It is amazing to contemplate the contrast of the lying in state of the late President, the Honorable Gerald Ford with the demise of the late … Saddam Hussein.
SHOPPING ONLINE? Please, come here first!
Fr. Z’s Podcasts RSS Feed
About this blog…
“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
Coat of Arms by D Burkart
MASS INTENTIONS
I'm taking Mass intentions right now. Also, I regularly say Mass for my regular benefactors and special Roman Sojourn Donors. HERE for the form I use.YOUR RECENT COMMENTS
Fr. John Zuhlsdorf on Daily Rome Shot 1241 – a lucky man: “[NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t be “spoilers” for others.] In Germany, the…”
donato2 on Daily Rome Shot 1240: “The Rome picture looks like the Italian version of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks.”
Lurker 59 on VIDEO: Can a bishop forbid Communion at a Communion rail? A canonist responds.: “Many people, myself included, have bad knees. There is a certain cruelty in having us kneel on hard marble floors…”
Charivari Rob on Daily Rome Shot 1240: “Looks like a pretty good meal, Father. There is nothing like finding the good stuff done right. We visited one…”
Bthompson on VIDEO: Can a bishop forbid Communion at a Communion rail? A canonist responds.: “There is an odd critical mass of late of bishops aggressively insisting on the American indult for standing and in…”
monstrance on VIDEO: Can a bishop forbid Communion at a Communion rail? A canonist responds.: “Chiara, It’s good to hear things are well on the North Coast. But… How we receive Communion is a Vital…”
mrs wu on Daily Rome Shot 1240: “It isn’t quite as far as Venus, but there’s a place in Montana with Chinese food. I won’t recommend the…”
JPA on VIDEO: Can a bishop forbid Communion at a Communion rail? A canonist responds.: ““Monstarnce’s” response brings up a question. Faced with the situation of having to choose receiving communion from the priest while…”
NavyVet on VIDEO: Can a bishop forbid Communion at a Communion rail? A canonist responds.: “@Chiara Without making a judgement about any particular priest or bishop, we must remember Christ warned us that there will…”
karmato on Daily Rome Shot 1240: “After several posts and all the photos over the past few years re: Chinese Food in Queens…. I am tempted…”
acardnal on Has anyone had a problem with the “combox” form?: “I was unable to post a comment several days ago.”
Fr. John Zuhlsdorf on Daily Rome Shot 1240: “Black to mate in 4. [NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t be “spoilers”…”
Chiara on VIDEO: Can a bishop forbid Communion at a Communion rail? A canonist responds.: “I *really* do not understand why Cardinal Cupich, et. al., are making such an issue of people kneeling for Communion,…”
JustaSinner on VIDEO: Can a bishop forbid Communion at a Communion rail? A canonist responds.: “Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute… So Nancy Pelosi, spreader of lies against Catholic Orthodoxy and creator…”
ABORTION PILL RESCUE NETWORK
- 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
Federated Computer… your safe and private alternative to big biz corporations that hate us while taking our money and mining our data. Have an online presence large or small? Catholic DIOCESE? Cottage industry? See what Federated has to offer. Save money and gain peace of mind.
I am an affiliate. Click and join or at least explore! If you join, I’ll get credit.
“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.”
- Prosper of Aquitaine (+c.455), De gratia Dei et libero arbitrio contra Collatorem 22.61
Do you want to show some appreciation?
Polls
Loading ...
Your support is important. Thanks in advance.
To donate monthly I prefer Zelle because it doesn't extract fees. Use
frz AT wdtprs DOT comDonate using VENMO
GREAT BEER from Traditional Benedictine Monks in Italy
CLICK and say your daily offerings!
NEW OPPORTUNITY – 10% off with code: FATHERZ10
Fr. Z’s VOICEMAIL
Nota bene: I do not answer these numbers or this Skype address. You won't get me "live". I check for messages regularly.
WDTPRS
020 8133 4535
651-447-6265Good coffee and tea. Help monks.
I use this when I travel both in these USA and abroad. Very useful. Fast enough for Zoom. I connect my DMR (ham radio) through it. If you use my link, they give me more data. A GREAT back up.
Help support Fr. Z’s Gospel of Life work at no cost to you. Do you need a Real Estate Agent? Calling these people is the FIRST thing you should do!
Don’t rely on popes, bishops and priests.
“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.”- Fulton Sheen
Therefore, ACTIVATE YOUR CONFIRMATION and get to work!
