Fr. Z's Blog

In the course of things, dawn broke over Rome and some confused, angry and misled pilgrims and denizens at 06:32.  During the night, we went off the “daylight savings” here and so we gained back an hour of sleep.   The sunset was therefore also later by the clock, now close again to solar time, at 17:16.

Therefore the Ave Maria for the Curia adjusted to 17:30, but solar Ave Maria was at 17:36.

Today in the Vetus Calendar we celebrated the Feast of Christ the King with its wonderful texts about Our Lord being King of everything meaning also all social entities.

Also on the calendar today are Santi Crispino and Crispiniano of King Henry V fame and the Battle of Agincourt in 1415.  “Today….” you know how it goes!

Welcome registrants:

DavaoDan
Franciscan91

I was out to lunch at the dependable Elle Effe with a couple from the USA.  What they had.

Scottadito.

I’m trying to remember what this was … looks like fusilli… so Pasta Siciliana.  Elle Effe is a Roman/Sicilian venture.   Tell them “don John” sent you.  If you want a white wine, you will not make a mistake with their Catarratto.  If they are out, Leone.

But we tried…. and “santa mucca” it was great.

I love this medievalist’s wicked sense of humor…

Happy Sunday 🙂 https://t.co/zpCdwAUSQz

— MedievalistMatt (@medievalistmatt) October 25, 2026

BTW… I’ve seen a great many things… stupid things… harmful to the Cause posted about what went one and what didn’t go on during the Summorum pilgrimage.  I’ll post about it.  This is just to say, do NOT just go with “oh…they are being so mean to us”.  There’s more to it and involves, frankly, both incompetence and prevarication.   The truth will out.  I’m still gathering the threads.

THIS… is far more important…

Robin Yount walked out to throw the first pitch at the first Brewers World Series game in 44 years, and he was wearing another man’s jacket.

A plaid sport coat. One of Bob Uecker’s actual ones, off the rack in his closet.

Yount is the one who asked.

When he found out he had the first pitch, he went to Brewers broadcaster Lane Grindle and asked whether it would be appropriate to wear a plaid jacket in honor of Ueck. Grindle told him he thought it would be incredible.

Then Grindle went a step further and asked Uecker’s family whether the crew could borrow the real coats.

They said yes right away.

So Yount walked to the mound in Bob Uecker’s jacket. And then on the mound he took it off.

Underneath was a Brewers jersey. Number 19. UECK across the back.

The entire radio crew wore the coats too. Josh Maurer got the one Uecker wore in the Miller Lite commercial with Whitey Ford and John Goodman, which is also the coat he is wearing on the cover of Catcher in the Wry. The engineer, Kent Sommerfeld, wore the one from the commercial Uecker did with John Madden.

Outside the ballpark, people were setting Miller Lite cans down at the foot of the Uecker statue. Ryan Braun got the crowd to shout for Ueck before the game.

Now understand why it had to be Yount.

He played 20 seasons and every single one of them was in Milwaukee. He was the starting shortstop on Opening Day of 1974, at 18 years old, and he did not stop until 1993.

Bob Uecker had been in that radio booth since 1971.

Which means Uecker called every game Robin Yount ever played. All 2,856 of them.

And in 1982, the last time this franchise got here, Yount was the Most Valuable Player in the American League. He hit .414 in that World Series with a home run and six runs batted in.

Milwaukee lost it in seven games.

Yount finished with 3,142 hits, all of them in a Milwaukee uniform, and he won a second Most Valuable Player award in 1989 after a shoulder problem moved him to the outfield. Only two men before him had ever won it at two different positions.

Uecker did not make it to this one. He passed in January of last year at 90 years old, after 54 seasons calling Brewers games, and the team got back to the World Series twenty-one months later. The broadcast booth has his name on it now, which is not the same as having him in it.

Milwaukee beat Tampa Bay 3 to 2.

A man who gave one city his entire playing career walked to the mound carrying the coat of the man who described all of it, took the coat off, and showed everybody whose name he had on his back.

— the Sports ON Tap (@thesportsontap) October 24, 2026

White mates 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.  

