Statue, Notre-Dame-des-Victoires Church, Quebec City

The above image from Notre-Dame-des-Victoires Church in Quebec City is included in a striking gallery on the religious heritage of Quebec. Would post more links, but would be here all day: One church is more beautiful and historic than the next in Quebec City and in Montreal. A magnificent collection.

When Pope Pius XII blessed American troops following their liberation of Rome, an infantryman in the audience captured the photo above.

A British soldier who was there recalled the event in his diary:

My driver was a devout Roman Catholic whilst I was a practising Wesleyan Methodist. We joined the American soldiers hurrying into the Papal Palace, and we soon packed into a large room. A short time later the Papal guard sprang to attention, and through a large door emerged the Pope, carried in a 'carriage' high on the shoulders of six strong bearers. He was dressed all in white and made a truly impressive sight.

He alighted from his 'carriage' and the stood in front of what was an audience of several hundred American Servicemen - and two English soldiers. The Pope then addressed us in quite good English. He thanked us for our past in liberating Rome and then said he would give a general blessing following which he would pass amongst the giant crowd and give a personal blessing to six people.

Slowly he passed amongst the throng and as he neared us I could sense the excitement of my colleague. Here he was, a Roman Catholic, hoping and no doubt praying that he would be a chosen one. Suddenly, His Holiness stopped right in front of us. He stretched out his arm and his hand then gently rested upon my head! What a fantastic moment as the Pontiff gave me his personal blessing (in Latin), and handed me a Crucifix.

For the rest of my war years I continued to wear that Crucifix around my neck on the string which always carried my two identity discs.

This without doubt was one of the most wonderful experiences of my life and one that I will treasure for ever. Arthur Cope

On the other hand, if the Ian Paisley school is to be believed, a papal blessing outstrips the Curse of Tutankhamen among Things to be Avoided at All Costs. Not only vampires recoil at holy water. So do Orangemen.

Mary, Refuge of Sinners, 1836, Basilica of Our Lady of Victories, Paris

Inspired, or should I say provoked, by the latest from the Vatican, a sampling of churches dedicated to Our Lady of Victory:

The Basilica and National Shrine in Lackawanna, N.Y., won't be appearing anytime soon on Modern Liturgy magazine's list of top 10 tourist attractions. What a remarkable-looking place! Take a 360-degree panoramic view. Compare the altar at the OLV National Shrine to its equivalent at Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles. I know which one I prefer, but expect 250 words from Todd by the end of the day.

A page of photos of Notre Dame des Victoires in Paris includes this striking image of the candle-lit shrine to Our Lady.

In the Canadian Arctic is the Igloo Church, Our Lady of Victory in Inuvik, Northwest Territories. This is the inside.

Will want to see Modern Liturgy magazine's latest Visual Arts Awards (PDF).

Showcased on the second page is a Jubilee 2000 Mass celebrated outdoors at a tennis stadium in Queens. According to the caption: After the assembly of the Brooklyn Diocese had gathered for the Mass, a team of dancers/builders carried stones from a pile to form the altar.

You might call it a Bull Gang Mass.

The Complete Military History of France: Fast becoming an Internet chestnut. Image via Propaganda Postcards of the Great War.

"Only peace must be an absolute value"

From the indispensable Sandro Magister of L'Espresso Online, a report on Jerusalem's Latin-rite patriarch, wholly in the pocket of Palestinian extremists: The Patriarch’s Peace March, with an al-Fatah Escort.

Patriarch Michel Sabbah is isolated even within the Palestinian Catholic community, Magister writes, because he is partisan; excessively aligned with the extremist currents that throw their weight around in Bethlehem and the territories, and that conditioned and distorted the Dec. 31 peace march.

Sabbah is the churchman who last September, after the announcement of the arrival in Jerusalem of Cardinal Martini – who is judged to be pro-Israeli – said that the Milanese cardinal was a “persona non grata.”

Sabbah is the man who gave this justification of Palestinian suicide terrorism; his words were transcribed from a videotape of a February 2002 discourse to the faithful:

“The situation is simply military occupation, from 1967 until today. Ours is an occupied country, which explains why people are tired and blow themselves up. The Israelis tell Palestinians: Stop the violence and you will have what you want without violence. But one has seen in the history of the last ten years that the Israelis have moved only forced by violence. Unfortunately, nothing but violence makes people march. And not only here. Every country has been born in blood.”

And it is he who in a homily for Easter 2002 Mass said that “injustice and oppression have been imposed on only one of the two peoples,” the Palestinians. And “the [Israeli] leaders must stop talking about terrorism to hide the root evil [committed by them] and to justify and feed the permanence of death and hatred.”

And what do they think about Patriarch Sabbah in the Vatican? In its April 4, 2002 issue, “L’Osservatore Romano” carried large sections of that Easter homily, as if in support of its theses.

Meantime, the equally indispensable John Allen offers a dispatch on the visit of Tariq Aziz to Assisi, with revealing background on the clerics in his retinue, among them a French former UN functionary-turned-priest who shills for Iraq, and this remarkable Melkite patriarch :

[O]ne of the more striking sidebars to the Assisi visit [was] the conspicuous presence alongside Aziz of Archbishop Hilarion Capucci, an auxiliary bishop of the Greek Melkite church in communion with Rome. Capucci, who led a tiny Melkite community in Jerusalem in the 1960s and 1970s, carries the personal title of “patriarch.”

