Fr. Z's Blog | Catholic commentary by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

GUEST POST: A mother benefits from Low Mass

Posted on 17 October 2013 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

I received a note from a parishioner at my home parish back in St. Paul, MN, The Church of St. Agnes.

I have been a parishioner at St. Agnes in St. Paul for 14 months having moved to the Twin Cities for my husbands new job. We absolutely love the parish and the beautiful liturgies there. While initially disappointed at the change in the Extraordinary Form Masses from every other Sunday at the 10 AM Mass to a low Mass every Sunday at 7:30 AM, we have found the low Mass to be beautiful and a good for our family. We have 3 children ages, 1, 3, and 4.5. I thought you might appreciate this piece I wrote on the Low Mass as a regular contributor at Truth and Charity.

That schedule change was a good one. They were alternating the Sunday 10 am Mass between the older and newer forms. Not good. Instead, now the 10 am has gone to the Novus Ordo with all the Roman and traditional stops pulled out. That is what the late Msgr. Schuler built over decades to demonstrate what the Council actually asked for. It is also the Mass that first caught my attention to the point that I would eventually enter the Catholic Church.

In any event, here is an excerpt from the young lady who wrote to me:

It is the silence and the stillness that make the Extraordinary Form Low Mass unique and beautiful. It seems the most appropriate early in the morning, when the world is waking and still. For someone attending the Mass, nothing but one’s presence is required. The servers say the responses and the faithful can be completely receptive to the graces being given through the words and actions of the liturgy. It is a holy hour of prayer, where we are led by the priest, and by him given the very Body and Blood of our Lord. The quiet stillness is a break from the fast paced, loud world. Even when I spend the liturgy pacing in back with a chattering baby, the quiet is still so powerful. I have been to a wide variety of Masses in my short lifetime, and I know that diversity of the universal Church. But I love that the quiet Low Mass is still being said throughout the world, in many different cultures, and that I can go to it and have a taste of Heaven.

In a world with less and less silence, Low Mass in the older, traditional form could be of great spiritual benefit to many of your parishioners… FATHERS.

Dear brethren: Learn the older form if you don’t know it well already. If you are a priest of the Latin Church, it behooves you to know our rite. Let people know about it and make it available.

Posted in SESSIUNCULA | Tagged Archd. St. Paul and Minneapolis, Low Mass, St. Agnes, SUMMORUM PONTIFICUM
18 Comments

My view for a while

Posted on 17 October 2013 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Farewell to Venice.

The pilgrimage is officially over and I am off to Rome. But… sigh… what a sight to have to leave. And from the relative quiet and clean air to … well… you know.

I made it by vaporetto with 10 minutes to spare.

I will now fight with the onboard wifi for a while and, once I have given up, I will read from my Kindle a book sent by a reader. (I am into the Kydd series).

UPDATE:

This was about what we did for most of the trip.

UPDATE:

Back in Rome. I just made it in before rush hour.

UPDATE:

I am in my apartment, I did my grocery shopping, I put laundry in (really needed) and I have the computer online. Soon I must get a cab and race to P.za Barbarini to meet someone for supper.

So far so good.

Posted in On the road, What Fr. Z is up to |
3 Comments

Symptoms of The Francis Effect™

Posted on 17 October 2013 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

We didn’t think this was going to happen?

Six months into this pontificate, and people are starting to go a little crazy.

For example, the Archbishop of Birmingham is talking about intercommunion with Anglicans, based on a document which dates back to 1993 and concerns the conditions necessary for intercommunion with the Eastern Orthodox. (In other words, that document doesn’t apply. One is an actual Church with valid sacraments and the other is neither.)

For example, in the Archdiocese of Freiburg, Germany, some minor chancery official usurped authority which was not his in order to outline a “policy” that would allow the divorced and remarried in the diocese to receive Communion. (In other words, it remains entirely against the law and, whether he did it on his own or with the wink and nod of the diocese’s administrator, someone oughta get their backside paddled, and hard.)

Not helpful.

In some places, the Church’s teaching on doctrine and morals are out the window.

Real colors are being revealed.

“But Father! But Father!”, some of you will be saying by now… ohhhh…. I know you too well…. “You are turning on Pope Francis! We can tell. NotonlydoyouhateVatican II, but all this fulsome support of Francis you gave over the last few months….”

No, dear readers.

If in some diocese in Germany or some diocese in England a minor official or a bishop does something that is … well… pretty weird or against the Church’s law, that in itself is not Francis’ fault. I remind the readers that those bishops or officials were not appointed by Francis. They weren’t told to do those things by Francis.

We will have to wait and see, with patience, what the CDF might do in response to crazy things that will be popping up from time to time.

Here’s the deal.

The new style of this Pope – which I admit I am not comfortable with when it comes to liturgical praxis – is going to tend to bring people’s true colors out.

