Fr. Z's Blog

Welcome registrant:

SursumCorda91

I had posted a Mom’s Stuff Page – hoping to learn what things are and what they might be worth.  Someone reached out to buy something.  Nice.  So much better than something my mom made going off into the void.

Today I had a house inspector come to inspect my place and my mom’s house.

Mine is good to go.  However, my mom’s house needs a new roof, which is going to really hurt.  I knew it was coming, by looking at it, but the news was still a real blow.  Time to get estimates, I guess. The rest of the house is okay, water heater, A/C.  There are some valves that need work, but that’s small stuff.   There is so much to do.  Power washing, probably painting.  It’s intimidating.  My main “handy man” was once the maintenance guy for a large parish and is a faithful practicing Catholic who serves Mass and has been life-long KC.  He knows all sorts of people for services, which  helps.  We sat down and strategized.  I think we need to get a 10m dumpster to start with, rather than haul loads.

Also, we got her car tidied up for 1) sale 2) use (would have to get plates and insurance).  Low mileage: 2014 SUV with 46K.

I suspect more than one of you have faced these things.   Please ask St. Joseph to help me.

I get this, but think about it.

? ? pic.twitter.com/lalqKvaYHg

— Juanita Broaddrick (@atensnut) June 25, 2026

More than 20 professors at Franciscan University are calling on the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) not to proceed with its planned consecration of bishops on July 1.https://t.co/gdoH9G079d

— Catholic News Agency (@cnalive) June 25, 2026

I can guess what’s up.  I don’t think this bodes well for the non-bishop members of the SSPX.  Lay people are not members: they just go to their chapels.  The SSPX is a fraternity of priests, though there are brothers and sisters.

Now this is interesting…. Infovaticana notes that in the past week, Pope Leo has held three meetings with Cardinal Victor Fernandez, prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.

These haven’t been happenstance encounters; they’ve been formal, scheduled events,…

— Philip Lawler (@PhilLawler) June 26, 2026

Please remember me when shopping online and use my affiliate links.  US HERE – WHY?  This helps to pay for health insurance, utilities, groceries, and now also my late mother’s place.  At no extra cost, you provide help for which I am grateful.  

White to move and mate in 4.

NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t be “spoilers” for others.

From my friend Fr. McTeigue (aka One Of The Gooduns):

Welcome registrant:

eta2000

NB: I can take some MASS INTENTIONS right now. I have quite a few from two people, but I will work new ones in. If there is something URGENT, tell me.

HERE

The saga of dealing with my mother’s possessions/house/car continues.  A friend with some legal savvy is visiting.  Helpful.  We are ticking things to do off of the To Do List.

I had posted a Mom’s Stuff Page – hoping to learn what things are and what they might be worth.  There are so many knowledgeable people who read here.     Anyway, I have updated there with more photos.

(Someone who bought my mom’s house would coincidently be close to some place where the TLM celebrated everyday – while I’m in town – and there is a church in town which has the TLM on Sunday.)

This…

What a bizarre affectation.   It’s hard to believe that any priest would do something this self-centered.

Why does Cardinal Tucho
Fernandez, Prefect for the Doctrine of the Faith, hold the chalice like this during Mass?

What’s going on here? pic.twitter.com/heKcK1J0p6

— Dr Taylor Marshall™? (@TaylorRMarshall) June 24, 2026

Meanwhile… the SSPX now has an open Letter to the Pope and Cardinals and a 28 page Profession of Faith which they say they hope will be the basis of fraternal dialogue with Rome.   I haven’t read it yet.  However, I suspect it will not have the most irenic tone.

Black to move.  Mate in 4.

NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t be “spoilers” for others.

Please remember me when shopping online and use my affiliate links.  US HERE – WHY?  This helps to pay for health insurance, utilities, groceries, and now also my late mother’s place.  At no extra cost, you provide help for which I am grateful.  

Hard to improve on this from a couple years ago.  Little changes.

Your planet once again is whirling its way towards your solstices, Summer in the North and Winter in the South.  Since the emphasis in Western Civilization has been northern, I’ll stick with that.

In the Northern Hemisphere the June solstice is the day with the most daylight and the shortest night.  It falls every year between 20-22 June, this year on 21 June.  The solstice marks the end of Spring and the beginning of Summer.