To call Capucci’s past “checkered” would be an under-statement. He first came to public attention when he was arrested on August 18, 1974, by Israeli security forces in after returning to Jerusalem from a trip to Lebanon. His car was found stuffed with TNT and guns headed for the Palestinian Liberation Organization.

At the time, Israeli interrogators said Capucci had blamed “blackmail” by Al Fatah guerillas, claiming that they had threatened him with physical force and “disclosure of actions that might threaten his position in the church.” In August 2002, Franciscan Fr. David Maria Jeager, spokesperson for the Franciscan custodians of the holy sites in Jerusalem, supported this hypothesis in an interview with the Italian publication Libero. Jeager said Capucci in the 1960s had developed “personal interests, not at all compatible with the dignity of the priestly or episocopal office” that had left him vulnerable to Palestinian blackmail.

Reports suggest that prior to the 1967 war, Capucci had worked easily with Israeli authorities, so much so that some regarded him as a “collaborator.” After his arrest, however, he became an ardent champion of the Palestinian cause.

Capucci was sentenced to 12 years in prison and began organizing an international campaign to secure his release. At one point he declared a hunger strike. Pope Paul VI intervened with a personal letter to then-President of Israel Ephraim Katziv. Capucci was released in 1977, with, Israeli sources insist, an understanding that he would stay out of politics.

If so, the deal has been honored largely in the breach. Capucci served as a member of the Palestine National Council, the PLO’s parliament-in-exile, and in 1980 was dispatched by Yassir Arafat to negotiate the return of the bodies of American soldiers lost in the attempt to rescue the embassy hostages in Iran.

Capucci, now 81, has lived in a private apartment in Rome since his release, and according to sources, has maintained a low profile within Melkite circles in town. Yet he is quite visible on the political scene, often taking part in demonstrations or appearing on TV. Italian author Oriana Fallaci, whose recent anti-Islamic polemic La Rabbia e L’Orgoglio was a publishing sensation in Italy, has called Capucci “that saintly man with a Mercedes full of bombs who lives in the Vatican.”

In December 2000, Capucci made a visit to Lebanon to visit Sheikh Nabil Qaouq, a Hezbollah leader. In front of reporters, when he reached the Lebanese-Israeli border, Capucci picked up a stone and hurled it in the direction of the Israeli territory.

“I wish I had been with the heroes of the intifada to take part in their battle for the independence of Palestine,” Capucci said.

In March 2002, Capucci participated in a march in Rome which had been billed as an apolitical appeal for peace in the Middle East, but which some believe turned into a pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli exercise, with slogans and banners that even members of Italy’s secular left described as “anti-Semitic.” A group of young Palestinians dressed as suicide bombers led the procession.

St. Joseph Catholic Church provides a place of Christian worship that enhances the participation of parishioners in the Mass. Passing by a natural boulder from which water flows into baptismal pools, worshipers enter to see the faces of those who are already gathered. Soaring interior spaces flooded with light streaming through stained glass complete the open, friendly feeling of the worship space…Entry into the sanctuary was designed so that visitors would enter facing the congregation and see all of the member's "smiling faces." Description of St. Joseph Catholic Community, Arlington, Tex., by the Dallas architectural firm of Selzer Associates.

St. Joseph, Husband of Mary Church, Las Vegas

Or as CCBG did the renovation of Sacred Heart Church in San Diego:

A chance to renovate a 1920’s mission-style Catholic church two blocks from the ocean created a need to honor the history and beautifully adorned simplicity of this worship space. The image of entering God’s house was reinforced in the original design, and respected in the renovation. The interior refurbishing focused on a series of small aesthetic and technical improvements that collectively rejuvenated the church, but did not reveal a date, thereby creating a sense of timelessness.

Altar, Sacred Heart Church, San Diego

Kudos to project architect Brian Cassidy.

*

And E. L. Core has it covered.

In the Diocese of Kalamazoo – where Fr. Robert Johansen reportedly has again been silenced -- priests of Newman's order have transformed a house into a fine little Oratory.

How one wishes the Oratorians or the Anglican-Use Congregation of St. Athanasius were invited to adopt St. Aidan's, the landmark Brookline, Mass., church where John F. Kennedy was baptized, but which now faces redevelopment as a church-themed housing complex or office space.

33 He was beaten by savage blows in an undignified manner by impure men because of his attempt to restore abused women to a secure life.

35 Absorbed in prayer and four cubits off the floor, his face shining in a marvelous way, he was heard to cry frequently: "O Lord if they only knew you."

40 An assassin attacking him with a drawn sword was stopped by a voice: "What are you doing, you scoundrel?" Terrified, he abandoned his crime.

41 In a suburban chapel of the Blessed Virgin he and his nine companions took their vows, especially to go to Jerusalem and seek the palm of martyrdom. Each year they repeated this vow.

42 In an effort to dissuade a man from an impure life he stood in freezing water in the middle of winter and thus converted the man who was frightened by this sound and the sight.


