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David Bruce Huxley

September 2, 2023 in Uncategorized No Comments Tags: Genealogy

 

 

 

David Bruce Huxley and Anne Remsen Schenck

David Bruce Huxley (1915-1992) was our great grandfather.  He was born to Leonard Huxley and Rosalind Bruce in London, 21 years after his half-brother Aldous Huxley was born.  David loved his older half-siblings, but his much later birth meant some social separation from them.  He was naturally closer to his younger brother Andrew, the Nobel Prize winner.

David was educated at Christ Church at Oxford University, but any plans for using his degree were put on hold due to the outbreak of World War II.  Fortunately, he thrived in his military service. He began as a Second Lieutenant in the Royal Tank Regiment and went to North Africa, where he fought Rommel in the desert.  According to his son, David “got blown to hell” and was sent to a hospital in Cairo, where he contracted dysentery.

At the end of his convalescence he was reassigned to Iraq for 3-4 years, where he put together a small defense force.  He loved doing the spying, according to his son, but knew they’d fall apart if the Germans arrived. He played desert polo and hunted for foxes in his down time, and established a house of leisure for the troops.  David left the Army as a Major.

After his return from the war, David gained posts in Bermuda as the solicitor general, attorney general and acting chief justice of the Supreme Court – for almost two decades. He made Bermuda attractive to US investors.  He compiled and revised the “Private and Public Acts of the Legislature of Bermuda 1620-1953,” a seven-volume work.  The 1953 West Indies and Caribbean Yearbook lists David as the Attorney General.

David Huxley with Michael
David Huxley with Michael
Michael Huxley with his son.  Credit: Huxley family collection.

David married Anne Remsen Schenck (1918-1993) in the Spring of 1939 in Chelsea. Anne participated in the World War II effort as an ambulance driver in London, frequently witnessing Nazi air raids, and even being injured during one.  She also contributed her services as a logistical organizer.  Family legend also contends that she was a member of the OSS, befriending and spying on Nazi officers in the early years of the war.

Anne was the daughter of Frederic Schenck (1886-1919) and Marie Civilise Alexandre (1891-1967).  Marie Civilise Alexandre was the granddaughter of the Civil War General Alexander Stewart Webb (1835-1911) through her mother Helen Lispenard Webb (1859-1929).  Therefore, General Alexander Webb is our third great-grandfather through Anne.  Our Webb family history sketch offers details.

David and Anne had the following children:

  1. Angela (Huxley) Darwin.  Angela married George Pember Darwin in 1964.  The marriage of a Huxley to a Darwin – a natural selection – attracted some media attention.
  2. Frederica Huxley of London
  3. Virginia Huxley of Columbia, Missouri
  4. Elizabeth Huxley of St. Louis, Missouri
  5. Michael Huxley of Albany, New York; married Carole Corcoran.

David took a position as a vice president and legal adviser to Arnold Bernhard and Company and the Value Line Fund in New York from 1957 to 1976.  The marriage ended in divorce in 1961.

David then married Ouida Branch Wagner (1918-1998) in 1964.  They retired to England in the late 1970s, where David took on the duties of warden of his local church.  He loved the “bells and smells” of the church, according to his son.

David Bruce Huxley and Anne Remsen Schenck

David Bruce Huxley, Q.C. (1915-1992) and Anne Remsen Schenck (1918-1993) were our great grandparents.  David was born to Leonard Huxley and Rosalind Bruce in London, 21 years after his half-brother Aldous Huxley was born.  David loved his older half-siblings, but his much later birth meant some social separation from them.  He was naturally closer to his younger brother Andrew, the Nobel Prize winner.

David was educated at Christ Church College at Oxford, and was proud of being the youngest Queen’s Counsel at the time. He also said he was the only QC to have spent a night in jail (for pinching a policeman’s helmet) He was at the Inns of Court when war broke out, then he joined the Court Regiment and thrived in his military service. He began as a Second Lieutenant in the Royal Tank Regiment and went to North Africa, where he fought Rommel in the desert.  According to his son, David “got blown to hell”, developed vascular dysentery, and was sent to a hospital in Cairo.

David Bruce Huxley
David Bruce Huxley
David Bruce Huxley in his military uniform.  Credit: Huxley family collection.

At the end of his convalescence he was reassigned to Iraq for 3-4 years, where he put together a small defense force.  He loved doing the spying, according to his son, but knew they’d fall apart if the Germans arrived. He played desert polo and hunted for foxes in his down time, and established a house of leisure for the troops.  David left the Army as a Major.

After his return from the war, David gained appointed posts in Bermuda as the solicitor general, attorney general and acting chief justice of the Supreme Court – for a total of almost two decades. He made Bermuda attractive to US investors.  He compiled and revised the “Private and Public Acts of the Legislature of Bermuda 1620-1953,” a seven-volume work.  The 1953 West Indies and Caribbean Yearbook lists David as the Attorney General.

David married Anne Remsen Schenck (1918-1993) in the Spring of 1939 in Chelsea. Anne was the daughter of Frederic Schenck (1886-1919) and Marie Civilise Alexandre (1891-1967).

Anne also took part in the war effort, possibly serving in the OSS in the early war according to family history, and then as a London ambulance driver and social aid organizer. She wrote her mother frequently during the war, describing constant Nazi air raids and the damage it inflicted on the community.  She recounted being thrown by an explosion and injuring her nose.  But she took most of it in stride, commenting in one letter that “war becomes me.”

David and Anne had the following children:

  1. Angela (Huxley) Darwin, 1940.  Angela married George Pember Darwin in 1964.  The marriage of a Huxley to a Darwin – a natural selection – attracted some media attention.
  2. Frederica Huxley, 1947 of London
  3. Virginia Huxley, 1952 of Columbia, Missouri
  4. Elizabeth Huxley, 1957? of St. Louis, Missouri
  5. Michael Huxley 1941of Albany, New York; married Carole Corcoran.

