"He instinctively can find the shining greatness of our American culture and does a good job of highlighting it (although he also does have those rare lapses when he writes about hockey, but that is something caused by impurities in the Eastern waters or something)." Erik Keilholtz
Under the patronage of St. Tammany
Mark C. N. Sullivan is an editor at a Massachusetts university. He is married and the father of three children. Email
America editor Fr. Reese, SJ, on the return of the Tridentine Mass to Detroit:
The only thing that could spoil the venture at St. Josaphat is too much success, Reese said.
"When the pope authorized bishops to allow this mass in 1984, the idea was that this was a pastoral response to older people who still are so attached to this older mass that they need it," Reese said Monday. "The idea was never to create a new desire in people for this mass."
Maida's decision to allow it at St. Josaphat seems in keeping with the spirit of Vatican rules, Reese said. But, "It would be counterproductive if too many people turn this into a marketing strategy to fill churches.
"The idea behind allowing this mass was that it could help older people in the later stages of their lives. The hope is that this mass eventually will fade away."
One wonders what other sorts of old things Fr. Reese hopes would fade away once loosed from the grasp of preservationists. Traditional folk songs? Negro spirituals? Roots music in general? Inaccessible grand opera? Ballet? Mozart? Classical music on the whole? Jewish prayer in Hebrew and Aramaic?
To think conservation of the old, the original, the historic, the traditional and the beautiful actually is considered quite laudable in many quarters.
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Andrew of the Holy Whapping makes a pilgrimage to St. Agnes Church in St. Paul, Minn. Fr Jim Tucker is envious.
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A tin-foil-hat type obsessively logs cryptic numbers he hears broadcast over his shortwave – and yes, they're really being broadcast.
Numbers stations, with their variety and quantity, triggered all of his impulses to catalogue and collect. The stations had personality, if you listened long enough. One always began with a few bars of "The Lincolnshire Poacher," an old British folk song. On another you could occasionally hear roosters or echoes of Radio Havana in the background, as though someone had forgotten to turn off a mike. One starred a young lady with an exotic accent who dramatically read words from the International Radio Operators alphabet, somehow making inscrutable phrases -- "Sierra. Yankee. November." -- sound life-and-death urgent.
The Heinz Kerrys of Louisburg Square probably didn't make a lot of post-2 a.m. visits to the old Buzzy's on Charles Circle, home of the Super Roast Beef Sandwich, when they had the chance. But they did go to Wendy's the other day, and Mark Steyn comments, via Power Line.
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