Jules Witcover mentions Dyngus Day in “85 Days,” his excellent chronicle of RFK’s 1968 campaign: “After Easter at Hickory Hill, where a photograph with Ethel and all ten children was taken that later was to be cherished by his own family, Kennedy stopped in Indiana long enough to help Polish-American voters celebrate ‘Dyngus Day’—commemorating the death of St. Stephen, Christianity’s first martyr—and to take a parting shot at the Indianapolis newspaper. After eating kielbasa and drinking beer at the West Side Democratic and Civic Club in South Bend, Kennedy sang a Polish song he had learned during his 1963 visit to Poland and said of that trip: ‘ The Polish government refused to advise the people that we were there. It’s sort of like the Indianapolis papers when I’m here.’”
It's Polish and here in South Bend it's the first day of electioneering for the next election, especially at the Democratic Clubs in the area. Since Palm Sunday 2010 I no longer go there.
The Democratic Club on the West Side normally has good food and if you are a paid up member you are supposed to get a free dinner. In 2008 it was so packed they gave us our food outside. Tim Roemer spoke in support of Obama. Since he was a good pro-life Democrat I listened to him.
Dingus is the Australian slang Term Ed was looking for.
It’s usually a kind of affectionate insult, akin to ‘Dingbat’, ‘Drongo’, or ‘numnuts’. It’s what you’d call a sibling or a friend doing/saying something stupid. Little different to that particular celebration. We didn’t get a large Polish expat population until the 1980s.
J.D. I must once again come down on team ED. While the percentage of mass going Catholics has dropped, I don't think it follows that the Church is less faithful. This is only one data point.
If I may, let's posit three populations of Catholics:
Devout Catholics: Uphold the fullness of the faith.
Spiritual Catholics: Attend weekly as their personal spiritual expression but are not overly burdened by the actual creed professed.
Cultural Catholics: see themselves as Catholic, but only practice as it's practical.
Cultural Catholics have largely been disaffiliated by the sex about scandal.
Spiritual Catholics never came back after COVID.
And both camps have been hit heavily by the growing rift between the Church and both US political parties, but especially the democrats.
Who's left in the pews except the intentionally devout?
Re: Groundhogs day. I recently discovered that it is coterminous (in date) with Candlemass. And also I’m predicting Spring weather. So it’s roots are very Catholic and Im glad the U of Dallas is taking it back.
Unmentioned is the role of the VII calendar changes in deracinating Catholic culture. All of a sudden feast days which had traditions and foods linked to seasons and weather were upended and thrown into different parts of the year where the old traditions didn't really fit. This inorganic, "scientific" meddling with cultural traditions had a devastating effect on maintaining Catholic culture. As Benedict XVI wrote, “One of the weaknesses of the postconciliar liturgical reform can doubtless be traced to the armchair strategy of academics, drawing up things on paper which, in fact, would presuppose years of organic growth. The most blatant example of this is the reform of the Calendar: those responsible simply did not realize how much the various annual feasts had influenced Christian people’s relation to time. In redistributing these established feasts throughout the year according to some historical arithmetic – inconsistently applied at that – they ignored a fundamental law of religious life.”
It is not a "James Bond" Passion narrative but it is a "murder mystery" Passion narrative: Dorothy Sayers wrote The Man Born to be King. It had not really occurred to me before reading the introduction that it really is properly speaking a premeditated murder with some unanswered questions.
The lack of knowledge of Catholic culture among Catholics that JD talked about resonates with me. After joining a Tridentine Mass parish, I discovered, in addition to the Sacred Liturgy, an additional attraction to membership - the observance within my new parish of a rich calendar of traditional liturgical and cultural events no longer celebrated within our modern(-ist) Church. If we include specific cultural traditions like Dyngus Day, it's a wonderfully rich rota of events and practices, part of fully integrating our Faith into our lives. For a deeper examination of the value of this "Catholic Integralism", read here: https://open.substack.com/pub/positionanddecision/p/living-integralism?r=fitma&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Jules Witcover mentions Dyngus Day in “85 Days,” his excellent chronicle of RFK’s 1968 campaign: “After Easter at Hickory Hill, where a photograph with Ethel and all ten children was taken that later was to be cherished by his own family, Kennedy stopped in Indiana long enough to help Polish-American voters celebrate ‘Dyngus Day’—commemorating the death of St. Stephen, Christianity’s first martyr—and to take a parting shot at the Indianapolis newspaper. After eating kielbasa and drinking beer at the West Side Democratic and Civic Club in South Bend, Kennedy sang a Polish song he had learned during his 1963 visit to Poland and said of that trip: ‘ The Polish government refused to advise the people that we were there. It’s sort of like the Indianapolis papers when I’m here.’”
