My iTunes is updating the LENTCAzTs. However, my statistics are all screwed up. The Podpress stats show me that 12 people listened to yesterday’s entry, through the average has been closer to 1000.
How is the player working for you? Problems? No problems?
I had a note from someone suggesting that there is a report that Fr. John Trigilio may be been in some kind of traffic accident. (Vague, I know, but that is what I am working with.)
Many of you will have seen Fr. Trigilio on EWTN.
May I suggest prayers for his well being if needed? If true, prayers will help and if not true, you have prayed for a priest.
UPDATE:
From the EWTN page:
Dear EWTN Family:
Please keep Fr. John Trigilio, Co-host of Web of Faith and Crash Course in Catholicism, in your prayers as he recovers from non-life threatening injuries sustained in an automobile accident. He is currently at home recovering and his condition continues to improve. He appreciates all the prayers!
By coincidence, three people wrote to me today about “Save the Liturgy – Save the World” swag. I was prompted to look at the old design and to create a better, more useful file.
Along the line I made a new design. Looking at the present design, it thought it might look better were I to split the two phrases to the front and back rather than wrap them around (making them harder to read at a glance). I also experimented with the colors.
New idea (I don’t have one yet, caveatis emptores). I am ordering one. I’ll keep the old design too. It’s still there.
As I fiddled around with this, the colors (aside from the obvious black and red connotation) could also say something about the interaction of the divine and the world, much as in sacred art we our Lord clothed in one color over another to indicated something about His divinity hidden in self-empyting beneath our humanity.
I also have a car magnet ready, especially at the request of my friend in NYC, EC, whom I hope to be seeing shortly. It is on sale now.
Here is what the large mug in the new design would look like.
Just a little variety.
And don’t forget to refresh your coffee supply!
The nice UPS gal swooped in with a review DVD from First Run Films about the late Archbishop Oscar Romero. I’ll probably watch it tonight.
In our brief chat, I mentioned how impressed I was that UPS and FedEx can move everything so well and quickly. I suggested that they should run not only the post office but also health care “delivery”.
As she revved up the truck she shouted “If it wasn’t for health care, I’d be retired!”
We need solutions, but not the solutions that have been forced on us.
The Supreme Court is going to be looking at the health care legislation very soon.
May I suggest prayers to the guardian angels of the Justices, to help them with clear minds and without demonic attacks, study the issue well and prudently?
As you know, the plural of “anecdote” is “data”. And I have good “data” about the preferences of seminarians when it comes to the older or newer forms of the Roman Rite.
Bishops and others in formation of seminarians should take this to heart. The more you try to keep seminarians in the dark about the Extraordinary Form, the more you inspire them to learn it. Once they do… game over.
A seminarian, having found an old poll about preferences for Extraordinary Form or the Ordinary Form, wrote with a note (edited):
I’m from the [SEMINARY] in [PLACE].
It seems clear to me that, yes, most seminarians would prefer to be ordained in the old-Latin rite.
Does that mean I am demonizing the “new” rite in any way?
No.
Hands down, I would pick (as well as most seminarians today) the old-rite.
Sorry liberals!
Sorry! (Not!)
Thank you, Pope Benedict, for Summorum Pontificum.
Once priests learn the older form, they never say the Ordinary Form the same way again. Over time, this will affect a congregation’s understanding of who they are at Mass, who the priest is, and who is the true Actor in our liturgical worship.
Priests learn new dimensions about who they are as priests at the altar. Mass is a Sacrifice. Sacrifice requires priesthood. A older form emphasizes the priest’s role as priest acting as mediator in the act of sacrifice. A priest’s ars celebrandi changes when, in our new context of healing discontinuity after decades of deprivation and distortion, he learns and beings often to say the Extraordinary Form.
We need celebrations of the Extraordinary Form everywhere.
I hope that during the summer seminarians and young priests will seek out tools, resources and other priests to help them learn the Extraordinary Form.
Make a plan, men.
