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{]:¬)

23 October 2023 – The altar painting of the Holy Trinity by Guido Reni taken down for an exposition.

Posted on 23 October 2024 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

23 October 2023 – The altar painting of the Holy Trinity at Santissima Trinità dei Pellegrini in Rome by Guido Reni is taken down for an exposition.

23 October – St. Severinus Boethius: “A man content to go to heaven alone will never go to heaven.”

Posted on 23 October 2024 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

“A man content to go to heaven alone will never go to Heaven” – Boethius

What have you done, lately, to help someone get to Heaven?

Today is the feast of St. Severinus Boethius (+525), the author of the Consolation of Philosophy. He was a pivotal figure at the cusp of late Antiquity and what are called the Middle Ages.

Boethius was a member of an ancient Roman family. Among his accomplishments were translations and commentaries of Aristotle’s works on logic in Latin along with Euclid’s Elements. He also wrote on arithmetic, geometry, music, and perhaps astronomy and he coined the term quadrivium (four-fold way), the basis of education for centuries, now revived in a way in homeschool circles (thank you, Dorothy Sayers!).

Boethius was an important figure in the court of Theodoric the Ostrogoth. Theodoric would eventually come to believe that Boethius was conspiring against him and threw him in prison before executing him. While he was in prison, he composed the astonishingly influential Consolation of Philosophy.

Here is his entry in the Martyrologium Romanum:

6*. Papiae in Liguria, commemoratio sancti Severini Boetii, martyris, qui, scientia ac scriptis praeclarus, in carcere detentus tractatum scripsit de consolatione philosophiae et Deo usque ad mortem a Theodorico rege inflictam cum integritate servivit.

Who wants to take a crack at the Latin?

Take note that the entry calls him “Saint” Boethius. So does the official Vatican Curia’s calendar. He is celebrated as a saint in Pavia.

You may be interested to know that Boethius’ tomb is in the crypt of the same church where St. Augustine’s remains are interred: San Pietro in Ciel d’oro in Pavia, south of Milan.

Here is Lady Philosophy explaining God to Boethius in the guise of 15th c. France.

It’s too bad that hats are not more in style these days.

Posted in Saints: Stories & Symbols | Tagged Boethius
5 Comments

Rome 24/10 – Day 23: The Deposition

Posted on 23 October 2024 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

At 7:30 the sun rose here in Rome.

It set at 18:18.

The Ave Maria is at 18:30

I think a church in the neighborhood is ringing the Ave Maria. I’ll try to capture it. It was 3-4-5-1 at exactly 18:30. Hmmm.

At Ss. Trinità (aka the Parish™) the great main altar painting of the Trinity by Guido Reni was taken down. It was quite a project. I’ll have a video of the process processed soon. The painting will go to an exposition.

On a cool rainy day, this was a good lunch, though it required a nap.

Risotto milanese with ossobuco.

This was at one of my favorite places, one of the consistently best in the rione, Rosina. I really enjoy this place. It is not for large groups.

Thank you, O Lord, for this day.

Welcome Registrant:

Catholic19

Please remember me when shopping online and use my affiliate links. US HERE – UK 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 churchy news… the Cardinal elect from Indonesia has declined to become a Cardinal. HERE I wouldn’t mind if a few more did, too. I have a little list.

He saw the list.

Pray for the soul of liberation theologian Gustavo Gutierrez, who has died.

Scomparso a Lima, a 96 anni, il teologo domenicano #GustavoGutierrez tra i fondatori della teologia della liberazione che chiedeva alla Chiesa “un’opzione preferenziale per i poveri”. #PapaFrancesco sei anni fa lo ringraziò per il suo servizio
Leggi ?? https://t.co/Wpu48zvzb4

— Vatican News (@vaticannews_it) October 23, 2024

At walking together about walking togetherity a couple things. The final document has been given to the participants: paper copy. Not email. Not electronic. They have been admonished, virtually threatened, not to share it, take photos of it, quote it. Of course who would? Canary trap. Just as the Stasi could put variants into texts to see where the leak came from, the walkers togetherers could just as well do that. So, the meeting isn’t over but its over.

But it’s not over. There is going to be three-day conference at the Jesuit university (where else) about walking together and Vatican II. You can imagine what this will be about: the synod is the natural outcome of the fons and culmen of Vatican II which (now) requires that everything imaginable must be completely redefined and retooled: Cult, Code, Creeed (liturgy, law, doctrine) … everything. Even history (read: memory hole).

Will this every end? Not for a while: the point of the whole thing is PROCESS.

