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“And seeing the star they rejoiced with exceeding great joy. And entering into the house, they found the child with Mary his mother, and falling down they adored him; and opening their treasures, they offered him gifts; gold, frankincense, and myrrh” (Matthew 2:10-11)
Adoration Of The Magi - Carlo Dolci (1616 - 1686)
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2 EDITORIAL
Catholic Voice
1st January 2021
Pope Francis Declares Year of St. Joseph pointed us to Joseph consistently in the last 150 years, indicating that we need his protection and support in the midst of our moral famine. Consider the following acts of Supreme Pontiffs: On December 8, 1870 Pope Pius IX, in an act of enormous consequence, declared St. Joseph Patron of Universal Church. Anthony Murphy Eight Ways to Gain a Plenary Indulgence Over the Next Year On December 8th, 1870 — 150 years ago — Pope Pius IX declared St. Joseph the Patron of the Universal Church. In honour of this anniversary, Pope Francis has announced a Year of St. Joseph, that began on December 8th and will be celebrated through to December 8th, 2021. This is amazing news! The Church has awakened a sleeping giant, St. Joseph the terror of demons. Devotion to St. Joseph has been steadily gaining momentum and is desperately needed for our time. The Church is the Body of Christ and Joseph was appointed guardian of Christ and head of God’s household. He is the Patriarch, like the first Joseph, who through his vigilance saved the world from starvation in time of famine. The Popes have
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In 1889, Pope Leo XIII wrote an encyclical on St. Joseph, ‘Quamquam Pluries’, asking that a prayer to Joseph be added to the rosary during the month of October and that the month of March be kept in honour or St. Joseph. In 1955 Pope Pius XII erected the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker to be celebrated on May 1st to counteract Communist May Day celebrations. Essentially, he asked St. Joseph to counteract the false ideology of work and politics overtaking the world after World War II. In 1962 Pope St. John XXIII added St Joseph’s name to the Roman Canon, followed by Pope Francis’ inclusion of Joseph in all Eucharistic prayers in 2013. We also see devotion to St. Joseph confirmed supernaturally: First: “The Story of Knock began on the 21st August, 1879 when, at approximately 8 o’clock in the evening, fifteen people from the village of Knock in Co. Mayo, witnessed an Apparition of Our Lady, St. Joseph, St. John the Evangelist, a Lamb and cross on an altar at the gable wall of the Parish Church.” Second, the Miracle of the Sun in Fatima: “After our Lady had disappeared into the immense distance of the firmament, we
beheld St. Joseph with the Child Jesus and Our Lady robed in white with a blue mantle, beside the sun. St. Joseph and the Child Jesus seemed to bless the world, for they traced the Sign of the Cross with their hands.” Third, recently approved apparitions in Itapiranga, Argentina: three Sacred Hearts: Jesus, Mary and Joseph: “My son Jesus and I, your Mother, desire that the whole world be consecrated to the most chaste heart of St. Joseph.” As we know from Sr. Lucia of Fatima: “The final battle between the Lord and the kingdom of Satan will be about Marriage and the Family.” One of the main victims of this battle has been fatherhood, young men in particular are in need of strong role models and what better father figure to teach the true meaning of fatherhood than St. Joseph. Devotion to the chaste heart of Joseph the worker may be the antidote to the crisis of manhood we face in our culture. This special year will be the Catholic answer to the militant feminism which plagues our society, the feminism which not only perverts the true calling of women but also undermines authentic manhood and destabilise our families. In future issues of Catholic Voice we will dedicate some pages to St. Joseph in order to celebrate and promote this special year. Pope Francis also added indulgence opportunities to the decree. The decree explains four ways to obtain a plenary indulgence throughout this liturgical year. The indulgence requires the individual to follow the three usual conditions with “the intention of
1st January 2021 Catholic Voice
EDITORIAL 3