Carl Olson at Catholic World Report has a good piece to which I direct your attention:
The CWR Blog
The Emptiness and Deceit of Cave-in “Catholicism”
March 21, 2012 06:20 EST
By Carl E. Olson“The Bishops speak for the Catholic and apostolic faith, and those who hold that faith gather around them. Others disperse.” — Francis Cardinal George (Feb. 14, 2012)
It is no surprise that dissenting, protesting Catholics—those I’ve lately been calling “cave-in Catholics”, in homage to Cardinal Dolan’s retort to the weak-kneed editors of America magazine—thumb their noses at papal speeches, conciliar texts, and formal, Magisterial teaching. What is somewhat curious is how they try to justify their disdain for popes, bishops and the dread “Vatican” by simply saying, “After all, very few Catholics in the U.S. pay attention to Church teaching anymore. See this poll! Watch this interview! Check out these stats!”
What is far more curious is how these cave-in Catholics—having indeed caved-in to the dominant beliefs about contraception, abortion, cohabitation, homosexuality, and so forth—think this “argument” is both pure genius and completely unassailable. But such Catholics are not, when all is said and done, truthful with the facts, willing to face the truth, or interested in seeing how truth, facts, and the Catholic faith are not only compatible, but are competely and fully compatible.
Let’s take a couple of examples, both courtesy of the Pompous Journal for Advanced and Agitated Bashing of Catholicism, more circumspectly known as The New York Times. Last month, a Notre Dame professor of philosophy, Gary Gutting, wrote an essay, “Birth Control, Bishops and Religious Authority” (Feb. 15, 2012). Gutting begins by saying that what interests him “as a philosopher — and a Catholic — is that virtually all parties to this often acrimonious debate have assumed that the bishops are right about this, that birth control is contrary to ‘the teachings of the Catholic Church.’ The only issue is how, if at all, the government should ‘respect’ this teaching.”
He then takes a clever but misleading tact:
[…]
To find out the rest, go there.
From a reader:
With technology: iPads, iPods, iphones, Kindles, etc. I have noticed people listening to, I presume, music in the adoration chapel. Being humans, this sensual stimulation can bring us into deeper prayer.. is this appropriate to do during adoration? (Spiritual or Religious music, of course.)
Perhaps they are listening to “white noise” in order to block out the snoring from across the chapel?
I don’t have a problem with the use of these things in a context where people “get them”.
Incontrovertible truth based on person anecdote:
I was reading my Office on my iPhone in a church in Manhattan one day and a self-appointed nose-thruster-in-er took it upon herself to harangue me about how people shouldn’t “play with their phones” in church. She was … of a certain age, an age that suggested that perhaps she still had a hand-cranked wall-phone and called her fridge the “ice box”.
Nevertheless, the experience with Mrs. Butinski drove home to me that there is a generation gap of sensitivity about these electronic things. A lot of people of a certain age see all these things as “toys”, and therefore not appropriate for church. They don’t get that you can read Scripture, say your office, read of list of intention or people for whom you pray and their needs, etc.
You are not the only one in the chapel. Remember that other people are there to pray and, even if it is none of their business what you use, your use of these things can be a distraction to them.
And, let’s not fool ourselves, there is a temptation to leave of prayer during Adoration for the lure of the little palatiri at whose fascinating flicker we willingly gaze.
Be prudent.
That said… it is actually possible not to use these things for a hour and still manage to pray and adore the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament! Edgy and retro, I know. But, take it from me, it still works!
In another entry about Bp. Morlino’s sermon, a comparison is made between Cyrus and [insert powerful secularizing political figure here, e.g., Pres. Obama] with the point that no figure (e.g., Pres. Obama) can possibly win in the end when it comes to God’s plan. In that confidence, no matter what else we face in this vale of tears, we may face it rejoicing, as did so many of the early martyrs.
Cyrus became God’s instrument to build up the Temple again. Obama is unifying Christians. He may very well have some victories in the short term, but our help is in the Name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth. Obama, like Pilate, ought not forget that any power he now wields was given to him from above.
If Pres. Obama can be, in this context, compared to Cyrus, then my friend, the great Fabricius Romanus (who rants far better than I rant and who knows US politics better than 99% of us reading and writing here) has provocatively dubbed our President as
“Diocletian Hussein Obama“.