Doesn’t it seem that way to you?

The SSPX is having a spittle-flecked nutty over in the selva oscura where they wander. Liberals are dancing around like Gollum on the edge of the Crack of Doom.

SNAFU

Something about Pope Francis is disorienting. In the disorientation, people are showing sides that they have otherwise been able more easily to keep under wraps.

I recommend the brewing of strong Mystic Monk Coffee as an antidote to both the nutty in the dark woods and the temptation of the “precious”.

Mystic Monk Coffee!

It’s swell.

Posted in Francis, The Drill, The future and our choices, Throwing a Nutty | Tagged Archd. Birmingham, D. Freiburg, divorce, inter-communion, remarriage, SNAFU, The Francis Effect
56 Comments

QUAERITUR: I am not sure if I confessed this sin or not.

Posted on 17 October 2013 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

From a reader:

I know you have a lot on confession here, but I can’t find an answer for my question. Several months ago I went back to the Church after 30 some years, and gave what I thought a good and thorough confession. Later I thought of sins that I wasn’t sure I confessed, and confessed them at my next confession. Since then, I keep thinking of sins, committed over decades, that I’m honestly not sure if I confessed or not. I think I did, but not 100% sure. This is really starting to get to me. Is there a place I can just start fresh, with a clean slate, without the constant worrying about whether it was confessed or not. This isn’t about remembering unconfessed sin, but about thinking I confessed, but not 100% sure, and this happening over and over again with each confession.

First, laudetur Iesus Christus! Second, good for you! 30 years. I really admire people who come back to confession after a long time. It takes some guts and trust.

If you make a sincere confession, as complete as you can at the moment – even though you suspect you have forgotten things – with true sorrow for sins and a desire to amend your life, then when you receive absolution all your sins are forgiven. It isn’t that the ones you confessed at forgiven and the ones you forgot are not. ALL of them are forgiven.

If you remember things along the way, by all means confess them the next time you go to confession.

The confessional may a tribunal in which you are both the prosecuting attorney and simultaneously the accused, but it is not a torture chamber. I am not saying that you should be easy on yourself. Examine your conscience and be tough and exacting. When making your confession, do your best, be clear, precise and hide nothing. But don’t torment yourself in doubts about vague memories. If you are not sure about whether you have confessed something in the past or not, something that comes to your memory and you are just not sure about, then tell the priest exactly that: you remembered something and you aren’t sure that you confessed it and then just say what it is. You don’t have to go into long detailed explanations. Just say it and move on.

And everyone out there reading this…

GO TO CONFESSION!

Posted in "How To..." - Practical Notes, ASK FATHER Question Box, GO TO CONFESSION, Liturgy Science Theatre 3000 | Tagged confession, reconciliation, sacrament of penance
10 Comments

An encouraging website

Posted on 17 October 2013 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

I saw at Rorate a great post about the beautiful page of the FSSP’s seminary in Wigratzbad. It is in French, but you will

Great new blog: Wigratzbad seminary

The European seminary of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter (FSSP), the Seminary of Saint Peter in Wigratzbad, in the Bavarian Swabia, has a new page in French, a blog on the daily activities of the formation house.

We heartily recommend visiting it for frequent updates, and we also recommend it to those thinking about a vocation in this great Fraternity.

While I think that the real reforms will come when more diocesan priests are shouldering the load, I am all for – even more than ever – the good work of the FSSP.

Posted in Our Catholic Identity, SSPX | Tagged FSSP, schism, SSPX
2 Comments

ICEL: 50th anniversary – Two Cheers for ICEL!

Posted on 17 October 2013 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Two cheers for ICEL!

I was sent this by an ICEL insider:

ICEL was founded in St Peter’s Basilica fifty years ago today. The occasion will be marked by a Solemn Mass at the Altar of the Chair at 5pm, concelebrated by the Bishops of the Commission and their collaborators (Principal Celebrant and Homilist – Archbishop Arthur Roche, Secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.

The Mass will include English Gregorian Chant from the Roman Missal and the Graduale Parvum together with some hymns. The Master of Ceremonies of the Mass will be Mgr Jean-Pierre Kwambamba Masi, one of the papal ceremonieri. The deacons will be from the Pontifical Scots College and the Pontifical Beda College. Seminarians from the Pontifical North American College will serve and the schola will be formed of seminarians of the Venerable English College and the Pontifical Beda College. The organist will be Charles Cole, Assistant Director of Music of the London Oratory. The lector will be Peter Finn, Associate Director of ICEL. The offertory gifts will be brought forward by the staff of the ICEL Secretariat from Washington DC. In addition to concelebrating bishops and priests, Cardinals Pell and Burke will assist in Choir.