complying as soon as possible). One must receive sacramental confession, holy communion, and pray for the Holy Father, as well as detach oneself from all sin. Here are some ways to gain a Plenary Indulgence During the Year of St. Joseph: 1) Meditate for 30 minutes on the Our Father 2) Attend a spiritual retreat that includes St. Joseph meditation 3) Carry out a corporal or spiritual work of mercy 4) Recite the Holy Rosary with your family (or if engaged, with your future spouse). 5) Entrust your day and/or work to St. Joseph, invoke his protection and intercession. 6) Pray to St. Joseph for persecuted Christians. 7) Recite any legitimately approved prayer or act of piety in honour of St. Joseph. 8) For the elderly, sick, and dying: recite act of piety in St. Joseph’s honour, entrust life and discomforts to St. Joseph. In conclusion here the Prayer to Saint Joseph requested by Pope Leo XIII: To thee, O blessed Joseph, we have recourse in our affliction, and having implored the help of thy thrice holy Spouse, we now, with hearts filled with confidence, earnestly beg thee also to take us under thy protection. By that charity wherewith thou wert united to the Immaculate Virgin Mother of God, and by that fatherly love with which thou didst cherish the Child Jesus, we beseech thee and we humbly pray that thou wilt look down with gracious eye upon that inheritance which Jesus Christ purchased by His blood, and wilt succour us in our need by thy power and strength. Defend, O most watchful guardian of the Holy Family, the chosen off-spring of Jesus Christ. Keep from us, O most loving Father, all blight of error and corruption. Aid us from on high, most valiant defender, in this conflict with the powers of darkness. And even as of old thou didst rescue the Child Jesus from the peril of His life, so now defend God’s Holy Church from the snares of the enemy and from all adversity. Shield us ever under thy patronage, that, following thine example and strengthened by thy help, we may live a holy life, die a happy death, and attain to everlasting bliss in Heaven. Amen. St. Joseph, patron of the Catholic Church, pray for us!
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18 A CHRISTMAS CAROL
Catholic Voice
1st January 2021
A Christmas Carol Christopher Monckton of Brenchley Standing on the sturdy jetty at Carie Point on the southern shore of Loch Rannoch on a crystal-clear, starry night, thousands upon thousands of stars hanging silently above us, we looked up to the West and saw the cloud-like wisp of light that is the heart of the Andromeda megagalaxy rushing towards us. The galaxy, prosaically catalogued by astronomers as M31, is enormous. It occupies 17 degrees of arc, though only its heart can be seen with the naked eye. It will collide with our galaxy to form a globular cluster in about a billion years. That will be a spectacular sight. One night a housewife, mother of four and formidable astrophysicist (how did she find the time?), carefully studied the outer stars of Andromeda through a giant telescope. She discovered that they were rotating about the galactic centre with much the same angular momentum as the innermost stars close to its monstrous, raging black hole. Hers was one of the earliest observations that led to the theory that dark matter must exist. For unless that vast, silent galaxy were bound rigidly together by the gravitational attraction of dark matter, so that it rotated much as though it were a solid disc, the outer stars would have a longer orbital
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period than the inner stars, just like the planets of the Solar System. Thus went the theory: but a recent re-evaluation has tended to support Monckton’s hypothesis that whatever cataclysmic force set the spiral galaxies spinning was so great that the outer stars, with little or no gravitational attraction from celestial bodies beyond their own galaxy to slow them down, have simply continued to orbit the galactic centre at something close to the original rate at which they were flung into eternal orbit.
garish, unloved and egregiously supererogatory sodium-arc streetlights in the tiny, stone-built village of Kinloch Rannoch, at the end of the loch three miles east of Carie Point. Anyone who has what is today the rare privilege of gazing up at the stars cannot but be struck by the sheer inventiveness of the Creator of all that was and is and is to come. How in Heaven did He think up all of that, and set it in motion, and lay down the laws by which it would live and move and have its being?
In that event, perhaps there is no such thing as dark matter. We cannot see it for the good and sufficient reason that it is not there. To paraphrase Hughes Mearns, “I met dark matter in the air. I met it but it wasn’t there. It wasn’t there again today. I wish that it would go away.”