Fabricius explicat:
Mutatis mutandis the agenda of Diocletian wasn’t so different, and not just about Christians: he too was a big spender who exploded the debt and devalued the currency, he too sought to regulate the economy by centralized planning with catastrophic results, expanded the bureaucracy to unprecedented levels and planted the economical-administrative roots of the final collapse of the Empire. At least he had Galerius crush the Sassanid Persians. Let’s hope the Incompetent in Chief of today won’t try to imitate that last part too in the next few months, and solely for electoral purposes.
That’s a “No” vote from Rome.
Cyrus or Diocletian… Pres. Obama must be a one term president.
Life got ya down? Irritated and depressed by the kulturkampf raging and the attacks of the Obama Administration on the freedom of all Americans?
Laetare, Ierusalem!
I have written before about His Excellency Most Rev. Robert C. Morlino, Bishop of Madison. He gave a sermon on Sunday which touches the very point I lead with.
You can listen to the 13 minute sermon HERE.
Snippets:
Today is “Rejoice” Sunday; “Laetare.”
Now, as someone who watches and reads the news a lot, that news doesn’t not leave me in much of a “laetare” mood, in much of mood to rejoice.
It leaves me in a mood that is in fact very sad, because I honestly do fear that our country is on a very, very, very dangerous path. I do feel that our country is choosing darkness rather than the light, and I do fear the consequences of that, as we just heard in the gospel (ref. gospel text).
But in truth, that does not keep me from rejoicing, because my life is not all about the news, and my life is not all about this country. The main thing in my life is Jesus Christ, [Do I hear an “Amen!”?] Who is still risen from the dead, and that’s why today is Rejoice Sunday, because our celebration of the Easter feast is only 3 weeks away, We’re gaining on it fast, and that Resurrection victory of Jesus Christ is the absolute last word about the journey of humanity in this world.
Whatever may be happening right now in our country, or what will happen, that doesn’t change the destiny of our journey. And that’s why we sang so beautifully “Let my tongue be silent if ever I forget you” (ref. responsorial psalm text). If ever we forget the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, there’s only one reasonable place to go, and that is into the depths of despair.
[…]
He also talks, bless him, about the need to make a good confession:
[O]ne of the major Lenten things we do is make a good confession, to prepare for Easter. And we encourage our friends and our neighbors and our family members—make a good confession. Every year more and more people are coming back to Confession. We need everybody to come back to confession, because this is a Church of seven Sacraments. In order to be a Catholic, you’ve got to be open to seven Sacraments, not six. [I can see it now. Some proponent of women’s ordination will cherry pick that line and claim that Bp. Morlino is open to all manner of foolishness.] So let’s encourage family, friends, fellow workers – make a good confession, who are Catholic.
[…]
He spoke also about King Cyrus (the 1st reading for Mass on Laetare Sunday in the Ordinary Form). Do you suppose he had anyone in mind?
King Cyrus was a “big deal” pagan leader. He had no interest whatsoever in God. But when God really needed to save His people, what did He do? He inspired even King Cyrus, who had no interest. And King Cyrus became God’s instrument, to lead the chosen people back to Jerusalem, to build the temple. And he appointed a Mayor of Jerusalem when they went back, his name was Nehemiah (there’s no extra charge for that), and he appointed a high priest whose name was Zerubbabel. God even inspired him to go further. And God inspired him to give all the money to build the temple. So when Zerubbabel went back, he didn’t have to have an Annual Catholic Appeal. Cyrus gave all the money.
Now, if Cyrus is a pagan leader with no interest in God, no matter who any leader in the world is, that leader is not powerful enough to thwart God’s purposes.
Cyrus, a pagan, gladly went along. Maybe others wouldn’t. But no leader in the world is powerful enough to thwart God’s Providence, to thwart the plan of Almighty God for the end of the journey of His beloved people, the heavenly Jerusalem won by the Death and the Resurrection. That’s why we can rejoice—no world leader can undo the victory of the Resurrection. Can’t be done. That’s why we can rejoice, and that’s the second point.
[…]
For the third point, you’ll just have to go look for it yourselves.
WDTPRS kudos to Bp. Morlino for giving perspective and also preaching on the Sacrament of Penance.
Coat of Arms by D Burkart
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