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

11 Oct 1962 – the opening of Vatican II and John XXIII’s speech

Posted on 11 October 2022 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

11 Oct 1962 - the opening of Vatican II and John XXIII's speech

11 October 1962 saw the opening of the Second Vatican Council. John XXIII, brushing off the reservations of advisors and those whom he consulted, determined to have that Council (but who refused to reveal of Secret of Fatima at Our Lady’s command) gave a speech called from its incipit “Gaudet Mater Ecclesia“.

It is interesting, as an aside, that the Vatican website doesn’t provide it in English. Someone put it together with the variants in Italian. John gave the speech in, of course, Latin.

The February before the Council opened John also signed an Apostolic Constitution on the altar of St. Peter’s Basilica about Latin, Veterum sapientia, but I guess that is one of the AC’s it’s okay to ignore.

In the speech Gaudet Mater Ecclesia, John cited in #8 “prophets of doom who are always forecasting disaster” in the world and in the future of the Church.

I wonder what he would day about that now. John also told the Council Fathers at #16 “to make use of the medicine of mercy rather than the weapons of severity” in the documents they would produce.

There is also an old adage, “spare the rod and spoil the child”. The antinomiam spirit that has risen in the name of “mercy” has resulted in a tyranny.

In Gaudet Mater Ecclesia John said in #11:

“The greatest concern of the Ecumenical Council is this, that the sacred deposit of Christian doctrine should be more effectively defended and presented.”

Is this part of the Spirit of Vatican II or not? It’s hard to tell.

He said: “it is first of all necessary that the Church never turn her eyes from the sacred heritage of truth which she has received from those who went before;…”

He said #14:

The twenty-first Ecumenical Council, which uses the effective and significant assistance of experts in the sacred sciences, in the apostolate, and in administration, wishes to transmit whole and entire and without distortion the Catholic doctrine which, despite difficulties and controversies, has become the common heritage of humanity.

He said #15:

What instead is necessary today is that the whole of Christian doctrine, with no part of it lost, be received in our times by all with a new fervor, in serenity and peace, in that traditional and precise conceptuality and expression which is especially displayed in the acts of the Councils of Trent and Vatican I. As all sincere promoters of Christian, Catholic, and apostolic faith strongly desire, what is needed is that this doctrine be more fully and more profoundly known and that minds be more fully imbued and formed by it. What is needed is that this certain and unchangeable doctrine, to which loyal submission is due, be investigated and presented in the way demanded by our times. For the deposit of faith, the truths contained in our venerable doctrine, are one thing; the fashion in which they are expressed, but with the same meaning and the same judgement, is another thing. This way of speaking will require a great deal of work and, it may be, much patience: types of presentation must be introduced which are more in accord with a teaching authority which is primarily pastoral in character.

It is of interest that the Council opened on 11 October, which in the Roman Missal of the day, that is in the Roman Missal of Vatican II, the Roman Missal of John XXIII, the Feast of the Maternity of Mary. John said at #17: “In these circumstances, the Catholic
Church, as she raises the torch of religious truth in this Ecumenical Council, wishes to show herself to be the most loving mother of all, kind, patient, and moved by mercy and goodness towards her separated children.”

Today of the office of the Synod (“walking together”) of Bishops, preparing for next year’s opening of the ouroboros-like Synod (“walking together”) on Synodality (“walking together”), release a statement including this:

The synodal process currently underway, dedicated to “Synodality in the Life and Mission of the Church,” is also within the Council’s wake. The concept of “Synodality” is found throughout the Council, even though this term (only recently coined) is not found expressly in the documents of the ecumenical assembly. The magna charta of Synod 2021-2023 is the Council’s doctrine on the Church, particularly its theology of the People of God, a People whose “condition is the dignity and freedom of the children of God, in whose heart the Holy Spirit dwells as in a temple” (Lumen Gentium 9).

It’s the spirit of the Council.

Talk about the “spirit” is back in spades. From what I have heard, the phrase is being used to read into the Council something that isn’t there. The main proponents have, it seem, a special, double-top secret insight into the space between the lines of the texts.

It is a propitious time, with this anniversary, actually to read the documents of the Council.

