“Remember, boy, it’s 20 minutes, amice to amice.”

Posted on 6 March 2025 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

At Rorate I read some Q&A with Card. Roche of the Roman Dicastery tasked with liturgical issues, including persecuted the people who desire the Traditional Latin Mass. It’s not just about the form of Mass, it’s about the people… they don’t like the people.

In the interview Card. Roche said something that caught my attention. Do you read anything contradictory in this?  Emphases mine.

For very good reasons, the Church, through conciliar legislation, decided to move away from what had become an overly elaborate form of celebrating the Mass.

When I was at school, I used to serve Mass, and the priest would say to me: “Remember, boy, it’s 20 minutes, amice to amice.” What he meant was that as soon as he put the amice [liturgical vestment] around his neck, I was to start counting the minutes until he took it off at the end of Mass. If, by chance, he reached the last Gospel by 15 minutes, I had to pull the back of his chasuble. It was a sort of scruple, I suppose, but something very different from what people experience in the Extraordinary Form today.

Very different from what people experience in the TLM today.  Exactly.

On the one hand he said that the TLM was “overly elaborate”.   On the other hand it could be said in 15-20 minutes.   But it’s overly elaborate?   One can surmise from this that that priest, whom Roche used as a negative example, was a massive liturgical abuser of the older rite.   So the Rite he perhaps thinks of as the older, Traditional Rite, is not a good example.  His thoughts are based on abuse, rather than proper use.

I don’t think that I could, even with my experience and speed, say Mass in 15 minutes.   Even omitting the Dies Irae in a daily Requiem I don’t think I could do one in 20 and actually do everything.  I am having a hard time getting my mind around what Roche said.

Okay, there’s another thing I didn’t quite get (and comments):

One of the things that has been very interesting to me is observing this situation worldwide. [Funny, that.  Given that the TLM was “worldwide”.] The numbers devoted to the Traditional Latin Mass are, in reality, quite small, but some of the groups are quite clamorous. They are more noticeable because they make their voices heard.  [I thought this was the age of “walking together”.]

So, they make their voices known.  That’s good right?  I think there is even a canon in Canon Law about that (cf. can. 212).

Oh yes… there is this.

In the lectionary from the Novus Ordo, there is a three-year cycle for Sundays and a two-year cycle for weekday readings. There is a much lower percentage of scriptural readings in the 1962 missal than there are in the newer missal.

There might be a lower percentage of total Scripture, but there is a vastly lower percentage of people hearing any readings in the Novus Ordo these days.  So, how is that working out?   Not only, ask people what the readings were as they are walking out of your average suburban church.   The annual repetition of a core selection of pericopes helped to assure that Mass going Catholics – and so many more went to Mass – remembered and were, therefore, affected by what they heard.  Am I wrong?

There’s a little more:

What interests me is why people get hot under the collar[that’s not dismissive] about others celebrating the Tridentine Mass. I think this has been a mistake. Bishop Wheeler, of the Diocese of Leeds, insisted that a Holy Mass be celebrated in Latin according to the Novus Ordo at least once every Sunday in every deanery. That showed considerable wisdom.   [IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT LATIN.]

[…]

I often hear people say, “Cardinal Roche is against the Latin Mass.” Well, if they only knew that most days I celebrate Mass in Latin because it is the common language for all of us here. It is the Novus Ordo Mass in Latin. I was trained as an altar boy until the age of 20, serving the Tridentine Form.

Apparently his exposure to the Tridentine Form was… well… not what we have today.  What did he say”

“something very different from what people experience in the Extraordinary Form today.”

Maybe, rather than crush out what is going on today, it should be given a try?

Posted in Liturgy Science Theatre 3000, Save The Liturgy - Save The World, SESSIUNCULA, The Drill | Tagged
23 Comments

Daily Rome Shot 1263 – so it begins

Posted on 6 March 2025 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

WELCOME REGISTRANT:

MCZT

A few years ago, I gave a talk at a conference in Napa Valley for a men’s group. It was a fine event with great guys. Two other priests spoke, Fr. David Jenuwine and Fr. Edward Looney. I was so grateful that I was the last speaker and not the first so that the poster did not read “Zuhlsdorf Jenuwine Looney”. It was the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. The next day a fire swept through Napa. That night, in the hotel near the airport for my next day flight, it hit me. A severe, nearly paralyzing, burning stabbing pain seized my left shoulder and stabs up the side of my skull. It was so bad that all I could do was sit in a chair. Moving was agony. I had some pain killer with me and loaded it up in the morning in order to get home. I don’t know how I did it. That pain stuck with me for a long, except, it moved around. Sometimes lower in my back, sometimes sliding over to the right side. Sometimes worse, sometimes less bad, sometimes so bad I couldn’t raise the chalice at Mass and all I could do was sit in a chair. The pain left, entirely, on the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary exactly one year after it started.   I talked to an exorcist friend about it and we compared notes.

