official hat, like Grand Imperial Farrier-General. All I ask in exchange is someday you write a proper autobiography, hopefully with copious illustrations.

Unfortunately, the nefarious Dr. Caligari did not check to see if the shrinking potion he had surreptitiously slipped into Pope Pius's wineglass was labeled properly.

Or:

Popezilla.

An early rendering of the approved design.
It's be quiet on the Shrine this week, because I've been talking up a storm over on The New Liturgical Movement contra the unfortunate new proposal for Holy Family Cathedral in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, a $28 million (Canadian) project that resembles nothing so much as a 1960s Pan-Am terminal, despite a sincere and much-appreciated desire among the designers and planners for noble beauty and local materials. I appreciate the open e-mail ear one of the building committee members has offered to my contrarian sentiments, even if we may agree to disagree.

The somewhat outmoded design, nonetheless, remains a disappointment to me on many levels. We are in an age, surprisingly, of cathedral-building--Los Angeles, Oakland, Houston, Steubenville, and now Saskatoon, and yet, we see not a white garment of churches, but an ecru chasu-alb.


Matthew Alderman. Perspective Study of a Hypothetical Proposal for Saskatoon Cathedral. July 2008. Click to enlarge.
Money is, of course, one of the big issues, but as I have said many times in the past, traditional design is not expensive vis-a-vis modern design. Quality design is expensive, whatever sort you're looking at. And cathedrals deserve the best, or close to it. If this should not be possible, it might be better to wait for better times.

A "high-style" modern building is just as expensive as a "high-style" classical one, and often more. Look at Los Angeles Cathedral, a bloated excrescence with hardly a scrap of ornament on it, and yet the bill came to nearly $200 million. If one is going to spend any money, one should spend it on something good. Better throw in some extra cash and do it right. If you show people beautiful drawings, and aim high, you often get donations. It takes time, but it can happen. Better a cathedral that takes time and care to raise, or no cathedral at all, than a bad one.

Matthew Alderman. Hypothetical counter-proposal for Saskatoon Cathedral. A plan of the principal floor. June 2008. Click to enlarge.
Think of how much money that was raised for the yellow armadillo in L.A. and Oakland's nuclear sugarloaf--if people are willing that much to donate for such hideous structures, think of how they'd flock to something beautiful. And even if a design must be simplified, better a clever classicist to do it; simplicity is more than turning geometric diagrams into construction documents.

Anyway, if you want to know more, head over to The New Liturgical Movement and see what's going on. You will find a brief run-down on the problems of approved design here, and my own hypothetical counter-proposal here and here, which also include some more realistic variations derived from my admittedly somewhat fanciful proposal.

Matthew Alderman. Hypothetical counter-proposal for Saskatoon Cathedral. Perspective of Romanesque alternate scheme. June 2008.

And for my readers in Tallahassee, two Vegemite-related, World Youth Day-themed Sister Giovanna sightings, courtesy Dawn.

(For those of you who don't know her, Sr. G. and I were in kindergarten together. For those who do, she definitely requires no introduction. All I can say is it's starting to get to be like Where's Waldo.)

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then the dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like the morning star full of life and splendor and joy. 0h, what a revolution! and what a heart must I have, to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall! Little did I dream, when she added titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom; little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor, and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult.

"But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded, and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever. Never, never more, shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom! The unbought grace of life, the cheap defense of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise is gone. It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honor, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness."

--Edmund Burke, 1793

I hope zhat Weis pulls zee team togezzer zis year. Georg! Ease up, you are not assisting Holy Mass. Maybe you might get us some zhat... vhat vas it? Oh, zee "taco dip."

It was then that Fr. de Rossi realized that the traditional post-ordination game of musical chairs was about to go horribly wrong.

(Photo from Hallowed Ground, which also features another photo of HSH Princess Grace guaranteed, even more than the the one we posted, to reduce all Catholic males within a 50 mile radius into a happy little puddle of gibbering goo.)

