COLLECTObservationis huius annua celebritate laetantes,quaesumus, Domine,ut, paschalibus sacramentis inhaerentes,plenis eorum effectibus gaudeamus.Today we have a nice parallel of the forms laetantes and inhaerentes and also of paschalibus sacramentis and plenis effectibus. This was in the Gelasianum Vetus on Saturday of … Read More →
WDTPRS has been sustaining for years now that "active participation" really means "active receptivity". For the most part clerics and liturgists misunderstand this term. I have argued this from documents and from semantic/philological grounds. Today during the Holy Father’s sermon … Read More →
This just in… Chirac ‘shocked’ by use of English at summitUpset French leader bolts EU meeting after Frenchmen switches languagesBRUSSELS, Belgium – President Jacques Chirac said on Friday he had been so shocked to hear a fellow Frenchman speak English … Read More →
There was some biretta confusion this morning. Birettas are to be worn with the center point to the right, so that you can grasp it with the right hand and move the thing. Birettas are always handled with the right … Read More →
This is an amazing photo. The flag of the People’s Republic of China in the Square of St. Peter. I note with satisfaction the similarity of color to that of the cardinalatial habit, symbolizing the williness to shed blood for … Read More →
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During the Public Consistory, His Holiness spoke a homily in Italian. The official text released by the Holy See has this following paragraph. La Parola di Dio, che poc’anzi è stata proclamata, ci porta indietro nel tempo. Con l’evangelista Marco … Read More →
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His Holiness focused in his homily today on the title, "dear to St. Gregory the Great": Servus servorum Dei…. Servant of the servants of God. This is illuminating in light of the fact that Benedict has dropped another title, that … Read More →
EXCERPT:
All good things come from God. When we make the choice to grasp hold of those things, God makes our hands strong enough for the grasping. Together we bring to completion those things He began. So, God crowns His own works in us, so that they are simultaneously His and ours. Read More →
Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog, Ei-I-Ei-I-OOOO! OR, I guess, it should really be EUOUAE I tip my biretta to Argent by the Tiber o{]:¬) for the heads up about a fun new blog redolent of Geoffrey Chaucer called Geoffrey Chaucer … Read More →
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And you can’t even get a cheap drink to dull the pain…. BEIJING, China (Reuters) — China will slap a tax on chopsticks and a range of goods ranging from yachts to petrol in a bid to save trees and … Read More →
EXCERPT:
We are half way into Lent now. At the beginning of Lent the Church began to die to herself liturgically speaking. Elements of the liturgy, in which we can “actively participate” are taken away from us. The Church says that there is to be no instrumental music in Lent, with the exception of sustaining congregational singing. What the Church means is a little organ, not a band, to do so. Flowers and ornaments in church are curtailed. We no longer have the Gloria and Alleluia.
When 1st Passion Sunday would arrive in the older, Roman calendar, the Iudica me was stripped out of the prayers at the foot of the altar. There was no Gloria Patri at ends of antiphons. Statues and images were drapped and hidden from view. Again, the Church is dying to herself and our active participation in the sensory elements of Mass is being reduced.
At the Triduum, we are given a brief flash of glory at the Mass of the Last Supper and then the Blessed Sacrament is hidden away. The altar is stripped entirely. Bells are no longer sounded. Holy Water is removed. On Good Friday we are deprived even of Mass, though we can have Communion and on Holy Saturday we cannot even have Communion. Remember that reception of Holy Communion is the most perfect form of “active participation”. So, it is as if on that day the Church is dead, awaiting the resurrection. At the beginning of the Vigil we are even deprived of light with which to see.
This is, to my mind, what is is in the background of that quanto…tanto construction. Read More →
EXCERPT:
Okay, everyone, I am now waiting for the day when they take the title “Patriarchal” away from the Lateran Basilica, the Pope’s Cathedral as Bishop of Roma and, once upon a time, Patriarch of the West. Read More →
The Internet Prayer project is rolling right along! This week we already posted both Dutch and Maltese. Now we have the great African language Swahili. If you can contribute to the collection, please do! Any language missing from the list … Read More →
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EXCERPT:
Day by day our Lenten observance ought to be a polishing not a torture. Sometimes people make the mistake in the spiritual life of putting themselves on the rack. The rock tumbler is a better model than the rack. Read More →
As a convert to the Catholic Church I am interested in hearing and reading about the conversion experiences of others. Pontifications, to which I tip my biretta, alerted me to one posted on Argent by the Tiber about the writer’s … Read More →
EXCERPT:
Not every celebration of the new Mass is bad, though many are. Not every celebration of the older Mass is perfect, … indeed few are. However, there are fewer differences between them, when celebrated according to the books and with a traditional style in mind, than there are differences between, say, St. Ipsidipsi and St. Idealia just down the street in your town. You can go from church to church in some places and see Masses so different you would think they were all representative of different religions. And this doesn’t even bring into the discussion the fact that Ukrainian Catholics and Maronite Catholics are celebrating in their own particular Rites. Are they somehow less Catholic than Latins just because one group prays one way and another group prays in another? Piffle. Read More →
Folks, a couple friends came through with version of the famous Internet Prayer in both Dutch and Maltese! Kindly say a prayer for each of the them. If you can contribute to the collection, please do! Any language missing from … Read More →
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EXCERPT:
As we think about this prayer, remember that originally it was recited by the priest after Communion, rather than at the beginning of Mass. So, we are praying herewith that the graces and effects of the Communion just received would endure. Fairly soon after this prayer we receive the final blessing, wait for the last Gospel and (for a few decades at least) the Leonine prayers after Mass. Then after a quiet moment of thanksgiving out of church we would go to our work, whatever that might be. Read More →
EXCERPT:
This all has implications for everything which is chosen for the Church’s sacred rites and worship. Proper understanding of active participation as “active receptivity†the perfection of which is reception of Holy Communion in the state of grace, must have an impact on choice of music, placement of choirs, organization of processions, how the reading are handled, use of vestments, organization of the sanctuary, and nearly everything else you can think of about Holy Mass. Read More →
EXCERPT:
“Lord, your Church often seems like a boat about to sink, a boat taking in water on every side. In your field we see more weeds than wheat. The soiled garments and face of your Church throw us into confusion. Yet it is we ourselves who have soiled them! It is we who betray you time and time again, after all our lofty words and grand gestures. Have mercy on your Church; within her too, Adam continues to fall. When we fall, we drag you down to earth, and Satan laughs, for he hopes that you will not be able to rise from that fall; he hopes that being dragged down in the fall of your Church, you will remain prostrate and overpowered. But you will rise again. You stood up, you arose and you can also raise us up. Save and sanctify your Church. Save and sanctify us all.” Read More →
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“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
I'm finishing up a batch of Mass intentions right now. I'll have room in my register for more while I am in Rome. Also, I regularly say Mass for my regular benefactors and special Roman Sojourn Donors. HERE for the form I use.
Everyone, work to get this into your parish bulletins and diocesan papers.
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.”
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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.”
“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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As 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
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.