It's Polish and here in South Bend it's the first day of electioneering for the next election, especially at the Democratic Clubs in the area. Since Palm Sunday 2010 I no longer go there.
The Democratic Club on the West Side normally has good food and if you are a paid up member you are supposed to get a free dinner. In 2008 it was so packed they gave us our food outside. Tim Roemer spoke in support of Obama. Since he was a good pro-life Democrat I listened to him.
Dingus is the Australian slang Term Ed was looking for.
It’s usually a kind of affectionate insult, akin to ‘Dingbat’, ‘Drongo’, or ‘numnuts’. It’s what you’d call a sibling or a friend doing/saying something stupid. Little different to that particular celebration. We didn’t get a large Polish expat population until the 1980s.
J.D. I must once again come down on team ED. While the percentage of mass going Catholics has dropped, I don't think it follows that the Church is less faithful. This is only one data point.
If I may, let's posit three populations of Catholics:
Devout Catholics: Uphold the fullness of the faith.
Spiritual Catholics: Attend weekly as their personal spiritual expression but are not overly burdened by the actual creed professed.
Cultural Catholics: see themselves as Catholic, but only practice as it's practical.
Cultural Catholics have largely been disaffiliated by the sex about scandal.
Spiritual Catholics never came back after COVID.
And both camps have been hit heavily by the growing rift between the Church and both US political parties, but especially the democrats.
Who's left in the pews except the intentionally devout?
the key word there is "in the pews!"
On that front, I agree completely. But in terms of people who self-identify as Catholic, they are less devout than they have been in previous decades.
In which case, the interesting question is why people who don't practice the faith still call themselves Catholics.
Re: Groundhogs day. I recently discovered that it is coterminous (in date) with Candlemass. And also I’m predicting Spring weather. So it’s roots are very Catholic and Im glad the U of Dallas is taking it back.
Unmentioned is the role of the VII calendar changes in deracinating Catholic culture. All of a sudden feast days which had traditions and foods linked to seasons and weather were upended and thrown into different parts of the year where the old traditions didn't really fit. This inorganic, "scientific" meddling with cultural traditions had a devastating effect on maintaining Catholic culture. As Benedict XVI wrote, “One of the weaknesses of the postconciliar liturgical reform can doubtless be traced to the armchair strategy of academics, drawing up things on paper which, in fact, would presuppose years of organic growth. The most blatant example of this is the reform of the Calendar: those responsible simply did not realize how much the various annual feasts had influenced Christian people’s relation to time. In redistributing these established feasts throughout the year according to some historical arithmetic – inconsistently applied at that – they ignored a fundamental law of religious life.”
It is not a "James Bond" Passion narrative but it is a "murder mystery" Passion narrative: Dorothy Sayers wrote The Man Born to be King. It had not really occurred to me before reading the introduction that it really is properly speaking a premeditated murder with some unanswered questions.
The lack of knowledge of Catholic culture among Catholics that JD talked about resonates with me. After joining a Tridentine Mass parish, I discovered, in addition to the Sacred Liturgy, an additional attraction to membership - the observance within my new parish of a rich calendar of traditional liturgical and cultural events no longer celebrated within our modern(-ist) Church. If we include specific cultural traditions like Dyngus Day, it's a wonderfully rich rota of events and practices, part of fully integrating our Faith into our lives. For a deeper examination of the value of this "Catholic Integralism", read here: https://open.substack.com/pub/positionanddecision/p/living-integralism?r=fitma&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web