The looters and their laws

My old friend Stephen Moore, formerly of the Cato Institute and now with the Wall Street Journal's editorial page, has had the same thought running through his head the past four months as I have:

Many of us who know Rand's work have noticed that with each passing week, and with each successive bailout plan and economic-stimulus scheme out of Washington, our current politicians are committing the very acts of economic lunacy that "Atlas Shrugged" parodied in 1957, when this 1,000-page novel was first published and became an instant hit.

Rand, who had come to America from Soviet Russia with striking insights into totalitarianism and the destructiveness of socialism, was already a celebrity. The left, naturally, hated her. But as recently as 1991, a survey by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club found that readers rated "Atlas" as the second-most influential book in their lives, behind only the Bible.

For the uninitiated, the moral of the story is simply this: Politicians invariably respond to crises -- that in most cases they themselves created -- by spawning new government programs, laws and regulations. These, in turn, generate more havoc and poverty, which inspires the politicians to create more programs . . . and the downward spiral repeats itself until the productive sectors of the economy collapse under the collective weight of taxes and other burdens imposed in the name of fairness, equality and do-goodism.

In the book, these relentless wealth redistributionists and their programs are disparaged as "the looters and their laws." Every new act of government futility and stupidity carries with it a benevolent-sounding title. These include the "Anti-Greed Act" to redistribute income (sounds like Charlie Rangel's promises soak-the-rich tax bill) and the "Equalization of Opportunity Act" to prevent people from starting more than one business (to give other people a chance). My personal favorite, the "Anti Dog-Eat-Dog Act," aims to restrict cut-throat competition between firms and thus slow the wave of business bankruptcies. Why didn't Hank Paulson think of that?

These acts and edicts sound farcical, yes, but no more so than the actual events in Washington, circa 2008. We already have been served up the $700 billion "Emergency Economic Stabilization Act" and the "Auto Industry Financing and Restructuring Act." Now that Barack Obama is in town, he will soon sign into law with great urgency the "American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan." This latest Hail Mary pass will increase the federal budget (which has already expanded by $1.5 trillion in eight years under George Bush) by an additional $1 trillion -- in roughly his first 100 days in office.

The current economic strategy is right out of "Atlas Shrugged": The more incompetent you are in business, the more handouts the politicians will bestow on you. That's the justification for the $2 trillion of subsidies doled out already to keep afloat distressed insurance companies, banks, Wall Street investment houses, and auto companies -- while standing next in line for their share of the booty are real-estate developers, the steel industry, chemical companies, airlines, ethanol producers, construction firms and even catfish farmers. With each successive bailout to "calm the markets," another trillion of national wealth is subsequently lost. Yet, as "Atlas" grimly foretold, we now treat the incompetent who wreck their companies as victims, while those resourceful business owners who manage to make a profit are portrayed as recipients of illegitimate "windfalls."

Anonymity has no rights

Henceforth, anyone who comments on this site anonymously forfeits his posting rights. That doesn't necessarily mean I will delete unsigned comments in every circumstance, but there will be no benefit of the doubt granted to questionable or antagonistic statements. "Anonymous" means the failure to use a consistent I.D.; I recognize that some of you cannot sign your actual name due to professional and other considerations.

"My Mass of the Year"

A reader assisted at the 9 am celebration of the Ordinary Form in Latin at Cincinnati's St. Cecilia today. Here was his reaction:

My Mass of the year was at 9 a.m. today at my childhood parish, St. Cecilia, in Oakley. The celebrant, Fr. Earl Fernandes, was liturgically magnificent, particularly with a practice session beforehand with a 7 page "missalette".

Many golden memories from 60 plus years ago quickly came to mind, when we attended daily, served regularly, prayed and responded in those same Latin words and chants.

Did anyone else assist? How well-attended was it? My duties at the Son Rise Morning Show kept me away today, but I hope to be there in two weeks. Remember, it's the second and fourth Friday, at least in January. Let's show Frs. Weber and Fernandes our support by attending so that it continues.

Resolved: To leave you on your own

Rochester's Bishop Matthew Clark issues a set of resolutions for his flock. Since none require him to lift a finger, I suppose my Rochester readers should interpret this to mean they're on their own in 2009 -- just like last year.

