First of all, there’s a new Latin lesson, #24, on the relative pronouns, like who, whom, which, and that.  I haven’t figured out where I’m going with the next lesson yet.

Here are a couple cool sciency things.  The first is about an archaeological dig in Turkey where they’ve found almost 50 large carved stones, sort of like Stonehenge if there were lots more stones and they had lots of stuff carved on them.  The big catch is that carbon dating says they’re at least 12,000 years old, at least five thousand years older than Stonehenge.  That makes them a couple thousand years older than agriculture, and the arrowheads they’re finding with the stones support the idea that they were built by hunter-gatherers.

The problem with that is, scientists have been telling us that humans weren’t able to build things until they settled down in one place for a long time, and that they couldn’t do that until the Agricultural Revolution when they started growing crops.  This blows that theory away.  The assumption was that any group of people large enough to build something lasting would wipe out the wild game and have to move on too soon to bother building.   I suspect most people today underestimate just how many animals there were to eat back then.

The funny part about the article is that after the author points out how this blows away some assumptions about history that have been accepted as fact, he comes up with some pretty wild theories of his own.  Interesting, though.

Here’s one about a new technology that will let you have a 3-D model of your baby before it’s born.  That’s very cool, but if it’s going to look like the one in the picture, they should probably warn the parents how much it looks like a goblin.  I guess it’d benefit from the same thing that makes people say every newborn is beautiful: when it’s your little goblin, it’s the most beautiful thing ever.

Here’s an inspirational one, about Fr. Tim Vakoc, a priest who was seriously injured in 2004 while serving as an Army chaplain in Iraq.  He just passed away recently after spending the last five years in a nursing home.  It sounds like he had an incredible amount of faith and did a lot of good for the soldiers in his care.  Now that we’ve got a new president, we don’t hear much about them anymore, but an awful lot of people are still over there.

To end on a lighter note, here’s a funny bit from a Simpsons episode.  Homer and Bart have decided to become Catholic, and Marge is having a dream after Ned Flanders tells her that people of different religions go to different heavens:

"If this is a Catholic Church, then where is the CRUCIFIX!"

* * *

My cell phone just makes and receives phone calls, and that’s the way I like it.  No pictures or video, no downloadable ring tones, no texting plan, no games—just phone calls, and as few of those as possible.  But I have to admit this is kind of cool:  (H/T Fallible Blogma)

* * *

The next one looks both fun and inspirational.  Every year, over 10,000 people make a 72-mile, three-day pilgrimage, from Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris to the cathedral at Chartres.  I don’t know what the terrain is like there, but it doesn’t look much different from ours here.  Maybe we should do that.  If you take back roads, Jacksonville is about 70 miles from Quincy, and I’m pretty sure there’s a Catholic church there, so we could walk from there to St. Rose.  Pilgrimages seem European somehow, or foreign at least; but so do processions and we’ve done those, so who knows.  Anyway, watch it; it’s pretty cool.  Thanks to PBS for showing it.

* * *

On to some health-related links.  One argument the low-fat crowd makes is that we haven’t done it yet.  They claim we’re still eating way too much fat and meat, and that’s why heart disease and diabetes and all the other illnesses of modern society keep increasing.  If we’d just do as they tell us, they say, we’d all lose weight and be healthier.

That’s bunk.  Any cookbook from before 1975 will show it’s bunk.  I’ve got a cookbook on grilling from 1965, and the meat cuts in the pictures have thick fat around the edges and lots of marbling.  The recipes in it commonly say to put a pat of butter on each cut when it comes off the grill—real butter, of course, not margarine.

But that isn’t really proof.  Maybe people were ignoring the cookbooks and eating lots of pasta and vegetables and fruit compared to today, right?  Well, no.  Here’s a post with some nice graphs that show that we have followed the low-fat advice since the 1970s.  We’ve cut back on red meat, dairy, and eggs, and increased our consumption of poultry, fish, fruits, vegetables, grains, and starches.  Of course, when the fat went away so did much of the flavor, so we replaced it with extra sugar, but that was supposed to be okay.  Sugar was no longer harmful, at least not in comparison to fat.

The truth is, we haven’t been ignoring their wonderful advice at all.  We followed all the advice from the days of George McGovern’s vegetarian-sponsored legislation in 1977, up to the USDA’s food pyramid, and it’s made us fatter and ramped up diabetes, heart disease, and all the other illnesses of civilization.  It’s time we recognize that their recommendations came from radical vegetarians, grain processors, and pharmaceutical companies, and tell them all to stuff it.

