NEW BOB DYLAN ALBUM – TEMPEST - SET FOR SEPTEMBER RELEASE

NEW BOB DYLAN ALBUM – TEMPEST - SET FOR SEPTEMBER RELEASE

COLLECTION OF TEN NEW BOB DYLAN SONGS
MARKS MUSICIAN’S 50TH ANNIVERSARY AS A RECORDING ARTIST

Columbia Records announced today that Bob Dylan’s new studio album, Tempest, will be released on September 11, 2012. Featuring ten new and original Bob Dylan songs, the release of Tempest coincides with the 50th Anniversary of the artist’s eponymous debut album, which was released by Columbia in 1962.

Tempest is available for pre-order now on iTunes and Amazon. The new album, produced by Jack Frost, is the 35thth studio set from Bob Dylan, and follows 2009’s worldwide best-seller, Together Through Life.

Bob Dylan’s four previous studio albums have been universally hailed as among the best of his storied career, achieving new levels of commercial success and critical acclaim for the artist. The Platinum-selling Time Out Of Mind from 1997 earned multiple Grammy Awards, including Album Of The Year, while “Love and Theft” continued Dylan’s Platinum streak and earned several Grammy nominations and a statue for Best Contemporary Folk album.

Modern Times, released in 2006, became one of the artist’s most popular albums, selling more than 2.5 million copies worldwide and earning Dylan two more Grammys. Together Through Life became the artist’s first album to debut at #1 in both the U.S. and the UK, as well as in five other countries, on its way to surpassing sales of one million copies.

Those four releases fell within a 12-year creative span that also included the recording of an Oscar- and Golden Globe-winning composition, “Things Have Changed,” from the film Wonder Boys, in 2001; a worldwide best-selling memoir, Chronicles Vol. 1, which spent 19 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller List, in 2004, and a Martin Scorsese-directed documentary, No Direction Home, in 2005. Bob Dylan also released his first collection of holiday standards, Christmas In The Heart, in 2009, with all of the artist’s royalties from that album being donated to hunger charities around the world.

This year, Bob Dylan was the recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honor. He was awarded a special Pulitzer Prize in 2008 for “his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power.” He was also the recipient of the French Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres in 1990, Sweden’s Polar Music Award in 2000 and several Doctorates including the University of St. Andrews and Princeton University as well as numerous other honors.

Today is the Memorial of Our Lady of Mount Carmel

Today is the Memorial of Our Lady of Mount Carmel

Commemoration of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel

Sacred Scripture celebrated the beauty of Carmel where the prophet Elijah defended the purity of Israel's faith in the living God. In the twelfth century, hermits withdrew to that mountain and later founded the Carmelite order devoted to the contemplative life under the patronage of Mary, the holy Mother of God.
Devotion to Our Lady of Mount Carmel is worldwide, and most Catholics are familiar with the Scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, also known as the Brown Scapular. Mary appeared to St. Simon Stock on July 16, 1251, and gave him the scapular with the following words, which are preserved in a fourteenth century narrative: "This will be for you and for all Carmelites the privilege, that he who dies in this will not suffer eternal fire." The feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel was instituted for the Carmelites in 1332, and extended to the whole Church by Benedict XIII in 1726.

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Our Lady of Mount Carmel
Today is the principal feast day of the Carmelite Order. Through the efforts of the crusader Berthold, a group of hermits living on Mount Carmel were organized into an Order after the traditional Western type about the year 1150. Oppressed by the Saracens, the monks slowly emigrated to Europe. During the night preceding the sixteenth of July, 1225, the Blessed Virgin is said to have commanded Pope Honorius III to approve the foundation. Since the Carmelites were still under constant harassment, the sixth General of the Order, St. Simon Stock, pleaded with the Blessed Virgin for some special sign of her protection. On July 16, 1251, she designated the scapular as the special mark of her maternal love. That is why the present feast is also known as the feast of the Scapular. The scapular, as part of the habit, is common to many religious Orders, but it is a special feature of the Carmelites. A smaller form of the scapular is given to lay persons in order that they may share in the great graces associated with it. Such a grace is the "Sabbatine privilege." In the so-called Bulla Sabbatina John XXII affirmed that wearers of the scapular are soon freed from the flames of purgatory, at least by the Saturday after death. The confirmation of the Bulla Sabbatina was promulgated by the Sacred Congregation of Indulgences, July 4, 1908.