Let us resolve as one body in Christ to make a real effort to become better Christians in word and deed in 2009. By this I mean that we get more involved in the daily life of our parishes; that we go about our daily work and family life in a conscious imitation of Christ; and that we seek to learn more about our faith so that we can experience a deeper knowledge of God and the fruits of that knowledge.

This would include regular Mass attendance — every Sunday. Let us come to church not just out of a desire to fulfill this obligation of our Catholic faith but with a voracious hunger to worship the Lord in joyful community. For some, this might mean making a stronger effort to plunge into the Scriptures on our own, to attend a Bible study, to read good books and good Web sites about Christian life and practice.

For still others, this might mean a concerted effort to keep the spirit of the Sunday Mass in our hearts beyond the drive home from church. It will mean that we go to work each Monday as kinder, more compassionate supervisors or more cooperative, positive employees; that we ask God for the strength to leave our stress at the workplace as best we can and go home each day to nurture a warm and loving family life in the image of the Holy Family.

Let us resolve to practice good stewardship as Jesus asked us, to share our time, talent and treasure in every meaning of those words. For some, this would mean looking for and accepting opportunities to volunteer in our community, at our schools, at nonprofits, in our parishes. What a difference we might make if each of us and all of us together made a daily practice of asking people, “How can I help?” more than we ever have. What would happen if all of us truly pondered the material ways God has blessed us and chose to sacrifice to help not only people we love and know but complete strangers? What if each of us made a point of not letting a single day in 2009 go by without helping someone in need?

Let us resolve as a diocese to answer our president-elect’s call to become more involved, more active and more knowledgeable as Americans, regardless of our political views or how we voted this past November. Let each of us make a point of studying the issues that need attention or that call us to debate, from the economy and energy to defense and human-life issues and myriad others. Let it never be said that we failed out of ignorance. Let us read, study and question and stretch our minds, as citizens of a democracy ought to do. ...

In the comment box, a reader submits an open letter:

Dear Bishop Clark,

Let's be frank. I have actively practiced all those things you proposed in your New Year's treatise for many years now. I have said yes to just about everything asked of me by my pastor over the past 15 years. My family has gone to Mass every Sunday and supported our parish financially every week. I started a rosary group. My kids are altar servers. I studied the candidates and voted for those with pro-life records. It was the right thing to do. Still, what has this gotten for me?

You closed my school, my mother's school, and my kids' school, all in one fell swoop, so that you could balance your budget. You are crippling our parish with your unfunded mandates. The loss of the school has thrown our parish's CYO program into disarray -- what is winter without CYO basketball!? We are struggling to maintain an empty school building in a down economy. Then you and your staff imposed a $12,000 increase in our parish CMA "tax" the very next year.

I would like to see the leadership of our diocese practice the resolutions it preaches; not give lip service to some lofty virtues. It would help if there was some positive direction that the diocese was headed, rather than the death spiral we are currently in. Forgive my cynicism, but the hurt imposed by these painful changes runs deep. I and many others feel abandoned by our local church. While these resolutions sound nice, the sentiment behind them seems hollow.

If anyone knows how I can place a permanent, more elegant, countdown clock on this site, please drop me a line.

Low-key, focused, prayerful

This is one morning when it would have paid to sleep in. I assisted at the 7:15 am Mass at St. Louis Church with Fr. Binzer this morning. Here's what a reader tells me I missed at noon:

Thought you would be interested in the Coadjutor Archbishop Dennis Schnurr's appearance to say mass at St Louis at noon today. I usually go to St X for weekday mass and just happened on a birthday whim to go elsewhere.

His sermon lasted about 3 minutes but managed to recall Benedict's New Year's message about peace, which Archbishop Schnurr said emphasized poverty, certainly in material things but more importantly addressed spiritual poverty; Archbishop Schnurr then tied that to today's gospel reading where Jesus reads the words of Isaiah, and urged all of us to spread the glad tidings of the Kingdom to work for peace. So good, and inexplicably rare, to hear any priest use the thoughts and language of our gifted pope. If I were a priest, I'd be cribbing all the time.

During the intentions, he prayed for the diocese to work for holiness in the year ahead; another intention was for seminarians and increased vocations.

His style of saying mass was low-key, focused, prayerful.

