Posted in category "Sacred Scripture"
The notion on my daily to-do list reads: “D.O. 5:30.” That means, Divine Office, 5:30 p.m.
Most days I say the Divine Office at 5:30. I chose this as my regular time to adhere to every day. 
If I’m working at home, I shut down the computer and say the evening office (Vespers) sitting in the living room. If I spent the day in the office in New York, I read the Divine Office on the train on the way home. I have to say I haven’t gotten any weird looks, if anything, mild interest, but I am not concentrating on the reactions of people around me, but savoring each line I read.
The origin of the Divine Office goes back to the time of St. Peter, when religious Jews prayed at fixed times every day. “Seven times a day I have given praise to thee, for the judgements of thy justice.” Psalm 119:164.
The seven offices were orginally established by St. Benedict for his monks. Benedict was born in about 480 A.D. His Rule for Monasteries can to be the one which was most widely kept throughout Christendom for several centuries after his death in 547.
Like many people who pray–or try to pray–the Liturgy of the Hours, I get a little lost without a bunch of patient monks or nuns nearby to follow or learn from. I don’t get discouraged, I just do my best.
I have considered visisting the St. Thomas More House of Prayer to learn from people whose mission it is to promote the Liturgy of the Hours. I think it would also be wonderful to pray the Office with other people, and hope to do this at some point in the coming year.
Both on retreat and vacation in Tucson, Arizona I participated in the Vespers service at the monastery of the Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration. It was always the highlight of my stay.
I know this way of prayer is for me. It calms me down, and helps me to be kinder to myself and to others. I don’t understand many things, and certainly don’t approve of all the sexist language, but as Benedict instructs, “Listen and attend with the ear of your heart.” I try.
But, I still need help, because I can’t pick up the sequence correctly. I have tried various online sources, but they didn’t work for me.
This morning, though, I may have found the guide I need: The Divine Office for Dodos (Devout, Obedient Disciples of Our Savior): A Step-by-Step Guide to Praying the Liturgy of the Hours by Madeline Pecora Nugent.
A good background to the Divine Office can be found here.
Read about The Divine Office for Dodos here. 
Mainline christian denominations–Catholics and Protestants alike–are bitterly divided over the question of homosexuality. But what does the New Testament really say about this controversial issue? Most people assume the New Testament expresses strong opposition to homosexuality. 
William O. Walker, Jr., a member of the Catholic Biblical Association of America, and professor emeritus of religion at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, developed six propositions that, considered together, lead to the conclusion the New Testament does not provide any direct guidance for understanding and making judgements about homosexuality in the modern world.
Proposition 1: Strictly speaking, the New Testament says nothing at all about homosexuality. The paucity of references to homosexuality in the New Testament suggests that it was not a matter of major concern either for Jesus or for the early Christian movement.
Proposition 2: At most, there are only three passages in the entire New Testament that refer to what we today would call homosexual activity.
Proposition 3: Two of the three passages that possibly refer to homosexuality are simply more-or-less miscellaneous cataloges of behaviors that are regarded as unacceptable, with no particular emphasis placed on any individual item in the list.
Proposition 4: It may well be that the two lists of unacceptable behaviors - 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 and 1 Timothy 1:8-11 do not refer to homosexuality at all.
Proposition 5: Even if 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 and 1 Timothy 1:8-11 do refer to homosexuality, what they likely have in mind is not homosexuality per se but rather one particular form of homosexuality that was regarded as especially exploitive and degrading.
Proposition 6: The one passage in the New Testament that almost certainly does refer to homosexuality is based on some highly debatable presuppositions about its nature and causes.
The Catholic group, Informed Conscience, also presents homosexuality and the New Testament in depth.
A 3′ tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew that scholars believe dates from the decades just before the birth of Jesus has ramifications for Christianity–mostly positive–but with plenty of room left for debate. 
It speaks of a messiah who will rise from the dead after three days. Jesus’ predictions of a suffering messiah, one who would bring salvation to the people of Israel, were not new. They were circulating years before his ministry, and can be found in the Book of Isaiah.
Ada Yardeni, who analyzed the stone together with Binyamin Elitzur, is an expert on Hebrew script, especially of the era of King Herod, who died in 4 B.C. The two of them published a long analysis of the stone tablet, dubbed “Gabriel’s Revelation,” more than a year ago in Cathedra, a Hebrew-language quarterly devoted to the history and the archaeology of Israel. Yardeni and Elitzur said that based on the shape of the script and the language, the text dated from the late first century B.C.
