Mount Calvary and the Great War

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The Redwood Cross

Our ceremonial processional cross was given by Mrs. Frank T. Redwood (Mary Buchanan Coale, 1861–1940), who was a member of Mount Calvary. The family lived at 918 Madison Avenue near the church. The father, Frank Redwood, was killed on Thanksgiving Day 1906 in a railway accident.

George Buchanan Redwood, Mrs. Redwood’s first child, was born in 1888. His family had a long military tradition and as a boy was fascinated by soldiers. He attended the Hill School in Pennsylvania and graduated from Harvard in 1910. For a while he considered the ministry while he was working as a reporter for the Baltimore News. George attended military camp in 1915 and 1916 and after the U. S. entered the war was commissioned a lieutenant and served as a scout.

He enjoyed tricking the Germans. He would go through No Man’s Land at night and visit occupied towns, where darkness and his flawless German enabled him to pick up useful intelligence. He would also pick up food and wine from under the Germans’ noses to bring back to his platoon. He would write his reports and include a joke and a line of verse.

He was the first American to capture German soldiers. Of them he wrote “Honestly, I don’t believe in this business of hating your enemy.  It is pitiful when a Boche prisoner, clean cut and apparently a good, intelligent little fellow, asks when of his captors in an awestruck whisper, ‘when are they going to shoot us?’ and after being reassured says, ‘They told me, “woe to you if the Americans ever take you,” and then adds, ‘We thought you were all going to be Indians!’”

A fellow-officer later wrote of Redwood;

Men who went on patrols with him have told me that after leaving the trench and entering No Man’s Land, he always knelt in a shell hole and prayed, and he was always careful not to expose them needlessly in dangerous positions. He always regarded his men. As to himself, he always sought the place of greatest danger…Lieutenant Redwood seems to have been the incarnation of the Christian soldier.

He and his comrades expected death, and they discussed what the life to come would be like. They read in Donald Hankey’s A Student in Arms, “every man who goes to war must, if he is to be happy, give his body, a living sacrifice, to God and to his country. It is no longer his. He need not worry about it.”

During the German offence at Castigny, May 28, 1918, Redwood found the severely wounded Sgt. Max Rosenbaum, who later wrote that Redwood “administered first aid to me, and regardless of his own safety, he carried me back thru intense machine gun fire and intense artillery fire to the back area. While assisting me he was severely wounded, and instead of receiving first aid treatment as I asked him too, he attempted to reach the lines again” to carry out his scouting assignment.

But a shell found him, and his platoon found his body with “a hole above his right temple and a piece of shrapnel through his heart.” He was the first Maryland officer to die in the war.

His platoon carried Redwood to a quarry near Castigny and buried him. One was killed while digging the grave. They placed a propeller from a downed German plane as a cross.

The City of Baltimore changed the name of German St. to Redwood St, in his honor. In November 1919 a tablet was placed in the Cathedral of the Incarnation in Baltimore in memory of George Redwood. It proclaims:

A CRUSADER BLAMELESS AND WITHOUT FEAR.

His brother, Frank Jr., (1904—1923) learned that the girl he loved was engaged to his best friend, who was away at Harvard. He went to his friend’s house, to his friend’s room, took his friend’s pistol, and shot himself through the head.

On the next day, of Mrs. Redwood the Baltimore Sun said:

The Lord loveth whom he chasteneth, we are told, but all who know this heroic and lovely woman will find it difficult to understand why this culminating affliction should have come upon her. If there be tears in Heaven, angels themselves might weep for her. Certainly hundreds of mothers will weep with and her for her today. Human speech can compass no words of consolation for such a case as this. The pathos of it paralyzes the tongue and pen. If there is a God of mercy, as we believe there is, may He give her strength and courage to bear this last and most cruel cross of all.

Her faith was unshaken, and she gave a silver processional cross to Mount Calvary, where her son had been baptized and confirmed and received his Lord in the Eucharist, as a memorial to her son and to his sacrifice.

Lt. George Redwood

The story of George Redwood’s life and death is told in James Carl Nelson’s book, Five Lieutenants: The Heartbreaking Story of Five Harvard Men Who Led America to Victory in World War I.

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Once and Future Popes

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Archbishop Viganò (and many others) has called on Pope Francis to resign. He won’t, of course; Francis is a stubborn old man and feels much put upon, merely because he has done what most, if not all, popes have done in handling problems in the church: Blame the messenger and look away.

In any case, we don’t know whom we might get next. It might be someone of Cardinal McCarrick’s ilk, or a favorite of “nighty-night, baby” Cardinal Tobin.
The learned and perspicacious John Bellairs reminds us of Old Anti-Catholic Canards, such as the Pope Joan story. He explains it in this way:

“Some foolish people believe there was once a female Pope who was elected by mistake. This story probably originated several years after the papacy of Ganymede V, a Pope of doubtful masculinity. This golden-haired, rather limp-wristed young man was elected in 1503, after an unusually long run of lecherous Popes; the feeling was that he would reverse the trend. The chronically anti-Catholic historian Furze calls Ganymede “a raving queen,’ but that indelicate epithet is unkindly used against this admittedly confused man, who had a habit of fainting into the arms of Leonardo da Vinci. It is true, of course, that Leonardo’s unfinished painting “Saint Sebastian Dying in a Bed of Zinnias” was inspired by the sight of Ganymede running through the Boboli Gardens, clad only in a kirtle of begonias. But all rumors, true or otherwise, should have stopped when Ganymede was found dead in his bed one summer day in 1505. He had been smothered by orchids, which were poured into the room by the skylight while he slept.”

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Mount Calvary Music: November 11, 2018

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Mount Calvary Church

A Roman Catholic Parish

The Ordinariate of the Chair of S. Peter

Eutaw Street and Madison Avenue

Baltimore, Maryland

November 11, 2018

10 A.M.

The Anniversary of the Consecration of the Church

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Organ Prelude

Ich Ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ BWV 639, J.S. Bach

Here is  Leo van Doeselaar in the St. Catherine’s Church, Hamburg, Germany.

