A Note for the Falgoust Clan

Via Facebook, my note to the great Falgoust clan regarding the republishing of the Falgoust book.

A note for and to the great Falgout/Falgoust clan, and my apologies that I no doubt came across as quite abrupt yesterday. My mother Barbara Allen wrote a lengthy, well-researched book about the family which was published in 1988. Many people have asked about it over the years, and especially in the last several months:

Memories of my Mom: I apologize for offending anyone with my recent posts. I was asked just prior to Lent and the Covid shutdowns about reprinting the book, and I would love to. Yesterday was the first opportunity I had to address the issue – and coming off of a very busy time, my tone no doubt was more high strung than most. Sorry. 

My memories of the Falgout/Falgoust book are very many, and very ingrained in my entire life. My mother worked diligently for a decade or so putting the entire thing together, and every night the kitchen table – an Ethan Allen kitchen special, was covered in documents which back in the day were literally cut and pasted together. 

Friends were always stopping in and dropping by after work to help decode the writing of priests in their registries, and to this day I’m meticulous about handwriting and keeping proper records. One of her best friends, Elton – who would always stop by with a little bag from Burger King – one day was looking at a document and asked me to help figure out what it meant when he said “I can’t wait until this priest dies!” 

I said “what are you talking about?”

He explained – the priest’s handwriting was so bad it was taking forever to learn what he had written down. The priest who followed him was meticulous, and a breeze. Everything was very present tense. 

When the book was finally finished, I was offered the unenviable task of proofreading it. Which meant reading every word of it aloud. I did it. 

Barbara suffered a heart attack just after the book was published, and in the process underwent an allergic reaction to heparin. She was one of the first cases in the USA of heparin allergy, and heparin-induced thrombocytopenia. No one at Ochsner knew what was going on as her nose and extremities started turning black, and at first we joked about it. 

But a military physician who was visiting from the Gulf wars at the time recognized it, and urged them into action. A special dispensation was granted by the FDA for the remedy, low molecular weight heparin, to be rushed onto the scene. We sat and waited, and the hospital staff came in and gave us hourly updates on the transport of the cure. It was in New York; the plane was leaving the airport; the plane had landed; it’d be here in a few hours; they’d start as soon as possible, hopefully, they wouldn’t have to amputate her feet, etc. 

As it turned out, she was in and out of the hospital for about three years, which did not do her heart much good. Her feet were not amputated, but much dead tissue was taken off, and tissue was taken from her arms and stomach to rebuild her feet. It was always difficult for her to walk afterward, and she almost always wore long sleeves. And it was also the reason she had to practice walking the length of the aisle in the Cathedral before my ordination, as she had to use a cane, and was fearful that her feet would need more attention – a constant debriding. They gave her two weeks to live, and she lived over a decade after. 

On Thanksgiving day, of 2003, 7 months prior to my ordination, her heart took a turn for the worse and it was a constant downhill slide.  The hospital staff told me they would try to keep her alive for my ordination. She was not able to be present at my ordination to the Priesthood, but the Archbishop at the time, Archbishop Hughes, and the ceremony filmed, and I was able to bring it to her and to watch it with her several times. And of course, say private Masses with her. 

I apologize that I haven’t been more present to the desires of the Falgout/Falgoust clan regarding the republishing of her work. And I apologize if I have come across as rude, or unsympathetic. I’m not. And I know that it would be my mother’s greatest desire to see that the information was not only available to all but that it would be continued. Until the day she died, she was collecting information, all of which is sitting in boxes in my garage. 

Because of her health concerns and allergic reaction to heparin, many people grew angry with her because she was not able to respond immediately to book requests and requests for more information. That has probably clouded my mind for too long, and I apologize once again. 

She loved her work, her research, and everyone included in it. Many people have written warmly about her over the years. Her research was used to correct information in the National Archives and helped spur many on to their own research, making their own connections, and discovering the knowledge that comes with knowing one’s history. 

Please know, each one of you, that you are the reason Barbara was so passionate about her work. And it is up to each one of you, also, to keep alive the spirit of greatness and strength which has forged the Falgoust clan throughout all of history, and which will endure for all time to come. 

St. Joan of Arc

St. Joan of Arc

From the Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913:

Joan of Arc (Jeanne d’Arc), Blessed, by her contemporaries commonly known as la Pucelle (the Maid); b. at Domremy in Champagne, probably on 6 January, 1412; d. at Rouen, 30 May, 1431. The village of Domremy lay upon the confines of territory which recognized the suzerainty of the Duke of Burgundy, but in the protracted conflict between the Armagnacs (the party of Charles VII, King of France), on the one hand, and the Burgundians in alliance with the English, on the other, Domremy had always remained loyal to Charles.

Jacques d’Arc, Joan’s father, was a small peasant farmer, poor but not needy. Joan seems to have been the youngest of a family of five. She never learned to read or write but was skilled in sewing and spinning, and the popular idea that she spent the days of her childhood in the pastures, alone with the sheep and cattle, is quite unfounded. All the witnesses in the process of rehabilitation spoke of her as a singularly pious child, grave beyond her years, who often knelt in the church absorbed in prayer, and loved the poor tenderly. Great attempts were made at Joan’s trial to connect her with some superstitious practices supposed to have been performed round a certain tree, popularly known as the “Fairy Tree” (l’Arbre des Dames), but the sincerity of her answers baffled her judges. She had sung and danced there with the other children, and had woven wreaths for Our Lady’s statue, but since she was twelve years old she had held aloof from such diversions.