From Company Magazine come several more interesting features on Jesuit history:

FEW JESUIT MISSIONS IN THE WORLD are as remote and difficult to reach as the 17th and 18th century reductions of Chiquitos, Bolivia. The proportions of their construction were related to musical harmonies, and they remain astonishing for the splendor of their carved altars, pulpits, and confessionals.

IN CHINA, THE TOMBSTONES of Matteo Ricci and other Jesuits of the 17th and 18th centuries are tucked away on the grounds of Beijing's Communist Party School.

WITH A HERITAGE OF SCHOLARSHIP that dates back to 1603, the Society of Bollandists have been determining fact and fiction in the lives of the saints for centuries.

The first volume of the Acta Sanctorum, containing the saints remembered in January, was published in 1643.

Music in the Ruins, c. 1918

SOLD: Convent altar

Antique Church Furnishings sold here.

Catholic church altar, Victoria, Minn., early 1900s postcard

Lileks on Catholic church architecture:

It was built in 1962, and it shows. The floors were paved with salt-and-pepper terrazzo; the bricks were light red, the railing around the altar was the black-and-white marble you’d find in the lobby of Perry Mason’s office building. The altar space was immense, and empty - a blank screen against the wall, a canopy floating in the middle of the space (its eyebrow shape seemed designed to capture prayers and deflect them back down) and a tiny crucifixion scene hanging in the air, a potent jot of symbolism in this empty Empyrean expanse. Very 1962. Oh so 1962. You could imagine the congregation back then - narrow lapels, thin ties, shaved necks, a faint ghost of Vitalis and Winstons hanging over the men. The women had nylons that skrred when they walked; sensible Republican cloth coats, Patsy Cline hair that had been aqua-netted to the brittle consistency of frozen cotton candy. This place must have seemed extraordinary to their eyes, at least compared to the old church - no more the suffocating jumble of Gothic iconography, the cold wind shooting in through ancient windows, the creaky pews, the heavy timbered roof. This was the future. You might as well have carved LATIN NOT SPOKEN HERE over the door.

I kept expecting the gigantic screen to slide up and reveal a bank of Univac computers, busily computing the ideal homily to keep the people believing in Landru.

I understand the concept - rather than stuff every corner with some sad-eyed disapproving saint, rather than have every square inch radiate HISTORY and OBEDIENCE and MAJESTY, the architects pared it down to the essential details: the stained-glass window with its triumphal expression of Mariology put the church firmly in Catholic territory, and the lone small Christ hanging in mid-air concentrated the worshipper’s mind on the essentials. I grew up around modern churches, so these places don’t leave me cold. But there’s something forlorn about the churches whose modernism now feels dated and failed. In the old churches your faith was reflected in the splendor around the altar - the faces, the symbols, the details of stone and wood that tied this place to centuries past. Here the great void over the altar swamps and swallows the tiny little Christ. The architects, in effect, made people pray to something hanging off a charm bracelet…

Oh, to write as well as he. (Link courtesy of the Rev. Jeff Gill)

Altarpiece of Coronation of the Virgin, 1499, Basilica, Szepeskáptalan, Hungary

A faithful correspondent of progressive liturgical bent has commented to the effect that high altars are irrelevant.

I, of course, could not disagree more. Just look at the masterpieces of devotional art at this site on Hungarian winged altarpieces. Or browse the results of a search there for altar images, any of which may be sent as a postcard.

Or see this image from the Catholic Encyclopedia and this and this from a UC-Santa Cruz archive of the Certosa di Pavia in Italy.

Compare to the showpiece sanctuary highlighted at this church-furnishing site. Or to Archbishop Rembert Weakland's un-sanctuary with hovering barbed-wire. Or anything by Vosko.

High altars irrelevant? Never.

Quick, somebody send the Vatican this week's edition of Weekly World News.

Christopher Johnson at Midwest Conservative Journal weighs in on the Holy See's latest conciliatory outreach to the Butcher of Baghdad. Respecting the Vatican's opposition on just-war grounds to US action "would be infinitely easier," he writes, "were I not confronted with the image of a papal envoy listening politely while a mass-murderer declared what the Vicar of Christ's responsibilities before God ought to be.

More on the Vatican-Iraq niceties at Disordered Affections.

And this from Andrew Sullivan:

THE VATICAN AND THE THUGS: The Roman Catholic hierarchy is now in full spin behind Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. It was truly sickening to see Tariq Aziz, the instrument of one of the most murderous regimes on earth, using the shrine of St Francis for a photo-op. It's even more sickening to read the comments of Cardinal Etchegaray, informing the world that Saddam Hussein had been relieved by Friday's report to the United Nations by the chief weapons inspectors. "He [Saddam Hussein] is doing everything to avoid war," the Cardinal told Italian television, according to French news agency AFP.

I know these aren't matters of faith and doctrine to which all Catholics are supposed to assent. But after the child-abuse scandals, we now have to deal with a Catholic hierarchy that is actively supporting genocidal dictators and their malevolent agendas. When the world needs moral clarity, the Vatican gives us the spin from Baghdad. It really is 1933 again, isn't it?

The Neville Chamberlain spirit of the recent anti-war rallies was not lost on Little Green Footballs.

