I occasionally receive questions about or photos of boys “playing Mass”.
I received a photo from a reader of a lad being helped by a Dominican Sister of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist. (NB: She is neither serving nor is she trying to shove junior out of the way).
His grave expression reveals a better ars celebrandi than is found in many suburban parishes.
In the 2005 Martyrologium Romanum we find this entry today:
11. Lucae in Italia, sanctae Gemmae Galgani, virginis, quae, dominicae Passionis contemplatione et doloribus patienter toleratis insignis, viginti quinque annos nata, angelicam vitam die Sabbati Sancti consummavit.
Among her other earthly sufferings, Gemma bore the grace of the stigmata.
Before a saint is canonized a miracle worked through her intercession must be authenticated.
Gemma herself received the miraculous intervention of another interesting young saint, whose particular skill saved his village from terrorists.
Here is something useful from Ed “the academic” Peters.
It would be great were you to make this known to people before the opportunity has passed! Consider putting a note about this things in the worship aids you develop for ordinations and for first Masses! Consider having a note about it the week before in the diocesan newspaper and in parish bulletins where first Masses will be celebrated. Include the requirements for gaining the indulgences.
Moreover, Your Excellencies, you can by your office and authority enrich with a partial indulgence the reception of a “first blessing” by a priest or a deacon (yes, deacons can give invocative blessings). The Enchiridion doesn’t provide for such an indulgence, but you, Your Excellencies, can concede one! Get a request to Rome soon, if necessary.
Ordinands, you might ask your bishop to grant this spiritual favor. Proper procedures are to be followed, of course.
These are important spiritual benefits. We have to re-teach people about them.
Ordinations, first Masses, and clerical blessings
by Dr. Edward Peters
Questions related to ordinations, first Masses, and clerical blessings always surface about this time of year. Shall we review a few points? Let me cite to the more commonly available 1999 “Manual of Indulgences” although the 2004 Enchiridion Indulgentiarum is the current statement.
1. The practice of receiving a priest’s “first blessing” after his ordination Mass is a praiseworthy custom, but there is no specific indulgence attached to receiving such a blessing or, for that matter, to attending a cleric’s ordination Mass. [I DON’T CARE if there is no special indulgence attached to this. ASK for the blessing and kiss the palms of the priest’s hands.]
2. There is a specific plenary indulgence attached to attending a priest’s first “scheduled” or “public” Mass (regardless of whether it is designated a “Mass of Thanksgiving”, although it likely will be so designated), and to the first such Mass only. Enchiridion 1999, conc. 27. The celebration indulgenced here is not the same as the ordination Mass itself. [The new priest concelebrates with the ordaining bishop.]
3. All deacons are authorized to give any blessings so listed in the Book of Blessings [BLECH! I suggest that you all ignore the Book of Blessings… a dreadful thing… and use the Rituale Romanum. But please, let’s not deal with that in the combox. Rabbit hole is hereby closed.] and several such blessings could be appropriately given by a deacon immediately after his ordination. See 1983 CIC 1169.3 and the Shorter Book of Blessings, especially the Appendix “Solemn Blessing and Prayers over the People”.
4. Diocesan bishops may prohibit certain blessings from being offered (1983 CIC 1169.2 and CLSA Comm at 1403). Clergy should comply with such prohibitions, of course, but are free to discuss the policy with the proper authorities. Arguments against such prohibitions (say, those discouraging deacons from offerings blessings) are certainly at hand. [A deacon is ordained to do certain things after all.]
5. It would be within the authority of the arch/diocesan bishop to enrich a cleric’s “first blessings” with a partial indulgence, per Enchiridion 1999, norm 7.1, although the requirement for prior Roman review of such grants, per norm 12, probably makes such an idea impractical for this year. As I’ve said in several other contexts, this year’s liturgical questions should addressed now for use next year. [A note about that. The proper office to ask about this would be the Sacra Penitenzieria Apostolica. They are notoriously SWIFT in replying! Because this is not a matter of the internal form, you could fax to their office. I’ll wager you would get a quick response.]
Read more about indulgences: Edward Peters, A Modern Guide to Indulgences (Liturgy Training Publications, 2008) 115 pages.