In chessy news… HERE

(White to move and mate is 2)

Posted in SESSIUNCULA |
6 Comments

Rome 24/10 – Day 22: Over the river

Posted on 22 October 2024 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

07:29 for the sun rise and 18:20 for the sunset here in Rome. It was a lovely midday and not so lovely late afternoon.

The Ave Maria is 18:30.

It is/was the Feast of St. John Paul II.

Lord, thank you for this day.

Although… I hear that there is another encyclical coming.

I went across the river today for the first time since I’ve been here. No, that’s not right. I went over the near me, but not toward the Vatican, which I avoid as much as possible.

However, I had an errand there… a pleasant one as it turns out… to meet up with some well-known Catholic writers (whose names you would know).

I spotted that the Angel Bridge is all boxed up. This is really a bad time to come to Rome for sightseeing. Everything is entombed and being restored.

Then…

A quick stop in one of St. Philip Neri’s churches, San Giovanni dei Fiorentini.

This one saw the consistory list. Poor little guy.

Please remember me when shopping online and use my affiliate links. US HERE – UK 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.

Thanks to readers for flower money. I have some roses going. And Pippo gave me the outlier today when I stopped for alstroemeria.

Hey Fathers! How about a clerical Guayabera shirt?

In chessy news… HERE.

(White to move and mate in 4)

Posted in SESSIUNCULA |
3 Comments

22 October 2004: Death of Fr. Louis Bouyer

Posted on 22 October 2024 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Louis Bouyer (1913-2004) was a former Lutheran minister who was received into the Catholic Church in 1939 and became a priest of the French Oratory. He was a theologian and exerted a strong influence at Vatican II as a peritus in the sphere of liturgy. With Joseph Ratzinger and Hans Urs von Balthasar he was a founder of the periodical Communio (which was countered by Kung’s and Rahners Concilium). Today is the 2oth anniversary of Bouyer’s death.

In his memoirs, Bouyer has anecdotes about how the Conciliar liturgical reform was ~~perpetrated~~…. er um… implemented. For example:

October 3rd — Sainte Thérèse de l’Enfant Jésus (Roman calendar and a local Saint here in Normandy)…

Father Louis Bouyer (photo): I wrote to the Holy Father, Pope Paul VI, to tender my resignation as member of the Commission charged with the Liturgical Reform. The Holy Father sent for me at once (and the following conversation ensued):

Paul VI: Father, you are an unquestionable and unquestioned authority by your deep knowledge of the Church’s liturgy and Tradition, and a specialist in this field. I do not understand why you have sent me your resignation, whilst your presence, is more than precious, it is indispensable!

Father Bouyer: Most Holy Father, if I am a specialist in this field, I tell you very simply that I resign because I do not agree with the reforms you are imposing! Why do you take no notice of the remarks we send you, and why do you do the opposite?

Paul VI: But I don’t understand: I’m not imposing anything. I have never imposed anything in this field. I have complete trust in your competence and your propositions. It is you who are sending me proposals. When Fr. Bugnini comes to see me, he says: “Here is what the experts are asking for.” And as you are an expert in this matter, I accept your judgement.

Father Bouyer: And meanwhile, when we have studied a question, and have chosen what we can propose to you, in conscience, Father Bugnini took our text, and, then said to us that, having consulted you: “The Holy Father wants you to introduce these changes into the liturgy.” And since I don’t agree with your propositions, because they break with the Tradition of the Church, then I tender my resignation.

Paul VI: But not at all, Father, believe me, Father Bugnini tells me exactly the contrary: I have never refused a single one of your proposals. Father Bugnini came to find me and said: “The experts of the Commission charged with the Liturgical Reform asked for this and that”. And since I am not a liturgical specialist, I tell you again, I have always accepted your judgement. I never said that to Monsignor Bugnini. I was deceived. Father Bugnini deceived me and deceived you.

The Novus Ordo… what the Council Father’s wanted?

Also, at The Catholic Thing today there is a piece about Bouyer’s view of “Catholicism” which might not be what you think it is. He thought that, within the Church, there were polar opposite ideologies of progressivism and integralism. Distinctions can and must be made.

BTW… if anyone knows for sure the name of the restaurant where Bouyer and Bernard Botte cobbled up in an evening the 2nd Eucharistic Prayer, drop me a line.

The English translation of The Memoirs of Louis Bouyer: From Youth and Conversion to Vatican II, the Liturgical Reform, and After has finally been produced. UK – HERE

This is an important first hand account of what happened in the liturgical “reform” sparked by Vatican II.