Andrew Sullivan commented on the selection of slogans from which anti-war protesters were choosing for tee-shirts and banners (second item):

Notice that only one addresses anything to do with the threat from Saddam. Notice also the constant harping on the tired old notion that Bush is an idiot - "Brains Not Bombs," "Bush Is a Moron," "Smart Bombs Don't Justify Dumb Leaders." Notice the personal attacks - "Draft the Bush Twins," "Sorry, Dubya, Have a Pretzel Instead." Notice the idiotic moral equivalence: "Who's The Unelected Tyrant With The Bomb?" It's hard not to feel demoralized by a culture that can throw up such things as genuine pieces of protest. It's as if an entire generation or more has forgotten what an argument is.

Medieval tomb effigy, St. Canice's Cathedral, Kilkenny.

Historic churches in which Cromwell's troops stabled horses include:

In Scotland, St. Nicholas Buccleuch in Dalkeith, Sinclair Chapel at Rosslyn Castle, Whitekirk church, the crypt of Glasgow Cathedral, the only pre-Reformation cathedral in mainland Scotland left standing by Cromwell's army, and St. Magnus Cathedral in the Orkney Islands.

In Ireland, St. Nicholas of Myra Church in Galway, St. Canice's in Kilkenny, St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin, and the Augustinian Abbey in Co. Tipperary.

In Wales, Llandaff Cathedral, used by Cromwell's armies as a beer hall. In England, medieval tomb-effigies somehow survived the ransacking of the priory chapel at Cartmel; at Willingham, Cromwell's forces kept records of the church decorations destroyed.

The historian Macaulay on the puritan zeal of the Roundheads:

But that which chiefly distinguished the army of Cromwell from other armies was the austere morality and the fear of God which pervaded all ranks. It is acknowledged by the most zealous royalists that, in that singular camp, no oath was heard, no drunkenness or gambling was seen, and that, during the long dominion of the soldiery, the property of the peaceable citizen and the honor of woman were held sacred. If outrages were committed, they were outrages of a very different kind from those of which a victorious army is generally guilty. No servant girl complained of the rough gallantry of the redcoats. Not an ounce of plate was taken from the shops of the goldsmiths. But a Pelagian sermon, or a window on which the Virgin and Child were painted, produced in the Puritan ranks an excitement which it required the utmost exertions of the officers to quell. One of Cromwell's chief difficulties was to restrain he pikemen and dragoons from invading by main force the pulpits of ministers whose discourses, to use the language of that time, were not savory; and too many of our cathedrals still bear the marks of the hatred with which those stern spirits regarded every vestige of Popery.

And this:

There was scarcely a rural grandee who could not tell a story of wrongs and insults suffered by himself, or by his father, at the hands of the parliamentary soldiers. One old Cavalier had seen half his manor house blown up. The hereditary elms of another had been hewn down. A third could never go into his parish church without being reminded by the defaced scutcheons and headless statues of his ancestry, that Oliver's redcoats had once stabled their horses there.

See a story and a graphic from December 2001 on the renovation of the Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption in Covington, KY. The project had been criticized by Michael Rose, but appears to have turned out rather well. The architects' perspective is here.

Part of an altar removed from St. John the Baptist Church lies in a dumpster, Northern Cambria, Pa., 2000.

In a powerful essay on the conservative vision of Edmund Burke, Roger Scruton writes:

Burke was of additional interest to me on account of the intellectual path that he had trod. His first work, like mine, was in aesthetics. And although I didn’t find much of philosophical significance in his Essay on the Sublime and the Beautiful, I could see that, in the right cultural climate, it would convey a powerful sense of the meaning of aesthetic judgment and of its indispensable place in our lives. I suppose that, in so far as I had received any intimations of my future career as an intellectual pariah, it was through my early reactions to modern architecture, and to the desecration of my childhood landscape by the faceless boxes of suburbia. I learned as a teenager that aesthetic judgment matters, that it is not merely a subjective opinion, unargued because unarguable, and of no significance to anyone besides oneself. I saw—though I did not have the philosophy to justify this—that aesthetic judgment lays a claim upon the world, that it issues from a deep social imperative, and that it matters to us in just the way that other people matter to us, when we strive to live with them in a community. And, so it seemed to me, the aesthetics of modernism, with its denial of the past, its vandalization of the landscape and townscape, and its attempt to purge the world of history, was also a denial of community, home, and settlement. Modernism in architecture was an attempt to remake the world as though it contained nothing save atomic individuals, disinfected of the past, and living like ants within their metallic and functional shells.

Scruton later describes, from experience, the political and social result of the revolutionary drive to remake the world in accord with the ideology of the moment:

It was not until much later, after my first visit to communist Europe, that I came to understand and sympathize with the negative energy in Burke. I had grasped the positive thesis—the defense of prejudice, tradition, and heredity, and of a politics of trusteeship in which the past and the future had equal weight to the present—but I had not grasped the deep negative thesis, the glimpse into Hell, contained in his vision of the Revolution. As I said, I shared the liberal humanist view of the French Revolution, and knew nothing of the facts that decisively refuted that view and which vindicated the argument of Burke’s astonishingly prescient essay. My encounter with Communism entirely rectified this.