Pope Francis speaks about the devil often – probably more often than any other pope in modern history.
From News.va, part of what he said:
Pope Francis further developed this reflection. “When we prefer to gossip, gossip about others, criticize others- these are everyday things that happen to everyone, including me – these are the temptations of the evil one who does not want the Spirit to come to us and bring about peace and meekness in the Christian community”. “These struggles always exist” in the parish, in the family, in the neighborhood, among friends”. Instead through the Spirit we are born into a new life, he makes us “meek, charitable.”
How many times is that now?
It is early enough in the pontificate that someone could chase down the explicit mentions and keep track.
That might be useful for the meditations of liberals who praise Francis’ humility but down play or deny the existence of the Devil or Hell’s population.
From a reader:
Buona Pasqua!!! [Altrettanto!]
I want to ask about the way of bishop’s staff. many people(liturgy experts) said, only the ordinary could turn the tip(i don’t know how to call it exactly) of staff to the congregation. Other bishops should turn it to himself, while altar servers should turn it into left or right hand side. But I couldn’t find any indication in the ceremoniale episcoporum. What is the correct way to hold it, father?
Good question. I don’t have to staff this one out.
The crook of the staff (Latin baculum, or baculum pastorale) should always face away from the bishop, any bishop, the ordinary of the place or a visitor or retired or an auxiliary. It is always to be turned forward.
This is an old question and it has an old answer. Back in 1911 (also the nickname of a classic pistol) the question was put to Sacred Congregation of Rites, which responded (Acta Apostolicae Sedis 4 (1912) 178 and 181):
III. De Episcopo extra propriam dioecesim, inquiritur:
3. Quomodo Episcopus extraneus, si, functione id requirente, aut annuente Episcopo Ordinario, pastorali baculo utatur, superiorem huiusce baculi partem vertere debeat?
[…]
Ad. 3. Semper cum parte reflexa ab se; scilicet, versus personas vel res quas prospicit.
Thus, “Always with the (top) part turned away from himself, namely, turned toward the people or things which he is looking at.”
That “always… semper” means that this applies to any sort of bishop anywhere.
Furthermore, the bishop usually carries the staff in his left hand, to free up his right hand for blessing.
By the way, the young fronds of ferns bear an uncanny resemblance to the bishop’s crosier. “Fiddleheads” (not to be confused with the misapplied term “fiddleback” for a style of chasubles) have a crosier at the top.
Finally, I urge readers who may see an errant or rookie bishop carrying a crosier with the top facing the wrong way not to dash up to him at the earliest opportunity – all other considerations having been forgotten (such as prayer) – to accuse him of something nefarious or to correct him.
These details and errors have their own importance in the sphere of decorum, but they are not so important that you are therefore given permission to be a jerk when you spot them.
From a priest:
I am a young priest in the Diocese of ….. A number of months ago you posted from a conference on exorcism you attended in Tulsa. In one of those posts you said something to the effect that there are things bishops and priests need to know. That comment has been rattling around in my mind since I read it. Also, situations occasionally come to my attention and I don’t really know how to deal with them. I went to the Josephinum and we were taught precisely zero about this stuff. Do you have any resources to which you could direct me ?
If you cite this email, please remove any identifiers. Thank you for your blog, your witness, and your priesthood.
It is not a surprise that you didn’t hear much about this.
BUT…
Exorcists say that “problems” are on the rise.
They also say that Latin is best, but… “Get it right”… because the demon corrects bad Latin.
FATHERS... do you want me to read in toto the whole rite in Latin and make the recording available?
I would make it available ONLY to bishops and priests. That would be handled on a one to one basis after proving that you are who you claim to be. No debate. No exceptions. No “But Father….!” Period.
At the blog Laetificat, run by a sharp gal in Madison (who comments here), there are some marvelous images juxtaposed.
First, pictures by kids from last Palm Sunday. Go there for the back story.
Some of Matisse to this…
Oh my, is this not perfect? Could an Italian master get it better?
Bishop Morlino blessing palms.
Nice vestment. Notice the maniple.