Send Snail Mail to Fr. Z
Fr John Zuhlsdorf
Tridentine Mass Society of Madison
733 Struck St.
PO BOX 44603
Madison, WI 53744-4603
For email HERE
- “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
This blog has to earn its keep!
PLEASE subscribe via PayPal if it is useful. Zelle and Wise are better, but PayPal is convenient.
A monthly subscription donation means I have steady income I can plan on. I put you my list of benefactors for whom I pray and for whom I often say Holy Mass.
In view of the rapidly changing challenges I now face, I would like to add more $10/month subscribers. Will you please help?
For a one time donation...
To donate monthly I prefer Zelle because it doesn't extract fees. Use
frz AT wdtprs DOT comAs 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
-
Recent Posts
- Daily Rome Shot 1241 – a lucky man
- Daily Rome Shot 1240
- VIDEO: Can a bishop forbid Communion at a Communion rail? A canonist responds.
- Has anyone had a problem with the “combox” form?
- Daily Rome… er um… Catania Shot 1239
- Daily Rome Shot 1238
- PENTIN on “Trump’s Early Decisions Expose Damage Caused by Vatican Complicity With Democrat-Run Globalism”
- ROME DAY 25/01 11: Time to go. My View For A While
- Hey Fathers! How about a clerical Guayabera shirt? (Tariff
- ROME DAY 25/01 10: Last meal out (and a tintinabular explication)
- ROME DAY 25/01 09: 1st meal out
- Notes about the Candlemas procession: the link between the Nativity and the Passion
- A Poetry ‘Encounter’ for Candlemas: “A Song For Simeon” by T.S. Eliot
- Your Sunday Sermon Notes – Candlemas / Purification (N.O. Presentation) 2025
- ROME DAY 25/01 08: Fractal
- St. Ignatius, martyr, and Bl. Ludovica, widow – Beauty, differently manifested
- ROME DAY 25/01 07: A martyr
- Fr. Charron on Mr. Lofton
- ACTION ITEM! 2-10 February – NOVENA to Immaculate Heart for FSSP for their Vatican “Visitation”
- ROME DAY 25/01 06: INTERNET
- “GO TO CONFESSION!” I always say. Another thing I say is that it is CRUEL to leave penitents in doubt.
- ROME DAY 25/01 05: a little discrepancy
- Another point of Catholic identity out with the bathwater?
- But people who want the TLM must be suppressed…
- “I asked the new Chinese AI “DEEPSEEK”, about the priest’s posture during the consecration in the Traditional Latin Mass. It’s Reply….”
- 28 January – SECOND St. Agnes
- ROME DAY 25/01 04: Cringe
- ROME DAY 25/01 03: “You Had ONE Job!”
- ROME DAY 25/01 02: jet lag
- ROME DAY 25/01 01: Home at last
Let us pray…
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.
PLEASE RESPOND. Pretty pleeeease?
Loading ...
WDTPRS POLL
Loading ...
Great WINE USE COUPON CODE: fatherz10
If I have to read another commentator going on about how President Ford’s choices for his funeral are subdued, but how the office of the President demands pomp and circumstance…
If the funeral of John Paul II taught us anything, it is that less truly can be more in terms of majesty.
Very true Jacob. It is often said that one’s funeral should reflect how one lives. But if nothing else, the subtlety of JPII’s funeral in contrast to the public perception of a globe-trotting life revealed the kind of life he lead away from the crowds, that which was, I’d say, the inner John Paul II. I think a funeral should reflect the true person, not the one the public read about.
That said, how exactly would one conduct a funeral for someone like Saddam? That is a question I hadn’t even thought about until just now.
A couple of observations:
1) Pres. Ford’s funeral’s planned dignified simplicity contrasts beautifully with most official memorials not only in its understated manner, but in its personal nature. This is not planned to be a public fairwell to a “great man,” but rather a public farewell to a dedicated public servant, a citizen-leader, a man who had office thrust upon him. Perfect.
