What Does The Prayer Really Say?
W D T P R S

From a reader:

I am the chief sacristan in my home parish in a large Hispanic community last Sunday all souls day many parishioners came after mass to ask we did not have a false catafalque and recite the prayers of committal like an ordinary funeral mass.

I was always under the impression this practice was suppressed after the Vatican II reforms.

Is there any official prohibition of this practice?

Apparently this is widely done in Mexico and Latin America, in which the committal prayer of the Novus Ordo take the place of the traditional absolution in the extraordinary Rite.

Frankly, I don’t know if it was forbidden for the Novus Ordo.  I suspect not, but I may be wrong.

Let’s get you readers on this question.

Otherwise… just use the old Mass and remove the problem!

A friend in England wrote with news:

A week Monday, 17th November, there are a number of Requiem Masses in the usus antiquior in England for the repose of the soul of the last Archbishop of Canterbury, Reginald Cardinal Pole, who died on 17th November 1558 (several hours after Queen Mary I).  

I shall be in choro at that to offered in the Chapel of Magdalen College, Oxford, where Pole had studied.

I wish I could be there! 

Everyone… please consider giving American Papist a lift today.

He is trying to win a college scholarship for bloggers, to pay his loans.

I think WDTPRSers could give him a boost.

This will cost you nothing but a few seconds of your time.

Go HERE and vote for Thomas Peters, who runs the American Papist site.

He is a good kid trying to do good work.

We Catholic bloggers have to stick together and not just play in our own little sandboxes.

Working together, linking and helping each other, makes us a more effective force in shaping the conversation.

A moment for some perspective.

Carefully consider the photo to the right, from Astronomy Picture of the Day.

Explanation: What’s happening at the center of active galaxy 3C 75?

The two bright sources at the center of this composite x-ray (blue)/ radio (pink) image are co-orbiting supermassive black holes powering the giant radio source 3C 75.

Surrounded by multimillion degree x-ray emitting gas, and blasting out jets of relativistic particles the supermassive black holes are separated by 25,000 light-years. At the cores of two merging galaxies in the Abell 400 galaxy cluster they are some 300 million light-years away.

Astronomers conclude that these two supermassive black holes are bound together by gravity in a binary system in part because the jets’ consistent swept back appearance is most likely due to their common motion as they speed through the hot cluster gas at 1200 kilometers per second. [PER SECOND]

Such spectacular cosmic mergers are thought to be common in crowded galaxy cluster environments in the distant universe.

In their final stages the mergers are expected to be intense sources of gravitational waves.

Given this explanation, one wonder at what "intense" might imply.

Read Daniel 3.

Blessed art thou in the firmament of heaven: and worthy of praise, and glorious for ever….      O ye heavens, bless the Lord: praise and exalt him above all for ever…. O ye sun and moon, bless the Lord: praise and exalt him above all for ever…. O ye stars of heaven, bless the Lord: praise and exalt him above all for ever….     O ye fire and heat, bless the Lord: praise and exalt him above all for ever…. O ye cold and heat, bless the Lord, praise and exalt him above all for ever…. O ye light and darkness, bless the Lord: praise and exalt him above all for ever…. O ye lightnings and clouds, bless the Lord: praise and exalt him above all for ever…. O ye servants of the Lord, bless the Lord: praise and exalt him above all for ever…. O ye holy and humble of heart, bless the Lord: praise and exalt him above all for ever.