The Official Bishop Helmsing Institute Blog

The Gloria (part 1)

 

 

[As we prepare for the new translation of the Roman Missal this Advent, the BHI blog has posted a series of blogs on the new translation of the Roman Missal. Here we repost a previous blog on the Gloria from 12/1/2010] Editor

The Gloria, perhaps the single most beautiful prayer of the Mass, currently reads as follows:

Glory to God in the highest,

and peace to his people on earth.

Lord God, heavenly King,

almighty God and Father,

we worship you, we give you thanks,

we praise you for your glory.

With the new translation, however, the first part of the Gloria will read as follows:

Glory to God in the highest,

and on earth peace to people of good will.

We praise you, we bless you,

we adore you, we glorify you,

we give you thanks for your great glory,

Lord God, heavenly King,

O God, almighty Father.

The new translation will wonderfully restore a traditional rendering drawn from the Gospel of Luke. In Luke 2:14, an angel of the Lord appears to shepherds to deliver the good news that, “today in the city of David a savior has been born for you who is Messiah and Lord…you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.” Suddenly “there was a multitude of the heavenly host with the angel, praising God and saying: "Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.” This rendering might sound odd to us at first hearing. After all English speaking Christians – even Catholics – have grown accustomed to the rendering as it is drawn from the Protestant King James Version of the Bible. That rendering pops up so often on signs and cards at Christmas time: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.” There is a tremendous difference between God granting peace to those He favors and granting peace toward men whether they are favored or not. The second KJV’s rendering might sound more generous to us, but it is not the best translation.

A restoration of the traditional sense of the Gloria is important because the prayer is – like so much about the Mass – more than it seems. The Gloria is referred to as the Greater Doxology. A doxology is a hymn or formulaic praising of God. Many of the great attributes of God are enumerated in the Gloria: He is Lord, God, the heavenly King, almighty God and Father, and so on. The first attributes are perhaps taken directly from the Apostles’ Creed, “I believe in God, the Father almighty…”

Whereas Mary sang the Magnificat after the conception of Jesus in her womb, and Zachariah sang the Benedictus after the birth of his son, John the Baptist, the Gloria is a song not from human beings but from the very angels who serve God. The Gloria came from heaven. It was the heavenly announcement to men that the Savior was born to them. It must be admitted, however, that although ancient and medieval Christians often envisioned angels delivering this message to the shepherds by way of song, angels – according to a strict reading of scripture in the Greek – (and as recently pointed out by our own Alex Weber), are nowhere depicted as singing. That may be a surprise for many as it was for me.

Who received this heavenly announcement – whether sung or said? Kings? Generals? High Priests from the Temple? No, just simple shepherds tending their flocks. But as Mary said of God in her Magnificat, “He has thrown down the rulers from their thrones but lifted up the lowly.” (Luke 1:52) The lowly were lifted up just as we lift up our voices in singing the Gloria which long ago became the song of the Church as well as the angels. Our response to that heavenly message should be the same as the shepherds, “Let us go, then, to Bethlehem to see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us." (Luke 2:15) The shepherds do not hesitate to go to see the gift given them by God. The place complete trust in the heavenly message. We too should place our trust in that same message: “…I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For today in the city of David a savior has been born for you who is Messiah and Lord.” (Luke 2:10-11),

Dr. Tim Brennan

Pat Robertson, and the After-Wife

During the past year I have posted on the Bible and the permanence of marriage in the Catholic view.  I also posted about the nature of vows in an earlier post on a strange passage in Judges 11. 

Pat Robertson has a reputation for saying strange and nutty things. This Tuesday on 700 Club,  Pat Robertson made a really alarming statement.  When discussing a married man who had a wife in the advanced stages of Alzheimer's disease, he gave the opinion that the wife was already dead and the man was released from his wedding vows. 

You can imaging the headlines (MSN news) Pat Robertson: Divorcing a spouse with Alzheimer's is justifiable;  Associated Press in USA Today and ABC News: Pat Robertson Says Alzheimer's Makes Divorce OK.  An accurate analysis of what Robertson really said is found here.

Is Robertson right that divorcing a spouse with Alzheimer's is justifiable because the disease is "a kind of death?"  Doesn’t this fly in the face of the “in sickness and in health until death” (assuming people still use traditional wedding vows)?

Without diminishing the intense suffering of Alzheimer's, saying the spouse is “kind of” dead is clearly blowing smoke.  This will not allow us to “kind of” dodge Jesus clear teaching on divorce and remarriage.

“Every one who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery” (Luke 16:18).

“Whoever divorces his wife and marries another, commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery” (Mk 10:11-12).