Posted in The Coming Storm, The future and our choices, Vatican II | Tagged Gaudet Mater Ecclesia, John XXIII, Vatican II
10 Comments

ROME 22/10 – Day 10: About donations and Masses for benefactors

Posted on 10 October 2022 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

In Rome sunrise was at 7:15 and sunset will be an 18:39 with the Ave Maria bell to be rung at 1900. It is the traditional feast of St. Francis Borgia. He was the great grandson of Alexander VI (Borgia) whose tomb is just a stone’s throw from where I presently write and he was the 3rd Superior General of the Jesuits, back when they were worthy of the title.

NB: There was recently a scare tactic from P@y P@l (which I think few like very much but which works and with fees that are lower than some of other services, few that they are). The word was out that PP threated to extract $2.5K from anyone’s account if they posted something that was deemed … I dunno… un-woked, too-based!

Apparently that was all a mistake and PP has removed that from their user agreement. HERE

Was this a canary in a mine shaft to test the atmosphere before the midterms. It’s grim. Some donors here immediately terminated their monthly donations because they, I believe, thought that the threat was aimed at them. No, I believe it was aimed at people like me who provide content.

ROME 22/10 – Day 10: About donations and Masses for benefactors

Continue to Give

If you are looking for alternatives to P@y P@l, try Zelle (which most US banks offer as a free service – very good! use frz AT wdtprs DOT com), Continue to Give (continuetogive.com – okay, but higher fees and wonky), and Wise (wise.com – which is terrific for international operations, though it takes a bit to set up: low fees and the best exchange rates). There are other options, too, including snail mail which can be forwarded. It’s slow.

I’d be delighted were everyone to use Zelle or, internationally, Wise.

I can’t begin to describe my gratitude to my regular and occasional donors. While I’ve been here in Rome, I’ve been saying Masses for the intention of my benefactors, especially those who made contributions to this Roman Sojourn. I feel alive again, here, and refreshed.

This morning I said Mass for my regular monthly donors.

You are a blessing and I pray that God reward you.

If the evening light in Rome is wonderful, so is the morning light.

The Bridgettines have a lovely little church on the Piazza Farnese. I stuck my head in for the morning Mass.

Yesterday was anniversary of the death of the last Roman Pope, Ven. Pius XII. I was recently at the house where he was born. I stopped in for a photo of the inscription when I took my chalice to be worked on in the shop where it was made in the first place.

Priestly chess players, drop me a line. HERE

Meanwhile… Fabiano Caruana beat the exceptionally unlikable Hans Niemann to take the lead in the 2022 US Championship in St. Louis. Caruana said “I think we’re no longer on chatting terms!” after defeating Niemann in 80 moves. That counts as two wins for Fabiano!

White to move. This is pretty easy.

Along with donations, income comes through affiliate programs, such as for the beer that the Benedictines in Norcia make, the wine that the monks of Le Barroux are producing, the Remote Chess Academy (RCA – which gives me an astonishing 50%), the Summit Dominicans (which produces about enough to help me get their beeswax candles for my chapel). Please remember me when shopping online. Thanks in advance. US HERE – UK HERE

Posted in SESSIUNCULA |
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WSJ: Justice Delayed for Father MacRae of beyondthesestonewalls.com

Posted on 10 October 2022 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

From the WSJ:

Justice Delayed for Father MacRae
A list of officers with credibility issues calls his 1994 conviction into question.

Father Gordon MacRae has been in prison since 1994, when a New Hampshire jury convicted him of sexual assault and he was sentenced to 33½ to 67 years. The charges against him were “built by a determined sex-abuse investigator and an atmosphere in which accusation was, in effect, all the proof required to bring a guilty verdict,” the Journal’s Dorothy Rabinowitz wrote in 2013. Father MacRae has maintained his innocence all along.

A new development will soon provide Granite State courts an opportunity to reconsider Father MacRae’s conviction. The state attorney general has published a so-called Laurie List of law-enforcement officers with credibility problems. The list is named for State v. Laurie, a 1995 case in which the state supreme court overturned a conviction after exposure of a detective’s dishonest conduct.

The list initially included Detective James F. McLaughlin of the Keene Police Department, who was the lead investigator in the MacRae case. He made the list for alleged “falsification of records” in an unrelated case in 1985. Detective McLaughlin successfully petitioned to have his name removed from the list, but the New Hampshire Center for Public Interest Journalism sued to learn who had been removed. (Detective McLaughlin has declined to respond to local press requests for comment on the list.)