On Holy Church’s calendar we celebrated the Vigil of John the Baptist yesterday, 23 June, and the Feast of his Birth today, 24 June.  The reason we celebrate John near the solstice, both because we count the months of Elizabeth’s being with child, and because John said “He must increase, I must decrease”. The ancients knew that at this time of year the length of days began to decrease.  The Nativity of the Lord falls near the Winter Solstice, when the days – at last – get longer and light comes back to the world.

There are lots of fine traditions from different cultures which you might incorporate into your own observances.

First, each year consider having a bonfire (and cookout) on the Vigil of the Nativity of the Baptist.  Invite your priests!  There is a special blessing in Rituale Romanum for fires on the Vigil.  After the usual introduction, the priest blesses (it should be done in Latin) the fire saying:

Lord God, almighty Father, the light that never fails and the source of all light, sanctify + this new fire, and grant that after the darkness of this life we may come unsullied to you who are light eternal; through Christ our Lord. All: Amen.

At this point the fire is sprinkled with holy water and everyone sings the hymn Ut queant laxis which is also the Vespers hymn.  I have more about that beautiful – and historically important hymn – HERE.  You might practice the hymn and sing it.

In some places the bonfire is used for the burning of witches… in effigy.  That could be fun.  The witch connection probably comes from the fact that the satanically inclined or possessed hold the solstice as one of their important annual moments for their vile rites.

Also, I recommend the eating of snails.  This is very Roman. 

Romans traditionally eat snail of the Feast of John the Baptist, and so should you.

If you call yourself a traditional Roman Catholic…well… there’s no excuse.

Also, there is a witch connection with the snails and what Romans ate.

Romans would gather certain plants that were mature by this point, such as what we call St. John’s Wort, along with onions and garlic, which they thought drove off witches and demons.

Near St. John Lateran (named after both the Baptist and Evangelist) there was a little hill Monte Cipollario or “Onion Hill” that was eventually razed in the time of  Papa Lambertini – Benedict XIV.  It seems that lots of onions and garlic were cultivated in that zone.    In any event, the Romans gathered at St. John’s and ate lumache al sugo and greeted each other with the Roman dialect “Perdonamose!” (from “perdono… forgiveness”), a sort of way of mutual apologies and peacemaking.  It may be that the eating of snails comes from the fact, first, that at this time of year there are a lot of them and, next, they have horns, which could have symbolized discord and strife.  Hence, eating them did away with strife and promoted reconciliation.  “Perdonamose!”

To make and mess of lumache al sugo alla romana (aka ‘na ciumacata), you need well-purged snails, of course, along with tomatoes, olive oil, hot red pepper, onion, garlic, (preferably wild) fennel and/or mint. A couple versions I saw included anchovy.  Make your sauce and then add the snails, cook for a while, and serve hot with good bread.  This one is instructive HERE.  And, HERE. For wine …. why get fancy?  Stick with cold Frascati or another dry white from the Castelli Romani!

If you can’t get your hands on some snails, or enough snails, there’s always THIS… for lots of fun and conversation.   I am not making this up…

SNAIL ACTION FIGURE!

US HERE – UK HERE… nope, sorry!  [The old one seems to be gone, but there is THIS 

Meanwhile get your canned or jarred snails and start planning: US HERE – UK HERE… nope, sorry again!

Finally, I sure would like to make some snails tonight.

Click!

There is also a very cool Medieval recipe I just found for cherries for St. John’s Day.

And… I recently had snails in Rome.  I wish I were in Rome right now having snails.

It is nice to have as your Patron the great Baptist, for I get two feasts a year, his Nativity and his Beheading.

For the Vigil of St. John (today, as I write even thought it is the 5th Sunday after Pentecost, which bumps the Vigil) in the old Roman Ritual the priest would once bless bonfires!

And in Bavaria, witches are burned!  A priest friend who shares my feast sent me a spiffing photo (below – a little hard to see at this size, but I assure you, there is a witch in there).

If you have any unwanted witches (and don’t we all?), send them to Bavaria next year for a nice vacation.

In other places, cast-off or unneeded things are burned… in a way parallel, I suppose, to throwing things away at the other end of the year after the Winter Solstice.

In any event, the evening is about as long as the year can offer, so a great party could be had well into the night with much cooking in the open and revelry.  Have a nice bonfire!

The blessing for the bonfire is beautiful.  After the usual introduction, the priest blesses the fire saying:

Lord God, almighty Father, the light that never fails and the source of all light, sanctify + this new fire, and grant that after the darkness of this life we may come unsullied to you who are light eternal; through Christ our Lord. All: Amen.

