The Day of Atonement--Yom Kippur

From St. Louis Today:

No one knows whether it happens with a satisfying "thump," but at sunset Monday, God will close the Book of Life, according to Jewish tradition, and the fate of every Jew will be sealed for another year.

Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement and most solemn day in the Jewish calendar, begins at sunset Sunday and ends at sunset Monday. It is a day dedicated to repentance and forgiveness, the end of the 10-day high holiday season that began with Rosh Hashanah, the festive Jewish New Year. Over those 10 days, Jews worldwide, including the 6,000 in the St. Louis area, seek forgiveness from those they've wronged over the last year, and forgive those who ask it of them.

But Yom Kippur is different. It is the day that Jews will also ask forgiveness for sins they've committed against God. Just before sunset Sunday, Jews will gather for the Kol Nidre prayer, a chant that releases the individual from promises made to God that won't be fulfilled.

The following 25 hours are spent in an intense individual examination of one's life - as it relates to other people, to God, to the Jewish faith and to the prospect of life's finality.

"All our lives we deny we're going to die, but on Yom Kippur we're forced to realize that we're not going to get out of this life alive," said Rabbi Mark L. Shook of Congregation Temple Israel in Creve Coeur. "Yom Kippur makes us think hard about the significance of our lives. What will be different about the world because we've entered and left it?"

Church Music: "Cultural Vandalism"

Scottish composer takes on the banality of modern music in the Catholic Church.

From Scottland on Sunday:

A devout Catholic, MacMillan uses an article in a religious magazine this weekend to confess his despair of the "screaming microphones" and "incompetently strummed guitars and cringe-making, smiley, cheesy foil groups" which fill churches every Sunday.

He reserves particular venom for two well-known modern hymns, 'Bind Us Together, Lord' and 'Make Me a Channel Of Your Peace', the latter having even been recorded to popular acclaim by Irish singer Daniel O'Donnell.

MacMillan says the hymns amount to "cultural vandalism" and that a backlash against such groups is growing, with more church-goers demanding a return to the traditional music which filled churches before reforms of the 1960s.

He declared: "The church has simply aped the secular West's obsession with 'accessibility', 'inclusiveness', 'democracy' and 'anti-elitism'. The effect of this on liturgy has been a triumph of bad taste and banality and an apparent vacating of the sacred spaces of any palpable sense of the presence of God."

Alabama Plays Gators Like it was 1966

I think the throwback uniforms almost did the Gators in, because in the first half they played like it was 1966. You would have thought that the Crimson Tide was being coached by Bear Bryant, not Mike Shula...but thankfully the time warp ended by half-time.

Pope Asks Faithful to Pray Rosary, for Missions, Iraq and to Follow Example of St. Therese

Whose Feast Day it is, from Asia News Italy:

The pope also cited the patroness of missions, the Carmelite St Thérèse of the Child Jesus, who John Paul II proclaimed as Doctor of the Church. “She, who indicated confident abandonment to the love of God as a ‘simple’ way to holiness, helps us to be credible witnesses of the Gospel of charity. Most Holy Mary, Virgin of the Rosary and Queen of missions, lead us all to Christ the Saviour.”

The Last of the LaSallettes

In New Hampshire. I made a youth retreat at the now closed school in the early 1970's, even then it was in decline--in some way I was surprised to hear that they still exist at all.

From The Concord Monitor:

The order was started after the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared before two young shepherds, a teenage boy and girl, in the tiny alpine village of La Salette, France, on Sept. 19, 1846. Mary, according to believers, came to the children weeping and lamenting that Christians had strayed from the word of God. She implored them to spread the message that believers had to return to the basic tenets and practices of Christianity, including daily prayer and worshipping on Sundays. After speaking to them, she walked up a narrow path and ascended to heaven.

After several years of investigation, the Catholic Church deemed the shepherds' claims to be true and in 1852 a bishop founded the order based on the message delivered to them. La Salette missionaries first arrived in the United States in 1892, settling in Hartford, Conn. In 1898, the order established a college seminary and, within a decade, had to build two additions to the Connecticut school.

In 1924, a center was opened in Altamont, N.Y., and three years later the order purchased Shaker land and buildings in Enfield. The shrine, a replica of the meeting between the shepherds and Mary, was built in 1951.

There are several centers and shrines across the country and many more around the world, including in Africa, India and Latin America, where the order continues to grow.

Father Leo Maxfield, who is 77 and came to the seminary high school in Enfield from Leominster, Mass., said that at one time there were about 100 boys enrolled in the high school and living in its dorm. There were about 15 priests who served as teachers and an additional 12 to 15 brothers - who take similar vows as priests but do not perform church rites and rituals - who worked on the order's farm and ran the household.

He said that shortly after he arrived in 1944, there were only two priests buried in the Enfield order's cemetery. There are now more than 80 La Salettes, as the members are known, buried at the site. He says he loves the Enfield shrine, which is bordered by Mascoma Lake on one side and thick forests on the other and is saddened by thoughts of its future.

Clintonesque Response of Bridgeport Diocese

Strange story as told by Joe Pisani:

Thinking our story was going to appear last Sunday, another pastor responded prematurely and put a column in the parish bulletin and on the Web site that said: "The recent article in the Stamford Advocate requires some response. While I can't answer every point in this brief piece, I would like to address some." But the points he chose to address were not even part of our story.

He wrote: "The paper's proposed solution to the present church crisis is that clerical celibacy be made optional or abolished." Where did he get that idea? Since the very beginning of our reporting, the issue of abolishing celibacy had never even been discussed.

The essay continued: "The Advocate article used this scandal as the springboard for marshaling every unhappy group or individual, whether ideologically Left or Right, Catholic or otherwise, to give vent to their vitriol against the Catholic Church and against the priesthood in general, and Bishop Lori in particular." Wrong again. This story was a result of the many calls, e-mail and letters we received from devout practicing Catholics who love the church. Clearly, it would have been wiser if he had waited to read the story before writing his impassioned response.

Contrary to the diocese's campaign of disinformation and demagoguery, the misrepresented and maligned story, which appears on Page One of today's paper, is not filled with "innuendo and gossip." It is not a "witch hunt." And it does not "name names." It is rather a story about concerned parishioners who are looking for answers and ecclesiastical accountability and who sincerely want every one of their priests to honor his vows. This is a fair story.

And just as it would be a tragic injustice for us, as a newspaper, to impugn the reputation of many priests because of the transgressions of a few, it would be an equally tragic injustice for the diocese to imperil the reputation of the many by ignoring the transgressions of a few.

Al-Qaida Weights in on Pope

From MSNBC:

“If Benedict attacked us, we will respond to his insults with good things. We will call upon him, and all of the Christians to become Muslims who do not recognize the Trinity or the crucifixion,” al-Zawahri said.