Perhaps the most fascinating and terrifying aspect of Communism was its ability to banish truth from human affairs, and to force whole populations to “live within the lie,” as President Havel put it. George Orwell wrote a prophetic and penetrating novel about this; but few Western readers of that novel knew the extent to which its prophecies had come true in Central Europe. To me it was the greatest revelation, when first I travelled to Czechoslovakia in 1979, to come face to face with a situation in which people could, at any moment, be removed from the book of history, in which truth could not be uttered, and in which the Party could decide from day to day not only what would happen tomorrow, but also what had happened today, what had happened yesterday, and what had happened before its leaders had been born. This, I realized, was the situation that Burke was describing, to a largely incredulous readership, in 1790. And two hundred years later the situation still existed, and the incredulity along with it.

Lincoln borne aloft by angels in an 1865 lithograph by D.T. Wiest. *

It's worth recalling the president now generally acknowledged to have been the greatest in American history was derided by many in the smart set of his day as a backwoods idiot, a usurper, a warmonger and an ape.

Partisan newspapers abused the President as "a slangwhanging stump speaker," a "half-witted usurper," a "mole-eyed" monster with "soul ... of leather,""the present turtle at the head of the government." Men of his own party openly charged that he was "unfit," a "political coward," a "dictator,""timid and ignorant,""shattered, dazed, utterly foolish." Grolier Online

"His mind works in the right directions but seldom works clearly and cleanly. His bread is of unbolted flour, and much straw, too, mixes in the bran, and sometimes gravel stones." Henry Ward Beecher on Abraham Lincoln

"The President is nothing more than a well-meaning baboon…I went to the White House directly after tea where I found “the original Gorilla” about as intelligent as ever. What a specimen to be at the head of our affairs now!" General George McClellan on Abraham Lincoln

"Filthy Story-Teller, Despot, Liar, Thief, Braggart, Buffoon, Usurper, Monster, Ignoramus Abe, Old Scoundrel, Perjurer, Robber, Swindler, Tyrant, Field-Butcher, Land Pirate." Harper’s Weekly on Abraham Lincoln

"Mr. Lincoln evidently knows nothing of…the higher elements of human nature…His soul seems made of leather, and incapable of any grand or noble emotion. Compared with the mass of men, he is a line of flat prose in a beautiful and spirited lyric. He lowers, he never elevates you…When he hits upon a policy, substantially good in itself, he contrives to belittle it, besmear it in some way to render it mean, contemptible and useless. Even wisdom from him seems but folly." The New York Post

"…We did not conceive it possible that even Mr. Lincoln would produce a paper so slipshod, so loose-joined, so puerile, not alone in literary construction, but in its ideas, its sentiments, its grasp. He has outdone himself. He has literally come out of the little end of his own horn. By the side of it, mediocrity is superb." The Chicago Times on the Gettysburg Address (Via Betsy Newmark)

"Our country owes all its troubles to him, and God simply made me an instrument of his punishment." John Wilkes Booth on Abraham Lincoln

This extraordinary interest in the details of Lincoln's life seems the more astonishing in light of his low contemporary standing. His associates were sure there were greater figures in their era; usually they had at least one such person in mind--and close at home at that. Lincoln they thought a simple Susan, a baboon, an aimless punster, a smutty joker. He left the highway of principle to pursue the devious paths of expediency. A "huckster in politics," sneered Wendell Phillips, "a first-rate second-rate man." A Springfield neighbor called him "The craftiest and most dishonest politician that ever disgraced an office in America." "If I wanted to paint a despot, a man perfectly regardless of every constitutional right of the people," cried Saulsbury of Delaware in the Senate, "I would paint the hideous form of Abraham Lincoln...."

Not even assassination at once translated Lincoln into sainthood. "The decease of Mr. Lincoln is a great national bereavement," conceded Representative J. M. Ashley of Ohio, "but I am not so sure it is so much of a national loss." Within eight hours of his murder Republican Congressmen in secret caucus agreed that "his death is a godsend to our cause." Andrew Johnson, they believed, would carry through the proposed social revolution in the South which the conciliatory Lincoln had blocked. Now, crowed Ben Wade, "there will be no trouble running the government."

But politicians of all parties were apparently startled by the extent of the national grief over Lincoln, and, politician-like, they decided to capitalize upon it. Democrats were, of course, under a handicap, but a surprising number of them now discovered that they had really heartily endorsed the Lincoln program. That vicious Copperhead sheet the Chicago *Times* discerned "indications of the last few days of [Lincoln's] life that he might command [Democratic] support on the close of the war," and Clement L. Vallandigham reported that even the peace men had begun "to turn toward Lincoln for deliverance." David Donald, "Getting Right With Lincoln," The Atlantic Monthly, 1956

Lincoln is caricatured as "The Great American 'What Is It?' Chased by Copperheads" in this anti-Lincoln cartoon, which is included in a remarkable online gallery of historic prints from Harper's Weekly.

Another fine online repository of historic images is Picture History, which offers this Lincoln archive.

E. L. Core prints an eloquently-worded correspondence between President Lincoln and a Quaker friend.

For commentary on Lincoln, an excellent place to start is The Atlantic Monthly, a great magazine of Lincoln's day, still outstanding today. (Full search results on Lincoln at the Atlantic here)

The song most widely associated with President Lincoln and his cause made its debut in the pages of The Atlantic Monthly 141 years ago this month, in February 1862.