Israel Knohl, a professor of Bible Studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, posited in a book published in 2000 the idea of a suffering messiah before Jesus, using a variety of rabbinic and early apocalypic literature as well as the Dead Sea Scrolls.
In Knohl’s interpretation, the specific messianic figure embodied on the stone was a man named Simon who was slain by a commander in the Herodian army, according to first-century historian Josephus. The slaying of Simon, or any suffering messiah, is seen as a necessary step toward national salvation.
Knohl focuses on line 80, which begins clearly with the words “L’shloshet yamin,” meaning “in three days.” The next word of the line was deemed illegible by Ms. Yardeni and Mr. Elitzur, but Mr. Knohl, who is an expert on the language of the Bible and Talmud, says the word is “hayeh,” or “live” in the imperative.
It was less important, Mr. Knohl said, whether a man named Simon was the messiah of the stone than the fact it strongly suggested that a savior who died and rose after three days was an established concept at the time of Jesus.
“His mission is that he has to be put to death by the Romans to suffer so his blood will be the sign for redemption to come,” Mr. Knohl said. “This is the sign of the son of Joseph. This is the conscious view of Jesus himself. This gives the Last Supper an absolutely different meaning. To shed blood is not for the sins of the people but to bring redemption to Israel.”
“As a director, my goal is to be completely open. Just look at how I portray sex in my films. They’re considered shocking and obscene because I like to carefully examine human sexuality. It has to be realistic.”
Paul Verhoeven’s biography of Jesus, Jesus of Nazareth: A Realistic Portrait, will be published next month by J. M. Meulenhoff, an Amsterdam publishing house. It will be translated into English in 2009. 
Verhoeven, 69, is best known as the director of a number of blockbuster films, including Basic Instinct, Robo Cop, and Total Recall.
Over the years, Vehoeven, who is Catholic and holds a doctorate in mathematics and physics from the University of Leiden, was a regular attendee of the Jesus Seminar, which was co-founded by the late religious scholar Robert W. Funk. The Jesus Seminar is a group of scholars and authors that seeks to establish historical facts about Jesus, and examines miracles and statements attributed to him.
Verhoeven’s new book makes the suggestion that Jesus may have been the son of Mary and a Roman soldier who raped her during a Jewish uprising against Roman rule in 4 B.C. The book also makes the claim that Judas Iscariot was not responsible for Jesus’ betrayal.
William Porter, a professor of religious studies at the University of Dayton, in Ohio, said the Jesus Seminar was known for making provacative claims, but “they are real scholars–you have to deal with them.”
However, he said Verhoeven’s ideas sounded “pretty out there.”
John Dominic Crossan, a Jesus Seminar founder, agreed. He said that while Verhoeven was a member in good standing, there was little evidence for the view Jesus was illegitimate.
Crossan said the claim was first reported in a polemic written in the 2nd century against the Book of Matthew, intended for a Jewish audience.
“It’s an obvious first retort to claims that Mary was a virgin,” Crossan said. “If you wanted to do a hatchet job on Jesus’ reputation, this would be the way.”
U.S. bishops have rejected a new translation of Mass prayers, a rare instance of U.S. preclates denying a Vatican-ordered liturgical change.
Sister Mary Walsh, a spokesperson for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, could not recall another instance in which a majority of the USCCB rejected a full document of Vatican translations.
The measure did not pass at the bishops’ meeting in June, and mail-in ballots won’t add up to the 166 needed to pass the new translation. A two-thirds majority of the USCCB’s Latin rite bishops is required for approval.
The vote was a shock. Most observers expected approval to be a formality, in part because four other English-speaking bishops’ conferences have already accepted it.
Known as the “Proper of the Seasons,” the prayers are said on Sundays, Holy Days and during liturgical seasons such as Lent, and change from day to day. Examples include the opening prayer, prayers said over the bread and wine, and prayer after Communion.
The late Pope John Paul II ordered the new translations to increase fidelity to the original Latin. Some Vatican liturgists said the church moved too quickly–and sloppily—in translating the Mass into local languages after the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s.
The vote over the Proper of the Seasons provided the most drama of the bishops’ three-day session, thanks to a speech by Bishop Victor Galeone of Saint Augustine, Florida. Bishop Galeone is a former Latin teacher. 
In his speech, Bishop Galeone argued the new translation is “too slavish” with respect to the Latin original, with the result the prayers are too awkward, too remote from normal English speech, to be proclaimed effectively.
In effect, Galeone suggested the translation amounts to a departure from the post-Vatican II vision of worship in the vernacular languages of the community.
