You might want to check out The Catholic Herald, the UK’s best Catholic newpaper, and its take on Pope Benedict’s apostolic journey to the USA.
SHOPPING ONLINE? Please, come here first!
Your support is important. Thanks in advance.
To donate monthly via Continue To Give use your phone's camera to activate the Q code or text 4827563 to 715-803-4772 (US) for a link.
For Zelle and Chase, etc., use
frz AT wdtprs DOT com.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
Wonderful about St. Joseph! “Terror of Demons”
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
Polls
Loading ...
Daily Quiz
Donate using VENMO
GREAT BEER from Traditional Benedictine Monks in Italy
CLICK and say your daily offerings!
Do you want to show some appreciation?
Do you have a faithful Catholic website that needs competent and reliable tech support?
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
651-447-6265YOUR RECENT COMMENTS
Fr. John Zuhlsdorf on Daily Rome Shot 650: “White to move. Where does black’s King go? 1. Nc5 Yeah… pretty strong.”
Fr. John Zuhlsdorf on Daily Rome Shot 648 & Pre-Lent is coming: “White sure looks safe. But is there a weakness? Black to move. 1. … Nxg2 2. Kxg2 Qf3+ 3. Kg1…”
roma247 on These folks could teach Moray eels a thing or two about slippery twisting. (Yes, this features a Jesuit.): ““Shall we ask your cousin the reason of this?” said Elizabeth, still addressing Colonel Fitzwilliam. “Shall we ask him why…”
timothyturtle on Crisis: Will today’s shepherds provoke a schism as they have in the past?: “My wife and I spent 19 years since our conversion working at our local parish trying to improve the beauty…”
Mama Jean on Sign posted on confessional door: “GET TO THE POINT!” Wherein Fr. Z rants.: “Speaking of Confession, this is the most amazing testimony! So honest and from the heart. Esp. loved the part he…”
Dicop on Sign posted on confessional door: “GET TO THE POINT!” Wherein Fr. Z rants.: “In Henry Morton Robinson’s “The Cardinal”, young Father Fermoyle discovers “women were more apt to extenuate their offenses than the…”
Archlaic on These folks could teach Moray eels a thing or two about slippery twisting. (Yes, this features a Jesuit.): “Looks like the odd photo accompanying the even odder article was taken during the “Great ShutUp” which occurred in the…”
Gaetano on These folks could teach Moray eels a thing or two about slippery twisting. (Yes, this features a Jesuit.): “Reeses’ claim that people today don’t know Thomistic philosophy is disingenuous. Every systematic theology rests upon a philosophical system that…”
Grabski on Crisis: Will today’s shepherds provoke a schism as they have in the past?: “Scranton PA Bishop Hoban’s prejudice led to the formation of the Polish National Catholic Church and Lithuanian NCC”
JonPatrick on These folks could teach Moray eels a thing or two about slippery twisting. (Yes, this features a Jesuit.): “There seems to be this strange concept among Modernists in the Church that we are oh so different from the…”
tzabiega on Sign posted on confessional door: “GET TO THE POINT!” Wherein Fr. Z rants.: “I completely agree with this priest and his sign if he confesses people more than on Saturday afternoon (then the…”
bsjy on These folks could teach Moray eels a thing or two about slippery twisting. (Yes, this features a Jesuit.): “Is the man an Occamian nominalist? We might be on to something here.”
grateful on Crisis: Will today’s shepherds provoke a schism as they have in the past?: “They just don’t feel as strongly about it as you do. They have no idea about what they are missing.…”
Benedict Joseph on These folks could teach Moray eels a thing or two about slippery twisting. (Yes, this features a Jesuit.): “The hubris is obscene but to be expected. Tom Reese, Jim Martin, Marko Rupnik and legion of other Jesuits each…”
Kathleen10 on These folks could teach Moray eels a thing or two about slippery twisting. (Yes, this features a Jesuit.): ““So, first, forget transubstantiation. Better to admit that Christ’s presence in the Eucharist is an unexplainable mystery that our (your)…”
Books which you must have.
