Motu Proprio Meeting

This came directly from the Vatican Information Service. NOW it's imminent...

MEETING DISCUSSES "MOTU PROPRIO" ON USE JOHN XXIII'S MISSAL

VATICAN CITY, JUN 28, 2007 (VIS) - Given below is the text of a communique released today by the Holy See Press Office concerning Benedict XVI's forthcoming "Motu Proprio" on the use of the Missal promulgated by Blessed John XXIII in 1962.

"Yesterday afternoon in the Vatican, a meeting was held under the presidency of the Cardinal Secretary of State in which the content and spirit of the Holy Father's forthcoming 'Motu Proprio' on the use of the Missal promulgated by John XXIII in 1962 was explained to representatives from various episcopal conferences. The Holy Father also arrived to greet those present, spending nearly an hour in deep conversation with them.

"The publication of the document - which will be accompanied by an extensive personal letter from the Holy Father to individual bishops - is expected within a few days, once the document itself has been sent to all the bishops with an indication of when it will come into effect."

OP/MOTU PROPRIO/... VIS 070628 (180)

Up All Night...

Once again, I find myself up all night doing some sort of work on a client video, so while it's rendering, I decided to do some Mater Dei Television work in my downtime. Technically, it's not downtime, but seeing the editor is working right now and it doesn't seem to need me for awhile, I can do some other things...

The video feed is still up and going after two days. I saw a little stutter earlier during "The Catholic Hour", but that doesn't seem to have repeated since. I'd say all and all it's doing well. I also but an old 9.1 GB SCSI hard drive into the NEC server, although I don't have it connected up yet. There are a few articles of junk on top of that server that need to go into the trash first, as well as a guitar amp to move, and some VGA F-F connectors to pick up for my KVM switch. Nevertheless, it looks like the encoder is going to be up soon. Looking at the encoder, however, it does seem like it can be done more efficiently. A LOT more efficiently, but it'll have to do until we get something better.

Looks like I pulled some cables on the KVM by mistake. More later...

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

This Just In: Motu Proprio to be Released on July 7

From Gerald over at The Cafeteria is Closed...

"My Austrian friends just emailed me. Kath.net/Die Welt (Klaus Badde) report (my translation:) that the motu proprio liberating the Tridentine Mass for the entire Catholic Church has been given to about 30 bishops from all over the world in the Sala Bologna of the Apostolic Palace by Vatican Secretary of State Tarcisio Cardinal Bertone. The bishops had been invited to Rome for that purpose.

At the end of the meeting, in which the motu proprio was introduced together with a letter of explanation by Pope Benedict XVI., Pope Benedict met with the bishops. The document is about three pages long, the accompanying letter about four. From Germany, Cardinal Lehmann (the head of the German bishops conference) had been invited. The circumstances of the procedure make clear that the Pope was very interested to personally inform the bishops, in collegial manner, of the content rather than have them learn about it from the media.

The publication of both documents will take place on July 7th. It emphasizes the unity of the Roman Rite which will consist of an ordinary and an extraordinary form which are supposed to inspire each other. The ordinary/regular form will continue to be the new rite of 1969. The extraordinary form will be the Missal of Bl. John XXIII. of 1962."

Interesting to say the least. This means I need to talk to someone out in California soon. He's not only a diocesan priest who prays the Tridentine Mass, but he's also a video guy like me. And as of July 7, we don't have to have permission to do this stuff anymore (per se).

More later...

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Testing is underway...

Well, the stress testing of the MPEG-2 player is finally underway. I started a playlist last night that runs approximately one hour and put it into a loop. I decided to try VLC Player again, and oddly enough, it worked without any stuttering or freezing. In fact, I've decided that I'm going with it again, at least for the time being, in the MPEG-2 player. I hope to be stress testing it for over the next several days to see how it's going to hold up.

I think the reason it didn't seem to be working properly the first time was that I may have had Windows configured to download and install updates as they became available. This, of course, is problematic. I've now got this configured to be done once a week, when the feed will be taken off-line anyway due to maintenance, like how a regular TV station would operate. As a result, VLC runs nice and smooth right now. The films I'm using with the testing, my first episode of ironically titled "The Catholic Hour" (Total Running Time: 30 min), "Our Lady's Shrine", and "Rome: The Sacred City" among others, so far have looked like I was running these straight off of a DVD player.

