Found While Looking for Something Else

Small lesson on not re-inventing the wheel: research first, then write.

I've been working on a little project on and off for a few months. I thought it might be useful for someone new to the traditional liturgy to have a little guide to the various hand missals available. It really should not take a few months, or even a few days, not even when allowing for my glacial writing speed. The hitch in the gitalong is that, even though I do have a few missals of my own, I don't have a copy of every missal currently available. The problem was finding borrow-able copies of the ones I don't have.

Well, what should I find this morning but this page. This should be almost everything anyone would need. The only thing missing are my profound editorial comments. (Oh, All right, if you insist: "idiosyncratic editorial comments". Be that way.) Someone somewhere might still want to know that the the English of the Marian Missal is by far the clearest and most readable while still being reverent and ever so slightly archaic: thee and thou are retained as they ought to be. Or that the Lasance Missal has a wonderful little introduction with a short do-it-yourself course for following the Mass in the Missal. But that's for another day.

In the meantime, if you're in the market for Missal click the link to the Southwell Books website for their Missal review summary.

Some Piping for the Weekend

John Walsh playing shuttle pipes of his own making.

The "Anglican" Apostolic Constitution

On the off chance that anyone interested might have missed it, the Apostolic Constitution responding to the Anglican overtures has been released. It's called Anglicanorum Cœtibus and can be found on the Vatican's website here. There is also a second document called "Complementary Norms for the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Cœtibus" which gives more practical details. You can find that one here.

Friday the 13th. . . .

. . .comes on a Friday this month.

So don't walk under any black cats or break any ladders. And whatever you do, don't be superstitious. That's very bad luck, indeed.

Success!

We have a brand, spanking new operating system now! Windows 7, yesireebob.

And, um, I can't actually see much difference. It took almost three hours to intall. I was expecting. . .well, I don't know what I was expecting. Fireworks, maybe. I was hoping that perhaps there would be drivers for the scanner that would work with W7. Of course not.

On the other hand none of my files vanished. I suppose I ought to be thankful that anything technological works when done by me.

Against my better judgement. . . .

. . .I'm going to upgrade the pc from Vista to Windows7. By myself. Even though I know full well that when technical prowess was being handed out I was in line for a second helping of cherry pie and ice cream.

The changeover is supposed to take an hour. If you don't see anything here for another week or so you'll what happened.

Onward and upward.

Some Piping for the Weekend

Terry Tully and Richard Parkes go to town on "The Pumpkin's Fancy".

Gratitude is the First of the Virtues

So said Dietrich von Hildebrand.

I played for a funeral the other day - All Souls Day, appropriately enough. Well, I have never been so profusely thanked in my life for anything. It's really rather humbling. Music is an extraordinary thing; it has an undefinable and unpredictable power. But here there was an added factor.

My wife volunteered me for this one. The funeral was for the mother of a man she works with. Mary knows I don't like her to volunteer me for these things. So she never does. If the family doesn't want a piper, it makes it difficult, or at least uncomfortable, for them to refuse the offer. This time for reason she can't explain she felt she had to make the offer. The man practically cried. His mother had been a piper in her youth. She still had her pipes and some of her music.

So on All Souls Day I played another piper to her rest. That was a good day.

Bl John Bodey

Since it is All Souls Day, Blessed John doesn't get much of a mention on this, his feast day. He was a married man, a lawyer, and a schoolmaster, one of the few lay martyrs of the English reformation raised to the altars. The good old Catholic Encyclopædia has this lovely story of his life:

Born at Wells, Somerset in 1549, he died at Andover, Wiltshire on 2 November, 1583. Blessed John. . .

. . .studied at Winchester and New College, Oxford, of which he became a Fellow in 1568. In June, 1576, he was deprived, with seven other Fellows, by the Visitor, Horne, Protestant Bishop of Winchester. Next year he went to Douay College to study civil law, returned to England in February, 1578, and probably married. Arrested in 1580, he was kept in iron shackles in Winchester gaol, and was condemned in April, 1583, together with John Slade, a schoolmaster, for maintaining the old religion and denying the Royal Supremacy. There was apparently a feeling that this sentence was unjust and illegal, and they were actually tried and condemned again at Andover, 19 August, 1583, on the same indictment. Bodey had a controversy with Humphreys, Dean of Winchester, on the Nicene Council, and the martyr's notes from Eusebius still exist. After his second trial, he wrote from prison to Dr. Humphrey Ely, "We consider that iron for this cause borne on earth shall surmount gold and, precious stones in Heaven. That is our mark, that is our desire. In the mean season we are threatened daily, and do look still when the hurdle shall be brought to the door. I beseech you, for God's sake, that we want not the good prayers of you all for our strength, our joy, and our perseverance unto the end. . . . From our school of patience the 16th September, 1583."