Three sure proofs that God loves us in one convenient photo: the Eucharist, the priesthood, and the existence of Grace Kelly.

Photo from the lovely and talented gals over at the Pious Sodality, who also have excellent taste in haberdashery. Now, I will reassure you of my masculinity by making loud grunting noises.

Bishop Burnham, a name delightfully similar, if completely unrelated, to Bishop Brennan

Today:

The Bishop of Ebbsfleet, the Rt Rev Andrew Burnham, is to lead his fellow Anglo-Catholics from the Church of England into the Roman Catholic Church, the Catholic Herald will reveal this week.

Bishop Burnham... has made a statement asking Pope Benedict XVI and the English Catholic bishops for "magnanimous gestures" that will allow traditionalists to become Catholics en masse.

He is confident that this will happen, following talks in Rome with Cardinal Levada, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and Cardinal Kasper, the Vatican’s head of ecumenism. He was accompanied on his visit by the Rt Rev Keith Newton, Bishop of Richborough, the other Canterbury "flying bishop", who is expected to follow his example.

Bishop Burnham hopes that Rome will offer special arrangements whereby former Anglicans can stay worshipping in parishes under the guidance of a Catholic bishop. Most of these parishes already use the Roman liturgy, but there may be provision for Anglican prayers if churches request it.

Anglican priests who are already married will not be barred from ordination as priests, though Bishop Burnham would not be able to continue in episcopal orders, as he is married and there is an absolute bar on married bishops in the Roman and Orthodox Churches.

Read it all

It would be really, really awesome if the Anglicans are received as a sui iuris Church, so that we would have an actual non-Roman Western Rite (as opposed to the vestigial Mozarabic Rite or the localized Milanese rite), though that seems unlikely from the details provided here.

(Tip of a biretta-worn-with-tippet-surplice-and-hood to Damian Thompson via Fr. Z)

Update: Some commentators aren't so sure

Lord Jesus Christ, give to us the patience of St. Cassian of Imola, who endured a hundred small wounds because of his love for You. Help us to endure the daily trials of life, and attentive to our duties, keep our hearts focused on loving You and serving Your people with the joy of those who acclaim You as our Savior. We ask this in Your Holy Name. Amen. (Prayer for private use only.)

"...Santo Domingo's curiously-named Museum of Dominican Man..."

~Tony Horwitz, visiting Hispaniola in A Journey Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World, 2008.

After the Church of England voted to ordain women to the Episcopate yesterday (itself a surprising instance of Anglicans deciding something definitively), representatives of some 1,300 clergy, including Anglo-Catholics, released their own surprisingly straightforward intent to do something that may be surprising concrete:

The consistent behaviour of the General Synod compels Forward in Faith and the Catholic Group in General Synod to recognise that, without intervention by the House of Bishops, there is little prospect of gaining a synodical majority which would provide a structural solution that would meet the needs of those who, out of obedience to scripture and tradition, are unable in conscience to receive the ordination of women to the episcopate. We will in the coming days continue to explore all possible avenues which might secure our corporate ecclesial future and look to our bishops to facilitate this.

When the celebrated ability of the Church of England to muddle its way through disagreements falters, the Anglican Communion really is on the verge of... something.

(Tip of a biretta-worn-with-tippet-surplice-and-hood to Titus 1:9

This is the single most depressing thing I've read in months:

Then, the interviewer declared: “Your conflict is not so bad. Jennifer-Angelina is worse

Some friends of mine and I were chatting this weekend and the subject of the Holy Kinship came up, those wonderful family-portrait altarpieces showing the immensely complex shape of the extended Holy Family--Mary Salome, Mary Cleophas, James and John, and all the rest. At the National Gallery in Washington, there's a large medieval wood-carving depicting this, with all the women in the foreground, babies playing round their feet, and a oddly despondent set of husbands in the back row, clearly putting the lie to the whole "male-dominated Church" business; as well as a delightful set showing the Salomes and the Cleophases split into two separate family group portraits.