Testing will continue, and the next step is building the Windows Media Encoder. If everything goes right, I won't have to use Windows Media Encoder or Windows.

One can hope.

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

MPEG-2 Player UP!!!

This should really be titled "A Productive Weekend In Spite of Myself", but that would be way too long...

Here's what went on. This is going to be mostly technical, so if you don't want to be inundated with another geek-post, then feel free to skip this and wait for the next post which will be less geeky in nature.

I spent a lot of time in the office this weekend cleaning it out, and taking my old Dell Precision 420, which used to serve as my main video editor, and turning it into a working MPEG-2 player. It started basically by trying to decide which flavor of linux I was going to use for this, and then I decided to go with Windows instead. You already know that part, since that was the gist of my previous post.

I found out a lot about the nature of AGP cards this weekend. It figures, since the best cards now are PCI-E cards, but if you have to use older technology, then it's good to know these things.

Anywho, here's what happened: A few weeks ago, we went to a garage sale in an eastern suburb of Indianapolis, and I picked up an Nvidia GeForce 6200oc with 256MB RAM onboard. Not a bad deal for ten bucks. I stuck it in my wife's computer a few weeks ago, actually. My editor runs an ATI Radeon 9250, also with 256MB RAM onboard. Last year, someone freecycled to me an ATI Radeon 9600SE with 128MB RAM onboard. The lady who gave it to me said that her kid "didn't like it", so she gave it to me.

Well, I now know why.

I stuck that 9600 in my Dell while building this MPEG-2 player, and after I'd installed the drivers for it and got it to a point where it was ready to go, or so I thought, the video came out black and white. I checked the monitor with one of my cameras. Nope, got color there. Swapped out S-Video cables, but that didn't work either. So I got online and found out that this problem was not unheard of. This kind of frustrated me, so I went ahead swapped it out with the GeForce card that I just had put into the wife's computer. She is only using one monitor, and won't be using the S-Video anytime soon, so it seemed to make sense. When I stuck that GeForce into my Dell, though, all I had to do was reinstall XP and away we went. I'd tried VLC Player to playback source video, but the video looked real choppy. I wound up using Ulead DVD player to play it back, and it looked real nice; not choppy and very stable.

I plan on the official stress test on this tonight and tomorrow (I'm going to get an hour of programming on a loop and see how it looks), but I have every reason to believe that we just took a gigantic step to getting Mater Dei Television on the air. It's not quite the way I wanted to do it, as I want to use a professional video card that will allow output independent of the AGP card (a Blackmagic Intensity HDMI card would be nice), but this will get us going.

The Windows Media Encoder will be next, and I may try it in my NEC server, for which I need an Ultra-Wide SCSI hard drive. I don't need a large one, since I'm just running the encoder, but I need something. Even an adapter which would allow me to use an existing SCSI drive that I already have would work. The downside is that it's an old server; Pentium Pro grade. The upside is that it's a quad-processor and it's got approximately 320MB RAM already installed, and it's the older style RAM, so coming across it via freecycle shouldn't be a problem. It can go upto 4GB RAM, which in this day and age is still high-end, although when this server was built, it was unheard of. This server may wind up running VLC Player to capture and stream video out to Peercast. Ideally, we can still use a linux distribution that will do that, with VideoLinux, Absolute, Slackware, and Dyne:Bolic being at the top of the list.

Sorry for such a long and technical post, but it is good news nevertheless.

One quick program note: I was actually thinking about doing a program on some of the older Church buildings here in Indianapolis. I'm going to run this by some friends of mine to see what they think.

Until next time...

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

An Epiphany of Sorts...

This morning, I had an epiphany of sorts (thus the title of this entry)...

I came to the conclusion that, while I'd like to use linux in some way, shape or form, it seems like every time I try to use it, at least in the early stages, something goes wrong and it doesn't work right. One installed fine, then unmounted the DVD-ROM drive when you put something in, others installed fine but then were next to impossible to upgrade (aka find the correct software to run MPEG-2), others wouldn't even install all the way. I came to this painful conclusion...

