Understanding American Foreign Policy

A Church in Houston

I was last in Houston for Pascha, visiting my mother and attending the Hajme, Mattins, Lauds, and Divine Liturgy with the nascent Melkite community there. I was back in Houston to see my mother and father for Independence Day and to re-connect in general. On a whim I decided to go to Confession at nearby Christ the Redeemer Church.

Christ the Redeemer reflects much of what I have seen in Dallas: large communities with considerable wealth; bland modern styling; separate chapels for daily Masses and Confession; communitarian arrangements; offices for full-time paid lay staff; and a mixed congregation of second generation Mexicans and third generation Republicans.

As with St. Francis of Assisi in Frisco, Christ the Redeemer has architectural potential that goes unfulfilled, although I think it has less potential than the Romanesque St. Francis. It is an odd blend of Spanish missionary style with a Greek dome. Sharp edges run along un-ornamented walls, which frame some colored glass at the center of this strange structure.

The church was locked, so Confession was held in a room just off a hallways running along the back of the daily Mass chapel. There was a sign on the wall immediately to the right after entering which read something like "We are Catholic Christians who believe that we become one family in Jesus together and we have a great commitment to Social Justice."

The daily Mass chapel was plain, but inoffensive. The statues beside the altar may date to a previous church. At the back of the chapel was a book where one could sign up for a part in a daily Mass. I noticed that a deacon had sign up for the "Bread" for the next several weeks. I photographed a blank page to safeguard the identities of any parishioners.

During Confession I was told to use the Sacrament less often (I wonder if the daily communicants are told the same thing?) and to "let the grace work within you." 

On the whole this parish just felt a bit odd, the sort of place where the finances and demographics uphold the official party line and renewal spirit that is dis-functioning everywhere else in the Roman Church. How long until time catches up to Texas?—or will the influx of immigration from the Spanish speaking Americas and from the rest of the USA give Texas a reprieve?

All most surreal....

Modern Church Architecture (1930s edition)

"I went to have a look at the cathedral—a modern cathedral, and one of the most hideous buildings in the world. It has four crenellated spires exactly the shape of hock bottles ... I think the Anarchists showed bad taste in not blowing it up ... though they did hang a red and black banner between its spires" - George Orwell on Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, found in Homage to Catalonia

End of a Very Religious Experience

Today I deigned to make the drive from Dallas to Houston, a pleasant drive that breaks the topographic monotony of northern Texas, offering grassy plains, rolling hills, odd trees, and wild flowers over the course of roads that wind like some quaint English rivers. It is all very rustic and enjoyable. Except at night.

I intended to leave at 5PM and arrive around 9PM, when the last light disappears during Texan summers. Unforeseen circumstances and stops put by departure at 6:30PM and my arrival at 11PM. I had to make the last two hours on back roads and byways with 70 mph speeds and impatient people riding my @$$. The roads have no lighting whatsoever. The state does not seem to maintain these roads very well either, given that the stripping and reflective strips have all but vanished over time. All I could do was try to make out the grooving in the asphalt. Gas stations and stores only pop up every twenty miles. Combine all this with a red warning light on the instrument panel—which happily turned out to be nothing—and one has considerable incentive to start singing litanies and the Jesus prayer over and over and over again.

Happy feast of the Visitation to all!

Joe the Communist & Bad Wine

Last night I attended a small dinner gathering and got to chatting with a like-minded fellow about a range of things from Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies to hobbits. Somehow we came upon the topic of S. Ioseph Opifex, the feast of "Joseph the Worker," or, as more adept people have called it, Joe the Communist. The discussant, who attends Mass at the local FSSP parish featured in a previous post, recounted a feeble attempt to pray the 1962 Lauds on a day that happened to be May 1st. He had to quit, so he told me, before even finishing the psalms because the antiphons were so remarkably bad. Here are the Lauds antiphons for the displaced feast of Ss. Philip & James and then the antiphons for the Apostles' Red Replacement:

• Lord, show us the Father, * and it sufficeth us. Alleluia.
• Philip, * He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father. Alleluia.
• Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known Me * Philip, he that hath seen Me hath seen the Father. Alleluia.
• If ye had known Me ye should have known My Father also, * and from henceforth ye know Him and have seen Him. Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.
• If ye love Me, * keep My commandments. Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.

The new feast:

• God, maker of the world, * has stationed man to dress and keep the earth, alleluia.
• Christ, the Son of God, * deigned to work with his hands, alleluia.
• The craftsman, * holy Joseph, faithfully exercising his trade, shines forth as a marvellous example of work, alleluia.
• Faithful servant, * and prudent, whom the Lord hath appointed over his family, alleluia.
• O Joseph, holy workman, * defend our work, alleluia.