The Church has consistently urged us to recognize marriage as indissoluble and that a marriage between a baptized man and woman which has been ratified and consummated “cannot be dissolved by any human power or for any reason other than death” (CCC 2382).

Death is the separation of the soul from the body before the resurrection, not diminished mental faculties.

Archbishop Gomez on the need to consider America's renewal

Don't miss this important address by Archbishop José H. Gomez  in the Vatican’s official newspaper L'Osservatore Romano on the need to consider America's renewal.

Archbishop Gomez on the need to consider America's renewal

Immigration and the ‘Next America’
perspectives from our history

The following is an adapted address given by the Archbishop of Los Angeles at the Napa Institute on 28 July 2011.

 

Our political debate about immigration in America frustrates me. Often I think we are just talking around the edges of the real issues. Both sides of this argument are inspired by a beautiful, patriotic idea of America’s history and values. But lately I’ve been starting to wonder: What America are we really talking about?

America is changing and it has been changing for a long time. The forces of globalization are changing our economy and forcing us to rethink the scope and purpose of our government. Threats from outside enemies are changing our sense of national sovereignty. America is changing on the inside, too. [more]

New Roman Missal: The Confiteor

The following is reposted from 07/13/2010.

The Confiteor is one of those prayers every Mass-going Catholic knows, but may not be aware of its name. The name is taken from the very first word of the prayer in Latin, Confiteor, which essentially means “I confess”. Since Catholics have a whole sacrament dedicated to the confession of sins they might wonder why the Confiteor is part of the Mass. Essentially the Confiteor is a necessary preparation for what we participate in at Mass, a work of the Lord.

Often before participating in a great work of the Lord men cleansed themselves. In scripture we see that a servant of God might have fasted, journeyed into the wilderness to pray, or even had his lips cleansed with hot coals by an angel (Isaiah 6:6) to prepare him for his work for the Lord. Although fasting before Mass is still our practice today, properly conforming our heart and soul to Christ also requires contrition for our sins. Through the Confiteor we fittingly offer contrition to God for our sins and prepare for our participation in the Divine Mystery of the Eucharist.

The prayer used for the last 40 years is familiar to us all:

I confess to almighty God,

and to you, my brothers and sisters,

that I have sinned through my own fault,

in my thoughts and in my words,

in what I have done,

and in what I have failed to do…

The new translation, which is closer to the original Latin, is more emphatic and draws more attention to a particular pious practice. Although in the rubrics (i.e. the prescribed actions to accompany the words said) of the Mass, this practice was often forgotten in the last few decades. We will discuss that in a moment. Here is the new translation (which will sound familiar to many older Catholics):

I confess to almighty God

and to you, my brothers and sisters,

that I have greatly sinned

in my thoughts and in my words,

in what I have done

and in what I have failed to do,

through my fault, through my fault,

through my most grievous fault…

When the penitent recites the last two lines of the Confiteor he takes his right hand, curls it into a loose fist and strikes his left breast. Immediately a couple of Bible verses come to mind. In the Old Testament, we find Jeremiah (Jeremiah 31:19) saying, “I turn in repentance; I have come to myself, I strike my breast; I blush with shame, I bear the disgrace of my youth.” In the New Testament, the contrition of the publican, the tax collector, in Luke 18:13 is recalled: “But the tax collector stood off at a distance and would not even raise his eyes to heaven but beat his breast and prayed, ‘O God, be merciful to me a sinner.’”

In ancient Judaism, striking one’s breast was a sign of deep sorrow our one’s sinfulness. This continued into the Christian era. St. Augustine, one of the greatest Early Church Fathers, noted that,

"No sooner have you heard the word 'Confiteor' than you strike your breast. What does this mean except that you wish to bring to light what is concealed in the breast, and by this act to cleanse your hidden sins?" (Sermo de verbis Domini, 13). http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02751a.htm

The secular world today, however, shuns such displays, but the Church most certainly does not. As the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has noted: “During the Confiteor the action of striking our breasts at the words through my own fault can strengthen my awareness that my sin is my fault.” http://www.usccb.org/liturgy/girm/bul3.shtml Our physical actions, when done piously, help bring home to us spiritual truths.

At this time, using the current translation of the Mass, we strike our breast once. In the old Latin Mass, Catholics struck their breast three times – once for each use of the word “fault”. It is not entirely clear at this time whether we will still use one strike or three. In any case, the importance of such gestures should not be underestimated. As Pope Benedict XVI wrote in Sacramentum Caritatis,

“the Synod of Bishops asked that the faithful be helped to make their interior dispositions correspond to their gestures and words… This is particularly important in a highly technological age like our own, which risks losing the ability to appreciate signs and symbols.” (Sacramentum Caritatis, 64)

But what is the point of all of this? When we pray the Confiteor – and we have to remember it IS a prayer – we are professing our contrition to God, His saints in heaven, and the faithful on earth. We are asking for forgiveness for all those sins - thoughts, words, deeds and omissions – which we have committed. Such a confession of sins makes it possible for our venial sins to be forgiven during the Mass itself.