Install Windows.

At least in the playback stage. When I have my MPEG-2 player going, I'm sure I'm going to need linux for the MPEG-TS encoder and perhaps even use it for Windows Media, forgoing Windows in that stage. In this stage, though (the MPEG-2 player), I don't think I was supposed to use linux. Maybe the MPEG-2 decoder card I have wouldn't take it anyway. There's got to be some reason...

We'll find out soon enough; after I tore everything apart to put this desk up in the last week or two, I couldn't get the video monitor to extend my desktop on my editor for some reason. Maybe this monitor is supposed to be what I monitor the MPEG-2 box with.

More later...

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Technical and Production Notes

Since my last update, I've been playing some with Slackware Linux, largely because of it's ability to be configured and it's ability to run multi-processor servers. Yes, I know Windows has been doing that since NT, but this is reasonably current, and of course, free. I also moved the server down into my office last night so I can commence work on on it.

I also pickup my satellite dish today. Please pray that all goes well in the move.

I also have decided that, due to gas prices and whatnot, I really need to start finding out the cool things about our faith that are already close to me, and I've found some good ones. St. Francis Xavier in Vincennes, IN is one (I wish there was a better picture in this link). Back in the day, before the Diocese (and eventually Archdiocese) of Indianapolis was HQed in Indianapolis, it was actually the Diocese of Vincennes. Now, all that territory has since been ceded to ArchIndy and the Diocese of Evansville (and probably quite a few other dioceses, for that matter). This particular parish is of note because it actually is the first parish in the entire state of Indiana, predating every current diocese within the state. Indiana used to be part of the Dioceses of Quebec, Baltimore, and Bardstown, KY before the Diocese of Vincennes was erected with Bishop Simon Brute as the first ordinary. His cause for sainthood is currently being investigated by ArchIndy. In any case, there's an interesting museum that's attached to St. Francis Xavier and it really looks like a good source of footage.

There are other things, too; Society for the Preservation of Roman Catholic Heritage in Dayton, OH and the Chapel in the Meadow down at Camp Atterbury in Edinburgh, IN, just to name a couple, but the point is that I should be getting as much footage from around me as I can first, then exhausting that, move on as I can. There are a few Indult parishes to which to travel not far away either, and I can guarantee that shooting footage around them will happen soon. I don't rule out trips to Cincinnati, Covington, KY, or Lexington either. There are plenty of places to get footage for good Traditional Catholic programs within a day's drive from here, and I'm going to make sure I hit each one.

Until then, though, I get to get this server up. Pray that all goes well.

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Technical Update

I trust all the fathers out there had a good Father's Day. It was an interesting Father's Day from a technical standpoint. I got a satellite dish.

Not one of those trite DSS dishes. I mean a real satellite dish.

What a lot of people don't realize, thanks to the digital satellite and cable providers, is that there is still free unscrambled programming up on "the birds" as TV engineers like to call them. If you get onto eBay and check for "Free To Air DVB", you'll see listings for the equipment pop up, and it's reasonably cheap, too.

There are two main kinds of satellite frequencies, C-Band and Ku-Band. There are some differences in the two, but if you're not a TV guy, these will be of no interest to you. The bottom line is this: Ku-Band Free to Air equipment is cheaper, but the only Catholic TV station you can get on that is TV-TRWAM, which will do you no good unless you speak Polish. C-Band is where the Free to Air signals for both EWTN and Familyland TV both reside, and you can use the same receiver as you can with the KU-Band signal. The caveat is this: You need a big dish.

So I got one. A nine foot Winegard dish from someone from my Freecycle list...

Don't worry - the neighbors have been warned. Never know - perhaps Mater Dei Television can earn a little money on the side in the downlinking business...

In other news, as the office is coming along fantastically now, I started working more on the playlist computer, and I've been playing with a few linux distros to see what they can do. I've decided for the time being I'm going with Fedora Core. That way, I can get used to it and use it as a basis for my very own distro...

More later...

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Breaking News: Motu Proprio Has Been Signed

Wow! Three entries within a 24 hour period...

According to the Catholic World News, the Motu Proprio has been signed and is being translated...