Under pressure from his wife to move to New York, David took a position as a vice president and legal adviser to Arnold Bernhard and Company and the Value Line Fund in New York from 1957 to 1976.

After his divorce from Anne, he married Ouida Branch Wagner (1918-1998) in 1964.  They retired to England in the late 1970s, where David took on the duties of warden of his local church.  He loved the “bells and smells” of the church, according to his son.

David died of heart failure on 6 September 1992 at their home in Wansford, England, according to a New York Times obituary.

David died of heart failure on 6 September 1992 at their home in Wansford, England, according to a New York Times obituary.

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Frederick Schenck

September 2, 2023 in Uncategorized No Comments Tags: Genealogy

 

Frederic Schenck (1887-1919)

attended Groton

On June 30, 1917 he married Marie Civilise Alexandre.

 

Fred Schenck competed in individual épée for the US at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics. He was from Pennsylvania, but graduated from Harvard in 1909 with a cum laude degree in the history and literature of the Middle Ages. Schenck then studied at Oxford University, earning a Litt.B. degree in 1912. He returned to Harvard, earning a masters’ degree in 1914 and a Ph.D. in 1918. Schenck then became a member of the Harvard faculty, as an instructor in the Division of History, Government and Economics. While on staff he was chairman of the Committee on Degrees with Distinction in History and Literature, and secretary of the Committee on the use of English.

 

His daughter Anne Remsen married David Bruce Huxley.

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Mothering Sunday 2022

March 27, 2022 in Uncategorized No Comments

Mothering Sunday text

The Fourth Sunday of Lent, Mid-Lent Sunday, Laetare Sunday, in the Anglican tradition is also called Mothering Sunday. The Introit for the day, from Isaiah, is “”REJOICE [Laetare] ye with Jerusalem: and be glad with her, all ye that love her: rejoice for joy with her, all ye that mourn for her: that ye may suck, and be satisfied with the breast of her consolations.  I was glad when the said unto me: We will go into the house of the Lord.”  The traditional Epistle from Galatians incudes the passage “But Jerusalem which is above is free; which is the mother of us all. For it is written, Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not; break forth and cry, thou that travailest not: for the desolate hath many more children than she which hath an husband. Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise.” The traditional Gospel tells of Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand.

From these passages of Scripture arose the custom of visiting the mother church, that is, the church in which one was baptized. Young people who had left their home village to work as domestic servants were given the day off to see their mothers and to bring a gift of food.

Henry Bourne, Curate of All-Hallows, in Newcastle upon Tyne, in 1727 explained

On this, “The fourth SUNDAY in Lent… having now brought us to the Middle of the thorny Way of Mortification, [the Church] cheers and comforts us with the End of our Journey and the Promise of Refreshment, lest we faint upon the Road…
The GOSPEL tells of Christ’s Relieving the five Thousand miraculously; intimating to us, that after the Hunger we suffer here, we shall be refreshed by our Lord…
THIS Sunday is also called Dominica de Panibus, the Sunday of the Loaves; or Dominica Refectionis, the Sunday of Refreshment: Because it does not treat of Mortification, but tells of the heavenly Jerusalem, and that Refreshment our Saviour will there give us.

During the Lent fast, people did not eat from sweet, rich foods or meat. However, the fast was lifted slightly on Mothering Sunday and many people prepared a Simnel cake to eat with their family on this day. A Simnel cake is covered with marzipan and twelve balls of   marzipan to represent Jesus and the eleven faithful apostles.

Simnel cake

Robert Herrick (1591-1674) refers to this custom in this poem:

I’ll to thee a Simnell bring
‘Gainst thou go’st a-mothering,
So that when she blesses thee
Half that blessing thou’lt give me.

A modern carol by George Hare Leonard refers to these customs:

So I’ll put on my Sunday coat,
And in my hat a feather,
And get the lines I writ by rote,
With many a note,
That I’ve a-strung together.

And now to fetch my wheaten cake
To fetch it from the baker,
He promised me, for mother’s sake,
The best he’d bake
For me to fetch and take her.

Well have I known, as I went by
One hollow lane, that none day
I’d fail to find – for all they’re shy –
Where violets lie,
As I went home on Sunday.

violets

My sister Jane is waiting-maid
Along with Squire’s lady;
And year by year her part she’s played
And home she stayed
To get the dinner ready.

For mother’ll come to Church you’ll see-
Of all the year it’s the day-
‘The one,’ she’ll say, ‘that’s made for me’
And so it be:
It’s every Mother’s free day.

The boys will all come home from town
Not one will miss that one day;
And every maid will bustle down
To show her gown,
A-mothering on Sunday.

It is the day of all the year,
Of all the year the one day;
And here come I, my mother dear,
And bring you cheer,
A-mothering on Sunday.

The music is from a medieval German carol “Ich weiβ ein lieblich Engelspiel,” here performed by Clara Obscura and here with medieval instruments. It is also appropriate for Lent, the lengthening of days in spring:

Der Winter kalt, der Sünden Zeit
die haben bald ein Ende;
kehr dich zu Gott, der dir verzeiht;
darum ihn bitt mit Herzen und mit Händen!

The winter’s cold, the time of sin, will soon have an end; turn to God, who forgives you, pray to him with hearts and hands!

 

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A Long History of Woe

February 23, 2022 in Uncategorized No Comments

I am rounding out the history of my wife’s family, the Lawrences of New York. I am not certain that she is related to Capt. Lawrence of “don’t give up the ship.” But I came across this article. Our woes with overdoses are not new, and the morphine epidemic of the nineteenth century led to the policy of controlled substances. The policy has not worked well.