When I told the same fellow what the Mattins lessons were for the new feast his reaction was one of understandable incredulity. Here is the fifth lesson

"The same Pontiff supplied a new proof of the Church's solicitude for labor organization, when, upon the occasion of a convention of workingmen held in Rome on the first of May in the year 1955, he took the opportunity of speaking to a large multitude gathered in the square before St. Peter's Basilica, and commended most highly the instruction of workingmen. For in our day it is of prime importance that the workers be properly imbued with Christian doctrine in order that they may avoid the widespread errors concerning the nature of society and economic matters. Moreover, such instruction is needed that they might have a correct knowledge of the moral order established by God as it effects the rights and duties of workers, and which the Church discloses and interprets, so that by partaking in the needed reforms they might work more effectively toward their realization. For Christ was the first one to promulgate in the world those principles which he delivered to the Church and which still stand unchangeable and most valid for the solution of these problems."

My night ended with a horrific viticultural experience. Older American readers may remember Paul Masson commercials featuring Orson Welles, the film maker who produced the greatest movie ever made at age 25 and whose career only declined from there. Welles was often inebriated during commercials, but revealed in an interview he never drank Paul Masson wine. Clearly he was bringing his own stuff. The motto for Paul Masson wine was "We will serve no wine before its time." Out of morbid curiosity a friend just had to buy a bottle jug. 

He poured me a quarter of an inch of this so-called wine in a tumbler. I smelled it. The scent was like that of very, very ripe apples. The sugar and fruitiness overwhelmed me. I gave it a swish and found it had no body of any kind. The scent, on a closer sniff, was positively pungent. I then put the liquid in my mouth where it committed first degree assault on my taste buds. I then spat it into the sink, which is when this experience became even worse. This so-called wine leaves an aftertaste I have only encountered with one other product, Robitussin cough medicine. When was this wine's time?

Editing was able to salvage this from the above takes:

More Dallas Churches: Mater Dei

Today I was compelled by a friend to attend the Missa Cantata at Mater Dei church in Irving, TX, a parish staffed by the St. Peter Fraternity under diocesan auspices. The parish was jammed wall to wall with adults and children. A polyphonic Mass was sung. Sunday was commemorated, but the Last Gospel was In principio. The sermon was an instruction on some manualist theologian's five criteria for rebuking people fraternally. The Rosary was prayed prior to Mass. My friend, Mr. "Lord of Bollocks," grabbed me and took me out of the church during the recession to avoid Faith of Our Fathers.

From what I understand the building was once an Asian Baptist church before the FSSP purchased it to escape the chapel of a cloistered Carmelite convent where they had previously celebrated Mass.

The decor has some positives, namely the stenciling, but other parts seem

to conform a bit too much to 1950s architecture.

Although difficult to see, there are actual choir stalls used

by the acolytes during Mass and by the clergy during Tenebrae.

In my opinion the altar design does not work very well. Too many

bulbous bits and gradines. A table altar with a metal tabernacle in the center

and the candles on the altar would look better. Perhaps also so color, either

in the form of paintings or mosaics. The statues next to the altar give an entirely

new meaning to "We who mystically represent the cherubim...."

There is a true baptistery, with an octagonally shaped room and font!

My friend opined that the plaster statues on the side altars

need to be replaced with crucifixes and some source of color.

I couldn't agree more. Still better than more churches in the

Dallas area.

Not sure what is happening with the windows. Is it

stained glass or is it a printed plastic sticker?

Hymnals compliments of the FSSPX and Bishop Richard Williamson.

Ss. Peter & Paul

"Dearly beloved brethren, in the joy of all the holy Feast-days the whole world is partaker. There is but one love of God, and whatsoever is solemnly called to memory, if it hath been done for the salvation of all, must needs be worth the honour of a joyful memorial at the hands of all. Nevertheless, this feast which we are keeping to-day, besides that world-wide worship which it doth of right get throughout all the earth, doth deserve from this city of ours an outburst of gladness altogether special and our own. In this place it was that the two chiefest of the Apostles did so right gloriously finish their race. And upon this day whereon they lifted up that their last testimony, let it be in this place that the memory thereof receiveth the chiefest of jubilant celebrations. O Rome these twain are the men who brought the light of the Gospel of Christ to shine upon thee These are they by whom thou, from being the teacher of lies, wast turned into a learner of the truth." Sermon of St. Leo the Great, 2nd nocturn of Mattins of the feast

O Roma felix, quae duorum Principum

Es consecrata glorioso sanguine:

Horum cruore purpurata ceteras

Excellis orbis una pulchritudines.