* * *

Here’s another video by Gary Taubes., talking about what really makes us fat and unhealthy.  It’s similar to the video I posted the other day, but it’s longer (about an hour and a half), so he’s able to go into more detail on some things.  He deserves a medal for going into hospitals and universities and telling people truths that most won’t even be willing to consider.

* * *

Here’s one from GraphJam that, unfortunately, comes too close to describing my work process:

Photo by GraphJam.com

* * *

Here’s a video that does a good job of describing what’s going on with government spending and debt.  As I’ve said before, Bush was very bad about borrowing and spending, and this shows that.  Obama just happens to be much, much worse.

* * *

And here’s one guy’s suggestion for what we ought to do about it—go on a consumption strike.  It’s not realistic, of course; if people had that much self-control, we wouldn’t be in the situation in the first place, and the third party candidates would have gotten more than a couple percent of the vote in the last election.  But it’s a nice thought.  The way things are going, we may be doing what he says involuntarily before long anyway.

* * *

As for the state of the economy, I don’t know for sure that we’re headed into a major depression.  No one can really know.  But here’s an interesting comparison between today’s economic situation and that in 1929-1930, when the Great Depression was just getting started.  It charts a lot of different indicators and different countries, so it’s not just focused on one factor in the US that might be balanced by other factors or the global economy.  There sure are a lot of similarities in those graphs…

* * *

Well, that cleared a lot of the extra tabs out of my browser, so I’ll stop there.  We’re headed out to dress chickens tomorrow, so I’ll probably be reporting on that next time.

Here are a couple nice new video ads (one and two) by CatholicsComeHome.org, that I guess have been on TV somewhere. They’re emotionally powerful, but at the same time they make their case simply and clearly without being pushy. They say, “Here’s who we are and what we’re about, and we’d love to have you join us.” I think they’re very well done, and there are also some nice shots of traditional services in the first one. Check out their site if you want to see more.

Here’s a good article from the New York Times (believe it or not) about two women who went into business with a monastery. A quote:

“I was scared to death,” said Ms. Griffith, 50, a Web designer and divorced grandmother who is not Catholic. “I’ve been to Catholic weddings, but I don’t know anything about monks. Do they talk? What do I do when they pray? Do I sing this stuff? I don’t know Latin.”

Here’s an interesting (and long) article about the early history of the Church. I liked this bit:

Since The Da Vinci Code and other dubious best-sellers claim that early Christianity was anti-feminist, it’s worth recalling that large numbers of women during these centuries thought otherwise. The Church’s teachings about marriage and family, along with its strictures against divorce, abortion, and the exposure of newborn babies — all of which a pagan husband could force his wife to do, no questions asked — resonated with women who were treated like chattel under the old dispensation. In the Acts of the Apostles, Luke goes out of his way to mention female converts like Lydia and Damaris. Even at this early date, women played a key role in the Church’s evangelical mission. No world religion has ever given women a more important place than Roman Catholicism.

I just discovered G.K. Chesterton, thanks to the folks at St. John Fisher Bookstore who came to St. Rose for the business expo. That’s a little embarassing to admit, considering that Chesterton is one of the most prolific and important writers of the twentieth century. But hey, I was busy reading sci-fi and fantasy during my school years.

Anyway, Chesteron provided a ton of great quotes, so I’m sure I’ll be writing more about him in the future. Here’s one about Catholicism, written after he converted. (H/T Fallibleblogma.com)

“It is impossible to be just to the Catholic Church. The moment men cease to pull against it they feel a tug towards it. The moment they cease to shout it down they begin to listen to it with pleasure. The moment they try to be fair to it they begin to be fond of it. But when that affection has passed a certain point it begins to take on the tragic and menacing grandeur of a great love affair.”

We learned this week that our Bishop, George Lucas, has been promoted to Archbishop of the Omaha diocese. I don’t know a lot about him, except that he had a real mess to clean up when he came to Springfield, and that he was supportive of the Latin Mass as soon as the people here in Quincy approached him about it. I’ll always be thankful to him for that, and I wish him well in his new appointment.

Surprises are fun—in birthday gifts and haunted houses.  I don’t find that they’re very conducive to a prayerful state, though.  I’m trying to keep these posts positive about the Latin Mass, rather than a list of negatives about the Novus Ordo Mass, but one thing I never liked with the NO Mass was the tendency for surprises.  I’ve never seen extremes like clown masses or Dorito “hosts” around here, but you never knew when you’d be asked to hold hands with the people across the aisle, or a priest would start the Mass by striding out front and asking the out-of-towners to introduce themselves, or someone would give a talk after Mass with a puppet.

