From a reader…
QUAERITUR:
Can your podcazts be obtained on iTunes? I would like to subscribe on my new ipod. Thanks!
Yes, indeed.
That said, remember that our world is becoming ever more dangerous. I warmly recommend that, when you are out and about, you take the buds out of your ears and keep your eyes off those little screens. Watch your surroundings. Be alert. Know where you are. See everyone.
His Excellency Most Reverent Robert C. Morlino, Bishop of Madison, the Extraordinary Ordinary, regularly celebrates Holy Mass also in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite.
The next Solemn Pontifical Mass – a Requiem – will be offered by Bishop Morlino on the evening of Monday 1 August 2016 at 7:00 PM, at the chapel of Holy Name Heights (aka Bishop O’Connor Center).
The Mass is organized by the Tridentine Mass Society of the Diocese of Madison at Bp. Morlino’s request. This will be a “Month’s Mind” for the repose of the soul of the late Msgr. Delbert Schmelzer, PA, a beloved priest of the diocese.
The music will be the Missa Defunctorum for 4 Voices by Tomás Luis de Victoria as well as Gregorian Chant.
All at welcome. Clerics are warmly invited to participate in choir dress.
Visit the site of the Tridentine Mass Society of the Diocese of Madison.
I have written before about the ULTIMATE gift for a priest: the marvelous portable altars by St. Joseph’s Apprentice. In 2014 HERE and in 2015 HERE
With each iteration, these altars are being perfected. He has taken some of my past suggestions and incorporated into the design.
St. Joseph’s Apprentice sent me an altar for my 25th anniversary (which was 26 May).
Let’s unbox it!
First, it was well-protected in the shipping box, but that part – important as it is – is boring.
It has a protective case and suitcase handle.
Beautiful glossy finish.
The underside is smooth and it won’t scratch any surface. There are brass fittings to protect the corners, but they are raised from the bottom and there is a felt pad.
The cover lifts up, that’s the vertical part. Wings fold out. There is an altar stone set into the hinged lid that opens to reveal in the inner compartment.
This is what he carved on the underside of the cover to the central, inner compartment.
There are two brass bars which you push outward from the inner compartment to act as supports to the side wings.
Fit these two pieces together: book stand.
Inside the bag was the crucifix for the summit of the top lid. You can see the tongue that fits into a groove on the top of the lid, to keep it in place.
Beautifully packaged altar cloths, including a vesperale.
A proper Roman altar has three altar cloths.
Set up with two little votive candles, a set of the travel altar cards from SPORCH. A Missale Romanum which I bought through the FSSP.
With the vesperale.
It came with nice altar cards, which were described as being from a priest who was a Franciscan of the Immaculate who is now, after the persecution began, trying to eke out a living. They are a little too flexible to stand up straight in the grooves, but they could easily be reinforced or given an extra stability by an additional lamination.
The altar, when opened, is 36″ wide and it weighs only 17 lbs!
The maker, Joseph’s Apprentice, Rick Murphey, said that this is of the same quality that all his other altars are. If there are any problems or defects, he will remedy them. He also wrote:
“Pray for me and for benefactors for those priests who are not able to afford one. We are keeping you in our prayers during these troubling times and ask that you remember us too”
Outstanding, all the way around.
Keep this in mind for your priest’s, for their ordinations and their anniversaries.
St. Joseph’s Apprentice.
Fr. Jacques Hamel (+2016)
At the online site of the excellent Regina magazine there is a good piece about the rock and the hard place, the Scylla and Charybdis, the fire and the frying pan, the deep blue sea and the devil, betwixt which we find ourselves.
A Catholic Caught Between Jihad and the Agenda
ISIS has made its intentions clear: “the Christian community… “will not have safety, even in your dreams, until you embrace Islam. We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses, and enslave your women….”
It happened yesterday, but it could have been the 700’s. Yesterday, Pere Jacques Hamel, an octogenarian pinch-hitting for a vacationing parish priest in Normandy’s beautiful city of Rouen, was forced to kneel before the altar where he was saying Mass, and martyred.