Requiescat in pace, Father Neuhaus

Since the news of his illness came so suddenly -- at least to me -- I suspect this loss is going to take a while to sink in. I'll be part of a trio of commentators discussing Fr. Neuhaus's impressive contributions to Catholic civic life on tomorrow's Son Rise Morning Show during the 8-9 am hour. From Victor Morton's obituary in the Washington Times:

The Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, one of the nation's leading conservative Catholic intellectuals and founder of the journal First Things, died shortly before 10 a.m. Thursday of complications from cancer. He was 72.

"As a priest, as a writer, as a public leader in so many struggles, and as a friend, no one can take his place," First Things editor Joseph Bottum said in a statement. "The fabric of life has been torn by his death, and it will not be repaired, for those of us who knew him, until that time when everything is mended and all our tears are wiped away."
...
He began political life as a liberal. An associate of Martin Luther King Jr., he backed Eugene McCarthy for president at the 1968 Democratic convention and led, along with actor Paul Newman, a tumultuous Chicago press conference backing the minority plank against the Vietnam War.

But starting with the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision that declared abortion a constitutional right and running through President Jimmy Carter's 1979 White House Conference on the Family, Father Neuhaus began moving to the right, becoming a supporter of Ronald Reagan.

He converted to Catholicism in 1990, was ordained a priest by Cardinal John O'Connor of New York a year later and became one of the leading figures - along with Michael Novak and George Weigel - in advancing a type of neoconservatism among Roman Catholics.

He explained his conversion in a 2002 First Things essay by saying that "I became a Catholic in order to be more fully what I was and who I was as a Lutheran."

"Let us all strive to be heroes"

Go read Cincinnati vocations director Fr. Kyle Schnippel's heroic, iconic vision of the priesthood in the latest edition of the Catholic Telegraph:

(Any column that cites both Fr. Walter Ciszek and St. Margaret Clitherow is worth your time.)

In a conversation last week on things in the Vocation Office, the Fishers of Men DVD was mentioned. Stunningly, one of the group mentioned that there are priests who absolutely cannot stand the video, which I think is terrific. “It is too heroic,” they say; “it doesn't match up to reality.” (As an aside, the scene that usually elicits this response is one where a teen is severely injured in the car wreck and a priest runs up to anoint and absolve him; which is based on a real life event.)

Because so much of what we do as priests can be seen as 'humdrum,' we can sometimes forget that we are called to be living witnesses to the Gospel; that we, as priests, are called to be heroes.

It happens in my own situation at times. I sit here at my desk, in my office, writing a column, going through paperwork, waiting for a phone call, answering emails, not to mention all the things that I should be doing and am not; and I ask myself: “how is this being 'a living witness of the Gospel'?”

For priests who are pastors of parishes, it is so easy to get caught up in the business aspects of parish life: the endless meetings, the balance sheet from the bank, squabbles among the office staff; that the idea of being 'a living icon of Christ the High Priest' is great in theory, not so good in practice.

Sure, when we are preaching on Sunday, celebrating the Sacraments, or visiting the sick; yeah, we can see it then. But really, how much of our time is in that arena? As one pastor I know said: 'I would like to think that way, but I have to pay off the debt!'

The difficulty is trying to identify that even and especially in those things that are not that heroic, that doing them well, doing them with honor, doing them with prayer is exactly heroic! Reading Jesuit Father Walter Ciszek's He Leadeth Me, he was struck with the same thought when serving time in a Soviet Gulag prison camp. He was asked by fellow prisoners: “Why work your hardest? Why strive to do your best when it only serves an oppressive regime?” His response was simple, yet profound: “Because it is my way of being heroic and giving praise and glory to God!” This was his way of living out the Jesuit motto: All for the Greater Glory of God!

St. Margaret Clitherow provides a final example. During fierce persecution of Catholics after the English Reformation, she was arrested for harboring priests and having Mass said in her home; capital offenses at the time. As she was being lead to her martyrdom, she sent her shoes and stockings to her daughter as a reminder to follow her mother’s footsteps. She was an ordinary wife and mother, living her faith heroically, simply out of love for Jesus.

Let us all strive to be heroes, in our own not that heroic way.

More in the CT on vocations here and here.

