Pray

We are on a cusp.

Consistory announced today.

Presidential debate tonight.

I feel like….

Just pray.

UPDATE:

I’m afraid, in the matter of worldly goods.  I’m very afraid.

In the matter of heavenly goods, I remain unshaken.

Friends, don’t let little mortals shake you.

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

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

  1. The Astronomer says:

    Gentle, nurturing, pastoral, accompanying, merciful…. Blaise.

    The Ghost of Bernardin is smiling…. his work continues.

  2. sorengard says:

    On the bright side, Arlington’s new bishop seems open and favorably disposed to the TLM (I realize that small potatoes in the larger scheme).

  3. MariaKap says:

    Not to worry, Jesus was most powerful when He was nailed to the cross. Lord be with us in this trial.

  4. stuartal79 says:

    Father, I have to be honest. I hoping for a little more analysis of the Consistory and its repercussions than that…

  5. Fr. W says:

    Just finished a talk to our high school youth group on the Spirit of Counsel and St. Thomas More. Counsel is closely related to the natural virtue of prudence. I think Fr. Z’s simple admonishment to “pray” suffices for now.

  6. JimGB says:

    I think that Father is probably adjusting to arriving in Rome. Plus to me, the appointments speak volumes about Francis’ intentions for the future of the Church and it is very demoralizing.

  7. yatzer says:

    Tobin in Indianapolis seems OK. I only have experience in Indiana, though.

  8. stuartal79 says:

    Fr. W, you are right. JimGB, it is very demoralizing. I just wish there was something to be said that could make us feel better right now. However, I will say to the NCR/Fishwrap crowd that Pope Francis and the majority of these soon to be cardinals are not even remotely close to what you wish they were, regardless of how it is spun.

  9. stuartal79 says:

    Yatzer, can you elaborate on your experiences with him?

  10. Michael_Thoma says:

    Naming Franciscan Father Ernest Troshani Simoni is to be lauded.
    http://americamagazine.org/content/all-things/pope-francis-weeps-he-honors-albanias-martyrs

  11. JimGB says:

    To me, these are political appointments for men who agree with Francis’ worldview and nothing more. Giving Indianapolis (!), a relatively minor See by anyone’s definition, a red hat while passing over Philadelphia and especially Los Angeles reduces these appointments to political spoils for those who toe the line, and can help Francis further bend the Church to his viewpoint.

  12. majuscule says:

    Yes, pray!

    I have been praying about local things and offering up my suffering…and I think I am seeing incremental results. Perhaps we need to pray hardest for these little localized things but also pray with whatever extra zeal we can find for the larger more distant things?

    Seeing the local results sure helps to dredge up that extra zeal, too!

  13. stuartal79 says:

    Majuscule, sounds good. I decided this week to leave the parish I was confirmed in 10 years ago in favor of another that is more traditional and offers the TLM.

  14. Monica says:

    Some prayers for you are included, Father.
    We are on a cusp indeed.

  15. Eric says:

    This is one person in the archdiocese of Indianapolis that is truly astonished. I am at a loss as to what our archbishop and our archdiocese has done to deserve this.

  16. McCall1981 says:

    Nzapalainga and Osoro Sierra are good. Cupich, De Kesel and Tobin are the only outspoken liberals as far as I know. Consistory doesn’t seem THAT bad.

  17. therecusant says:

    I will say that Archbishop Tobin has done Confirmations in the Old Rite two of the last three years (and the one year he didn’t it was due to a scheduling conflict).

  18. yatzer says:

    stuartal79,
    I am just a lowly parishioner, but priests I know who are solid seem OK with him. He was against Pence’s position on current immigrants, but that is a local, disputed situation here with some arguments on both sides. There are two permanent TLMs that I know of in the diocese, and others have celebrated it with apparent freedom. I haven’t met him, nor do I have any insider information. The new priests from St Meinrad are wonderful, but I don’t know how much influence he’s had on that. I hope it doesn’t go away due to the influence of the Francis effect. I doubt he’d put up much resistance no matter how things go, one way or the other. We could do much worse, but I’m still very afraid along with FrZ’s train of thought.