Among other things, Galeone cited the text’s use of the phrase “the gibbet of the Cross.” “The last time I heard that word was back in 1949, during Stations of the Cross in Lent,” Galeone said.
His speech motivated a number of other bishops to come forward to express their own reservations about the translation. “It’s a linguistic swamp,” one bishop added.
The rejected translation will come up again, with amendments, at the USCCB’s next meeting in November.
If parishes return to phrases like “the gibbet of the Cross,” they are going to have to dedicate a portion of the Missal to explanatory footnotes. The priest will also need to articulate very clearly and not mumble, so people don’t think he’s talking about “giblet” gravy and get really confused. 
When the album, Chant: Music for Paradise was released in Europe in May, it shot to #7 in the British pop charts, outselling releases from Amy Winehouse and Madonna. 
Maybe Pope Benedict is on to something, trying to rekindle interest in Catholicism by reestablishing some of the old traditions and cultural touchstones. If the popularity of Gregorian chant cuts across all ideological lines, and brings old and young together in a secular society, perhaps the Pope would do well to remember one thing: restore the beauty without the baggage. The beauty brings people in; the authoritarianism turns people off.
Gregorian chant has made pop celebrities of the monks of Heiligenkreuz, Austria. While not all of the monks are thrilled at the idea of sacred music being repackaged for a secular society, most seem to believe the music has the great potential to stir feelings of faith in a society that has drifted far from religion.
In 1994 the Benedictines of Santo Domingo de Solis in Spain prompted the last big revival of Gregorian chant with an album, Chant, that became a phenomenon. Within a year of its release, it had sold over 5 million copies, many of them to young people between 16-25.
For now, the monks of Heiligenkreuz seem sanguine they can balance their celebrity with monastic life. “If the problem becomes too big,” the abbott said, “I’ll take a plane down to Santo Domingo de Silos and ask the abbott there for advice.”
George Carlin passed away over the weekend. He was a funny guy. I’ll miss him and his outrageousness. Bill Maher, another ex-Catholic comedian, could take a cue from him to be sharp but not slashing. It’s funnier, and even more devastating, if you really want to nail institutions and people.
Carlin’s dissembling of the “Ten Commandments” is one of the most entertaining, uplifting scriptural explanations I ever heard. I always played whenever I needed to lighten-up a deary mood, especially from bad organized religion news. Anyone who took the Bible literally–or totally respectfully–probably would pass out if they heard it.
“I Used To Be Irish Catholic” from the Class Clown album is still my favorite.
He was also “Cardinal Glick” in the comedy, Dogma. The movie is set in my old home state - New Jersey! (You know, that was a good choice!)
I have signed up to participate in St. Francis’ summer session of courses. The Gospel of Luke runs six-weeks from mid-June to the end of July. Located in midtown Manhattan, it’s an easy walk from work to the classroom.
I like the idea of taking a break from work to sit down with others to study, discuss and discover new meaning in my life through the words in sacred scripture.
Past courses have brought together a great mix of people in the classroom: retirees, college students, office workers and professionals, housewives, unemployed, and even a few lost-looking people who just drifted in, sat down and contributed to the class.
The Gospel of St. Luke is a good choice for city filled with oppressed groups of people.
The consensus is that Luke was written by a Greek or Syrian for gentile or non-Jewish Christians. Luke’s gospel is concerned with groups on the margins of society: tax collectors, sinners, prostitutes, the poor, women and gentiles. St. Luke, said to be a physician, is the patron saint of doctors, surgeons and all health care workers.
Certain popular stories, such as the prodical son and the good Samaritan, are found only in this gospel. The Gospel of Luke also has a special emphasis on prayer, the activity of the Holy Spirit, and joyfulness. The word “joy” is mentioned more times in Luke than in any of the other gospels.
And, more than other gospels, Luke focuses on women as playing important roles among Jesus’ followers, such as Mary Magdalene, Martha and Mary of Bethany.
Who is Jesus? Why did he come? What does it mean for us, for me? These are the questions we’ll examine together in the study of this gospel.
To prepare for the course I picked up three books - The Gospel of Luke (Sacra Pagina Series) by Timonthy Luke Johnson; The Navarre Bible - St. Luke Texts and Commentaries, was initiated by St. Josemaria Escrinva, better known as the founder of Opus Dei; and New Collegeville Bible Commentary - The Gospel According to Luke by Michael F. Patella.
I plan to follow and participate in the class discussions, and read and compare the three books. Who knows…maybe all three will receive the coveted “Nihil Obstat” by yours truly!