These last two are quite wonderfully charming, showing a kindergarten-aged St. John studiously writing his gospel, as well as, in the other panel, a Buster Brown-wearing baby James Lesser fighting off the family dog with a medieval whirligig. It's hard not to love the Middle Ages after seeing such simultaneously deeply reverent, loving, charming, and even slightly silly images, and makes us wish we were able to balance realism and symbolism, imagination and tradition in our own religious art.



Which reminds me. The story goes that the confusing number of Maries in the New Testament--Mary Salome, Mary Cleophas, and Our Lady--in part stems from a very small-t tradition which has the ever-practical St. Anne marrying three times, which would explain her subsequent flair as a celestial matchmaker (i.e., St. Anne, St. Anne, find me a man; perhaps because nothing rhymes with 'girl,' guys are just on their own here):

Anna solet dici tres concepisse Marias,
Quas genuere viri Joachim, Cleophas, Salomeque.
Has duxere viri Joseph, Alpheus, Zebedeus.
Prima parit Christum, Jacobum secunda minorem,
Et Joseph justum peperit cum Simone Judam,
Tertia majorem Jacobum volucremque Johannem.

Anna is usually said to have conceived three Marys,
Whom her husbands Joachim, Cleophas, and Salome begot.
These [Marys] the men Joseph, Alpheus, and Zebedee took in marriage.
The first bore Christ; the second bore James the Less,
Joseph the Just, with Simon and Jude;
The third, James the Greater and the winged John.

~Jacobus de Voragine, Golden Legend (who else?), ch. 131.

Considering Our Lady was born when St. Anne was effectively barren, one must assume she was the child of her old age, so it is perhaps less startling. I used to find this old legend a bit harder to swallow, since three sisters all named Mary seems just a bit too good to be true.

Then it occurred to me. A whole family of daughters all named Mary? There's a very simple explanation. Of course, when you think about it, the answer's obvious--St. Anne must have just been a good Irish Catholic!

(More, serious, info on the paintings here and here, the sculpture here, and on the concept of the Holy Kinship here.)

Happy Summorum Pontificium One Year Anniversary! Just in case you missed it last go-round, here were our suggestions from last year on how to properly celebrate the continued implementation of what some are now calling the Ratzinger Plan for the rejuvenation of Holy Mother Church:

Of course, I imagine most of our dear readers will be celebrating the Motu Proprio with adult beverages, or fireworks, embassy balls, a Te Deum, courtly masques, Handel violin concertos and other such wonderfully refined entertainments, but let's not forget the kiddies, since they'll be the ones we'll have to be learning how to say Et cum spiritu tuo for those 5 AM low masses. (Girls, you're off the hook in this instance, but if you're lucky, maybe you'll grow up and get to be Catherine Pickstock or St. Joan of Arc or Emily of the Holy Whapping or the like.) In any case, here are some age-appropriate festivities for the little ones--or even your favorite gang of rowdy college students:

1. Pin the maniple on the subdeacon. Determine Gothic or Baroque vestments with liturgical arm-wrestling contest beforehand. Consult Dom Roulin on how to properly fasten this very pesky garment to everyone's favorite minor cleric. (If there are no relevant guidelines for liturgical arm-wrestling in the Pontificale, no doubt we can dig up some esoteric Irish monastic ritual to fill in the gap, like Ordeal by Club Sandwich or Trial by Magic Eight-Ball).*
2. Spin the aspergillum. Whoever "wins" has to exchange the Roman Pax with the person next to him--not so fun if played with elderly bingo ladies or seminarians, but totally awesome if you're sitting next to that cute girl from your sister's Legion of Mary group. Though in that case, best to play without alcohol, to be on the safe side.
3. Rubric or Dare. (Clergy only). Either you cite the correct passage in Fortescue or you have to wear shoebuckles and a biretta to your next Novus Ordo at the Granola Hills World Peace Retirement Home.
4. Hunt the Buskin. Just in case one of your guests is a fully-vested bishop.
5. Ambrosian Liturgical Thurible-Lassoing Competition. Here's one for the Milanese three-sixty degree censer cowboy enthusiast in the audience. (Come now, you know there's at least one in every party.) A great way to rein in wayward lectors!
6. Toilet-Paper Cardinal. Extra points for the best train on his choir-cassock.
7. Musical Cathedras. If you have two (or more!) fully-vested bishops present at your party. More fun than a barrel of apostolic protonotaries de numero. This is reputedly the favorite party game of Cardinal Medina Estévez.
8. Incense boat-boy hazing rituals. Use up all that creativity you shouldn't be expending on mass! Remember that fire is our friend.
9. Low Mass Charades. Guess the saint, feastday, or papal name! For an additional challenge, conduct the game entirely sotto voce while facing the nearest mantelpiece.
10. Motu Mania Drinking Game. Comb news accounts of the famous document. Take one sip of the Veuve for the words "back to the people," "active participation," "nostalgia," or "ultraconservative." Take two sips for any reference to the Good Friday liturgy, "over-50 crowd," "body blow," "spirit of Vatican II," "un-pastoral," "tragedy," "in a dead language," "only in Latin," or "imminent schism." Four sips for "ultratraditionalist," or for mentioning that American congregations, who can sing "Pan de Vida" and Swahili hymns can't handle Latin. Down the whole bottle if the article concludes with the observation that civilization is about to end as a consequence.

*I made those up. The first club sandwich, after all, was invented at St. Gall based on directions in Vitruvius's eleventh book. It was shortly eaten by a laybrother named Wipo who was on his tea break and just wanted to try a bite but discovered he had no self control, and the recipe was lost until the Enlightenment. Meanwhile, it appears that while the Magic Eight Ball was invented in Song Dynasty China, it did not become commonplace in Europe until it appeared in 14th century Spain among an obscure Qabalistic sect of rabbis who venerated billiards as a representation of the triumph of Adam Kadmon over primordial chaos. Situation cloudy, try back later.

Cheers!

Some odd research results from a recent study:

Along with co-author John Bartkowski from the University of Texas at San Antonio and other researchers from the University of West Georgia and the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Blanchard found that people live longer in areas with a large number of Catholic and Mainline Protestant churches. He offers two key reasons for these findings.

"First, these types of churches have what's known as a 'worldly perspective.' Instead of solely focusing on the afterlife, they place a significant emphasis on the current needs of their communities," he said. These religions commonly organize outreach efforts for the needy and homeless, invest in the health infrastructures of their town and participate in other forms of public charity.

"Secondly, these congregations tend to create bridging ties in communities that lead to greater social cohesion among citizens," said Blanchard. This enhanced sense of connection between people provides collective encouragement for healthy behavior.

In contrast to Catholics and Mainline Protestant congregations, Conservative Protestant churches have a mixed effect on community health. The "otherworldly" character of Conservative Protestantism leads congregations in this tradition to focus on the afterlife. Conservative Protestantism is also a more individualistic faith, one in which the believer's personal relationship with God is paramount. These types of churches are thought to downplay the importance of using collective action, including human institutions, to improve the world. Communities dominated by Conservative Protestant churches tend to have higher mortality rates.

I think the degree to which they controlled for economic conditions would be pretty important for the validity of this study.

H/T: The Lead

...will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations from one end of this Continent to the other from this time forward forever more.

~John Adams on how we ought to celebrate the 2nd of July, 1776. Why he was so darn all-fired up about St. Swithun's day, I'll never know.

I shall be away from the Hanseatic Republic of New York for a few days in order to better celebrate the feast of St. Elizabeth of Portugal (and the birth of our most serene Republic a few days late) by consuming mass quantities and watching professionals blow things up on a large scale. (I will probably have to leave my John Adams for King tee-shirt behind to avoid a hazing*). In any case, expect things to be quiet here at the Shrine

*I'm kidding. It really says "Philip II for President." I imagine, for the sake of balance, we'd have either Queen Christina of Sweden or Alexander Hamilton for the veep position.

