CRESCO IRISH/PART 5
Whatever twitches I will always have from abusive nuns, I forgive them everything for teaching me hymns like ADESTE FIDELES, PANGE LINGUA, VEXILLA REGIS and DIES IRAE. With no other access to great music, the plain-chant was a revelation. The Church has thrown out much of the old liturgy (except for the Easter vigil) and replaced the old Black Requiem with a cheerful White Resurrection Mass.

The DIES IRAE, the canticle of the Last Judgment, was not trumpeting the damnation of ordinary sinners. These could repent and make it into Purgatory.
I heard this hymn as revolutionary, about how the smug mighty ones would be exposed on Judgment Day—when the solid-seeming social world of winners and losers would dissolve.

Repentance was easy, and mercy available, for us garden-variety sinners.
The priests who were lions in the pulpit were often lambs in the confessional.
In theory, a single dirty thought could damn you; but the priest might say calmly,
“Suppose you ate some poisoned sweet—then even when you were trying to spit it out, you couldn’t help enjoying the sweet taste.” (Actually, this didn’t help that much.) But it turned out you weren’t expected to do your best—only to do your best to do your best. Remorse and excessive guilt were suspect, Judas-like.
What was appropriate for ordinary people was the shame felt by Peter when he wept over his weak betrayal.

It was said of the unlucky horseman, “Between the stirrup and the ground,
He mercy sought and mercy found.” Another slogan was “inter pontem et fontem”—
You might find mercy between the bridge and the river. God was fair-minded, if strict—and the Blessed Virgin was there for one who needed mercy beyond any rational limit. So when I heard the DIES IRAE, I didn’t worry about being trapped in sin at death-time (especially since I had made the 9 First Fridays!) This awful fate was reserved for distinguished and insolent rebels, not for us tame, weak sheep
Marked for Purgatory. (Somehow we avoided thinking about the painful aspect of Purgatory.)

Another reason I’m not so happy about the cheerfulness in the New Church is that now, when we really need a liturgy of mourning for our crumbling world,
The Catholic Church—once so magnificently able to express grief—
Seems to have succumbed to a mindless, Rotarian optimism.
But there was no hint of this strange outcome in Assumption parish
In the ‘30s.

The Holy Week liturgy, with its awesome purple-draped statues, led us masterfully into the story of the Divine Hero, His awful death and His springtime Resurrection.
On Good Friday it always rained and we always planted potatoes.

Then at noon came the 3-hour Royal Funeral, with that magnificent anti-Semitic hymn: ”MY PEOPLE, MY PEOPLE, WHAT HAVE I DONE TO YOU? HOW HAVE I FAILED YOU? I LED YOU OUT OF EGYPT AND YOU LED ME TO THE GIBBET OF THE CROSS.” Then we prayed in English for the ‘perfidious Jews’.

Early on the dark morning of Holy Saturday came the archaic ceremonies of fire and water, where the six-foot male candle was plunged again and again into the fertile baptismal water. Half nauseated from fasting, we looked forward to gorging ourselves on candy at the stroke of noon,to end our Lenten fast (kept well or ill).

All this convinced me that we really did know the secret name of God, while the snickering outsiders were sunk in invincible ignorance. Those outsiders said wrongly that we worshipped statues; Little did they know that what we really adored was the white, round Host, the Body of Christ, displayed in a golden Monstrance, which I stared at hypnotically during half-hour ‘visits’—we approached the altar with three double genuflections. Walking past the church on a dull Iowa street, I felt with Chesteron that the inside of the church was bigger than the outside. The liturgy did not grip most Catholics this way; it took a special combination of neurotic family tradition and high taste to make me love it so.

CRESCO IRISH, PART SIX:

Many Irish families featured vivid mothers and sisters and dull fathers.
The mother often dominated the family by addicting them to her slave-like
Ministrations.

Any talk of sex was out of place. An old aunt recalled that, as a spinster living at home, she once asked her father (the Senator) what ‘rape’ meant.
He forbade her to read any more newspapers. When she finally married, neither she nor her husband had any idea what to do—‘but we had great fun learning.’
A true Irishman doesn’t need adultery;respectable marriage is deliciously and mysterious fascinating enough—at least at first.

At age 4, I saw a robin’s nest in our apple tree and suggested to my older sister that we must come from eggs also. She hit me in the mouth; I noted that she had some kinky hatred of birds.

The Irish repressed talk of sex, but not of death, which was morbidly interesting.
Chicago Irish are quite different from Iowa Irish, but their attitude toward death was just as open. In my wife’s huge extended family, the ancients died at home.
But the younger people stood up to them. (Perhaps that’s why typical Americans now have to ship out their ancients; they’re unbearable because nobody can fight with them.) This one old matriarch was terrorizing the family in her last weeks.
Her daughter, mistress of the house, took her by the shoulder and said,
“You want to drag all of us into the grave with you. I’ll someday have to die alone.
Now you must die alone.”

Being raised thusly gave me roots—partle poisonous and neurotic roots, but still roots. I have a strong sense of being a single,substantial self—not necessarily one I approve of--in all my roles: a child in Iowa, a soldier-clerk in Korea, a factory worker, a monastic novice, a husband/father, and a college teacher.
Hearing students talk about doubting their identity, I figured they picked up that talk from sociologists. But maybe they just lacked strong community roots.