Click to buy!

Posted in SESSIUNCULA | Tagged Fr. Louis Bouyer
13 Comments

5 years ago today – 21 October 2019: Pachamama demon idols go into the drink

Posted on 21 October 2024 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Five years ago today (the Feast of Karl of Austria), a young Austrian man walked together with demon idols which were scandalously in a church and dumped them into the Tiber River.

October 21st is Pachamama day!
Five years since she went into the Tiber. #staysaved https://t.co/TNyTLGjl1M pic.twitter.com/iYV1vWGbnS

— Eccles (@BruvverEccles) October 21, 2024

If you find objects that have to do with the occult or idolatry, they should be broken, burned, whatever, and the detritus put into living water (i.e., moving, as a stream or river or ocean).

Posted in Fr. Z KUDOS, Linking Back |
15 Comments

STOP! Look at this: “What Are Synods Good For?” (AUDIO)

Posted on 21 October 2024 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Take a few minutes – right now, not later – and read the piece over at the ever valuable The Catholic Thing by my old friend Msgr. Hans Feichtinger. This is outstanding in its perspicacity and in its concision. There is hardly a word wasted (which is good because the policy of The Catholic Thing is to keep their daily offerings under 1000 words).

I’m going to presume on my friendship with both Msgr. Feichtinger and the editor of TCT Robert Royal and read this piece for you, so that you can listen to it easily in your car or elsewhere… perhaps several times. Their webpage has a button to hear a computer generated reading but I think I will be able to manage a slightly more interesting recitation.

A taste:

What Are Synods Good For?

[…]

The very idea that evangelization needs more synodality is, in fact, questionable. Evangelization needs witness, prophecy, holiness. For synods to have a place in the work of evangelization, they need to stay away from political ways of thinking.

When people engage in a lot of Church sociology, it’s a sure sign of being stuck in a confused nostalgia about Christendom, and in approaches that have been failing for some decades: pace Cardinal Radcliffe, but the reasons why bishops, clergy and laity in Africa (and not only there) reject Fiducia supplicans are deeply biblical and doctrinal, not “pressure” they feel from Orthodox, Protestant or Muslim groups in their countries, bolstered by Russian, American, or Arab money.

Such a statement is theologically shallow, and Marxist in its reductionism of all things to power and money. On closer inspection, it’s even a kind of a conspiracy theory and/or a projection. The pressure from people with power, influence and money, endlessly pushing an LGBT agenda, is much stronger in North America and Europe. This ideological colonization is by now exhausting even the papal patience.

[…]

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Posted in Synod | Tagged synodality
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Rome 24/10 – Day 20 & 21: Hammer of Freemasons

Posted on 21 October 2024 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

The beautiful blue Roman sky was today illuminated at 07:28. It will darken considerably after 18:21. The Ave Maria is now in the 18:30 cycle in the Roman Curia, if they did anything over there.

Thank you, Lord, for this day.

This day is also the Feast of St. Gaspar del Bufalo (+1837), known as the “Hammer of Freemasons”. A great title.

I have interest in St. Gaspar as one of my Roman patrons because I exercised ministry as a seminarian and then deacon at the basilica in Rome where he helped to found devotion to and the Confraternity of the Most Precious Blood at San Nicola in Carcere. He had a tense relationship with the state (Napoleon’s police were after him). Masons tried multiple times to assassinate him… as they do. His answer to the French commissar asking him to sign his submission to emperor should be the motto of every pope and bishop requested to yield to the world:

“I can’t, I musn’t, I don’t want to.”

That’s how a Roman priest says ‘No’ when he wants to be talkative.”

It’s better in Italian.

‘Non posso, non debbo, non voglio!’

I wonder if Pius VII’s “Non debemus, non possumus, non volumus” didn’t come from St. Gaspar. I’ll bet it did.

These days it’s more like, “Volumus! Possumus! Debetote etiam vos!” Anything to appease the secular realm.

St Gaspar’s tomb is in the little S. Maria in Trivio, tucked away behind where the flashy Trevi Fountain. His bronze tomb has no barrier and the hand of the image of the saint is extended outward so that you can grasp it. It is quite moving.

St. Gaspar had ways that really could irritate, as many saints. For example, he could sense satanic objects and would charge into peoples homes to seize and destroy them no matter how well hidden. When he was young, he grew up across the mighty Church of the Gesù where his father was a cook at the Altieri palace. When Gaspar was very young he had a malady of the eyes that threatened blindness. He was cured through the intercession of St. Francis Xavier, whose arm is in the Gesù. As a priest of Rome he was critical of the Papal States which got him into hot water. The Pope had confidence in him, and asked him to engage in charitable works.