Even if you enjoy those things, the variations mean you have to keep your head up and stay prepared so you can react when something unexpected happens.  (If you’re easily spooked, they make you feel like a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs, as the saying goes.)  If you’re deep in prayer, the people next to you will think you hate them when you don’t hold hands or whatever the latest thing is.  I much prefer the consistency of the Latin Mass.  There will be no surprises, so I know exactly what’s going to happen (now that I’ve been to a few), and I can relax and be as deeply meditative or as focused on the Sacrament as I like.  The priest is going to say all the prayers and readings as they are in the missal, the bells are going to ring at the proper times, and everything will be nice and consistent.  No surprises.

Photo from Flickr.com

That’s not only true from week to week within a single church that practices the Roman Rite, but also for all Latin Masses held around the world.  You might walk into two Novus Ordo Masses in the same town and have two very different experiences, but you can walk into two Latin Masses anywhere in the world and assist at the very same Mass (except for the sermon, which will be in the local language).  That gives me a sense of unity with the entire Church that I never felt before.

This unity even stretches over time, as the Latin Mass has been changed very little for the past 1500 years, and substantially goes all the way back to the Apostles.  At any hour of the day, a Mass with the same language and motions and meaning is being said somewhere on the surface of the earth.  In a sense, the Latin Mass is one long prayer that Catholics of all nations and races have been saying consistently and continuously for centuries!  That seems like a very powerful idea to me; one that inspires me whenever I’m part of it.

When I’m at Mass now, I’m praying the same prayers and assisting at the same rite as my grandparents (until the 1970s, anyway), my great-grandparents, and most of the saints.  There’s a real feeling of connection there that goes way beyond the group of people in the pews.  I’m not usually much of a joiner, but that’s one “community” I like being a part of.

Everything’s Better in Latin

One thing I always tell people is it’s not just about the language. There are many other differences between the TLM and the Novus Ordo (the new Mass said in most churches today). But the Latin is an important part of it, for a variety of reasons. When you hear someone speaking in a foreign language, it gets your attention, whether you can understand it or not. It’s an immediate sign that something unusual is happening here. That helps me focus and want to know what the speaker is saying and why.

Latin is also important because it’s a dead language, so it isn’t changing anymore. The meanings of the words are the same as they were centuries ago. Modern languages are always changing, and the meanings of words can change quite a bit in a short time. The sentence God Is the End of Man is inscribed over the door of a school near here. When that was written, the “final purpose” meaning of the word “end” must have been more commonly used. But now, I picture those kids looking up at that and thinking of God as a sort of Terminator character who will come “end” them someday.

If our prayers are in English, we’re going to have to keep tweaking them over the years to keep the meaning the same. (Anyone know what “vouchsafe” means? It was all over English prayers a century ago.) If you’ve ever studied a foreign language, or just used an online translator to translate something to a foreign language and back again, you know how quickly the meaning can vary with each translation. By sticking with Latin, we don’t have to worry about that. We may use different English words than they used 500 years ago to get the same meaning, but the essential prayers themselves and the meanings of the words won’t have changed.

Different languages lend themselves better to different uses. English is a very blunt, stripped-down language, great for quick dialogue and technical writing. Latin, with its more complex structure, has a formality that works well in the liturgy. Many prayers were originally written in Latin, so they flow better in it than when translated into another language. The Ave Maria (Hail Mary), for example, is awkward in English, but it flows like poetry in Latin, even if you don’t know what it means.

So it’s not about stubbornness, or using something old for oldness’s sake. The Latin language itself adds something to the Mass, especially when combined with the things I’ll talk about in the next articles.

The furnace had gone out last week, so we had a chilly 8:00am Mass. It was fixed by the time Mass ended, but it hadn’t really built up any heat yet. It was cold enough outside that everyone was wearing coats, though, so we survived okay.

I was the one who printed up the Propers (a sheet of the prayers and readings that aren’t in the missals in the pews because they change from week to week), so I almost choked when I was following along with the reading and got to “nammer” instead of “manner.” Apparently I need to proofread those when I copy-and-paste them from a web site. There were a few other typos; I hope to have this Sunday’s mistake-free.