At his martyrdom, Bodey kissed the halter, saying, "O blessed chain, the sweetest chain and richest that ever came about any man's neck", and when told he died for treason, exclaimed, "You may make the hearing of a blessed Mass treason, or the saying of an Ave Maria treason . . . but I have committed no treason, although, indeed, I suffer the punishment due to treason". He exhorted the people to obey Queen Elizabeth and died saying, "Jesu, Jesu, esto mihi Jesus". His mother made a great feast upon the occasion of her son's happy death, to which she invited her neighbours, rejoicing at his death as his marriage by which his soul was happily and eternally espoused to the Lamb.

The original can be found here.

All Souls Day

From the "Handbook on Indulgences", English edition:

Grant number 67
Visiting a Church or an Oratory on All Souls Day

A plenary indulgence which is applicable only to the souls in purgatory is granted the Christian faithful who devoutly visit a church or an oratory on All Souls Day.
This indulgence can be obtained either on the day mentioned above or, with the consent of the ordinary, on the preceding or following Sunday or on the solemnity of All Saints.
This indulgence is already contained in the apostolic constitution, Indulgentiarum doctrina, norm 15. it is included here in light of the Sacred Penitentiary's deliberations since the constitution was issued.
According to norm 16 of the apostolic constitution, this visit is to include the "recitation of the Lord's Prayer and the Creed, (Pater and Credo).
The rather odd use of italics is in the original.

Grant number 13
Visiting a Cemetery

An indulgence is granted the Christian faithful who devoutly visit a cemetery and pray, if only mentally, for the dead. This indulgence is applicable only to the souls in purgatory. This indulgence is a plenary one from November 1 through November 8 and can be gained on each one of these days. On the other days of the year this indulgence is a partial one.

Almighty and eternal God, grant unto the souls of they servants and handmaidens departed the remission of all their sins, that through pious supplications they may obtain that pardon which they have always desired. Through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Some Piping for the Weekend

Even if the weekend is almost over.


It's a lovely tune called "Apples and Chairs", the piper's own composition. (I know her name but I can't remember it to save my life. She's written a smallpipe tutor with an accompanying CD. The first thing to go is the memory.)

[ADDENDUM: Her name is Vicki Swan.]

Pride Goeth before a Fall

It seems it also goeth before a minor humiliation known only to oneself.

I was so delighted with myself this morning. I, who have nothing but trouble with Latin poems and hymns, breezed right through the hymn for Lauds this morning. All Latin hymns are a complete brick wall to me; I can never make head nor tails out of them, even the dictionary doesn't help often enough. Oh, sure if the hymn comes up often enough like Te lucis ante terminum or O Salutaris Hostia. That's different. But getting a once-a-year hymn this morning like Iesu, Salvator sæculi and actually knowing what it meant without consulting a dictionary three times in every line. . . .what a delight.

And then we came to the collect. Couldn't make the second half make sense. Never quite got all the grammatical bits to line up with the modifiers and the modified in happy unity. Had to look at the provided English translation in my missal. You can't fiddle with this stuff forever; it stops being prayer. And then, of course, it was blindingly obvious. I hate it when that happens. The bloody things could at least have the courtesy to have something arcane and subtle about them to provide a decent excuse. But, no. Just move the modifier a few words away from the modified and I'm at sea.

The Week

Well, the picture host server came back on line almost immediately after I mentioned that it was out. All the illustrations seem to be present and accounted for. A happier outcome than expected.

The rest of last weekend didn't go quite as predicted either. There were to be, if you will cast your minds back, "two funerals, a class, and an evening dance if my plantar fasciitis quiets down." The first funeral was ideal. Played the processional and the recessional for a Catholic Mass and had my own pew in the back to sit in. Got to play the Irish pipes for a change in a big church with a wonderful reverb. The services ran a bit long so I didn't make the class.