Only a couple of old nuns and two parishioners were present to see this gentle servant of God beheaded by blood-stained jihadis. Two hundred years of aggressive secularism has had its effect. France today is a proudly secular state run almost exclusively by leftists; few French people attend Mass outside of the traditionalist Catholic community, which is astonishingly large and strong, though a secret outside of France.
This martyrdom is of course only the latest in a series of Islamist outrages that almost now daily attack the civilized world. In 2015, France endured more than 800 attacks on Christian places of worship and cemeteries – most unreported.
[…]Why is this? Allahu Akbar does not fit the Narrative. In the view presented by the mainstream media across the West, almost without exception, we are governed by good, decent men and women who only want to promote global trade and peaceful relations. In a word, ‘Coexist’. These powerful men and women are just like us, the governed. They have children, even grandchildren. They live modest, decent lives. They are ‘public servants.’ They are against ‘hate’ and ‘judging’ we are solemnly assured, until of course Wikileaks reveals otherwise.
Most people are too busy to focus on this. We all want to believe that all is basically well, that these events are tragic anomalies, that everything is under control. When the furor dies down, we will all go back to our lives. As a Catholic, I will go back to my rosary and my Mass. I will ‘coexist’ of course, what choice do I have?
That the West’s political elites know this–and bank on it as the source of their power–is clear. Politics as usual goes on in service of this agenda. Payments are made into bank accounts. Police in America will be targeted and executed by thugs paid out of slush funds. Less spectacular attacks on women with children in the streets of Frankfurt or Paris or Peoria will go unreported. School curricula will be changed to reflect the new world order. Anyone questioning this will be ostracized, placed on ‘extremist’ list. Public toilets will be gender -neutral. Children will be trafficked for the tastes of those who can pay for it. Victims be damned.
Meanwhile, in the political arena, gargantuan egos collide, seemingly impervious to the fact that the ‘little people’ now have a window into their world, far beyond what we used to see in their apparently-controlled media.
Today, the little people see the corruption, the double-dealing, the selling of favors, the gambling with our children’s lives. We understand that the mainstream media is also for sale. But most frighteningly of all, we see that our Western leaders are fiddling while Rome burns.
I think I speak for many millions when I say that I do not want the dystopian future all this portends. I do not want to live sandwiched between two forms of dhimmitude: Koran or Agenda-driven.
[…]
May I recommend a couple books?
The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America by Andrew McCarthy
[UK HERE]
Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War by Sebastian Gorka
[UK HERE]
UPDATE:
Meanwhile, at Fishwrap (aka National Sodomitic Reporter) we find this:
Dublin archbishop rebukes Cardinal Burke’s comments on Islam
[…]
In a recent interview on his new book, Burke said that Islam seeks to govern the world and that the only way to save Western civilization is to return it to its Christian roots. “I don’t think that helps at all,” Martin rebuked.
“Does Islam want to rule the world? There may be some people of the Islamic faith who do, but Islam itself has another side within it — a caring and a tolerant side,” he added.
Interreligious tensions, he suggested, are caused by inequalities, people feeling excluded, and the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, which he warned would be used to justify violence the longer it was allowed to continue. “Long term solutions will come from education,” he said.
[…]
Right! They just need some education.
I posted on Burke’s comments HERE.
Be sure to read what I posted from Gorka’s book (above) about Islam’s goal of world rule.
I was pleased to see that the UK’s best Catholic weekly has taken interest in His Eminence Raymond Card. Burke’s most recent book, Hope for the World: To Unite All Things in Christ. UK HERE
The cardinal said the devil tries to sow doubt in Catholics’ minds about defending human life publicly
Cardinal Raymond Burke has revealed that his mother was advised to abort him.
In a new book-length interview with the French journalist Guillaume d’Alançon, Cardinal Burke says that when his mother was pregnant with him, she became seriously ill and a doctor advised her to have an abortion.
According to Cardinal Burke, the doctor said: “You already have five children, it is important for you to be in good health so as to take care of them”.
“My parents refused,” says the cardinal, who is now chaplain to the Order of Malta. “My parents told him that they believed in God and that Christ would give them the necessary help. My mother gave birth to me, and everything went well.
“I was therefore quite touched by this question of defending human life, because I could very well have been killed.”
In the book, entitled Hope for the World, Cardinal Burke argues that the “ferocious attack against life today” results from “the distortion of the sexual act by contraception”, [and homosexual acts and demonic “gender” twisting] and urges Catholics to defend human life.