Yesterday, Ash Wednesday, my tech started to fight me. I had desktop problems, laptop problems, TV box problems. I was making a podcast and the software I’ve used so many times fought me. The microphone wouldn’t record above a whisper though I adjusted it way up. I worked through these things and got the recording posted. I read something from Sheen’s On The Demonic in the LENTCAzT.  I said Mass in the afternoon, with only a minor audio glitch in the stream at the start. Supper. Then it hit me. The same massive pain over my left scapula and up the side of my skull. During the night it drifted over to the right. I reflected on Paul and the thorn in his side as I asked Mary to put her mantle over me, the angels to defend me and Christ to pour His Precious Blood upon me.

This morning I find that my refrigerator ice maker is not working and that it is not cooling below 40°F.

A connection with the podcasts, maybe?  Some other resolve I made?  I note that the podcasts for Lent began on Shrove Tuesday, which this year 4 March is the Feast of the Holy Face.  Also, recently, with the TMSM society I’m still involved with I obtain new reliquaries and relics for the chapel where the TLM is celebrated.  No good deed goes unpunished?

I don’t often get very personal in my posts.  Whatever this is, I ask for your prayers.  I’d really like this to stop but I’ve offered the pain for my mother’s healing.

And I still don’t understand what’s happening with my amazon affiliate accounts (US and UK).   The links seem to work but I am not showing any sales in my stats.   This is a deep concern.

It feels like an all out attack.

Please remember me when shopping online and use my affiliate links.  US HERE – WHY?  This helps to pay for health insurance (massively hiked for this new year of surprises), utilities, groceries, etc..  At no extra cost, you provide help for which I am grateful.

 

In chessy news… HERE

White to move and mate in 2. Tricky.

Posted in SESSIUNCULA |
11 Comments

“Ash Wednesday” by T.S. Eliot

Posted on 5 March 2025 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Back in 2013, with a remnant of a cold, I read T. S. Eliot’s Ash Wednesday.

It’s interesting to go back to that post and see the comments.  For example, Supertradmum is no longer with us.  Say a prayer for the repose of her soul.  There are names of some commentators we haven’t see around for a while.

HERE

 

Posted in Linking Back, Poetry | Tagged ,
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POLL: Your Ash Wednesday 2025 Sermon notes and ASHES – Did you get your #ASHTAG?

Posted on 5 March 2025 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Ash Wednesday is NOT a holy day of obligation.

That said, many people try to go to Mass on Ash Wednesday.  Many, however, cannot.

Therefore, let us know about your good experiences of Holy Mass and the good points in the sermon, if there was on.

Was there a GOOD point made in the sermon you heard?

I wrote “good”.  Let’s make this positive and edifying for the benefit of those who had to work or who were shut in or otherwise not able to go to Mass.

Tell about attendance especially for the Traditional Latin Mass.  I hear that it is growing.  Of COURSE.

Any local changes or (hopefully good) news?

Let’s have a poll.

Anyone can vote. Only registered and approved users can comment. And I hope you do!

When I received ashes for Ash Wednesday 2025the formula used was...

View Results

And also.

For 2025 Ash Wednesday about reception of ASHES

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Posted in SESSIUNCULA | Tagged ,
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Daily Rome Shot 1262 – no pun intended

Posted on 5 March 2025 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

More in Sant’Ignazio. In memory of Jesuit Fr. Felix Cappello, an amazing canonist and famed confessor.

Seems right for ASH WEDNESDAY.

GO TO CONFESSION!

Thanks to PS CP, GF, for reliquaries from my wishlist! I look forward to installing relics in them. OF course, I am STILL waiting for those relics to arrive. I’m trying to be patient.

Can you spell JURASSIC? Well… I guess I let that one out… no pun intended. Well, yes, it was intended. The consequences of this may not be intended, however.

Chessy news… HERE

Posted in SESSIUNCULA |
2 Comments

Daily Rome Shot 1261 – starching

Posted on 4 March 2025 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Welcome Registrant:

FJH3

Sant’Ignazio…

I haven’t figured out what is going on with my amazon tags.  I can see that people have ordered things, by the traffic graphs.  So, I will continue to ask for your assistance this way.

Please remember me when shopping online and use my affiliate links.  US HERE – WHY?  This helps to pay for health insurance (massively hiked for this new year of surprises), utilities, groceries, etc..  At no extra cost, you provide help for which I am grateful.

