As I write, there is a big problem with the back end of the blog, what is “under the hood” that drives it. It has to do with the WordPress engine and data base. The wonderful people who give me tech support are “coincidently” hampered from assisting. No blame to them. Circumstances are too amazing.
Blog problems cropped up on the Vigil of the Feast of St. Peter and Paul. I noticed that the blog’s admin was slow. On the Feast itself, worse. Today, Sunday but the Commemoration of St. Paul, but the 6th Sunday after Pentecost.
In this period, there was a consecration of the new Abbot of the traditional Benedictine monastery in Norcia, Italy. It was the first elevation of an abbey in Italy since the 1960s. That says a lot about the life of the Church in Italy. My main blog tech fellow is an oblate of that abbey and he went to the consecration of the new Abbot. Therefore….
In this last 48 hours or so, I lost all audio settings on the laptop that handles the live stream of my Masses. I fought with it for a couple hours (after midnight), which screwed up my next day. Then I had internet problems. The problems with the blog were underway. Today, when I tried to print out notes for days Mass (I read the readings in English and give a fervorino), neither of my printers would work.
Not only that, although I just managed to replace the roof on my house (which I wouldn’t have had to do were I not treated so well by a certain bishop, leaving me financially devastated – thanks, I pray for you), I have now found other difficulties that require some urgent attention precisely in the place where my home chapel is. I am not sure, but I may have related that I am pretty sure I and this place are under siege. When I had the place painted, I anointed the walls with chrism before the painting and put Miraculous Medals and St. Benedict Medals in the nooks and crannies before the place was refloored. A priest friend of mine who is an exorcist helped me do a dual exorcism of the place. However, I keep getting indications of affliction, including one day when I entered the chapel to say Mass for the anniversary of the death of a prominent Catholic figure, and a frog was sitting on the altar.
Get the picture?
Someone doesn’t like me.
Writing this will surely bring more problems. PERSEVERE.
Friends, the axe will be falling again soon and more people will suffer. I address myself to them.
Do NOT NOT NOT waver in your dedication to being a faithful Roman Catholic. NEVER. Do NOT for a moment consider orthodoxy (massively dysfunctional and NOT the Church Christ intended). Never give up! Never Surrender!
Tech.
However, I had already determined, in light of what I am hearing about a potential document attacking people who want the Vetus Ordo – while I now believe based on what I hear will indeed come on 16 July, the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel (again) – is not only aimed at diocesan priests (guys like me, though I’ve been partially cancelled) it is aimed at bishops. I believe that they are going to be forbidden to use the Pontificale Romanum.
This is sacramental contraception.
In view of what I think is on the way, I had intended to post for the Feast of the Most Precious Blood – 1 July – an urgent plea for prayers for defense of the Traditional Latin Mass. I wanted to urge people to take action now for home chapels and to network with the priests.
I’ll postpone some other comments about what I think is going on. This is the auxiliary bridge.
I ask prayers for the protection of the Holy Angels from spiritual and temporal harm.
Loading ...
We pray for you, Father.
If I may use the vernacular of my native place–Queens–I smell a rat.
Your amphibious hospes need not necessarily auger ill. From Ulisse Aldrovandi’s “Serpentem et Draconum Historiae Libri Duo”:
“Ex altera parte rana Aegyptiaca, miro astu Hydum Nili fallere nititur, dum eminus illum conspicata, illico frustum arundinis mordens, illum obliquum gerit, ne ab Hydro possit deglutiri: cum Hydrus tam amplo ore non fit refertus, ut ranam et arundincm absorbere queat. Hinc nonulli ranarum Niliacarum prudentia robur Hydrorum fuperari affrmant.”
There are ways to deal with serpents.
St. Ulphia or Ulphe, who lived on the banks of the river Noye in France, has a frog as one of her attributes. She is a patron of Amiens, and her day is January 31.
The legend is that the frogs near her hermitage got so loud that they were preventing her sleep at night, so she commanded them to be silent and they still are. (But only in that place — like many silent frog communities, they start croaking if moved away.)
A frog? Sounds ominous to me. When weird things go on in the house I bless it with blessed incense, holy water and salt. I put on a Georgian chant cd and say different prayers, especially those of Thanksgiving. A little slice of Church/Heaven at home. And you can bless your own items! Unlike laity that have to stock up in bulk like a Costco shopping cart. :-)
Anyway, the good news is that the weaker you feel, the more you can lean on Christ for strength.
The freakiest amphibian thing that happened to me was that, one winter, I inadvertently brought a plant into the house that a toad had chosen for his winter dormancy chamber. He mostly stayed asleep under the soil all winter, because the plant was in a cool part of the house. But in the spring, he woke up and came out, and I found soil everywhere and a toad sitting on the plant stand! Both I and the toad were pretty boggled, but I got him outside with no trouble.
Never forget the “Batrachomyomachia,” the war of Frogs and Mice:
“Ent’ring the fields, first let my vows
call on
The Muses’ whole quire out of Helicon
Into my heart, for such a poem’s sake,
As lately I did in my tables take,
And put into report upon my knees.
A fight so fierce, as might in all degrees
Fit Mars himself, and his tumultuous hand,
Glorying to dart to th’ ears of every land
Of all the voice-divided; and to show
How bravely did both Frogs and Mice bestow
In glorious fight their forces, even the deeds
Daring to imitate of Earth’s Giant Seeds.
T’hus then men talk’d ; this seed the strife begat:”
https://www.google.ca/books/edition/Batrachomyomachia/qnlMAAAAcAAJ?hl=en
(I would have gone for “Croak, O Muse” myself, but it the ancients had a sharper sense of parody)