Here we go again. . . .

Gentle readers, it has been far too long between blog posts, but life has been -- for all of us, I'm sure! -- full, rich and packed with other things which demand our attention.  However, following a summer of relocation from Florida to California, beginning a whole series of new responsibilities, and various family matters, now seems like a good and appropriate time to start things up again.

I'm writing from beautiful Rome, and I don't mean the beautiful Rome in Georgia.  As I've blogged about before, several of us deacon-theologian-professors are launching a new international advanced studies institute on the diaconate here at the Vatican. We are meeting tomorrow with representatives from the Vatican (the Congregation for Catholic Education) and the various pontifical universities who will be involved with the Institute.  We will be discussing the final details of dates, times, costs and curriculum, so it promises to be a full day!  If all goes well, we will offer the first courses this coming summer.  I'll provide all the details as soon as they are finalized.

For now, however, I'm off!  I'm going to walk over to St. Peter's and spend an hour in prayer at the tomb of my hero, Pope St. John XXIII.  I know, I know: the rest of the Church hasn't yet canonized him; but I claim the ancient practice of canonization by acclamation!  I will keep all of you and your intentions in prayer.

A presto!

From Benedict XVI: Great words for those in formation for ordination

My friend and brother deacon, Greg Kandra, has a wonderful posting today on a sermon delivered by Pope Benedict XVI to a group of seminarians.  As Greg points out, it is a wonderful exhortation for deacon candidates as well, and I am forwarding a copy of it to all of our deacon candidates for this diocese.  Read the entire homily here, but here is a wonderful excerpt.

Dear friends, you are preparing yourselves to become apostles with Christ and like Christ, and to accompany your fellow men and women along their journey as companions and servants.

How should you behave during these years of preparation? First of all, they should be years of interior silence, of unceasing prayer, of constant study and of gradual insertion into the pastoral activity and structures of the Church. A Church which is community and institution, family and mission, the creation of Christ through his Holy Spirit, as well as the result of those of us who shape it through our holiness and our sins. God, who does not hesitate to make of the poor and of sinners his friends and instruments for the redemption of the human race, willed it so. The holiness of the Church is above all the objective holiness of the very person of Christ, of his Gospel and his sacraments, the holiness of that power from on high which enlivens and impels it. We have to be saints so as not to create a contradiction between the sign that we are and the reality that we wish to signify.

Meditate well upon this mystery of the Church, living the years of your formation in deep joy, humbly, clear-mindedly and with radical fidelity to the Gospel, in an affectionate relation to the time spent and the people among whom you live. No one chooses the place or the people to whom he is sent, and every time has its own challenges; but in every age God gives the right grace to face and overcome those challenges with love and realism.

Happy Feast Day to My Hero!

My wife and I have just moved again; the original house we rented turned out to have certain, shall we say, issues.  We have now settled into a wonderful new place and I'm back online!

And what a great time to return to the blog!  August 10th is the feast day of the greatest deacon who ever lived, Deacon Lawrence of Rome!  OK, so that's one person's opinion, but consider:

1) Lawrence, when instructed to gather up the treasures of the Church to present to the magistrate, did just that -- he gathered the poor of Rome and presented them as the treasure of the Church!

2) Notice that Lawrence was correctly assumed to be responsible for the temporal goods of the Church -- a longstanding tradition of the Church.

3) Lawrence displays a particularly diaconal sense of humor when he tells his executioner to turn him over because he's done on that side!  Not to mention the wit mentioned above about playing on the term "treasures of the Church."  His rapier wit is seen quite often in his deacon-successors around the world, who frequently take great joy in "tweaking" people and getting them to think and to laugh!  Deacon Larry of Rome would fit in easily with any community of deacons (and wives of deacons) with whom I'm familiar!