I’ve been asked a lot of questions about the Latin Mass since all this started. Some people are interested in attending, but they aren’t sure what they’re getting into. I was the same way the first time I went, wondering if there was anything I should learn first, so I wouldn’t goof up and look like a newbie. (Note: the following are my understanding sprinkled with my opinions, not official instructions by any means.)

Don’t worry about goofing up; no one will be watching you. Dress nice and sit about halfway back or more, so you can watch the people in front of you to know when to do what. (We regulars are still shaky on all that, so if you sit up front, you might mess the rest of us up. ) Missals are in the pews, and the Propers will be on a folded sheet of paper you can get at the entrance. There’s usually someone there who will be glad to make sure you have what you need if you tell them you’re a first-timer. The missal tells you what’s happening when, and shows the prayers in English and Latin. Or leave the missal closed and focus on what’s happening at the altar and pray. Trying to follow along exactly when you’re new at it all can be distracting.

Women are encouraged to wear dresses or skirts, but I’ve seen lots of slacks and some jeans so far, and no one’s been kicked out. Try not to wear something that has people asking about your Buns of Steel workout, though. Men should dress nice too. I think almost every guy has a pair of slacks and a shirt with a collar, and if you don’t wear your nice clothes to church, what are you saving them for? But if all you have are jeans and you’re really strapped for cash, don’t let that stop you from coming. (Again, my opinion.)

Many women like to wear a veil or hat, as was required a couple generations ago. I’ll save the reasons for that for another post I’m working on, but don’t feel like you’ll stand out if you don’t wear one. I’m a big fan of hats on women in general, so I hope it catches on.

Since the Mass is the 1962 Roman Rite, there’s no Communion in the hand. Communion is taken on the tongue, kneeling at the Communion rail, as it was for centuries before all the changes in the late 1960s. If a disability prevents you from kneeling or climbing the stairs to the Communion rail, sit in the front pew and I’m pretty sure Father will bring it to you, but you might want to make sure he knows your situation. By the way, Confession is available before Mass, if you didn’t arrive in a state of grace. There should be a Rosary before Mass, but I don’t know if we’re organized enough yet to make sure someone leads that every time.

I think that covers everything you really need to know. If you’ve been thinking of coming but weren’t sure what was required, I hope you’ll relax and join us. The Low Mass at 8:00 takes about an hour; and the High Mass at 11:00 takes somewhat longer. Make sure you join us in the hall behind the church after Mass and introduce yourself. (Hey, I’m known for being anti-social, but I’ll be there.) If you decide you’d like to join, you don’t have to drop out of your current parish, since St. Rose is technically a chaplaincy, not a parish, for now.

I went to both Masses, because I plan to go to the 8:00 most of the time, but I’d never been to a High Mass, and I wanted to hear the choir sing, so I went to that one too.  The Low Mass at 8:00 was what I’ve gotten used to, with a few minor differences from the way Fr. Schlangen did it.  I can report that the kneelers are reasonably comfortable—certainly better than kneeling on marble like the servers were up front.  I heard there were 140 people there, which was more than I expected for the early Mass.

High Mass was pretty impressive.  The choir sounded good, but they need more voices to pump out enough volume to fill the place.  We had nine (9!) servers, and they all had things to do.  I told someone that the main thing we had to do when I served the Novus Ordo was try not to fall asleep, but these guys stayed busy.  They did a great job of keeping it all straight, considering it was their first time.  Kudos to them and the older guys who have been training them.

There was some confusion in the pews about when to stand, sit, and kneel.  The missal tells us when, but with the choir singing, I think people lost track of where we were exactly.  At one point I and about a dozen other people sat down, and no one else did.  We’ll get better with practice, though.  As Father said in his sermon, the Latin Mass does take some getting used to.  It has less dialogue between priest and congregation, and more internal communication between the individual and God.  During the consecration, there are long stretches of silence where we have nothing to “do,” so we have to get used to the idea of praying and using that time to prepare for Communion.  As Pope Saint Pius X said, “Don’t pray at Holy Mass, but pray the Holy Mass.”

There were about 230 people at High Mass, so nearly every pew was in use, but there was room for 100 or so more.  Not counting the people like me who went to both, we probably had nearly 350 altogether, so that was a great start.  In the hall afterwards, people were full of excitement and so thankful for Father Devillers and everyone who worked to make this happen.  I didn’t take any pictures, but I hope to get some from someone who did, and put them up soon.  I’ll keep writing about St. Rose and the Latin Mass, since I’m interested and involved in it, but also because it brings me more traffic than anything else I write!