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

In this matter of contingent, prudential judgments, whose judgment will in time prove to have been the more prudent?

The Catholic bishops with pro-life groups or their opposition, the LCWR and CHA and NCR, etc?

I happen to think the bishops are right and the CHA and NCR and LCWR are wrong.  I think the bishops are right this time, not because they are bishops, by the way, but because they happen to be right.  Even if there really is a barrier between federal money and the procuring of abortions, a barrier which might allow a Catholic legislator in this byzantine tangle to vote for the bill, is that barrier going to stand? 

Or will it – as I fear it will – open the gates to direct federal funding for abortions?

At this point I doubt many people are going to change their minds about their positions.

Therefore, I have this to say to those Catholics who support the passage of this bill. 

I am speaking especially to the women of the LCWR and the CHA and the dissenters of the NCR.

No one is going to forget that you supported this bill when, in years to come, your barrier did not hold and children are being killed with tax-payer funding.

In years to come, you will be held accountable by Catholics on the street.

You will be held responsible for this and you will be made to answer for this down the line. 

You will be responsible for federal funding of the most extreme form of child abuse.

You are in for a Dante-esque contrapasso in decades to come.

Dear readers, think about how these same people scream for the heads of bishops and priests who years ago harmed innocent children.  Today those who support this legislation have in the past also relentlessly pursued bishops and priests who, 40 years ago, showed compassion – rightly or wrongly – in trying to rehabilitate priests who harmed children.

"If we only knew then what we know now…", people will say in years to come, just as they do now about child abuse in years past.

"What harm we could have avoided if we, moved by compassion, had made a different prudential judgment!"

When federal funding for the extreme child abuse of abortion starts to flow, I suspect people will find you, Sister – Reverend Mother – Sister "President" – in the same kind of nursing homes in which various groups has searched out priests who abused children decades ago.

Organizations will be formed, seek you out, and extract your public mea culpas because of your "prudential" judgments today.  

Sisters… what you are doing is WRONG.

Your magisterium of liberal nuns has told us that if only women had been priests or had been in power positions, then maybe there wouldn’t have been a crisis today with sexual abuse of children. 

Is that so?   Perhaps if there were men in power positions in the LCWR and CHA we might avoid the abuse to come. 

You tell us, Sisters, that out of compassion for the poor we ought to take the risk that federal funds, in a worst case scenario, might go to pay for abortion.

I think that is the wrong prudential judgment.

The bishops are right and you are wrong. 

They are right, not because they are bishops, but because they are neither naive nor governed by false compassion…nor false motives. 

And I think we must, Sisters, question your motives.

This moment, Sisters, will come back to haunt you.

Z-Cam & Radio Sabina, or "Fr Z TV" is on the air most of the time!

I have added a entirely Latin chaplet of the Rosary with the Sorrowful mysteries to the play list as well as a Prayer for the Pope.  They both are indulgenced prayers and they cycle through the playlist from time to time.

Today I added the Lorica of St. Patrick.

Watch the feeder and very often windows of the chapel and also my office.

Live Broadcasting by Ustream

There is Z-Chat in a chatroom from time to time.  I send out Tweets about when it is open via Twitter.  (Latin pipata, or "tweets" from pipio "to twitter, chirp")


Open as a pop up.

"tuppence a bag…"

Well… far more than tuppence, actually…. HELP!



REGISTER to be able to post comments.

There are signs of spring at the feeder.

First, I have seen a Robin.  No photos yet.

Also, the Goldfinches are beginning to molt and change, at least in the case of the males, to their brighter yellow.



The Nuthatches are spending less time around the Chickadees, which are also singing more and getting more aggressive with each other.



And this fine fellow spent a few minutes in front of my window, distracting me from my writing.





Here you can get a sense of the feathers.

I suspect that in most places where sand replaces holy water in the stoups, the priests probably don’t hear confessions during Holy Week or the Triduum.

It happens every year despite the fact the the Holy See has made it clear that it is possible to hear confessions during the Triduum.

This comes from The Lair of the Catholic Caveman:

First You Get Rid Of The Sacramantals…
Then you get rid of the Sacraments

More lunacy out of the Cape Fear Deanery.

A week or so back, I posted of certain parish in this Deanery that went directly against the direction given by The Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments in regards of replacing Holy Water with sand during Lent.