St. Gaspar, Hammer of Freemasons, pray for us.

My 1st class relic of St. Gaspar.

Speaking of the Most Precious Blood, I had occasion yesterday to ask Christ to wash with His Precious Blood the guy in the street – again – outside of where I was saying Mass all of a Sunday evening. The same really bad musician this time had – I am not making this up – a banjo, instead of a guitar. He was decidedly not a better banjo player than a guitar player. The suspicious side of my character suspects that this was not an accident, especially given how it went last week. As you may recall, I had asked the holy angels to quiet him while I said Mass. As I passed him later he said, “The demon doesn’t like you.” (Al demonio non piace!). In any event, I started Mass and he quieted down for a while, just to start up again right at the consecration. I paused and renewed my plea and he calmed down again and was mostly quite for the rest of Mass. Passing him by this time I heard a mumble, but nothing I could make out.

Yesterday I was out to lunch at a wonderful place near The Parish™. Starting with tongue and pizza bianca with a wonderful herby green schmear and homemade mayo. This we shared around.

Grama’s meatballs. The place is known for recipes that the owners grandmother made.

I had braised mutton. I spoke to the chef about it at length. It was in a marinade the day before. Some juniper and clove and wine. About 5 hours to braise, the last hour with a bay leaf and rosemary. It melted.

The side altar of Our Lady of Sorrows with The Parish™’s fine Crucifix.

What else can I tell you?

Today I am doing laundry. Also, I just got off the phone with the goldsmith’s shop. They are working on my paten (again). Aldo says it should be ready on Thursday or Friday. I’m betting Monday. Beati qui non expectant… and all that.

In churchy news… I don’t have much good to say about the walking together about walking togetherity going on over the river. This, however, is encouraging.

His Excellency Archbishop Wolfgang Haas conferred tonsure to 20 seminarians of the FSSP in Lindau (Germany) on October 19: pic.twitter.com/w27je6uRoI

— P. D’Angona, Sacerdos Romano-Catholicus (@RomanoSace57080) October 20, 2024

Also, Fr. Z follows Fr. V.

Saint Nicholas Owen was a skilled carpenter and mason. His expertise was pivotal in constructing hiding places for priests, known as priest holes, within the homes of Catholic families. These secret chambers were crucial for hiding Catholic priests from the Protestant authorities… pic.twitter.com/YvpQKO48ti

— Father V (@father_rmv) October 20, 2024

I had a nice note from the Summit Dominicans, the “soap sisters”, who make lots of other things as well including candles. They send candles for my chapel. Sister wrote to tell me that they earmarked a couple sets of ADVENT candles for me! Very sweet of them. I always think of them and say an Ave when I light my Advent wreath.

Advent isn’t that far off. Perhaps you should think about candles?

And this, just because I love St. Joan of Arc.

In chessy news … HERE

(White to move and mate in 2)

Posted in SESSIUNCULA |
1 Comment

Your Sunday Sermon Notes – 22nd Sunday after Pentecost (N.O.: 29th) 2024

Posted on 20 October 2024 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Too many people today are without good, strong preaching, to the detriment of all. Share the good stuff.

Was there a GOOD point made in the sermon you heard at your Mass of obligation for this 22nd Sunday after Pentecost, or the 29th Sunday of Ordinary Time?

Tell us about attendance especially for the Traditional Latin Mass.

Any local changes or (hopefully good) news?

A couple thoughts about the sign of the cross: HERE A taste…

[…]

In response to the trap question the Lord asked for a coin. Not just any coin, but a nómisma toû kénsou, a “tribute coin”. They gave him one, a denarion, a Roman silver coin commonly used also as a laborer’s day wage. This coin, we learn from Christ’s interrogation (“Whose are this image and the inscription?” v. 20) bore the image of the Emperor Augustus’ adopted son Tiberius, then reigning (AD 14-37) and the Latin lettering: TI[berius] CAESAR DIVI AUG[usti] F[ilius] AUGUSTUS … Tiberius Caesar Augustus, son of the divine Augustus.” Augustus, “deified” after his death (AD 14) by acclamation, was titled also as “divi filius” as adopted son of the officially deified Gaius Julius Caesar (in 42 BC).

The coin given to the Son of God said that Tiberius was the “son of god”, Augustus). Even if the coin was older, from the time Augustus, it would have had DIVI F on it.

[…]