• If you have not already done so, have a priest enroll you in the Scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, or popularly known as the "Brown Scapular" and begin wearing it as a sign of your love for Our Lady. A priest enrolls people in the Brown Scapular only once. The Scapular can then be replaced afterwards by other scapulars or the scapular medal, which has on one side the image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and on the other, the image of Mary. The medal needs to be blessed by a priest, but the cloth scapulars do not require a blessing (separate from enrollment).
• Wearing the Brown Scapular is not an automatic guarantee of salvation. It is not a magical charm, nor is it an excuse to live in a way contrary to the teachings of the Church. It is a sacramental which has been approved by the Church for over seven centuries and is a sign of one's decision to follow Jesus as did Mary, the perfect model of all the disciples of Christ. In addition to being an introduction into the Family of Carmel, the Brown Scapular is an expression of our belief that we will meet God in eternal life, aided by the intercession and prayer of Mary. While sacramentals prepare us to receive grace if we are in the right disposition, the Church emphasizes that only sacraments can confer sanctifying grace. (see Catechism, no. 1670.)
• Periodically the Church reexamines devotions and popular piety to make sure they are "not at odds with the centrality of the Sacred Liturgy. Rather, in promoting the faith of the people, who regard popular piety as a natural religious expression, they predispose the people for the celebration of the Sacred Mysteries" (John Paul II, September 2001). In accordance with Vatican II, the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments issued the Directory on Popular Piety in 2001 to reevaluate different devotions and popular piety. Though the Brown Scapular is included in the document as a wonderful pious practice, the Directory does not mention the Sabbatine Privilege, which continues to present historical difficulties. The Directory rather emphasizes the beautiful sign of the "filial relationship" with the faithful and Mary:

  205. The history of Marian piety also includes "devotion" to various scapulars, the most common of which is devotion to the Scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Its use is truly universal and, undoubtedly, it is one of those pious practices which the Council described as "recommended by the Magisterium throughout the centuries." The Scapular of Mount Carmel is a reduced form of the religious habit of the Order of the Friars of the Blessed Virgin of Mount Carmel. Its use is very diffuse and often independent of the life and spirituality of the Carmelite family.
  The Scapular is an external sign of the filial relationship established between the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother and Queen of Mount Carmel, and the faithful who entrust themselves totally to her protection, who have recourse to her maternal intercession, who are mindful of the primacy of the spiritual life and the need for prayer.
  The Scapular is imposed by a special rite of the Church which describes it as "a reminder that in Baptism we have been clothed in Christ, with the assistance of the Blessed Virgin Mary, solicitous for our conformation to the Word Incarnate, to the praise of the Trinity, we may come to our heavenly home wearing our nuptial garb."
  The imposition of the Scapular should be celebrated with "the seriousness of its origins. It should not be improvised. The Scapular should be imposed following a period of preparation during which the faithful are made aware of the nature and ends of the association they are about to join and of the obligations they assume."

• Pope John Paul II has worn the scapular for a long time. The Holy Father's talk on the Scapular of Carmel, A Treasure for the Church mentions:

  Therefore two truths are evoked by the sign of the Scapular: on the one hand, the constant protection of the Blessed Virgin, not only on life's journey, but also at the moment of passing into the fullness of eternal glory; on the other, the awareness that devotion to her cannot be limited to prayers and tributes in her honor on certain occasions, but must become a "habit", that is, a permanent orientation of one's own Christian conduct, woven of prayer and interior life, through frequent reception of the sacraments and the concrete practice of the spiritual and corporal works of mercy. In this way the Scapular becomes a sign of the "covenant" and reciprocal communion between Mary and the faithful: indeed, it concretely translates the gift of his Mother, which Jesus gave on the Cross to John and, through him, to all of us, and the entrustment of the beloved Apostle and of us to her, who became our spiritual Mother.