A new morality

You sometimes hear about how scornful the Church's "patriarchy" is of women. It explains the apologetic, hand-wringing tone that accompanies discussions of our Catholic history. So Dinesh D'Souza's reminder of the true progressiveness of Christianity is a refreshing antidote:

In ancient Greece and Rome, individual human life had no particular value in and of itself. The Spartans left weak children to die on the hillside. Infanticide was common, as it is common even today in many parts of the world. Fathers who wanted sons had few qualms about drowning their newborn daughters. Human beings were routinely bludgeoned to death or mauled by wild animals in the Roman gladiatorial arena. Many of the great classical thinkers saw nothing wrong with these practices. Christianity, on the other hand, contributed to their demise by fostering moral outrage at the mistreatment of innocent human life.

Likewise, women had a very low status in ancient Greece and Rome, as they do today in many cultures, notably in the Muslim world. Such views are common in patriarchal cultures. And they were prevalent as well in the Jewish society in which Jesus lived. But Jesus broke the traditional taboos of his time when he scandalously permitted women of low social status to travel with him and be part of his circle of friends and confidantes.

Christianity did not immediately and directly contest patriarchy, but it helped to elevate the status of women in society. The Christian prohibition of adultery, a sin it viewed as equally serious for men and women, and rules concerning divorce that (unlike in Judaism and Islam) treated men and women equally, helped to improve the social status of women. Indeed so dignified was the position of the woman in Christian marriage that women predominated in the early Christian church, and the pagan Romans scorned Christianity as a religion for women.

Talk about the wither

Gene Michael and Dr. K calculate the precipitous decline in Mass attendance figures for Rochester's Sacred Heart Cathedral since the beginning of this decade. He reasonably stipulates that this as clear a measure as one can find of the unpopularity of Bishop Clark's progressive Catholicism:

In conclusion, the Cathedral Communities average weekend Mass attendance has dropped from a hard count of 1,851 to an estimated 470 in just 9 years. Certainly some of the members of Most Precious Blood and Holy Rosary are attending Mass outside of the Cathedral cluster. However, the precipitous decline in Mass attendance at the Cathedral since the renovation and the clustering is nothing short of disgraceful. It demonstrates a resounding rejection by the laity of these two key diocesan initiatives.

Justice, minister

The time has come for Pope Benedict to summon Cardinal Martino to the papal apartments, thank him for his service to Mother Church, and reward him with a quiet parish in the Italian countryside.

ROME (Reuters) - Pope Benedict's point man for justice and peace issues on Wednesday issued the Vatican's toughest criticism of Israel since the latest Mideast crisis began, calling Gaza a "big concentration camp."

Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Vatican's Council for Justice and Peace, made his comments in an interview in the Italian online newspaper Il Sussidiario.net.

"Defenceless populations are always the ones who pay. Look at the conditions in Gaza: more and more, it resembles a big concentration camp," Martino, whose informal title is Vatican "justice minister," was quoted as saying.

Pope Benedict has made several general appeals for an end to the violence in Gaza but has not openly criticised Israel.

The pope is due to visit Holy Land sites in Jordan, Israel and the Israeli-occupied West Bank in May.

True worship?

In the latest installment of his Pauline catechesis, Pope Benedict explains what St. Paul meant by "true worship." While the entire address is worth reading, the key paragraph is excerpted below. The reference point for worship is Christ.

But the question persists: Then how should we interpret this "reasonable spiritual worship"? Paul always supposes that we have come to be "one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28), that we have died in baptism (Romans 1) and we live now with Christ, through Christ and in Christ. In this union -- and only in this way -- we can be in him and with him a "living sacrifice," to offer the "true worship." The sacrificed animals should have substituted man, the gift of self of man, and they could not. Jesus Christ, in his surrender to the Father and to us, is not a substitution, but rather really entails in himself the human being, our faults and our desire; he truly represents us, he assumes us in himself. In communion with Christ, accomplished in the faith and in the sacraments, we transform, despite our deficiencies, into living sacrifice: "True worship" is fulfilled.

Lose your parish? Here's a DVD

The Catholic Courier of Rochester reports on the latest clustering innovation:

The new DVD "Companions on the Journey: Holy Rosary, Sacred Heart and Most Precious Blood Parishes" started out as a project to highlight the distinct histories of the three Cathedral Community churches and to help parishioners transition to one worship site in 2008.