The next time we are at Mass – especially when the new translation of the Mass is used beginning on the first Sunday of Advent 2011, let us keep in mind the following written by Fr. Nikolaus Gihr many years ago:

“The Confiteor is an open avowal of compunction of heart, a contrite and penitential prayer which should cleanse the soul from even the slightest stains of guilt and from all sinful defects. But in order that its recital, together with the threefold striking of the breast, may prove cleansing and salutary to the soul, it must in truth be the outpouring of a contrite spirit, proceeding from the depths of a heart touched with love and sorrow.”

(Nikolaus Gihr, The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass: Dogmatically, Liturgically, and Ascetically Explained, St. Louis: Herder, 1902, page 358).

Reposted 9/12/11

Tim Brennan, PhD.

A rose by any other name. . .

I have been trying to wrap my brain around a recent article by Catholic scholars Michael G. Lawler and Todd A. Salzman, which appeared in America Magazine. Lawler and Salman are emeritus and current professors at Creighton University, Omaha, Neb. These two scholars coauthored a book entitled, The Sexual Person: Toward a Renewed Catholic Anthropology (Moral Traditions), which was disciplined by the USCCB for its inadequate methodology and for its radical departure from traditional Catholic ethics. Perhaps not surprisingly the article in America Magazine, entitled “Beyond Catechesis: What is the proper role of theology?” complains bitterly about the silencing and ignoring of the voices of “unsafe dissenting” theologians.

In the interest of fair minded dialogue let’s see what Lawler and Salzman propose. First they complain that recent actions of the USCCB ignore “an essential distinction between catechesis (as in catechism) and the academic discipline of theology.” We do distinguish between a catechist and a theologian. The catechist faithfully “passes on the deposit of the faith” while the theologian speculates and philosophizes. Is this not a valid distinction? Should we not treat theologians in a different category? Clearly there is a measure of truth here but it could lead to a number of unfair distortions. Are we to conclude that the theologian who happens to believe her speculations and philosophizing about truth lead her to defend the deposit of faith, is really catechizing and that only those theologians who are “unsafe dissenters” are true theologians? Lawler and Salzman imply that anyone who agrees with the Vatican holds “a single, Roman theology and serve as methodological and theological apologists for the magisterium.” In other words they are not thinking people but mere instruments of Vatican propaganda.

Secondly, Lawler and Salzman describe what they call the charism of the theologian. A curious irony exists here since our entire understanding of what a Catholic theologian is comes from the sacred Tradition and the magisterium of the Church. They note, “Theology uses scholarly principles not only to communicate the truths of faith but also to explore the meanings of those truths and contemporary ways of articulating them.” Fair enough, but unless you accept the myth of modernist progress, being contemporary and exploring does not make you necessarily an “unsafe dissenter.”

Lawler and Salzman move on to quote the famous Jesuit theologian, Francis A. Sullivan, S.J., who they point out explains that being a theologian involves a two-way mediation is “from the faith, culture and questionings of the people toward the magisterium; and from the pronouncements of the magisterium back to the people.” I don ‘t have a problem with this notion as it is described by Sullivan in his work Magisterium which, by the way is based on reflections on the thesis of the International Theological Commission. Lawler and Salzman take this in new direction by suggesting that the Vatican must include “unsafe dissenters” in its theological consultations before making magisterial pronouncements. At one level it makes sense to consider how various peoples have interpreted a theological problem. No doubt Lawler and Salzman are correct in their view that excluding “unsafe dissenters” from the consultation “creates polarization between itself and both the faithful who disagree with the doctrinal pronouncements and the theologians who articulate this disagreement.” I think that Lawler and Salzman are blowing smoke when they imply that the majority of the faithful disagree with the Vatican and wish that the Vatican would change its doctrine to agree with that of the dissenters. Let’s be clear I have no problem with dialoguing with Lawler and Salzman, but there apparent assumption a thinking person would agree only with their views and that anyone who agrees with a traditional view is a mere apologist for the magisterium is clearly false thinking.

The truth may lie in the adjectives here. I truly do admire the theologian Karl Barth, but since he is a famous Protestant theologian it would be silly to look to him as a Catholic theologian. My question is how far outside the norms of Catholic tradition can a theologian go before they lose the right to hold the adjective “Catholic?” Todd A. Salzman currently is a professor of Catholic theology at Creighton University. Can he teach anything he wants and still be a professor of Catholic theology at a Catholic University?  In my view it is a sad day if the answer is “yes.”