• For the definitive treatment on the brown scapular, read The Scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel: Catechesis and Ritual.
• The Blessed Virgin's scapular should remind us that Christians have an apostolate against current extremes and extravagances in modes of dress. Clothes are a symbol of the person. Like the Christian heart, dress must be chaste and simple, for one judges the interior from the exterior. It should not be necessary to add that special attention be given this matter when preparing for church attendance. Examine yourself on how well you reflect Christian modesty in your dress and if you are a parent, how well you ensure that your children are modestly dressed.

BOB DYLAN'S SCREEN TEST ... January 1965

BOB DYLAN'S SCREEN TEST ...  January 1965

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M--oHOn4a0U&NR=1&feature=fvwrel

Today is the memorial feast of Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha

Today is the memorial feast of Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha
 
Kateri was born in 1656 near the town of Auriesville, New York, the daughter of a Mohawk warrior. She was baptized by Jesuit missionary Fr. Jacques de Lambertville on Easter of 1676 at the age of twenty. She devoted her life to prayer, penitential practices, and the care of the sick and aged in Caughnawaga near Montreal (where her relics are now enshrined). She incurred the hostility of her tribe because of her faith. She was devoted to the Eucharist, and to Jesus Crucified, and was called the "Lily of the Mohawks." She died in 1680 and was beatified June 22, 1980 — the first native American to be declared "Blessed."

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Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha
[Pronounce: Gah-deh-lee Deh-gah-quee-tah]


The blood of martyrs is the seed of saints. Nine years after the Jesuits Isaac Jogues and John de Brebeuf were tortured to death by Huron and Iroquois Native American nations, a baby girl was born near the place of their martyrdom, Auriesville, New York. She was to be the first person born in North America to be beatified. Her mother was a Christian Algonquin, taken captive by the Iroquois and given as wife to the chief of the Mohawk clan, the boldest and fiercest of the Five Nations. When she was four, Kateri lost her parents and little brother in a smallpox epidemic that left her disfigured and half blind. She was adopted by an uncle, who succeeded her father as chief. He hated the coming of the Blackrobes (missionaries), but could do nothing to them because a peace treaty with the French required their presence in villages with Christian captives. She was moved by the words of three Blackrobes who lodged with her uncle, but fear of him kept her from seeking instruction. She refused to marry a Mohawk man and at nineteen finally got the courage to take the step of converting. She was baptized with the name Kateri (Catherine) on Easter Sunday.
Now she would be treated as a slave. Because she would not work on Sunday, she received no food that day. Her life in grace grew rapidly. She told a missionary that she often meditated on the great dignity of being baptized. She was powerfully moved by God's love for human beings and saw the dignity of each of her people. She was always in danger, for her conversion and holy life created great opposition. On the advice of a priest, she stole away one night and began a two-hundred-mile walking journey to a Christian Native American village at Sault St. Louis, near Montreal.
For three years she grew in holiness under the direction of a priest and an older Iroquois woman, giving herself totally to God in long hours of prayer, in charity and in strenuous penance. At twenty three she took a vow of virginity, an unprecedented act for a Native American woman, whose future depended on being married. She found a place in the woods where she could pray an hour a day and was accused of meeting a man there! Her dedication to virginity was instinctive: She did not know about religious life for women until she visited Montreal. Inspired by this, she and two friends wanted to start a community, but the local priest dissuaded her. She humbly accepted an "ordinary" life. She practiced extremely severe fasting as penance for the conversion of her nation. She died the afternoon before Holy Thursday. Witnesses said that her emaciated face changed color and became like that of a healthy child. The lines of suffering, even the pockmarks, disappeared and the touch of a smile came upon her lips. She was beatified in 1980.
 
Patron: Ecologists; ecology; environment; environmentalism; environmentalists; exiles; loss of parents; people in exile; people ridiculed for their piety; World Youth Day.

Symbols: lily (a symbol of her purity); a cross (a symbol of her love of Jesus Christ); or a turtle (a symbol of her clan).

Phyllis Bowman, the Catholic pro–life campaigner

Phyllis Bowman, the Catholic pro–life campaigner

The life of Phyllis Bowman, the Catholic pro–life campaigner who died in May, was remembered during a Mass at Westminster Cathedral on 3 July 2012.