Now I find out that another parish within this Deanery has cancelled ALL Confessions during Holy Week.

I found the following signs posted next to the supply room turned Confessional.

 

I have a guest for the weekend and so I made something a bigger more expansive than I would were I on my own.

Three large pork chops were delivered by the aforementioned guest, along with sauerkraut… as Dr. Maturin would observe, a fine antiscorbutic.

As I turned on the Minnesota Golden Gopher men’s hockey game, I got out a glass pan, since I intended to do these in the oven.

Lay down a bed of kraut.

"But Father! But Father!" you may be saying.  Shouldn’t you clear off the flies before …"

No… no… not flies.  These are juniper berries!

Also mixed in with the sauerkraut is a chopped up medium sized yellow onion.

I salted and peppered and added dry white wine.

For some color at the last minute, some chopped green onion.



I salted and peppered the porkchops and just set them on top.



Oven… 350…. for a while.  I think it must have been about an hour.



Served with Yukon Gold potatoes… pork chops and sauerkraut with onion and juniper.



Sometimes pork chops can get a little dry and tough if you over cook them.  These were neither.  

As Preserved Killick would have lamented, "Which they left nary a scrap".

If you want, you could add some slices of crisp apple.

Serve with beer or dry white wine, such as Sauvignon blanc.  You could serve a sweeter white as well.

Gophers’ victory over hated North Dakota.

Tonight, I think I will do sausage and eggs and hashbrowns and watch them beat ND again.

From a reader.  You can make your own comments.

I have just returned from Mass.  As usual, during the Mass I was constantly distracted by the consistent ad libbing by the priest celebrant.  Permit me to offer a  sample:

Before the Sign of the Cross:  Father reads a snippet from a "liturgical cheat sheet" that introduces the "theme" of the Mass.

Introduction to the Penitential Rite:  Father gives a introductory monologue that gives the weather report and welcomes our visitors, who we are always happy to have with us.  He then calls us to recall "the times when we have been too much to ourselves and loved each other less." 

The Prayers of the Faithful:  After the banal intercessions from the "liturgical cheat sheet," Father improvises prayers for the suffering in Haiti, announcing how much money was collected and thanking the parishioners for their generosity; for those serving in the military—living and deceased—their "parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and surrogates" (I’m NOT making this up); and on and on and on.  The Prayers of the Faithful went on for 5 minutes!  I realize that, in the great scheme of things, 5 minutes doesn’t seem long, but it is an eternity at Mass.

The "Orate Fratres":  "Let us pray that this our sacrifice and all that we do will become acceptable to God the Almighty Father."

The "Mysterium Fidei":  "In song, let us proclaim this great mystery of our faith."

The "Per ipsum et cum ipso":  "For it is through Him, and with Him and in Him…."

The Invitation to the Our Father:  "Let us with faith and love, in union with God our Father and as one family, we proclaim that prayer which Jesus taught us."

The "Ecce Agnus Dei":  This is Jesus Christ, our hope and our peace, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.  How happy and blessed are we to be called to supper."

This said, my question is this:  after over 35 years of priesthood and over 35 years of "doing his own thing" at Mass, will he, all of a sudden with the new translations, actually start to "say the black and do the red"?  Will bishops and those entrusted with implementing the new translations, actually INSIST that priests not do what this man has been doing Sunday after Sunday for years and years since his first Mass?  And who is going to hold them accountable?  Bishops?  The laity?  In fairness to the bishops, bishops can’t be everywhere.  As to the laity, priests often resent, no matter how tactfully, respectfully, and charitably states, any constructive criticism about the way a priest celebrates Mass. 

My great fear is that, despite the new translations, priests will continue to do whatever they wish with their parts in the Mass simply because no one is going to hold them accountable for otherwise. 

Thanks for listening

It is Friday in Lent, and as the sun sank, I – a traditionalist in my consistency – wanted a cheeseburger.

So, I dug into the freezer and found a piece of frozen halibut which I bought for $1.38.

"What can I do with", quoth I, "this."

I thought immediately of crab cakes... which a long-lost friend likes.

I have no crab in my life, at the moment, so that was out.

And halibut not being crab….

... when life gives you halibut, make halibut cakes.

I started with this.

I have no food processor so I had to do this the old way. (I had a one cup, but it died.)