4) John Paul II recognized all of this in Lawrence.  During the Jubilee Day for Deacons in 2000, an urn containing the relics of Lawrence was brought to the audience hall from the Basilica of St. Lawrence.  When the pope began his address to us, he gestured to the urn and said, "You were unable to go to Lawrence, dear Deacons, so I had Lawrence brought to you!"

So, dear sainted brother Lawrence, we celebrate your feast with great joy!  Thanks for the inspiration!

A Liturgical Rant: Wearing Underwear Over Outerwear

OK, so this isn't a post dealing with a particularly earth-shaking issue!  Still, it's something that continues to crop up and I get questions about it all the time, so I thought I'd address it.  The issue?  The horrible practice of wearing the deacon stole OVER the dalmatic!

I'm old enough to remember very well the days prior to the Second Vatican Council.  I began serving Mass in 1957 when I was seven years old, and often served two or three Masses a day.  I then spent high school and college in the seminary during and after the Council; liturgically, that's a lot of experience!  I first served as a liturgical Master of Ceremonies when I was 15.  OK, that's some background.

For centuries, the accepted practice for all clerics in the major orders was to wear the amice, alb, cincture, and maniple.  Over these foundational vestments, the subdeacon added the outer vestement of the subdeacon, the tunicle.  Over those same foundational vestments, the deacon added the stole (tied diagonally and held in place by the cincture) and then the outer vestment of the deacon, the dalmatic.  Over those same foundational vestments, the priest added the stole (worn crossed over his chest and held in place by the cincture) and then the outer vestment of the priest, the chasuble.  Notice the pattern?  THE OUTER VESTMENT, by definition, was worn OVER EVERYTHING ELSE!

Catholic clergy didn't adopt the Protestant practice of a "preaching stole" worn over other vestments.

So -- what happened?  Why do priests and now some deacons choose to wear these so-called "overlay" stoles?  How did this liturgical novelty catch on, DESPITE liturgical guidance (read: law) otherwise?

Let's get the legal stuff out of the way.  The General Instruction of the Roman Missal (the GIRM) has always stated that the dalmatic or chasuble is worn OVER the stole and other foundational vestments.  Period.  So why do some choose to wear their liturgical "underwear" over their liturgical "outerwear"?

I think there are a couple of things at play here.

First -- and this is a good thing -- we have seen a wonderful emphasis on the primary role of the bishop, presbyter and deacon for preaching the Good News.  I get that, and support it.  This led some priests, immediately after the Council, to adopt the common practice of other Christian churches to wear the stole, associated by many of those Churches with the function of preaching, OVER their chasubles.  Vestment makers picked up on this and began to design "overlay" stoles.  Still, it's worth noting that the liturgical law of the Church has NOT changed on this regard: it still tells us to wear the stole UNDER the chasuble/dalmatic.  What's next, wearing the cincture over the chasuble/dalmatic?  How about throwing on an amice over everything?  That would be an interesting look, too!

Second -- for deacons, many of us are still getting used to the dalmatic.  After the Council, most parishes got rid of their old "Mass sets": fiddleback chasubles, dalmatics/stoles, and tunicles.  New liturgical vestment styles were developed, except that in the late 1960s and early 1970s these often didn't include vestments for the deacon, since the permanent diaconate was still in its infancy.  This led to expedient of wearing an alb along with a "priest" stole tied or pinned diagonally.  There were very few dalmatics.  This led to the liturgical innovation of a deacon of the Mass wearing only an alb and a stole: this was NEVER the practice prior to the Council.  So, deacons often associated the stole as the primary sign of their Order of Deacon.  HOWEVER, the actual sign of the deacon is the DALMATIC: that is the vestment unique to the diaconate (and the episcopate).  So, when overlay stoles were developed by the vestment makers, they gradually extended that mistake to the deacon's vestments as well, and some deacons have embraced it because they can wear "their" identifying vestment (mistakenly assumed to be the stole) in plain view over the dalmatic.

During this time of ongoing liturgical renewal, it seems a good time to get back to the basics: Wear the stole UNDER the dalmatic!