The Battle Hymn of the Republic
By Julia Ward Howe

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.

I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:
His day is marching on.

I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
"As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,
Since God is marching on."

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat:
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me:
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.

President Lincoln and son Tad.

The Lord as "cool cat beatnik" at OCP.

Inspired by Sal Ravilla at Catholic Light, I set out to find the answer to a longstanding question: What is the provenance of that vaguely Mayan-appearing clip-art that illustrates church bulletins, not only wherever the earthenware chalice is raised and the folk guitar strummed, but in seemingly every other parish in the land?

A trip to Oregon Catholic Press readily provided the answer.

Turns out Brother Steve Erspamer, SM, is to church-bulletin art what Marty Haugen is to modern hymnody. The Marianist from St. Louis is the illustrator of several widely-used clip-art books published by Liturgy Training Publications of the Archdiocese of Chicago, and also is featured in OCP's Liturgy Notes.

Not all of Brother Erspamer's oeuvre is that bad, but much is the liturgical equivalent of the big-eyed-urchin paintings you see in movie theater lobbies – and it is ubiquitous.

No doubt once regarded a progressive alternative to pre-Vatican II pious art, the block-print-troll style of Brother Erspamer might be called Kumbaya Kitsch.

What's with the gnarled and stumpy and Hobbit-like features, the hands the size of baseball mitts, and those eyes?

Gregorian chant: Not participatory enough for the new pastor of St. Patrick's Church, Portland, Ore.

From the archdiocese that gave us the banal and ubiquitous Oregon Catholic Press hymnal, an account of a renowned Gregorian chant choir forced from its longtime parish home in the name of liturgical renewal:

David Kubiak e-mails:

Do you read "Sacred Music"? There was a note at the end of the most recent number about "Cantores in Ecclesia", a really splendid polyphonic choir that had been based at a church in Portland, Oregon, since 1985. They have now been forced out because they refused to stop singing the Gregorian Introit and Gradual at the weekly Latin Mass...

They were on tour a couple of years ago and sang Victoria at an old rite pontifical Mass in Chicago at St. John Cantius. I had several students in tow, and two of them eventually converted, partly, they told me, because of the splendor of that liturgy. I see no sign whatever that the descent of the American Church into complete philistinism is being retarded.

Use of the Gregorian Propers is of course one of the options in the newest Missal, but it is clear that if a pastor with the support of a local bishop chooses to impose the "Gathering Song/Responsorial Psalm" option, there is nothing that can be done about it.

Here's how The Oregonian described the choir's final performance at St. Patrick's Church on Oct. 19:

The day the music died. With tears in their eyes, worshippers stood and applauded Cantores in Ecclesia's final singing of Gregorian chant at St. Patrick's Church. A liturgical dispute between a reform-minded priest and a tradition-bound choir director led to the choir's withdrawal after 17 years. The choir is still seeking another home.

A member of the Oregon Guild of Organists commented on the choir's finale: "My heart is very sad. It is a sad day indeed for the status of Roman Catholic church music and lack of appreciation of historical musical modes."

Here, in its entirety, is a feature that ran in The Sunday Oregonian on Oct. 27:

SILENCE COMES TO ST. PATRICK'S
By DAVID STABLER, The Oregonian

A dispute between the priest and music director has stopped the church's popular Latin service -- and raised questions about the role of music in worship

On Saturday nights, as cars roar past on a freeway yards away, the choir of St. Patrick's Church draws a single breath.

"Alleluia," they sing. "Confitemini Domino et invocate nomen eius."

Silver-haired men and mothers with babies kneel and bow their heads. The melody, created about 1,200 years ago by an illiterate monk, echoes through the 113-year-old church, the unison lines restrained and contemplative. Light from stained-glass windows blushes the walls rose while the sharp, woody smell of incense fills the air. The ancient song, the Latin, the humble surroundings and the devout parishioners create a sense of timelessness. This is worship as it might have been in any Catholic church since the seventh century.

But on Oct. 19, after 17 years of service, Cantores in Ecclesia chanted for the last time at St. Patrick's, a perennially poor parish in the heart of industrial Northwest Portland.

Some of the choir members didn't know that this was the group's last performance, but many parishioners did, and they packed the small church.

When the final notes faded, worshippers stood, turned their faces to the choir loft and, breaking a tradition at St. Patrick's, applauded the choir for several minutes. Many were crying, according to those who were there.

"It's a huge loss to the city," said Susan Koe, who attended the emotional service.

Koe converted to Catholicism two years ago precisely because of the choir. "I love that type of music. It's soothing and soaring. It kind of takes me away, like it's God, like it's being part of that."

Although St. Patrick's offers other Mass services, Saturday's Latin Mass drew a particular kind of worshipper. They came from 64 different Zip codes that included Olympia and Government Camp.

On the face of it, the dispute that led to the choir's departure was simply a clash of wills between a choir director, Dean Applegate, dedicated to the old music of the Catholic tradition and a new priest, the Reverend James Mayo, eager to embrace a new congregation and new traditions. Both men are almost the same age and converted to Catholicism as young men.

But their argument gets to central issues in the celebration of the Catholic Mass in a post-Vatican II world. And it raises significant questions about how religion and culture intersect.