Lots of chopping of what I had on hand. Parsley, celery, some summer savory surviving on my counter all winter, thyme dried from last summer, generous salt and pepper, a dash of hot curry, and a dash of cayenne.

Chopping the fish. This one is for Damian Thompson, who thinks that preparing food looks disgusting.



I had only Pumpernickle bread, so… two slices of that.



I wanted to add capers, but I didn’t have any. I chopped up some kosher dill pickle instead.



I have never made anything like this before.

But I figured that when I added the mayonnaise this would get pretty loose. I therefore cracked in an egg I got from a local farm to bind it together when it cooked.



Another one for Damian Thompson, who thinks that food prep is ugly. Okay… Damian, I’ll stop now.



I added some mayo… no photo.

Mix mix mix… glop some into a medium hot frying pan with enough olive oil to cover the bottom and flatten the glops.



Fry for a while. I started with five minutes on the first side.



A little longer on the second side.

Here they are on a plate. This is how some of my readers would plate this, because they hate anything that might look like it tastes good.



The light in the previous pic is better, obviously.

Then you add some personality. Tonight, I use some evvvvvillllll parsley.

I made some tartar sauce with mayo and pickle and lemon and shallot salt.



I made four of these.

It took all my will power not to eat the other two while standing over the stove eating directly from the frying pan.

I will be making these again.



Excluding the stuff I had on hand, which you probably have on hand, this cost less than $2.00.  It would have fed two … or me alone, standing over the frying pan.

And the sun goes down on Friday.

UPDATE:

Thanks to KK for the moniker Fr. Z’s "Just For The Halibut" Cakes

House Finch.

They were scarce for a while, but are getting more active, I think.



And many thanks to RF who used my amazon wish list to send Joseph Pearce’s Through Shakespeare’s Eyes: seeing the Catholic presence in the plays.  I read Clare Asquith’s book a while ago and found many of her examples compelling.

To all the priests out there still… unbelievably still putting sand in holy water fonts during Lent…

KNOCK IT OFF!

And if you go into a church where you see this sort of idiocy… for the love of God, DON’T bless yourself with SAND.






Total FAIL.

• Sand in your holy water stoup
• Dumb liberal idea #3464: Removing Holy Water during Lent 
• Empty holy water fonts during Lent… GRRRRRR!
• QUAERITUR: removing holy water during Lent

You know you are a soldier and pilgrim in a dangerous world, right?   What is Lent for?  Spiritual discipline and war, right?

So why… why… why would these dopey liturgists and priests REMOVE a tool of spiritual warfare precisely duing the season of LENT when we need it the most?? 

Holy water is a sacramental. 

It is not a toy, or something to be abstained from, like chocolate …. which is the stuff of a childish Lent.


This is a response from the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments about this question. Enjoy.

The emphases are mine:

    Prot. N. 569/00/L

    March 14, 2000

    Dear Father:

    This Congregation for Divine Worship has received your letter sent by fax in which you ask whether it is in accord with liturgical law to remove the Holy Water from the fonts for the duration of the season of Lent.

    This Dicastery is able to respond that the removing of Holy Water from the fonts during the season of Lent is not permitted, in particular, for two reasons:

    1. The liturgical legislation in force does not foresee this innovation, which in addition to being praeter legem is contrary to a balanced understanding of the season of Lent, which though truly being a season of penance, is also a season rich in the symbolism of water and baptism, constantly evoked in liturgical texts.

    2. The encouragement of the Church that the faithful avail themselves frequently of the [sic] of her sacraments and sacramentals is to be understood to apply also to the season of Lent. The "fast" and "abstinence" which the faithful embrace in this season does not extend to abstaining from the sacraments or sacramentals of the Church. The practice of the Church has been to empty the Holy Water fonts on the days of the Sacred Triduum in preparation of the blessing of the water at the Easter Vigil, and it corresponds to those days on which the Eucharist is not celebrated (i.e., Good Friday and Holy Saturday).

    Hoping that this resolves the question and with every good wish and kind regard, I am,

    Sincerely yours in Christ,
    [signed]
    Mons. Mario Marini [Later, the Secretary of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, now with God.]
    Undersecretary

 

I suggest little beach chairs made from toothpicks and a drink umbrella would look good in there…. maybe a golf ball? 

Some fast sprouting beans and a little water when no one is looking?  

Have sand in your fonts?  How about some photos!?