The Mass provided testimony to power and pertinence of Bowman’s belief in the dignity of all human life. Just as it had been during her lifetime, Bowman had once again brought together leading public figures, present yesterday because they believe in the rights of society’s most vulnerable; the unborn child, the elderly, the sick and the disabled.
Amongst those who attended the service were Professor Lord David Alton of Liverpool, Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe, Jim Dobbin MP (Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Pro-life Group), David Amess MP (Chair of the  All-Party Group for the Holy See), Baroness Sue Masham, Fiona Bruce MP, Sir Nicholas Winterton, Lady Ann Winterton, Lord Nicholas Windsor, Rev Alan Rabjohns were present as well as John Cotter, Vice Chairman, and Chris Whitehouse, trustee of Right to Life Charitable Trust that Bowman founded. Pro-life organisations represented included Right To Life, Life, Care Not Killing, Care Prolife Alliance.
During the service which took place on the Feast of St Thomas the Apostle, Archbishop Vincent Nichols gave a homily in which he reflected on the quality of love that Bowman’s work was rooted in.
The love of human life “needs to be organised well” said Archbishop Nichols. “It needs to be organised in its practical expression to promote and defend life’s dignity and value. It needs to be organised to provide practical care and support. It needs to be organised in order to be a powerful advocate, to give a voice to the voiceless in the political and social spheres.” And this, he said, takes “shared vision and a unity of purpose”.
The Archbishop also remembered Bowman’s colleague, former MP and Right to Life chairman, Ken Hargreaves who died recently. Relating this, and the ongoing proposals to legalise assisted suicide, to the pro-life cause, Archbishop Nichols said there was an opportunity to pause to consider “how best the love for life should be organised as individuals, as organisations, and in partnership with one another.”
Archbishop Nichols concluded by calling upon all present to follow Bowman’s example of maintaining “courage and determination to work together and organise our love in the interests of promoting the dignity and sanctity of human life as an ordered service to our society”.

Yves Congar and the Meaning of Vatican II

Yves Congar and the Meaning of Vatican IIBy Rev. Robert Barron

One of the most theologically fascinating and just plain entertaining books I’ve read in a long time is Yves Congar’s My Journal of the Council. Catholics of a certain age will recognize the name, but I’m afraid that most Catholics under the age of fifty might be entirely unaware of the massive contribution made by Congar, a Dominican priest and certainly one of the three or four most important Catholic theologians of the twentieth century. After a tumultuous intellectual career, during which he was, by turns, lionized, vilified, exiled and silenced, Congar found himself, at the age of 58, a peritus, or theological expert at the Second Vatican Council. By most accounts, he proved the most influential theologian at that epic gathering, contributing mightily to the documents on the church, on ecumenism, on revelation, and on the church’s relation to the modern world.

During the entire course of the Council, from October 1962 to December 1965, Congar kept a meticulous journal of the proceedings, which includes not only detailed accounts of the interventions by various bishops and Cardinals, but also extremely perceptive, often arch, commentaries on the key personalities and the main theological currents of the Council. Several times as I read through the journal, I laughed out loud at Congar’s pointed assessments of some of the players: “a bore,” “useless,” “talks too much.” But what most comes through is—if I can risk employing an overused and ambiguous phrase—“the spirit of the Council,” by which I mean those seminal ideas and attitudes that found expression in the discussions, debates and texts of Vatican II. Over and again in the pages of Congar’s journal, we hear of a church that should be more evangelical and open to the Word of God, of the dangers of clerical triumphalism, of the universal call to holiness, of a liturgy that awakens the active participation of the faithful, of the need for the church to engage the modern world, etc. Attending meeting after meeting and engaging in endless conversations with bishops and theologians, Congar was indefatigably propagating these ideas, which we now take to be commonplace, and the permanent achievement of Vatican II.