The tank has only one gear.
Friends… if you are feeling down and don’t know what to do, if you are discouraged because Pope Francis is doing different things, remember that Pope Benedict left juridical provisions.
If you don’t know what to do…
… take the training wheels off and RIDE THE DAMN BIKE.
Get something going.
Last night I watched a movie I haven’t seen in years from a brand new blu-ray disk (thanks CEF!) on the big hi-def screen: Babette’s Feast.
Scruple Spoon
This movie has it all.
I can say “everything” now because it is the Pope’s favorite film and it features a cuillère à sauce individuelle, a source of true delight. And since Pope Francis, with his low liturgical style is unlikely to use a scruple spoon, I surmise that the cuillère à sauce individuelle – which I saw in the movie – is the Pope’s favorite spoon. (Okay.. maybe a wooden spoon, but that doesn’t work for this post.)
See it? Sorry, these are snaps from my phone of the screen.
Since everything in Babette’s Feast is symbolic, what do we make of the sauce spoon?
Not much?
Au contraire!
“But Father! But Father!, you will immediately object, “The great final meal of the film is set around 1885. The cuillère à sauce individuelle was introduced in 1950.”
Yes. I wrote about that HERE. I have featured the CASI in posts about food HERE and HERE. So what?
Lessons.
Pope Francis has a lower liturgical style which has liberals taking victory laps. They will say, “See? SEE?!? He is doing it just like the Apostles, in the pristine way before all the medieval accretions gummed up the works. He’s so humbly wonderful, so wonderfully humble….”
I respond saying that his liturgical style may be just as much as an anachronism as the appearance of the French sauce spoon in the Pope’s favorite movie Babette’s Feast.
Thus, perhaps the Pope is really trying to signal some quite different. He is actually saying “I might like ‘Ol-brot’, but Mass should be like what Babette made. Use the sauce spoon!”
The anachronistic sauce spoon in the Pope favorite movie proves it.
The next step. He might be turn Roman liturgy into Ol-brot, but what he really wants us to have is the final meal. What’s better for Mass? What she made or… “let it soak”.
BLECH.
Once the general uses it, during the last supper, and people see what it is for, they all use it too.
Okay… everyone… get out there are promote the older, traditional form of Holy Mass in that Latin Rite.
That’s what Francis would want! The sauce spoon in Francis favorite movie proves it. Go ahead and argue that it is anachronistic. That makes it even better.
Now I need to look up recipes for Cailles en Sarcophage! I might need serious donations to make that one, given the huge slices of black truffle.
By the way, at the end of the movie, the two sisters -like the disciples walking to Emmaus – recognize Christ (Babette is the self-emptying Christ-figure) not in the soaking of the ale-bread, but in the wreck of dirty dishes and the flotsam of the kitchen, and what they ate, and how their hearts burned within them … and through the use of the cuillère à sauce individuelle.
(Someday remind me to tell you about the meal during which we sucked the brains out of the heads of little birds.)
Back on 2 April – which in blog years is like a decade ago – I offered a brief manifesto about how I think we ought to approach Pope Francis.
In fact, there are any number of entries I have posted over the last few weeks that demonstrate what I am trying to do.
I am purposely, obviously, openly, repeatedly trying to rein in the hyper-trads – to get them to breath into paper bags – and also to remind liberals that tradition-scorning victory laps are waaaaay premature.
But my adversaries – liberals and conservatives – are trying to paint me as a Francis-bashing rad-trad, and therefore to take me down.
I want you readers to know that this is going on – not because I am concerned about myself – but because the position that I have taken over the past few weeks is highly nuanced and, therefore, should not be misrepresented, wittingly or unwittingly, as that of an extremist.
I have been consistent. For example….
19 March: Dear Traditionalists…
28 March: What Pope Francis is really saying.
Note also what I wrote on 2 April (full post there).
[A]s I have been saying all along, Pope Francis needs some time to learn how to be Pope. We also have to learn to have him be our Pope.