2) The contrast between Ford — a politican who was man of basic decency — and Saddam is a good one to draw right now. Ford had a reverent respect for the rule of law, the Constitution of our country, and of the necessary civility that undergirds a democratic republic. His actions as president — his pardoning of Nixon, his appointments, his relationship to the Congress — were all geared to reinforce a sense of lawful continuity within the Republic at a time when the country was coming close to unraveling over Vietnam and Watergate. While there is much to disagree with when it came to some of Ford’s decisions (personally, I think his appointment of John Paul Stevens to the Supreme Court was a disaster), his intentions in his public life were always for the common good of the nation. He also had a fundamental decency about him — an ability to disagree without being disagreeable, a capacity to see in his political opponents a common love of the nation, a great love for his family. All of these traits combined to make that “accidental president” one of the great leaders of our country. In a very real way, Pres. Ford deserves to rank with the great leaders of our nation — not quite in the Washington/Lincoln league, but centainly above men like Webster, Clay, FDR, Teddy Roosevelt, and even my personal favorite among our former leaders, Ronald Reagan.
In a very real way, Pres. Ford deserves to rank with the great leaders of our nationâ€â€not quite in the Washington/Lincoln league, but centainly above men like Webster, Clay, FDR, Teddy Roosevelt, and even my personal favorite among our former leaders, Ronald Reagan.
I think TR was the best President of the 20th century. Not only were there were extraordinary achievements during his Presidency, but he was also a man of considerable personal accomplishment. He wrote a multi-volume history of the West, and was also was well known as a naturalist.
He is also, I think, the only one ever to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and the Congressional Medal of Honor (posthumously).
Gerald Ford was MOR, a man who settled things down and got inflation under control.
Yes, TR was a great president and a man of substantial accomplishments both in war and in peace. But did he undertake significant action to save the Republic? There are only a handful of presidents who have stood up during times of crisis for our nation and kept the Union from fragmenting or morphing into something unrecognizeable as a constitutional Republic. Washington was one such man, providing a model for all other presidents in our history to follow. Lincoln was such a man, preserving the Union and guaranteeing the surviving of the idea of a democratic republic. Arguably, both FDR and Reagan also served similar roles, helping to guide the Union through economic crisis at home and foreign challeges posed by totalitarian ideologies. Ford also served in such a role, helping to reinforce constitutional government in the wake of Watergrate, which itself was simply the culmination of executive abuses that reached back into the Kennedy administration (it was Kennedy, for example, who installed the White House taping system). Ford definitely belongs among the handful of our presidents who have not simply served our country but preserved it in times of crisis.
TR, for all his character, for all his endeavors, for all of his vision, simply did not live during a time of severe crisis for the country. He met challenges, of course, as all of our leaders do — but the very continuance of the country’s constitutional order was not one the line during his administration. It was during the administrations of Washington and Lincoln. And it was during Ford’s administration. And Ford, for all of his many faults and political weaknesses, rose to the challenge of re-asserting the primacy of our constitutional order in guaranteeing that our nation would be a nation, as he put it, “of laws and not of men.” For all his errors and mistakes, for all his flubbed appointments and gaffes during debates, for every stumble he ever took down the stairs, he still stands as a great president because when push came to shove, he got the most important thing right — he exercised his office with a fervent devotion to the Constitution of the United States and the principles (if not, unfortunately, the practice) of limited government and liberty under the law. And he did so at a time when those principles and our constitutional order were under assault, were endangered, and were hanging by a thread.
This is yet another reason why the neocons are just wild about Teddy.
September 1, 2006
http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo106.html
Ford did a good job in certain ways. He settled things down and got inflation under control. On the other hand, the economy was in serious recession during his WH years.
Presidents come and go; none are indispensible (though some might think they are). Some die in office, some serve out their terms, some are defeated in the election to return to the WH, and one resigned. Not only is political power spread out in American government, but the system is built to let succession happen with a new Congress or a new President.
Further, with a two party system the opposition is always trying to remove the majority party from power. Mostly, it is done with elections, but in this case it was done differently. Had the Dems not controlled Congress, there would have been no resignation. Likewise, Clinton’s impeachment wouldn’t have happened had the Repubs not controlled Congress.
And so I think the “crisis” was largely the consequence of adrenalin addicted TV news media with an itchy trigger finger on the CRISIS graphic.
[i]Le roi e mort. Vive le roi.[/i]
[b]This is yet another reason why the neocons are just wild about Teddy.
September 1, 2006
http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo106.html%5B/b%5D
It seems to me that the Presidency attracts prima donnas, and TR, like Churchill, was a 33rd degree pd.
But unlike neo-cons TR never got his country into a mess like Iraq. Further, he put the US at the center of its own foreign policy–there is no reason to think that he would have ransomed our Middle Eastern policy for the security of Israel.