A Lesson for Sinatra, an insight for all of us

Bob Greene over at CNN has a nice little story about Frank Sinatra, and his friendship with Pasquale "Patsy" Scognamillo who owned what became known in the 1950's as the singer's favorite restaurant.  It seems that the men became friends when both were about to make it big, Frank in entertainment, and Patsy with his own popular restaurant.  Then, when Sinatra's career tanked for a time in the early 1950's, Patsy and his restaurant became sources of comfort and support.

Patsy's grandson still runs that restaurant, and the family recounts this time justifiably with great pride. Greene writes,

 A person recalls how he is treated not when he is on top of the world, undefeated, but when he is at his lowest, thinking he will never again see the sun.

 This is such a good insight for all people of faith.  Not only do we ourselves remember how we were treated when we were down, it is a reminder about how we treat others when they are most in need.  As Greene points out, many people didn't want to be seen with Sinatra during his "down" time, but Patsy reacted with generosity and compassion.  That's a good lesson for all of us, especially those of us who are deacons.

Read the whole story here.

On the Road to Tucson: Fundamentals

I just arrived in one of the greatest cities around -- Tucson, Arizona.  I'm here for an annual gathering of the diaconate communities of the dioceses/archdioceses that comprise Region XIII.  It's always a wonderful event, with lots of great fellowship, wonderful food and drink, and conversation.  They've asked me to talk about "The Diaconate in the Liturgy: Past, Present, Future."  That's quite a broad topic, but here's what I plan on doing.

There's been a lot of talk about the implementation of the 3rd Edition of the Roman Missal in a few months, and so most of the folks have already been to classes and workshops on the particulars.  I don't want to prattle on about things they already know.  What I think (hope!) will be far more beneficial is to really turn the clock back and reflect on WHY we have the Mass in the first place!  We often spend all kinds of time talking about WHAT the Mass is, and WHAT TO DO at Mass, and many times we don't have a real clue about WHY we're doing it in the first place!

We are going to start with the most fundamental dogma of the Church.  That will be my first challenge to the deacons and wives present tomorrow at my presentations: Just what IS the most fundamental DOGMA of the Catholic Church.  A dogma, of course, is a teaching (doctrine) of the Church that we believe is divinely-revealed.   Think about that for a minute.  What do YOU think that most fundamental dogma is?


If you said the TRINITY, you get a gold star, or maybe we should make it a gold triangle!  So, the first thing we're going to do is talk about the Trinity.  Where did that whole idea come from?  What led Christians to take the ONE GOD of the Jewish faith and further define that ONE GOD as being in Three divine Persons?  Why was such a radical step necessary?

Because Christians had to answer a very important question, one that they'd been wrestling with since Jesus asked if of Simon at Caesarea Philippi: "Who do you say that I am?"  Every Christian has to answer that question for himself or herself.  Well, the range of possible answers includes: "You are a man," "You are God", "You are neither God nor Man," and "You are both God and Man."  But here's the rub.  If you answer that Jesus is simply a man, you have no problem.  But if your answer involves Jesus being divine, you then have to figure out HOW to explain His relationship to the ONE GOD.  Of course, as any good church historian will tell us, these dicussions about who Christ is (the Christological debates) and who God is (the Trinitarian debates) occupied many of the early centuries of the church's life as disciples struggled to explain all of this.

And while all of this debating was going on, faithful Christians continued to gather in their various communities and traditions to worship Mystery through the breaking of bread as modeled for them by Christ.  Those earliest Christians didn't wait till they had answers to all their questions before they acted: they lived and acted out of sheer faith.

We'll get into many things tomorrow, but this will be our starting point.

Moving On. . . . What shall we talk about?

OK, I'm all settled in (well, mostly) to my new jobs, and there's been so much on the news (both religious and secular) to choose from!  I entered (briefly) into the whole Corapi mess, but now it's definitely time to move on.

So, what shall we talk about about?  What's on YOUR mind these days?