Pope Benedict's Upcoming Prayer at Ground Zero

Fr. Z has this post on his web page.


Holy Father’s upcoming prayer at Ground Zero
Fr. John Zuhlsdorf @ 9:07 am
The booklet with all the services for the Pope’s USA trip is available. (There is an appendix in the back with prayers in Latin, btw.)
This caught my eye:


O God of love, compassion, and healing,
look on us, people of many different faiths
and traditions,
who gather today at this site,
the scene of incredible violence and pain.
We ask you in your goodness
to give eternal light and peace
to all who died here—
the heroic first-responders:
our fire fighters, police officers,
emergency service workers, and
Port Authority personnel,
along with all the innocent men and women
who were victims of this tragedy
simply because their work or service
brought them here on September 11, 2001.
We ask you, in your compassion
to bring healing to those
who, because of their presence here that day,
suffer from injuries and illness.
Heal, too, the pain of still-grieving families
and all who lost loved ones in this tragedy.
Give them strength to continue their lives
with courage and hope.
We are mindful as well
of those who suffered death, injury, and loss
on the same day at the Pentagon and in
Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
Our hearts are one with theirs
as our prayer embraces their pain and suffering.
God of peace, bring your peace to our violent world:
peace in the hearts of all men and women
and peace among the nations of the earth.
Turn to your way of love
those whose hearts and minds
are consumed with hatred.
God of understanding,
overwhelmed by the magnitude of this tragedy,
we seek your light and guidance
as we confront such terrible events.
Grant that those whose lives were spared
may live so that the lives lost here
may not have been lost in vain.
Comfort and console us,
strengthen us in hope,
and give us the wisdom and courage
to work tirelessly for a world
where true peace and love reign
among nations and in the hearts of all.

At the conclusion of the prayer, the Holy Father is handed an aspergillum.He blesses the ground in all four directions.

Offering it up

I enjoyed this post in Open Wide the Doors of Christ! blog by Sr. Lorraine. I haven't heard much lately about offering it up, but this post reminded me of it.

Offering it up
I've been rereading Pope Benedict's encyclical on hope. He mentions a practice that used to be quite common among Catholics, but seems to have fallen by the wayside. It is the practice of "offering it up."While major sufferings can and do come into our lives--tragedies and severe things that are hard to bear--most of our everyday sufferings are small things that can cause annoyance and discomfort. These things can be turned into opportunities to join our sufferings to those of Jesus for the salvation of the world. The Pope's words made me reflect on this more. Sometimes I forget and waste these chances to offer everything to the Lord. But in some mysterious way that we can't fully understand, I can offer to God through Jesus my aches and pains, a cutting remark from someone, some extra work I didn't want to do, bad weath, or whatever it might be, and God can use that to bring grace to someone anywhere in the world. Benedict says: "What does it mean to offer something up? Those who did so were convinced that they could insert these little annoyances into Christ's great 'com-passion' so that they somehow became part of the treasury of compassion so greatly needed by the human race. In this way, even the small inconveniences of daily life could acquire meaning and contribute to the economy of good and of human love."

The Latin Mass

Because of some recent blog posts, I have been thinking of the old Latin rite of the Mass (Tridentine). I recall it with some nostalgia. I experienced it as a boy and as a teenager. What I recall most strongly was/is its sacredness, Holiness, and sublimeness. Once, a number of years ago, I attended a Pius X Society Mass. I did it to remember things past. It was rewarding. Yet, I must say I was not pleased with some of the participation and recalled the same from my memory. Many of the attendees were in their own world during these Latin rite Masses; some were following along with their Missals and yet many were reading other devotionals, their favorite prayers, etc. (not necessarily bad, I'm sure they were communicating with God). I think the benefit of the new Mass was more active participation.

Yet there is that nostalgia and the longing for that greater sense of the sacred. For whatever benefits of the Novus Ordo I think we lost something important.

Perhaps a trifle, but I miss the choreography, if you will, of the Priest and alter boys as they moved about, their active participation and responses. I was an alter boy in training - learning the Latin responses and movements - though I never completed the training and became one. But what I did experience was important to me.

And I do mean alter boys with deference to members of the opposite sex. I think the shortage of priests is due, in part, because we don't have alter boys in which to plant the seeds of service to God and the church. Yes, we still do have alter boys, sometimes, but the role they play today is very minor; no responses, just holding a candle during the Gospel or holding the Sacramentary for the priest.