When He gave us free will, He gave us something of His inventive power. Social psychologists, a sour and gloomy bunch of killjoys, say that only one in 100 of us will ever use that power and invent anything, for the uninventive majority tend to resent invention, and too often to reward it only with grief.
Rannoch is one of the few places in these crowded islands where there is no light pollution, which is why there was such fury locally when the numpties at Perth and Kinross Council decided to install pointless,
For all that, we are a lovably inventive species. And nowhere is our power of invention more charmingly expressed than in the countless ways we have found to thank the Lord of Life for giving us
1st January 2021
Catholic Voice
A CHRISTMAS CAROL 19
something of the life and love and laughter of the stars. Now that we are safely into Christmastide, I have allowed myself a treat that I sternly deny myself for the rest of the year. I listen to my favourite Marian Christmas carol, Es ist ein Ros’ entsprungen, a Catholische gesang whose simple, traditional melody was first printed in the Speierisches Gesangbuch of 1599. The musical scholar Michael Praetorius came upon it in the Gesangbuch and, ten years later, gave it the magnificent four-part harmony that is sung by the world’s choirs to this day. The Nazis tampered with the ancient words to remove the mention of Jesse, on the ground that he was a Jew. That characteristically loutish interference did not survive them. Now that the internet is at our command, we can hunt for the very best versions of our favourite music. I have played that innocent game with Es ist ein Ros’. Yes, the King’s Singers do it nicely, if rather bloodlessly. Ditto the Ottawa Bach Choir. The Jena Students’ Choir belt it out. Even Andre Rieu, the master of blue-rinsed kitsch and schlock, has a go, though the words are mumbled and muffled. The Ensemble Chanticleer come close, very close. But unquestionably the best version is by the Gesualdo Six, founded only six years ago to perform Gesualdo’s Tenebrae responsories in the Chapel of Trinity College, Cambridge in 2014. The Six are all learned musical scholars. Most of them are not only singers but also keyboard specialists or organ scholars. They recorded their version standing beneath the great octagonal lantern tower of Ely Cathedral, the Ship of the Fens, once surrounded by the North Sea but now, thanks to the inventiveness of the Dutch engineer Jan Vermuyden, watching majestically over – and visible from – hundreds of thousands of acres of flat, fertile farm fields. Aside from the Six, the vast cathedral – one of the few Gothic cathedrals that stirs my soul, for I am a Classicist and not so much a Gothicist – is empty. The recording was made in the evening, with the cathedral lit in a honeyed glow. And O, the singing! It is acapella, and all the more moving for that. In the most perfectly-enunciated German, the Six give the gentlest, most reverent, most thrilling performance of this lovely, simple harmony. The balance between the voices is meticulously maintained throughout. Unlike most choral consorts, the Gesualdo Six take the fullest advantage of the Classical freedoms: momentto-moment, delicately controlled variations of tempo, dynamic range and articulation. You don’t get
Original Melody And Lyrics From 1599
any of those in the clang-bang-twang of contemporary music. But the chief glory of this profound and worshipful performance is the counter-tenor, Guy James, who is justifiably in great demand. He has sung both at Westminster Abbey and at Westminster cathedral, as well as with numerous ensembles and choirs, and has contributed to two dozen choral CDs. And – what’s not to like? – he plays cricket when he is not singing. His performance of the soprano part is a triumph of self-effacing sensitivity. Owain Park, the director, rightly gives him his head, particularly in the closing stanza: O Jesu, bis zum Scheiden aus diesem Jammertal, Lass Dein hilf uns geleiten hin in den Freudensaal. In Deines Vaters Reich da wir Dich ewig loben, o Gott, uns dass verleih. O Jesu, till our parting out of this vale of woe, O with Thy help escort us there to the hall of joy. Within Thy Father’s realm, There may we ever praise Thee; God, this on us bestow. I like to imagine that our Creator, looking down upon the six singers praising Him so beautifully at the heart of the great Cathedral whose architects and craftsmen had laboured for a hundred years to praise Him in a symphony of stone, does not regret having given us free will and, with it, the power of invention.