Father MacRae plans to ask a court to throw out his conviction, arguing that Thomas Grover, his only accuser at trial, testified falsely at Detective McLaughlin’s behest. As Ms. Rabinowitz has documented, Detective McLaughlin’s own reports showed that he attempted a sting by writing a letter to Father MacRae and forging the signature of Jon Grover, the accuser’s brother. According to supporters of Father MacRae who run the website BeyondTheseStoneWalls.com, Detective McLaughlin failed to produce and maintain recordings of interviews with alleged victims, despite making adamant statements about the importance of recordings in child-abuse investigations.

In a May 1994 lawsuit, Father MacRae alleged that Detective McLaughlin accused the priest of having taken pornographic photographs of one of the alleged victims. No such photos were ever found. (Detective McLaughlin filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit with prejudice, which the judge denied. After Father MacRae was convicted in September 1994, the judge dismissed the suit without prejudice.)

Ms. Rabinowitz wrote a series of stories about such cases beginning in the late 1980s. False and implausible accusations of child sexual abuse led to conviction and imprisonment of innocent people from New York and Florida to Washington state.

All this happened because “believe the children” became a nationwide mantra. Society has a duty to protect young children—but also to assess accusations rationally and fairly, especially when they’re improbable, spectacular and horrifying. Journalists, too, must maintain a level of skepticism when cases as improbable as these arise. Any reporter who covers the legal system should have recognized the high probability that these accusations were false.

Most of the defendants in these cases were ultimately released, but their lives had been ruined. The recent development in Father MacRae’s case offers hope of another such bittersweet vindication.

Mr. Silverglate is a Boston-based criminal-defense and civil-liberties lawyer.

Appeared in the October 10, 2022, print edition as ‘Justice Delayed for Father MacRae’.

Posted in Mail from priests, The Drill, The Last Acceptable Prejudice | Tagged Fr. Gordon MacRae
10 Comments

ROME 22/10 – Day 9: Processions and digressions

Posted on 9 October 2022 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

7:14 is the time for the Roman sun to appear and it is slated for disappearance at 18:41. The Ave Maria is at 19:00. It is the Feast of St. John Leonardi (+1609), founder of the Clerics Regular of the Mother of God. More about that, below.

It is the Feast of St Abraham, Old Testament Patriarch.

Yesterday evening there was at S. M. in Campitelli a ceremony of sung Vespers, of it in Latin, and then a procession in the streets of the quarter, including seminarians of the Propaganda College up on the Gianicolo. St. John Leonardi, whose remains are at SM Campitelli, was a founder of Propaganda. I got some shots and vids. I hope they come through.

This is great. The celebrant goes to incense the remains of the Saint and set off the proximity alarm. I love Rome!

The procession and a band and there were helpers from the Confraternity of Ss. Trinità dei Pellegrini, as it was fitting. St. John was a disciple of St. Philip Neri, after all, and the churches are neighbors.

This was great. The procession went by S. Angelo in Pescheria, which I featured on Friday, last. I have a video of what was going on in there as the procession was passing. I’m at the side door of the church.

You have to understand the state of liturgy in Italy to get the impact of this.

The seminarians of Propaganda really needed to come in their house cassocks and surplices. There were a couple of servers properly dressed. Not enough. C’mon guys!

Ah, Roma!

Yesterday I met a friend and his wife for lunch. He is a lawyer who dedicates a lot of his practice to the defense of priests who are being abused by their bishops or superiors. It is interesting that canonists and civil lawyers are getting organized and fighting back now. It’s about time. But things had to get really bad before something finally shattered the patience of the laity in this regard. There are so many priests who are being canceled or bullied into moral injury and PTSD. And they are financially exposed to devastation as well as the permanent scarring of their reputations. I digress.

Anyway, we had a great lunch while he told me what he is doing.

Rigatoni alla norcina… sausage and black truffle.

Spigola, in the oven, with potatoes and artichokes. It could have had more artichokes, frankly, but, hey. And the restaurant, a long time favorite, was really on point.

Rome has its charm by night.