This REALLY helps! And it’s great coffee (and tea)
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.
Get ready…
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.
That way I have steady income I can plan on, and you wind up regularly on my list of benefactors for whom I pray and for whom I periodically 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...
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
-
Recent Posts
- Daily Rome Shot 651
- “Days in Rome” Project – April/May 2023
- These folks could teach Moray eels a thing or two about slippery twisting. (Yes, this features a Jesuit.)
- Crisis: Will today’s shepherds provoke a schism as they have in the past?
- Daily Rome Shot 650
- Sign posted on confessional door: “GET TO THE POINT!” Wherein Fr. Z rants.
- Daily Rome Shot 649
- Fr. John Hollowell’s brain tumor was miraculously healed at Lourdes.
- Items of good news and an ACTION ITEM!
- ASK FATHER: I just learned we have to confess mortal sins in kind and NUMBER. But I haven’t been doing that. I don’t want to go to Hell.
- Daily Rome Shot 648 & Pre-Lent is coming
- If Vatican II was supposed to usher in a new “springtime”…
- WDTPRS – 4th Sunday after Epiphany: YOU, weary foot soldier of the Church Militant
- Your Sunday Sermon Notes – 4th Sunday after Epiphany (N.O.: 4th Ord) 2023
- Daily Rome Shot 648 and another “Emeritus”
- The Exorcist Files. Podcasts about real cases.
- Daily Rome Shot 647
- Benedict XVI said that he abdicated because of insomnia
- Fr Z’s Kitchen: Hardwear and soft-fare.
- Daily Rome Shot 646 with Friday appropriate fare
- Responses to Card. McElroy’s essay in Jesuit-run Amerika
- Daily Rome Shot 645 and an Action Item!
- ASK FATHER: How do you argue with extreme fringe trads that the Novus Ordo is valid?
- Daily Rome Shot 645 – Obsculta, O fili, praecepta magistri!
- Daily Rome Shot 644 with overload
- You might be able to improve the preaching in your parish and change a priest’s life. Wherein Fr. Z suggests.
- Daily Rome Shot 643 & inspirational video
- ASK FATHER: Am I cooperating with evil in my job by changing generic “he” on forms to gender neutral terms?
- Daily Rome Shot 642
- 3rd Sunday after Epiphany: “‘Vengeance is YOURS’, saith the Lord!” No… wait… that’s not how it goes. CROSS-POSTED
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.
Be a “Zed-Head”!
CHALLENGE COINS!
My "challenge coin" for my 25th anniversary of ordination in 2016.
Want one? I do exchanges with military and LEOs, etc.
PLEASE RESPOND. Pretty pleeeease?
Loading ...
This is really useful when travelling… and also when you aren’t and you need backup internet NOW! I use this for my DMR “Zednet” hotspot when I’m mobile. It’s a ham radio thing.
If you travel internationally, this is a super useful gizmo for your mobile internet data. I use one. If you get one through my link, I get data rewards.
Please use my links when shopping! I depend on your help.
WDTPRS POLL
Loading ...
Fr. Z’s stuff is everywhere
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!
GREAT causes to support
Benedict XVI can not even mandate to put the altar rails back into churches to let people kneel and receive communion on the tongue without having to say Amen before putting the tongue out.
The Herald ahve a link concerning the music at the Mass and the link brings me to back to your website Father and isplays the folowing:
??????????, ?? ???? ???????, ????? ?? ????????? ?? ?????? ????????!
Any idea what that menas?
With regard to yesterday’s papal Mass, I can’t help but be reminded of Sr. Lucia’s comment regarding the 3rd Secret when asked if it(the secret) was good or bad. She replied that it was good for some and bad for others. Yesterday’s Mass was good for me. It further confirmed me in my love for, and adherence to the Tridentine Mass as the form of Catholic worship pleasing to God, a thoroughly vertical, God-centered form of worship.
The same Mass will be “bad” for others – for those who have lost their Catholic ethos. They continue on the road to perdition.
