Fr. Z's Blog | Formerly entitled: "What Does The Prayer Really Say?" – Clear, straight commentary on Catholic issues, liturgy and life by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf o{]:¬)

MADISON, WI – 2 Feb – CANDLEMAS – Pontifical Mass at the Throne

Posted on 2 February 2015 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

On 2 February – Candlemas – in Madison, WI, His Excellency Most Rev. Bishop Robert C. Morlino (the Extraordinary Ordinary) will celebrate a Pontifical Mass at the Throne.

The Mass will begin at 7 pm at the Bishop O’Connor Center.

Bishop Morlino will bless candles brought by parishes and people before Mass. All are invited.

Candles are symbols of sacrifices. They are like living things. They eat and drink the wax from the bees, which reminds us that sacrifice can also be sweet, not just bitter. Candles breathe air. They move in their flames as they flicker. They communicate to our eyes a beautiful. They die at the end of their span. They are consumed for the Lord in all our liturgical rites. So should we be. Using candles during important times is a wholesome Catholic practice.

UPDATE 2 Feb evening:

Here is a shot from the Mass tonight.

Posted in Events, Just Too Cool, Liturgy Science Theatre 3000, The Campus Telephone Pole | Tagged Bp. Robert Morlino, Candlemas, D. Madison
4 Comments

Commercial banned from the Super Bowl?

Posted on 2 February 2015 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

It seems that the NFL didn’t want this commercial during the Super Bowl.

Posted in Semper Paratus | Tagged 2nd amendment, self-defense
36 Comments

CINOs

Posted on 1 February 2015 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

I point the attention of the readership to something at American Catholic. This is dreadful, but I sense that much of our struggle for our Catholic identity will be circumscribed by situations like this.

The University of St. Thomas (St. Paul, MN) says, “Stick it in your ear!”

The folks over at The College Fix have done their homework, exposing how administrators at the University of St. Thomas (UST)—a “private Catholic liberal arts school” located in St. Paul, MN—are standing by their decision to let students to gain academic credit by serving as interns at a Minnesota-based National Organization for Women (NOW) chapter, even though the organization advocates for abortion on demand, LGBTQ rights, same-sex marriage, and its brand of so-called “racial justice.” UST’s Women’s Studies Department is sponsoring the internship opportunity.

This decision comes after the folks over at TFP Student Action also did their homework, organizing a successful petition drive garnering 10k+ signatures admonishing UST for offering internships at Planned Parenthood and Minnesota NARAL. Quickly after that email was forwarded to UST President Julie Sullivan, the listings were removed.

Now, that administrative fiat might satisfy some people.

However, what’s noteworthy about the NOW incident is not that diversity and inclusion means providing students opportunities to intern in organizations whose purpose contradicts official Church teaching. Nor is what’s noteworthy that academic administrators and professors sincerely believe that providing students those internships advances the institution’s mission as Catholic.

What’s noteworthy about this incident is that doing so provides additional evidence of a pattern of conduct on the part of academic administrators and professors at many of the nation’s Catholic universities and colleges. Namely, tacitly allowing opportunities like those internships at NOW to proceed. How? Perhaps through a “wink and a nod” or, even better yet, “Don’t inform me.” The idea is that if nobody finds out, all the better. And, if a crazy conservative Catholic does find out and complain, assert plausible deniability.

[…]

Read the rest there.

Posted in Lighter fare, Our Catholic Identity, Pò sì jiù, The Drill, The Olympian Middle | Tagged Archd. St. Paul and Minneapolis, CINOS, University of St. Thomas
18 Comments

Septuagesima – Burying the Alleluia

Posted on 31 January 2015 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

We have come around again to Pre-Lent. It is time to get our heads into the game and start preparing for our upcoming Lenten discipline.

Already.

Sunday is Septuagesima. That means that on Saturday at 1st Vespers, in the traditional Roman Rite, we sing “Alleluia” for the last time until Easter.

Here are the Benedictines at Le Barroux singing the Alleluia for the last time.

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Posted in "How To..." - Practical Notes, Liturgy Science Theatre 3000 | Tagged Alleluia, pre-lent, Septuagesima
1 Comment

“Who says Catholic Social Teaching requires us to follow the policy prescriptions of the hard left?”