Now perhaps there is a change about us. With Pope Benedict's motu proprio Summorum Pontificum there is the possibility of having more Latin rite Masses. Though some priests will have to learn Latin. And none are offered in my area right now. I look forward to attending a Latin Mass now and then.

I call myself a post-Vatican II conservative. What I mean is that I believe many of the reforms were good and necessary. But the liberals went too far. For them change needs to be a constant. But in terms of the Church and Tradition change should be a rarity and thought out.

Where is the beautiful sacred music now? We have churches-in-the-round. Some look like parking structures. Some I can't tell if I am in a Protestant church or Catholic.

I hope we find Summorum Pontificum a help in the reform of the reform. But I also pray it does not lead to further breaks in the church.

For the test of Summorum Pontificum please go to:
http://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/b16SummorumPontificum.htm

For an article on Summorum Pontificum go to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summorum_Pontificum

Send 12 Swiss Guards to arrest them all!

Thanks to AmericanPapist for bringing this video to my attention.

Exposing Culture of Death, Inc.

Exposing Culture of Death, Inc. Mark Stricherz Review from InsideCatholic.com (InsideDigest 30) by Mark Stricherz 3/30/08

Embryo: A Defense of Human Life Robert P. George and Christopher Tollefsen, Doubleday, $23.95, 256 pages

Like a successful corporation, the culture of death is gaining market share. As late as 20 years ago, it was confined mainly to abortion clinics and hospitals. It now has expanded to research labs: ten states permit embryonic stem cell research, while eight states permit human cloning, known as "therapeutic cloning." The end of Roe v. Wade may be near, but in one market at least, Culture of Death, Inc., is poised to achieve greater penetration. Both Democratic presidential candidates, as well as presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain, support taxpayer-financed embryonic stem cell research.

Every political movement needs theorists, and perhaps the best public philosopher against the culture of death is Robert P. George, a professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University and a member of the President's Council on Bioethics. George is the author of several books about religion and politics, including 2001's The Clash of Orthodoxies. Now, he and Christopher Tollefsen, an associate professor of philosophy at the University of South Carolina, have written Embryo: A Defense of Human Life. It is an impressively reasoned and argued book, one that undercuts Culture of Death, Inc.'s, intellectual foundations.

George and Tollefsen make three main arguments. Their first is that a human embryo or zygote is, well, human. In their definition, the embryonic boy or girl is a "whole living member of the species Homo sapiens in the earliest stage of life." When this human embryo comes into being is trickier. In the vast majority of cases, an embryo is a single organism during the end of fertilization or conception; in the cases of twins, the two embryos become separate organisms during the formation of the primitive streak during gastrulation, a process that occurs during the third week after conception.

The embryo has three defining characteristics: He or she is distinct from the mother and father; possesses the genetic makeup distinct of humans; and is a complete or whole organism. This is a rational position, but it's widely misunderstood. Some intellectuals compare embryos to sperms or eggs. Others liken them to somatic cells, like skin cells or muscle cells. The error in both suppositions is that embryos are functionally separate from the mother and father. Left to its own resources, "a skin cell will not become a human embryo."

The authors' second argument is that embryos are persons. Their definition of personhood is biological: The embryo possesses a basic natural capacity for reason and self consciousness, the ability to choose, and to use language. "Our position is that we human beings have the special kind of value that makes us subjects of rights by virtue of what (i.e. the kind of entity) we are," they write.

In opposition to this view are two types of moral dualism. The developmental version equates personhood with immediately exercisable capacity -- the ability to do something now. The attribution version equates personhood with the ability to decide now. The weakness of the development version is its logical conclusion: If immediate exercisable capacity is the criterion for personhood, people in comas and asleep would qualify as non-persons. The weakness of the attribution version is that it's analogous to the law of the jungle: The powerful decide the fate of the weak.