Organ Postlude

Praeludium in G, BWV 568, J.S. Bach

Here is J. van Oortmerssen

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Anthems

Thomas Tallis (1510-1585)

Hear the voice and prayer of thy servants, that they make before thee this day. That thine eyes may be open toward this house night and day, ever toward this place, of which thou hast said: “My Name shall be there.” And when thou hearest have mercy on them.

Here are Pro Cantione Antiqua & Mark Brown

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Tomás Luis de Victoria (1548-1611)

O quam metuendus est locus iste! Vere non est hic aliud nisi domus Dei et porta coeli.

Oh, how awe-inspiring is this place! Surely this can be nothing else but the house of God and the gate of heaven.

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Hymns

Christ is made the sure foundation is a translation by John Mason Neale (1818-1866) of a seventh-century Latin hymn, Angularus fundamentum, which was used for the dedication of a church. The parallel with Ephesians 2:20-22 is striking: “having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit”. Neale became an Ago-Catholic at Cambridge and was of the first to translate Latin hymns for the English hymnal.

Here is a parish singing it.

How lovely is Thy dwelling place. This metrical psalm was the version of Psalm 84 in the first Scottish psalm book after the Reformation. The tune BROTHER JAMES’S AIR is by James Leith Macbeth Bain (1840-1925), a healer, mystic, and poet known simply as Brother James.

Here is the Mormon Tabernacle Choir using the tune for Psalm 23.

Glorious things of thee are spoken is by John Newton (1725-1807), whose most famous hymn was Amazing grace. This hymn uses the image of the city of Zion, an image based on visionary passages such as Isaiah 26: 1 and 4: 5-6, Psalm 87: 3, Psalm 132: 14, Psalm 46: 4 and Revelation 1: 6. The tune AUSTRIA, composed by Franz Joseph Haydn from a Croatian folk hymn, was later used by Haydn in his string quartet in C, Op. 70, No. 5, “The Emperor.”

Here is St. John’s, Detroit.

 

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Republican Weather

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The weather on Election Day can affect the outcome.  I suspect the Republican National Committee hires Hopis to do a rain dance.

The New York Times reports:

Multiple studies have shown that bad weather on Election Day can decrease turnout, which in turn tends to help Republicans, because the groups most likely to be deterred from voting are those that tend to vote Democratic.

Bad weather may even influence voters to vote Republican.

Multiple studies have shown that bad weather on Election Day can decrease turnout, which in turn tends to help Republicans, because the groups most likely to be deterred from voting are those that tend to vote Democratic. But a more recent study, published last November in the journal American Politics Research, found that the political effects of Election Day storms may go beyond turnout. Among voters who do turn out, one of the study’s co-author said, slightly more tend to vote Republican when the weather is bad.

“Not just whether to vote but how to vote can be influenced by the weather,” said the co-author, Yusaku Horiuchi, a professor of government at Dartmouth. “When the weather is bad, people’s mood is affected. People tend to be more risk-averse. When people become more risk-averse, people are more likely to be more conservative, and therefore they’re likely to vote for the Republicans instead of the Democrats.”

The first effect is very insulting to Democrats: they won’t go out in the rain to vote.

The second effect is insulting to Republicans: they judge the state of the Union by the state  of the weather.

Perhaps the Democrats should try to move elections to May, a fairly dry and cheerful month in most of the U.S.

I remember after the Democratic debacle in 2016, various pundits tried to come up with a rational way of restricting the electorate to those who  had a faint idea about how the government worked – the modern version of a literacy test. But every way, such as requiring an elementary civics test (e.g. name the three branches of government) would end up eliminating large numbers of Democratic voters and guaranteeing a permanent Republican majority, so that idea was dropped.

Speaking of restricting the electorate. After the Civil War blacks received the franchise. In the deep South violence was used to intimidate black voters.

Baltimore was much more civilized. Before the general election, white Democratic political bosses would meet with the black Republican bosses. The white bosses would tell the black bosses that the white bosses would pay the black bosses for every black who did NOT vote. The black bosses would then sponsor picnics way out in the country and offer free excursions on the Bay. After the election they would go over the voting  lists with the white bosses and receive their pay for every black non-voter.

Corrupt – yes, but in fairly civilized fashion. I am not even sure it was illegal.

Nowadays the Democrats think they are being defeated by angry white working class men. Perhaps the Democrats could sponsor all day demolition derbies and Nascar races, with free beer, from 7 AM to 8 PM on election day. This would certainly lead to an era of good feelings, if nothing else.

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Mount Calvary Music November 4, 2018

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HEAR O ISRAEL

 

Mount Calvary Church

A Roman Catholic Parish

The Ordinariate of the Chair of S. Peter

Eutaw Street and Madison Avenue

Baltimore, Maryland

Rev. Albert Scharbach, Pastor

10 A. M. Mass

November 4, 2018

Trinity XXIII

___________________

Common

Missa S. Maria Magdalena, H. Willan

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Organ

Postlude in D minor, Johann C.H. Rinck

Here is the Geneva Presbyterian Church of Laguna Hills

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Anthems

Thomas Tallis (1510-1585)

A new commandment give I unto you, saith the Lord, that ye love together, as I have loved you, that even so ye love one another. By this shall every man know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.

Here is the Schola Basilicae of St. Patrick’s Basilica. Ottawa, Ontario

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Thomas Tallis (1510-1585)

Te lucis ante terminum, Rerum Creator poscimus, Ut solita clementia Sis praesul ad custodiam. Procul recedant somnia, Et noctium phantasmata: Hostemque nostrum comprime, Ne polluantur corpora. Praesta pater omnipotens, Per Jesum Christum Dominum, Qui tecum in perpetuum, Regnat cum Sancto Spiritu.

