MaybeToday.org

I’ve embedded the nifty iBreviary web app on a new page on the site, which can be used to peruse the daily offices of the Liturgy of the Hours, as well as the readings for the daily Liturgy of the Eucharist. The other content from the missal for Masses (Roman or Ambrosian rite) is also available at a click, though not integrated with the readings – not that anyone would be likely to be celebrating Mass with my website up in front of them, anyway. Another section displays an impressive selection of common prayers.

This is a really cool addition to the site, if I do say so myself. It could only be better if it were available as some kind of text feed I could style to match my site’s CSS. As it is, it lives in an iframe, which is essentially a window that embeds the content of another web site, and allows people to interact live with the other site through the window living in my page.

My deep gratitude to Don Paolo Padrini and the good folks at ibreviary.com for not only publishing this fabulous app, but allowing sites like mine to embed it. Besides the web app, they have apps available for iPhone, iPad, Blackberry, Android, as well as any WiFi device (Kindle, phone…) via a browser. All this available in English, Italian, Latin, French, and Spanish. Great stuff.

Quote of the Day for Saturday, February 26th, 2011:

From an AP story by Maggie Michael and Ben Hubbard, as posted on boston.com this afternoon:

Supporters in about 50 cars covered with Gadhafi posters drove slowly around the square, waving green flags from the windows and honking horns. A camera crew filmed the procession.

A taxi driver, Nasser Mohammed, 25, was among those who had put a picture of Gadhafi and a green flag on his car.

"Have you heard the speech last night?" he asked. "It was great. Libyans don’t want anyone but Gadhafi. He gave us loans."

Mohammed said each family received 500 Libyan dinars (about $400) after the start of the protests, plus the equivalent of about $100 credit for phone service.

The idea of a clown like Qaddafi being able to buy the support of citizens for $400 per household (on a loan!) is mind-boggling, given the outrageous criminality that his regime has inflicted on the people inside and outside Libya both in recent days, and for more decades than Nasser Mohamed has been alive. With news today that he is arming such stooges from military depots to repress their fellow Libyans, the scene becomes gut-wrenching. It was depressing enough knowing he could buy mercenaries to come in from other African countries to terrorize the citizenry, but this…

It’s hard to read of the cravenness of Qaddafi’s cheap shills without wondering where the rancor roiling the U.S. over the past week or so might eventually end up. Granted, we’re a long way from the governing class handing out weaponry to their bought stooges in order to hang onto power in the face of a fed-up resistance movement, but it’s not hard to see a shadow of the same dynamic at work as the beneficiaries of government largesse-by-proxy circle the wagons against those who demand an end to corruption.

The protesters who are demonizing reformers like Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker with Hitler, Mussolini, or Mubarak (!) characterizations are pleased to fancy themselves stateside brothers-in-arms of the protesters in the Muslim world, standing up to autocratic dictators; but the truth of the matter is that they themselves represent the entrenched power of cozy governmental corruption and inside deals, and they are showing themselves more than willing to subvert legal and ethical norms to protect their privilege. As with Qaddafi’s Libyan stooges, it is a Faustian bargain they cut, but it can be hard to see that when you know you have a chance to be in on the loot today.

So, a Canadian woman, Mary-Lu Zahalan-Kennedy, has earned the world’s first graduate degree in Beatles music. Is there any possibility left that the worldwide university system retains so much as a shred of its former dignity and gravitas – or relevance?

Mike Brocken, founder and leader of the Beatles MA at Liverpool Hope University, said the postgraduate degree makes Zahalan-Kennedy a member of a select group of popular music experts.

"Mary-Lu now joins an internationally recognized group of scholars of Popular Music Studies who are able to offer fresh and thought-provoking insights into the discipline of musicology."

Lord knows there are plenty of angles here for comedic exploration, but for giggles, can anything really top the professor’s conceit that how, finally, after proper designation as Masterly degreed, this woman is “able to offer fresh and thought-provoking insights into the discipline of musicology"? Oh, my. Well, maybe, maybe not – but at least now she has a ticket to ride.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has announced the release on this coming Ash Wednesday (March 9th) of what amounts to the completion of a Revised version of the New American Bible, which will be known as the New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE). I should be happy to see the publication of what is being touted as a more formal translation of the Old Testament for the NAB, but I can’t help but feel that the USCCB has bungled this.

This will be the fourth release of the NAB family of translations. The original translation was completed in 1970, and then a second edition containing a Revised New Testament was released in 1986. Five years later, the NAB was released in a third edition with a revised Psalter, and this fourth release now replaces both the 1991 Psalms, and the rest of the 1970 Old Testament – while retaining the 1986 Revised NT translation.