Posted on 31 January 2015 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

I found a really interesting opinion piece at Crisis by Austin Ruse, who runs C-FAM (an organization you should know and support).

I am going to drop you into this piece in medias res. You should go back to read the first part on your own. Plenty of fireworks there, too.

[…]

I first noticed this group of thunder-bolt tossing uber-Catholics at a blog called Vox Nova, [they seem to come unhinged pretty easily… HERE ] which for a good long while was exorcized over the question of water boarding. I engaged the debate and suggested this was a distraction from real issues and a way to convince faithful Catholics that they could not vote for the Republicans because of it. You would have thought I was the biggest heretic since Martin Luther.

People went to the board of directors of the group I run asking for my firing because a heretic like me certainly could not run a Catholic organization. [Pretty nasty, that. But that’s how they work.] I was excoriated in columns and comment boxes. I was schooled on Elizabeth Anscombe’s essay about why numbers do not matter; that three water-boardings are as important as 50 million abortions, or something like that.

This started all up again when a few months ago the Democratic staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee released a 6,000-page report on “torture” wherein they did not interview anyone from the CIA, but spent most of their time with defense attorneys for terrorists jailed in Guantanamo Bay.

This group of writers hasn’t exactly downplayed the non-negotiables as to expand them into meaninglessness. Gun control is now a non-negotiable. So is the minimum wage. Universal government provided health care is a non-negotiable and now, with the impending papal encyclical on the environment, global warming is one, too.

I got into a debate a few weeks ago on the topic of water boarding. What I found is these juice-box theologians, that is, mostly young newly minted but largely unemployed PhDs, believe that water boarding is so important that one must cast their vote for president based on it and it alone.

Talk about single-issue voting.

This may be an important issue but not one that rises to the level of determining my vote nor should it. There are too many other important issues like—yes—abortion.

Has the GOP overturned Roe v. Wade just yet? No. Does the GOP desert this issue on a fairly regular basis? Sure. Are there anti-lifers all over the GOP elite? You bet. Even so, the GOP remains the only viable political vessel for stopping what Pope St. John Paul the Great called the most important human rights issue of our time. He did not say that about torture, or the minimum wage, or universal government-run health care.

[QUAERITUR…] As for Catholic Social Teaching, the cudgel this group likes to beat us with, who says Catholic Social Teaching requires us to follow the policy prescriptions of the hard left? The following fits right in with Catholic Social Teaching, if only Catholics were willing to put it this way:

Eliminate the corporate income tax. Eliminate the capital gains tax, and the death tax. Eliminate OSHA and the Department of Education. At the same time, run a national campaign out of the White House encouraging people to finish high school, get married, go to church, and have babies. Sit back and watch all boats rise.

While we’re at it, let’s get the Federal government out of the land business. The Feds own a third of all US land, up to half and more of many western states. Let’s have a modern day land-rush for all those Distributists out there who are just itching to fish, farm or make cheese—though one suspects they’ll stay exactly where they are, blogging and adjunct teaching. [heh heh]

Posted in Liberals, Our Catholic Identity, The Drill | Tagged Austin Ruse
40 Comments

Brick by Brick: Another parish implements Summorum Pontificum. Wherein Fr. Z rants.

Posted on 31 January 2015 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

For your Brick by Brick file.

A reader sent me a link to a story in the St. Louis Review (a publication of the Archdiocese of St. Louis) about a parish which as started up a Traditional Latin Mass.

‘Mysterium tremendum’ | St. Barnabas begins offering the Traditional Latin Mass

With a single intoning of the bell, Mass had begun at St. Barnabas.

But this was no Ordinary Form of the Mass.

“In Nomine Patris, et Filii et Spiritus Sancti …”

For the first time in nearly 50 years, the Extraordinary Form of the Mass — better known as the Traditional or Tridentine Latin Mass — is being celebrated at the northern O’Fallon parish. In January, Father Raymond Hager began offering the Mass at 10 a.m. on Sundays, after a group of parishioners wrote a letter last January requesting it. [See what happens when you ask?]