Here is the Concordia Chamber Choir

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Hymns

All people that on earth do dwell is from the Genevan Psalter. This was compiled over a number of years in the Swiss city of Geneva, a center of Protestant activity during the Reformation, in response to the teaching of John Calvin that communal singing of psalms in the vernacular language is a foundational aspect of church life. This contrasted with the prevailing Catholic practice at the time in which sacred texts were chanted in Latin by the clergy only. Calvinist musicians including Bourgeois supplied many new melodies and adapted others from sources both sacred and secular. The final version of the psalter was completed in 1562. Calvin intended the melodies to be sung in plainsong during church services, but harmonized versions were provided for singing at home. The tune OLD HUNDREDTH, partially by Louis Bourgeoise, is perhaps the most familiar hymn tune in the English-speaking world.

Here is King’s College, Cambridge.

Jesus, Thou joy of loving hearts  is a translation by the Congregationalist minister Ray Palmer (1808-1887) of ‘Iesu dulcedo cordium’, part of ‘Iesu dulcis memoria,” which is sometimes attributed to St. Bernard, but was probably by a twelfth-century English monk or nun. The hymn celebrates the joy that we have in Jesus — the peace that his love imparts — the filling of our souls through the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist.

Her is the tune ABENDS.

Praise to the living God is the work of three translators, a rabbi and two Unitarian ministers, of the Yigdal by the fourteenth century Daniel ben Judah. The Yigdal is a metrical paraphrase of the thirteen articles of Jewish faith drawn up by Maimonides (Moses ben Maimon, 1130-1205). The tune LEONI is named after the celebrated cantor Meyer Lyon (1751-1797), whom Thomas Olivers heard singing this tune at the Great Synagogue in London.

Here is a great organ accompaniment.

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Mount Calvary All Souls Day 2018

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Mount Calvary Church

A Roman Catholic Parish

The Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter

Eutaw Street and Madison Avenue

Baltimore, Maryland

All Souls’ Day

November 2, 2018

7:00 P.M.

The Common, Proper and Dies Irae will be in plainchant

Here is the Latin Dies Irae

Hymns

Jesus son of Mary was written by Edmund Stuart Palmer (1856–1931) in Swahili as ‘Yesu Bin Mariamu’ sometime before 1901, for the Requiem of a colleague. Palmer was a doctor and Anglican cleric who preached and practiced medicine in Zanzibar and East Africa.

Here is the tune we will use ADORO DEVOTE.

Here is the choir of All Saints with the original tune for the Swahili hymn.

Abide with me was written by the Scottish Anglican clergyman Henry Francis Lyte (1793–1847). The hymn is based on Luke 24:29, part of a post-Resurrection narrative telling the story of Emmaus: “But they constrained him, saying, Abide with us: for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent. And he went in to tarry with them.”  Lyte takes the quotation and turns it into a metaphor for human life in all of its brevity. At the same time, by changing ‘Abide with us’ into ‘Abide with me,’ he deepens the feeling by making it speak to the individual, in prayer or meditation. It is perhaps the personal intensity of the text, the use of the metaphor of evening and the closing line, “In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me,” that makes this hymn a favorite at requiems.

Here is the Kings College Choir, Cambridge.

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Day of Wrath

The tune of the Dies Irae is used scores, probably hundreds of times, in classical music. As the themes of Death, Judgement, and Wrath have been softened or have disappeared from mainline Christianity, the Dies Irae has become more and more prominent in popular culture. Death is dreadful, and there is no escape, as we all, believers and non-believers, deep down know.

A Musical History of Death: “Exit Music” by Tom Allen

 

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Mount Calvary: Music for All Saints’ Day 2018

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Mount Calvary Church

A Roman Catholic Parish

The Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter

Eutaw Street and Madison Avenue

Baltimore, Maryland

All Saints’ Day

November 1, 2018

7:00 P.M.

_____________________

Common

Missa Aeterna Christi Munera, Palestrina

______________________

Anthems

Tomas Luis de Victoria (1548-1611)

William Byrd (1540-1623)
Hymns
Who are these like stars appearing is by Heinrich Theobald Schenk (1656-1727), translated by Frances Elizabeth Cox (1812-1897).

The first two verses of the hymn are a description of the saints arrayed before God’s throne, asking the question: who are they? Verse three begins to answer the question. So verse four is an answer to the question of who are the saints? What is wonderful about verse four is that it describes people who do not simply submit to God’s will: “who in prayer full oft have striven with the God they glorified.” In other words, their prayer has often been an intense struggle with God. It’s a powerful description of one aspect of a devout Christian life. Like Jacob, we often wrestle with God about His seeming absence in our anguish; Jesus too cried “my God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?”

Here is the Wakefield Cathedral Choir.

There is a land of pure delight. This hymn, by Isaac Watts (1674—1758), reminds of why All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day are adjacent: only through death can we come to the realms of eternal life. For a Christian, death is painful, but we are consoled by the hope that once we cross Jordan’s stream we shall be forever with our Father in the true Canaan, the Promised Land.

Here is the tune CAPEL by Ralph Vaughn Williams

For all the saints is by the Anglican bishop William Walsham How (1823—1897), who was a great friend of the poor of his diocese, and was known variously as ‘the children’s bishop’, ‘the poor man’s bishop’ and ‘the omnibus bishop’ (the last referring to his preferred means of travel about his diocese).

This hymn derives much of its power from its ability to capture the spirit of the Church Militant here on earth, using imagery from the book of Revelation. Vaughan Williams composed the tune SINE NOMINE (‘without a name’) for this hymn. It has been suggested that the name of the tune refers to the countless number of saints who are not remembered by name but who are part of the ‘glorious company’.

Here is the St. Edmundsbury Cathedral Choir.

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Mount Calvary Music October 28, 2018

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 Healing of Bartimaeus, Eustache Le Sueur 1625-1650

________________________

Mount Calvary Church

Eutaw Street and Madison Avenue

Baltimore, Maryland

A Parish of the Roman Catholic Ordinariate

The Chair of Saint Peter

Trinity XXII

October 28, 2018

______________________

Ordinary: H. Willan

______________________

Organ Prelude

Toccata in F BuxWV 157, Dietrich Buxtehude (1637-1707)

Here is François-Henri Houbart.

Organ Postlude

Ein feste Burg, Johann Gottfried Walther (1684-1748)

Here is Harm Woltjer op het orgel van de grote of sint Janskerk te Wijk bij Duurstede.

