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About this blog…
“This blog is like a fusion of the Baroque ‘salon’ with its well-tuned harpsichord around which polite society gathered for entertainment and edification and, on the other hand, a Wild West “saloon” with its out-of-tune piano and swinging doors, where everyone has a gun and something to say. Nevertheless, we try to point our discussions back to what it is to be Catholic in this increasingly difficult age, to love God, and how to get to heaven.” – Fr. Z
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- The most evident mark of God’s anger and the most terrible castigation He can inflict upon the world are manifested when He permits His people to fall into the hands of clerics who are priests more in name than in deed, priests who practice the cruelty of ravening wolves rather than the charity and affection of devoted shepherds.
St. John Eudes
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“Until the Lord be pleased to settle, through the instrumentality of the princes of the Church and the lawful ministers of His justice, the trouble aroused by the pride of a few and the ignorance of some others, let us with the help of God endeavor with calm and humble patience to render love for hatred, to avoid disputes with the silly, to keep to the truth and not fight with the weapons of falsehood, and to beg of God at all times that in all our thoughts and desires, in all our words and actions, He may hold the first place who calls Himself the origin of all things.”
- Prosper of Aquitaine (+c.455), De gratia Dei et libero arbitrio contra Collatorem 22.61
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“He [Satan] will set up a counter-Church which will be the ape of the Church because, he the devil, is the ape of God. It will have all the notes and characteristics of the Church, but in reverse and emptied of its divine content. It will be a mystical body of the anti-Christ that will in all externals resemble the mystical body of Christ. In desperate need for God, whom he nevertheless refuses to adore, modern man in his loneliness and frustration will hunger more and more for membership in a community that will give him enlargement of purpose, but at the cost of losing himself in some vague collectivity.”
“Who is going to save our Church? Not our bishops, not our priests and religious. It is up to you, the people. You have the minds, the eyes, and the ears to save the Church. Your mission is to see that your priests act like priests, your bishops act like bishops.”- Fulton Sheen
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- “The modern habit of doing ceremonial things unceremoniously is no proof of humility; rather it proves the offender's inability to forget himself in the rite, and his readiness to spoil for every one else the proper pleasure of ritual.”
- C.S. Lewis
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frz AT wdtprs DOT comAs for Latin…
"But if, in any layman who is indeed imbued with literature, ignorance of the Latin language, which we can truly call the 'catholic' language, indicates a certain sluggishness in his love toward the Church, how much more fitting it is that each and every cleric should be adequately practiced and skilled in that language!" - Pius XI
"Let us realize that this remark of Cicero (Brutus 37, 140) can be in a certain way referred to [young lay people]: 'It is not so much a matter of distinction to know Latin as it is disgraceful not to know it.'" - St. John Paul II
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Recent Posts
- ROME 26/3– Day 04: cold and windy
- Update: working on the Mass Intention Request Form
- Pope Leo’s admonition to French bishops about the TLM and Vatican II
- LENTCAzT 2026 – 38: Friday in Passiontide – Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows
- ROME 26/3– Day 03: the color purple
- Pope Leo asks for generosity from bishops towards people who seek the TLM. I’ve seen this movie before.
- LENTCAzT 2026 – 37: Thursday in Passiontide – Babylon and Nard
- The Annunciation – The 1st Joyful Mystery (Patristic Rosary Project) Ave Gratiarum Mediatrix Omnium!
- ROME 26/3– Day 02: Annunciation
- Updating the different 3 different contact “forms”: Contact, Ask Father, Mass Intention Requests
- Cardinal Eijk’s first Pontifical Mass in the Traditional Roman Rite: “impressive and unforgettable experience”. Wherein Fr. Z rants.
- TESTING the POLL plugin to see if it works – your assistance requested – FIXED (I think)
- LENTCAzT 2026 – 36: Wednesday in Passiontide & Annunciation – Good Shepherd in the Mass
- Fr. McTeigue triggered my PTTSD
- ROME 26/3– Day 01: And so it begins
- LENTCAzT 2026 – 35: Tuesday in Passiontide – Christ’s suffering, popular piety
- Test of app and MY VIEW FOR AWHILE: Rome bound
- Article at The Catholic Thing about the two forms of the Roman Rite
- ROME 26/3– Day 00: Brooklyn and blog
- LENTCAzT 2026 – 34: Monday in Passiontide – Ancient v. Modern Views
- Your Sunday Sermon Notes – Passion Sunday, 5th in/of Lent 2026 – POLL about veils
- ASK FATHER: John 8:55
- I love this story and it makes me sad
- LENTCAzT 2026 – 33: 1st Passion Sunday (5th Lent) – “Christ entered once into the Holies…”
- WDTPRS – 5th Sunday of Lent: The Church, liturgically dying
- LENTCAzT 2026 – 32: Saturday 4th Week in Lent – Approaching Passiontide
- LENTCAzT 2026 – 31: Friday 4th Week in Lent – The 3rd Station
- Ite ad Ioseph… Go to Joseph!