[…]

“At the first Mass, people had tears in their eyes,” said Father Hager. He said that all of this is “directed toward God and what’s called the ‘mysterium tremendum,’ or the tremendous mystery. [the sort of “tremendum” which makes one shudder with awe…] The sense of the sacred, and the mystery of God becoming present in His most sacred Body and Blood is proclaimed profoundly in and through the Extraordinary Form of the Mass.

[This part might sound familiar to longtime readers here…] “In the Eastern Churches they have the iconostasis … where you can’t see everything that’s going on, because what is happening is so holy it should be veiled. When the elements of the bread and wine become Our Lord’s Body and Blood, you’re not seeing that at that moment, but you do see Our Lord and God at the elevation of the consecration in the Extraordinary Form of the Mass. It really speaks to that sense of mystery.”

[…]

Ordained in 1997, Father Hager taught himself how to celebrate the Mass according to the 1962 Missal. Born in 1960, he has no memories of going to the Traditional Latin Mass as a child. As a seminarian, he would occasionally visit St. Agatha, where the Latin Mass was offered in St. Louis at the time. “I was blown away by the beauty and sacredness of the liturgy,” he said.

The process of learning the language and rubrics took several months. Father Hager approached Archbishop Robert J. Carlson, who connected him with Canon Michael Wiener, rector of St. Francis de Sales Oratory, one of two churches designated specifically for the Latin Mass in St. Louis. Canon Wiener, the episcopal delegate for the implementation of the Traditional Latin Mass in the archdiocese, offered his guidance.

Father Hager also watched videos, read books and sought help from several others, including Sister Michaleen Vomund, CPPS, PSR director at St. Barnabas, and Bill Guelker of the Latin Liturgy Association, a local organization that promotes the use of ecclesiastical Latin in the liturgy. Several changes had to be made in the sanctuary, including moving the nearly 1,500-pound altar back four feet and adding a communion rail. [Well done! And it was worth all the effort.]

[…]

Read the rest there.

We need as many celebrations of the older form of the Roman Rite as possible in as many places as possible as soon as possible.

These are trying times, and there is a lot of confusion right now. Some people are showing signs of defeatism.

NO!

This is precisely the time to get to work. Let’s keep our eyes focused on what is really going to make a difference. I think that is located in exactly the vision that Pope Benedict XVI offered us.

So, I will repeat what I have been saying for some time now.

Make things happen. Work with sweat and money to make them happen. If you thought you worked hard before, forget it. Work harder. Pope Francis wants some “lío”? We’ve got some “lío” right here. ¡Hagan lío!

Get involved with all the works of charity that your parishes or groups sponsor. If Pope Francis wants a Church “for the poor”, then we will respond, “OORAH!!” The “traditionalist” will be second-to-none in getting involved. “Dear Father… you can count on the ‘Stable Group of TLM Petitioners-For-By-Now-Several-Months” to help with the collection of clothing for the poor! Tell us what you need!”

Pray and fast and give alms. Have you been doing that? Do more.

Form up and get organized. Find like-minded people. Put in your request for the implementation of Summorum Pontificum. Raise the money to help buy the stuff the parish will need. Make a plan. Find people. Execute!

Get your ego and your own little personal interpretations and preferences out of the way. It is team-work time. If we don’t sacrifice individually, we will stay divided and we won’t achieve our objectives.

The legislation is in place. Young priests and seminarians are eager to get into this.

Give them something to do.

As I have written before, Pope Benedict gave us, boys and girls, a beautiful new bicycle! He gave us a direction, encouragement, and a running push. Now, take off the training wheels and RIDE THE DAMN BIKE!

Meanwhile, Fr. Z kudos to Fr. Raymond Hager and St. Barnbas parish!

Posted in ¡Hagan lío!, "How To..." - Practical Notes, ACTION ITEM!, Be The Maquis, Benedict XVI, Brick by Brick, Fr. Z KUDOS, Just Too Cool, Liturgy Science Theatre 3000, Our Catholic Identity, Si vis pacem para bellum!, SUMMORUM PONTIFICUM, The future and our choices, Wherein Fr. Z Rants |
20 Comments

More from the mighty pen of Daniel Mitsui

Posted on 30 January 2015 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

From time to time I post about art from Daniel Mitusi, the talented Catholic artist who has worked under the inspiration of the Medieval period as well as Japanese prints. He gets proper inculturation.