In 1898 during his solo circumnavigation of the world Joshua Slocum encountered such a group in Durban. Three Boers [...] presented Slocum with a pamphlet in which they set out to prove that the world was flat. President Kruger of the Transvaal Republic advanced the same view: "You don't mean round the world, it is impossible! You mean in the world. Impossible!" [Source].

In other news, the patron saint of Slovenia is known sometimes as Vergilius the Geometer.

So, perhaps May Day is past, and so is the official astronomical start of summer, and St. Jean Baptiste day, but it's heating up and some appropriate seasonal folk music is in order, a version of the Day Song from the Padstow Obby Oss May Day festival, a quaint if inexplicable custom of great antiquity, and one which fortunately looks likely to endure. (Also, it has the unusual honor of having a cover done of it by British folk-rock group Steeleye Span, which, I think, tenaciously still exists out there somewhere, with pretty much none of its original members.)

And like all folk tunes with age-old words, nobody has any clue what it means:

Unite and unite and let us all unite,
For summer is a-coming today,
And whither we are going we will all unite,
In the merry morning of May.

The young men of Padstow, they might if they would,
For summer is a-coming today,
They might have built a ship and gilded her with gold
In the merry morning of May.

The young maids of Padstow, they might if they would,
For summer is a-coming today,
They might have made a garland with the white rose and the red,
In the merry morning of May.

Rise up Mrs. Johnson,
All in your gown of green,
You are as fine a lady as waits upon the queen,
In the merry morning of May.

O! where is King George [sometimes St. George],
O, where is he, O?
He's out in his long-boat,
All on the salt sea O.
Up flies the kite and down falls the lark O,
Aunt Ursula Birdhood she had an old ewe,
And she died in her own park, O.

With the merry ring, adieu the merry spring,
For summer is a-coming today,
How happy are the little birds that merrily doth sing
In the merry morning of May.

Where are the young men that here now should advance,
For summer is a-coming today,
Some they are in England and some they are in France,
In the merry morning of May.

"They are considerable men," he said.

"I know. But have you listened to their conversation? They don't seem to have understood anything they have seen here."

"They have seen the mine. They have understood that to some purpose," Charles Gould interjected, in defence of the visitors; and then his wife mentioned the name of the most considerable of the three. He was considerable in finance and in industry. His name was familiar to many millions of people. He was so considerable that he would never have travelled so far away from the centre of his activity if the doctors had not insisted, with veiled menaces, on his taking a long holiday.

"Mr. Holroyd's sense of religion," Mrs. Gould pursued, "was shocked and disgusted at the tawdriness of the dressed-up saints in the cathedral—the worship, he called it, of wood and tinsel. But it seemed to me that he looked upon his own God as a sort of influential partner, who gets his share of profits in the endowment of churches. That's a sort of idolatry. He told me he endowed churches every year, Charley."

"No end of them," said Mr. Gould, marvelling inwardly at the mobility of her physiognomy. "All over the country. He's famous for that sort of munificence." "Oh, he didn't boast," Mrs. Gould declared, scrupulously. "I believe he's really a good man, but so stupid! A poor Chulo* who offers a little silver arm or leg to thank his god [sic] for a cure is as rational and more touching."

"He's at the head of immense silver and iron interests," Charles Gould observed.

"Ah, yes! The religion of silver and iron. He's a very civil man, though he looked awfully solemn when he first saw the Madonna on the staircase, who's only wood and paint; but he said nothing to me."

~Joseph Conrad, Nostromo, 1904

*Presumably a misspelling of cholo, a word sometimes used in several contexts (sometimes derogatorily, sometimes with pride, sometimes indifferently) to refer to Hispanics of predominantly Indian blood. Any more detailed explanation would make my head hurt. Its first recorded appearance is in a 1609 history by the half-Inca, half-Spanish aristocrat Garcilaso de la Vega, who understandably didn't seem to like it very much.