Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracies and the Catholic Church

In today's mailbag (scroll down to "A bit of rambling regarding clerical bureaucracy") at jerrypournelle.com, one of Pournelle's correspondents takes a fascinating and accurate look at the Iron Law and the Church's bureaucracy. It seems that over time the Church has avoided the worst effects of the Iron Law.

Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representative who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions.

The "devotions" meme

Zoinks! I've been tagged by TSO on the favorite devotions meme.

Well, the last few years I haven't really done off-the-shelf devotions. I keep one of these excellent little rosary booklets on my bedside coffee table, but I haven't gotten into it in a really long time, and I never did get into the various chaplets and whatnot. So what passes for my devotions nowadays are -

• reading the Psalms and Canticles - in the King James or the old BCP on the old Benedictine schedule (the weekly schema in the Psalterium Monasticum) along with Neale & Littledale's magnificent old 4-volume commentary. Not every day - I just drop down into them now and then. Note the recurring refrain: old, old, old. Speaking of old, I have a handy rule of thumb: never join a new Catholic movement that's less than 500 years old. Saves a lot of hassle.
  
• reading the Fathers - I try to keep up with the week's Gospel in the old calendar by reading through the relevant commentaries and sermons in The Sunday Sermons of the Great Fathers. For each week's Gospel, the relevant part of the Catena aurea of Aquinas is given, followed by a few of the complete sermons from which Aqinas gleaned his excerpts. I appreciate the old calendar's slow and steady emphasis on one reading per week over against the new calendar's frenzied whirlwind of daily readings. With SSOTGF you get the Gospel on Sunday, then you have a whole week to work through the Catena and a few patristic homilies before another Gospel comes up. Each of the homilies is from a preacher such as John Chrysostom or Gregory I, whose chief delights are stepping on toes and calling people to their senses. Works for me.
  
• reading Divine Intimacy - it's a mid-20th-century Carmelite book, keyed to the old calendar, with a short 3-part daily devotion. It's organized like Opus Dei's In Conversation With God series, but with more fundamental theology and less of something I can't put my finger on. It does come with lots of references to the chief Carmelite writers, which (grumble) I guess I can live with. Carmelites always read as though they've been translated out of French.
  
• quick Hail Marys - when I converted, I spent a lot of time with St Louis de Montfort's True Devotion and works of similar piety that I'd found at the Marian Center in Springfield, Illinois - a delightful mess of a bookstore. Somewhere, de Montfort emphasizes the power of a single Ave, and that has somehow stuck with me.
  

I basically read myself into the Church, and I guess I continue that today.

I prefer to call it the Holy Flu

...if it causes changes like this:

Jenky also suggested that the Sign of Peace should temporarily take on a new expression. Instead of a handshake or an embrace, parishioners are advised to interact with a “nod of the head or a smile.”

LET THERE BE SUNG TE DEUM!

Fr Neuhaus on Bible translations

Three articles from his magazine First Things in which the good Father rails against our Catholic Newspeak Bible and endorses the Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition. A tip o' the hat to Dylan, an aficionado of good translations.

• Bible Babel, May 2001
  
• More on Bible Babel, January 2006
  
  • "...it is very difficult to share thoughts when we do not share words."
• 70 or 70x7?, July 27, 2007
  

Fr Z's SSPX FAQ

Lege. Basically the only thing that has changed so far is the status of the four SSPX bishops (and perhaps a few hearts). There's a long row to hoe yet.

Two more down

The diocese of Peoria has lost two more priests. Fr Jerry Pilon seems to have been laicized over an allegation of sexual misconduct with a minor (which he denies), and Fr Jeffrey Lawrence seems to have left the priesthood to become the publisher of a magazine called Presbyterians Today. Here's a bit from his interview with Presbyterian News Service:

“The last four or five years I’ve felt pretty battered by all the stuff going on in the Catholic church and have been pretty put off by increasingly exclusionary dogma,” he said. “I wanted to continue to contribute to the Lord’s service but didn’t know how.”

Lawrence said he also thought he could always “fall back” on his previous experience in law, advertising, and publishing, but then the Presbyterians Today opportunity offered him the chance to combine his business skills with ministry. “Suddenly, I no longer feel like a square peg in a round hole,” he said.

UPDATE: the diocese says Fr Lawrence is on a personal leave of absence.

UPDATE: here's a background piece on Fr Pilon from the Champaign News-Gazette.

Obama's ferocious pro-life position

After that long campaign I had no idea he was one of us!

We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.

Strong words against the abortion mafia. A tip o' the hat to Ellyn of Oblique House.

On this feast of Mary

Here are some texts for today's Mass from the 1966 Saint Joseph Daily Missal and Hymnal from the Catholic Book Publishing Company. As far as I can tell this was the last official "Englishing" of the Tridentine Mass before the Mass of Paul VI was introduced in 1970. It's satisfying to note echoes of the apparition at Lourdes in these texts: flowers appear; the cleft of the rock; the watered land and so on.

