@Pontifex
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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
Fr. Z’s Podcasts RSS Feed
- 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
Recent Comments
- WVC on Your Sunday Sermon Notes – Passion Sunday, 5th in/of Lent 2026 – POLL about veils: “All statues and images covered.”
- JSzczuka on Your Sunday Sermon Notes – Passion Sunday, 5th in/of Lent 2026 – POLL about veils: “All statues were covered except one large pieta. We have a lot of statues! Father said it took 2 people…”
- EAW on Your Sunday Sermon Notes – Passion Sunday, 5th in/of Lent 2026 – POLL about veils: “The poll doesn’t work. All statues and images that could be covered were covered.”
- Suburbanbanshee on Your Sunday Sermon Notes – Passion Sunday, 5th in/of Lent 2026 – POLL about veils: “I can’t access the poll, either, but everything at church was covered.”
- Philliesgirl on Your Sunday Sermon Notes – Passion Sunday, 5th in/of Lent 2026 – POLL about veils: “Our deacon gave the sermon today. He started by talking about the precepts of the Church. Go to Mass on…”
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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.”
- Prosper of Aquitaine (+c.455), De gratia Dei et libero arbitrio contra Collatorem 22.61
Do you want to show some appreciation?
Polls
Will you be a "Custos Traditionis" and commit to a DAILY 'Memorare' and WEEKLY penance?
- YES! (66%, 1,905 Votes)
- YES! And I will recruit others! (34%, 974 Votes)
Total Voters: 2,879
ABORTION PILL RESCUE NETWORK
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
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CLICK and say your daily offerings!
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
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Recent Posts
- LENTCAzT 2026 – 34: Monday in Passiontide – Ancient v. Modern Views
- Your Sunday Sermon Notes – Passion Sunday, 5th in/of Lent 2026 – POLL about veils
- ASK FATHER: John 8:55
- I love this story and it makes me sad
- LENTCAzT 2026 – 33: 1st Passion Sunday (5th Lent) – “Christ entered once into the Holies…”
- WDTPRS – 5th Sunday of Lent: The Church, liturgically dying
- LENTCAzT 2026 – 32: Saturday 4th Week in Lent – Approaching Passiontide
- LENTCAzT 2026 – 31: Friday 4th Week in Lent – The 3rd Station
- Ite ad Ioseph… Go to Joseph!
- LENTCAzT 2026 – 30: Thursday 4th Week in Lent – St. Joseph
- Daily Rome Shot 1569
- In the ancient Roman Church today, Wednesday “in mediana” was a big day for catechumens.
- (no title)
- LENTCAzT 2026 – 29: Wednesday 4th Week in Lent – Purity and Mud
- SSPX in Italy sent a book all Italian Bishops about the upcoming consecrations
- Daily Rome Shot 1568
- LENTCAzT 2026 – 28: Tuesday 4th Week in Lent – Mass and Cross
- Daily Rome Shot 1567 – It was worse than we thought
- Such wealth and depth we have in the traditional Roman Rite
- LENTCAzT 2026 – 27: Monday 4th Week in Lent – The truth and you
- Your Sunday Sermon Notes – Laetare Sunday, 4th in/of Lent 2026
- LENTCAzT 2026 – 26: Laetare Sunday, 4th in Lent – The goal
- Daily Rome Shot 1566
- LENTCAzT 2026 – 25: Saturday 3rd Week in Lent – The spirit of prayer
- LENTCAzT 2026 – 24: Friday 3rd Week in Lent – Evangelize with our lives
- “Days in Rome” Project – Easter 2026 and beyond
- HEAR YE! HEAR YE! New from TAN – “The Matins Lectionary: The Complete Readings from the Traditional Roman Breviary”
- LENTCAzT 2026 – 23: Thursday of the 3rd Week in Lent – Feet on the earth, minds in Heaven
- UPDATE on Fr. Z
- Daily Rome Shot 1565
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?
The "sign of peace" during Mass in the Ordinary Form...
- I dread it as it approaches and think of ways to avoid it. (36%, 9,555 Votes)
- I tolerate it. (35%, 9,195 Votes)
- I hate it so much I won't go to Mass where it is done. (12%, 3,205 Votes)
- I like it and am happy to do it. (11%, 2,955 Votes)
- I don't care one way or another. (6%, 1,696 Votes)
Total Voters: 26,606
WDTPRS POLL
Should the Bishops of the USA have us return to obligatory meatless Fridays during the whole year and not just during Lent?