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The Case of the Canoodling Cleric

July 25, 2021 in clergy sex abuse scandal No Comments Tags: Burrill, double life, Grindr, sex addiction

 

Mgr. Jeffrey Burrill, the General Secretary (roughly, CEO or COO) of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), had to resign suddenly. The Pillar, a Catholic journalism site, had been given some interesting data sets. The two journalists at The Pillar, JD Flynn and Ed Condon were a little vague about the nature of the sets but insisted that the sets had been obtained legally and had been validated. What people forget is that their movements can be tracked by their smartphone, and that they have agreed to let apps trace their movements and sell the data obtained to third parties. I gather than the data Pillar received concerned sexual hook-up apps, possibly ones associated with clerics.

Condon and Flynn said they had no reason to suspect Burrill at first, but one set of data obtained from Grindr, the gay hook-up app, showed a user who stood out above the rest. The user was also in places one would not expect, such as the offices of the USCCB. They looked at the locations at which this cell phone appeared and narrowed it down to a cell phone associated with Burrill. They contacted him and asked for a meeting to explain what they had found. No response. They contacted the USCCB and asked for an off-the-record meeting to show what they had found. The meeting was first scheduled and then cancelled by the USCCB. It was rescheduled, but when they were on the way to the second meeting, they learned that Burrill had resigned.

The New York Times had pioneered the investigative use of location data obtained from apps to identify participants in the January 6 riot at the Capitol. The data from apps is for sale to anyone who wishes to pay. So the data was obtained by The Pillar legally, and there was a precedent for using it journalistically.

Flynn and Condon said that they had thought long about using the data they had obtained from Burrill’s phone in a story about him. They decided that Burrill was a public figure in a sensitive position in an organization that was developing protocols about how to deal with sexual abuse and manipulation by clerics. The data seemed to show that Burrill was a sex addict and was leading a double life which opened him to blackmail, extortion, and pressure. It also demonstrated extremely bad judgment. Therefore, his use of Grindr was relevant to the public good.

When I was a federal investigator, I did background investigations for security clearances. We were looking for behavior that would indicate bad judgment or susceptibility to blackmail or extortion. It might be financial problems, psychiatric problems, or sexual behavior that they wanted to keep hidden. Burrill’s behavior would have disqualified him for a security clearance as a janitor in a sensitive facility.

All priests through confession and counselling have access to sensitive personal secrets and must demonstrate that they have the highest degree of integrity so they can be trusted with these secrets. Men, because of their tendency to put parts of their lives, usually money or sex, into boxes isolated from the rest of their lives, have a problem with integrity, the integration of personality. Priests must demonstrate that they have integrity; this does not mean that they must be sinless, but that that there are not large areas of their lives that are inconsistent with their profession. It would be the same situation if Burrill were a KKK member in his spare time.

Burrill was leading a double life, and whatever vetting process the USCCB used did not detect it. When I was at an investigators’ conference several decades ago, investigators from the Northwest talked about cases they had encountered in which priests had, not simply double lives, but double identities. That is, they were Father so-and-so in one city but led a very active gay life under a totally different name in another city. The investigators wondered whether the bishops had any inkling about what was going on.

If the Pillar’s article has put other clerics on notice that their double lives can be exposed, all the better. If fear of God doesn’t cause priests to behave, perhaps fear of bad press will.

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Mount Calvary Music: Easter II: April 11, 2021

April 8, 2021 in hymns, Mount Calvary Church, Music No Comments

Mount Calvary Church

A Roman Catholic Parish

The Personal Ordinariate of S. Peter

Eutaw Street and Madison Avenue

Baltimore, Maryland

Rev. Albert Scharbach, Pastor

Andrew Johnson, Organist and Music Director

Easter II

April 11, 2021

8:00 A.M. Said Mass

10:00 A.M. Sung Mass

This mass will be livestreamed

______________
Prelude & Postlude
Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706) represents the pinnacle of organ music in 17th-century Southern Germany. A generation before Bach, Pachelbel used chorale tunes as the basis for many of his compositions. His prelude “Herr Gott, dich loben alle wir” (Lord God, We All Praise You) uses the tune OLD HUNDREDTH, played by the pedals below imitative counterpoint in the manuals. “Toccata in E minor” is a free, improvisatory-like work which also features playful imitation.
Offertory: “Rise Up, My Heart, with Gladness”
J.S. Bach (1685-1750) who during his tenure at St. Thomas Church in Leipzig edited and harmonized this joyful melody as part of the Musikalisches Gesangbuch of 1736. The tune is by Johann Crüger and the original German text is by Paul Gerhardt.
Communion: “O Taste and See”
John Goss (1800-1880) was an organist and music professor in 19th-century England. The simplicity of this anthem speaks for itself. Goss sets the text
syllabically and homophonically so that the delivery of the scripture is paramount. He writes more dissonant harmonies to paint words such as “lion” and hunger,” then returns to the familiar
and inviting refrain.

_____________

Hymns

Firmly I believe and truly (NASHOTAH) is adapted from John Henry Newman’s 1865 poem The Dream of Gerontius about the progress of a soul from death to salvation. As an Evangelical, Newman (1801—1890) rejected the doctrines of purgatory and the intercession of saints, but as part of his conversion (1845), he came to a realization of the fullness of the communion of saints: those striving on earth, those being purified by the divine fire, and those in heaven moved by love to pray for those on earth and in purgatory. The poem (Greek Geron: old man), relates the journey of a pious man’s soul from his deathbed to his judgment before God and settling into Purgatory. As the priests and assistants pray the prayers for the dying, Gerontius recites this creed and prays for mercy. Sanctus Fortis, Sanctus Deus is from the Good Friday liturgy and is alluded to in the line “him the holy, him the strong.”

