Say The Black – Do The Red

I had this from a priest friend who is a military chaplain:

A blessed Lent “in capite jejunii” to you! I thought you might enjoy this. The Vicar General of the Archdiocese for the Military Services, in his latest letter, encouraged priests to celebrate the rites of Holy Week correctly saying, “the Sacramentary is clear about the proper form of the liturgies of the Holy Week. Please Do the Red and Read the Black.” I thought it was very encouraging. God bless you and your work!

A very wise priest.  OOH-RAH!

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
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12 Comments

  1. Father, do you have an official Latin version of STBDTR out there yet? I was ruminating on this and came up with NIGRA DICITO RUBRA FACITO, though you could also take it one step further toward total accuracy (though away from intuition) with NIGRIS DICITO RUBRIS FACITO…. which one would of course understand as [verba litteris] NIGRIS [scripta] DICITO [et facienda litteris] RUBRIS [statuta] FACITO.
    Just my $0.02.

  2. RomeontheRange: A good idea. I’ll see what I can do about that. I like your use of the “comic/legal” imperative there. That seems appropriate. Should I seek an imprimatur from the Great One?

  3. Mr Flapatap says:

    I wish one of the priests who celebrates Mass at the Pentagon could get that message. He is not a military chaplain but he will make up the Mass as he goes.

  4. Marcin says:

    nigra dicantur rubra faciantur ?

  5. Centristian says:

    One might wish that there were as much ready obedience within the ranks of the clergy as within the ranks of the military.

  6. Bryan Boyle says:

    @Centristian:
    Or the penalties as severe for not following orders?

    :)

  7. wolfeken says:

    One small directive that could restore some dignity in the field is to explicitly ban the use of Camo Chasubles, which were apparently invented around the first Iraq war.

  8. Thomas G. says:

    Mr. Flapatrap – I’m one of the regular Pentagon daily Mass attendees and I know EXACTLY what you mean and which priest you are referring to. Concur wholeheartedly in your remarks. He’s a good priest, to be sure, but I just wish he would STBDTR!

  9. Centristian says:

    “@Centristian:
    Or the penalties as severe for not following orders?”

    Roger that, Bryan.

  10. Animadversor says:

    I also like the future imperative in nigris dicito, rubris facito; on the other hand, nigris dic, rubris fac has a certain emphatic quality to its sound, with those blunt, consonant-rich present imperatives at the end.

  11. Stephen Matthew says:

    On Ash Wednesday I wish our priest had kept this in mind, he had the world “earthling” substituted for “man” during the imposition of ashes by all those assisting at all masses that day. He even offered up a reasoning about it dealing with the Hebrew and Greek, and I suppose his scholarship was sound enough, but it all got tied into this “Lent 4.5” campaign which is urging a sort of environmentally based Lenten practices, and his homily talked of how the Earth is our Mother and She is very generous with us and we must take care of Her. At the end he did tack on the cryptic, “but we can’t give our hearts to her” implying we righlty belong to someone greater than the Earth (I very much hope everyone filled in that blank correctly, but given no one else knew to kneel after the Sanctus was chanted in Latin I doubt nuance was the best way to go).

  12. Father Z,
    Yeah, you might wanna see what Ipsissimus has to say about that before you have any mugs or shirts printed up. I think he’ll like it, though.
    RoR

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