He adds: “The devil, of course, wants to discourage us: he tries to sow doubt in our minds about defending human life publicly. And he subtly tempts us to remain silent, to mute our conscience, to tell ourselves that we are personally against abortion but do not have to express our faith and moral convictions in public.”
Elsewhere in the book, the cardinal claims Barack Obama “wants to push the Church back behind the walls of her church buildings”. He appears to be referring to the legal battles over President Obama’s healthcare mandate, the ongoing conflict surrounding religious freedom, and the administration’s demand that public schools, including Catholic ones, adopt gender neutral bathrooms.
“The federal government is trying to reduce religious liberty, contrary to the Constitution of the United States,” Cardinal Burke says in the interview.
“President Obama wants to push the Church back behind the walls of her church buildings and to prevent her applying her law to her own hospitals and schools.
[…]
The Speculum Iustitiae conference continues today. You will recognize the title as being that given to Mary in her beautiful litany.
It is encouraging that beautiful churches can be built still today in beautiful places.
As Mass closed yesterday, Cardinal Burke on his way out. I had been in the confessional during Mass since I generally eschew concelebration.
This morning, having read even more about the murder of the priest in France, I spent some time with St. Miguel Pro, to whom we ought perhaps to turn in these troubling times.
His altar and relic.
Today our talks are by Msgr. Jason Gray on “The Promoter of the Faith in Causes of Canonization: Its History and Implications for the Defender of the Bond” and by Dr. William Daniel: “Analysis of the 2015 Reform of the Marriage Nullity Process”. Later Card. Burke will speak about “The Defender of the Bond as a Distinct and Necessary Office in the Matrimonial Process”.
Indeed, I hear one canonist here suggest that there should be formed some kind of association of Defenders of the Bond, in the wake of Mitis index.
From Fr. Rutler at LifeZette:
A Christian Duty in the Face of Terror
After another devastating ISIS attack in France, this time against a priest in his 80s while he was saying Mass, the answer isn’t just, “Do nothing.” As racism distorts race and sexism corrupts sex — so does pacifism affront peace.
Turning the other cheek is the counsel Christ gave in the instance of an individual when morally insulted: Humility conquers pride. It has nothing to do with self-defense.
[…]
A father is culpable if he does not protect his family. A bishop has the same duty as a spiritual father of his sons and daughters in the church, just as the civil state has as its first responsibility the maintenance of the “tranquility of order” through self-defense.
[…]
The shortcut to handling the crisis is to deny that it exists.
On the first day of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, there were over 60 speeches, and yet not one of them mentioned ISIS.
[…]
From my the increasingly well-known Fr. Murray:
A Catholic priest embodies the soul of European culture. Murdering a priest is symbolic of the intention to kill the entire Christian West. Muslim expansionist warfare has historically been directed at conquering the Christian nations of Europe. ISIS is carrying out that warfare today — and the past few weeks have shown that they have agents of death all over Europe.
Here’s something for your ongoing interest in Pope’s Francis recent off-the-cuff remarks.
Pope Francis, after a firestorm of criticism, amends his official remarks from Diocese of Springfield in IL on Vimeo.
To begin, for the readers of the Fishwrap, I’ll lead off with this.
Buy this book now… HERE (UK HERE).
And now the real thing.
Each summer, His Eminence Raymond Card. Burke organizes a conference for canon and civil lawyers. The presentations are always good.
So is the break food… homemade blueberry bars.
And then there were these cheesy things.
Still warm from the oven. But I digress.
Cardinal Burke’s talk was about “Discipline and Doctrine: Law in the Service of Truth and Love.”
He got into some of the sloppy language in use today and attempts to pit “mercy” against “justice”, being “pastoral’ as opposed to observing the law.
Break time.
Next we had a talk by the President of Franciscan University, Sean O. Sheridan, TOR, “The Role of Academic Freedom at a Catholic University.
Of course he spoke about the second most ignored document in the history of the Church, Ex code Ecclesiae.
The Holy Door of the Basilica for the Year of Mercy.
Note the set up on the altar.
More later.
Coat of Arms by D Burkart
A Daily Prayer for Priests
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