At this point the fire is sprinkled with holy water and everyone sings the hymn Ut quaent laxis which is also the Vespers hymn for the Feast of St. John.

It is almost as if the fire, and our celebration, is baptized.

The reference to light and darkness surely harks to the fact of the Solstice, which was just observed. At this point the days get shorter in the Northern Hemisphere.  I looked at that HERE and HERE.

For the feast of St. John in June for centuries the Church has sung at Vespers the hymn beginning Ut queant laxis. 

If you want to hear Ut queant laxis sung “in the wild”, as it were, check the monks at Le Barroux.  Hard core.  Fantastic chant. HERE  Their sung hours are available live and on demand.

Those of you who are lovers of the movie The Sound of Music will instantly recognize this hymn as the source of the syllables used in solfège or solmization (the use of syllables instead of letters to denote the degrees of a musical scale). Both the ancient Chinese and Greeks had such a system.

The Benedictine monk Guido d’Arezzo (c. 990-1050) introduced the now familiar syllables ut re mi fa sol la for the tones of the hexachord c to a… or, more modally, the tonic, supertonic, mediant, etc. of a major scale. The Guidonian syllables derive from the hymn for the feast of St. John the Baptist:

UT queant laxis
REsonare fibris
MIra gestorum
FAmuli tuorum,
SOLve polluti
LAbii reatum,
Sancte Ioannes (SI).

The Guidonian Hand was often used as an instructive tool for music

After the medieval period (when music became less modal and more tonal) to complete the octave of the scale the other syllable was introduced (si – taken from S-ancte I-oannes, becomes “ti”) and the awkward ut was replaced sometime in the mid 17th c. with do (or also doh – not to be confused in any way with the Homeric Simpsonic epithet so adored by today’s youth, derived as it is from the 21st century’s new liturgical focal point – TV) and do came to be more or less fixed with C though in some cases do remains movable.

So, now you know where Doh, Re, Mi comes from!  Check out this oldie PODCAzT from 2007:

036 07-06-24 St. Augustine on John the Baptist; Ut queant laxis

It is also good to gather St. John’s Wort (Hypericum perforatum) on the feast.

“Wort” is from Old English wyrt (German Würze), which means “plant”, but is used mostly in compounds.  Since ancient times “singent’s wort” was known to relieve melancholy or depression, as does borage… which every garden should have.  It would be hung above doors, windows and sacred images (hence the hyper-icum “above image”) to keep witches and evil spirit away.

Burning those witches might have something to do with its effectiveness as well, now that I think about it.

Build a fire tonight, even if you can’t burn a witch, and sing something in honor of St. John!

Oh! And get some snails for tomorrow. It is a Roman custom to eat snails on the Feast of John the Baptist.

And, just in case it has been a while…

In the Church’s traditional calendar St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More have their  feasts on 9 July.  More was martyred on 6 July and Fisher on 22 June.  In the Novus Ordo calendar they are celebrated today, together.

HOWEVER: According to Cum Sanctissima feasts established after 1962 can be observed in the Vetus Ordo so long as some other feast doesn’t “outweigh” it.  Hence, today we can say the Mass in honor of Sts. Thomas More and John Fisher.  For TEXTS see below!

Pope John Paul II in 2000 declared St. Thomas more the patron saint of statesmen and politicians.

More makes you think about our catholic politicians today.   Fisher about our bishops.

Plus ça change…

There is a book about them: John Fisher and Thomas More: Keeping Their Souls While Losing Their Heads by Robert J. Conrad, Jr and published by TAN, which is serious stepping up its game.

US HERE – UK HERE

Two saints for our times if ever there was need, one for comportment in the secular sphere and the other in the Church.

Let us invoke the intercession of St. Thomas and of St. John for our public figures, secular and spiritual.

Animi caussa…

From the 2005 Martyrologium Romanum.

Sanctorum Ioannis Fisher, episcopi, et Thomae More, martyrum, qui, cum Henrico regi Octavo in controversia de eius matrimonio repudiando et de Romani Pontificis primatu restitissent, in Turrem Londinii in Anglia trusi sunt.  Ioannes Fisher, episcopus Roffensis, vir eruditione et dignitate vitae clarissimus, hac die iussu ipsius regis ante carcerem decollatus est; Thomas More vero paterfamilias vita integerrimus et praeses coetus moderatorum nationis, propter fidelitatem erga Ecclesiam catholicam servatam sexta die iulii cum venerabili antistite martyrio coniunctus est.