 O sons and daughters (FILII ET FILIAE) is a translation by John Mason Neale (1818-1866) of the hymn O filii et filiae by the Franciscan Jean Tisserand (died 1494). It recounts the appearance of the Risen Christ to both the women on Easter and to the disciples in the upper room. We are addressed in the stanza How blest are they who have not seen / And yet whose faith has constant been, / For they eternal life shall win. Although we have not seen the Risen Lord with our bodily eyes, we see Him with the eyes of faith, especially in the Eucharist, and are loyal to Him.

 I know that my redeemer lives (DUKE ST) is by the English Baptist Samuel Medley (1738-1799). The hymn uses a simple repetition of “He lives” to celebrate the resurrected Jesus who rules our lives and gives us eternal life. DUKE STREET is by John Warrington Hatton  (1710 -1793), who was christened in Warrington, Lancashire, England. He supposedly lived on Duke Street in Lancashire, from where his famous tune name comes. Very little is known about Hatton, but he was most likely a Presbyterian, and the story goes that he was killed in a stagecoach accident.
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Racism as the New Communism

March 28, 2021 in Anti-Semitism No Comments Tags: antisemitism, Colorado shooter, racism

 

Those of us with Bircher relatives remember that they saw everything through the lens of communism: whatever went wrong, it must be the fault of communism. They were right to some extent: the communists were making life miserable for a lot of people, and, yes, Alger Hiss was a communist. But most evils were the result of other bad tendencies in human nature.

Racism has become the new communism. A man kills prostitutes: it must be because he is a racist. The serial killer of prostitutes is a recognized type of criminal from Jack the Ripper onward. There is something about the warped sexuality of a few men which makes them murderously angry at prostitutes. Race has nothing to do with it.

Just before Passover a Syrian immigrant drives 25 miles to a supermarket that advertises its Kosher department and murders the people from the Jewish neighborhood who are shopping for Passover. The media cannot fathom a motive because there is no racial angle. Antisemitism is the most likely motive, but not a peep has been heard from the media about that possibility, because it does not fit the obsession with racism that dominates newsrooms.

European countries are discovering that they can have a Jewish minority or a Muslim minority; they cannot have both and have social peace, and there are more Muslim voters than Jewish. The United States may discover the same painful truth.

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Death by Gunshot

March 25, 2021 in Masculinity, murder No Comments Tags: blacks, homicides, whites

The horror of a mass killing provokes an international reaction, but the far greater number of individual homicides barely provokes a yawn.

A Washington Post article reported

On average, there was one mass shooting every 73 days in 2020, compared with one every 36 days in 2019 and one every 45 days in 2017 and 2018. The slowdown interrupted what had been a five-year trend of more frequent and more deadly mass shootings.

That gun violence increased overall even as mass shootings declined underscores the fact that those high-profile events account for a relatively small share of firearm deaths.

An analysis of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found Black males between the ages of 15 and 34 accounted for 37 percent of gun homicides, even though they made up 2 percent of the U.S. population — a rate 20 times that of White males of the same age.

The perpetrators and victims of mass shootings tend to be white, and the reverse among individual deaths. Could this explain the different reactions?

I don’t think that blacks are any more genetically inclined to violence than whites are, but something is wrong with the culture that leads young men to take out their aggressions on each other in such a deadly fashion.

Many cities have tried de-escalation programs, and some of them work to some extent. But a new mayor and a new police chief get into office, and want to try a new program, so there is little attempt to build on successful programs.

The absence of a father and violence among young males are clearly correlated, and it is easy to see the connection. The presence of guns makes the violence deadly. But how to restore the two parent family in a country where it is disappearing among all segments of society?

But what can be done about handguns? They have little or no military use and it would seem that they could be restricted without violating the Second Amendment. But what could be done about the tens of millions in circulation? Strictly control ammunition and require each bullet to be laser marked?

Any attempt at mass confiscation of unregistered handguns would require draconian measures and provoke violent resistance both by blacks and whites. Does anyone have any ideas that go beyond pious wishes?

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Migration: No Easy Answers

March 23, 2021 in Uncategorized No Comments Tags: Biden administration, border surge, human trafficking


The Biden administration does not realize that what they say is noticed in other countries.

Biden campaigned against what he characterized as Trump’s inhumane immigration policies. Democratic leftists have come out for totally open borders (as has The Economist). Consequently, there is a massive surge at the border, and the Biden administration is not sending back unaccompanied minors (mostly older teenagers, from the few pictures I’ve seen) but is trying to process them and send them to relatives or sponsors. As word gets around, even more teenagers will show up.

However

  • All over the Southwest you see  posters warning about human trafficking.
  • My contacts indicate that human trafficking has replaced drug smuggling as the leading border problem.
  • Who are these minors? Do we have proof who they are?
  • To whom are we sending them? Have their relatives and sponsors been vetted, or are we turning them over to pimps and dealers?
  • Since vaccinations are not approved yet for minors, how do we know we are not seeding coronavirus around the country, especially in already hard-hit Hispanic communities?
  • As the market for unskilled workers has collapsed during the pandemic, what are these minors going to do? Will they have any opportunity for honest work? Or are they going to be forced into prostitution and drug running?
  • The Biden administration is discovering there are no easy answers to the current situation, and it may be forced to revert to the harsh policies of the Trump administration as being the least damaging, both to the U.S. and to the migrants.
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Mount Calvary Music: Lent I: January 21, 2021

February 18, 2021 in hymns, Mount Calvary Church, Music No Comments

 

 

Mount Calvary Church

A Roman Catholic Parish

The Personal Ordinariate of S. Peter

Eutaw Street and Madison Avenue

Baltimore, Maryland

Rev. Albert Scharbach, Pastor

Andrew Johnson, Organist and Music Director

Lent I

January 21, 2021

8:00 A.M. Said Mass

10:00 A.M. Sung Mass

This mass will be livestreamed

_______________

Anthems

Offertory: “Remember not, Lord, our offences.”
Henry Purcell (1659-1695) wrote this anthem around the time he was appointed Organist and Master of the Choristers at Westminster Abbey. Descending sigh-like motives and chromatically ascending lines capture the repentant nature of this litany.