You may recall that his little daughter has spent quite a bit of time in the hospital. You know what that means.

Here are a couple more pieces which he sent recently.

The first is a treatment of a psalm. HERE

I was especially amused by the rabbits, which multiply along the decorative margin.

The second is an ink drawing of the dream of Joseph when the angel reveals Herod’s plot and tells the Holy Family to flee to Egypt. The image of what the angel wants is depicted on the raised fan. Very cool.

Marvelous. And there is a reference to the cherry tree. HERE

His site is HERE. Please visit.

Speaking of the cherry tree, recently when I was in Washington DC, I saw the exhibit of images of Mary. They had a well-known Barocci on loan from the Vatican Museum of the Rest on the Flight into Egypt. Joseph, with a beautiful smile, hands the diminutive Lord a branch with cherries.

Posted in Just Too Cool, The Campus Telephone Pole | Tagged Daniel Mitsui, inculturation
19 Comments

Finding one’s way deeper into the Faith

Posted on 30 January 2015 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

On the threshold of the big… *yawn* … game, there is something of interest in a piece at the National Catholic Register, an interview with the grandson of the legendary Vince Lombardi.

Joe Lombardi is the offensive coordinator of the Detroit Lions.

Take note of this in particular:

LOMBARDI: I first started becoming truly interested in the greatness of the Catholic faith around the time I got married 15 years ago. My wife, Molly, and I were concerned about all the health dangers of contraceptive pills, so we looked into natural family planning [which the Church approves]. A priest we met with wanted us to listen to a talk on CD from Dr. Janet Smith called “Contraception: Why Not”; but we said we were already sold on the topic. He insisted that we listen to it anyway, and we were blown away by what Dr. Smith said. Even though we were on the path it recommended, our beliefs and motives were reinforced or augmented in many ways.

Q: That was the first step toward becoming more fully Catholic?

LOMBARDI: Yes, we started looking into what the Church teaches, and our search has produced so many great results. Now, we love being immersed in Catholic traditions, including the extraordinary form of the Mass. We attend a parish that has this one Sunday a month, and the other Sundays they have the ordinary form in English, but with the priest facing ad orientem [“toward the east,” or in the same direction as the congregation] and with suitable music.

Posted in Just Too Cool, Liturgy Science Theatre 3000, Our Catholic Identity | Tagged Joe Lombardi, Vince Lombardi
6 Comments

ASK FATHER: Where to bow or genuflect in confusing church

Posted on 29 January 2015 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

From a reader…

QUAERITUR:

I attend a “modern” church with the traditional long, central aisle. At one end (not the east) is the rose window above the wooden table that serves as an altar (ad popularum). At the other end is the Tabernacle in a small chapel with glass doors. Thus the tabernacle is just about as far from the altar as possible, but can be seen from the aisle through the glass doors. Some folks when they enter genuflect toward the bare altar, and bow when they cross from left to right in front of the altar (on their way to give a reading etc.). Before the consecration shouldn’t they bow toward the Tabernacle, and not the bare altar?

When Constantine legalized Christianity in the 4th c., the Church moved from worshipping in homes, caves, and makeshift gathering spaces into larger venues built (or in some cases, adapted) specifically for the worship of God. In times of persecution, the Church went back to worshipping in whatever space was available.

When persecution comes again (as it will) we’ll do the same.

In the meantime, we have the ability -now – to construct buildings specifically for the worship of God. We have a tradition of such structures, built by our forebears, upon which we can draw. From past constructs we can what works, and what doesn’t work.

We don’t need to re-invent the wheel.

There are those for whom “creativity” means starting with a blank slate, ignoring the past, and creating something altogether new. Beauty is irrelevant, what works is cliché, logic is thrown out the window (which usually contains some chips of colored glass in some abstract pattern). It’s a passing trend, but it’s something we have to deal with now.

Two hundred years from now art and architecture students will write theses entitled, “What WERE They Smoking in the 20th – 21st Century?