It was at the age of thirteen and a half, in the summer of 1425, that Joan first became conscious of that manifestation, whose supernatural character it would now be rash to question, which she afterwards came to call her “voices” or her “counsel.” It was at first simply a voice, as if someone had spoken quite close to her, but it seems also clear that a blaze of light accompanied it, and that later on she clearly discerned in some way the appearance of those who spoke to her, recognizing them individually as St. Michael (who was accompanied by other angels), St. Margaret, St. Catherine, and others. Joan was always reluctant to speak of her voices. She said nothing about them to her confessor, and constantly refused, at her trial, to be inveigled into descriptions of the appearance of the saints and to explain how she recognized them. None the less, she told her judges: “I saw them with these very eyes, as well as I see you.”

“… Joan, either to defend her modesty from outrage, or because her women’s garments were taken from her, or, perhaps, simply because she was weary of the struggle and was convinced that her enemies were determined to have her blood upon some pretext, once more put on the man’s dress which had been purposely left in her way. The end now came soon. On 29 May a court of thirty-seven judges decided unanimously that the Maid must be treated as a relapsed heretic, and this sentence was actually carried out the next day (30 May, 1431) amid circumstances of intense pathos. She is said, when the judges visited her early in the morning, first to have charged Cauchon with the responsibility of her death, solemnly appealing from him to God, and afterwards to have declared that “her voices had deceived her.” About this last speech a doubt must always be felt. We cannot be sure whether such words were ever used, and, even if they were, the meaning is not plain. She was, however, allowed to make her confession and to receive Communion. Her demeanour at the stake was such as to move even her bitter enemies to tears. She asked for a cross, which, after she had embraced it, was held up before her while she called continuously upon the name of Jesus. “Until the last,” said Manchon, the recorder at the trial, “she declared that her voices came from God and had not deceived her.” After death her ashes were thrown into the Seine.”

Ste. Jeanne D’Arc, priez pour nous.

The Venerable Bede

Venerable Bede

I am always fascinated by the Venerable Bede. A part of that is simply that I don’t know that much about him, aside from the basics, being a student of music and theology, rather than history.

What a simple life this man led… prayer, reading Scripture, writing.

I’ve read that this hymn which he composed is set to the ancient tune of Agincourt, a staple of organists throughout the world, and which appears in serval hymnals in various forms.

 

While I don’t like this version as much, I do like the picture which goes with the video.

 

A Hymn for the Ascension

the Venerable Bede

A hymn of glory let us sing;
New songs throughout the world shall ring:
Christ, by a road before untrod,
Now rises to the throne of God.

The holy apostolic band
Upon the Mount of Olives stand;
And with his followers they see
Their Lord’s ascending majesty.

To them the angels drawing nigh,
“Why stand and gaze upon the sky?
This is the Savior,” thus they say;
“This is his glorious triumph day.

“Again shall ye behold him so
As ye today have seen him go,
In glorious pomp ascending high,

Up to the portals of the sky.”
O risen Christ, ascended Lord,
All praise to thee let earth accord,
Who art, while endless ages run,
With Father and with Spirit one.

And, because I love the tune…   an interesting version set to a separate hymn.

Learning the Latin Mass

Extraordinary Form Mass at St. Jane

Recently we changed our Mass schedule here at St. Jane, and added a Mass at 12 Noon. The Mass we added is in the Extraordinary Form, otherwise known as the Latin Mass.

It’s really been met with sheer delight in some quarters, and sheer horror in others. What can I say? When the Lord asks you to do something, you don’t say no. And when the Archbishop confirms it, you absolutely don’t say no!

Aside from that, I’m glad to have it here. The Extraordinary Form adds a rich dimension to the spiritual life of the Parish, and many many of our Parishioners have asked for it. We’ve averaged over 250 people so far, which is quite a crowd in our Church, which holds about 280 people (I know… it’s a rather intimate sacred space.) Several Priests in the area have offered to help with it, which is a help as we have 7 Masses here on the weekend.

In the 45 years since the new Mass — the Novus Ordo Missae — was introduced, a lot of people have never gotten to know the former rite. When the new Mass was introduced, I was a kid, and remember being very confused by it. We all looked at each other and said, “What?! (Seriously, we did. It was confusing and not well explained to us kids.) I finally studied it by reading all of the Liturgy Documents published during the 70’s and 80’s, and 90’s, and the 00’s, and the 10’s, which has been no small feat, and came to understand and have a great appreciation for it.

When I first re-attended a Latin Mass, as a grown-up some 30 odd years later, the old Mass, the Extraordinary Form, I was very confused. It’s not the kind of thing which is necessarily easy to follow along with, especially at first glance. But one day I went, and I just sat there and prayed, and prayed along with what was going on, and it came back to me. I understood it again.

That was a far cry from actually learning the Mass. It’s been no small feat either. I’ve studied it before, have translated parts of it on and off, and come to a general understanding of the structure. But I’d never mastered the nuts and bolts properly until a few weeks ago. I have more to learn, but I’m looking forward to it. What’s life without interests, challenges and new lessons to learn?

Come out and join us sometime!

The Rev. Kenneth Allen