Yet when parishioners began examining the three churches' histories, they discovered that the parishes had been linked for years.

The new DVD is just one of a few new initiatives being undertaken by Rochester’s urban churches as part of recent clustering and mergers. Among other efforts are a building project at St. Monica Church and an emphasis on parish growth; a round of planning for the future at the Cathedral Community; and a special blessing to celebrate the coming together of parishes at Holy Apostles Church.

Cathedral Community

The DVD project grew out of the desire to bring together Cathedral Community parishioners prior to the 2008 closing of Holy Rosary and Most Precious Blood churches, said Carol Dady, a Cathedral Community parishioner and member of the committee that put together the DVD. She credited Father John Mulligan, former Cathedral Community pastor, with getting cameras rolling on the project. ...

School daze

Mike at DOR Catholic has a couple of very good posts on the state of Catholic schools in Rochester under Bishop Clark's new dispensation. In a nutshell, enrollment is off by 200 and the tab for closing half the diocese's schools is $3.2 million.

Our new tabernacle

Read about how the pastor for Cincinnati's St. Cecilia Church retrieved a discarded tabernacle and put it to good use at his parish:


And don't forget that St. Cecilia's celebration of the ordinary form, a.k.a., the "new Mass," in Latin starts this Friday.

All are welcome

Nothing sends Catholics running for the hills like the words "communitywide, interfaith prayer service." Couple those words with "for President-Elect Barack Obama" and you very well may have a stampede. From the Communications web page for the Diocese of Rochester:

Communitywide, Interfaith Prayer Service for
President-Elect Obama to be led by Bishop Clark

Bishop of Rochester Matthew Clark, with the participation of other religious leaders, will preside at a special community interfaith prayer service Jan. 19 at Sacred Heart Cathedral, 296 Flower City Park, on the eve of President-Elect Barack Obama's inauguration. The prayer service will begin at 7 p.m.

Prayers and readings will be offered for the president-elect and all recently elected public officials. Internationally acclaimed baritone Derrick Smith will perform. Leaders of many faith groups and public officials are expected to attend.

All are welcome.

It depends on how you define "human dignity"

Jacqueline DeCarlo, the Senior Fair Trade Advisor with Catholic Relief Services and the woman wearing the Obama t-shirt in the attached link to her 'blog, will be coming to the University of Dayton to discuss "better ways to respect human dignity in our economy." The Archdiocesan Catholic Social Action Commission is, naturally, a sponsor.

Listen to any news account of the status of the economy and the thought has probably occurred to you that there have to be better ways to respect human dignity in our economy. Please plan on attending The Power of Your Change: How your everyday purchases change the world. We’ll be focusing on financial choices inspired by the Gospel. The event will be held on Saturday, February 28, 2009 from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. at the University of Dayton.

Our speakers will look at the question from local initiatives to fair trade in developing nations. Jacqueline DeCarlo, the Senior Fair Trade Advisor with Catholic Relief Services, is the keynote speaker for this 3rd annual Global Solidarity Conference. Tom Allio, the Director of the Social Action Office from the Cleveland Diocese, will talk about PayDay Lending and Credit Card Debt. Mr. Allio led the statewide campaign for PayDay lending reforms.

This event is co-sponsored by the Catholic Relief Services Committee of the Archdiocesan Catholic Social Action Commission and the University of Dayton. Cost is $25 and includes lunch. Student rate is $10.

Someone from UD's Students for Life group ought to show up and give Ms. DeCarlo a t-shirt of their own:


Myspace Tshirt Generator

Symptoms

This morning's Cincinnati Enquirer includes a story about the reactions of local Jews and Arabs to Israel's campaign against Hamas in Gaza. Quotes from the local representative of CAIR, a Hamas front group, dominate the Arab perspective. It's worth highlighting because most legitimate newspapers stopped seeking commentary from CAIR representatives years ago.

Karen Dabdoub, director of the Cincinnati chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said Israel's assault threatens thousands of innocent people. She said her husband, a Palestinian, has spoken several times to his relatives in Gaza.

"For the last 10 days, they've all been huddled in one room in the back of their house, praying that the bombs don't land on them," Dabdoub said.

