Monday, June 26, 2006

More From the Wuerlpool

I've been tipped off that some readers were looking for the video of Thursday's installation down in DC, but couldn't find it.

Gratefully -- and especially as, for some mysterious reason, the fulltext of Archbishop Donald Wuerl's homily has yet to materialize -- KDKA in Pittsburgh has kept both the video of the 27-minute masterpiece of Wuerl's precise and resonant preaching and a "clean" (i.e. uncut, commentary-free) feed of the liturgy posted on its website.

Note to KDKA: many thanks -- and please keep the video up as long as is humanly possible.

To all of you who haven't yet seen the Mass, and as I keep hashing away at my own reflections on the historic and beautiful day, click over and enjoy. If you like beautiful liturgy, or even if you don't, it's a real treat to watch.

(It was even more of a treat to actually be there, of course, but you'll be hearing more about that in due course....)

In more recent developments, Archbishop Wuerl took his cathedra for the first time yesterday morning during a liturgy of welcome at St Matthew's Cathedral. Cardinals McCarrick and Baum attended in coro.

Preaching a homily which was described as "simple, but demonstrative" of the his comfort as and expressed preference for being the teacher, Wuerl recounted the story of a letter he received during his tenure as bishop of Pittsburgh. In advance of his visit to a parochial school in the diocese, a 4th grader wrote the bishop saying, "I am excited to know that you know someone who knew someone who knew someone who knew someone who knew... someone who knew someone who knew Jesus."

The archbishop noted that the students were likely told to fill a whole page.

However, "When I read that," he said, "I immediately wanted to appoint young Dominic to the Diocesan Theological Commission," using the boy's observation as a link between the import of the passing on of tradition and the role he would exercise from the archbishop's chair in the here and now.

His predecessor in tow, Archbishop Wuerl leaves today for Rome, where he'll receive his pallium on Thursday alongside his fellow Pittsburgher, Archbishop Daniel DiNardo of Houston, and Archbishop George Niederauer of San Francisco.

From Rome, Cardinal McCarrick will leave next week for Moscow as part of a Vatican delegation of six cardinals sent to meet with Alexei II, the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church.

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