He has done things that I think are both strange and ill-considered. On the other hand, he minces no words about the warfare we are in with the Devil, to whom he refers clearly and boldly. He spoke about the need for priests to hear confessions, though that was in private. I’ll bet he speaks about it publicly too, before long. In his homilies he has entirely eschewed a modern biblical exegetical style in favor of a more Patristic, allegorical style… even as Ratzinger famously used. His use of the image of the garb of the Old Testament priesthood and the chasuble priests put on for Mass was like something Pope Benedict would have offered us, and he wrote it before he was elected: it was his own work and not that of some flunky in the Secretariate of State. There are a lot of things Francis is showing which traditional Catholics can sincerely applaud (if they can get over themselves long enough to see them).
Even though Francis has painted himself into a corner through his abrupt dramatic changes, he is more than likely going to adjust to the exigencies of his office, which include decorum at a different level and an awareness that he is more than the bishop of a diocese somewhere.
Time, friends. Patience. And pray for him. He must be wondering if he is going to wake up from some sort of long, strange dream.
Here is my point.
We must not pit Francis against Benedict right now. We find the continuity between them.
Read Francis through Benedict.
Does this sound like I am trying to trash Pope Francis?
I think not.
“But Father! But Father!”, some will rush in to shout, “you criticized him in places too!”
When I have been critical of some change the Pope has made, I have urged caution when interpreting him, and have advocated patience while we watch him clarify what his pontificate stands for. I have stressed the need not to lose the forest for the trees.
And I have been strongly critical of myself and traditionalists for sometimes doing just that.
For example, back on 28 March:
Some liberals live and breathe liberal liturgy. On the other end of the spectrum, such as the undersigned, traditional Catholics think that liturgy is critical but for different reasons (“Save The Liturgy, Save The World”, comes to mind). Francis isn’t invested in either of these camps.
For Francis, I think, it is more a matter of “a pox on both your houses”.
[…]
Bottom line.
Francis is pushing out to the world (ad extra) an image of compassion. I think he is correcting both sides, within the Church (ad intra), which may both be, both sides, losing the forest for the trees….
This is the position I have said is highly nuanced and that should not be misrepresented as that of an extremist.
There is a deeply flawed, perhaps even mendacious, piece on CNN about Archbishop Vigneron’s comments about Catholics who promote same-sex marriage and reception of Holy Communion. I posted about that HERE.
The CNN article suggests, implies, hints, that the Archdiocese of Detroit is now trying to “step back” from or “dial back” what Vigneron said, by “adding content”.
The problem with CNN’s claim is that, well, it’s wrong. The Archdiocese, by adding content, didn’t “step back” at all.
Here is the little of the CNN piece with my emphases and comments.
Detroit archdiocese dials back no Communion for same-sex marriage supporters [There’s the “dial back”.]
By Dan Merica, CNN
Washington (CNN) – The Archdiocese of Detroit tried to reframe a day-old statement by Archbishop Allen Vigneron that compared Catholics who advocate for same-sex marriage and receive Communion to people committing perjury.
After an academic with ties to the church [Pretty dismissive, no? The “academis” is Ed Peters.] wrote in a blog post that Catholics who advocate same-sex marriage should not receive Communion, Vigneron told the Detroit Free Press on Sunday that Catholics who support same-sex marriage and receive Communion would “logically bring shame for a double-dealing that is not unlike perjury.”
“For a Catholic to receive Holy Communion and still deny the revelation Christ entrusted to the church is to try to say two contradictory things at once: ‘I believe the church offers the saving truth of Jesus, and I reject what the church teaches,’ ” Vigneron told the paper. “In effect, they would contradict themselves.”
On Monday, the archdiocese looked to step back and add context to the statement. [The implication, together with that “reframe” and “dial back” is that Archbp. Vigneron is changing his mind, saying something different. That’s not true.]
“The archbishop’s focal point here is not ‘gay marriage’; it is a Catholic’s reception of Holy Communion,” Joe Kohn, the archdiocese spokesman, wrote in an e-mail to CNN. [Uh huh. Fine. The issue of legalization of same-sex marriage isn’t the Archbishop’s focus in his statement. His focus is the state of the soul of the people who push for it. Going on…] “If a Catholic publicly opposes the church on a serious matter of the church’s teaching, any serious matter – for example, whether it be a rejection of the divinity of Christ, racist beliefs, support for abortion or support for redefining marriage – that would contradict the public affirmation they would make of the church’s beliefs by receiving Communion.” [I don’t see a “dialing back” there, do you?]