Beaupre said the increasingly organized efforts to sway public opinion are similar to those used during the recent presidential campaign, except the stage is bigger and the stakes are higher.

"It is the equivalent of what we in America would call the 'ground game,'" Beaupre said, referring to grass-roots, get-out-the-vote efforts in the presidential election. "Only it's writ large, it's international."

Unfortunately, he said, the continuing cycle of violence in the Middle East has given both sides plenty of practice over the years. But the dueling campaigns to win hearts and minds around the world have so far failed to produce a long-term solution to the conflict.

"No amount of talking points or rationalizations are going to address the underlying issue," Dabdoub said. "Until you treat the disease, the symptoms will continue."

Behind every statistic

In this week's Catholic Telegraph of Cincinnati, a seminarian I've had the pleasure of meeting several times, Matthew Robben, had an inspiring LTE. Fr. Schnippel posted the text for his readers:

The article, “Food pantries…facing double whammy” in the November 28 issue doesn’t even come close to putting a human face on the situation. I completed a social service project at the Walnut Hills Food Pantry and Soup Kitchen this past April and try to volunteer whenever my schedule allows. This past Tuesday (before Thanksgiving), I dropped off plastic Kroger bags and empty egg cartons (usually in need), helped serve lunch, and assisted in the pantry. What I experienced was unsettling! The lunch line was longer than I had ever seen and we turned away dozens of people seeking groceries from the pantry. The look on the face of the elderly gentleman and the mother with her small child could have broken the hardest, coldest heart!

While the need for money and food are great, food pantries and soup kitchens also need volunteers; volunteers who are willing to look into the eyes of those in need and offer a helping hand. Some parishes sponsor meals once a week/month and provide men and women to work the lunch lines. Where would our soup kitchens and food pantries be if every parish in the Archdiocese did the same? Remember, behind every statistic, quote, and department agency there are human beings, human faces; one look into their eyes and charity will never be the same!

May the Love of Christ always burn in your heart!
Matthew J. Robben
2nd Theology- Mt St Mary Seminary

You can reach the Walnut Hills Food Pantry at the attached link. I left a message Friday expressing an interest in volunteering.

Profound bow

Deep in the thread for the "What a difference a diocese makes" post, Maureen reflects on the meaning of a "profound bow" Archbishop Pilarczyk asks to perform before receiving communion. Like her, I rarely hear anything about it. (My kids do, however ;->.) Our previous pastor mentioned something about it briefly five or so years ago when the policy was announced, and in fact described it as "ducking your head" rather quickly.

In the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, the archbishop has instructed us to bow profoundly. Since one bows profoundly when approaching or walking in front of the altar (as opposed to kneeling before the tabernacle), one assumes that, if anything, the bow to Our Lord should be deeper and more considered than the bow to the altar. Kneeling would make more sense, really, but it's clear that ducking your head apologetically is simply not a bow, much less a profound one.

Bowing = bending forward at the waist.

Profound bow = seeing some floor.

Now, nobody gives us instruction on the precise angle which constitutes a profound bow. We just get ordered to do it. Frankly, I feel like a pretty big slacker when I watch live-action Japanese shows where somebody bows to his prospective father-in-law -- now that's a profound bow! The Jewish definition is apparently "bowing until you feel the muscles in your back working", which seems reasonable.

But nobody actually pronounces on this, so nobody has any right to complain about how somebody chooses to do their "profound bow". I usually have my eyes somewhere else when I'm in the communion line because I'm trying to pray and stuff, so I really can't say how anybody else does it.

The other difficulty is that it's fairly difficult to bow profoundly with hands folded, as opposed to simply held in "praying hands" stance. A nice balancing trick, in fact. But since our archbishop has ordered it, I will continue to attempt to follow orders.

"20 CMB 09"

Today's Rochester Democrat & Chronicle has an encouraging article about how one local parish is trying to keep traditional customs alive for yesterday's Feast of the Epiphany:

(Yes, the details about children "gathered in front of the altar" and the Sharpie-wielding priest are odd, but this is Rochester.)

FAIRPORT — Michele DeLass considers the Feast of the Epiphany service that she attended Sunday as the culmination of the holiday season.

"Everyone has to stop and think about the Christmas message," said DeLass, 45, of Penfield.