Remember not, Lord, our offences, nor the offences of our forefathers; neither take thou vengeance of our sins: spare us, good Lord, spare thy people, whom thou hast redeemed with thy most precious blood, and be not angry with us for ever.

Communion: Agnus Dei from Missa Brevis No. 1.
Healey Willan (1880-1968) was a well- known Canadian organist, composer, and teacher of the 20th century. This movement is extracted from his first of twelve Missae breves.

The Great Litany 

The Great Litany was the first service written in English. It was composed by Thomas Cranmer in 1544 from older litanies: the Sarum rite litany, a Latin litany composed by Martin Luther, and the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. The word litany comes from the Latin litania, from the Greek litê, meaning “prayer” or “supplication.” Litanies are penitential exercises. They are the urgent supplications of the people of God suffering under or dreading divine judgements and asking to be spared or delivered from calamities which at the same time they confess that they deserve. After invoking the Trinity, we ask to be delivered from the evils that come upon us because of sin: heresy, schism, natural disasters, political disasters, war, violence, murder, and sudden death. As our country experiences severe strains in a pandemic, let us pray this with especial fervor, knowing that God hears the prayers of those who humble themselves before Him.

Hymns

O love that will not let me go. At age 20 George Matheson (1842-1906) was engaged to be married but began going blind. When he broke the news to his fiancée, she decided she could not go through life with a blind husband. She left him. Before losing his sight he had written two books of theology and some feel that if he had retained his sight he could have been the greatest leader of the Church of Scotland in his day. A special providence was that George’s sister offered to care for him. With her help, George left the world of academia for pastoral ministry and wound up preaching to 1500 each week–blind. The day came, however, in 1882, when his sister fell in love and prepared for marriage herself. The evening before the wedding, George’s whole family had left to get ready for the next day’s celebration. He was alone and facing the prospect of living the rest of his life without the one person who had come through for him. On top of this, he was doubtless reflecting on his own aborted wedding day twenty years earlier. In the darkness of that moment George Matheson wrote this hymn. He remarked afterward that it took him five minutes and that it was the only hymn he ever wrote that required no editing. Albert L. Peace (1844-1912), a well-known Scottish organist of his day, wrote the tune ST. MARGARET.

To You I lift my soul is a paraphrase of Psalm 25 by John Dunn. The tune LOVE UNKNOWN is by John Ireland (1879-1962). He studied at Durham University in England and became a church organist, choirmaster, editor, and lecturer, eventually teaching at the Royal College of Church Music. He was a gifted composer of music for voice, piano, organ, chamber music, and orchestra that were recognized for their excellence during his lifetime; LOVE UNKNOWN was his only hymn tune.

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Mount Calvary Music: Quinquagesima February 14, 2021

February 13, 2021 in hymns, Mount Calvary Church, Music No Comments

Mount Calvary Church

A Roman Catholic Parish

The Personal Ordinariate of S. Peter

Eutaw Street and Madison Avenue

Baltimore, Maryland

Rev. Albert Scharbach, Pastor

Rev. Kirk, Celebrant

Andrew Johnson, Organist and Music Director

Quinquagesima

February14,, 2021

8:00 A.M. Said Mass

10:00 A.M. Sung Mass

This mass will be livestreamed.

______________

Organ Prelude and Postlude

Fairest Lord Jesus, arr. David Johnston

Agincourt Hymn, Dunstable

_______________

Anthems

Nearer my God, to Thee, arr. David Johnston

________

O Lord, increase my faith, Orlando Gibbons

O Lord, increase my faith, strengthen me and confirm me in thy true faith;
endue me with wisdom, charity, and patience in all my adversity.
Sweet Jesus, say Amen.

_______________

Hymns

Firmly I believe and truly (NASHOTAH) is adapted from John Henry Newman’s 1865 poem The Dream of Gerontius about the progress of a soul from death to salvation. As an Evangelical, Newman (1801—1890) rejected the doctrines of purgatory and the intercession of saints, but as part of his conversion (1845), he came to a realization of the fullness of the communion of saints: those striving on earth, those being purified by the divine fire, and those in heaven moved by love to pray for those on earth and in purgatory. The poem (Greek Geron: old man), relates the journey of a pious man’s soul from his deathbed to his judgment before God and settling into Purgatory. As the priests and assistants pray the prayers for the dying, Gerontius recites this creed and prays for mercy. Sanctus Fortis, Sanctus Deus is from the Good Friday liturgy and is alluded to in the line “him the holy, him the strong.”

Love divine, all loves excelling is by Charles Wesley (1707—1788). The hymn is a prayer: through the incarnate Christ, we pray for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and ask that we would never be separated from the love of God in Christ, who works in us and through us until our time on earth is done. One of the most loved Welsh tunes, HYFRODOL was composed by Rowland Hugh Prichard (1811—1887) in 1830 when he was only nineteen.

