Do you have some good news for the readership? How are things going with churches where you are? Is COVID Theater diminishing? (Good news, please.)
For my part, I am so very grateful for help I have received from people regarding my packing and moving. I see the light at the end of the tunnel. I am grateful to my benefactors and will say Mass for them again today. I am happy that things are loosing up a bit around here. Yesterday at the grocery store and another shop many people were without masks and they were pretty much grinning at everybody.
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Yesterday, for Corpus Christi, we had a High Mass followed by a procession on the parish grounds and benediction. No masks.
Some of my kids saw the inside of the Food Lion for the first time in over a year. They didn’t wear masks. I didn’t wear a mask. Nobody asked us any questions. At least half if not more of the folks in the Food Lion were not wearing masks, including several employees.
Today, hardly anyone in the Food Lion was wearing a mask.
At our community swimming pool, which just opened for the season, there are no masks, no one taking temperatures, and the stupid little pool dividers are no where to be seen.
Very good news. At least in my neck of the woods most folks are either dropping the sham or rediscovering their sanity.
Cardinal Marx has offered his resignation.
I prevailed on the pastor to give my wife last rites after quite a bit of difficulty with the office staff. a great relief to have that accomplished. she has quite severe Alzheimer’s that would pretty much obliviate her culpability for any future actions, so i’m not in the least concerned that it was “too soon”. the pastor is being transferred to another parish later this month and i didn’t want this to get lost in the shuffle.
Attendance limits, assigned seating, and mask mandates at Holy Mass are done with – as is the dispensation from obligation. Attendance last Sunday was good for a holiday week.
Sounds like i’ll be able to continue working from home indefinitely, which is quite a boon.
I’ve been waiting ages for one of your good news requests, Father. I’ve been saving items.
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Friends from our parish had a serious fire at home but all the people are okay and stuff is just stuff that can be replaced so that’s what counts.
One of my cousins just had a baby last month, mother and child both doing well.
One family unit in my extended family just had more of a gathering than they’ve been known to have in a while, so there may be some healing of strained relationships going on there. Communication lines are open.
As I sat down to write this, I was going to say that another of my cousins is expecting a baby “any minute now”. The phone then rang with my mother giddily relaying the update that baby arrived overnight. Mother and child both doing well.
I had a discussion two or three years ago with my pastor about volunteering to trace faulty wiring to try to sort out the cause for our non-functioning Church carilion. The project got put on hold for a number of reasons, including that I blew out my knee and couldn’t climb the church Tower. Pleasantly surprised one day earlier this spring to open my living room window and here at chimes drifting from the tower down towards our house. Chatting with the pastor later, found out that he was able to get a donation from somebody to replace the somewhat antiquated controller and deal with some wiring issues. Now have chimes on the hour and sometimes the Angelus.
A pleasant surprise coming out of social media usage. I got to make a connection with a previously unknown (to me) cousin in Australia as she was looking up our common roots
My hometown parish just did some renovations and use of space changes. Result being perpetual adoration moved from a small chapel in the large parish Church building to lead use of a separate chapel building
My mother has been dealing with health issues since last fall and has been in and out of hospital and nursing this spring, but focusing on the good news that things were not the worst they could have been and that she is getting needed treatment.
One of the order of religious brothers that reside in and assist some at our parish was ordained to the priesthood last month.
We have a lovely new granddaughter, a week old today. Our fifth grandchild.
In our tiny town, all Mass restrictions are done with. Persons may wear masks at their own discretion. We will eventually need to refinish the tops of the pews, which have lost their finish thanks to the constant disinfecting, but that is minor. Mass attendance is not up to pre-Covid numbers, but we have a mostly older population to begin with.
Our town itself is wide open- no more masks or social distancing, except by choice.
In the nearby Big City, the TLM parish is still thriving and booming. Activities are being resumed and they confirmed 70 young people two weeks ago.
Our son, who underwent treatment for cancer during the pandemic, continues to recover. He has returned to work and found a new place to live.
We are 6 weeks into our weekly Friday evening adult catechism classes and fortnightly (Wednesday evening) apologetics classes (both via Zoom) offered by our hardworking FSSP priests at our chaplaincy. Good turnouts at each session of 25-27 people on average.
Left the US in early May and went to Montenegro for a week, Tirana (Albania) for 2 days and in both countries, almost no one wearing masks. Now traveling through the Greek islands for the summer. No one wears masks outside. Outdoor dining only but that’s what you do in the summer anyway. Masks still worn inside supermarkets and pharmacies. Greeks looking forward to summer after hard lockdown for months. I’m enjoying the fine weather, good food and wine, and deserted beaches. Still hardly any tourists here. Italy supposed to open to Americans very soon. Maybe you’ll be able to go to Italy again.