She was among the more than 400 people who gathered at Sunday's mid-morning service at the Church of the Assumption in Fairport.

The Feast of the Epiphany, also known as Three Kings' Day, celebrates the visit of the three wise men from the East to the Christ child in Bethlehem and represents God's love for all people.

At the Church of the Assumption, part of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rochester, packets containing a piece of chalk and a prayer were handed out during the service. Families took these packets home to write "20 CMB 09" above their front door with the chalk.

The numbers indicate the current year and "CMB" stands for the "Christus Mansionem Benedicat," which — translated from Latin — means "May God bless this house."

The Rev. Edward Palumbos, pastor of the Assumption congregation, said that in European towns and villages, this day is celebrated by priests and monks walking through the streets and leaving the "CMB" initials on homes.

"It's a blessing for the people living there and a reminder that whenever someone comes to their homes, they should be greeted with hospitality," Palumbos said.

The Feast of the Epiphany service is also one that involves children, who sang at the beginning and end of the service. About 75 children gathered in front of the altar during the service for a discussion led by Deacon Stephen Carroll about the meaning of Epiphany.

Palumbos then climbed a ladder and, with a marker, wrote the "CMB" blessing on a cardboard sign near the entrance of the church.

"Every visitor who comes is greeted as Christ," Palumbos said.

In Fr. Z's weekly liturgical catechesis, he had this to say about "C.M.B.":

Exquisite customs grace Epiphany. The most famous is the blessing of chalk used to hallow homes. On the lintels of the doors the priest writes with the chalk “20 + C + M + B + 09”, i.e., the year and initials of the names of the Magi indicated in Rituale Romanum: Gaspar (G and C being related), Melchior et Baltássar.

The names of the Magi are traditional, not scriptural and some ancient authors thought there were as many as 24.

Some say “C + M + B” stands for “Christus Mansionem Benedicat… May Christ bless this dwelling”. Though clever, that’s probably wrong.

Faces of the future

Rochester's Spiritus Christi sect spreads to nearby Buffalo.

CDW: "Lay people, within the context of Holy Mass, are unable to confer blessings"

Attention all priests, extraordinary ministers, or members of the laity encouraged to "extend your hands" to give blessings during Mass. The Holy See has something to say to you:

This Congregation for Divine Worship and the Disciple of the Sacraments acknowledges receipt of your kind letter of 13 August, 2008 and would like to thank you for your interest and suggestions. This matter is presently under the attentive study of the Congregation.

For the present, therefore, this Dicastery wishes to limit itself to the following observations:

1. The liturgical blessing of the Holy Mass is properly given to each and to all at the conclusion of the Mass, just a few moments subsequent to the distribution of Holy Communion.
2. Lay people, within the context of Holy Mass, are unable to confer blessings. These blessings, rather, are the competence of the priest (cf. Ecclesia de Mysterio, Notitiae 34 (15 Aug. 1997), art. 6, § 2; can. 1169, § 2; and Roman Ritual De Benedictionibus (1985), n. 18).
3. Furthermore, the laying on of a hand or hands—which has its own sacramental significance, inappropriate here—by those distributing Holy Communion, in substitution for its reception, is to be explicitly discouraged.
4. The Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio, n. 84, “forbids any pastor, for whatever reason to pretext even of a pastoral nature, to perform ceremonies of any kind for divorced people who remarry.” To be feared is that any form of blessing in substitution for communion would give the impression that the divorced and remarried have been returned, in some sense, to the status of Catholics in good standing.
5. In a similar way, for others who are not to be admitted to Holy Communion in accord with the norm of law, the Church’s discipline has already made clear that they should not approach Holy Communion nor receive a blessing. This would include non-Catholics and those envisaged in can. 915 (i.e., those under the penalty of excommunication or interdict, and others who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin).

Please continue to pray for the Church’s ministers that they ever become more worthy of the mystery they celebrate.

Tip, Joshua. More here.

My apology

Over the past several months, I've received a number of offers to meet for coffee or a meal from my readers. Please accept my apology for either not responding to a couple of you or being unable to rearrange my schedule to accommodate your offer. The last three months of 2008 were the most trying of my professional career. I am grateful for your generosity and look forward to a bit of daylight between now and spring.