Gradual Canticle 2:12; 10:14

The flowers appear in our land,
the time of pruning has come,
the song of the dove is heard in our land.
Arise, my beloved, my beautiful one,
and come!
O my dove, in the clefts of the rock,
in the secret recess of the cliff.

Alleluia, alleluia.
Show me your face,
let me hear your voice,
For your voice is sweet
and your face is beautiful. Alleluia.

Or, after Septuagesima,

Tract Judith 15:10; Canticle 4:7

You are the glory of Jerusalem,
you are the joy of Israel,
you are the honor of our people,
You are all-beautiful, O Mary,
and there is in you no stain of original sin.
Happy are you, O holy Virgin Mary,
and most worthy of all praise,
For with your virgin foot
you have crushed the serpent's head.

Communion Antiphon Psalm 64:10

You have visited the land and watered it;
greatly have you enriched it.

Memorial of Maximilian Kolbe

    

Second Reading from the Office of Readings of the Liturgy of the Hours for August 14, the Memorial of Maximilian Mary Kolbe, priest and martyr

From the Letters of Maximilian Mary Kolbe

(Scritti del P. Massimiliano M. Kolbe, Italian translation, vol. 1, pt. 1 [Padua, 1971], 75-77; 166)

Apostolic zeal for the salvation and sanctification of souls

The burning zeal for God's glory that motivates you fills my heart with joy. It is sad for us to see in our own time that indifferentism in its many forms is spreading like an epidemic not only among the laity but also among religious. But God is worthy of glory beyond measure, and therefore it is of absolute and supreme importance to seek that glory with all the power of our feeble resources. Since we are mere creatures we can never return to him all that is his due.

The most resplendent manifestation of God's glory is the salvation of souls, whom Christ redeemed by shedding his blood. To work for the salvation and sanctification of as many souls as possible, therefore, is the preeminent purpose of the apostolic life. Let me, then, say a few words that may show the way toward achieving God's glory and the sanctification of many souls.

God, who is all-knowing and all-wise, knows best what we should do to increase his glory. Through his representatives on earth he continually reveals his will to us; thus it is obedience and obedience alone that is the sure sign to us of the divine will. A superior may, it is true, make a mistake; but it is impossible for us to be mistaken in obeying a superior's command. The only exception to this rule is the case of a superior commanding something that in even the slightest way would contravene God's law. Such a superior would not be conveying God's will.

God alone is infinitely wise, holy, merciful, our Lord, Creator, and Father; he is beginning and end, wisdom and power and love; he is all. Everything other than God has value to the degree that it is referred to him, the maker of all and our own redeemer, the final end of all things. It is he who, declaring his adorable will to us through his representatives on earth, draws us to himself and whose plan is to draw others to himself through us and to join us all to himself in an ever deepening love.

Look, then, at the high dignity that by God's mercy belongs to our state in life. Obedience raises us beyond the limits of our littleness and puts us in harmony with God's will. In boundless wisdom and care, his will guides us to act rightly. Holding fast to that will, which no creature can thwart, we are filled with unsurpassable strength.

Obedience is the one and the only way of wisdom and prudence for us to offer glory to God. If there were another, Christ would certainly have shown it to us by word and example. Scripture, however, summed up his entire life at Nazareth in the words: He was subject to them; Scripture set obedience as the theme of the rest of his life, repeatedly declaring that he came into the world to do his Father's will.

Let us love our loving Father with all our hearts. Let our obedience increase that love, above all when it requires us to surrender our own will. Jesus Christ crucified is our sublime guide toward growth in God's love.

We will learn this lesson more quickly through the Immaculate Virgin, whom God has made the dispenser of his mercy. It is beyond all doubt that Mary's will represents to us the will of God himself. By dedicating ourselves to her we become in her hands instruments of God's mercy even as she was such an instrument in God's hands. We should let ourselves be guided and led by Mary and rest quiet and secure in her hands. She will watch out for us, provide for us, answer our needs of body and spirit; she will dissolve all our difficulties and worries.

RESPONSORY - Ephesians 5:1-2; 6:6

Be imitators of God as his dear children.
Follow the way of love,
even as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us
as an offering to God.
--A gift of pleasing fragrance.

Do God's will with your whole heart as servants of Christ.
--A gift of pleasing fragrance.

PRAYER

Gracious God,
you filled your priest and martyr,
Saint Maximilian Kolbe,
with zeal for your house
and love for his neighbor.

Through the prayers of this devoted servant of Mary Immaculate,
grant that in our efforts to serve others for your glory
we too may become like Christ your Son,
who loved his own in the world even to the end,
and now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.

Let us praise the Lord.
--And give him thanks.

The fourteenth day of August

The Vigil of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

At Rome, the birthday of Blessed Eusebius, priest and confessor. He was imprisoned in a small room of his house by the Arian Emperor Constantius, for defending the Catholic faith. Persevering continually in prayer, he remained there (a prisoner) for seven months until he died. Two priests, Gregory and Orosius, took his body and buried it in the cemetery of Callistus on the Appian Way. A memory.