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Anthems

Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672)

Die mit Tränen säen, werden mit Freuden ernten.
Sie gehen hin und weinen
und tragen edlen Samen
und kommen mit Freuden
und bringen ihre Garben

Here is Sestina Vocale.

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Antonio Caldara (1670-1736)

Transeunte Domino clamabat coecus,
Jesu, Fili David, miserere mei.

Here is the United Continuo Ensemble.

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Hymns

Thine arm, o Lord, in days of old  is by Edward Hayes Plumptre (1821–1891), who wrote it for King’s College Hospital, of which he was chaplain.

The hymn’s biblical basis is in the healing miracles of Jesus described in the first nine chapters of St. Mark, particularly Mark 6:53-56. The hymn strikes a positive note, with words such as ‘strong’, ‘calmed’, ‘almighty’, ‘deliverer’ and ‘soothe’ stressing both the power and gentleness of God. The first verse describes the sick, with their various afflictions, coming together to seek healing from Jesus. The second verse draws in both those who are able to go about their business and the bedridden, ‘in crowded street, by restless couch’ and links them to those healed in the past ‘by Gennesareth’s shore’. In the third verse, both the healers and the sick ask for God’s help and support and take part together in praising him.

Here is Norwich Cathedral Choir.

Comfort, comfort ye my people is a paraphrase of Isaiah 40:1-5, in which the prophet looks forward to the coming of Christ. More specifically, the coming of the forerunner of Christ – John the Baptist – is foretold. Though Isaiah’s voice crying in the desert is anonymous, the third stanza ties this prophecy and one from Malachi (Malachi 4:5) to a New Testament fulfillment. “For Elijah’s voice is crying In the desert far and near” brings to mind Jesus’ statement, “’But I tell you that Elijah has already come, ….’ Then the disciples understood that he was speaking to them of John the Baptist.” (Matthew 17:12, 13 ESV).

This hymn is a translation by Catherine Winkworth (1827–1897) of Tröstet, tröstet meine Lieben, by Johann Olearius (1611–1684).

Here is the Canto Deo Choir. Here is a lively version by the First Plymouth Church of Lincoln, Nebraska.

Hail to the Lord’s anointed, a free paraphrase of Psalm 72, was written by the Moravian James Montgomery (1771–1854). Psalm 72 is a well-known prophecy of the coming Messiah – foretelling the reign of the King and what the Kingdom of that Messiah will be like. But perhaps more than a prophecy, Psalm 72 is a prayer. In these verses the psalmist calls upon God to give justice and righteousness to the King, perhaps the newly crowned earthly king of Israel, but also the heavenly king. It is a cry for the deliverance of a broken people, for the realization of peace and light. The Messiah already brings justice and healing to the oppressed, as a foretaste of His final triumph over sorrow, sin, and death.

Here is St. Bartholomew’s.

The tune WOODBIRD is from a folk song, ES FLOG EIN KLEINS WALDVÖGELEIN. Here is the song and here are the words:

Es flog ein kleins Waldvögelein,
der Liebsten vor die Tür,
klopft an mit seinem Schnäbelein,
gar still mit aller Zier:
Ich bin soweit geflogen
in Kummer und Sorgen groß,
doch still und ganz verborgen
der Liebsten in ihrn Schoß.So grüß dich Gott im Herzen,
du schöns Waldvögelein!
Vertreibst mir viel der Schmerzen,
daß du bei mir kehrst ein:
Bist du so weit geflogen
in Kummer und großer Gefahr:
Dir bleib ich g’neigt und g’wogen
mit großer Liebe gar!Bin ich geflogen über Berg und Tal
doch mit sehr großer Müh:
Und such mein Lieb ganz überall,
trag Sorg, sie sei nicht hie.
Herzlieb! bist du vorhanden,
tröst mich Waldvögelein,
in dein schneeweiße Hände
schleuß du, Herzlieb, mich ein!

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White People’s Problems in Roland Park

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Baltimore has a horrendous homicide rate; young blacks males are the perpetrators and victims. The police, black and white, are not much help, and sometimes make things worse.

Yet life goes on in Roland Park, bastion of Whiteness.

Courtesy über alles

A stop light in Roland Park has become the favorite venue of panhandlers. They supplement their income by going through        unlocked cars at night and removing unwanted change and left behind trifles.

One woman helped herself to a pair of new and distinctive running shoes that the wife had forgotten in the car. She was caught on security camera and the husband recognized her.

When he stopped at the aforesaid light, he noticed the thief was wearing the shoes. He criticized her roundly for stealing them. She claimed someone had given them to her.

When he returned home and reported his discovery, his wife was horrified by his discourtesy to the thief, and made him go back and apologize.

Flashback

This reminds me of an incident in the nineteenth century involving the Episcopal bishop, William Whittingham

Late one night he heard some one engaged in forcing a door in the back part of his house, which is reached by a private alley having but one outlet. Without hesitation and without calling for any aid he went out from the front door, entered the alley, closed the door behind him, and thus had the robber without means of escape except over him. A struggle followed, but he proved to be the stronger and dragged the burglar into the house. Here, after a lecture, he was about to give the conveyancer an opportunity to try his luck elsewhere, when the fellow complained that in the fight his hat had been demolished, and he had the impudence to ask for another. The bishop ordered one to be given him; but the family refused to obey their head, and through their lack of charity the poor thief was turned out with the chance of catching cold.

The Squirrel War

A friend lives an old shingle house and has conducted a decades-long battle against the squirrels that infest his attic and walls. His weapon is the Have a Heart Trap; he catches the squirrels and releases them n the grounds of St, Mary’s Seminary, where, as is well known, there are many nuts.

Recently the squirrels started helping themselves to the tomato crop, and he sent a trap.

What he did not reckon with is Next Door, the website that has replaced the back fence, with about the same degree of accuracy.

Someone in horror posted that someone was TRAPPING ANIMALS! (coyotes, beaver, bear?) This led to a string of remarks expressing dismay and the desire to do something about this trapper. There were plans afoot to steal the trap.

