Smasher Lagru

It all depends on who you read and your point of view.

I watched the Pope celebrate Mass and Baptism on EWTN last night.  Since it was the first time I've seen Mass in the Sistine I couldn't tell if it was unusual that the Pope was using the main altar and celebrating ad orientem.  Also used a wonderful throne to one side, which was clearly original (or there a long time) since the sanctuary steps were designed to facilitate its use.

The Pope is, I think, a master communicator - even greater than Pope John Paul - in his use of images and symbols.  So here he celebrated ad orientem, but using the Ordinary Form and in Italian (Eucharistic Prayer 2 which is great if you've got children cos it's short).  And he also used the modern baptismal font from the seventies.

All of this completely confuses "religious commentators" who can't move beyond the two legs good, four legs bad approach.



We all enjoy seeing the human side of the Pope so it was good to note that he got one of the children's name wrong and had to be corrected by the father.  And that mysteriously at some point he also lost his fisherman's ring.  You know the way people fiddle with these things and I recall Bishop Walsh of Down and Connor dropping his during a sermon by Cahal Cardinal Daly.  And another MC who, having been given a bishop's ring to hold at some point during a Mass - the bishop was anointing - the MC put the ring on his own finger and then couldn't get it off again.  And if you've ever got your finger stuck in a bishop's ring that can be very embarrassing. 

I have never been a big fan of the Old Mass/Traditional Latin Mass/Extraordinary Form simply because, well I've only ever been to one which was fine but what tended to put me off was that I knew so many weirdos connected with the Old Mass.  Not just the tweed wearing Peadar types who look and talk like 1950s civil servants but genuine lefebvrists types spouting off about the protestantised novis ordo, free masons and "can you get me an altar stone from the college chapel".

But I completely supported the Motu Proprio on the basis that, well it's from the Pope firstly, and secondly it makes good sense to bring people in from the cold if you can, and thirdly it might help improve the appalling celebration of the Ordinary Form.  and I have been gently shocked by the rebellious reaction of some bishops, including Irish bishops such as Patrick Walsh in Down and Connor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Walsh_%28Bishop%29)

A priest friend of mine, a missionary in South America, back in Ireland for a few weeks, is a celebrator of the Extraordinary Form, which he did almost every day in his home town to the delight of the local Latin Mass Society Tweed wearers.  I presume he passed no test set by a local bishop.

For those awaiting humour in this post - there isn't any (well apart from the picture which is vaguely amusing and refers, in case you don't follow these things, to another document due out explaining what the Pope meant when he said priests didn't need special permission to use the Extraordinary Form) as I am too ill to be funny.  I have what the doctor describes as a three week virus and what Bellatrix calls "your cold".

Friday evening saw the Baudelaire-Lagru family gathered in the kitchen around the table, converted with loving reverence into an altar complete with two snowy white table cloths, some beautiful candle sticks and a lovely crucifix made by the Sisters of Bethléem, a contemplative order in the south of France who use local dolomite stone to cast their sculptures.



Our local curate, Fr Dan Handler, had kindly offered to say Mass and who were we to turn him down.  I explained to the children how it was important that they be quiet and respectul during the Mass.  The moment Fr Dan walked in, vested in a beatiful chausable with an icon of Our Lady on it, my eldest, Hermione began moaning, not in a "I'm in ecstasy" way but in a "I'm hungry" way - this continued loudly, even while I did the readings and then she took matters into her own hands by climbing up and getting a chunk of bread from the bread bin.  She chewed this throughout the Mass.  Meanwhile our second youngest, Artemis, who's three in March, filled his nappy and then wandered around the kitchen, unable or unwilling to sit down.  Beatrice began to take up the hunger theme by thirsting, though more gently than her older sister.  But she began to cry loudly when she couldn't receive communion - it was like watching Little Nellie of Holy God, except Little Nellie didn't have an older sister who went bananas and began screaming "don't be bloody stupid, you can't go to communion when you're only in senior infants - stupid!".  Only little Lemony, our youngest, managed to remain quiet and calm throughout.

Rarely was the Ite Missa Est responded to with such a heart felt Deo Gratias.