"A papal document calling for broader use of the Tridentine liturgy has been completed and signed, and is now being translated and prepared for publication, according to two different Roman news agencies."

It beats the news that says "OK, any day now..."

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Lefebvre a Modern Athanasius?

I was listening to Traditional Catholic Radio last night when a program came on about St. Athanasius and the Arian Heresy. It went into history and talked about how St. Athanasius bravely fought the Arian Heresy when 80% or so of the bishops in the world bought into it. The speaker (I believe it was a Society priest) went on to say that Archbishop Lefebvre was a modern day St. Athanasius, bravely fighting the Modernist Heresy after Vatican II was promulgated. I tend to disagree with this assessment. Here's my thinking...

• St. Athanasius DID stand up to the Arian Heresy, but it needs to be remembered that he was defending what the Pope was teaching, even though 80% of the bishops at that time went against what was being taught.
• Archbishop Lefebvre ordained three bishops against the wishes of Pope John Paul II.
• So you have defending the Pope (St. Athansius) against disobeying the Pope (Archbishop Lefebvre).

The conclusion I come to is therefore this: Nope.

Archbishop Lefebvre had some good ideas, though; any Indult Catholic needs to admit that without Archbishop Lefebvre and the Society of St. Pius X, there would be no Tridentine Indult Mass at all, let alone a Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter. And facing facts, like it or not, he was also right about Modernists running amuck in the Church after the Second Vatican Council. This was not the fault of the Council itself but mainly the fault of a poor implementation of it afterwards. Latin was never supposed to be completely eliminated from the liturgy, and Gregorian Chants were still supposed to be used as well. If you are truly supposed to give your best to God, why on Earth would anybody choose Marty Haugen or David Haas to represent that musically?

I just wish that Archbishop Lefebvre wouldn't have went off and gotten himself excommunicated and gotten the Society suppressed/suspended/whatever. There are people in various places thirsting for a Mass that's celebrated in a holy and sacred manner. And the Society could have provided that, within the confines of the Church, had this whole fiasco not happened. If confronted with "saying even one Novus Ordo Mass", it should have been pointed out that the Eastern Rites aren't bound to the Novus Ordo, nor are various religious orders in the Western Rite (these orders weren't even bound by Quo Primum), and it would have made sense to allow the Tridentine Mass for all those who wanted it. I honestly believe that had Archbishop Lefebvre worked with the Church instead of against it, there would be no Pontifical Commision Ecclesia Dei but rather a Ponitifical Commission Quo Primum, overseen by Archbishop Lefebvre himself. And he wouldn't have had to sell out. Not one bit.

I think that in time, things will be patched up between the Society and Rome, and Archbishop Lefebvre will be in some way vindicated. However, I don't think a comparison to St. Athanasius would be appropriate; let Archbishop Lefebvre's work stand by itself, and time will tell whether or not he's vindicated.

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

This is a good sign...

Seeing that I'm typing this upstairs right now, that means that the wireless is working. Not a huge feat by any means, but an important one nevertheless. I should have my office cleaned up this weekend and my NEC server moved in. Then I can start my playlist computer...

And I also found my copy of Evil Entity Linux. It wasn't working, of course, and it seems as if the project has been abandoned altogether, but at least SourceForge had a copy of it. Evil Entity was a very minimal linux distro that was multimedia friendly. The concept behind it was great, but I could do without much of the dark imagery. Perhaps I can get into it someday and change it to something a little more, well, Catholic. Perhaps instead reverse engineer it to be a tribute to the League of Evil Traditionalists...

Time to go to bed...

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Minor Technical Update

I finally got the "new" desk put into place. This will not only help in the organization of my office but also mean that I won't have something that was literally collapsing around me. Also, I installed a new router that I've had for a few months, and while I need to get a few things straightened out with the wireless on that, it works. Also, I put a newer eMachines monitor online. One more thing I got from Freecycle.

I hate to cut this short, but for some reason, there is some serious lag while updating this log, and I don't know if it's my laptop, the connection at my day job, or Blogger itself. In closing, say a quick prayer that we're able to find the resources to purchase a couple of films I'm tracking on eBay. They'd both be fantastic to add to the Mater Dei Television collection!