My friend noticed this strong and decided that he didn’t want to lose the trap, so he removed it.

Then someone posted that she had walked by the house thirty minutes ago and that the villain had removed the trap. He realized his house was under surveillance.

Then there were smug exchanges that the guilty party had been EDUCATED, My friend felt he was undergoing reeducation in the Cultural Revolution in Mao’s China.

We had just come back from the West so I suggested that I could get him a coyote skin which he could nail to the wall at the front of his house. There are also numerous stuffed squirrels available in junk shops. These could be placed strategically in windows. He might also send recipes for Kentucky Burgoo (Take one squirrel and skin it…) to the Roland Park Magazine.

He has not taken me up on my offer.

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Archbishop Vigano Remembers Renaissance Popes

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Archbishop Viganò has gone into hiding, supposedly saying that he feared for his life. Some have suggested he has read too many Dan Brown novels. Or perhaps he remembers how other popes have dealt with critics. We return to the learned John Bellairs and his portrait of a Renaissance pope under the topic Bad Popes:

The worst Renaissance Pope was Bragghimento dei Crudelissimi, who took the name Sporus VI (1540–1565). His election took place under most peculiar circumstances, since the Curia in 1540 had been drastically reduced by plague, sudden death, and a drowsy euphoria that came drifting out of the Pontine Marches like  the exhalation of some besotted giant.

At Sporus’ election, fifteen prelates were present, wot an average age of eighty-six. Eight were certainly senile, and there may be some question about Balbo of Genoa, who kept spilling his ink during the balloting, and who constantly referred to the cardinal next to him as “Rosa.”

The fifteenth ballot had been reached when a disturbance arose over pens. Old Cardinal Schotto of Mainz had broken his and could not secure another from the proctors, whom he accused (loudly) of being in the pay of the Italians. He advanced to the idle of the room, denouncing violently, and was met by three proctor, two Italian cardinals, and Scataphorus, the ninety-eight-year-old Patriarch of Alexandria, who was trying (in a general way) to find the bathroom.

(We shall draw a veil over the disturbance.)

After this unseemly tiff, the balloting proceeded,  although Cardinal Schotto never did get a pen, and afterwards boasted that he had  marked his ballot with soot from the Greek patriarch’s beard.

Sporus was elected and immediately acknowledged three mistresses, a concubine, and fourteen illegitimate children, supporting this move with his campaign slogan, “Honesty in the Church.” But honesty was not neigh, for he was alas, prone to bribery, nepotism, and murder, and his reign was this pockmarked with many scandals.

Not the least of these incidents was the series of attempts that he and Cardinal Bobbo made to poison each other. The latter sent Pope Sporus a jar of tainted quinces, which were (fortunately) devoured by one of the Pope’s greedy nephews. Sporus responded with a lute filled with tarantulas, which was accompanied by a gaily mocking note in classical Greek hexameters. The cardinal shot back with a music box which, when opened, played early Renaissance music as it fired a small vial of bat saliva at the unlucky recipient. Sporus, however, ended the tomfoolery in a rather crude manner, when he invited Cardinal Bobbo to a card party and threw him down a well.

It must not be forgotten, however, that Pope Sporus VI was a patron of the arts. Up until 1921, one could see near Rome traces of the Villa Pasta, which Sporus built from the ruins of  twenty-five old Roam temples in the vicinity.

Furthermore, he was the patron of Sandro di Garagiola, who did the famous, if fanciful, frescoes entitles “Pope Sporus Debating with Aristotle,” “Pope Sporus Duelling with the Spirits of Nestorius and John Hus,’ and “Pope Sporus Being Begged by the Curia Not to Abdicate and Go Live on Patmos as a Hermit.”

But not even art could preserve Pope Sporus from the recurrent attacks of mal de siècle that sent him, in the twilight of his reign, more and more frequently to Capri. Though he was unsuccessful in establishing that island as the summer residence of the popes, he became a legend there. The islanders still talk of the way he would wander about in brightly flowered robes, leather sandals, and a straw tiara he had had made for him. (Some virulently anti-Catholic historians insist that Pope Sporus wore smoked spectacles with tis costume. This is nonsense.) At last, in October of 1565, this unhappy man was called before that cloudy Bar of Justice on which no early gavel can ring. He was blown off Tiberius’ Leap during a high wind and was drowned.

(Cheer up, it’s been worse.)

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Multi-Generational Incest in the Catholic Church

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A significant portion of sexual abusers of boys in the Catholic Church – I would estimate half – fall into the pattern of multigenerational incest.

One case which I witnessed from various angles over forty years exemplifies this pattern.

In 1964 I entered Calvert Hall College High School in Baltimore, an all-boys’ school. So did Jeff (Jerome) Toohey. He was not in the advanced class, so I did not know him well, but we had many mutual acquaintances.

After high school Toohey entered the seminary for the archdiocese of Baltimore. He studied at St. Mary’s Seminary in Roland Park, near where I live. At that time Richard Sipe, a psychologist and later an expert in clerical sexual abuse, was teaching there. Years later Sipe told me that he witnessed Toohey being seduced by a member of the seminary faculty. The faculty member, whose name Sipe never told me, told Toohey that he had to get in touch with his sexuality etc. Toohey succumbed.

Jerome F. Toohey

Toohey was ordained and eventually was appointed chaplain of Calvert Hall College High School and moderator of the swim team. Toohey’s proclivities were suspected by his former classmates, and there were Calvert Hall yearbooks showing Toohey with the Speedo-clad members of the swim team, annotated with hilarious and obscene comments. (Toohey was also a chaplain to the deaf, who are prime targets of abuse, for obvious reasons – I had cases involving them.)

In the late 1980s or early 1990s, I attended a lecture by Raymond Brown in the chapel at St. Mary’s Seminary. Behind me were sitting a faculty member and a Presbyterian ministress from Govans Presbyterian. She said that she wanted to study Celtic Spirituality, and did they have anyone on the faculty who knew about that. Yes, replied the faculty member, we had a priest who knows about that, but he insisted on sleeping with students and flaunting it too openly. He was sent to a rural parish in western Pennsylvania to cool off, but he would be back.