I have started to renew my corporals.  It has been quite a while.  I found a couple languishing which had gone sort of yellow.  Therefore, I gave them a good soak in Oxyclean and then set about the starching.  I had in the past used a combination of rice starch and white olive oil soap to obtain a beautiful shiny gloss.   However, I remembered that one priest in the combox said he used just liquid starch and it worked.  I tried that.

Smoothed out wet on a pane of glass.

Dry this morning.  You can see through the linen that underneath the glass I put a rubbery sheet to make sure the glass wouldn’t move it bumped.

Peeling it off.  It came off with difficulty, not at all like when I used also the oil soap.

I used magnets to hold the edge tight.

Peeled.  It has no glossy surface at all on the side that was against the glass.  It feels quite rough.

Folded.

It is rather hard, which is good, but it is rough to the touch.  The point of having the glossy, glassy finish is that you can both see and catch up particles of a Host easily using the paten.

I will not use this corporal.  Instead, I will try an experiment.  I’ll liquify some oil soap and blend it into the liquid starch.  Maybe that will work.

Posted in SESSIUNCULA |
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5 March 2025 – Ash Wednesday – Fasting, Abstinence, and You (with remarks on coffee and on brushing your teeth)

Posted on 4 March 2025 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

According to the 1983 Code of Canon Law for the Latin Church, Latin Church Catholics are bound to observe fasting and abstinence on Ash Wednesday.

Here are some details. I am sure you know them already, but they are good to review.

FASTING: Catholics who are 18 year old and up, until their 59th birthday (when you begin your 60th year), are bound to fast (1 full meal and perhaps some food at a couple points during the day, call it 2 “snacks”, according to local custom or law – call it, two snacks that don’t add up to a full meal) on Ash Wednesday and on Good Friday.

Some choose not to eat at all.  Some choose, in the monastic style, to have something only in the evening.

There is no scientific formula for this.  Figure it out.

ABSTINENCE: Catholics who are 14 years old and older are abound to abstain from meat on Ash Wednesday and on all Fridays of Lent.

In general, when you have a medical condition of some kind, or you are pregnant, etc., these requirements can be relaxed.

For Eastern Catholics there are differences concerning dates and practices. Our Eastern friends can fill us Latins in.

You should by now have a plan for your spiritual life and your physical/material mortifications and penitential practices during Lent.

You would do well to include some works of mercy, both spiritual and corporal.

I also recommend making a good confession close to the beginning of Lent.  Let me put that another way:

GO TO CONFESSION!

“But Father! But Father!”, some of you are saying anxiously, “What about my coffee?  I can drink my coffee, can’t I?  Can’t I?”

You can, of course, have coffee.  No question there.  You can also choose not to.

How about coffee in between meals on Ash Wednesday?

The old axiom, for the Lenten fast, is “Liquidum non frangit ieiunium … liquid does not break the fast”, provided – NB – you are drinking for the sake of thirst, rather than for eating.

Common sense suggests that chocolate banana shakes or “smoothies”, etc., are not permissible, even though they are pretty much liquid in form.  They are not what you would drink because you are thirsty, as you might more commonly do with water, coffee, tea, wine in some cases, lemonade, even some of these sports drinks such as “Gatorade”, etc.

Again, common sense applies, so figure it out.

Drinks such as coffee and tea do not break the Lenten fast even if they have a little milk added, or a bit of sugar, or fruit juice, which in the case of tea might be lemon.

Coffee would break the Eucharistic fast (one hour before Communion), since – pace fallentes  – coffee is no longer water, but it does not break the Lenten fast on Ash Wednesday.

You will be happy to know that chewing tobacco does not break the fast (unless you eat the quid, I guess), nor does using mouthwash (gargarisatio in one manual I checked) or brushing your teeth (pulverisatio – because once people used tooth powder – and you still can!  GETCHYER TOOTH POWDER HERE! There is even one with charcoal.  The ancient Romans at least the ancient Iberians under the Romans, as we know from a poem by Catullus, used chalk and urine. Yes.  They did (cf. Catullus 39 about Egnatius, who apparently grinned to excess).

EVERYONE NB: Never forget the Latin proverb, risus abundant in ore stultorum… laughter/grinning abounds in the mouths of the stupid.  And, in the aforementioned Cat 39, “nam risu inepto res ineptior nulla est… there is nothing more tasteless than a silly laugh”.  If you have a risus ineptus you would do well to change your ways.

Concerning the consumption of alligator and crocodile – HERE

I included notes also on the eating of endothermic moonfish, peptonized beef, and muskrat… just in case.

If you want to drink your coffee and tea with true merit I suggest drinking it from one of my coffee mugs.  I’d like to offer an indulgence for doing so, but that’s above my pay grade.