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

This Just In from St. Stephen's in Syracuse

Two Rosary Rallies for Bishop James M. Moynihan
When: June 21, 2007 at noon and June 24, 2007 at 4:30 PM
Where: Outside the Cathedral, 259 East Onondaga St, Syracuse, NY

Press Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Jim Reilly
(315) 682-9366

Those in the Diocese of Syracuse To Hold a Rosary Rally on the Feast of John the Baptist to Aid Bishop. 100's Expected for grass roots Marian Event In Syracuse

At the Cathedral - 259 East Onondaga St., Syracuse, NY 13202; Sunday June 21 th Noon
At the Cathedral - 259 East Onondaga St., Syracuse, NY 13202; Sunday June 24 th 4:30 PM

Concerned our Bishop is moving in the wrong direction? PRAY FOR HIM !

● When Massive church closings are hailed as a solution not a tragedy
● He an expert in Canon Law, saying there is no appeal to church suppression!
● Support for Openly Gay Priests and acceptance of lifestyle. Call Sin a Sin!
● Replaced Religious Education with an awful Sex Education Class.
● Stifles and limits legitimate sacraments to the faithful.
● Homosexual priest scandal and attempts to reassign them.
● Closes growing healthy parishes.

Sidewalk procession around block of Bishops residence while saying the full 15 decades of the rosary.

We pray our Bishop will reconsider his actions in the light of long standing traditions of Holy Mother Church. Renounce his support of ill-formed homosexual priests. Rethink church closings. Accept offered help from priests and help from outside the diocese. For more information on the Rosary Rally or to register an organization for the events, contact Jim Reilly (315) 682-9366

Pius XII and the Jews

Looks like Cardinal Bertone is finally setting the record straight on Pope Pius XII...

The part that stuck out was this:

"Cardinal Bertone said the legend about Pope Pius' supposed "silence" during the war had its roots in the postwar period, specifically 1946-48, a time when the state of Israel was being formed and when the pope was calling for respect and justice for Palestinian residents of the Holy Land."

I'm surprised nothing was said about the propaganda that Radio Moscow was sending out about the Vatican shortly after the war. The Catholic League brings up a few good points about the relationship of the Vatican and the Third Reich during World War II.

Of course, I'm sure Abe Foxman will have a problem with this.

I don't have a problem with Jewish people. I've got good friends who are Jewish. I respect Judaism on the whole. But Foxman telling the Vatican to hold off on the canonization of a man who really was pontiff during a difficult time in the world, in a difficult place is just wrong. The ADL, like it or not, has no say in who the Catholic Church canonizes, and while I understand their concerns, perhaps Mr. Foxman needs to read the documents that have already been released before making any comments on a Faith about which he has no vested interest.

The Catholic League won't start making demands to the Jewish people on how to practice their Faith. What makes Mr. Foxman think he can do that to Catholics?

The bottom line is this: Many died during the Nazi Holocaust during World War II; Jews, Catholics, Polish dissidents, Gypsies, and many, many others were brutalized by an evil ideology, and nobody but nobody should have to ever deal with that kind of evil. But to have facts in front of you and to reject them based on your own prejudice is wrong too. Venerable Pius XII did everything he could to help the Jews during World War II, and had to do it on the down-low because it was critical to their survival.

I'm just kind of surprised that Mr. Foxman is going to take the word of Radio Moscow over the word of the Catholic Church herself.

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Couple of quick things...

First, check out the nifty new banner. It only took me having this blog up for almost three months to figure out that Blogger would take my own banner and that using the MDTV logo would make things look so much better. I guess Gerald did it on The Cafeteria is Closed, but for some reason, things just didn't click until now...

Second, once again, thanks to Paul Nichols from the Catholic Cartoon Blogspot for not only the plug, but the custom cartoon!

ICTM,
Chuck, MI

Catholic Cartoons

Most of you already have seen Paul Nichols' cartoons satirizing the state of some dioceses around the country. Paul's now got his own blog where he keeps his cartoons...

http://www.catholiccartoonblog.blogspot.com/

Worth your time to check it out. Paul and I were on several email discussion groups together and knows what we're trying to do with Mater Dei Television. He's a good guy. Go check out his blog.

Now.

ICTM,
Chuck, MI