Around that time a friend of mine, another former Calvert Hall student, was working in an office and met a single mother. They talked, and it turned out that she had a son in Calvert Hall. She said that the chaplain there, Father Toohey, was concerned that her son lacked a male role model and that the son should come to live with him. My friend said, do not ask questions, but under no circumstances allow your son to live with Toohey. The mother said that the proposal had made her uncomfortable.

In early 1993 Michael Goles publicly accused the popular Father Toohey of having abused him at Calvert Hall; Goles was roundly attacked by the Calvert Hall community and the Catholic  laity. A parishioner of St. John’s, Long Green, Bill Loeffler, said “This is a lie…. The real victim is Father Jeff because he will never recover from this.”

Then, in 2004, Michael Goles, who remained troubled and unvindicated, got a phone call from someone who had just come forward with similar allegations. The second man, CNN Headline News anchor Thomas Roberts, was also a Toohey victim. He was believed.

In 2006 Toohey pleaded guilty to abusing Roberts  and was sentenced to five years in prison, but served less than 10 months before being released into home detention.

Thomas Roberts

In 2007 Thomas Robert told his story:

I became a victim of sexual abuse at the age of 14; the abuse lasted three years. It took me nearly 20 years to gather the strength to help put my abuser behind bars. Now, a year after “justice” was done, I am ready to tell my story publicly in ways I never have before.

My abuser was Father Jeff Toohey, a trusted man of God. He was the equivalent of a religious celebrity in my private all-boys Catholic school in Baltimore, Maryland. Father Jeff was every boy’s friend and mentor. I considered him my mentor as well.

When my parents divorced, I was sent to Father Jeff to help me cope with all the changes. Divorce in the mid-1980s still seemed so foreign. Plus, I was just a kid, and I didn’t know much about divorce. I just knew it sucked.

All I had at that time in my life was my family and school. Those were my constants. But as my family fell apart, so did my life at school. After the abuse began, high school became a prison of shame and lies.

I felt trapped. My parents would be horrified to know their failure at marriage put their son at risk to be sexually abused and that the man abusing me was the high school chaplain and beloved priest.

The school would never believe me, I thought, and I feared I would be expelled if I revealed the abuse. I was 14, with no voice, except the one in my head saying, “You can never tell the truth about what is happening.”

Roughly a month after the abuse started, I attempted to commit suicide. I took a bottle of my mother’s pills. I lined them up one-by-one on my maple dresser. I took them all and lay on my bed hoping to just fade away and die.

My sister, Patsy, came home and found me. It was the day before her 18th birthday. She saved my life that day just by merely coming to my room to say, “Hi.” She saw the pill bottle and went to get ipecac, which made me throw up.

My parents were terribly upset by my actions. Father Jeff was told I tried to kill myself. All agreed I just needed more counseling. Father Jeff’s exact words were, “You have so much to live for.” I felt so cornered, and I had nowhere to go and no one to run to. I just became numb to the abuse.

“This too shall pass” is one of my favorite religious sayings. The abuse did pass, but it left me so insecure about who I was.

When I was in college, another boy, Michael Goles, came forward and reported his abuse at the hands of Father Jeff. I knew I could help Michael if I, too, revealed Father Jeff’s abuse, but out of a feeling of self-preservation, I remained quiet. Michael wasn’t believed, and his case was thrown out of court.

Nearly 20 years after the abuse started, I became strong enough to go back and confront what had happened to me. I was strong enough to tell my family the truth. I was strong enough to report it to the archdiocese. And I was strong enough to call Michael Goles and tell him, “I am sorry,” and that I believe him because it happened to me, too.

Together, we were strong enough to see our abuser finally admit his crimes. Father Jeff was charged with 10 criminal counts of child sexual abuse in relation to my case. He asked for a plea and admitted his guilt in court. He was sentenced to five years in jail but only served 10 months. He was released early to serve eight months in home detention.

This was the pattern that McCarrick followed. He abused seminarians, and then at least one of them abused a boy. When priests initiated seminarians into homosexual activity, the seminarians learned that this was the way that priests were allowed to deal with their sexual desires. They in turn sought out physically mature but emotionally vulnerable teenagers. Some of them entered seminaries, and the pattern continued.

How is it possible to break this pattern of multigenerational incest?

In 2005 Cardinal O’Brien conducted an apostolic visitation of seminaries because of widespread complaints, but it was a joke. He asked, Anything wrong here? No, everyone replied, nothing wrong.

From the toleration that was extended to McCarrick over decades, it is clear that the hierarchy, including perhaps the pope, do not regard the sexual abuse of adult seminarians as a serious matter. Or perhaps McCarrick’s behavior was considered unremarkable and normal.

Even if a seminary is cleaned up, there will always be the possibility of corrupt priests returning to the faculty

If priests have to be educated in seminaries, why does the faculty have to be priests? There are many competent, married laymen and deacons of  good character with theology, history, music, and psychology degrees. Priests are ordained to minister to the laity, not to other priests. Laity are the best judges of whether a seminarian is suitable to be a priest, although a bishop must make the decision about ordination and take the ultimate responsibility.

I think this change, which would not, as far as I know, require any change in canon law, would break the cycle of multigenerational abuse. There are other sources of abuse, but  I think that the seminaries have been responsible for much, if not most , of the abuse.

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Bad Popes

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It is small comfort, but things have been worse in the papacy before.  The learned John Bellairs sums up the pornocracy of the ninth century:

There are only a few things that the well-informed Catholic absolutely must know about Church history. These are

  1. Popes
    1. Good
    2. Bad
    3. Lost

Popes

Since no Catholic will be called upon to defend Good Popes, and since we know nothing at all about the Lost Popes, let is concentrate upon the Bad Popes.

The worst Pontiff ever to slouch menacingly in  a corner of the Chair of Peter was Spatulus III (898-899) who came to power as the nerveless ninth century was dissolving imperceptibly into the tepid tenth. He was, no doubt, a product of his times, born to a family of decayed Roman nobility in an age was Rome was little more than a “battered caravanserai.” To be fair, we must say that Spatulus might have been better if his mother Papella had not kept him in a root cellar from the time he was three till his election at forty-two. As it turned out, he was (to quote the learned Father Roodscreed) “no better and no worse than one might expect.”