Woah.. I just tried to upload more video but my site says I have reached a limit for my subscription. I can get a monthly with a large upload … if you want more videos.

Grrrr. I can convert with Blender, but it uses massive resources and is verrrry slllllooowwww. Grrrr.

White to move.

Interested in learning? Try THIS.

Please remember me when shopping online. Thanks in advance.

US HERE – UK HERE

Posted in SESSIUNCULA |
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VIDEO: London Rosary Crusade of Reparation 2022

Posted on 9 October 2022 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

A friend in London sent this video of procession with the Rosary, Rosary Crusade of Reparation.

He wrote:

It’s held each year on the Saturday after the feast of the Holy Rosary, and the March starts at Westminster Cathedral and ends at the Oratory. Covid stopped it in 2020 and last year due to severe restrictions it was much smaller and entirely held outdoors. In effect this year was its comeback in its glory after a two year hiatus.

The Crusade was started in 1984 by a good Jesuit Fr. Hugh Thwaites SJ who was himself a convert from Anglicanism. HERE

This year, the guest speaker was the Provost of the London Oratory, Fr. Julian Large CO, and despite a National Rail strike, attracted a considerable number of faithful. The procession made its way through the busiest and most exclusive shopping district of Knightsbridge, passing shops that sell fashion items beyond the reach of many of the ordinary Catholics clutching their rosaries hemmed within two plastic ropes held by volunteer wardens. However, many of the visiting Arab population, who make up the majority of buyers at these shops, stopped to take photos or respectfully stood by to see what the procession go past. Some, however, impatiently revved the engines of their Bugatti Veyrons or their Ferrari Purosangues, above the endless Aves.

It’s the only day of the year that Catholics get to stop the traffic in London, and show public witness to the faith. And it certainly feels wonderful to be in their midst.

Thank you for publishing it father, for the greater edification of the faithful.

Posted in ¡Hagan lío!, The Coming Storm | Tagged Rosary Crusade
3 Comments

ASK FATHER: Father rushes through the weekly Novena. What to do?

Posted on 9 October 2022 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

From a reader…

QUAERITUR:

At my parish, we have a new pastoral administrator…. Don’t know the whole story, but suffice it to say that Fr. W does not really seem to want to be in parish ministry. Our parish has prayed the Perpetual Help novena every week for several generations, and many people come from other parishes just to pray it with us. Fr. W, however, has no time for it and races through it after Mass with so little an attempt at reverence and so obvious a desire to get the heck out as quickly as possible, that it has driven most of the people away. Is there a version of the novena which lay people can pray without the “participation” of a priest? I should also say, that his normal mode of blessing is to say “May Almighty God bless US . . .,” not a real blessing, so the loss of the final blessing would be no loss to us. Thank you for taking the time. God bless you, Father!

I know that Novena well, since at my home parish, also for generations, it has been prayed publicly on Tuesday nights followed by Benediction and confessions. It also included one of the most Caro-syrup sweet Marian hymns I know: Mother Dearest, Mother Fairest. It has to be Irish.

I answered this privately, as I do a great many questions. However, I thought about this a little more in light of the how, these days, lay people need to step up more and more. As Fulton Sheen said:

“Who is going to save our Church? Not our bishops, not our priests and religious. It is up to you, the people. You have the minds, the eyes, and the ears to save the Church. Your mission is to see that your priests act like priests, your bishops act like bishops.”

The immediate answer is, just go ahead a pray the Novena as printed but, without a priest to bless you, say “May Almighty God bless us”, as you wrote above. God hears.

As I wrote to the Titius who sent in the question, I had a flash in my imagination of the whole congregation staying put as Father “gets the heck out” and then re-praying the entire Novena, aloud, with greater attention.

I wonder if that would get his attention.

Another reason why I wanted to bring this to a wider audience is because of my conviction that our prayers really make a difference, but they have to be prayers.

Prayers don’t have to be sloooooow to be attentive and reverent. They don’t have to be rushed to be reasonable. They ought to be paced so that they are language and natural, which will shift a little according to the group and culture.

An exorcist friend told me about the effect that the Rosary has on demons. In general, the Rosary has a greater effect on demons than any other devotion. On the “screamometer” from the demons, the Rosary is powerful.