- Yes, and I think this is very important. (81%, 15,546 Votes)
- Yes, I guess so. (9%, 1,716 Votes)
- No, I hesitate about such a move. (5%, 900 Votes)
- No, this would be a really bad idea. (3%, 511 Votes)
- I don't care. (2%, 431 Votes)
- What's penance? (1%, 152 Votes)
Total Voters: 19,255























Umm, about all those cases of Fanta, it’s not that I don’t like it, but, they’re sort of in the way now.
I have a stupid question. How does this Twitter thing work? Is there a number to dial-up or a text number or what? I appreciate the cultural significance, but I don’t text, so I never had the opportunity to use it. I am sooo glad that Twitter did not exist in 1st-century Palestine. The disciples on the road to Emmaus would never have had to run back to tell the disciples. They could have just tweeted and Mary Magdeline, instead of being the, “Apostle to the Apostles,” would have been the, “Tweeter to the Tweets,” or something. How sad would it have been to get a tweet from Jesus after He rose from the dead. Some things are, still, best done in person.
Chicken,
Twitter is “done” by opening an account and then “Tweeting”. This is usually done through an application on a smartphone, cellphone, tablet, or iPod or some such device. It can also be done via your Internet Browser by going to twitter.com – setting up your account and then “going to town” as it were.
If you have an older flip phone or other non-smartphone, you can text through to Twitter via standard text messages.
“Yes, I will keep an eye out for the stacked WDTPRS tweets. What day of the week are they again?”
Yah, unt I know zat you neet to jiggle zee handle on zat toilet in zee Papal Office. Eet ees such an embarrassment durink ad lumina visits.
Ha. thats funny.
Chicken.. if you get on twitter, let us all know your handle so we can follow you.
Chicken,
I believe that it was because of the non-existence of of social media such as Facebook and Twitter, or the internet that Jesus specifically chose women to spread the good news- He wanted it spread ASAP, and knew women had been gifted with such abilities.
“Jesus specifically chose women to spread the good news- He wanted it spread ASAP, and knew women had been gifted with such abilities.
Ah, yes, the gift of gossip…
(I know I’m gonna catch it for that one :) )
The Chicken
P. S. A Chicken tweeting would be a painful thing. Let me just get it over with…
“Got up, this morning. Ate some bird seed. Avoided butcher. Discovered a truly remarkable proof of the Riemann Hypothesis. Takes 141 words.”
For the pedantic in the crowd: 1 math character = 1 word.
LOL – That’s funny!
Masked Chicken: Speaking of getting in trouble, oh, what the heck. I love that Gospel passage because it reports (as the Gospel does so often) how many times the first disciples/Apostles got the message wrong!
Did Mary run back to Peter and say “He rose!” No. Does she run back and say “The tomb is empty!” Not really. Instead she runs back and says “They have taken him and we don’t know they put him!”
Now, of course, “they” had NOT “taken him” and had NOT “laid him” anywhere. Mary looked at the scene, jumped to all of those wrong conclusions, and reported them as if that were the case. But does the Gospel edit that little detail out? No. It reports her words honestly, because that is what happened. It really adds cred to the Gospel, I think, to admit, How often we all get the message of Christ wrong.
Now, back to jokes:
On second thought, let’s leave the Fanta there, and folks who want one can can ante up a euro. The free lunch ain’t free anymore.
Dear @Chicken,
Discovered a truly remarkable proof of the Riemann Hypothesis
for which, nevertheless, the wall of the henhouse is too small, I guess?
Francis – feed my cats !
B16: The password is: Popes’R’us.
The password is: Be Sure To Drink Your Ovaltine
LOL
Ach! You sank mein Battleship!
And now a Pope Francis one:
Beeshop to Queen’s Four.
Wow, this thread could not have been times much better. Just got my first tweet from the Holy Father @Pontifex. It says, “God loves us. We must not be afraid to love him. The faith is professed with the lips and with the heart, through works and through love.”
Pope Francis: Right – it’s time to open the picnic basket.