Among the more interesting excesses of Pope Spatulus were:

  1. His love of rock candy. He made a little house out of it in his garden of his villa at Spumanti and took his mistresses there for unspeakable rites.
  2. His dog Gorgo. “It was much too large,” says Father Grabney in his book The Dog at Rome: Famous Pets of Popes.
  3. His insistence on dressing up as Amon-Ra and his fortunately averted scheme to be declared an Egyptian deity.

Spatulus was crushed to death by the Curia in 899 after making six necrophiles and a hat fetishist cardinals.

 

So let us comfort ourselves that we are merely afflicted with Francis, who will eventually be given a suitable sobriquet: Francis the Foolish? Francis the Phony? Francis the Donald Trump of the Catholic Church?

 

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Attacking the Messenger

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As usual, the messenger who delivers unwanted news is attacked to discredit his news.

Heidi Schlumpf (I love Low German names) at the leftist National Catholic Reporter:

Many, including more progressive Catholics, questioned Vigano’s credibility, because he has been implicated in covering up alleged sexual misconduct by former St. Paul-Minneapolis Archbishop John Nienstedt.

Others pointed out that Francis had replaced Vigano as nuncio after he was involved in the papal meeting with controversial Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis during the pope’s visit to the U.S. in 2015. New York Times religion reporter Elizabeth Dias noted on Twitter that “Vigano and Francis have been political enemies.”

Michael Shawn Winters, also at the National Catholic Reporter, has an objective headline: “Vigano letter exposes the putsch against Pope Francis”:

Vigano’s tissue of misinformation will leave its mark. In the midst of a feeding frenzy, no one stops to ask basic questions and even journalists can forget to undertake basic tasks like asking for corroboration or looking at the questions a text such as Vigano’s poses. Here are a few of my questions:

Vigano says he must unburden his conscience now.  Why now? If he felt as disturbed by the filth as he claims to have been, why did he not say anything publicly or at least speak to the bishops conference? I recall a few years back, at a meeting of bishops’ conference, sitting outside the ballroom in Baltimore chatting with a monsignor from the nunciature. He was waiting for Vigano who was in the executive session of the bishops’ meeting. Why did he say nothing then?

Vigano is a disgruntled former employee. Such people are always a bit angry. They are also often a bit unreliable. He was always a crackpot. But, make no mistake: This is a coordinated attack on Pope Francis. A putsch is afoot and if the U.S. bishops do not, as a body, stand up to defend the Holy Father in the next 24 hours, we shall be slipping towards schism long before the bishops meeting in November. The enemies of Francis have declared war.

(BTW can’t NCR afford accents?)

Notice Winters’ focus is not on the truth or falsehood of Viganò’s accusations, but on Viganò’s motives and character. A person may not have completely clean hands and may still tell the truth. In fact, those who know damning truths usually do not have completely clean hands.

Viganò has an agenda, and he focuses on the failures of Francis, who is, after all, the current pope, rather than on the egregious failures of John Paul II, who, after all, is dead. As for me – a pox on both their houses. Both popes failed sexual abuse victims, both allowed the evil to fester.

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Black Humor for Catholics

in homosexuality, sexual abuse, Vatican 2 Comments Tags: , , , ,

Robert Conquest started out as a leftist who fought on the Republican side on in the Spanish Civil War. But he soon turned against communism on utter disgust.

“He wrote more calmly about totalitarianism than about the accomplices and the deniers of its crimes. Stalin was a thug, Lenin a maniac. But why did so many sophisticated, educated Westerners ignore or excuse what was happening? He harried and skewered fellow-travellers and wishful thinkers, reserving particular scorn for apologist historians such as Eric Hobsbawm. Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan admired him. Critics called him a rabid anti-communist. He enjoyed teasing them, coining “Conquest’s Laws”—the first being that, generally speaking, everyone is “reactionary” on things he knows about.

When the Soviet archives opened, his meticulous work was utterly vindicated. His books were published in Russia, and he brought out updated editions in English. Mulling a new title for “The Great Terror”, his pal Kingsley Amis suggested “I told you so, you fucking fools”.

I am considering that as the title if I republish my book, Sacrilege: Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church. The expletive would not be an insult, but merely a description.

I had forgotten Neuhaus’s reaction to my book, but the editors of Touchstone have a long memory, and sent it to me:

“Very different is Leon Podles’ Sacrilege: Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church (Crossland). It is a rambling essay of more than five hundred pages on a potpourri of items picked up from the public media and the blogosphere, including, along with the kitchen sink, stomach-turning details of abuse, mainly with boys, and a scathing, if familiar, indictment from a conservative perspective of liberal depredations that brought things to this sorry pass. Regrettably, the tone is shrill, and even righteous anger does not justify the author’s suspension of caution and charity in attributing motives.”

I think that with Archbishop Viganò’s letter we know what the motives were.

Viganò may have temporarily delayed Francis’s plan to institute a gay marriage ceremony (a mere change in discipline not in doctrine, the pope will explain) but a homosexual network, the type who give pederasty a bad name, has a lock on the Vatican and on many dioceses, and they will shrug off Viganò as a right-wing ideologue  – the same way that Stalin’s critics were dismissed.

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Why Some Suspect there is a Connenction between Homosexual Priests and Abuse

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We will soon see the Grand Jury report on Pennsylvania. I wonder what it will say about Richard Ginder.

In Pittsburgh my wife’s mother was friendly with a politically conservative Catholic writer for Our Sunday Visitor, a Rev. Richard Ginder. My wife remembers that he suddenly stopped coming and was never mentioned again. My wife’s parents, including her father who was a judge, died before I discovered the truth about Ginder, so I never knew what they knew or had heard.

 

It turns out Ginder was of the “Vatican II… aggiornamento…take your clothes off” school.