As Congar led this charge, his chief opponents were Archbishop Pericle Felice and Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, the keepers of the traditional, scholastic form of Catholicism. His principal allies were “progressive” council fathers Cardinal Frings of Cologne and Archbishop Wojtyla of Krakow, as well as fellow periti Karl Rahner, Edward Schillebeeckx, Henri de Lubac, Hans Kung, and a young German theologian named Joseph Ratzinger. As I read the pages of Congar’s journal, all of these figures and that very heady time came rather vividly to life. But even as I was caught up in the euphoria of that moment, I couldn’t help but think of the divisions that would later beset that victorious group. Archbishop Wojtyla, of course, later became Pope John Paul II, and he would appoint Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) as his chief doctrinal officer. Further, John Paul would create de Lubac and Congar himself as Cardinals, but would preside over a critical investigation of the works of both Kung and Schillebeeckx. Why did these divisions arise in the post-conciliar period?

One way to get a perspective on the split in the victorious party is to look to the beginnings of the theological journal “Communio.” In the wake of the council, the triumphant progressive party formed an international journal called “Concilium,” the stated purpose of which was to perpetuate the spirit of the great gathering that had prompted such positive change in the Church. On the board of “Concilium” were Rahner, Kung, Schillebeeckx, de Lubac, Congar, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Ratzinger and many others. But after only a few years, three figures—Balthasar, de Lubac, and Ratzinger—decided to break with “Concilium” and found their own journal, and the reasons they gave to justify this decision are extremely illuminating. First, they said, the board of “Concilium” was claiming to act as a secondary magisterium, or official teaching authority, alongside the bishops. Theologians certainly have a key role to play in the understanding and development of doctrine, but they cannot supplant the bishops’ responsibility of holding and teaching the apostolic faith. Secondly, the “Concilium” board wanted to launch Vatican III when the ink on the documents of Vatican II was barely dry. That is to say, they wanted to ride the progressive momentum of Vatican II toward a whole series of reforms—women’s ordination, suspension of priestly celibacy, radical reform of the church’s sexual ethic, etc.—that were by no means justified by the texts of the council. Thirdly, and in my judgment most significantly, Balthasar, Ratzinger, and de Lubac decried the “Concilium” board’s resolve to perpetuate the spirit of the council. Councils, they stated, are sometimes necessary in the life of the Church, but they are also perilous, for they represent moments when the Church throws itself into question and pauses to decide some central issue or controversy. We think readily here of Nicea and Chalcedon, which addressed crucial issues in Christology, or Trent, which wrestled with the challenge of the Reformation. Councils are good and necessary, but the Church also, they contended, turns from them with a certain relief in order to get back to its essential work. The perpetuation of the spirit of the council, they concluded, would be tantamount to a Church in a permanent state of suspense and indecision.

Kung, Schillebeeckx, Rahner, Ratzinger, Congar, de Lubac and Wojtyla were all proud “men of the council.” They strenuously fought for the ideals I mentioned earlier. But in the years that followed, they went separate ways—and thereupon hangs a tale still worth pondering as we approach the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of Vatican II.

Fifty years ago today...

Fifty years ago today...





Fifty years ago today, in a cramped, sweaty basement club in London, something was brewing that would change the face of popular music. Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones (as they were billed) played their first gig at the Marquee club, filling in for Alexis Korner’s blues band, who had been booked for a BBC session. An audience of about 100 beatniks and hipsters watched a young, scruffy, long-haired six-piece charge through an adrenaline and alcohol-fuelled 50-minute set of American Rhythm and Blues, featuring songs such as Robert Johnson’s Dust My Broom and Muddy Waters Got My Mojo Working.

Nerves, youth, excitement and perhaps some other mysterious quality that was in the ether, a spirit of revolt against constriction and conformity, led the band to speed up as the night went on, concluding with a breakneck version of Down The Road Apiece and a blast of Elmore James’s Happy Home. A Melody Maker review questioned their “suspect tuning and internal balance” but the audience, initially reserved, gave them a warm reception.

Guitarist Keith Richards claims he knew right away he had found his calling. “There’s a certain moment when you realise you’ve just left the planet for a bit and that nobody can touch you,” he recalled in his autobiography, Life. “You know you’ve been somewhere most people will never get.”

