Wednesday, February 18, 2009

BYOB: Bring your own Bible (for Lent!)

According to Sr. Helena, there's only 7 shopping days 'til Ash Wednesday! So do you have your Lenten spiritual program ready? If you are here in Chicago, we are offering two Bible studies, both using Jeff Cavins' "Great Adventure" DVDs and guided by an on-site presenter (sometimes me, sometimes Sr. Helena, sometimes a seminarian).
Our Saturday class begins this Saturday (10:30-12:00); it's the "Bible overview" in eight sessions. Registration fee $20; optional workbook is another $20. (Payment not refundable after Feb. 21.0
Tuesday evenings (6:30-8:00 p.m.), starting Feb. 24 and continuing through April 28, will cover the book of Revelation (Apocalypse). Registration fee $30; optional workbook is $20. (Payment not refundable after Feb. 24.)
To register, call or visit the Pauline Chicago bookstore (312 346-4228).

6 comments:

mary montgomery aka greatgranmary said...

Wish I could come! Revelations is one of my all time favs.Which is why I would like to ask a question---of late I have run into several people who act as if Vatican 2 was a horrible thing and that the "new Mass" is horrible as well. These people say disparaging things about the "liturgical Movement" and how it has ruined the Church. I also live a an Opus Dei diocese where there is a big push to return to Trent.
I was away from home for a while from 1966 to 1996 so i missed out on all the debates. I have no idea what everyone else is talking about. Had it not been for finding Fr. Alberione and a "vernacular" Mass I would most likely still be in the wilderness. Being given Communion in my hand was the most powerful thing that ever happened to me---I remembered too well having a line drawn around the altar area which I could not pass even to wash the floor. I have no desire for the "good old days". Now that I have memorized the Tantum Ergo in English I can appreciate it in Latin, hearing it in English for the first time brought so many tears I could not speak.
The Book of Revelation is a Book of Liturgy and worship in the midst of a world gone mad. It is the picture of the Kingdom in the midst of the earth, the ark of worship that keeps safe all that is sacred and all who inhabit her.Anyway that is what I learned at Bible school--another story from the Baptist one and not much of interest from the last Catholic study I took, so I wish I could come to the windy city to take part in your study. Please feel free to answer me at my address.
Love and admiration,
Mary

Sister Anne said...

Once (sadly, only once!) I was at a liturgy in a small parish in Chicago and I really had that experience of being inside a living liturgy from the book of Revelation. The whole assembly responded with one resounding voice to the acclamations; it was one living, breathing Body of Christ together in praise of the Father.
If only our Catholics realized that this is what every liturgy is, at heart! The silliness we see on both sides of the ideological spectrum would fade appropriately away.

mary montgomery aka greatgranmary said...

I wonder if you might have a comment or two about the ideological difference we face today. Seems things are getting extreme and slightly out of hand.We have had a blogger here who was opening discussions on how the Liturgical Movement was never intended by the Council Fathers just taken over by the laity. I don't even know what they are talking about or how to answer but there is a dtrong push for a return to the Tridentene Mass in which case so much for acclainations as I remember it.

Sister Anne said...

I have never heard anyone claim that the Liturgical Movement was ever "taken over by the laity." It originated with the Benedictine re-founding of the monastery of Solesmes in 1832. (Solesmes, of course, is now the guardian and teacher of authentic Gregorian chant.) The movement continued through the 20th century, and the laity became especially involved from the 1920's through the 1940's--but the first "moment" of lay involvement in the Liturgical Movement was in 1914 (monastery of Maria Laach in Germany). Hardly an innovation of Vatican II. In fact, the beginnings of the 20th century liturgical reform had their first fruits in the revised Holy Week Liturgy under Pius XII.
I think some of the liturgical aberrations of the late 60's and 70's are still present to people who paint the whole valuable movement with the brush of idiosyncratic innovation, and want to wipe it all away with the turpentine of tradition.

Sister Anne said...

I should add, "tradition narrowly understood," because tradition is a living thing, and yet some people are trying to use it as a piece in a living museum.

mary montgomery aka greatgranmary said...

Reading List Gladly Accepted with papers and homework assignments! It was said in my protestant education that as the Catholic liturgy went so went the worship experience of all chritendom. From where I sit (in ignorance) I cannot tell the difference between ligitimacy and aberration. Recently read an article written by one Sr. Anne Flannagan about our Founder's love of the Liturgy. She seems like a pretty smart cookie and maybe she could steer a fellow Pauline in the right direction? No sense in arguing out of ignorance if there is a small chance one could discuss from the point of being informed.