But the second funeral was a sort of extremely pious secular non-denominational affair and ran in excess of two and a half hours. The deceased had an abundance of friends (which meant no seat available for the piper) most of whom got up to say a few words. Indeed, a great many words. A self-appointed lay preacher took the occasion to spend half an hour exhorting us to repent of our sins and come to Jesus so that on our passing we could join Brother Al in the celestial homeland. Now, as a rule I am four-square in favour of sin-repentance. But after a certain amount of time the law of unintended consequences begins to kick in and instead of sin-repentance one begins to be inclined toward sin-commission. Something involving violence and grievous bodily harm to long-winded preachers. St Teresa of Jesus advises that all things are passing, God only is changeless and that patience gains all things. One's faith in the sayings of Our Holy Mother Foundress wavered that afternoon.

So even though the feet were feeling a bit battered after two hours plus in uncomfortable shoes on a marble floor, we were feeling the need to be in a jollier gathering, one that didn't involve any dead people. We went to the dance. Great fun. Hence much limping on Sunday. On Monday we made an appointment to see the podiatrist who injected us with stuff that will make us ineligible to play major league baseball, gave us detailed instructions on new shoes to buy, gave us a prescription which according to the accompanying literature will either cure us or kill us in a terrifyingly painful and long-drawn out manner. Hanging, drawing, and quartering have nothing on the side-effects of this stuff. Highly appropriate for Hallowe'en. But so far, so good; still feeling relatively fit. (But I have another ten days worth of pills left, so I may not be out of the woods yet.) Oh, yes, and I got a nifty foot brace thingummy to wear to bed. The Holy Inquisition had one like it, except for the blue plastic. Don't know which part or parts of this treatment is effective, or whether it's all of it together, but our foot is feeling remarkably good. Our three-beat pas de basque days may not be over yet.

Otherwise, where has the time gone since last week's post? No idea. The days have been devoured by locusts.

Yes, the Angels lost. But we won't go there. Yankees vs Phillies? Ho, hum. I imagine they're excited on the east coast. Can't really be bothered here. I imagine that the Yankees will win. They paid for it; they're entitled.

Note to new readers: We understand your concern but we have no intention of settling on either first or second person plural in any particular piece, or indeed, any particular sentence. We have had a lot of complaints about this but nothing seems to help. We have given up. However, we do still try to keep their, there, and they're straight, not to mention to, too, and two.

Some Piping for the Weekend

Dublin's St Lawrence O'Toole Pipe Band playing their medley in the 2009 World Championship competition in Glasgow. Leading off with The Girl from Dungannon, usually a slow air but this time a hornpipe.

On This and That

Hot today but not the brutal heat predicted. One is grateful. Tomorrow, says the weather predicting thingummy on my mobile phone, will be even cooler. For a very long time one hopes.

You've probably noticed that most of the illustrations on The Inn are missing. The picture hosting site has been rather severely hacked. The pictures will, I hope, be back in the fullness of time. But maybe not. These things are sometimes irreversible so they tell me. I still have almost all of them on cds or portable hard drives so if you are in desperate need of a jpg that appeared on this effort, feel free to drop me a note and I will try to dig it up when I get a moment. (It won't be tomorrow: two funerals, a class, and an evening dance if my plantar fasciitis quiets down.) If the pics really are irretrievable, we will just start anew. I can promise that I will not go back over 7 years of The Inn to manually replace what's lost. I promised myself when I started this that it would not become another of my obsessions. Replacing all the illustrations over 7 years would leave obsession in the dust.

We are absolutely delighted with the Angels win last night. I turned it off about 7-ish to leave for class and they were behind 6-5. What a surprise to come home and find them winners 7-6. Saturday they have a decent chance to even it up; Saunders can do it. Sunday is more doubtful. Getting past Sabathia is no walk in the park. Fingers crossed.

Anglican Use News

There is a blog bearing that title here. It seems to be living up to its name. Well worth a visit. I've added it to the blogroll on the left in a couple of useful categories.

More on the Anglican Gesture

Mrs Vidal points out that the papal response to the Anglican traditionalists was made on 20 October, the feast of St Paul of the Cross: "For fifty years he prayed for the conversion of England, and left the devotion as a legacy to his [spiritual] sons." More here.

Some thoughts from a Catholic minded Anglican priest in Canada.

Another view, this time from an English parish priest in the CofE.

The major press organs, the drive-by-media, or however you like to phrase that, seem all to have received the memo on how to interpret this. Note the wording of the headlines from the New York Times (the mobile edition): Vatican Bidding to Get Anglicans to Join Its Fold; from the Wall Street Journal: Vatican in Bold Bid to Attract Anglicans; from the L.A. Times: Disillusioned Anglicans invited to join Catholic Church. The Press Telegram used the word "lure" but SWMBO has already tossed this morning's paper and I can't look up the exact wording. I presume there are more but that ought to do for starters. Not one of them says Vatican Responds with Generosity to Anglican Plea. I haven't seen a mention of the glorious gesture of the Traditional Anglican Communion in presenting a copy of the Catholic Catechism, signed in agreement by all the Communion's bishops, to the Holy Father with a plea to be accepted by Peter.

An Anglican Rite in the Roman Church?

Something like. Almost.

It's too new to fully understand but it seems like wonderfully good news. The principal hitch in the gitalong that strikes me is the dependence upon the local bishop's conference. Leaving things up to the hapless bench is what almost killed Ecclesia Dei. But God is merciful. Other than that, I have no comment except what the Te Deum expresses.

From the Vatican website:

With the preparation of an Apostolic Constitution, the Catholic Church is responding to the many requests that have been submitted to the Holy See from groups of Anglican clergy and faithful in different parts of the world who wish to enter into full visible communion.

In this Apostolic Constitution the Holy Father has introduced a canonical structure that provides for such corporate reunion by establishing Personal Ordinariates, which will allow former Anglicans to enter full communion with the Catholic Church while preserving elements of the distinctive Anglican spiritual and liturgical patrimony. Under the terms of the Apostolic Constitution, pastoral oversight and guidance will be provided for groups of former Anglicans through a Personal Ordinariate, whose Ordinary will usually be appointed from among former Anglican clergy.

So begins the preliminary document released this morning. There's much discussion on the web, though. Some early commentary:

From Dr Moynihan's irregular letters. He reports from the press conference.

Damian Thompson's blog at the Daily Telegraph in London: here, here, here, and here. It's early days yet; no doubt there will be many more. Here's the main link to his blog.

The text of the Westminster/Canterbury letter.

The response of Archbishop Hepworth, the primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion. (It ought to be pointed out that by no means all of the TAC are looking forward to union with Rome. There is a strong Evangelical base to the TAC.)

Well, I do have one comment after all. This move of the Holy Father's will provide the main thing that has been lacking so far in the Pastoral Provision or Anglican Use communities: a structure. Up to now there has been no bishop, no seminary, no house of formation, no religious order, nothing that could provide a continuity. (As of last month, there is now one religious order, the All Saints Sisters of the Poor in Catonsville, Maryland.) As of this morning, that is changed. A structure for preservation and continuity is being prepared. A great gift of God.

Solemn High Traditional Mass at St Peter's Basilica - the First in 40 Years

So says this report in Dr Moynihan's periodic letter.

Even if you're in Rome, you missed it because it was this morning -- about 10 hours ago as of this writing. But a landmark event, nonetheless. One more reason to be grateful to God for Pope Benedict XVI. This wouldn't have happened under Pope Paul VI of very unhappy memory indeed.

ADDENDUM: Not an unalloyed joy, it turned out. The brethren of the aggiornamentist- brotherly-love persuasion have once again shown themselves to be thoroughly ill-natured and petty. Vide licet.

Like MacArthur, We Have Returned.

The Seaside Games were great fun. Wonderful cool weather right beside, co-incidentally enough, the seaside. A nice handful of pipe bands and some good music. L.A. Scots was guest band but no competition for them. G-IV had Blandford, Pasadena, UCR, Gold Coast [a new-ish band local to Ventura], Salt Lake City, and Nicholsons. G-III's competition was between Blandford's and LA Scots' grade III ensembles. A couple of parade bands, George Hall's Black Watch band and the L. A. Police Emerald Society were also there.

The comp results (from the Dunsire Forum):

SATURDAY

Grade 4:

U.C.Riverside
Pasadena Scots
Nicholson
Salt Lake Scots

Grade 3:

Kevin R. Blandford Memorial
L.A. Scots


SUNDAY

Grade 4:

Pasadena Scots
U.C.Riverside
Nicholson
Salt Lake Scots
Gold Coast

Grade 3:

Kevin R. Blandford Memorial
L.A. Scots

There were loads of other excellent musicians and dancers, too. If you find these folks in your area, do not fail to catch their performance. A wonderful family band that will lift you out of your seat.

Lots of SCD people were there and a dance on Saturday night. I'm told it was good. We missed it. We went back to our room for a rest Saturday afternoon and fell asleep. Eventually awoke and scouted up some dinner but too late for most of dance.

For the first time I caught a good deal of the Highland dancing. It's an interesting endeavour and extremely taxing for the feet but a beautiful performance when it's well-done. I was particularly interested in watching the dance piper. Now that's a gruelling task. The same tunes played the same way at the same tempo for every competitor in each event. I don't know what they paid him, if anything, but it wasn't enough.

I took some photographs but nothing blog-worthy resulted. The phone camera ones all had too much light. And the ones taken with the proper camera are all too dark.

Off for the Weekend

We will be at the Ventura Seaside Highland Games this weekend. They have a website here if you're interested. So there may not be any more posting until Monday or Tuesday. I'll see what I can do from the pda, but as we have pointed out before, thumb typing is not my favourite thing to do. The thing is, I'm used to touch typing and I'm pretty good at it. The fingers can keep pace or not be too far behind the thoughts. With thumb typing I forget half of what I wanted to say. Not always a bad thing, to be sure. Saves a world of editing.

Some Piping for the Weekend

A few jigs on Scottish smallpipes with a chanter in A: Drops of Brandy, Whiskey Boys, and the Jig of Slurs. I don't know the name of the piper but he says his pipes are made by Malcolm MacLaren out of Australian Gidgea wood. A lovely, rich tone, no?

The President Wins A Major Award

From the Norwegians, no less.

The Dodgers Won the First of the Playoff Games Last Night . . .

. . . or maybe the Cardinals merely lost. That game either tied or beat the record for most walks in a post season game. And they threw in a few hit batsmen for good measure. Not whatcha call your pitcher's duel. And how many runners did both teams leave stranded? Vinny said, but I forgot. Wasn't it 30-something?

Yet it was an entertaining game if you were local and could listen to Vin Scully call it on the radio. Where they get those TV network fellas is beyond me.

And today the Angels play their first against the Red Sox, who - alas - have had their number all season. We will hope; it is, after all, baseball in which anything can happen. But we will also not bet the farm.

This is crying out for a witty, ironic headline or at least a decent pun. . .

. . .but my headline-creating juices seem to have dried up.

But take a look at this.

Yes, it's almost three months old. But what a delightfully serendipitous find here in a month when The Sainted One tried his hardest to foist both a Canadian-style health system and an Olympic Games upon the poor old bankrupt United States.

CNN "Fact Checks" a Saturday Night Live Sketch

Seriously. It seems SNL may have used [shock! horror!] exaggeration in poking a little fun at The Sainted One. CNN rushes to correct any misconceptions.

It's as if CNN and the St. Petersburg Times are trying to reinforce the impression that they are in the tank for Obama.

If only there a Pompous Twit award for television networks.

The WSJ will give you the details here with appropriate video links so you can "fact check" for yourself.

If the new health care marvel of the age programme is not going to fund abortions. . .

. . . .than why is the amendment embodying that provision continually stonewalled and not brought to the floor?

Bill McGurn's column asks the question here.

That is just what Mr. Stupak [a Democratic congressman from northern Michigan] is trying to do with an amendment to the health-care legislation would explicitly ban federal funding for abortion. Here's the problem: His own party won't let him bring it to the floor for a vote. It's a replay of earlier this year, when the leadership blocked a similar Stupak effort on a financial appropriations bill that ended up removing restrictions on D.C. taxpayer funding for abortion.

"The most frustrating thing is we go to the Rules Committee, they smile and say 'thank you,' and then we're left at the door," says Mr. Stupak. "At least give us a chance to let people debate and vote."

The effort to suppress Mr. Stupak's amendment is particularly ironic given the pledges Speaker Nancy Pelosi makes in her manifesto "A New Direction for America." In this document, she asserts that "no Member of Congress should be silenced on the floor." She also calls for a "full amendment process."

Last week Mr. Stupak, 24 other Democrats and 158 Republicans sent the speaker a letter asking her to make good on that pledge. Members of the House, they said, should have the "right to vote their conscience on an amendment offered by Congressmen Stupak and [Joe] Pitts [R., Pa.] regarding government funding for abortion."

Novena to St Teresa of Avila

The annual novena to St Teresa of Avila begins today.

All the days are published together under one post in this novena. You can use the same link each day. You can find it here.

"How Can You Buy Killarney?"

The old come-all-ye of the same name implied that it couldn't be done.

As it turned out, the whole country was for sale.

Independence paled after a mere 86 years.

Sidelight on the Obamacare Propaganda

But it defies reason to believe that we can add millions to the system, require insurance of people with existing conditions and diseases, without paying a great deal more. Protestations that we will save the money by eliminating fraud and waste are never credible: if that can be done, do it first, show the savings, and spend the savings on health care reform. I note that this is never seriously proposed.

And they never catch wise...

from Jerry Pournelle

2 October - Feast of the Holy Guardian Angels

Guardian Angel

My oldest friend, mine from the hour
When first I drew my breath;
My faithful friend, that shall be mine,
Unfailing, till my death;

Thou hast been ever at my side;
My Maker to Thy trust
Consign'd my soul, what time He framed
The infant child of dust.

No beating heart in holy prayer,
No faith, inform'd aright.
Gave me to Joseph's tutelage,
Or Michael's conquering might.

Nor patron Saint, nor Mary's love,
The dearest and the best,
Has known my being, as thou hast known,
And blest, as thou hast blest.

Thou wast my sponsor at the font;
And thou, each budding year,
Didst whisper elements of truth
Into my childish ear.

And when, ere boyhood yet was gone,
My rebel spirit fell,
Ah! thou dist see, and shudder too,
Yet bear each deed of Hell.

And then in turn, when judgements came,
And scared me back again,
Thy quick soft breath was near to soothe,
And hallow every pain.

Oh! who of all thy toils and cares
Can tell the tale complete,
To place me under Mary's smile,
And Peter's royal feet!

And thou wilt hang about my bed,
When life is ebbing low;
Of doubt, impatience, and of gloom,
The jealous sleepless foe.

Mine, when I stand before the Judge,
And mine, if spared to stay
Within the golden furnace, till
My sin is burn'd away.

And mine, O Brother of my soul,
When my release shall come;
Thy gentle arms shall lift me then,
Thy wings shall waft me home.

-John Henry Cardinal Newman
The Oratory, 1853

Some Piping for the Weekend

Another tune from some Irish Defence Forces pipers and drummers. There aren't very many videos or recordings of the Irish Defence Forces pipes out there and this one is fairly recent. Most of the band members in this group are army but there are some from the Air Corps also. And since they're using the Air Corps' bass drum with their logo prominently displayed it looks like an Air Corps band. Hence the misleading title that appears at the top "Royal Irish Air Band". The "Royal" part is just wrong; I can't think of an excuse for that.

Once again, they're playing with the KFOR, i.e., the UN forces in Kosovo. The tune is "The Pikemen", the arrangement in Terry Tully's "Collection of Traditional Irish Music". It's a shame the camera missed the first part. But a good, rousing march all the same.

If You Can't Stand the Heat. . . .

. . . .go for a sail. After a short respite, we're back into the 90s. Hotter than the hinges of hell as my grandfather used to say. Not sure why the hinges of hell should be hotter than any other part of it, but it does have a rhythm to it. So more pictures of water from last week for no other reason that I enjoy looking at them in this heat. (The pictures are enormous on Firefox; specifying "small" in the loading software doesn't help. But Opera presents them in a reasonable size, although if you want humongous you can click on them and achieve same. No idea what happens using Mickey$oft's Internet Exploder.)



Leaving the marina.


Still in the marina.


One of the Long Beach oil islands


Water, water everywhere. . . .


The Long Beach Yacht Club in the distance. I've played pipes here for a few events, weddings, anniversaries, and a memorial service or two for members.


A marina-view restaurant, fronted by The City of Long Beach. (Not the actual city, no. That's the name of the boat.)


From the dock; a forest of masts.

La Morenita

The solution to Honduras's political problems: the Blessed Virgin Mary.

In the past three months, a slew of Latin American presidents, foreign ministers, ambassadors and even a Nobel Peace Prize winner, have failed to find a solution to the political standoff that has split Honduras. Now, many despairing Hondurans say, may be time for a little divine intervention.

So every day, more and more Hondurans are calling on the Virgin of Suyapa, a 3-inch statuette of the Virgin Mary, made of dark wood and nicknamed La Morenita, or the Little Dark One, for help. Over the centuries, La Morenita, which was found on a hillside in 1747 and now makes its home at a small whitewashed colonial church near the capital, has been credited with sundry miracles, from curing kidney stones to ending a brief war.

The rest of the WSJ's front page story.

St Therese

Today is the feast of St Therese in the Pauline Rite. As usual, EWTN has an archive of excellent material. No need for The Inn to try and reinvent the microchip. Click here for as much as you could wish for on Sr Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, O.C.D.

Festum Angelorum

In the traditional Roman Rite this is the feast of St Michael the Archangel. In the Book of Common Prayer it's St Michael and All Angels. The Novus Ordo compromised - more than St Michael but less than All: the Feast of St Michael, St Gabriel, and St Raphael.

O Everlasting God, Who hast ordained and constituted the services of Angels and men in a wonderful order; Mercifully grant that, as Thy holy Angels always do Thee service in heaven, so, by Thy appointment, they may succour and defend us on earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

That's today's collect according to the old BCP. It's the same in the Roman Rite and in the Latin of the Novus Ordo. Even the ICEL stayed pretty close to the ranch on this one.

More Boats

Today is the official feast of St Sinach MacDara and aren't we awash in boats again. Mrs D'Arcy describes today's saint this way:

Down the centuries, until outboard motors, fishermen dipped sails three times in salute to MacDara's island off the Connemara coast. Now they sign themselves with the Cross. September 28 is given as the main feast day of the saint, but July 16 is the special day of local fishermen whose currachs still carry a small bottle of holy water in the prow. It is a day of reverent pilgrimage with the celebrant of the Mass bringing the Blessed Sacrament to the island in a special currach. Marking MacDara's monastic settlement today are the famous remains of the little almost roofless ancient oratory built of massive stone. A wooden statue of the saint was preserved there for many centuries.

Fifth-century MacDara's name Sinach is met with again in 12th century Irish religious history. Ceallach of the Clann Sinach brought his "great name and influence" to the cause of renewal in the Irish church. Long a favorite name locally, MacDara is recently coming into greater use. It is interesting to note that Patrick Pearse, the poet-patriot of modern Ireland, chose MacDara as the name of his hero in The Singer, his classic play of Irish patriotism.

Nor has MacDara's little stone oratory ever lost its appeal. Its gable shape stands as the prototype of features noted in important Irish art treasures such as the gabled top of the Monasterboice Muireadach sculptured Cross and the gable shape of the Moneymusk reliquary (a case for relics of Colmcille, preserved from 1315 in Moneymusk House and now in the Edinburgh Museum.)

MacDara's chapel has recently been restored. There is a photo below. The picture at the top of this post shows it almost roofless in the 19th century

Penance. Sort of.

Guilt implies penance.

To play for the service yesterday, I had to skip the 1:00 p.m. traditional Mass and attend the only other available traditional Mass, the one at 7:00 a.m. Except I overslept. So it was the Pauline Rite for me yesterday. Penetenze Age! as the demented old heretic in Name of the Rose always says.

And if I were in any doubt that my penance was relevant to the, uh, "crime", there was that offertory hymn. The words were changed to something suitably religious sounding, but the tune was. . . .


. . . .The Skye Boat Song.

Mild Guilt of the Non-Religous Type

I played for a funeral service yesterday, committing someone's ashes to the sea. I had a wonderful time. Which doesn't seem quite right. But I can't help it; I really enjoyed it. I got out of this miserable, blisteringly hot, dry corner of the world with its filthy air out onto the sea in the fresh, cool air for a couple of hours. I went for a boat ride, breathed the invigorating air, played pipes (the pipes loved the humidity), and got paid. What's not to like? And, yet. . . well, it was a funeral. A very sad occasion for the family. So I didn't smile. But inside and between you and me, it was a delightful afternoon.

(The picture is from the camera on my cell phone. I'm really astonished at how well it turned out. I wasn't expecting much from a phone camera, particularly as in the bright sunlight I couldn't see exactly what I was shooting. I have a few more but for some reason Blogger is not reducing them as it used to and they are coming out far too large.)

There's One Born Every Minute. . . .

P. T. Barnum Dept.

See, you get off your airplane at San Francisco International Airport and you're overcome with guilt at all the carbon you emitted what with riding on the airplane and all. I mean, the airplane emitted it. You may or may not have. But it's the aircraft that burned through oceans of jet fuel. And you, careless of the planet again, have facilitated it by riding on the airplane. What to do?

San Francisco International Airport officialdom have just the solution: kiosks. You slide your credit card into one of these kiosks and buy yourself some carbon offsets.

This seems to be entirely serious. Reuters publishes the solemn press release in all its sententious glory here.

Bernie Madoff chose the wrong racket entirely.

Rudeness When Addressing the Congress. . .

. . . isn't a brand new phenomenon.

Of course, maybe that sort of carry on is only rude when addressed to The Sainted One. It doesn't count when the president in question is George W. Bush.

Friday the 13th. . . .

. . .comes on a Sunday this month. Something had to go wrong so I overslept and missed the traditional Mass. So Novus Ordo it was. With piano. Tinkling piano mood music for everyone who misses the cocktail lounges of the '50s. I am, alas, not one of those people.

Carefully, carefully. . . .

The brand new pc has been cured of its user-inflicted maladies and is humming along as it ought to. The tech did a wonderful job of putting it back to its original out-of-the-box order. And I have carefully and oh so judiciously loaded the proper programmes of the correct type and in the correct order followed after careful examination by the files salvaged from the old pc. No more dumping all sort of odds and ends that might be useful if I knew what they were into the new box. The only thing left to get is the file of my old emails. I can't find where Eudora stores them and then transferring them so that they will be readable on the new pc presents a separate problem. Always assuming I can catch the old pc in one of its friendlier moods when the old video card and mother board decide to work.

I suppose there's no hope of retrieving my old address book on Eudora short of copying it out by hand.

All of which means that if I owe you an email your chances of getting it are considerably reduced unless I have your address from another source. A reminder to The_Inn at verizon dot com would be useful in that regard.

The World Waits: Did the Fed-Ex Guy Ever Arrive?

He did.

And delivered all the appropriate paraphernalia. I set it up and it all worked as it ought.

Then I started tinkering with it.

At which point things started to go pear shaped.

Which is why this is being typed on Herself's little notebook PC with the tiny keyboard.

The tech will be out tomorrow morning to undo my handiwork.

Again.

Waiting. . . .

The new PC is supposed to be delivered today. They don't give you a time of day; just a date. Somebody needs to be home to accept delivery. Somebody is me. So I am puttering around the house waiting for the Fed-Ex guy. At the moment I am, as you can see, blogging. On the old machine. Now that we have laid out the big bucks for a new machine the old one has decided to taunt me by working flawlessly. At least the assorted other odds and ends - monitor, keyboard, and so forth - don't have to be replaced. Small mercies.

It is once again hotter than the hinges of hell today. And we are still surrounded by fires. Miles away, thank God. No danger at all here. But we can see and occasionally smell the smoke. (Here's what it would look like if you were a NASA satellite.) And this little office where The Inn is typed - the hub of the blogging universe - is still not air-conditioned. Maybe someday after we have it re-wired. I believe electricity was something of an after thought in this neighbourhood. Our contractor appears to have believed it to be a passing fad.

This is the sort of idle rambling that kills a blog's readership. So they tell me. I suppose I should be more careful about that.

[Note to self: Avoid blogging when you have nothing much to say and are merely passing the time while waiting in the heat for the Fed-Ex guy.]

Three Cheers for Mrs Beamish

(Tip of the balmoral to Elizabeth Murphy via CTNGreg)

Some Piping for the Weekend. . . .

Gary West (the host of Pipeline) playing Scottish smallpipes in D. The first tune is apparently called "The Three-wheeled Rabbit". (I don't know what that means either.) He finishes in the last couple of minutes with a knock-out version of "The Mason's Apron".

Ecclesiastical Latin: Filo Pendens

Sine Reginaldo, nihil.

It looks like if anything happens to Fr Reggie it will be vernacular all 'round.

The details.