He recounted a particular experience during an exorcism. Exorcisms can go on for hours and many different prayers and devotions, along with the actual ritual, are deployed. At one point they were saying the Rosary. The demon stared to laugh at them. When queried, the demon responded that their distracted Hail Mary’s were like, “laying wilted dried flowers at her feet”. When asked what a attentive Rosary filled with love was like, the demon said, “What is a fragrant bouquet for her is our downfall.”

Father needs a reality check. Prayers have purposes and effects. While sacraments work ex opere operato, devotions have effect ex opere operantis.

Father has to be made to understand that rushing through the Novena with people like that, in a way that is obviously rushed, is like laying wilted flowers at Mary’s feet.

Think of the rising tide of distain for that which is good, true and beautiful in society and in the Church itself. I had a mental picture of a tsunami or storm surge, for long held back by the dikes of prayers, devotions, acts of charity, Mass intentions, mortifications and acts of reparation for the sins also of others like offenses against Our Lord and Our Blessed Mother. At a certain point the dikes will stop restraining. As the destroying wave roars forward we will be left in the time remaining to us to ponder if perhaps we might have done better to have prayed those Novenas with real attention, to have taken our obligations to fast and abstain and perform works of mercy more intently, to have make our participation at Mass all that it could have been, to have …

GONE TO CONFESSION

… when we could.

Posted in "How To..." - Practical Notes, ASK FATHER Question Box, GO TO CONFESSION, Hard-Identity Catholicism, Our Catholic Identity, Our Solitary Boast, Save The Liturgy - Save The World, The Coming Storm, The future and our choices | Tagged novena
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Male service at the altar

Posted on 9 October 2022 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

A friend and long-time internet colleague – once a member of the staff of the ancient Catholic Forum on Compuserve! – sent the following from a blog called Harvey Millican 2.0: Musings of a Trad Dad: “These Our Men“.

I once told a friend that the servers at Latin Mass, in particular, evoke a great sense of both pride and humility in me. Here we have – in some cases – boys as young as seven or eight serving a Latin Mass with the absolute greatest of integrity. They have diligently studied and memorized another language and intricate movements out of love for Our Lord. I well up when I see this. It is plain to me that the moment these lads pull the cassock over their heads and step into the sanctuary, they have at that moment become men. It doesn’t matter what youthful scraps they may find themselves in on the field, what emotional outbursts erupt as they develop physically and for which their hormones have not yet caught up. It doesn’t even matter their stage of physical development. Lacking the muscle mass, voice change, and facial hair that will one day belie their sex to the world; no, these boys could fight battles with the strength of soldiers once they ring the bell and Father hands off his biretta. There’s just something about that role and how seriously they take it. I think we know the reason. It is indeed a grace.

Posted in Hard-Identity Catholicism, Liturgy Science Theatre 3000, Save The Liturgy - Save The World | Tagged altar boys
9 Comments

Canada: A bishop is determined that a church be closed. Parishioners fight back.

Posted on 8 October 2022 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Reality is sometimes harsh.

For example, if a parish is not able to pay its bills, it’ll probably have to close or be “merged”. Either way, a few hearts will be broken. I don’t say “lots of hearts” because if there were lots, people would have paid the bills. I know that in some places demographics shift because of jobs and economy, but if people want it badly enough, they find a way.

HOWEVER, there is the role of the bishop and the local clergy to factor in. If they have for years given the people no straw for their brick making, scorpions and rocks instead of fish and bread, then the clergy are to blame and it is wrong to punish people for their mistakes.

So, people want a church to stay open and a bishop wants it to close. There is an example of this I read about at The Pillar in Canada, Archdiocese of St. John. The bishop, it seems, said that if the people could buy the church they could have it, but there is a priest shortage, etc. It seems that people came up with the funds but the bishop still wants the place closed. Period.

Conflict. It is an interesting read.

Naturally we have to have the usual disclaimer that these situations are complex, etc. etc. etc. Included in the questioning is whether or not the parish produced priestly vocations over the years, even in the more distant decades.

At this point we are probably saying, “Why not bring in a priest of the FSSP or the ICK or a diocesan priest and try TRADITION?” What is there to lose? If the place survives, in a symbiotic rapport between parishioners and chancery, bills being paid, a priest being provided for in a decent manner, what is there to lose?