From Diane Montagna‘s substack:

Vatican Bars Annual TLM Pilgrimage from Entering St. Peter’s Basilica
According to organizers, the decision was communicated in a letter from the Vatican Secretariat of State.

VATICAN CITY, 23 October 2026 — The Vatican will bar priests, religious and lay faithful participating in the annual Ad Petri Sedem pilgrimage from entering St. Peter’s Basilica on Saturday, Oct. 24, extending restrictions beyond the celebration of the traditional Latin Mass to the pilgrims’ customary gathering for prayer at the tomb of St. Peter.

According to the organizers, the decision was communicated in recent days in a letter from the Vatican Secretariat of State. “Your procession is not allowed to enter into St. Peter’s Basilica,” the letter stated, according to Christian Marquant, the pilgrimage’s chief organizer.

[…]

We’ve heard about various shrine and churches barring SSPX members…. but this isn’t an SSPX venture.

Or… we are all…. SSPX?….now?

Remember: It’s not just that they don’t like the traditional Roman Rite. They don’t like the people who want it.

Sol hodie Romae ortus hora VII et XXVIII minutis, occidit hora XVIII et XX minutis. Campana autem <<Ave Maria>> pulsari debet hora XVIII et XXX minutis, decem minutis post solis occasum, Curia pro Romana.

Sol oritur. Sol occidit. Campanae sonant. Nos interim, miseri temporis viatores, horas minutaque ac secundas numeramus, quasi fugientem diem retinere possimus.

Tempus fugit. Deus aeternus est.

Cum igitur campana vespertina insonuerit, meminerimus nos in tempore vivere, sed ad aeternitatem vocari.

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.  

This…

Finally, an O with an attitude https://t.co/yYeYE9Aquq

— MedievalistMatt (@medievalistmatt) October 23, 2026

“A man content to go to heaven alone will never go to Heaven” – Boethius

What have you done, lately, to help someone get to Heaven?

Today is the feast of St. Severinus Boethius (+525), the author of the Consolation of Philosophy.  He was a pivotal figure at the cusp of late Antiquity and what are called the Middle Ages.

Boethius was a member of an ancient Roman family.  Among his accomplishments were translations and commentaries of Aristotle’s works on logic in Latin along with Euclid’s Elements.  He also wrote on arithmetic, geometry, music, and perhaps astronomy and he coined the term quadrivium (four-fold way), the basis of education for centuries, now revived in a way in homeschool circles (thank you, Dorothy Sayers!).

Boethius was an important figure in the court of Theodoric the Ostrogoth.  Theodoric would eventually come to believe that Boethius was conspiring against him and threw him in prison before executing him.  While he was in prison, he composed the astonishingly influential Consolation of Philosophy.

Here is his entry in the Martyrologium Romanum:

6*. Papiae in Liguria, commemoratio sancti Severini Boetii, martyris, qui, scientia ac scriptis praeclarus, in carcere detentus tractatum scripsit de consolatione philosophiae et Deo usque ad mortem a Theodorico rege inflictam cum integritate servivit.

Who wants to take a crack at the Latin?

Take note that the entry calls him “Saint” Boethius.  So does the official Vatican Curia’s calendar.  He is celebrated as a saint in Pavia.

You may be interested to know that Boethius’ tomb is in the crypt of the same church where St. Augustine’s remains are interred:  San Pietro in Ciel d’oro in Pavia, south of Milan.

Here is Lady Philosophy explaining God to Boethius in the guise of 15th c. France.

It’s too bad that hats are not more in style these days.

I always think of my friend Robert Darwin Crouse on this day.  What a great gentleman and scholar.

On this Feast of St. John Paul II the sunrise over his former See was at 07:28.

The sun set with lovely colors at 18:20.

Ave Maria would have been at 18:30 for the Curia… according their calendar.

Colors. This is the time of year here for lovely light in the evenings.  There is a glow that’s hard to catch with a camera.

Welcome Registrant:

Carolo

I’ve been out a couple of times with friends who are in town, meeting some new priests as well.   Some of the dishes…

This pasta has, clearly, tomato, but also salmon and pistachios.

I went away from the place’s strengths to try something I’ve not had for a while… nope.  Not again.  Cotoletta alla milanese.   Way too breaded and with parmigiana.  Nope nope nope.