I’ve been making some major progress in the trauma therapy I’ve going through. My childhood was one of lots of trauma (severe mental illness in the family, divorce, narcissistic stepmother, physical and emotional neglect/abuse, lots of moves, etc.). Through all this work, I’m finding that my relationship with the Lord is improving as a side effect. Learning to trust Him after and actually deeply believe He loves me instead of being constantly against me (like my father pretty much was) is PRICELESS. And finally having a relationship with Our Lady is PRICELESS. It’s darned hard work, but we’re seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, so it’s very much worth it. My heart and soul feel so much lighter and freer. :o)
And, yes, I’m praying for my family.
My reverent N.O. parish in Cincinnati is at close to 90% of its prepandemic attendance* and our pastor will lead a Corpus Christi procession Sunday to the town square in his busy neighborhood.
*Liberal/dissentient parishes here have scarcely recovered, with many having less than 25% of their members returning.
Matt Walsh, who spoke at Fr. Heilman’s parish back in the lazy, hazy days of 2018…
https://www.romancatholicman.com/matt-walsh-calls-christian-america-talk-st-mary-pine-bluff-2/
…issued the following cri de coeur on the Twitter earlier today:
“As you’ve heard, @AOC’s abuela is living in a dilapidated home that was ravaged by Hurricane Maria. AOC is unable to help her own grandma for whatever reason, so I have set up this Go Fund Me campaign to save her home. Please give if you can. #HelpAbuela”
Matt Walsh set a goal of $48,990. The amount raised so far today is $52,000 and climbing.
And…Leftist trolls are losing their minds and are falling into pits of dismay and despair because a cis-gendered, hetero-normative, white Christian male is riding a trusty steed beneath the Banner of Heaven to the rescue of imperiled Abuela. To Leftist trolls: fear not the pit of Sheol, a soft landing is available at MyPillow dot com.
God bless the United States of America and God bless abuelas everywhere. Si se puede!
Let’s wrap this up old-school style, thus sayeth Jeremiah:
“Give ye glory to the Lord of hosts, for the Lord is good, for his mercy endureth for ever.”
Here in Ontario, Canada, things are slow to open up — especially churches which are still limited to 10 persons with social distancing — although things should be easing in the next month.
The good news…
A monthly diocesan sung TLM will still be going ahead this Sunday for Corpus Christ, despite the limit meaning effectively no congregation. No procession allowed, but there will be Exposition and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament right after Mass, with the sung Litany to the Sacred Heart in reparation. Our choir has grown from two to four over the past few months! Brick-by-brick…
@Rich Leonardi, great news! Yes, things are looking up in Cincinnati. We just changed parishes to Old St. Mary’s downtown. Love high mass there. Great time to be alive!
No masks in diocese of Brooklyn, NY! Yay!
I was just blessed to attend the ordinations of five new priests and go to two beautiful first masses (and get five first blessings!) These young men are so good, and so courageous to become priests in these hard times. It was all so lovely, and very edifying. I have started fasting (trying to anyway…not quite as good at is as I wanted to be, but I will keep trying!) for them and praying for them, and all the priests on my list (you are on there, of course, Fr Z.)…it’s growing and growing and growing. Every time I see a priest in need of prayers I add him to our list of priests to pray for. (I did run into a lot of priests out in the trenches and they all sure need our prayers. May God reward them for the good they are doing.)
On Sunday the 6th there will be a Corpus Christi procession after the 10:15 Mass through a fairly large chunk of the City of East Helena (MT), from Sts. Cyril and Methodius Church to West Main Street, along Main for a couple of blocks, then through the neighborhood and back to the church. Last year there was a shorter procession through the parish property, but this year our pastor (a young and very good priest) got a parade permit, allowing the procession to cross streets.
Other good news: The face diapers are no longer required and there are no social distancing (6 feet) requirements. The pews are becoming fuller.
Weekday Masses at our Parish are now given in the TLM.
And I am setting back forth on foot pilgrimage to Fátima, Santiago de Compostela, Lourdes, and back to our Parish.
MKrzem- I feel your pain. Doug Ford has really got Ontario under the heel! Alberta less so but then we have a fraction your population (4,371,000). Interestingly when I point out our low Provincial stats from its own AHS website around CoVid infections, hospitalization, ICU admissions and deaths (2,200 approx, of which majority are over 80 with 2 or more comorbidities), people get very cross with me. The difference between what the news says and the actual science of the stats are a gulf apart.
Anyway, hope you all get the ‘all clear’ asap
I have more time to study for my Ham Radio license, so I’m going for Technician AND General.
I am going to offer a High Mass for my 10 year anniversary. I am excited to be able to offer my thanksgiving to God in such a way. My heart is eternally grateful that the Holy Spirit moved me to learn the Traditional Latin Mass. It has radically enriched my ars celebrandi.