Of course there are a lot of bishops who would rather see a smoking crater filled with salt and bleach than see a happy parish with our Catholic tradition in action.

It will in interesting to see what happens with this.

Posted in "How To..." - Practical Notes, Canon Law, The future and our choices | Tagged Archd. of St. John, parish closures
16 Comments

WDTPRS – 28th Ordinary Sunday (N.O.): A seminar on grace!

Posted on 8 October 2022 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

The elegant Collect for the 28th Ordinary Sunday has been used for centuries on the 16th Sunday after Pentecost according to the traditional Roman calendar. This is a lovely prayer to sing.

Tua nos, quaesumus, Domine, gratia semper et praeveniat et sequatur, ac bonis operibus iugiter praestet esse intentos.

The separation of tua and gratia in the first line is an example of the figure of speech called hyperbaton: unusual word order to produce a dramatic effect. That et… et construction is snappy.

This prayer was in manuscripts of the Gregorian Sacramentary which results from the 10th c. The prayer must have struck a chord with Thomas a Kempis in the 15th c., for he quotes it in the Imitation of Christ, Bk. III, 55: Liber internae consolationis. It may also have been echoed earlier, in the a 12th c. Commentarium in Ruth e codice Genouefensi: Ex quo motandum est nec fortes stare nec posse debiles proficere, si non superna gratia et praeveniat et sequatur.

The pair of verbs praeveniat…sequatur reminds me of a prayer I heard at my home parish every Tuesday night after the communal recitation of the Novena of Our Mother of Perpetual Help by St. Alphonsus Liguori (+1787).

In the Rituale Romanum for blessings of people who are sick:

“May the Lord Jesus Christ be with you that He may defend you, within you that He may sustain you, before you that He may lead you, behind you that He may protect you, above you that He may bless you. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

Beautiful. Gotta suppress that one!

As long as we are into the weeds, let’s really dig and root using especially our wondrous Lewis & Short Dictionary.

Intentus, -a, -um is from intendo, “to stretch out, extend” as well as “to turn one’s attention to, exert one’s self for”.

Our Collect has both semper (“always”) and iugiter (the adverbial form of iugis) meaning “always” in the sense of “continuously.” A iugum is a “yoke”, like that which yokes animals together. Iugum, or in English “juger”, was a Roman measure of land, probably because it was plowed by yoked oxen, and it is also the name of the constellation Libra, Latin for a “scale, balance”, which has a beam, a kind of yoke. The Roman measure of weight called the “pound” still today has abbreviation “lbs”.

The iugum was an infamous ancient symbol of defeat. The Romans would force the vanquished to pass under a yoke to symbolize that they had been sub-jug-ated. Our adverb iugiter means “always” in a continuous sense probably because of the concept of yoking things together, bridging them, one after another in an unending chain. We hear this iugiter also in the famous prayer written by St. Thomas Aquinas (+1274) which is the Collect for Corpus Christi and is also used at Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament:

“O God, who bequeathed to us a memorial of Thy Passion under a wondrous sacrament, grant, we implore, that we may venerate the sacred mysteries of Thy Body and Blood, in such a way as to sense within us constantly (iugiter) the fruit of Thy redemption.”

LITERAL TRANSLATION:

We beg, O Lord, that Your grace may always both go before and follow after us, and hence continuously keep us intent upon good works.

OBSOLETE ICEL (1973):

Lord, our help and guide, make your love the foundation of our lives. May our love for you express itself in our eagerness to do good for others.

Look what we had to endure for so long. What slop.

CURRENT ICEL (2011):

May your grace, O Lord, we pray, at all times go before us and follow after and make us always determined to carry out good works.

Let’s be super picky for a moment about the conjunctions.

That et…et is a classic “both…and” construction, joining praeveniat and sequatur. Here we see et…et…ac… That ac (short for atque) sometimes informs us that what follows is of greater importance than what precedes it. If that is the case here, then our Collect presents a logical climax of ideas. This is why I added a “hence” to my literal version.

Tua gratia, “your grace”, is the subject of all these verbs.

We want God, by means of grace we do not merit, always to be both before and behind us. We want His help so that we, fallen and weak, may be always attentive to the good works which, informed by faith and God’s grace, will help us to heaven and benefit our neighbor.

