Here is the text of Fr. Jenkin’s introduction of Pres. Obama at the commencement ceremony on Sunday 17 May. This introduction sounds oh so right, in a gooey sort of way, but it is oh so wrong in many others. … Read More →
From one of my articles in The Wanderer: Bl. Abbot Columba Marmion, OSB (+1923), wrote in Christ in His Mysteries that “of all the feasts of Our Lord … the Ascension is the greatest, because it is the supreme glorification … Read More →
From the site Rinascimento Sacro … this is great, even if you don’t understand Italian. A little boy named "Beniamino", an altar boy, received his 1st Holy Communion. [youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3wBYs2hun0]
This weekend I zoomed to help sick priest who called me a plea for help. In I came for some innings of relief pitching: the Sunday Masses. After the Sunday Masses, in casual conversation, I found three alumni of Notre … Read More →
I urge all priests and bishops who read this blog with any slight quaver of resonance or benevolence, to consider this with care:
If you sense that something quite serious and important is going on right now, for the love of God rethink your approach to how you foster Holy Church’s proper public worship.
Do all in your power and through your influence to foster a worship of God which conforms not to worldly goals – as praiseworthy as they may be in a world still dominated by its dire prince – but rather to the real point of religion: an encounter with mystery.
Our worship must become more and more focused on the one who is Other. Seek what is truly above in your rites and raise people to encounter mystery.
You will be challenged and reviled, blocked and attacked as you do. You will be worn down and afraid under the weight of resistance.
But I think that to save the world we must save the liturgy.
Sunday reaffirmed this for me.
They can’t compete with the fullness of Catholic liturgy and sound preaching.
Reforming the liturgy along the lines Pope Benedict has proposed may be the most loving and effective option we have in these ever hotter times.
People will have to keep working very much in the sphere of the secular. Of course! Our inward Catholic Christian identity must find outward expression and bring concrete fruits.
But I think the real work now – where we will make some effective headway – must be done at the level of our public worship.
In the present circumstances, we are not going to argue most people out of danger or error. But together we can draw them in and along and back through worship.
So long as we remain doctrinally faithful and active in works of mercy both spiritual and especially temporal, if we get our public worship together we will have a strong bastion against error.
Holy Catholic worship will be an attractive force for conversion.
We need to foster worship which stuns, which leaves the newcomer, long-time practicing Catholic, above all the fallen-away simply thunder stuck. Worship must at some point leave people speechless in awe. We need language and music and gesture which in its beauty floods the mind with light even while it swells the heart to bursting.
The more people encounter mystery through liturgy, the more hollow will clang the false or incomplete messages of those who have strayed from the good path, either to the left or to the right.
Our goal must be that which is good and beautiful because it is true, that which reflects what is of God, not man’s image merely. Give us mystery, not fabrications smacking of the world, fallen and transitory.
Fathers, and you Reverend Bishops, if anything of alarm has sounded in your hearts and minds of late, rethink your approach to our worship. Examine your approach with an eye on the signs of the times. Take a new approach.
The approach we have had least last few decades isn’t getting it done. Really … it isn’t
Going neither left nor right along the road toward the Lord, even as He comes to us, take the flock now deeper, now higher on that path, but always to encounter the mystery which distinguishes truly Catholic liturgy… and therefore true Catholics.
Lines are being drawn, sides taken, choices made.
More than ever we need what Christ, the true Actor of our liturgy, desires to offer us through Holy Church’s worship. Read More →
If anyone has a transcript of Fr. Jenkin’s address, please send it or a link. By e-mail, please. I have a transcript of Pres. Obama’s speech. I watched it and I am thinking about it.
Posted inSESSIUNCULA| Comments Off on Transcript of Fr. Jenkin’s address
I watched my recording of the President’s speech at Notre Dame. I am pondering it. My initial reaction is one of discouragement. I am still formulating my questions and answers.
Posted inSESSIUNCULA| Comments Off on Pondering the Notre Dame Commencement
The 6th Sunday of Easter – COLLECT – 2002MR (adapted from a 2001 article) COLLECT: (2002MR): Fac nos, omnipotens Deus, hos laetitiae dies, quos in honorem Domini resurgentis exsequimur, affectu sedulo celebrare, ut quod recordatione percurrimus semper in opere teneamus. … Read More →
I saw a very interesting bird yesterday evening. As I was out walking about, I spied a very large white bird on a high tree limb. I drew closer and shot this. This doesn’t give you a sense of the … Read More →
I will say Holy Mass at the time of President Obama’s appearance at Notre Dame, in reparation for Notre Dame’s decision to bestow an honor on this aggressively pro-abortion public figure. No matter where you are, please join your minds … Read More →
From CNA. My emphases and comments. Archbishop Wuerl calls on Catholic institutions to act in ‘practical solidarity’ with bishops Washington D.C., May 16, 2009 / 01:12 am (CNA).- Encouraging Catholic universities and other institutions to act within the structure of … Read More →
Don’t look at these last minute statements of bishops against the decision of Notre Dame as merely "jumping on the bandwagon" or getting in "under the wire". There is something to timing. It is good to have some bishops continuing … Read More →
Read the statements of His Excellency Archbp. Robert Carlson and His Excellency Bp. Trautman. Bp. Trautman is an old and skilled warrior of the USCCB, its deliberations and processes. Archbp. Carlson has finally arrived in a position of real influence … Read More →
WDTPRS has been hard on the liturgical translation views His Excellent Most Rev. Donald W. Trautman, Bishop of Erie. Here is his statement on the scandal at Notre Dame. It is posted on the site of the Diocese of Erie. … Read More →
From the the site stltoday.com Carlson assails school’s plan to honor Obama By Tim TownsendST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH05/15/2009 SAGINAW, MICH. — St. Louis Archbishop-elect Robert Carlson said the University of Notre Dame’s decision to honor President Barack Obama this weekend puts … Read More →
Fascinating post on the blog In The Footsteps of Joseph Rock about a Catholic Church in western China on the Tibet/China border. Great photos and interesting story.
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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
Marcus der mit dem C on ROME 24/4– Day 40 (-1): Final restaurant review… for now: “Medals: most right is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benemerenti_medal most left is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pro_Ecclesia_et_Pontifice 3rd from left is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_St._Gregory_the_Great center is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_St._Sylvester”
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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Books which you must have.
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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.
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.
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