Immortal, Invisible, God only wise (ST. DENIO) by William Chalmers Smith (1824—1908), is a proclamation of the transcendence of God: “To the King of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever” (1 Tim 17). No man has ever seen God, who dwells in inaccessible light that is darkness to mortal eyes. God lacks nothing (“nor wanting”) and never changes (“nor wasting”), and is undying, unlike mortals, who in a striking image “blossom and flourish like leaves on the tree, then wither and perish.” The original ending of the hymn completes the thought: “And so let Thy glory, almighty, impart, / Through Christ in His story, Thy Christ to the heart.” “No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has made Him known” (John 1:18). Only in Jesus through the proclamation of the Gospel can we know the Father. John Roberts, in Welsh Ieuan Gwyllt (1822-1877), composed the tune ST. DENIO. It is derived from a Welsh folk song Can Mlynned i ‘nawr’ (“A Hundred Years from Now”).

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Mount Calvary Music: Epiphany III: January 24, 2021

January 19, 2021 in hymns, Mount Calvary Church, Music No Comments

Jonah awaiting the destruction of Nineveh

Mount Calvary Church

A Roman Catholic Parish

The Personal Ordinariate of S. Peter

Eutaw Street and Madison Avenue

Baltimore, Maryland

Rev. Albert Scharbach, Pastor

Andrew Johnson, Organist and Music Director

Epiphany III

January 24, 2021

8:00 A.M. Said Mass

10:00 A.M. Sung Mass

This mass will be livestreamed.

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Organ Prelude and Postlude

“Lord Jesus Christ, Be Present Now” arr. Paul Manz

Paul Manz, (1919-2009) was a renowned American organist, conductor, and composer best known for his improvisations and hymn festivals. This suite is in four brief movements, each painting a verse of the German chorale, HERR JESU CHRIST. The final variation sets the tune in compound triple meter, perhaps to represent the Holy Trinity.

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Anthems

Offertory

“How Beautiful Are the Feet of Them from Messiah” G.F. Handel (1685-1759)

“How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace,
and bring glad tidings of good things.”

Handel was a renowned German/English composer of the 18th century, whose popularity far exceeded that of J.S. Bach during their lifetime. Originally an alto duet, the composer later rewrote this aria for solo soprano.

Communion

“Call to Remembrance” Richard Farrant

“Call to remembrance, O Lord,
Thy tender mercy and thy loving kindness
which hath been ever of old.
O remember not the sins and offences of my youth:
but according to thy mercy think thou on me,
O Lord, for thy goodness.”

Richard Farrant (c. 1530-1580) was an English composer and dramatist of the 16th century. Based on the 25th Psalm, this anthem begins with a sweeping gesture of a melodic fifth, pleading for God’s tender mercy and loving kindness.

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Hymns

Joyful, joyful, we adore Thee was written ca. 1908, when Henry van Dyke (1852-1953) was a visiting preacher at Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts, set in the beautiful landscape of the Berkshire Hills, which is said to have inspired the hymn. Van Dyke, a Presbyterian minister, was also a professor of English literature at Princeton and a friend of President Woodrow Wilson. He served as a naval chaplain in World War I. He composed the words to be sung to the Ode to Joy in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. The Ode to Joy theme in the final movement stemmed from a melodic idea Beethoven had hatched in 1790, when he began setting to music a 1785 poem and drinking song by Friedrich Schiller, an die Freude (To Joy).

Fairest Lord Jesus (CRUSADERS HYMN) is a 17th century German, hymn. Three stanzas of this hymn are taken from the version published by Richard Storrs Willis (1819-1900), in his Church Chorals and Choir Studies (New York, 1850). The tune emerges in Franz Liszt’s oratorio Legend of Saint Elizabeth—wherein the tune forms part of the “Crusader’s March”—but no evidence of the tune exists prior to 1842, when the hymn appeared in Schlesische Volkslieder.

Jesus shall reign is by Isaac Watts (1674–1758), who interprets Psalm 72 using a Christological lens. The king referenced in the psalm is Christ, and could be no one else. For Watts, as for the Fathers of the Church, the Old Testament makes sense in light of the New, and vice versa. The tune DUKE STREET was composed by John Warrington Hatton (1710-1793), who supposedly lived on Duke Street in Lancashire, from where his famous tune name comes.

 

 

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Mount Calvary Music: Epiphany II: 17 January 2021

January 15, 2021 in hymns, Mount Calvary Church, Music No Comments

Mount Calvary Church

A Roman Catholic Parish

The Personal Ordinariate of S. Peter

Eutaw Street and Madison Avenue

Baltimore, Maryland

Rev. Albert Scharbach, Pastor

Andrew Johnson, Organist and Music Director

Epiphany II

January 17, 2021

8:00 A.M. Said Mass

10:00 A.M. Sung Mass

This mass will be livestreamed.

__________________

Organ Prelude

O Lamm Gottes, unschuldig, J. S. Bach

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Organ Postlude

All glory be to God on high, arranged Michael Burkhardt

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Anthems

Let All the Lands with Shouts of Joy, William Knapp

Let all the lands with shouts of joy
To God their voices raise;
Sing psalms in honour of his name,
And spread his glorious praise.
O come, behold the works of God,
And then with me you’ll own
That he to all the sons of men
Has wondrous judgments shown

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Agnus Dei from Mass for 4 Voices, William Byrd

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi
miserere nobis.
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi:
dona nobis pacem.

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Hymns

Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, a paraphrase of Psalms 103 and 150, was written by Joachim Neander (1650—1680), the first hymn writer of the German Reformed Church.It is Neander’s finest hymn, and one of the best known of all German hymns, a magnificent tribute to God as Creator and Preserver.  A valley was renamed in his honor in the early nineteenth century, and later became very famous in 1856 because of the discovery of the remains of Homo neanderthalensis, or the Neanderthal discovered in that valley. The hymn was Englished by the indefatigable translator of German hymns, Catherine Winkworth (1827—1878). She began translating hymn texts into the English language during the early years of the Oxford movement. The anonymous tune LOBE DEN HERRN appeared in the 1665 edition of Praxis pietatis melica (Practice of Piety in Song). a Protestant hymnal first published in the 17th century by Johann Crüger.