RichR, good move. You’ll be glad you did.
paterIacobus, that’s so exciting. Happy Anniversary. I will pray for you. Thank you for your priesthood!
No masks in Wyoming even when our governor had a mask mandate for 3 months this past winter. People here don’t put up with it!
Our bishop has finally lifted masks for the laity and we can now join the regular communion line even for communion on the tongue!
We started 40 hours devotion tonight with a Eucharistic procession on Sunday! I suggested that repeatedly to our pastor and our bishop when we first moved here. Our pastor has finally gotten the courage to do this. Our pastor was joined by a wonderful priest who I’m sure will be a holy bishop someday if there is ever a change in management in the hierarchy. I won’t say much more except that he instructs other priests in the way of tradition under the radar.
God (and St. Joseph) have been good to us and we give thanks!
As of the Monday after Pentecost our diocese removed all mask and social distancing requirements. Yay, I can now see the altar without my glasses fogging up! Our pastor made a point of saying we are not to question other parishioners about whether or not they have been vaccinated. So far we have been able to avoid getting The Jab but I don’t know how long we can hold out.
Our pastor has also been quietly starting a monthly TLM on First Saturdays which initially started out as a private Mass to which those in the know were free to attend. He has now announced it so that anyone can attend. I will be heading there shortly. There is one family in town with 3 sons who serve at the altar and do a great job too. Probably the first time since 1979 that parish church has seen the Mass of the Ages.
My eldest son has met a wonderful Catholic woman on a Catholic dating site and things are looking serious there.
It is Spring the Lupines are blooming and the birds are singing in the morning. God’s creation is wonderful here in this little corner of the USA.
Last Sunday The pews were unrestricted and no one was wearing masks in Raritan NJ TLM; what a relief! Attendance at the TLM here has been strong/consistent throughout the past year. Tomorrow, Corpus Christi, is first Sunday NJ bishops have lifted the dispensation from Sunday Mass. Across the river Delaware, in PA, you’d think it was 2020…
From St Anne Shrine in Fall River at 3:00PM tomorrow (Sunday, 6/6), our chaplain, Fr. Edward Murphy, will lead a formal Eucharistic Procession through the streets of this tired old city around starting from the front steps of the church thence around the upper portion of South (Kennedy) Park on South Main Street in thanksgiving for the gift of His Most Sacred Heart and for an end to the Wuhan Flu under which this Commonwealth has struggled.
The mayor (a former parishoner) happily issued a parade permit, countersigned by the chief of police, and for the first time in many years, we’ll be accompanied by the Banda Filarmónica Santa Cecilia (St. Ceceilia Philharmonic Band; the Portuguese community here in town loves St. Anne’s…), with police escort, carrying Our Lord under our NEW processional canopy (the old one was destroyed when they tore down the parish school).
If you’re within driving distance of Fall River…we’d love to have you join us. The more we proclaim our faith, the faster the forces of evil flee. And we could certainly use some divine influences as we move forward!
Less jabbering, more processions. We’re taking it to the streets.
Tomorrow, our bishop in Phoenix is leading a Corpus Christi procession (I know, Corpus Christi was Thursday, but he’s NO) through downtown Phoenix, and it’s coming to Mater Misericordiae (our FSSP parish) at 6:30 am. We’re going to greet him a block away with little girls spreading rose petals (WE HAVE SO MANY DONATED ROSES!!) up to the door of our church. Father has invited “the whole parish” to meet our Lord and His bishop at the church door tomorrow, and I can’t wait! Anybody near Phoenix, come join us! AND! We have been able to buy the new property, so by the fall we should be able to “spread out” a little… we’re just stuffed into our beautiful little church, thanks be to God!
The dispensation from the Mass obligation is gone in our diocese. It’s all kind of silly, though, since all of the varying regulations about the obligation to attend, after the opportunity to attend public Mass was restored, have been, essentially, “one must attend unless one has a good reason not to,” which to me is the usual rule.
Additional good news: Grandson no. 1 seems to overcoming cerebral palsy and Grandson no. 3 should arrive soon.
Made it to confession on Friday. There were 3 priests. Guess it was first Friday. Need to figure what that is all about but I know it was good to have confession available from 8:30 to 11:55 on a Friday!
Six young men in my Dominican province were ordained this morning by Archbishop Cordileone of San Francisco. It was also his birthday:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saSZae7Dwrs
The Mass actually begins 17 minutes into the recording of the live stream.
My son married a delightful Catholic young lady in a beautiful Latin mass, with choir. The reception was large and joyful. I am immensely grateful that they were able to have a large event and Covid restrictions were not the impediment they would have been a short time ago.