The problem I have with the NABRE stems from the relation of the New American Bible, as published, to the readings in the Lectionary, which is the primary locus of engagement with the Scriptures for most faithful Catholics. The bottom line is that the faithful in the pews, by and large, want to be able to read and study an edition of the Bible that corresponds to what is read from the Lectionary during Mass. This NABRE revision not only does not accomplish this humble and worthy goal, but it further exacerbates the alienation between the two sets of texts.

The Lectionary was revised in 1970 to comply with the significant changes in the liturgy instituted during the Second Vatican Council, and it utilized the original NAB edition for its text. A revision to that was produced following the two revisions to the NAB text, but liturgical Scripture translations are held to a different standard within the Church than are translations for personal use, and the revision work was determined to be not of sufficient quality, mostly owing to a perceived need among a dominant faction within both the hierarchy and American Catholic academia to appease the sensibilities of the victimhood-crazed political correctness speech police of the so-called progressive element in society. The reader knows of whom I speak.

The result was a squishy text (especially the Psalter – the NT was actually mostly an improvement over the 1970 text) that was eventually rejected by the Congregation for Doctrine of the Faith. The work had to be modified and corrected under the auspices of the CDF, and then sent back to the US bishops, and only one volume has even been approved. See this excellent site by Felix Just, S.J. for everything you want to know about the Lectionary.

The end result today is that we have one volume of the Lectionary (i.e. the Weekday readings) which is based entirely on the 1970 NAB, which itself has been unavailable since the revision to the NAB NT 25 years ago; and another volume (i.e Sundays & Solemnities) based on the 1970 OT, a modified version of the 1986 NT, and a version of the Psalms that I don’t believe reflects any published version. And now, as of the beginning of Lent, the published version of the NAB will also have a newly revised OT, therein severing any remaining translation consistency between the Word proclaimed in the liturgy, and the Bibles available to the faithful for their personal use.

It might be suggested I’m being unfair to the USCCB by indicting them for simply wanting to release the Revised NAB as soon as it is ready, rather than waiting for what we now know can be an excruciatingly long process of getting a corresponding revised Lectionary approved to go along with it, but a couple of factors mitigate against that suggestion.

The sharpest argument is that the USCCB is publishing the NABRE without the modifications to the revised NT demanded by the CDF for use in the liturgy. I cannot fathom that. That is a clear indicator that neither the USCCB nor the Catholic Biblical Association (CBA: the  translation committee for the NAB) considers a unified text a serious priority, despite the desires (and legitimate needs) of the laity.

The other factor is that the history of the work of the Americans with these translations should not fill anyone with confidence that the OT work they’ve just completed will be completely satisfactory. Given the lack of new direction in American Catholic leadership over this period, even if a new Lectionary edition based on the NABRE was produced and submitted for confirmation in short order, how much confidence should we have that we wouldn’t be undertaking a repeat of the ridiculous 1998 process?

And really, without a unified text for both liturgical and personal use, of how much use is the NAB – or NABRE – for personal use? Aren’t there significantly better options, in both Catholic and ecumenical packagings, of the Sacred Word?

Quote of the Day for Tuesday, February 1st, 2011:

I’m not sure quite how to attribute this… I’m quoting Joe Carter over at the First Thoughts blog today, who is quoting Judge Roger Vinson’s ruling published Monday striking down the ObamaCare law on account of the individual mandate, which is quoting then-candidate Barack Obama from 2008, essentially mocking the notion of a mandate… You can figure it out:

On this point, it should be emphasized that while the individual mandate was clearly “necessary and essential” to the Act as drafted, it is not “necessary and essential” to health care reform in general. It is undisputed that there are various other (Constitutional) ways to accomplish what Congress wanted to do. Indeed, I note that in 2008, then-Senator Obama supported a health care reform proposal that did not include an individual mandate because he was at that time strongly opposed to the idea, stating that “if a mandate was the solution, we can try that to solve homelessness by mandating everybody to buy a house.”

Politicians really hate when you remind them what they said on the campaign trail. I imagine they despise it even more when the reminder is included in a federal ruling overturning their prized legislation.

Priceless. But if there remained any doubts, we surely know now why Senator Obama was so well-known for voting “present” during his legislative stints – he’s not stupid. As to whether he’s principled, well, that’s another question altogether, as we wouldn’t want to conflate being principled with having an agenda. There’s a world of difference between being willing to pay any price to stand your ground, and being willing to pay any price to get what you want.