The Mass will be followed by a reception at the Venerable English College, venue of the first ever meeting of ICEL. Tomorrow, Friday October 18th, Feast of St Luke, The Holy Father will receive the Bishops of the Commission and the ICEL Editorial Committee and their principal collaborators in an audience in the Sala Clementina of the Apostolic Palace.

I say two cheers because the history of ICEL isn’t entirely without its blotches and stains. I think we all remember the bad-ol’-days, decades of:

Father,
you are so lucky that we are here.
You are really big.
Help us to be big too.

These days, however, we are happier (though not ecstatic) with the new, corrected translation, which by degrees of ten conveys better the content of the Latin texts.

For over a week now I have been with a pilgrimage in Italy. We have had a mixture of the older form of Mass and the Novus Ordo in English. I don’t often celebrate Mass using the Novus Ordo, and so the new, corrected translation really is still new to me. I still have to concentrate at certain points not to slip back into the old translation. Also, I can see how, were a priest simply to dash through the orations of Mass, they could come away with a feeling that they are clunky. That said, if you slow down and read for content, they work.

Furthermore, and more importantly, to those who say that it isn’t smooth enough and that it sounds like a translation, I say: GOOD! It is, after all, a translation. We should be using LATIN, according to the spirit of Vatican II as expressed in the documents of Vatican II. Remember the documents? Spirit, by itself, is not only not enough, it is misleading. We need documents.

In the documents we find that the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council explicitly mandated (SC 54) that pastors of souls make sure that people can both speak and sing the parts that pertain to them also in Latin. This has not been obeyed. SC 36 says: “. . .the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites.”

So, two cheers for ICEL!

Posted in Events, Liturgy Science Theatre 3000, Our Catholic Identity, The future and our choices | Tagged ICEL, Latin, SC 36, SC 54, vernacular
5 Comments

This warms my beady black heart

Posted on 16 October 2013 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Please take a moment to read this.

From Cincinnati.com:

Wounded soldier delivers ‘the most beautiful salute’
Cincinnati native’s struggling gesture during Purple Heart ceremony stirs up emotions, buzz

[…]

As the Purple Heart presentation began, Hargis struggled to move his right hand and lift it into a saluting position. Military protocol calls for a soldier to salute when he receives the Purple Heart.

A doctor tried to restrain his right arm. It was, alas, a losing battle.

“He had no idea how strong and driven my husband is,” Taylor Hargis said.

In pain from his wounds, still groggy from surgery, bandaged, hooked up to yards of tubes and without opening his blue-green eyes, Hargis delivered what his wife described as “the most beautiful salute any person in that room had ever seen.”

The commanding officer told her the salute left everyone in the room in tears.

[…]

Let us all learn from his spirit.

Posted in Just Too Cool | Tagged Purple Heart
12 Comments

[heavy sigh] Archbp. Marini’s “nostalgia” for the “spirit of the council”

Posted on 16 October 2013 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Does anything about the following strike you as supremely ironic?

From CNS:

Vatican II continues to mark ecclesial life today, says archbishop

BY MARY SOLBERG
Catholic News Service

ERIE, Pa. (CNS) — Archbishop Piero Marini, a Vatican official, recalls watching bishops day after day pour out of the Vatican hall where they gathered 50 years ago to formulate the constitutions, decrees and declarations that brought historic change to the Catholic Church.

A young priest at the time, Archbishop Marini arrived in Rome in September 1965, only a few months before the close of the Second Vatican Council.

Bishops and theologians began gathering in 1962 for the first of four three-month sessions to address more than a dozen aspects of church life, ranging from interfaith relations to greater lay participation in the liturgy, from social communication to relations between the church and the modern world.

“Fifty years later, I feel a great nostalgia and a desire to understand more fully and to experience anew the spirit of the council,” said Archbishop Marini, who is president of the Pontifical Commission for International Eucharistic Congresses.

He addressed the nearly 200 people gathered in Erie for the annual national meeting of the Federation of Diocesan Liturgical Commissions.

[…]

Archbp. Marini and the FDLC in Erie. The movie The Perfect Storm just came to mind. (Okay… I’ll admit that that’s not entirely fair.)

But…

“Nostalgia”? For “the spirit of the Council” Is that right.

Please. Some one tell me: have we seen anything else truly dominate the Church for the last few decades? Really?

You can bet along with me that the “spirit of the Council” he is nostalgic for ain’t the same spirit that Benedict XVI tried to guide us to.

I don’t have the text of the whole talk. But from this story I find it ironic that Marini laments to these people about his “nostalgia”.

Liberals have thrown “nostalgia” in the teeth of those who have had, as enshrined in both the magisterium and a juridical document, their own “legitimate aspirations” which are NOT actually stemming from nostalgia at all!