External Solemnly of Corpus Christi. 1st Holy Communions and solemn Eucharistic procession.
In another move toward normalcy it was announced last night that our province is reinstating the Sunday Obligation as of Father’s Day weekend the 19th/20th.
I went to two Corpus Christi Masses, both followed by processions and Benediction. One the traditional Latin on the Thursday, the other the Novus Ordo at my Dominican parish on Sunday. They were both great–but the important thing was that the Novus Ordo celebration was nearly as incandescent as the traditional (not quite: You can’t beat the chanting of the Lauda Sion in Latin). That was because: 1) most of the singing was in Latin: Mass parts plus hymns: Ave Verum Corpus, Pange Lingua, and the hymns that weren’t in Latin were beautiful old things; 2) Trad young people! Couples, young families with kids, a significant number of women wearing veils (I wore mine). This marks a sea change for middle-of-the-road Novus Ordo parishes. Ten years ago that Mass would have been overwhelmingly middle-aged to older people, dreary contemporary hymns, and certainly no procession and Benediction. It is a really important transformation, even more important than the growth of traditional Latin-Mass parishes over the last ten years. By the by, one week after our Archbishop lifted the mask and pew-separation rule, no masks at all to be seen at the traditional Latin, a few at the Novus Ordo but not many. Masks are pretty much over (although you still have to wear them inside the Safeway and on public trans). The DC weather is too hot right now for masks.
I’d ordered my first gun back in October, (in part because I knew Trump was going to lose, due to the same low-info voters who put Obama in twice,) and I was starting to fear it wouldn’t arrive before all of the extra financial penalties promised by Biden were enacted, but it arrived the Thursday before Memorial Day :D
(And, for the curious, Glock 19, Gen 5 MOS. It’s hard to conceal, it’s the biggest gun I have a prayer OF concealing with the body God gave me, but subcompacts darned near destroyed my wrist when I tried them =-\ )
It’s truly starting to hit me that I’ll be back on foot pilgrimage from Friday onwards, travel days tomorrow and Thursday.
I’m carrying on an interrupted pilgrimage from home, and something has just struck me — when you set out on foot from home, there’s an easiness to it, and if you want to tarry a couple of hours, simple. You just do. Departure is, well, you opening your own front door whenever you want to do so.
Simple and easy.
But travelling somewhere first, well, that’s immediately complicated — however I’ve realised now finally that the two are fundamentally the same, just that one comes with a timetable and the other not.
This is the first time I’ve had to do one of these in stages (grrrr) ; though I very much hope I’ll be able to finish my Camino all the Way back to our Parish this time ’round !! It’s “only” 3500K !!
My parents’ new pastor, whom I’d pegged as a Fr. YoungLib, continues to return Tradition to their large, well-attended parish as he gets more settled in. This weekend, he led a Eucharistic procession between his two churches – the first in at least 20 years.
Meanwhile in our little rural parish, we’ve got our Holy Water back – and it’s made by the old rite now, not the Book of Good Feelings. Father has put out the Communion kneelers full time at both his churches due to requests from attendees of his growing monthly TLM. They are widely used and I’m also seeing more veils, even at the other masses. He’s already maxed out on the number of Sunday Masses he can offer, but rumors continue to swirl that the Bishop is about to allow him to convert a second Mass to TLM (if only once per month). We are hoping it won’t depend on going along with His Excellency’s ideas about COVID, which have never really been enforced out here.
Praise be to God, our Mass also saw an infant baptism and an adult received into the Church this week!
My NO parish is fully open – our bishop allowed pastors to decide on what to allow and what not to opening. We have holy water again, communion in lines, and the pews are filling up – probably about 90% capacity. Still no communion on the tongue but I think that will be coming during the late summer.
We have two good and holy priests at our parish. Both give awesome homilies (even referencing sin, mercy and the Real Presence) and very reverent masses, as much as they can in the NO.
I’ll be starting my hospital unit for diaconate formation later this month, so that is good – originally would have been fall or winter. An opportunity presented itself at the local non-Catholic hospital which has never done this before with diaconate candidates.
Still not taken, nor will take the Covid jab and I’ve been fine – I tell friends I’m in the Control Group – maskless in our town for almost a month and life is good.
Discovered the Hallow app in the App Store – what a wonderful resource!
Grandchild number 3 is on the way!
So things are looking up here!
1st TLM ever at the Parish this morning was the best TLM I’ve ever attended.
I always say “the Mass is the Mass is the Mass“.
This morning, well, it was simply and beautifully the Holy Mass, not some abstract exercise in liturgical formalism.
Tomorrow I’m on my journey back to where I will restart my Way of Our Lady of Fatima, Saint James, Our Lady of Lourdes, and our Home Parish of Saint Joseph.