  19. Lavrans says:

    Rorate has a summary on a few of the new Cardinals. I am astonished by how young some of them are (which means a few may be a “gift that keeps on giving”). The “deaconette” thing will hopefully still be squashed, though it appears that a few of the new princes may seem to like the idea (despite all evidence to the contrary). A Pope Burke or Pope Sarah still a possibility? I hope so, but with some of these guys doing the voting, I have my doubts. It is hard to believe that Blaise Cupich could, theoretically, be Pope. Wow.

  20. iPadre says:

    “You know not the day or the hour.” I’m not saying the end of the world. Something is coming, you can almost feel it. Prayer, frequent confession, Mass and Holy Communion.

  21. jfk03 says:

    Put not your trust in princes, the sons of men, in whom there is no salvation. Trust in the Lord, for his mercy endures forever.

  22. Orlando says:

    What no red hat for Charlotte? I guess being the fastest growing Catholic population in the USA, with more seminarians then cities 3 times as large, a new Seminary , a great orthodox bishop who supports the TLM and encouraging it to flourish in numerous parish across the diocese…. oh I get it, that’s a disqualificatying action .

  23. Nightcrawler says:

    Cupich? Really?
    Why did Pope Benedict resign and leave this for his flock?
    Pope Francis obviously has a goal for Gods church. I wonder what that is.

  24. Warren says:

    Cardinal-elect Cupich has his reward.

  25. Rob83 says:

    The age of the appointees isn’t out of line with consistories seen since Benedict’s election. The average age of this crop is about 67, which seems to be about average for consistories. The young African is the outlier.

    This consistory will bring the number of voting Cardinals appointed by Francis up to 44 out of 120 (4 electors are aging out by the end of November to drop the number to 120), but at most 10 of the 44 will remain 15 years hence. Another consistory is unlikely until summer 2018, as there are only 4 cardinals with 80th birthdays in 2017 and the 7 turning 80 in 2018 all do so between February and June.

    Interesting times to be sure, but nothing is impossible for God. I never thought we’d have gotten Pope Benedict out of the 2005 conclave, just as I really didn’t think that with 8 years of his appointments we’d end up with the present situation. The college may just shock us all when it next meets to open a new parenthesis.

  26. spock says:

    At first I was upset about some of the choices for Cardinal. But now I am not. Lines are even more clearly drawn. That can be a good thing. Cardinal Cupich could be the second best thing to happen to the SSPX within his see. The people who need prayers are the regularized traditional groups within his sphere of influence.

    As far as Trump is concerned; I have repeatedly said to people that I was considering writing in HE Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke for president. But, guess what, he won’t get elected I’m sorry to say.

    I have a lousy, awful, pitiful, pathetic, rotten choice to make but I have to do it. It’s my job as a citizen. It’s not fun, it’s work.

  27. stuartal79 says:

    Lavrans, I read that Archbishop Tobin spoke favorably of deaconettes, but have strong doubts about weather he actually did. Pope Francis has clearly said on different occasions that deaconesses in the early Church were not ordained as men were and had very different roles. I don’t think Archbishop Tobin would contradict Francis on this, or anything else. However, the Archbishop might have spoken favorably about reinstituting the non-ordained variety.

  28. NBW says:

    Prayers for us poor folks in the Chicago Archdiocese!!!!!!

  29. excalibur says:

    Folks, Cupich having Chicago always meant a red hat. Recall what the late Cardinal George said about his successors. It may be a rocky road for the soon to be Cardinal Cupich, one which he may well help pave.

    Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.

    JMJ

  30. Benedict Joseph says:

    Far more reason to be concerned about the Church than the country – but both appear to be in the same bowl. Cult and culture…

  31. baileymxd says:

    I do not find it coincidental that the day after thousands of Catholics completed the 54 day Novena for our Nation all of this happens.