STORIES ABOUT ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA

To see fantastic stories about St.Catherine of Siena,
Google on her name,
and read the entry by Mary Ann Sullivan
Or click directly on
http://www.domcentral.org/trad/stcather.htm

Popes feared & obeyed her.

The entry by John Coulson is also interesting.

SAINT'S FOIBLES

ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA LIVED, FILTHY AND RAGGED, in her family’s basement.
They were a big, normal middle-class family.

Occasionally, during a party in the living-room,
St. Catherine would FLOAT Up from the basement,
thru the living room, and up the stairs to the 2d floor.

Her mother would say,
“I just HATE it when she does that !”

ETHNIC DIVERSITY

ETHNIC DIVERSITY

A Greek businessman used to take his friends to
a Chinese restaurant,
Where he would make fun of the owner by ordering ‘FLIED LICE’.

The annoyed Chinese went and took elocution lessons.

The next time the Greek ordered FLIED LICE,
The owner said carefully, THAT’S FRIED RICE,
YOU GLEEK PLICK !

TRAPPIST MONASTERY

WINNIPEG MONASTERY

Years ago, I regularly made retreats at one Trappist monastery or other.
One year I took the bus up to Winnepeg to visit a monastery at the edge of the city.
Many unique features:
--The young prior said, “These monks have no stressful decisions; they live long lives. But the abbot is in charge of a huge farm, and responsible for the spiritual welfare of all the monks. Abbots die usually 5 years after taking office.”

--This monastery was only a Priory, under the rule of an abbot in French Canada. This person was reactionary—
he insisted that monks wear their habits, even working in the fields. Regularly, some monk was pulled into farm machinery.

--One monk was allowed to talk; he was the liaison with laymen-visitors.
This guy was a former philosophy prof from Europe.
He noted that, as often happens,
A rich dairy farmer died, leaving to the monks
this expensive herd of cattle (some worth $10k each).
[The Trappists are reformed Cistercians, just as Cistercians were reformed Benedictines.
The Benedictines spent their time chanting, doing little manual labor the way St.Benedict envisioned. The Cistercians were at first very austere; but they were such good farmers they got quickly rich, and just as quickly corrupt. So a noble Frenchman who inherited
The Abbey of LaTrappe set out to found a new, super-strict order called Trappists.
They had a uniquely strict rule against talking; they communicated by hand-signals—Until Vatican II.]

This monk’s job was to care for these cows. “They have no brains; they’re just stomachs and udders. They can’t even give birth unaided; I have to follow the ones in late-pregnancy to help them deliver. I joined the Trappists to pray; but what with these damn cows, I have even less time to pray.”

One day he said, “The bull just screwed a horse. With my luck, the horse will give birth,
And I’ll be delated to the Vatican for witchcraft !”
-----
One guy in the guesthouse was a former monk, who had left the order and was living there while he sought a job.

He had been a salesman in Shanghai when the Communists took over.
He was impressed by the sight of several trucksful of Chinese CatholicsOn their way to execution,
singing hymns. He had a religious conversion.
He joined the Trappists to pray against Communism.

He had interesting stories about life as a Trappist..
As a mere novice, he was helping an older monk fold the altar linens. The old monk carefully folded that fancy linen
Cloth OUTSIDE the cheap homespun cloth that was supposed to protect the linen cloth.
This novice sign-languaged to the other monk that this couldn’t be right; the cheap cloth should be folded outside the fancy cloth, to protect it. The old monk signaled back,
“We’ve always done it this way!” That settled that.

This guy said one reason he had to leave the monastery was to tell the following tale: After Compline every evening
(early, because the monks rose at 1AM) they sang the
very beautiful SALVE REGINA. Laymen used to come to hear that hymn, staying in the chapel balcony reserved for lay observers.

Then the monks retired to their cells, to their straw mattresses; each cell had the dimensions of a public Toilet booth—with walls only 7 feet high.

The Trappists ate no meat,so they ate a lot of beans.
Once they settled down to sleep, they started to fart—
Sharp contrast with the SALVE REGINA. That was the tale he had to tell.

But that wasn’t the main reason he left. Remember, this was frigid Winnipeg.
At Mass each AM, just before they received Communion, they threw themselves on the cold, cold stone floor of the chapel, to say the CONFITEOR
(confessing their sinfulness).

One morning as he was lying there, he fell asleep.
Waking on that bone-chilling floor, he said he heard
Clearly a voice from heaven, saying
LET COMMUNISM WIN ! That’s why he left.

HOW FAR WE HAVE COME:
Selma, Alabama was the scene of carnage against blacks.
Coincidentally, it was the place where my brother, running a car agency,
Needed a car repossessed .

He deputized myself and two brothers to go to Selma and repossess that car.

On the train with us was an older white woman from Selma. She fixed me with a Steely glare, saying
“You people are going to Selma to make trouble, right?”

We explained that we were going to Selma to repossess a car.

‘Oh, no,” she said, “You are an Episcopal preacher, and you plan to stage a sitdown in the colored women’s john!” She ignored our disclaimers.

“I want to warn you that we have so many trouble-makers in the Selma jail
that we had to tie the town drunk to a tree!”

Today a black man was inaugurated as President..