God bless you, Tom. I enjoy reading your comments.
hmm that didn’t display properly for some reason here is the link to the page:
https://wdtprs.com/2008/04/blogs-i-look-at-react-to-the-washington-dc-mass/
From there I found this link to a little FAQ on Papal vestments:
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/posted/archive/2008/04/17/fashion-file-pope-style.aspx
Father Zuhlsdorf, if you could direct us to any in depth coverage of the Pontiff’s meeting with Catholic educators, it would be appreciated. That coverage is getting lost as the secular press leads with “the abuse angle” every day.
Thanks for your great work in pulling together so many good articles on the trip thus far.
Yesterday’s Papal Mass demonstrated is that the Latin Church, not only in the United States, is simply not ready to return to Her great Roman liturgical tradition.
That is the case even if the New York Papal liturgies prove, at least musically, superior to yesterday’s liturgical debacle at Nationals Stadium.
Many conservatives bloggers and posters yesterday absolved Pope Benedict XVI and Monsignor Guido Marini from any degree of responsibility for the Papal Mass debacle.
The fact is that nobody dictates to the Pope. When he wishes to promote his ecumenical vision for the Church, he does so in grand fashion (as did Pope John Paul II).
When Pope Benedict XVI wishes to promote his interreligious vision for the Church, he prays publicly in mosques and synagogues.
The Holy Father could easily have promoted his liturgical vision for the Church by having insisted that his Nationals Stadium Papal Mass would be offered in accordance to his teachings.
We know, particularly as the result of yesterday’s Mass, that the Latin Church in the United States is not remotely ready to restore liturgical sanity and beauty to our parishes.
Yes…here and there parishes will offer fairly traditional Novus Ordo Masses.
But yesterday’s Papal Mass demonstrated beyond doubt that by and large, it will be liturgical business as usual for the “American Church.”
Even more upsetting is that Pope Benedict XVI refused yesterday to promote yesterday his liturgical vision for the Latin Church.
Therefore, the Pope demonstrated that he is willing to tolerate liturgical business as usual regarding the Novus Ordo.
Yes…His Holiness’ New York Masses may prove superior to yesterday’s Papal Mass, at least regarding musical selections.
But we are left with the Nationals Stadium Papal Mass, which many American bishops, priests, and laymen will point to as being perfectly acceptable liturgy.
The “American Church” will be able to declare…”that style of Mass was good enough for the Pope…therefore, that style of Mass is good enough for us.”
Again…no matter how “traditional” the New York Papal Masses may be, the “American Church” diocesan and parish types who, in reality, control the Mass in America, will be able to point to the Washington Papal Mass as being “good enough for the Pope…good enough for us.”
The unfortunate reality is that the Latin Church, at least in America, is simply not ready as a whole to return to liturgical sanity.
Traditional Latin Mass communities will prosper in America. A relatively few parishes will offer decent Novus Ordo liturgy.
But by and large, it will be liturgical business as usual in America…and the Latin Church in the United States will remain in Her state of liturgical collapse.
We must pray that Pope Benedict XVI returns to the Traditional Latin Mass — the Mass that he was ordained to offer.
We must pray that the Holy Father promotes the Traditional Latin Mass to the hilt — most powerfully so by offering the TLM publicly.
Pax.
Martha wrote: “With regard to yesterday’s papal Mass…It further confirmed me in my love for, and adherence to the Tridentine Mass as the form of Catholic worship pleasing to God, a thoroughly vertical, God-centered form of worship.”
What wonderful remarks by Martha.
Certain conservative bloggers attacked Traditional Catholics yesterday when they claimed that Tradtionalists supposedly had a grand time bashing the Novus Ordo.
I read Martha’s post and find that the claim in question is ridiculous.
Martha, and her brothers and sisters who love the Traditional Latin Mass, understand that the TLM is fully God-centered…it’s vertical worship…God is always front and center at the TLM.
What transpired during yesterday’s Papal Mass could not possibly have transpired had the Traditional Latin Mass been offered at Nationals Stadium in place of the Novus Ordo.