Jesus calls us o’er the tumult is by Cecil Frances Alexander (1818-1895). It contains a revivalist note which was also part of the Oxford Movement, which emphasized the Catholic nature of the Church of England in order to call men to conversion and a holy life. This is a hymn of unmistakable challenge – in its opening three words and its imperatives (‘Christian, love me’, ‘make us hear’). The tune RESTORATION was first printed in William Walker’s Southern Harmony (1835). Like many folk tunes, it is pentatonic.

All glory be to God on high is a translation of F. Bland Tucker (1895-1984) of Allein Gott in der Höh’ sei Ehr, most of which was written by Nikolaus Decius (ca. 1490-1541), a monk who became a Lutheran pastor. It is a paraphrase of the Gloria in excelsis. The tune, also by Decius, is an adaptation from a tenth-century Easter chant for the Gloria text, beginning at the part accompanying the words “et in terra pax. . . “

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All Shall Be Well: A Christmas Meditation

December 19, 2020 in Uncategorized, Universal salvation No Comments Tags: Christian Rossettirista Ro, Christmas, Universal salvation

All Shall Be Well

All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well. Thus spake Our Lord to Lady Julian of Norwich. Is it true? The majority if Christians have believed in an everlasting hell. Many have believed that the vast majority of the human race is consigned to eternal punishment: all unbelievers, heretics, schismatics, unrepentant sinners, all unbaptized children — including those who die before birth from natural causes or abortion. The majority of the human race has always died before the age of reason. The saved are a tiny speck of light shining against the eternal darkness of the massa damnata. This has been gradually softened over the centuries: unbaptized children were sent to Limbo, heretics and schismatical might be spared from hell because of their invincible ignorance, non-believers who were just might be saved if they followed their conscience and the light of reason. But unrepentant sinners would suffer eternal flames.

A minority opinion in the church was that in the end all will be saved. Augustine mentions dismissively the misericordes, the merciful one, who believed this (but blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy). Hans Urs von Balthasar in Dare We Hope That All Men Will Be Saved came close to universalism without taking the final step. David Bentley Hart, in his somewhat grumpy defense of universal salvation, That All Shall Be Saved, collects some of the past defenders of universalism.

One theme in Scripture that seems to tell against universalism is that of the Elect. God feely chooses to choose some and reject others: I have loved Jacob, but I have hated Esau. This theme was developed into the doctrine of double predestination: in God’s sovereign and inscrutable will, He creates some rational creatures for eternal happiness and others for eternal torment. This is really not much softened by saying that God creates rational creatures whom He knows will damn themselves by being unrepentant sinners.

But why does God elect certain people, certain nations? Why Israel and not Egypt? Why those who have heard the Gospel and accepted it and not our ancestors who lived tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of years ago? What is the purpose of election?

I think that the doctrine of election can best be understood in the Biblical image of the first fruits or of what Joseph Ratzinger called vicarious representation. Israel was chosen not to be the sole and exclusive recipient of God’s revelation but to be a light to the Gentiles, the first fruits of the nations unto God.  When the first fruits are blessed, the whole harvest is blessed. Jesus Christ was the first fruits; in Him all the redeemed are blessed. The Church is the first fruit of the universe: in it all humanity and indeed the whole creation is blessed.

But what of God’s wrath spoken of so often in the Scriptures? God is simple: we cannot say that part of Him is just and part of Him is merciful. Too many Christians are dualists: they think of the divinity as Ahura Mazda and Ahriman. God is pure act, that act is Love; He is uncreated light and fire. Sinners experience God’s love as fire: but it is a fire that seeks not to destroy but to purge, to cleanse, to restore. It can be resisted, but can it be resisted forever?

Israel sinned, and was condemned to exile and captivity. It repeated the primal sin of disobedience and suffered the same consequences: exile from Paradise, from the Promised Land, from the Temple of the Lord. But God is angry only a little while, and His mercy endureth forever. Adam and Eve were promised a Savior; Israel returned from exile. And lost humankind will be restored to the Father.

The Lord God is a God of truth. And what is truth? Pilate did not wait for an answer, but Aquinas succinctly defined it: the conformance of the mind to reality. Truth is not an act of the will: we do not create reality. It is an act of reason: we conform our idea of something to the reality it represents.

As I approach the end of my life, I know that soon I will stand and experience the judgment of God. He will exercise his accurate judgment and show me the truth of my life. Repentance, I think, begins and perhaps consists in my agreement with His just judgement. But his justice is not a justice that condemns me, but that justifies me, transforms me. He will make me just, conforming me to that image of me in Him which is identical with his being, in a process I will undoubtedly at first find painful as all the darkness is driven out, all the crookedness made straight.

Can I reject His judgment and cling to my own erroneous judgment, justifying myself against Him? That would be final impenitence. But our minds are made to know the truth, our wills to love the good. Is it possible to forever refuse to acknowledge of the truth of our lives and the truth of God’s transforming love? It is possible forever to refuse to love the good for which our wills were created?

Forever! What does that mean? O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort! Unending duration? Time and space are not absolutes. They are creatures of God and their properties are not unalterable. In fact, we are told that Time will be no more, time at least as we experience it, always passing away into seeming nothingness. Time will lose its vanity; instead of passing into nothingness, it will be full of God, the pleroma, when He is all in all. We cannot imagine or conceptualize it, but we have hints of it even in philosophy: when did 2 and 2 not make 4? Physicists tend to be unadmitted Platonists: there is an eternal world of number which generates the phenomenal world. Linear time is a tricky concept; it is hard to conceptualize. The Scientific American once had an issue on time; it concluded that we have not advanced much beyond Augustine, who admitted that he could not define time. The past does not exist; the future does not yet exist; the present is but an instant. All that we perceive is in the past, and therefore does not exist, even our bodies, since it takes time for the electrical impulses to reach our brain. The world of linear time is a shadow world of unrealities.