The authors' third argument is that human embryos deserve legal protection. They affirm natural law theory, which posits that humans are good in themselves and ought not to be used as a means to an end. Of the principles of natural law, the number-one right is the right of "an innocent human person not to be directly killed or maimed." One competing ethical system is utilitarianism, which maintains that right conduct prefers pleasure to pain. Princeton ethicist Peter Singer argues that all sentient creatures deserve to be free from suffering; if certain animals and humans cannot feel pain, their interests are subordinate to others. George and Tollefsen contend that if this utilitarian argument is taken to its logical conclusion, late-term fetuses and very young newborns could be killed because they cannot reason and are not self-aware. As you might guess, Embryo is not a book for the casual reader. Its language is often abstract and confusing; sprinkled throughout the text are highly technical, biological words -- blastomeres, trophoblasts, the zona pellucida. The book's structure in one key chapter is faulty; the authors devote 22 pages to describing the origins of life without a reminder of why the description is important. Also, the authors' use of the term "it" to describe embryos is ill advised; the argument for protecting unborn human lives depends on viewing them as subjects or persons, not objects or things.

In fact, the thesis of Embryo is not especially original; several of its arguments can be found in Ramesh Ponnuru's The Party of Death. Even so, the book is essential reading for university students, activists on both sides of the debate, and public philosophers. Its chief virtue -- and it's a major virtue -- is the totality of its arguments, the wholesale assault on the notion that a human embryo is an unequal being. George and Tollefsen show that the tiniest human embryo is the moral equal of the largest adult. An embryo is not a "potential life," as the Supreme Court has termed this nascent life in several of its abortion cases, but rather a "life with potential." As the reference to the nation's highest court suggests, the implications of Embryo could not be bigger.

Those who accept its logic but reject its conclusion should acknowledge that they favor the killing not only of human embryos, but also of other groups of people, such as those in comas and very young newborns. After all, a human zygote is no more likely to reason or speak than a comatose person or a day-old infant.

Those who accept its logic and conclusion should acknowledge that they favor extending legal protection to human embryos. After all, every other class of human beings is subject to the law. The authors call for banning all embryo-destructive research and "regulat[ing] the production of human embryos in IVF procedures to ensure that couples create no more embryos than they could reasonably expect to bring to term."

In other words, George and Tollefsen have pulled off a rare feat. They have shown that Culture of Death, Inc., must either expand to new markets or have its charter revoked.

Amen and Sign of the Cross

One of my pet peeves is the lack of enthusiasm many Catholics have when saying "Amen". This is most noticeable when receiving Communion. Most times when in line to receive, I cannot hear the person in front of me say "Amen" before he/she receives the Host. Worst many Eucharist Ministers mumble "The Body/Blood of Christ". I can hardly hear them. Come on guys, do we believe what we are doing. Are we not acclaiming "Yes, this IS the Body of Christ". Let's respond boldly and clearly from our heart, "AMEN". When I was a Eucharist Minister I always clearly and proudly said "The Body of Christ".

In watching Into Great Silence (see post below) I noted that these holy men always made a large sign of the cross. Their hand went from their forehead down to their belly. It was done rather slowly and with intent. I would say, normally, my sign of the cross went from my forehead to my diaphragm. So taking their lead I am trying to improve my sign of the cross. Last Sunday I was watching people in Church just after receiving the Host. Many of them made the sign of the cross immediately afterward. But many made these tiny movements. Hardly touching their foreheads and commonly only reaching down to their chin or neck, and quickly done.

This is a sign of our faith. Let us make the sign of the cross purposely and intently. AMEN.

Into Great Silence

In an earlier post I mentioned my Good Friday entrance into silence. Not part of my usual routine. Yesterday I was able to watch this rewarding video "Into Great Silence". I was greatly impressed by these holy men and it touched me.

Netflix says this about the movie in its "At a Glance":

A prize winner at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, director Philip Groening's study of the Grande Chartreuse monastery introduces a world of austere beauty, following the daily activities of the resident monks, whose silence is broken only by prayer and song. With no other sound save the natural rhythms of age-old routines being carried out, the film captures the simplicity -- and profundity -- of lives lived with absolute purpose and presence.

First of all, I would highly recommend watching/experiencing this video. I surely wouldn't be able to live this life - you can't teach an old dog new tricks. But it taught me, along with my Good Friday experience, that I need to bring occasional silence into my life.

Violence is Wrong

Remember Me Passion of The Christ

Remember Me by Josh Groban

Sermon for Vigil of Easter

A very good Sermon for Vigil of Easter
from What Does The Prayer Really Say? by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf
http://wdtprs.com/blog/2008/03/sermon-for-vigil-of-easter/