Mayo versus Applegate Gregorian chant and the internationally acclaimed choir that sang it distinguished St. Patrick's from other American Catholic churches, where the majority celebrates Mass in English and with more contemporary music. When Cantores in Ecclesia began singing there in 1985, attendance at the church had dipped to alarmingly low levels. Many parishioners, drawn to the old style of Mass, credit the group with saving the church.

Chant is sung prayer, Scripture sung in Latin, and creates a powerful atmosphere of worship when sung in its original liturgical context. It has been a fixture in Roman Catholic worship at least since the seventh century. As a reservoir of about 3,000 melodies, it influenced Western music for centuries, forming the contours of vocal melody through composers ranging from the 16th-century's Giovanni Palestrina to today's Arvo Part.

Applegate, 56, a converted Catholic, has made his life's calling the study and performance of chant and the majestic Renaissance Masses of Palestrina, Victoria and William Byrd, music written specifically for the Latin Mass.

"It's the precious heritage of the Catholic Church," he said. "It is what this choir does."

And does very well. Besides a small but loyal following on Saturdays, attended by 100 worshippers, the choir, 30 adults and 30 children, regularly tours outside the country, to Mexico, England, France and Italy. Choir members scrape together funds from garage and bake sales, but once abroad they sing in glorious cathedrals, twice for the pope, and, in 1997, in a choir competition in which they won gold medals in all categories in the International Palestrina Competition in Rome. The group recorded a CD of music sung during that tour, and, every August, Applegate and the choir present a festival of Byrd's music, the renowned English Renaissance composer. Conductors and lecturers from the United States and England participate.

But Mayo favors a more modern approach to the worship service, or liturgy, calling for more participation by the congregation, including additional singing by worshippers. His disagreement with Applegate surfaced during the summer in memos to the choir director.

Specifically, Mayo requested two things: an entrance hymn that the entire assembly -- not just the choir -- could sing, and a psalm to which the congregation responds that comes between readings from the Old Testament and New Testament. The psalm would replace a section that the choir sang by itself. Mayo permitted the language of the hymn and the psalm to be in any language, even Latin, he said.

But Applegate viewed the changes as striking at the heart of his choir's mission, and rather than agree to them, ended his run at St. Patrick's.

"I've never compromised about that, ever," he said. "Not ever. And it probably isn't time for me to start.

"My struggle over the years has been to protect the heritage of Catholic sacred music," he said. "This was our raison d'etre. But I was powerless. My only power was to say 'No, I won't do what you're telling me to do.' "

The Latin Mass was no threat to the church culture, he said. "Other churches are free to pursue their music. Our music and liturgy sustained the church for years. It gave me an opportunity to fulfill a unique task. It just seemed to be my vocation in life."

Mayo, 55, is drawn to the Latin Mass himself, he said. "I love Latin, chant, incense," he said.

Raised a Southern Baptist, he converted to Catholicism at the age of 18, just before Vatican II, "just as everything I loved ended," he said. As a seminary student at Mount Angel Abbey, he sang chant regularly. He arrived at St. Patrick's 15 months ago.

But the liturgy requires the "full, active, conscious participation by everyone involved," he said, quoting church documents. "I think something happens when people participate. We become a common body. Our endorphins get engaged. I can participate in silence, but from my perspective, it can happen in a better way by participating, and I think that's my reading of church documents."

Mayo's requested changes came with the Archbishop John G. Vlazny's "full support," according to Mayo in a memo to Applegate.

Liturgy and culture Oxford-trained, Applegate is fastidious in dress and on the podium. He converted at the age of 26, but today, almost exactly 40 years to the week after Vatican II, he is a man out of fashion.

For the past 40 years, Gregorian chant and Latin Mass have fallen from favor in the church. Vatican II reforms, begun in the early 1960s, prompted priests to modernize church practices.

One of the most important changes adopted was to celebrate Mass in the vernacular and replace chant with more contemporary music. After centuries of the celebration of Mass in Latin, those two changes alone were considered enormous and controversial, but as the years passed, a majority of Catholics accepted them.

Still, Vatican II did not prohibit singing Gregorian chant or celebrating Mass in Latin, even though most Catholic churches adopted the reforms.

Many religions wrestle with making worship relevant, but after centuries of prescribed tradition, Vatican II's reforms felt cataclysmic to many Catholics. Mayo and Applegate symbolize the Catholic Church's continuing struggle.

"A lot of changes happened quickly without a lot of explanation," said Linda Weigel, a canon lawyer and director of canonical services for the Portland Archdiocese. "Things that were very important to people, like statues, candles, were suddenly removed. Symbols are important in our everyday life. If somebody came into your house and just announced you can't light your fireplace anymore, it leaves you bewildered. A lot of people are still adrift. Now, we're seeing that we need to do much better education."

Since 1963, the Catholic Church has moved toward a more inclusive liturgy.

Before that, priest and choir communicated in Latin, and the choir sang most of the music while the congregation passively listened. Since Vatican II, reform-minded priests celebrate Mass in the language of their parish and encourage more participation by worshippers. They now face the congregation from the altar, instead of keeping their backs to worshippers.

In addition to wanting to adjust the music of the Mass, Mayo made other controversial changes at St. Patrick's, in line with Vatican II. Women may now read portions of Scripture during Mass, for example, and girls may be altar servers.