Randy Engel summarizes the events:

The Ginder Case was played out under Bishops Hugh C. Boyle (1921-1950), John F. Dearden (1950-1958), John J. Wright (1959-1969), Vincent M. Leonard (1969-1983) and Anthony Bevilacqua (1983-1987). It clearly demonstrates how little the handling of criminal pederast priests has changed over the last seventy years in the Pittsburgh Diocese.

Father Richard Ginder was a native Pittsburgher born in 1914. He was a Basselin Fellow and held a master’s degree in philosophy and a licentiate in theology from the Catholic University of America. He was ordained a priest of the Pittsburgh Diocese in 1940 at the age of 26 by Bishop Hugh Boyle. Fr. Ginder taught for three years at St. Charles College in Catonsville, MD, and Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, MD. Later he became Censor of Books for the Diocese of Pittsburgh.

From the late 1940s to the early 1960s, Fr. Ginder was a popular syndicated priest-columnist. His byline appeared in such prominent Catholic publications as Our Sunday Visitor where he wrote the controversial syndicated column “Right or Wrong.” [Hah!] He also founded The Priest, a journal for Catholic clergy which he edited for 24 years and The Catholic Choirmaster which he edited for 13 years. He was also an accomplished organist and composer of sacred music.

Ginder claimed he discovered his “sexual identity” in 1949, nine years after his ordination. He said he regretted that over the next 25 years, he was never permitted to express himself on the subject of homosexuality in either OSV or The Priest. He did, however, give himself permission to act out his homosexual impulses with adolescent boys and young men.

Then in 1969, Ginder’s double life as a priest-homosexual pederast came to a grinding halt, not by any action of the diocese but by the Pittsburgh police.

As part of an intensive investigation, police officers raided Ginder’s private apartment in the Squirrel Hill section of Pittsburgh and found photographs of teenage boys performing homosexual acts with Ginder and possibly other priests from the diocese. The police also found diaries written by Ginder that described his (and, again, possibly other clerics’ and laymen’) homosexual activities with young boys and young men. Diocesan attorneys interceded for Ginder and he was released from jail and put on ten-years’ probation.

To recap – The Pittsburgh Diocese knew that Fr. Ginder was a homosexual hunter of underage boys, a criminal offense. The police had sufficient evidence to convict him. The diocese had enough evidence to petition the Vatican to laicize him. But Bishop Wright got him off the hook. He remained “a priest in good-standing.” And the entire sordid affair was covered-up.

Significantly, that very same year, 1969, Rome kicked Bishop Wright “upstairs” and brought him, and his young secretary, Father Donald Wuerl, to Rome. On April 23, 1969, Pope Paul VI appointed Bishop Wright, Prefect of the Congregation for Clergy. Five days later, Wright was made a Cardinal.

In 1975, a little more than halfway through his probationary period, Ginder published his semi-autobiographical book Binding With Briars – Sex and Sin in the Catholic Church, a defense of homosexuality and autoeroticism. As Ginder explains:

The Church does not hate gays. The Church hates sodomy. We are trying to change that opposition, to show that it is a mistaken hostility, that sodomy is licit, at least for gays …if homosexuals are sincerely persuaded that gay sodomy is permissible, then they have no need to build their own private little chapel within the Mother Church, to form an esoteric sect within the Christian commonwealth. Separatism, segregation, is not the answer. The answer is assimilation…Gays can be just as good Catholics as the rest and still have their sex. Don’t let them quit the Church …we need their help in forming a consensus. We need them on the team.

In the foreword of Binding With Briars, Ginder stated he celebrated Mass every day and that he believed in the tenets of the Nicene Creed as defined dogma, and that he loved his priesthood and his Church, but on the subject of moral theology, he took a sharp detour in terms of allegiance.

The priest attacked moral theology, “at least as it existed from Trent to Vatican II,” as a “stingy, pettifogging science,” that is “act-centered” rather than person-centered. Salvation lies in the “fundamental option” not in “individual acts,” he insisted. Not surprisingly, as an active homosexual/pederast, Ginder thought chastity and celibacy were highly overrated.

Fr. Ginder hailed “Gay Liberation” as being “the cutting edge of sexual liberation.” He favored both. He labeled pedophilia, that is, sex with children as “sick,” and distinguished “the child molester” from the “normal homosexual,” presumably a man like himself, who only engaged in sex with adolescent boys or peers.

In 1976, one year after the publication of Binding With Briars, Bishop Leonard, Wright’s successor, stripped Ginder of his priestly faculties. But he made no move to laicize the priest, so the hapless parishioners of the diocese continued to support the perp while the perp continued to seek out fresh meat.

I found the book. Engel’s quotes are accurate.

Here is Kirkus Review‘s 1975 review of the book. His pederasty goes unmentioned.

Richard Ginder has been a Roman Catholic priest “”in good standing”” for 35 years. He calls himself an “”open-minded conservative”” on dogma but in the area of moral theology he is a sexual liberal. He maintains–to put it mildly indeed–that the teaching of the institutional Church is overdeveloped in the area of personal sexual morality. Because of the Church’s preoccupation with chastity–the “”megavirtue,”” to the near exclusion of other more serious matters–war, ecology, violence, governmental integrity, sins against charity–countless Catholics have simply chosen to go their own way, often in bitterness and anguish. (Their testaments, especially since Vatican II, have come to constitute almost a genre in itself.) Father Ginder reviews the historical sources of guilt at bodily pleasure–if it feels good it must be bad–from St. Paul and the early Church Fathers down to the intransigence of Pope Paul VI’s Humanae vitae. Along the way credits go to the Scholastics, the Jansenists, the Irish clergy (truly sui generis) and the New England Puritans. But the value of his book lies not in telling us how American Catholics got so repressed–an oft told tale–but in its sexual specifics. He deals with the spectrum of sexual practices from fantasy to fetishism and with the exception of abortion (“”plain murder””) his advice, quoting St. Augustine is: “”Love God and do as you please.”” Direct, often amusing, and supportive, especially of gay libbers whom he calls the “”shock troops”” on the barricades.

_______

Perhaps Archbishop Donald Wuerl would care to explain his role in all this. “I know Nothink!” is not credible.

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