Our friend at Recovering Dissident Catholic, "Cathy of Alexandria" has a particularly good rant, which I feature here (with edits) as a "guest rant".  My emphases and comments.

A good priest is hard to find. Heck, a PRIEST can be hard to find.

I "do process" for a living but there are times you just need flexibility around the process so you can just jump to the terminator.

Death and serious illness are one of those times.

[...]

There is too much of an effort these days to give lay people more control over the administration of the sacraments then they should. There is a huge difference between a parish administrator role and the priest. The parish administrator or business adminstrator or office secretary should not be controlling access to Father to the point that they are, in essence, stonewalling people under the guide of "not wanting to bother Father with more stuff"

For instance, and this has loooong been a source of anger for me, you want FATHER to visit a loved one in the home or in the hospital or in the nursing home and the immediate response of the ‘gatekeeper’ in the parish is: "I’ll send one of our LAY ministers" There are times where, I’m sorry, I just don’t WANT a lay minister. I want a PRIEST. I get even more furious if they continue on and get down to it: "Father doesn’t DO those types of calls" WTH?

[...]

We’ve probably all know (well, I do) of priests who are surprised to hear that people can’t access him when he’s needed because Father had no idea the office was pushing folks away from him. Father ends up giving his cell phone number and PERSONAL email address out so people can bypass the "office". Is that acceptable? It’s ridiculous. [Especially with our new tools of communication.]

In my opinion, the authority in the parish, the last word, the COO, is the pastor. God is the CEO and ultimate word. The pretenders can all go home. I know it’s harsh. There it is.  [And when they do, Father will be even less available because he will also have their work to do.]

More and more people are bypassing the church weddings and funerals in favor of doing them at commercial wedding chapels and funeral home entirely. The commercial business world has figured out something we forgot: Give the people what they want AND what they need.

 

We need more vocations to the PRIESTHOOD.

Since one good rant deserves another, here is a little rant of my own.

Let’s be careful about prayers for vocations.

At times we should pray strictly for vocations to the priesthood. PRIESTHOOD!   Deacons are great, but they are not priests.   Religious women are great, but they are not priests.  Religious men are find, but that is its own vocation.  Married people are wonderful, but with a super small number of exceptions it is morally tedious to recount, they are not priests.

Often prayers for "vocations" are all lumped together, probably so as to avoid one of the great modern mortal sins: not being inclusive. 

Fine.  Do that.  Pray for "vocations".

But let us pray for PRIESTS…. priestly vocations… vocations to the PRIESTHOOD.

And another thing… this is the Year for Priests.  Yet I see this project and that effort for prayer for bishops, seemingly all the time.   Great!  Pray for bishops.  Bishops are priests too.    Bishops need constant prayers.  I too am constantly telling people, imploring people to pray for our bishops, upon whom so much depends.  I pray for a list of bishops after every Mass.   But can priests have their year?  Please?  We pray for bishops all the time.  It seems like every year is the year for bishops, right?  At every Mass we pray for bishops by name, for heaven’s sake!   

Okay… I must get back to work.

Thus endeth the rant.

I am trying these days to eat my principle meal at midday rather than in the evening.   In the evening I will have a light supper, maybe some salad and/or soup and then, after a while, have a solid workout. 

I wind up going to bed hungry that way, but that isn’t bad for Lent.

Today’s lunch featured catfish, which I found for $2.25/lb.  An egg wash and bread crumbs, salt and pepper.

Stir fried baby bok choy and green onions, both on sale.  A dash of soy sauce.



Good food doesn’t have to be expensive or hard to make.  From start to washing up less than an hour, during which I watched some CURLING!

Anyone can do this.

Back at last for a time at home, I have been able to note the changes at the feeder.

The first thing to note is how much they can eat.  Holy cow.

His scriptis, I note with pleasure that House Finches are back from whatever cruise they went on.

I hope it wasn’t on Celebrity.



This Chickadee lost its snack in the wind.

From a reader:

I had a question about the rubrics of the ordinary form that I can’t seem to find an answer to. Before the consecration, it is the practice of the sacred ministers to bow to the altar rather than genuflect to a tabernacle in the sanctuary. But what about after the consecration? As an acolyte (I would assume the priest and deacon are more-or-less stationary at the altar), I have to sometimes cross the sanctuary during Mass after the Agnus Dei and don’t know if I should bow or genuflect to the altar when the Blessed Sacrament is present.

