The opposite of the "selfie"


Many thanks to a reader who sent me this timely photo of St John Baptist and the Agnus Dei, painting c.1520 from the church of Wiggenhall St Mary the Virgin, Norfolk (photo summer 2013)

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Text of the new ICEL translation

The text of the new ICEL translation of the Ordinary of the Mass, courtesy of Fr Sean Finnegan and friends. I will get working on producing some nicer versions in Word and pdf unless someone else can do that little job and let me know in the combox. UPDATE Fr Sean has sent me a rough and ready pdf which you can download [Ed: link removed.] (Please note that this is not from an official source, and is not the final text, and there may still be quibbles about a word here or there.) [text removed at the request of ICEL] See the post " Letter from ICEL " for explanation.
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1962 Missal pdf online

The Church Music Association of America and Jeffrey Tucker of the New Liturgical Movement have made available the 1962 Missal online in pdf format (72Mb). The file is hosted at Musica Sacra , the website of the CMAA, thanks to a generous gift from Fr Robert Skeris While you are at it, take a look at the articles clarifying the rules for music at Low Mass and music at High Mass .
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Saint Agatha - a saint for today

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St Agatha, from Catania in Sicily, was martyred in 251 during the brief but ferocious persecution of Decius. At that time, everyone was ordered to sacrifice to the Roman gods by a certain day determined by the local authorities. When you had done so, you got a certificate (a libellus ). Some Christians were able to bribe an official or knew someone who could get a libellus – they were referred to as libellatici and were considered as having betrayed the faith; though not as seriously as those who had offered sacrifice to the Roman gods. St Agatha’s martyrdom is a classic example of the combination of two virtues, chastity and fortitude even in the face of torture and death. The Virgin Martyrs are sometimes despised in the world today by those who are particularly outraged by chastity and the readiness to quit this earthly life for heaven. St Agatha’s passion began when she rejected the amorous advances of a prefect Quintianus. He gave her to Aphrodisia, the keeper of a brothel wh...
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St Irenaeus: not a psychobabble practitioner

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Window of St Irenaeus by Lucien Bégule (1901) The single most celebrated quotation from St Irenaeus, the apostolic Father who lived from about 130 to about 202AD is “ Gloria Dei vivens homo .” ( Adversus Haereses 20-1-7) As my old patristics teacher, Father Antonio Orbe once said as politely as he could to a student who wanted to study the dictum for his dissertation: “This phrase is very often cited, but always wrongly understood.” Not a statement of self-actualising psychobabble The venerable professor said this because the much-quoted statement used to be widely misused to enlist St Irenaeus as a supporter of the personalist psychology of the 1970s. In this context, it would usually be quoted as “The glory of God is man fully alive” by which is meant man fully self-actualised, replete with “healthy” self-esteem. You could find this misinterpretation of St Irenaeus in books written by priest psychologists, in pastoral letters, and in sermons. I have sadly even seen it filt...
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She shall crush thy head

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A commenter says (of St Jerome's translation of Genesis 3.15) "That is not what the lectionary says." I am sure he/she is right, whichever lectionary is used. In fact, the Nova Vulgata , the Church's new official translation of the Bible in Latin, translates the Hebrew with the neuter ipsum . Here is the (old) Vulgate text again for the sake of reference: Inimicitias ponam inter te et mulierem et semen tuum et semen illius ipsa conteret caput tuum et tu insidiaberis calcaneo eius. (I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel.) The word ipsa translates an epicene Hebrew personal pronoun: one that has only one form to denote either male or female. It can legitimately be translated either as "he", "she", or "it." In one place, St Jerome quoted the Vetus Latina version which gives ipse . (Lib. Quaest. Heb. in Gen. PL 23.943) and this has been t...
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