In the New Creation we will have a new time: death, non-being, evil will be no more. How could hell exist in such a creation? God will be all in all, not just in part, but in all. Will the New Creation interact with the past? Can God change the past? This question was posed by medieval thinkers in light of God’s omnipotence. Most regarded it as a meaningless question, like the one: Can God make a square circle? The past is that which cannot be changed. Or can it?

If we consider the question not in terms of God’s omnipotence but of God’s love, perhaps there is a different answer. God loves all that He has made, no matter when it existed or exists or will exist. He has promised to wipe away every tear, and the whole creation has been drenched in tears and pain, both human and animal. He has promised to make all things new – including the past?

I don’t know how this could be carried out, or what it would mean. But I know, because of my confidence in God’s character as a God who is love, that if it can be done, He will do it. With God, nothing is impossible.

We return to what Jesus said to Lady Julian: all will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of thing will be well. We cannot even comprehend the mysteries of the physical cosmos. Could God explain to us what He is doing, or could we in status viae understand it ?  Our confidence is not in our comprehension of His purposes, but in our faith in His character: God is love.

Love came down at Christmas,
Love all lovely, Love Divine,
Love was born at Christmas,
Star and Angels gave the sign.

Worship we the Godhead,
Love Incarnate, Love Divine,
Worship we our Jesus,
But wherewith for sacred sign?

Love shall be our token,
Love be yours and love be mine,
Love to God and all men,
Love for plea and gift and sign.

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Mount Calvary Music: Advent IV: December 20, 2020

December 16, 2020 in hymns, Mount Calvary Church, Music No Comments

Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937), Annunciation

Mount Calvary

A Roman Catholic Parish

The Personal Ordinariate of S. Peter

Eutaw Street and Madison Avenue

Baltimore, Maryland

Rev. Albert Scharbach, Pastor

Andrew Johnson, Organist and Music Director

Advent IV

December 20, 2020

8:00 A.M. Said Mass

10:00 A.M. Sung Mass

This mass will be livestreamed

__________________

Organ Prelude

“Sonata III: Andante tranquillo” Felix Mendelssohn

Organ Postlude

“Sonata III: Con moto maestoso” Mendelssohn

Mendelssohn (1809-1847) was responsible for reviving the music of J.S. Bach in the 19th century. The second movement of this sonata is a brief yet tender, “Andante tranquillo,” while the opening of the first movement, “Con moto maestoso,” makes for a grand and joyful postlude.

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Anthems

Offertory Anthem

“Of the Father’s love begotten,” Erik Spangler

Of the Father’s love begotten, Ere the worlds began to be,
He is Alpha and Omega, He is the source, the ending He,
Of the things that are and have been, and that future years may see,
Evermore and evermore.

This is He whom they in old time chanted of with one accord,
Whom the voices of the prophets promised in their faithful word;
Now He shines, the long-expected; Let creation praise its Lord,
Evermore and evermore.

O ye heights of heav’n adore Him; Angel hosts, His praises sing:
All dominions bow before Him, and extol our Lord and King.
Let no tongue on earth be silent, ev’ry voice in concert ring,
Evermore and evermore.

Christ, to Thee, with God the Father and, with Holy Ghosts, to Thee,
Hymn and chant, and high thanksgiving, and unwearied praises be;
Honor, glory, and dominion, and eternal victory,
Evermore and evermore.

A note from our composer: “Of the Father’s love begotten” marks a return to liturgical composition for the Mount Calvary Choir, after a hiatus of several years. As with my earlier compositions for the choir, the harmonic language is indebted to early music of the Medieval and Renaissance periods, as well as 20th-century approaches to dissonance within an established mode. The form follows a general hymn structure, marked by the refrain of “Evermore and evermore!” at the end of each verse. The number of voices expands from three to four, reduced to two, and then built back up to four voices as a culmination of energy for the final verse. -Erik Spangler

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Communion Anthem

“Ave Maria” Jacques Arcadelt

Ave Maria, gratia plena,
Dominus tecum,
benedicta tu in mulieribus,
et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Jesus.
Sancta Maria, ora pro nobis.
Amen.

Hail Mary, full of grace,
the Lord is with thee,
blessed art thou among women,
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, pray for us.
Amen.

Arcadelt (1507-1568) was among the first generation of Italian madrigal composers in the 16th century. The clarity and smoothness of his vocal writing is also heard here in his sacred music.

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Hymns

O Come, O Come Emmanuel is a translation of the Latin hymn Veni veni Emmanuel, which in turn is based on the seven O Antiphons, which are sung in the monastic office at the Magnificat on the days preceding Christmas. These antiphons are of ancient origin, dating back to at least the ninth century. The hymn itself, though, is much more recent. Its first appeared in the 18th century. It is interesting to note that the initial words of the actual antiphons in reverse order form an acrostic: O Emmanuel, O Rex, O Oriens, O Clavis, O Radix (“virgula” in the hymn), O Adonai, O Sapientia. ERO CRAS can be loosely translated as “I will be there tomorrow”.

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Creator of the stars of light is a translation by John Mason Neale (1818–1866) of the 9th century Creator alme siderum. The translation captures the essence of the original Latin. Contrasting “everlasting light” with the “stars of night” in the first stanza is a common theological theme of Latin hymns. Stanza two refers to the great New Testament hymn found in Philippians 2:10-11: “That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

 

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