    I have put the rest of this year into the hands of the Lord. Surely, His will be done in all of this. We deserve the worst of his judgement, and yet we should pray that his mercy is relentless.

  32. Rosary Rose says:

    Pray the rosary daily. Go to confession. Frequent the Sacraments.

    Did St. Padre Pio say, “pray, hope, don’t worry”?

    Our Lady of Fatima said, “My Immaculate Heart will triumph.” I think the world will be in a very dark, dire, difficult situation so that the triumph is obvious. But my job is not to figure that out. My job is to pray. My job is to be joyful in sorrow, to offer it all up for the glory of God.

    The enemy wants us to despair, to think all our sacrifices are for naught. We keep praying and praying and things seem to be getting worse.

    (A little joy:) But think of egg whites. You stir and stir and stir, it seems fruitless, your arm is tired, and then voila, the egg whites are stiff and you have meringue. One minute it’s a slimy mess and the next it’s a lovely dessert topping. That’s what our prayers and sacrifices will do. Right now, someone keeps heaping more whites into the bowl and we’ve got to keep stirring like crazy, but it’s making us stronger. So you pray for me and I’m praying for you. Keep going, because voila, it will be amazing. Don’t lose hope.

    I don’t mean to trivialize the situation. I’m dead serious. Stay strong and courageous. Pray.

    Focus on Christ and His promises. Focus on His Mother. Thank God that He chose you to be alive at this moment.

    Pray for our Leaders! Thank God for Fr. Z!

  33. KAS says:

    Something seems to have blown through, that is for sure.

    Time to get to Confession more often.
    Time to get to Eucharist more often.
    Time to pray more Rosaries, LOTS more Rosaries.

    And I did well for me on the novena, I think I missed 7 days of it though. For me, that was better than I have done before. Now I need to keep it going and make a habit of it.

  34. Bosco says:

    Please God I shall be stirred but not shaken, Father. However, I await Francis’ October Lutheran suprise this All Hallows Eve.

    Pray the rosary. As Our Lady of Akita said on October 13, 1973:

    “As I told you, if men do not repent and better themselves, the Father will inflict a terrible punishment on all humanity. It will be a punishment greater than the deluge, such as one will never seen before. Fire will fall from the sky and will wipe out a great part of humanity, the good as well as the bad, sparing neither priests nor faithful. The survivors will find themselves so desolate that they will envy the dead. The only arms which will remain for you will be the Rosary and the Sign left by My Son. Each day recite the prayers of the Rosary. With the Rosary, pray for the Pope, the bishops and priests.”

  35. un-ionized says:

    Archbishop Tobin seems okay. I was told by a canon lawyer who knows him that he would not have left me hanging with a question of baptismal validity, he said he would have invited me to the chancery and taken care of it personally. That seems right.

  36. ies0716 says:

    The debate/election debacle is a lot less concerning for me than the state of the Church. The princes of this world have always opposed Christ and His Church, but to see the principles of this world (and the men who hold them) championed by the Vicar of Christ himself is really demoralizing.

  37. LarryW2LJ says:

    Every time it seems like things have quieted down ….. BOOM! Smacked upside the head again. I will continue saying my daily rosary and going to Adoration each Friday during lunch break.

    Sometimes I think we don’t have to wait for The Chastisement. It seems to be upon us.

  38. TNCath says:

    We are in for some extremely rough, precarious times ahead as a nation and as a Church. But, God always triumphs over the Evil One. But, it’s still going to be a very hard fight. St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle…Faith of our Fathers, holy Faith…

  39. Rich says:

    Thanks for the post, Fr. Z! More and more lately, when it comes to prayer concerning current circumstances, I feel our Lord is eliciting prayer for faith and trust in him that we may not freak out or lose heart as the barque of Peter is tossed about by the waves (cf. Mark 4:35-41).