All our good initiatives come from God. If we choose to embrace them and cooperate with Him, He guides them to completion.

Grace goes before. Grace follows after.

Grace goes before. God starts things. Even those initial glimmerings of faith that come before full fledged acts of will based on knowledge come from God. Like a gardener, he prepares the mind to have faith. This is prevenient grace, for it “goes before”. Thus, “In every good work, it is not we who begin… but (God) first inspires us with faith and love of Him, through no preceding merit on our part.” (cf. C. Orange II, can. 25)

That is for the beginnings of faith. But after faith we can fall and lose sanctifying grace and the gifts and fruits. That’s when God also “goes before” by offering us graces to convert, glimmers in our soul that bring us to repent and seek forgiveness. He disposes us by prevenient grace to return to Him. (Cf. C. Trent, Session 6, ch. 5: “a Dei per Dominum Christum Iesum praeveniente gratia … a going-before (predisposing) grace of God through the Lord Jesus Christ”).

God’s grace goes before. God’s grace follows after.

Praeveniat… sequatur.

Our good works have merit for heaven because God inspires them, informs them, and completes them through us, His knowing, willing, and loving servants.

The deeds and their merits are ultimately God’s but, because we cooperate and because He loves us, they are also truly ours.

As St. Augustine of Hippo (+430) wrote, God crowns His own merits in us (ep. 194.19 to Sixtus, later Pope Sixtus III).

They are truly His. They are also truly ours and, because He makes His ours, ours are meritorious.

They are meritorious not by us, but by Him who goes before and after.

Sunday’s Collect reminds us how important our good works are for our salvation. They are all manifestations of God’s grace.

Just as we hope God will lavish His graces on us, so too we should be generous with our good works for others.

Posted in Patristiblogging, WDTPRS | Tagged grace
1 Comment

ROME 22/10 – Day 8: More about fish, forbidden games, and a new book

Posted on 8 October 2022 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Sunset… sunset… 7:12… 18:42. The Ave Maria is at 1900. Today is the traditional Feast of St. Bridget. I’ll stop later to see if the nearby sisters keep the traditional day.

TOMORROW, however, is the Feast of. St. John Leonardi whose remains are at not too distant S.M. in Campitelli. There will be a procession this evening with his relics through the streets of that quarter. I hope to get there. Here is his enclosure from my last visit.

Tomorrow will also be the Feast of St. John Henry Newman. It is possible to celebrate him with the TLM when not blocked by a heavier day (such as a Sunday, like tomorrow). For you priests out there who may desire to do this in the future, here is my post about the LATIN Collect for St. John Henry Newman: HERE Bookmark or copy now so you have it.

I made a bit of a stroll yesterday and the knee did well. Over in the ghetto, the Jewish quarter, I was able to visit, just to keep the fishy theme going, St. Angelo in Pescheria. This little church is sort of inside the Portico of Octavia, which was built by Augustus Caesar to replace the Portico of C. Caecilius Metellus Macedonicus, between 33 and 23 BC.

To right, you see the entrance of the Oratorio dei Pescivendoli, of the Fishmongers which was part of the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament. The inscription reads: LOCUS ORATIONIS VENDITORUM PISCIUM. Note the image of St. Andrew, who was, of course, a fisherman.

Inside St. Angelo in Pescheria.

The side altar with St. Andrew.

NB: Universitas Piscium Vendotorum Urbis. Eventually it was suppressed in 1801. Too bad. I’d like to think that my fishmonger, near Campo de’ Fiori, was a member and participating in veneration of the Blessed Sacrament as part of his membership.

From this church Cola di Rienzo made his attempt at a coup.

On the Portico itself is this marvelous sign. It strikes home to all players of games.

There was a list of prohibited games in Rome, generally involving dice and cards, and therefore susceptible to bloodshed. Chess – waaaaaay back – once involved dice! That’s why at the time St. Peter Damian railed against chess for clerics and it came to be forbidden. It couldn’t last, of course. Great saints played chess, St Francis de Sales… St. Theresa of Avila is the patroness of chess! Several Popes were avid players, including Leo X and Leo XIII. John Paul played a lot of chess, too.

Speaking of chess…. BLACK to move for a winning position.