Philadelphia Chapter

Dear friends,

Thanks to the majority of you who have returned your information sheets. It is good to know who our loyal members are. Beginning August 1, this mailing list will be updated to include only those who returned their information. If you cannot find the Information Sheet, you can send a simple email containing:

Name
Address
Email
Telephone
Name of parish where you attend the TLM
Name of your home parish

Also, beginning August 1st, we will post all of our notices regarding future TLM’s and other pertinent information on our local LLA site, i.e., www.latinliturgy.org/phila/. Please check our site regularly. There are new items recently posted. By posting all notices on our site, will preclude the necessity of sending general mailings to the entire membership list.

Once again, make sure we have all of your information requested including your email address before August 1, 2011, and make a habit of checking for new postings of TLM’s on our website.

William A. Torchia, Esq., Chairman

The site New Liturgical Movement features one of our local Catholic churches.

http://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/

William A. Torchia, Esq., Chairman

Reading Aristotle Can Roll Back the
Tide of Relativism

21 July 2011

By Matthew Reisz

Educationalist calls for a ‘genuine’ revival of Classics teaching, reports Matthew Reisz

No woolly minds: Students should learn from Plato, Aristotle and Socrates

A leading educational researcher has called for a revival of “classical education” that goes beyond television documentaries, popular books about Socrates, GCSEs in ancient civilisation and the promotion of Latin as part of an International Baccalaureate.

Speaking at the Institute of Ideas Education Forum this week, Dennis Hayes, professor of education at the University of Derby, argued that we are not “on the verge of a second Renaissance”.

The enthusiasm for Classics among politicians such as Boris Johnson or Michael Gove was largely a result of misty-eyed nostalgia for their own “public or grammar school education”, he said.

What this tended to miss out were the things that made the classical tradition genuinely important. Prominent among these was ancient philosophers’ commitment to “objectivism” – “seeing things as they really are” – and an attendant “recognition of the need for a constant struggle against subjectivism, superstition and backwardness”.

The core values of today’s universities, continued Professor Hayes, are “counter to the classical spirit”.

We find “a woolly-minded relativism that allows management to have their values, marketing (to have) another (set of values), teacher training departments another, academic faculties another”, with “lecturers left to try to ignore or subvert these while pursuing their own values. This subjective muddle keeps going because there is no challenge to it.”

It is here that some of the great classical authors can play a vital role, Professor Hayes said, arguing that students should be “trained in the tradition of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.

“Plato destroys relativism in two pages,” he continued. “Classics teaching often focuses on accuracy of translation, which means that even those who know Greek can miss the point.

“What really matters is the rigour of thinking, which is a central feature of Greek philosophy. That is the aspect largely missing from current education and that most needs emphasising at the present time.”

Professor Hayes is due to develop his analysis in greater depth on 23 July as part of the Institute of Ideas Academy, a three-day residential event that aims “to take a stand for the value of the content of education instead of fixating on object and process”.

“A better understanding of a classical education,” he suggested this week, “would require us to demand it for all pupils and students” – provided it is based on “the defence of objectivity, criticism and intellectual detachment against subjectivity, compliance and the promotion of popular fads and fashions”.

In a warning against tokenism, he concluded: “What is on offer in schools today and any development of it, without the classical outlook of struggling to ‘see things as they really are’, will be mere dressing up. We might as well have potential students turning up for interview in togas.”

matthew.reisz@tsleducation.com.

The Archbishop has invited the FSSP into his diocese and has given them a church, where there are three Masses on Sundays and two daily.

Quoted from an interview he gave to the NCR:

“I certainly want to be faithful to the Holy Father and his teaching about the traditional expression of the Roman liturgy in the Tridentine form. I supported that and will continue to support that.”

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports:

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/breaking/20110718_Denver_bishop_to_replace_Cardinal_Rigali.html?cmpid=125219969

Denver Bishop to Replace Cardinal Rigali

By David O’Reilly

Inquirer Staff Writer

Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Denver appears poised to succeed Justin Rigali as archbishop of Philadelphia.

Persons familiar with the process say Rigali will host a news conference Tuesday to announce that Pope Benedict XVI has named Chaput, 66, to lead the 1.5 million-member archdiocese, which spans five counties.

Chaput (pronounced Sha-pew) is a member of the Capuchin order of Franciscan priests and has led the Denver archdiocese since 1997.

A member of the Prairie Band of the Potawatomi Tribe of American Indians, he is the second Native American bishop of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States, and its first Native American archbishop.

He is known as an articulate conservative who regularly exhorts his flock to live out the Catholic Church’s teachings on social justice, especially its opposition to abortion and the death penalty, and its care for the poor and immigrants.

The New Oxford Review site links to this article from catholicculture.org:

Over 300 Austrian priests join ‘Call to Disobedience’
July 13, 2011

Over 300 of Austria’s 4,200 priests have pledged to take part in Aufruf zum Ungehorsam (Call to Disobedience), an initiative launched in June.

The Call to Disobedience document cites “the Roman refusal of a long-overdue Church reform and the inaction of bishops.” Priests who support the document pledge:

*to pray for Church reform at every liturgy, since “in the presence of God there is freedom of speech”
*not to deny the Holy Eucharist to “believers of good will,” including non-Catholic Christians and those who have remarried outside the Church
*to avoid offering Mass more than once on Sundays and holy days and to avoid making use of visiting priests–instead holding a “self-designed” Liturgy of the Word
*to describe such a Liturgy of the Word with the distribution of Holy Communion as a “priestless Eucharistic celebration”; “thus we fulfill the Sunday obligation in a time of priest shortage”
*to “ignore” canonical norms that restrict the preaching of the homily to clergy
*to oppose parish mergers, insisting instead that each parish have its own individual leader, “whether man or woman”
*to “use every opportunity to speak out openly in favor of the admission of the married and of women to the priesthood”

“The open call to disobedience shocked me,” Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna said in a July 7 letter, noting that many professionals would have “long since lost their jobs” if they had called for disobedience. Reminding priests that they had freely promised obedience to their bishop at ordination, he asked, “Can I rely on you?”

“Christian obedience is a school of freedom,” the cardinal added. “It is about the concrete translation into life of what we pray in every Our Father, when we ask the Father that His will be done in heaven and on earth … This willingness is made concrete in religious obedience to the Pope and bishops.”

Those who truly in conscience believe that they must disobey the hierarchy, and that “‘Rome’ is on the wrong track [and] gravely contradicts the will of God,” ought in consequence to “travel the way no more with the Roman Catholic Church. I believe and hope, however, that this extreme case does not occur here.”

“The one who gives up the principle of obedience dissolves unity,” the cardinal continued, as he pledged to meet with the initiative’s leaders and point out its “inconsistencies,” such as “priestless Eucharist.”

The new initiative’s web site is registered in the name of Father Hans Bensdorp, until 2010 the parish priest of the Church of the Rosary in Hetzendorf in the Archdiocese of Vienna. A YouTube video, uploaded in 2009, shows an excerpt from the Mass commemorating the 35th anniversary of Father Bensdorp’s priestly ordination, according to the video’s description. Tensions between the papacy and segments of the Church in Austria are not novel, as witnessed by the advent of Josephinism in the 18th centry, the fin-de-siècle Los von Rom (Free from Rome) movement, and disagreements between the Vatican and Vienna Cardinal Theodor Innitzer in the face of the Nazi Anschluss.

July 14, 2011

The Vatican will soon announce the retirement of Philadelphia’s Cardinal Justin Rigali and the name of his successor, according to Micheal Sean Winters, writing in the National Catholic Reporter.

Cardinal Rigali has faced heavy criticism since February, when a grand jury report charged that the Philadelphia archdiocese had failed to pursue sex-abuse charges against 37 priests. After initially claiming that no priests who faced credible allegations were still in active ministry, Cardinal Rigali was forced to back down, and to place 24 priests on leave while charges against them were investigated. That clumsy handling of the explosive grand-jury report, combined with the cardinal’s advanced age (he is 76), gave rise to rumors that he would soon be replaced.

Cardinal Rigali enjoys close ties to the Vatican, having worked in Rome for years. He was president of the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy, the institution that trains Vatican diplomats, and later secretary of the Congregation for Bishops, before being appointed Archbishop of St. Louis in 1994. He moved to the Philadelphia archdiocese in 2003, and was raised to the College of Cardinals by Pope John Paul II that same year.

In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.

Before meals:

Benedic, Domine, nos et haec tua dona, quae de tua largitate sumus sumpturi. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.

After meals:

Agimus tibi gratias Omnipotens Deus, pro omnibus beneficiis tuis, qui vivis et regnas in saecula saeculorum. Amen.

There is a Traditional Roman Hymnal, which is already in use at several Traditional Latin Masses in the area. This hymnal is available from the Angelus Press.