Here’s Cantiones Sacrae, an interesting book of Latin hymns and “devotional chants” for the whole church year, arranged for simple harmony. There seem to be huge numbers of settings for “Tantum Ergo Sacramentum” and similar hymns. The real piece of awesomeness is that it has a hymn specifically for St. Stanislaus Kostka. (Man, these Jesuits stick together….) Also, for St. Aloysius Gonzaga.

There’s some music also apparently designed to be sung _over_ private Masses, which seems… unnecessary.

But anyway, there’s a lot of interesting stuff here, which doubtless those people more musical than myself will understand better than I and find useful.

Musica Sacra: Monatschrift is another Catholic hymnbook I found on books.google.com. All the forematter is in German, but the hymns seem to be mostly in Latin. There seem to be hymns for pretty much every feastday.

Enbrethiliel has a good post up about animals and God. (It must be good; she links to me.)

It is lucky for dogs that we Catholics accept Jewish scriptures written in Greek — because Jews in Israel didn’t think much of dogs, but the writer of the Book of Tobit thought that of course Tobit should have a dog. So if you’re Catholic or Orthodox, pets are scriptural. If you’re not, you have to rely on human tradition.

Here’s an interesting article on the Book of Tobit in the Dead Sea Scrolls and St. Jerome’s tail-wagging addition.

Cats have been important helpers of humanity for a long time, and Pope Benedict XVI isn’t the only churchman who’s liked them. For example, there’s the 9th century Irish monk at Reichenau who wrote a little poem about his cat, White Pangur (Pangur Ban). (More translations.) Apparently Pangur Ban (along with his monks) is a main character in an old kids’ Celtic fantasy series by Fay Sampson. Looks interesting.

There are still beguine houses (beguinages) and beguines in Belgium.

I want one, darn it. Or a house of canonesses.

If you like looking at holy cards, here’s a “blogue” all about French ones. Of course, it’s in French, but I think you’ll get the general idea.

Bad news: I missed the season finale of Avatar, the Last Airbender, and all the latest episodes, too.

Good news: In a stunningly sensible move, someone has hired David James Elliott (Harm on JAG) to play a medieval knight in a medieval knightly romance miniseries named Mirabilis.

Carney’s translation of “Is mebul dom imradud” (By an anonymous monk, about 1000 AD.)

A shame on my thinking
How it wanders away
It will cause me embarrassment
on Last Judgement day.

At psalm time it rushes forth
on a pathway that’s odd
running, raving, misbehaving
in the presence of God.

To merry women’s company
(the unvirtuous kind),
through wood and through cities,
faster than the wind.

When road is smooth it travels
merrily and gay,
but passes just as easily
the impenetrable way.

It needs no ship to journey
and the seas go by,
jumps with but a single leap
from solid earth to sky.

Put a fetter on its leg,
chain it to prayer?
Yes! But in a minute’s time
it’s no longer there.

Little use in beating it,
plying whip or rod:
like an eel’s tail it slips away
from my grasp and from God.

No chain and no dark dungeon
will hinder its course;
it laughs at seas and fortresses,
is mocking of force.

Dear Christ, lord of chastity,
chain thinking in place
with power of Spirit septiform
and all His grace.

Make, great elemental God,
the heart be still,
that You be my only love
and I, Your will.

May I come to Christ at last,
and then to see
that He is no unsteady thing,
nor wandering, like me.

At the Friday night prayer vigil that was just shown live on EWTN, the Holy Father had a very good homily about the Holy Spirit. He leaned heavily on St. Augustine, and commented that he didn’t really understand the Third Person of the Trinity very well until he read Augustine’s writings about Him. So… I guess we know what I’ve got to read on the Church Fathers, on the Maria Lectrix podcast, don’t we?

(I’ve been pondering doing something on the Holy Spirit for a while, actually. Maybe a year and a half, maybe two. Nothing like being prodded!)

I’m not sure exactly what work/s by Augustine the Pope was referencing, though. When Vatican.va gets the speech text up, I’m sure it’ll be in the notes.

Btw, I’m not complaining about Vatican.va. For once, they have really been on the ball. Just now, all the Pope’s talks were up except the prayer vigil one — and that one was just delivered about an hour ago.

UPDATE: According to the homily notes, the Pope is recommending De Trinitate.

“The Fathers of the Church loved to see the Scriptures as a spiritual Eden, a garden where we can walk freely with God, admiring the beauty and harmony of his saving plan as it bears fruit in our own lives, in the life of the Church, and in all of history.”

– Benedict XVI, Homily at St. Mary’s Cathedral

I should mention, too, that the whole homily seemed to get its inspiration from the big west window in St. Mary’s Cathedral, which apparently features Mary as the New Eve giving an apple to the baby Jesus, the New Adam.

The Holy Father took up the theme, mentioned in his first WYD speech, of humanity as the heart or center of Creation and the creatures. (He also used the more traditional “apex”; but people are programmed to scorn the idea of Man as summit of Creation. So the “heart” idea gets the same concept across, but in a way which doesn’t freak people out.

This time, he pointed out more definitely that not only do humans wound Creation directly, by doing bad things to it, but also by doing bad things to each other and themselves. Humanity is part of Creation. Anything that diminishes humans thereby diminishes all of Creation.

So if we love the environment, we need to quit sinning! Seriously, though… even from a utilitarian standpoint, that’s pretty much what it amounts to. We can’t separate ourselves from Creation, or pretend that we can treat ourselves like crap, ripping away our own human dignity and oppressing ourselves, and still be able to treat everything else with love and respect. Mystically, too, we are connected to the world.

One of the old signs of saintliness was always a genuine love for animals coupled with the ability to give them orders, to which even wild animals responded with love and respectful obedience. This reversal of the Fall and return to something like Eden is part of what we are called to do, as co-workers with the New Adam.

The Pope trying on a policeman’s hat in pictures 25 and 26. (We forget that his dad was a policeman.) Followed by the Pope and his staff looking at animals, while Msgr. Ganswein peers smilingly at some kind of goanna, in picture 29, and Aussie lifeguards posing next to a picture of the Virgin and Child in picture 33.

We see why they closed the streets of Sydney at picture 17. Followed at picture 20 by a pilgrim sleeping, guarded by the Red Lion of Luxembourg. (Barry argent and azure, a lion rampant gules, armed, lengued and crowned or.)  Picture 26 provides us women with yet another reason to be glad to be Catholic! Picture 39 shows us some very brave young people. Picture 59 shows a nun eating a bun. Picture 66 shows non-liturgical Scottish dancers.

Father Z has the full text of the Pope’s speech, and some beautiful screencaps of his welcome to World Youth Day.

Cablog blogs about life as a cabdriver in Sydney; I check back every once in a while for his outspoken commentary. Always very interesting! Here’s a post about some WYD pilgrims.

Fr. Stan Fortuna (constantly described as a “rapping priest” and not a “bass-playing priest”) has been mentioned in over fifty news articles, according to Google News. Heh!

Meanwhile, two monks from the chart-topping Cistercians of Stift Heiligenkreuz were in town with an Austrian group of pilgrims, totally unnoticed except by the music editor of The Australian. Of course, after he noticed, so did the Sydney Morning Herald. (H/T to the Papa Ratzinger Forum.)

Also under reporters’ radar was Anna Alexandrine, one of the current Grafins von Spee. She was chosen to ride on the Pope’s boat and represent the German pilgrims; but the press reported her as just some 20 year old chick from Bonn named Anna Grafin von Spee. Hee!!! (And no jokes about naval sinkings, please….)