Reverence should always be shown to Our Lord. He is our Creator and Redeemer. We owe Him EVERYTHING. We genuflect when we pass before the Blessed Sacrament because throwing ourselves prostrate before the Lord of the Universe each and every time we encounter Him would simply be impractical.

Yet, we also have liturgical law. In a spirit of humility, we should obey liturgical law. After all, the Church, which is properly deputized to do so, puts this in place to govern our actions when we worship God.

The current liturgical law in force for the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite requires that the ministers genuflect when entering the sanctuary if the Blessed Sacrament is reserved there. They must also genuflect at the end of the Holy Mass as they leave. If the Blessed Sacrament is not reserved in the sanctuary, the ministers bow to the altar. During the Holy Mass, the ministers are instructed to bow to the altar when they pass it.

Happily we also have now the full use of the Extraordinary Form. It is to be hoped that the Extraordinary Form will exert a powerful “gravitational pull” on the hearts and minds and knees of the faithful, and then upon the rubrics and laws of the Ordinary Form.

Posted in SESSIUNCULA | Tagged genuflection
27 Comments

Jesuits here, Jesuits there

Posted on 29 January 2015 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

The latest from Sandro Magister involves Pope Francis, a writer for the Jesuit produced journal La Civiltà Cattolica, the bishops of the Philippines, Pope Francis, and Fr. Joseph Fessio, SJ.

ROME, January 29, 2015 – They have not gone without notice, the harsh criticisms addressed by an authoritative Jesuit of the authoritative “La Civiltà Cattolica” to the bishops of the Philippines, for their strenuous opposition to the law on “reproductive health” successfully backed in the country by Catholic president Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino.

The criticisms, formulated in a book, were presented in detail in this article from www.chiesa:

> Bishops of the Philippines Under Pressure. Examined and Rejected

The Jesuit who slammed the Filipino bishops for being “backward” and “closed off” not only with respect to the beacons of modernity but also with respect to the requests of Pope Francis is the Frenchman Pierre de Charentenay, a former president of the Centre Sèvres, the Paris institute of higher education of the Society of Jesus, director from 2004 to 2012 of the magazine of the Jesuits of France, “Études,” and since last year part of the team of writers of “La Civiltà Cattolica,” the magazine of the Rome Jesuits printed after inspection by Vatican authorities and directed by a man very close to the pope, Fr. Antonio Spadaro.

His [Pierre de Charentenay’s] dismissal of the bishops of the Philippines made an even bigger impression because it coincided with the journey of Pope Francis to that country, which is not only the only one in Asia with a majority Catholic population, but also distinguishes itself by the strong presence of its bishops in the public sphere. [So, the Jesuits in orbit about Pope Francis right now are against “culture warriors”?]

Receiving the pope on January 16 at the presidential palace (see photo), Benigno Aquino, educated in the Jesuit schools of Manila, also took the opportunity to criticize the Filipino bishops. In welcoming his guest he cited and turned against them the pre-Christmas address of Francis to the Roman curia, with the condemnation of those who by virtue of their roles make themselves “sowers of discord.”

But neither in the discourse delivered immediately after that circumstance – where he nonetheless struck a blow for the “inalienable right to life, beginning with that of the unborn” – nor in other moments of his visit did Pope Francis expend a single word in defense of the bishops.

Not everyone, however, among the Jesuits agrees with the accusatory theses of their confrere of “La Civiltà Cattolica,” […]

From San Francisco, after reading the rejection of the Filipino bishops decreed by Fr. de Charentenay because of their closure to modernity, the Jesuit Joseph Fessio reacted by sending us the letter reproduced below.

Fr. Fessio is not an unknown. Formed in the theological school of Joseph Ratzinger – and a prominent member of the circle of his disciples, the “Ratzinger Schülerkreis” – he founded and directs the publishing house Ignatius Press in the United States, which recently made an impression with the book “Remaining in the Truth of Christ,” with contributions from five cardinals against communion for the divorced and remarried.

The following are the “errors of reason and of fact” that Fr. Fessio sees present in Fr. de Charentenay’s criticisms of the bishops of the Philippines, on matters of “reproductive health.”

[…]