Ordinandi Bios
Here are the bios for the three men being ordained tomorrow. Hope to see you there!
Dcn. Stephen Petrica
Former Anglican priest / psychotherapist; received into the Church in 2006
Originally from Maryland, Steve worked in psychotherapy for 14 years, followed by work in the public health field after receiving his Master of Divinity degree from Yale University and a Master of Public Health degree from Johns Hopkins. As an Anglican priest, he served as an Anglican chaplain at Yale and as a pastor of a church in Arlington, Va. After discerning his conversion to Roman Catholicism, Steve was received into the Roman Catholic Church on October 9, 2006 in New York City. Dcn. Stephen considered the monastic life, which brought him to Wisconsin.
Dcn. Vincent Brewer
Former Navy and Army National Guard Reservist / Harley Davidson rider
A native of Richland Center, WI, Vince was in the Navy and later the Army Nation Guard Reserve. Vince worked in the fields of telecommunication and technical communication management, after studies at UWPlatteville and before discerning a vocation to the priesthood. Dcn. Vince studied at Blessed John XXIII National Seminary, Weston, MA, where he received his Master of Divinity.
Dcn. Garrett Kau
Avid traveler & Skilled in the art of Charcuterie
From Jefferson, WI, Garrett went to school in Fort Atkinson before entering UW-Madison, where he received his BA in bacteriology. Garrett’s seminary studies took him to St. John Vianney Theological Seminary, in Denver, CO, where he received his philosophy and theology degrees, as well as his Master of Divinity. Garrett has traveled to the Amazon, Germany, Australia, Spain, and numerous other places in recent years. Dcn. Garrett is also an armature charcutier, or one who specializes in the branch of cooking devoted to prepared meat products, such as bacon, ham, sausage – which we all know Wisconsin loves/needs!
Fr. Steve Petrica’s Ordination and Mass of Thanksgiving
I would like to invite you and encourage you to assist at the upcoming ordination of three fabulous men for the Diocese of Madison this Friday: Rev. Mr. Vince Brewer, Garret Kau, and Steve Patrica by Bishop Robert Morlino.
Readers of this blog would do well to note that Fr. Petrica’s Mass of Thanksgiving (Saturday, 10am at Holy Redeemer) will be a great highlight for the reform of the reform. The Mass itself will be celebrated in Latin, according to the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite, ad orientem. The votive Mass of the Holy Spirit will be celebrated, and the liturgy itself will be sung in latin, with the exception of sung readings in English.
Additionally, local schola director Aristotle Esguerra and the available members of the Knights of Divine Mercy Schola will be singing the gregorian propers for the votive Mass.
Yours truly will be acting as principal Master of Ceremonies, assisted by seminarians of the diocese who will be serving.
Finally, Fr. John Zuhlsdorf, now in residence in Madison, will be preaching.
Unfortunately, Bishop Morlino will not be celebrating the Mass of Ordination ad orientem, although I’d invite you to discuss it with him afterwards, and show your support for it. 
Note well: It is THIS FRIDAY and Saturday.
Mass of Sacerdotal Ordination: Friday, May 24th at 7:30pm @ St. Maria Goretti.
Fr. Petrica’s Mass of Thanksgiving: Saturday, May 25th at 10:00am @ Holy Redeemer in Downtown Madison followed by a brunch onsite.
By Popular Request…
I wasn’t planning on posting any of these, but I guess people really want to see them… you people reading this on FB, click the link. It’s the only prom pics I’m posting. As usual, click the pics for larger versions.
Update: added another cool shot from downtown at the bottom.
Alas, I forgot my hat in the car.
Pictures from Mrs. L and JP (the crazy one)
Psalm with antiphon or antiphon with Psalm?
An interesting viewpoint from Kathy Pluth at the Chant Cafe:
I’ve been wondering lately whether we give the Psalms full credit when considering the Propers.
If you were to ask me, “What is a Proper?” I would answer, “It’s an antiphon–and some verses of a Psalm if you have time.”
Two things have recently made me wonder if I’m not looking at the Propers from a 180 degree wrong angle. Perhaps I have it backwards, and the introit is A Psalm, which alternates with an antiphon that shows the Psalm in greater light.
The first thing that caught my attention in this matter was the plenary address given at last year’s Colloquium by Fr. Guy Nicholls of the Birmingham Oratory. Fr. Nicholls convincingly demonstrated that the Introit Psalms in Ordinary Time are not chosen according to the readings of the day or according to any other external device, but run sequentially through the Book of Psalms from beginning to end. In effect, the Introit Psalms of the year are a Psalter. If this is true–if we are meant to be singing the Book of Psalms throughout the year as monks sing them through the week–then the Psalms are much less incidental to the Propers than I had thought.
The second indication that I was taking the Psalms less seriously than they deserved, and perhaps taking the Antiphons more seriously than warranted, was this interesting definition of “Introit” from the old, online Catholic Encyclopedia:
The Introit (Introitus) of the Mass is the fragment of a psalm with its antiphon sung while the celebrant and ministers enter the church and approach the altar. In all Western rites the Mass began with such a processional psalm since the earliest times of which we have any record.