"The Latin Mass can tend to be a time of private prayer rather than the priest and assembly worshiping together," said Weigel, who has extensive experience in church canon law. "I don't know if you can worship and pray to God if you don't know the language."

A contrarian view comes from Richard Proulx, former director of music for Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago, the largest archdiocese outside of Los Angeles. In its highest form, everything in the liturgy is sung, Proulx said. A founder of the Conference of Roman Catholic Cathedral Musicians in 1982, he is no fan of contemporary Catholic music.

"Now, you'll find music done just for entertainment value, a very informal approach to the whole thing. A lot of the music is prerecorded. A priest flips a remote control, and when he's had enough, he turns it off. One of the defects of the Roman Catholic Church is its propensity to allow only one way to do things, and surely there has to be some leeway."

At the same time that Cantores in Ecclesia has proven popular among the parishioners at St. Patrick's, it has also attained a high level of respect in Portland's secular music community. The choir rarely performs outside the liturgy, but it still attracts fans of magnificent choral music to St. Patrick's.

It is one of only two churches in the Portland area that still performs the Latin service (that choir, at Holy Rosary in Northeast Portland, also is led by Applegate).

Keeping the old music alive in the context of the liturgy -- for which it was composed -- has an undeniable appeal, and not just for musicologists.

In an e-mail, one of the parishioners asked the key questions. "The rather simplistic way in which the local church has apparently interpreted the mandates of Vatican II has meant the disappearance of this great music tradition," she wrote. "Is this music worth saving? What does it mean to save it only as museum pieces that are recordings or performances done outside of its religious context?"

Cantores in Ecclesia has recorded two excellent CDs, "In Rome" and "Faure Requiem," but they don't compare to the choir's singing at St. Patrick's, where the music is part of something larger.

Who wins? Most of the parishioners at St. Patrick's who agreed to talk about the dispute between Father Mayo and Applegate insisted, like the e-mailer, on anonymity. They were sharply divided -- some blamed Applegate, others Mayo.

Some wondered why Applegate couldn't accommodate Mayo's changes, if the alternative meant silencing the choir.

"Who is he serving?" one asked. "Dean, in his rigidity, makes it look like it's Dean's show. Now, there's no music and who does that serve? Is he so pure that he can't exist in today's culture? Father Mayo is operating in 2002, which means more participation by the congregation."

Another parishioner put it this way: "Do we worship communally or do we worship silently while others sing for us? For Catholics, the Eucharist is the heart of our faith. What happens at Mass is extremely important to us. Changes in liturgy can affect our ideas about God and our relationship to God, and that can be upsetting or enriching."

On the other side, one parishioner blamed Mayo and the archdiocese for the "extreme crisis." He said, "There's been no discussion. How is it that the Archdiocese has allowed this to happen? It's not clear why Father Mayo has decided his vision for the church is to have a more active Mass."

Another parishioner called it "an incredible tragedy for the city and the region and the church and for all religious music."

Some choir members were equally bewildered.

"It's very disappointing," said Kellogg Thorsell, who started singing with the group in the mid-1980s. Singing in the reverberant church was a memorable experience, he said.

"Acoustically, it's one of the easiest and friendliest buildings that I have sung in -- the presence to the sound, an immediacy, a warmth. As a singer, you're constantly trying to evaluate the sound quality that comes back at you. If the room makes that easier for you, it's more rewarding."

Financially, Cantores always has skated on the edge. The choir's income came from half the collection from Saturday services, individual donations and choir members. Ten singers received wages, Applegate said. He himself put in about 30 hours a week, preparing and conducting the choir. He did not receive a salary.

The choir's future is uncertain. Prompted by Mayo before the breakup, Cantores in Ecclesia recently became an independent organization, with its own nonprofit status. Applegate has moved his office out of the church, and the choir continues to rehearse Thursday evenings, at St. Mark's Anglican Church in Northwest Portland.

Its next public appearance will be Dec. 8 at Mount Angel Abbey, where the choir will sing music it has specialized in all these years: the three musical giants Claudio Monteverdi, Tomas Luis de Victoria and Palestrina. The boys and girls of Cantores will sing at Ascension Chapel in Portland on Nov. 10.

A group of parishioners hopes to meet with the archdiocese to resolve the dispute, but for now, the choir loft at St. Patrick's remains empty.

"I take no joy in any of this," Mayo said. "It is sad on every level. At St. Patrick's, the music is the finest I've heard in my life, and the finest choir I've ever heard in the context of Roman Catholic worship. Differences do not mean disrespect. My admiration for what Dean and the choir do is immense. They're extraordinary."

Sure, he admires the choir so much he is going to force it to change, for the good of the assembly, of course, which may have loved the choir the way it was, but will be brought around soon enough to a more enlightened understanding of their own liturgical needs. Because he says so: Nothing like the pastoral warble of the Passive-Aggressive Clericalist Wreckovator.

This is spiritual and cultural vandalism, Praise & Glory fascism. As one correspondent writes in the Cantores in Ecclesia guestbook:

I will never understand the totalitarian mindset of those on the Left who cannot tolerate one small Mass in one small parish that does not use the awful music from Oregon Catholic Press. Where is the threat to their hegemony of the liturgy?