The Ordinary Form prescribes that sacred ministers genuflect at the beginning of Mass when coming to the altar and at the end.  Also, the priest genuflects at the moment prescribed after the elevation of each of the Eucharistic species after their consecrations, and also before taking up the Host atbefore Communion.  Otherwise everyone is supposed to bow to the altar – even if the Blessed Sacrament is present there in a tabernacle – or bow to the tabernacle if it is elsewhere around the sanctuary and you walk before it.

The idea here is that we, as a Eucharistic gathering, ideally all of us seething with meaningful awareness of the ancient Christians who didn’t reserve the Eucharist as later Christians did, all of us ideally focusing our seething awareness and mutual affirmation on how the altar is a sign of the presence of Christ (as are the words Scripture and the congregation itself gathered in His Name, etc.) are to give honor to the altar of sacrifice, blah blah, all of us seething in mutually affirming anticipation as an Alleluia people who stand rather than kneel that sometime during the institution narrative …. 

You get my drift.  This is all very heady stuff.

I am a Say The Black – Do The Red sort of guy, so I am not, I repeat not going to tell people to ignore rubrics… but…. 

Frankly, I think that whole thing should be done away with.  To my mind it is just plain wrong to "ignore" -  to use a contentious word – the Blessed Sacrament in favor of some other thing which at that moment also is a sign of the presence of the Lord, namely the altar.  And yes we all know that Eastern Catholics and the Orthodox bow rather than genuflect and that their bowing is in no way lacking in reverence, etc.

But lets just talk among our Latin Church Catholic selves for a while here.

This is one of those modern liturgical reform oddities of the Novus Ordo, the Ordinary Form, which I just can’t get my old-fashioned Catholic head around.  If someone were to show up in my confessional saying that he genuflected during Mass when walking in front of the Blessed Sacrament I am not sure I would think he sinned, even venially.

"But Father! But Father!", the liturgically-aware will expostulate, perhaps with a little sneer.  They have been waving their arms around for a couple paragraphs by now, saying, "We are not ignoring the reserved Eucharist!  We are rather affirming the Eucharistic presence which is going to be consecrated in the context of this present sacred synaxsis. [They always have to get words like "synaxsis" in there.]  Perhaps the unnuanced find this disconcerting but in time the liturgically more mature come to be able to balance interrelations and seeeemingly challenging phenomena which diachronically …. "  yadda yadda…. yawn yawn. 

I respond: Oh yah? 

That’s all very fancy, but what real people are liturgically aware of, pal, is that you are blowing off the Blessed Sacrament which they can SEE  – RIGHT THERE.  You are walking by the tabernacle where they KNOW or OUGHT TO KNOW the Eucharistic Lord is really and truly present. 

After a while that will take its toll on what people believe and how they themselves give reverence to the Blessed Sacrament.

So… seethe away with liturgical awareness, juxtaposing and balancing your interrelated phenomena. 

I think this should be simple for Latin Church Catholics: 

Are you walking in front of the tabernacle? Hit the deck! 

Unless you are carrying something big or precarious, whether it is during Mass or simply heading across the sanctuary after Mass to scrape some wax off the floor, in my opinion we should genuflect when we walk before the Lord, truly present.

The Goa’uld in Stargate got one thing right, and I wish I could make my eyes flash: Bend your knee to your GOD!

And I will remind everyone that in the older, traditional form of Mass this isn’t a problem.

I am a Say The Black – Do The Red sort of guy, so I am not, I repeat not going to tell people to ignore rubrics… but….  

We MUST rethink Communion in the hand.

I found this over at Rorate:

 When will the horror of Communion in the hand stop?
Leading by example is nice, but the general pontifical faculty of allowing Communion in the hand (extended to Poland, for instance, during this Pontificate) could be abolished in a single day…

From Costa Rica (this Presidential candidate lost):

The best time for the Philadelphia Blognic II is Sunday, 21 February, in the afternoon from 4:00-6:00 pm.  

I made a slight change to accommodate those who want to attend Vespers at Mater Ecclesiae in Berlin, NJ.

The same location as last time: Irish Pub at 20th & Walnut in the Rittenhouse Square area.

That’s the score!   I hope some of you will be able to attend.  Happily it is a Sunday, so we will be able to relax a bit.