Fried anchovies.  Yes yes yes,

Octopus salad

Walking about today I ran into the neighborhood cockatoo, named Coco.

She makes quite a racket when she wants to.

This was across from my realtor where I had an appointment to get my place renewed for a while and pay some utility bills etc.

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.  

Sights in the parish.  We don’t waste anything.

And there’s this…

A bet this was a common request https://t.co/AIqFLL7x5p

— MedievalistMatt (@medievalistmatt) October 22, 2026

Finally

J.R.R Tolkien also translated the Hail Mary, the Our Father and parts of the Litany of Loreto into Elvish. https://t.co/ivVngslPec

— Trad West (@trad_west_) October 22, 2026

White to more. 4.

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

 Each of the “rioni” or districts of Rome have a characteristic fountain put in place in the 1920s. They have some symbol, pertinent to the area, such as this one, which has books for the original site of the Sapienza University and the stag’s head for the Church of St. Eustachio, which saint gives the name to the Rione. The books once has Fascist symbols, later chiseled off.

Welcome Registrant:

magar

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.  

Meanwhile…

Sr Mary Barron has renewed her activism for a female diaconate this week

She told EWTN that:
“women today may hear the call to priesthood.
Some of the great women saints heard that call also.
So for me, it’s how do we within the Church facilitate that discernment?” https://t.co/TcAYScCfeq

— Michael Haynes 🇻🇦 (@MLJHaynes) October 21, 2026

12th Oct 2026

Dear Diary,

Msgr. Tommy told me something the other day about priest morale being pretty low.  I think he’s on to something. Priests don’t laugh like they used to, even when they’re together for something fun like a convocation or a vicariate meeting. Lots of tension. I try being myself with them, but it doesn’t seem to work. I sense the younger guys are rolling their eyes behind my back but, heck, we did that too do back in the day.  But they were those crusty old rigid guys who were in charge. I don’t get it. I’m not like them. Why don’t the new guys like me?

Anyway, had a free evening tonight so I decided I’d think it over and come up with some ideas. Brianstorm!  Nothing really good on the TV.  I made myself a nice stiff manhattan – not as good as Dozer’s, but it did the trick as always.  What can I do to improve priest morale? I came up with some pretty great solutions, if I say so myself.   I’ll have to work out the details before I spring them and how, but here are a few ideas.

1 – I’m going to move EVERYONE! I think some of the issues is that guys have gotten complacent. I’ve let some of them sit in the same place too long. That has to get boring.  I’ve got some ideas about who goes where, starting with retiring McSwiney and putting Tommy at SnT.

2 – Masses are too long. Especially Sunday. Some of these guys are doing like three on Sunday and that adds up to almost maybe three hours?  Work on changes.  How do we get things down to 45 minutes tops?  That’ll make people happy, I’m sure!  Priests esp. Don’t ask Tommy!

3 – I hear there’s a lot of division between the old guys and the young guys, and some of it I don’t understand. Some of the young guys want to say the ad oriental Mass for some reason.  I think it’s because they’re shy and don’t like looking people in the eye.  They grew up on those phones and games. Anyway, I was talking to Bishop Fred, the Episcopalian over at Grace Cathedral and mentioned that. He laughed and said that that was a problem for them some years ago and he had some ideas.  NOTE: Get in touch again.

4 – Guys complain that they have too much administration, and I have to admit, I don’t know if I could do it now. It’s not like when I was a young priest. All these computer programs, and reports, and filing this thing with this department, and that with that one. So, what if I have the diocese take over all the financial stuff in the parishes? Parishes send their collections to us every weekend?  That seems pretty synodwal.

5 – Really important for morale is more syndonality ^synod stuff too.  I know how to look like I’m completely listening and that’ll make the guys feel like their voices are being heard, even if we’ve already come to the right conclusion.

What’s next.   I could do this with a series of decrees, maybe get Dozer’s people to help me to keep it out of the chancery staff.  They’d wanna get involved and they’d leak for sure.  Otherwise, we could have a big convocation, all the priests. I’d tell them my new ideas and then we’ll have some guy – or hey, maybe a gal! – show how modern I am – speak on syndonality ^synod.