Anyone care to take a shot?

NOTA BENE FATHERS!

Mass texts in the Extraordinary Form for these two saints on 9 July are not easy to find.   HERE  and HERE

Huge thanks for the texts from my good friend, His Hermeneuticalness, Fr. Tim Finigan.

Tonight… this great classic?

US HERE – UK HERE

Please remember me when shopping online and use my affiliate links.  US HERE – WHY?  This helps to pay for health insurance, utilities, groceries, and now also my late mother’s place.  At no extra cost, you provide help for which I am grateful.  

10 diacres et 7 prêtres ont été ordonnés par Mgr Bernard Fellay ce 19 juin au séminaire de Dillwyn (États-Unis). pic.twitter.com/Kytx02KoMU

— FSSPX Actualités (@FSSPXFR) June 22, 2026

And also

FSSPX.Actualités : On entend dire que les prochains sacres pourraient créer un schisme. Pourtant certains, au sein de l’Église, considèrent que la FSSPX est déjà schismatique. Comment expliquer cette contradiction ?

Don Davide Pagliarani : La contradiction est réelle et met en… pic.twitter.com/iMe6ywdrp4

— FSSPX Actualités (@FSSPXFR) June 22, 2026

Meanwhile… these guys not only get a pass from the top, they get applause from the top. How does that work, exactly?

Jimmy Martin, Cardinal McElroy and their friends. pic.twitter.com/im5kJJES1R

— Fred Simon (@FredSimonTLM) June 22, 2026

Interim, motus ad lusorem cum militibus albis pertinent. Scaccus mattus, scilicet mors regis, IV in motis veniat.

NB: Detineam explicationes in crastinum, ne vestrae interrumpantur commentationes.

More success for the Church walking together under the leadership of the Windy City.

Allowing this Church, named after Our Lady of Victory from the Battle of Lepanto against the Muslims, to be bought by Muslims and converted into an Islamic center–it makes one's head spin. https://t.co/855a5FkJRr

— Sidge S. Mondo ?? (@Magister_Mondo) June 21, 2026

This…

So, if the alleged problem that TC was meant to solve was that TLMers were behaving like a parallel group not integrated into the life of the Church, how does kicking them out of the parish that they help support and segregating them into the parish gym… https://t.co/vWzs2kwbZh

— Magister Tertius (@BaldwinIVofJer) June 21, 2026

Too many people today are without good, strong preaching, to the detriment of all. Share the good stuff.

Was there a GOOD point made in the sermon you heard at your Mass of obligation for this 3rd Sunday after Pentecost in the Vetus Ordo (11th Ordinary Sunday in the Novus Ordo)?

Tell us about attendance especially for the Traditional Latin Mass.

Any local changes or (hopefully good) news?

A taste of what I offered at 1 Peter 5 this week.  I wrote about the 2nd Sunday after Pentecost but related it to the great feasts nearby.

[…]

As an aside, about the ordering of creation, it has been proposed that everything that moves has its angel to guide it.  Everything that moves?  Earth, water, air, organic material of whatever kind, down into to molecules, atoms, quarks, leptons, bosons, spinons.  Now expand out into the cosmos unto galaxies made up of the same and then clusters of galaxies. There are angels that guide everything that moves? That’s a lot of angels. A third fell. That’s a lot of enemies. Don’t invoke spirits of this or that. You might get more than you bargained for.   There pops into mind Francis and Pachamama and when in Canada in a ceremony with a shaman spirits (demons) were summoned.

Be careful about what you ask for.  Once thee show up, being legalists, they claim the right to stick to you.

[…]

Holy Mass today is for my benefactors. I am so grateful.

You see the image of Mary? It is in the Church of San Carlo ai Catinari. But San Carlo has been closed for years. More on that later.

Remember this when Rome declares that the bishops of the SSPX are excommunicated.

The fruits of Vatican II ? pic.twitter.com/ziinHci7xR

— Chris ?? ?? (@FreeIrishman7) June 20, 2026

No, that’s not gay at all.

I think this weirdo is in the Diocese of Venice.

Meanwhile, the Bishops of Owensboro and of Camden have stomped on the faithful who want the TLM.

White to move. Mate in 4.

NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t be “spoilers” for others.