Perhaps more than any other iconic band, the Rolling Stones are defined by their live identity, billing themselves as “The World’s Greatest Rock and Roll Band”. What, I wonder, would be recognisable about this legendary institution from that very first performance? Not the musical style. The young Stones were strictly blues, and Jagger recalls being concerned lest people mistook them for “a rock ’n’ roll outfit”. And not the personnel. The drummer for the first gig was Mick Avory, who later joined the Kinks.

Bassist Dick Taylor went on to form The Pretty Things. Pianist Stewart was deemed (by manager Andrew Loog Oldham) too ugly to become a band member, though he played with them until his death in 1985. Guitarist Brian Jones, originally one of the driving creative forces, became befuddled with drugs and died shortly after being expelled from the band in 1969. Yet the crux of the Stones legend was certainly in place, the twin talents of Dartford school mates Jagger and Richards.

 

Both were 18 years old and still living at home, but evidence suggests Richards’s bad boy image and obsessive musicality were already apparent.

Biographer Christopher Sandford reports that it was the acne-faced guitarist who called out each number, spurring on the drummer by hammering his leg up and down and yelling “---- you! Faster!” As for Jagger, he was already getting a reputation as a front man from stints with Alexis Korner, hence his top billing. Even in early footage, it is striking how he holds the centre with a very physical, primal, sexual charisma, moving with the spirit of a dancer, even in confined spaces. Jagger may not have the loveliest voice but that, in its way, was bold and fresh; a raw, snarling, yelping and croaking sound suited to the sleazy drama of their dense, rhythmic drive, rising to a soulful, tender falsetto when the band take it down and dirty.
You would have seen something else the first time the Rolling Stones took the stage: a look perfectly in tune with the times. Dressed in cords, sweaters and scruffy jackets, hair unkempt, they rejected the buttoned-up uniforms that branded bands as entertainers. Instead, they looked like their audience: the hippest kids of swinging London, letting it all hang out. Charlie Watts was in the audience for the first show and was struck by what he saw. “This lot crossed the barrier,” he recalled. “They actually looked like rock stars.”
Still, the Stones in 1962 weren’t half the band they would become. Watts took them to another level when he joined in 1963, bringing a jazz swing to the band that would free them from strict, hard tempos. As Richards is fond of saying of his favourite drummer, “A lot of people can rock, but they forget about the roll.” Not to underestimate the contribution of bassist Bill Wyman (recruited before Watts), Keith and Charlie have always been the rhythm section of the Stones. Richards virtually invented a guitar style that is half riffing, half lead, with open tunings that set up mantras and drones pulsing all the way through. Between them, they cooked up a sophisticated form of R’ n ’B that feels loose, shaggy and alive, punctuated by off beats filtered in from country music, another of Richards’s great loves.
Aside from a short-lived period of big productions in the Sixties, when Jagger and Richards were consciously competing with Lennon and McCartney to write genre-defining pop songs, the best Stones records always sound live. Their real glory period is the early Seventies, when Mick Taylor joined on fluid, silvery lead guitar that spurred Richards into concocting long, hypnotic grooves with mesmerising twists and turns. To watch footage of the Stones playing Happy at Madison Square Garden in 1972 is to witness the sheer electric excitement of a band liberated from themselves, utterly lost in the music.
Ironically, perhaps, it was this breakthrough that gave them the platform to move into stadiums, where the world’s greatest rock band have become the world’s biggest rock brand. It has ensured continuing wealth and status, but these venues are no places for subtle musical interplay while Jagger has scaled up his showmanship to preposterous levels.
When I first saw them with 120,000 other fans at an outdoor show in Ireland in 1982, the thing that struck me most was the distance Jagger covered sprinting from one side of the enormous stage to the other, dressed more like an athlete than a counter-culture icon. Ronnie Wood, who joined in 1975, fits the image of the band, but isn’t half the player Taylor was, and all the extra musicians, horns, keys and backing vocals on stage, only clutter up the groove.
The energy that drives a contemporary Rolling Stones gig comes from the audience revelling in a myth, singing along with classic songs that defined rock’s rebellious sense of itself. They still don’t wear uniforms, but the 21st-century Stones have become a kind of glorified showband. I wonder what the young blues purists of the Marquee club would make of it all?