But we are supposed to coo and smile when he speaks of his nostalgia when he and his crowd poured and pour bile on the legitimate aspirations of the more traditionally-minded.

Marini’s is precisely the “spirit” rooted in discontinuity and rupture. I am reminded of what we read in the book that came out with his name on it, A Challenging Reform, in which he expatiates on the marvelous work of the Consilium of Lercaro and Bugnini. Get this. Context: The Consilium has just just taken a major step in moving from an informally meeting group to an officially and formally established body. They have their first plenary session.

“They met in public to begin one of the greatest liturgical reforms in the history of the Western church. Unlike the reform after Trent, it was all the greater because it also dealt with doctrine.” (p. 46)

They succeeded. The work of the Consilium, in revising the Missale Romanum, did indeed change the Church’s doctrine. Change they way you pray and you change what you believe… and vice versa.

Color me less than enthusiastic about Archbp. Marini’s nostalgia about the “spirit of the Council”.

And, no, I’ll believe he will be appointed to the CDW when it actually happens. (Read: don’t think it is going to happen!)

Posted in Benedict XVI, Liberals, Liturgy Science Theatre 3000, Our Catholic Identity, The future and our choices, Vatican II | Tagged Archbp. Marini, Benedict XVI, nostalgia, Spirit of Vatican II
39 Comments

Card. Burke, Bp. Pozzo leave conference during Magister’s criticism of Pope Francis

Posted on 16 October 2013 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

I has just left Rome, I think, or I would have been at this event, to be sure.

(Rome) to a scandal occurred in Rome during the presentation of the conference proceedings on the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum on the 10th of October at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum) during proceedings of the presentation of collected papers of the Third Conference on Summorum Pontificum, which had taken place in 2011. Raymond Cardinal Burke, Professor Giovanni Turco and the Vaticanist Sandro Magister three speakers were present.

[…]

Finally, Sandro Magister gave his contribution as a lecture on which Katholisches.info already reported (see separate report Pope Francis and the Liturgy – “Pure Functional Access” Reservations to Tradition, weakness in the knees before the Lord ). Master analyzed in a critical manner, the previous decisions of Pope Francis in the Liturgy: The ban for celebration in the old rite by the Franciscans of the Immaculate, the dismissal of all five consultants for the Office of Papal Liturgical Celebrations, who were close to the liturgical understanding of Benedict XVI., the refusal to genuflect in the Holy Mass at the words of consecration, although from papal Mass to papal Mass always newly master of ceremonies Guido Marini always included the two relevant points and finally the halting by CDF, that they no longer check the bizarre special forms in the Mass of the Neocatechumenal Way, as Benedict XVI. had ordered. Magister has also expressed the opinion that the Pope is “friendly” to everyone, “except with the traditionalists.”

“Scandal Currently The Dominant Characteristic of Climate in Rome”

The lecture finally came to a scandal. Magister so openly expressed his criticism of Pope Francis, that Cardinal Burke and Archbishop Pozzo had to leave the room. “The response of Cardinal Burke and Archbishop Pozzo is indicative of the currently prevailing climate in Rome,” the website Chiesa e Postconcilio (Church and Post-Conciliar). “Was it because of the time for both of them or was it simply a precaution, because of the polite but harsh criticism by Magister of Pope Francis? The withdrawal of a Cardinal during a major event is something glaring. All interpretations are allowed, “said the Spanish Catholic blogger Francisco de la Cigoña.

Okay! I am on the road, and so I can’t get too far into this.

I don’t vouch for the translation or the facts of the evening. However, I thought I should bring it to your attention. You can read the rest there.

Remember, friends. Those of you who uphold the traditional ways had better tread lightly, and with a smile. It is still possible to lose everything.

Posted in SUMMORUM PONTIFICUM | Tagged Bp. Pozzo, Card. Burke, Sandro Magister
69 Comments

Day 9: Of saints and black pasta

Posted on 16 October 2013 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Today began with Mass in the crypt of San Marco! We were at the altar where the tomb of St. Mark was for hundreds of years before it was moved upstairs.

On the way over the basilica we had some water gurgling up into the piazza.

BTW…. I have come to the conclusion that I do NOT like the way Mac handles importing photos. As a matter of fact, I detest it.

That said… I’ll post more later if I can figure the dopey system out.

A couple more shots, lest I post too little for a good taste.

In this church, S. Zacaria, you will find the tombs of St. Zachary, father of St. John the Baptist, and of St. Athanasius.

Remember that Venice pretty much sacked Byzantium when it had the chance.

A typical and evocative view.

Lunch involved my beloved squid ink again.

I will try to post more, but, honestly, Mac (I am on my laptop) has a system of importation of photos from different sources that is clunky to the point of being purposely resistant to common sense.

UPDATE:

I didn’t post my second course for lunch!

Liver, in the Venetian style.