Kohn continued: “As the archbishop states, the pastors of the church are ready to assist Catholics to help them understand and avoid this conflict.” [Was the “dialing back” in part of the email that the writer chose not to share?]
[… some of the back story, which I will cut out…]
A majority of Catholics, according to polling, disagree with this view of Communion. [And now CNN tries to show how backward and out of step Vigneron is with the “majority”. Hopefully he’ll start listening to the Voz del Pueblo pretty soon and really “dial back” his medieval views.]
A 2011 survey by the National Catholic Reporter [ROFL!] found that 86% of Catholics said they believe a Catholic “can disagree with aspects of church teachings and still remain loyal to the church.” [I love this… CNN is pitting Archbp. Vigneron against the Fishwrap.]
The same survey found that 35% of Catholics said the church’s opinion on same-sex marriage was very important, a number that reporter William D’Antonio says is lower in previous years.
“What more and more Catholics are saying,” D’Antonio wrote in 2011, “is that my lived experiences are different than what the church is saying.”
[And that is where the article ends.]
This is biased reporting, if it is reporting at all.
Furthermore, here is the image that accompanied the piece, together with the caption CNN posted with it.
Archbishop of Detroit Allen Vigneron gives communion to a parishioner.
Ummmm…. no. That is not what is happening in that picture.
The CNN writer or the editor can’t get that right. They didn’t get anything else right either.
UPDATE 21:58 GMT:
CNN has changed the title of their entry!
Ed Peters, the “academic” responded as well. HERE.
Coat of Arms by D Burkart
APX on 10 November – St Andrew Avellino (Vetus Ordo). Wherein Fr. Z rants.: “Many priests live alone, with no one to notice if they fail to rise, suffer a fall, or become suddenly…”
on 10 November – St Andrew Avellino (Vetus Ordo). Wherein Fr. Z rants.: “Father, in case you haven’t already considered this, an iPhone might help you or another priest in that situation. “…”
on 10 November – St Andrew Avellino (Vetus Ordo). Wherein Fr. Z rants.: “his Theatines maintain a minor seminary in the neighborhood under his patronage. i drove by it on the way to…”
on WDTPRS – 9 November: Feast of the Dedication of St. John Lateran, Rome’s Cathedral: “Great stuff Fr Z….. are the doors to St John Lateran originally the doors from the Roman Curia in the…”
on 10 November – St Andrew Avellino (Vetus Ordo). Wherein Fr. Z rants.: “As the demographic collapse accelerates, priests may find it prudent to live together in a central location with their deanery.…”
on Some notes for your Sunday Mass in the Vetus and the Novus Ordo: “This is the best explanation I have heard in my almost 50 years. I wish it was what was heard…”
on Some notes for your Sunday Mass in the Vetus and the Novus Ordo: “moon1234: We have to understand something about the Lord’s parables. The parable, or Hebrew mashal is an allegorical lesson of…”
on WDTPRS – 9 November: Feast of the Dedication of St. John Lateran, Rome’s Cathedral: “The obelisk outside the building was originally built by Thutmose III, and contains dedications from subsequent pharoahs. If you follow…”
A Daily Prayer for Priests
They find you a pro-life agent in your area who commits to giving a portion of the fee to a pro-life group!
PLEASE subscribe via PayPal if it is useful. Zelle and Wise are better, but PayPal is convenient.
A monthly subscription donation means I have steady income I can plan on. I put you my list of benefactors for whom I pray and for whom I often say Holy Mass.
In view of the rapidly changing challenges I now face, I would like to add more $10/month subscribers. Will you please help?
For a one time donation...
Help Monks in Wyoming (coffee – UPDATED LINK) and Norcia (beer) and the wonderful "Soap Sisters" of Summit, NJ!
Please follow me on Twitter!
Visits tracked by Statcounter
since Sat., 25 Nov. 2006:
