ORATIOReminiscere miserationum tuarum, Domine,et famulos tuos aeterna protectione sanctifica,pro quibus Christus, Filius tuus,per suum cruorem instituit paschale mysterium. The rich and enlightening Lewis & Short Dictionary shows that cruor has a precise meaning: "Blood (which flows from a wound), a … Read More →
EXCERPT:
Each year there is recurring set of abuses of the people of God that take place during the Sacred Triduum.
First there is vile abuse of the people through illicit “general absolution”. That will need its own treatment. Second there is the silliness surrounding washing the feet of women during the Mass of Holy Thursday.
Finally tired of the blather about how “sexist” it is to wash only the feet of men, or how “meaningful” it is to wash the feet of females of any age, I figured it was time to give my explanation.
People get pretty emotional about this topic. Any priest who decides actually to obey the Church’s laws finds that he is being fried on the third rail. I know a few priests who have exercised their option not to have the rite at all because some angry women were carping at him about not being treated equally and there was no reasoning with them, no explanations possible.
However, it may also be possible that they really were not able to explain it clearly: they know the truth about this rite, but sometimes in the life of a busy pastor having a sense of something isn’t the same as theological clarity. They wind up unable to put thoughts into clear words.
Here is my explanation. Keep in mind I fully believe that just stating the law of the Church ought to be enough. Read More →
The term “Maunday” or “Maundy” Thursday refers to Christ’s mandate (mandatum) in John 13:34 to His apostles in the service of the Church. It is also called sometimes “Shere” Thursday, perhaps from “shere” indicating “tolerance” and “remedy”, in the sense … Read More →
On the site of Archivum Liturgicum we read: 12 Aprile 2006La Liturgia romana non e’ mai stata abolitaDiverse fonti confermano che domani, Giovedi’ Santo, dovrebbe uscire un importante documento del Papa avente come argomento la validita’ attuale della Liturgia tridentina. … Read More →
EXCERPT:
The words peragere and percipere underscore the intensity with which we ought to participate in the sacred mysteries especially during this Holy Week. The per prefix suggests to us a thoroughness of our participation, the one per leading to the other per through the connect of the ita… ut. The peragere is an invitation to us to participate in the mysteries of Holy Week in a way that is “full, conscious and active”, especially in the interior sense. In this way we can more completely grasp in all senses of that word what the Lord has to offer to us. Read More →
Before an earthquake or volcanic eruption, seismographs pick up tremors. Even in Jurassic Park you do your best to watch for shock tremors in puddles, right? Call them “signs of the times”, if you will. For some weeks now I … Read More →
The great Francis Card. Arinze, who is the titular Cardinal Bishop of the Suburbicarian Diocese of Velletri-Segni, recently (the diocese of the author) gave a speech recently in London, for the efforts of the ordinary their to engage in … Read More →
EXCERPT:
Readers of WDTPRS well remember my explanation of how the document of the Bishop’s Committee on Liturgy called Built of Living Stones intentionally distorted the meaning of the GIRM 299. In spite of the fact that the Congregation for Divine Worship has previously explained to the world how to translate the Latin and clarified that that paragraph did not mean that it was preferable in any way for Mass to be celebrated “facing the people”, but rather concerned only the position of the altar in the sanctuary. I just looked at 299 in the newly released translation. They did not correct their flawed approach. They wrote: “The altar should be built apart from the wall, in such a way that it is possible to walk around it easily and that Mass can be celebrated at it facing the people, which is desirable wherever possible.” This sounds as if the GIRM is saying that it is preferable that Mass is celebrated “facing the people”. The Latin: Altare maius exstruatur a pariete seiunctum, ut facile circumiri et in eo celebratio versus populum peragi possit, quod expedit ubicumque possibile sit. What the Latin really says is something like: “The main altar should be built separated from the wall, which is useful/desirable wherever it is possible, so that it can be easily walked around and a celebration toward the people can be carried out.” The quod expedit refers to the main clause describing the position of the altar, and not Mass must be said. Now thousands of people will have to listen to liturgists and bishops use that paragraph to argue against celebrations ad orientem when the text says nothing of the kind. I suspect that more problems of this kind will emerge. Read More →
Posted inSESSIUNCULA, WDTPRS| Comments Off on Palm Sunday: POST COMMUNION)
EXCERPT:
The really hard phrase in this is pietas actionum. We have on many occasions in the daily Lent series talked about pietas, and how hard it is to get into English, since “piety” just doesn’t sound right to our modern ears. If you are steeped in medieval things, or at least archaic usage of English, and know something of heraldry, you might remember the symbol of the pelican “in her piety”. There is a symbol of Christ and His Church as a pelican who, in time of famine and drought, pierces her own breast with her bill to feed her chicks from her own blood. This sort of piety harks to the sense of pietas as “duty”. This is what she must do for her young. Read More →
EXCERPT:
Returning to the image of the loom, which is woven into today’s vocabulary, I have in mind the incredible phrase from the Book of Job: “My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle, and come to their end without hope. Remember that my life is a breath; my eye will never again see good.”
Our days are indeed like a shuttle. Some years ago I met a women who woven cloth with a large loom. She showed me how it worked. In her practiced hands, the shuttle lashed swiftly back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, while the loom packed the threads together. The cloth “grew” as it was woven, slowly, but surely. But the shuttle snapped back and forth with increasing speed as she found her rhythm and settled into it. Read More →
EXCERPT:
We need clear doctrine, clear prayers, and clear willingness to adhere to them on the part of her duly appointed pastors. Hopefully the ongoing project of preparing a new translation of the Missale Romanum will be a contribution, not an obstacle. Read More →
I am posting this at about "oh dark hundred" and, as it is posted, will be just about ready to catch a couple hours sleep before walking out the door to meet my ride for the airport. I am heading … Read More →
EXCERPT:
My instant reaction to this prayer is rather bittersweet. The Church’s shifting demographics in wealthy countries reveals that, while more people may be identifying themselves as Catholic, the percentage of Catholics going to Mass remains steady or is falling. This means that we are going backward. Also, in European countries which were once Catholic countries, such as Italy, the birth rate is far below replacement rate. Yet “Eur-Arabia” is swiftly muliplying. Contraception and abortion is killing off one dimension of the life of the Church. The forces of the “Prince of this world” prevail in some places. Read More →
An update on Archbishop Marini comes from Archivium Liturgicum. 2 Aprile 2006 Mons. Marini ristabilito da crisi cardiaca Fonti accreditate riferiscono che S.E. Mons. Piero Marini si e’ gia’ ristabilito e domani potra’ essere al fianco del Santo Padre. Which … Read More →
Posted inSESSIUNCULA| Comments Off on UPDATE: Archbp. Marini
In Rome we say, “Morto un papa, se ne fa un altro… one pope dies, so ya make another.” I am so very happy with our new Holy Father. But I do miss John Paul II. Read More →
Posted inSESSIUNCULA| Comments Off on Morto un papa, se ne fa un altro… *sigh*
COLLECT Deus, per cuius ineffabilem gratiam omni benedictione ditamur, praesta nobis ita in novitatem a vetustate transire, ut regni caelestis gloriae praeparemur. Today’s Collect was not in any previous edition of the Missale Romanum. Instead it has its roots in … Read More →
Bishop Slattery of Tulsa has posted a new contribution to his series on liturgical reform of his diocese. This last piece resonated so much with what I have been writing for years that I must share it. You can read … Read More →
EXCERPT:
Taking a page from St. Augustine of Hippo (+430), we the baptized who are the Body of the Mystical Person of Christ, the Church, are on a journey with the Lord, the Head of the Church, toward Jerusalem: the Jerusalem of our own passion and the new Jerusalem of our Resurrection. Christ made this journey so that we could make it and be saved in it. In our liturgy the one, whole Mystical Christ is on a Lenten journey. Each year in Lent Christ, in us, travels that road of the Passion, and we, in Him, travel the road marked out by Holy Mother Church and her duly ordained shepherds. We must unite ourselves in heart, mind and will with the mysteries expressed in the liturgy. Our passion, our road to Jerusalem, is in our examination of conscience and good confessions, our self-denial and works of mercy. Read More →
Another friend has come through with an addition to the growing collection of translations of the "Internet Prayer". Today we bring to you the verion in Kinyambo, one of +120 languages spoken in Tanzania. About 400,000 people speak Kinyambo. The … Read More →
Posted inSESSIUNCULA| Comments Off on UPDATE: INTERNET PRAYER – Kinyambo
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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
ThePapalCount on ROME 24/4– Day 28: bad news and good news: “Fr Z I agree with MaternalView above. The world situation is shaky and a trip to Poland… next to Ukraine…”
adriennep on Faith practice declining far and wide…. except…: “Lori announced massive parish closings, along with the suppression of the Latin Mass in diocese. Sure suicide by cutting off…”
Kathleen10 on ROME 24/4– Day 28: bad news and good news: “I think people have lost confidence in all manner of things, airplane manufacturers, airlines, FAA, government agencies who are supposed…”
maternalView on ROME 24/4– Day 28: bad news and good news: “Perhaps world events are making some nervous international travelers. Personally, I would have loved to go to Poland on a…”
voxborealis on ROME 24/4– Day 28: bad news and good news: “The bit about Claudius thinking that a return to the republic was likely or even possible may take its inspiration…”
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.
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