I just happen to have available a “Liquidum non frangit ieiunium” mug!  HERE

And there’s also this new choice…

3:16 isn’t just in John.

CLICK to see MORE

Posted in Canon Law, Our Catholic Identity, SESSIUNCULA |
1 Comment

During this “watch”, each evening at St Peter’s Gregorian chant is sung… but hardly anyone sings. Why is that?

Posted on 3 March 2025 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

From a priest reader…

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, each night in St. Peter’s Square, a small schola has sung the Oremus pro Pontifice for the Holy Father. It’s a gesture that is simultaneously reverent and traditional, yet incredibly simple. For those of us in the know, however, the videos of the nightly chanting of this antiphon give a glimpse into the effects of the liturgical reform on the Church at large:

  1. The Liturgical Movement was supposed to restore chant to its pride of place. Every night, the faithful, religious, and priests in attendance stare blankly at the schola, not really understanding the significance of the chant. On this point, if the Liturgical Movement had succeeded, then this would be a staple of the Catholic repertoire; a common chant sung regularly at parishes.
  2. The majority of the cardinals, themselves, despite traditionally being models of Romanitas do not know how to sing this chant. They, too, stare blankly at the schola as they chant the antiphon. When they enter the conclave, will these men even know how to sing the Veni Creator, or the meaning of its poetry?
  3. The only cardinals who do know how to chant the antiphon are the ones that you would expect, namely Burke and Arinze.

I just thought that you would appreciate these observations. Thank you for all you do in the webspace for Holy Mother Church.

In 1962, John XXIII issued Veterum sapientia.

The Second Vatican Council said that Latin was to be retained and that Gregorian chant had pride of place.  It required that pastors of souls made sure that people could sing and speak the Latin that pertained to them.

The Latin Church’s Code of Canon Law commands that candidates for the priesthood be very capable (bene calleant) in Latin.

One thing after another has been disobeyed.  The result?   We don’t know who we are now.

Posted in "How To..." - Practical Notes, ASK FATHER Question Box, Mail from priests, Our Catholic Identity, Pò sì jiù, The future and our choices | Tagged
11 Comments

Daily Rome Shot 1260 – news

Posted on 3 March 2025 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

More from Sant’ Ignazio

Welcome registrants:

Briddygirl
Datter av Gud
Mr N Murphy

NEWS…

Yesterday I celebrated Holy Mass for my benefactors.  I remember in prayer daily all my benefactors, those regular and those occasional.  I am also grateful for you who use my amazon links.

ABOUT AMAZON… yesterday I had a bit of a scare.   I checked the balance of the accumulated percent of the sales from the use of my links and… everything was GONE.  No records… no access.  I found my UK link, but my USA link is…. I don’t know.  I have no idea what is happening.   I think that if you use links with that USA tag (whatdoesthepr-20) I still get the credit.  But I don’t know.  I have an other tag that is – in theory – to unify the different international shops (onamzwhatdoes-20).   I am scratching my head at this point wondering if I’ve been cancelled or partially so.   This is troubling, because a good portion of my income comes from this.  Time will tell.

Speaking of News… I did a New of the Church podcast yesterday.  I’m asking myself …why.  No comments.

More news.

In chessy news… HERE

White to move and win. Not mate just yet because black can delay. One slip and it is mate in 5.

Posted in SESSIUNCULA |
6 Comments

News of the Church 12 – 2 March 2025

Posted on 2 March 2025 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Sometimes the PLAY arrow doesn’t display, but it’s there. And you can use this HERE.

It’s 2nd of March 2025 and it is Quinquagesima Sunday.

Some time ago, I saw a movie called News of the World in which years after the Civil War a former confederate officer ekes out a living travelling from town to town and reading aloud news and stories in newspapers from different parts of the country to people who paid a dime a ahead to listen (that’s about $2.50 today). People in those days were news and novelty starved and often illiterate, so there was interest in what he read. This was a real boon for them if they wanted news. The idea of a wandering gazetteer caught my imagination and here I am.

BTW a “gazette” – a news report once often the name of newspapers – came from the name of the 16th c. venetian coin that bought early paper news sheets.

An audio “gazette” of Catholic things.

00:13 – Init
01:26 – Beginning of St. Joseph’s Month.
05:18 – News of the Moon, Jesuits and insects
11:47 – Another “red shift” Jesuit scientist (but not a Communist for a change).
18:06 – The Wanderer: “We Must Renew Our Trust In God”
26:29 – Wherein Fr. Z rants
30:29 – Litany of St. Joseph
36:00 – Exit

Posted in News of the Church, News of the Church, PODCAzT | Tagged , , ,
4 Comments