  40. hwriggles4 says:

    Bishop Farrell may have been elevated to Cardinal in part because of his new position at the Dicastery for the Family. He did OK in Dallas (I know I live in the Dallas Diocese), and like most Bishops, there were things I am glad he did and there were other things that I wish he would have done differently. I will go on record saying that Bishop Farrell was more effective in Dallas than his two previous predecessors.

  41. hwriggles4 says:

    For what it’s worth, one Archbishop in America who I would like to see one of these days get a red hat (besides Chaput, Gomez, and Olmstead) is Most Rev. Timothy Broglio of the Archdiocese for the Military Services. Abp. Broglio is always in the trenches and not timid about being hands on. He is solid, and a good role model for the Catholic men and women 18 to 42 (the average age of those in uniform today is about 24) who make up all branches of the Armed Forces.

  42. Uxixu says:

    Cupich is the worst of the bunch but none of the rest are particularly surprising. We can only pray for his conversion and that he’ll avoid the fate that Cardinal George predicted. What St. John Paul II saw him to be worthy of the episcopate, I can only imagine…

    Of course, LA has twice as many Catholics as Chicago, so it’s definitely a curious choice though one can imagine the most obvious answer is that Cardinal Mahony is still alive (even if he’s not eligible to vote in conclave anymore) while Cardinal George is dead…

  43. frjim4321 says:

    This more about the inexorability of gravity and the pendulum arcing centerward.

  44. Thomas Sweeney says:

    Our Pope picks cardinal the way our Democrats pick supreme court justices. Whereas the justices want to overturn our constitution, the cardinals want to dismiss, or diminish, over 2000 years of dogma.

  45. Aquinas Gal says:

    I’m disappointed but not surprised–however, the Church is in God’s hands and he can bring good out of anything.

  46. bookworm says:

    “I have a lousy, awful, pitiful, pathetic, rotten choice to make but I have to do it. It’s my duty as a citizen”

    If by that you mean “I am morally obligated to vote for a major party presidential candidate, or for a presidential candidate of any kind,” I would say “not necessarily”, depending on where you live.

    The only votes that really count in a presidential election are the state by state electoral votes. I concluded months ago that my vote for president would be essentially meaningless in terms of having a material effect on the electoral vote total because I live in a deep blue state (IL) whose EVs are already baked into the Democratic total. Voting for any non-Democrat presidential candidate in this state has as much impact on the national outcome as spitting into a Category 5 hurricane. Nothing I do or don’t do gives Hillary any electoral votes she doesn’t already have in the bag. For Trump or any non-Democrat to even come close to winning IL would require a cataclysmic, nationwide shift of public opinion that would guarantee them a landslide victory of Reagan-esque proportions everywhere else. They would not “need” our EVs to win; it would just be icing on the cake. So I am not voting for either major party candidate — the first time in my adult life I have not done so. Meanwhile, our own Bp. Paprocki (whose orthodoxy is unquestioned) wrote a column in our diocesan newspaper in which he specifically stated that voting third party or abstaining was morally permissible if one cannot in good conscience support a major party candidate.

  47. Filipino Catholic says:

    Napoleon once declared his desire to crush the Church to Cardinal Consalvi, secretary of state to Pius VII. Consalvi’s reply: “If in 1,800 years we clergy have failed to destroy the Church, do you really think that you’ll be able to do it?”

    Still, having a firm faith in the unsinkability of the Barque of Peter does not mean we get a free pass to ignore when repair jobs are needed to fix gaping holes letting worldly muck and bilge into the hull.

  48. Vincent says:

    My advice: Don’t grouse, offer it up, don’t abandon the good priests who need encouragement and choir members and servers, and money. You can save your soul and others if you join Our Lord on the Cross right now.

    It’s like the Lord of the Rings; the siege of Minas Tirith is under way, just don’t despair and desert your post.

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