- LENTCAzT 2026 – 30: Thursday 4th Week in Lent – St. Joseph
- Daily Rome Shot 1569
Let us pray…
Grant unto thy Church, we beseech Thee, O merciful God, that She, being gathered together by the Holy Ghost, may be in no wise troubled by attack from her foes. O God, who by sin art offended and by penance pacified, mercifully regard the prayers of Thy people making supplication unto Thee,and turn away the scourges of Thine anger which we deserve for our sins. Almighty and Everlasting God, in whose Hand are the power and the government of every realm: look down upon and help the Christian people that the heathen nations who trust in the fierceness of their own might may be crushed by the power of thine Arm. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. R. Amen.
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That’s a very pretty church. It somehow escaped the ubiquitous beige paint job, I see.
Or at least mostly, on second look.
It’s beautiful.
I don’t understand the crotulus and clacker. I do keep seeing them used, but no one has explained them.
Last evening’s service at St. Agnes, in St. Paul, was the first time I’d seen the clackers, and as a woodworker gaped away as the procession of the Stripping of the Altars went past. And now Father Z has them close-up here. Something I believe I’ll want to make. St. Agnes, deo gratia, was packed.
I take it the clackers and crotulus (I can’t believe my iPhone had that in it’s dictionary) are for the EF only, as I’ve never seen them before
That church is beautiful! Reminds me a bit of St. Dominic’s in San Francisco. Father, I understand the clacker but how does the crotulus work? It’s the first time I’ve actually seen one! In our parts, we use a “Patraka”.. handled like a a bell but works and sounds like a door knocker! BTW, those purple embroidered textiles (vestments maybe?) look great!
It was a wonderful service– I am happy to have chosen it over other contenders. (Manhattan is liturgically rich on Good Friday.) Unfortunately, it ran until after 5 PM, and by the time I ran across town to Our Saviour, Fr. Rutler was already at the Eighth Station. But I guess that is a minor quibble. In heaven, we’ll get to attend all the great services all at once.
Catholicmidwest – I asked someone how it was that HI missed “renovation” and retained the beautiful high altar and the altar rail, among other things. I was told that poor churches, which HI is, could not afford “renovation.”. Blessed are the poor! Something Father .
Z does not show is the magnificent painting of Christ’s crucifixion above the altar. I think it may be 30 ft high and was painted by a known painter whose name escapes me. I often meditate on this picture and find it a great inspiration.
I did a little searching and found this link about the picture of the crucifixion at HI.
http://www.nyc-architecture.com/MID/MID165.htm
As this link says, the artist is Constantino Brumidi. The painting is soon going to be renovated. I can’t wait to see it then.
Well, I’d never heard of the words ‘crotalus’ or ‘patraka’ but we had wooden noise making things at Holy Thursday mass (Novus Ordo – EF masses are more or less unheard of in our neck of the woods – though I went to my first the other week which is held once a month on saturday morning at the cathedral). I couldn’t see it, but it sounded just like a football rattle (I think that’s a distinctively British item, sadly no longer in common use). It wouldn’t surprise me if it had once been such.
The first time I came across this custom was when I was an Anglican at St Mary Magdalen in Oxford. I seem to recall it as a thing like a big wooden cowbell.
Wish we could have been there at Holy Innocents for yesterday’s liturgy. We feel very blessed to have attended the Solemn High Mass on Holy Thursday, however. Some pictures of the Mandatum and Procession with Fr. Z officiating if anyone would like to see them:
http://drvccatholic.blogspot.com/2011/04/maundy-thursday-at-holy-innocents.html
Of the 16 servers at our Holy Thursday mass, my son got to operate the “Dingsbums” noise maker.
He also had the clacker during the procession.
He really likes to serve.
Aren’t those ‘clackers’ the same ones used in cloistered monasteries as ‘wake-up’ devices?
Beautiful chanting, but why only Fr. Z and Fr. Trezza?
Was the other a layman?