I’m sure most of us have had the experience of needing the briefest possible proper, and if you are like me, you would have chosen to sing the antiphon and left the Psalm for another day when there was more time. However, I’m not convinced that this is the right way to go.The article in the Catholic Encyclopedia, as I read it, seems to suggest that the Introit started as a Psalm only, and that antiphons were added later. Over time the antiphons came to be the defining aspect of the Introit, perhaps in part because the antiphon alone needed to be printed, in order to provide the melody. The Psalm would be sung to a Psalm tone, and by the cantor, who would not need it to be printed in the book. Eventually the Psalm was shortened to one verse with its Gloria Patri unless further verses were needed for reasons of time.
I wonder whether this is a unique scholarly view, or whether it might be safe to say that the Psalm is at least as essential to the singing of the responsorial Propers as is the singing of the through-composed antiphon.
Msgr Octocat
I had bit of fun yesterday with inkscape. One of my online buddies, Adam Wood, is creating an online repository for open source sacred music (mainly GABC and Lilypond) on a service called GitHub, and their official mascot is a little guy called octocat.
Well yesterday, I turned him into Msgr Octocat. Click him, all the details are there!
And for the two of you interested, the chant is Populous Sion (Advent II int.), the tile is from St Mark’s in Venice, and the surplice of from my fantastic vicar general’s main surplice (in case you’re unclear, both the surplice and VG are fantastic 
).
Obama: Reject the Voices that Warn of Tyrany
Recently, President Obama recently gave another indoctrination session commencement speech, and this time, he’s getting even worse. Now he’s saying that we should “reject those voices” that warn us of government tyranny.
Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems. Some of these same voices also do their best to gum up the works. They’ll warn that tyranny always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave, and creative, and unique experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham with which we can’t be trusted.
We have never been a people who place all our faith in government to solve our problems. We shouldn’t want to. But we don’t think the government is the source of all our problems, either. Because we understand that this democracy is ours. And as citizens, we understand that it’s not about what America can do for us, it’s about what can be done by us, together, through the hard and frustrating but absolutely necessary work of self-government. And class of 2013, you have to be involved in that process.
This is getting scary. Let’s contrast this with some of what the founding father’s said:
My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.
-Jefferson
DOJ: We can read your Email
How consoling. The Federal Department of Justice is more than willing to look into every part of your life. But it’s all for a good cause, right? Just there to protect us? Yeah. Sure. The Government has never done anything wrong with our personal data.
More, from the Capitalism Institute:
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) recently obtained documents from the Department of Justice that demonstrate a serious erosion of the Federal Government’s guarantees of a citizen’s right to privacy, under the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. The Constitution is a document designed not to limit citizens, but to limit the Federal government, and guarantees protection of individual rights.
Under a recent Freedom of Information Act request (FOIA), the ACLU discovered that the Justice Department has obtained legal opinions from attorneys that subpoenas alone can be used to force a third party, such as an email or cloud storage provider, to surrender files to the Department as part of investigations. The problem with this is that subpoenas are intended for use to compel an individual to testify.
Chanting The Scriptures
Kathy Pluth’s recent post at the Chant Cafe reminded me of one of my new things that has been happening in the homeschool and traditional liturgical sphere here in Madison: chanted readings.
While it was rubricised as required for every sung Mass before the wrecking ball of the post-conciliar reforms (note, the reforms after the council were the problem, not the council), but it’s a practice that has rarely been done following the council. Thankfully, at papal Masses, and diocesan Masses in the Diocese of Madison, chanting the gospel has recently made a return.
However, something even more rare is the chanting of the first and second readings.
Thanks be to God, we have more priests being willing to sing their parts of the Mass, adding additional dignity and prayerfulness, but even in many Masses that are mostly sung, it always falls flat when you get to the first reading, and the lector comes up and starts reading the reading. Notably, I was recently asked to sing one of the readings at Fr. Rick Heilman’s 25th ordination anniversary Mass.
Musicam Sacram says “Liturgical worship is given a more noble form when it is celebrated in song, with the ministers of each degree fulfilling their ministry and the people participating in it” (no. 5).
Celebrating our liturgies in sung prayer gives it a more noble form! That’s not just talking about the four hymns, or singing the Holy. We should be trying to sing as many of the prayers as possible, because the true language of worship is singing.
Musicam Sacram, an instruction from the Holy See regarding the music at Mass, says that we should really be singing the readings if we are singing the responsorial psalm, alleluia, processional hymns or chants. The new Missal gives us music for chanting the readings.
Why not use them, and give our liturgies “a more noble form”? Go ask your choir director. Ask your pastor. Look up Musicam Sacram and read it!
Catholic Meme: Cafateria Catholics
This is a Catholic meme back from when I went with friends (pictured below) to the March for Life. I should have posted this sooner…better late than never though!
This is from the cafeteria under the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington DC, which is what made the joke funny. It can also be enlarged by clicking.
Enjoy!