Martha understands why the TLM is vital to Catholics and the life of Holy Mother Church.
Frankly, based upon their remarks yesterday, many conservative bloggers do not understand why the Traditional Latin Mass is, compared to the Novus Ordo, the superior Mass.
Conservatives yesterday fired at Traditionalists when they stated that the TLM can be “mumbled” by priests.
Nobody said that a priest could not “mumble” through the TLM.
Nobody said that Novus Ordo cannot be offered in proper fashion. The fact is that yesterday’s Papal Mass was offered free of liturgical abuses and in proper fashion by the Holy Father.
But yesterday’s Novus Ordo Papal Mass was a debacle. The watered-down, ecumenically-flavored prayers remained in place.
Communion in the hand remained in place. Nobody knelt to receive Holy Communion.
The Papal Mass was offered properly and in complete adherence to Church teachings…and it was a debacle.
That is the Novus Ordo’s inherent weakness. Even when offered properly, it remains a man-centered Mass.
The men who formed the Novus Ordo constructed the Mass to be man-centered…and that cannot change…even when offered free of liturgical abuses and in proper priestly fashion.
Conversely, as Martha indicated, the Traditional Latin Mass is God-centered worship…and will remain always a God-centered vertical Mass.
That is why the Traditional Latin Mass, compared to the Novus Ordo, is the far superior Mass.
Martha understands that.
I pray that our conservative brothers and sisters in the Faith will grasp the reality that the Novus Ordo can not possibly reinvigorate Catholic identity.
Pax.
Comment by Martha
Our Holy Father desires that Catholics in America reject hedonism.
His Holiness wishes that Catholics in America leaven America’s me-first, look-at-me, man-centered society.
How on earth does the Holy Father expect Catholics in the U.S. to leaven society and reject selfish, hedonistic attitudes when yesterday’s Papal Mass featured preening, look-at-me, hedonistic attitudes?
One aspect regarding yesterday’s Papal Mass debacle that had gone unnoticed is the ecumenical ramifications that the debacle will have with the Eastern Orthodox.
A number of Catholic Churchmen have linked the need to restore sanity and beauty to the Roman Liturgy to ecumenical relations with the Eastern Orthodox.
The idea is that as long as Latin Church liturgy remains in a state of collapse, ecumenical relations with the Eastern Orthodox will remain all but dead in the water.
With the emphasis that the Eastern Orthodox place upon grand liturgy, they will certainly view yesterday’s Papal Mass as an unmistakable sign that the Latin Church is incapable of recovering Her liturgical and even spiritual sanity.
The Papal Mass debacle yesterday sent a clear and extremely unfavorable message to the Eastern Orthodox and could not possibly have advanced ecumenical relations with the East.
That said, imagine what Eastern Catholics must think about yesterday’s Papal Mass.
What a debacle…all the way around.
Tom: What about Catholics who love and attend solely the TLM but at the same time is full of hope and trust in the promises of Christ to his Church? Who also believe that the Holy Father has wisdom and grace given to him by the Holy Spirit as Successor to St Peter? Who believe that as faithful Catholics – dictating to the Holy Father what he has to do (e.g. must ban the NO, publicly rebuke his bishops, etc.), does not demonstrate the humility that the Vicar of Christ demands?
We go on and on about how the Holy Father should stamp his authority. How about we begin with ourselves as self-proclaimed faithful Catholics who swear unswerving fealty and loyalty to the Pope, obedience and total humility before the Supreme Pontiff chosen by God to lead his holy Church?
Many of these comments underscore a point Father Z has made recently: a lot of thoroughly well-meaning dedicated advocates of the Extraordinary Form do it a great disservice by their incessant griping. Chronically bad-tempered people don’t present an interesting and inviting picture to the eyes of Catholics who may never have been to a Mass celebrated in the EF, but who might be open to learning more about it. For Heaven’s sake, smile a little once in a while. If you don’t remember how much worse things were thirty years ago, I do.