At Apamea in Syria, St. Marcellus, bishop and martyr. He broke to pieces a shrine of Jupiter and was slain by the outraged heathens.

At Todi in Umbria, St. Callistus, bishop and martyr,

In Illyria, St. Ursicius, martyr. After many and various torments was slain with the sword for Christ's name, under Maximian the Emperor and Aristides the governor.

In Africa, St. Demetrius, martyr.

On the island of Aegina, St. Athanasia, widow, famous for her observance of the monastic life and for the grace of miracles.

V. And elsewhere many other holy martyrs, confessors, and holy virgins.

R. Thanks be to God.

It's about dang time...

...someone ordained a skinny bishop: see the story and pictures at Gerard Serafin's fine blog.

Blessed Titus Brandsma

Here's another entry for my still quite small webpage detailing the causes of various venerables and blesseds.



I read somewhere recently that someone has a picture of Bl. Titus at his desk, and it's a mess! Three cheers for sloppy saints!

Who reads Dutch? Is this the homepage for his canonization cause?

General Carmelite news with some mention of Bl. Titus

Brandsma miracle denied

Short biography from Ireland's Brandsma Review.

The Thirteenth Day of August

At Rome, Blessed Hippolytus, martyr. So glorious was his confession of faith, in the reign of the Emperor Valerian, that after the usual torments had been inflicted, his feet were tied to the necks of wild horses. Then he was cruelly dragged through briars and brambles until he died, his whole body having been torn to shreds. On the same day, Blessed Concordia, his nurse also suffered. Flogged with lead-tipped whips, she died ahead of him. Also nineteen others of his household were beheaded outside the Tiburtine Gate. All were buried with Hippolytus in the Veranian field. A feast of three lessons.

At Imola (in Italy), the birthday of St. Cassian, martyr. Because he refused to worship idols, the persecutor summoned those pupils to whom he had become hateful while teaching them, and gave them permission to kill St. Cassian. Although their hands were weak, the agony of the martyrdom was all the greater, being so long drawn out.

At Todi in Umbria, St. Cassian, bishop and martyr, under the Emperor Diocletian.

At Burgos in Spain, SS. Centolla and Helen, martyrs.

At Constantinople, St. Maximus, abbot, famous for his learning and zeal for Catholic truth. He fought strenuously against the Monothelites, and for that reason his hands and tongue were cut off by the heretical Emperor Constans. He was exiled to the Chersonese, and died there, celebrated for his glorious profession of faith. At that time, two of his disciples, both named Anastasius, and many others, also suffered various tortures and bitter exile.

At Tritzlar in Germany, St. Wigbert, priest and confessor.

At Rome the birthday of St. John Berchmans, a scholastic of the Society of Jesus, confessor. He was noted for his innocence of life and careful observance of religious discipline. He was canonized by the Sovereign Pontiff, Leo XIII.

At Poitiers in Gaul, St. Radegund, queen, whose life was resplendent with miracles and virtues.

V. And elsewhere many other holy martyrs, confessors, and holy virgins.

R. Thanks be to God.

Liturgy of the Hours

More and more lay Catholics are praying the Liturgy of the Hours.

If the whole thing (four volumes, thousands of pages of psalms, readings and prayers) is too daunting, try just the readings from the Office of Readings (in your email daily), or try Tom Kreitzberg's microbreviary:

Anyone who wants to ease into the spirit of the Liturgy of the Hours without any prayerbooks can try this three-step method:

• When you wake up, pray the Benedictus
• In the early evening, pray the Magnificat
• When you go to bed, pray the Nunc Dimittis

If your memorization skills are up to it, you can throw in a Miserere Friday mornings and a Te Deum Sunday and feast day mornings.

Oh, and a Visita, quaesumus, Domine following the Nunc Dimittis as you lay you down to sleep is also liturgically correct.

(And don't forget that, except for the Benedictus and the Nunc Dimittis, all these prayers are indulgenced. The souls in purgatory will thank you.)

Saint Monica, keep praying for us

The blogs are buzzing about marriage between Catholics and Wiccans, a.k.a. pagans. Not that I'm in favor of it, but here's a Catholic/pagan marriage that turned out pretty well. As Mark Shea notes, you should be a saint before trying this at home.

Saint Mary Magdalene, apostle to the Apostles

Did you know that Mary Magdalene is one of the patronesses of the Order of Preachers?

Mary Magdalene by El Greco

Mary Magdalene by Giotto

Mary Magdalene by John da Fiesole (Fra Angelico), a Dominican friar.

Michael D. O'Brien

Thomas Kinkade? How about Michael O'Brien? His philosophy of art is True, Good and Beautiful, as is his art; so's he, come to think of it. Don't miss his Children of the Last Days series of books, and his contributions to the Catholic Educator's Resource Center - he's on their advisory board.