A young priest reflects on celebrating the TLM and its positive influences

Today at Rorate there is a positive post.

Fr. Tim Iannacone, a young priest ordained in 2017, assistant in a Connecticut parish, contributed an essay on his experience of learning to celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass, discovering its benefits for himself, for the congregation and, significantly for another priest: his pastor!

Aside: I’ve corresponded with Fr. Iannacone about various vocation choices since 2011. It’s great to see how he is flourishing and that his head is screwed on in the right direction.

The column was penned originally for a parish bulletin, but it deserves wider visibility.

Please check it out. They don’t have a combox over there, but you can discuss it here.

Here’s a sample:

Through the Extraordinary Form, Catholics can come to see the beauty and love of Christ in the Holy Mass, which has organically developed over centuries. If more Catholics come to understand the Church, and more importantly the Traditional Mass, we will undoubtedly see the laity and clergy become champions of Truth; a Truth that ultimately is Jesus Christ. No longer ought we be discouraged by statistics showing decline in the practice of the faith, but instead we can be encouraged by this solid liturgical grounding to further conform our lives to Christ, Who offers Himself without reserve in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

In this paragraph, Fr. Iannacone touches on something I insist upon. We are our rites. Participation in this rite or that rite of the Church, over time, affects deeply who we are. Fiddle around with our rites, changing them or adapting them to the worlds ways – rather than giving what the Church has to give logical priority – fiddles around with our Faith, our identity. And not in a good way.

Recovery of the traditional rites which were lovingly crafted and polished and embellished by our forebears and then handed lovingly down to us as a precious gift is essential for a recovery of our Catholic identity and, hence our continuing mission ad extra.

We are our rites.

Posted in "How To..." - Practical Notes, Just Too Cool, Liturgy Science Theatre 3000, Mail from priests, SUMMORUM PONTIFICUM |
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SYZYGY WATCH! Rare Total Eclipse of the Sun

There was a rarish total solar eclipse on 2 July which terminated at the eastern coast of S. America (think Argentina… portentous!). Rarish because totality was viewed close to sunset, near to the horizon, producing some amazing views.

A reader writes:

Fr. Z,
I am an eclipse chaser as well as an avid reader of your blog. I am in Argentina this week and was able to witness a magnificent total eclipse of the sun. I recalled your interest in matters celestial, and imagined you might like this photo I captured of the moment.

I put together little solar projections from the syzygies I witness (eclipses and transits), and would be happy to post one to you if you would like.

Pax et bonum,
James

Yes, please!

Here is the photo he sent.

SpaceWeather also has a few truly awesome photos of this rarish eclipse. HERE Included as some “dreamshots”. For you who read this later, Spaceweather scrolls their stories off the front pretty quickly. Look at THIS!!!

BTW… the “transits” he mentioned are like to those great events of the Transit of Venus across the face of your planet’s yellow star.   I was still living in Rome during the first of the last pair of Transits.  Near the Holy See Press Office, a couple of lads from England had set up their telescopes and were letting everyone who wanted to have a look, have a look.  It was marvelous.

Here’s Sousa’s Transit of Venus March written in honor of a man who had worked on the proper viewing of the penultimate pair of Transits.

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Did you know that Sousa also wrote novels?

Posted in Just Too Cool, Look! Up in the sky! | Tagged , , ,
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Historic church, rescued from demolition, to reopen in @FRDiocese

Do you recall the post about saving a spectacularly beautiful church, a shrine to St. Ann, in Fall River, MA?  Miracles have been granted there.

A lot has happened since I posted that.   One thing that happened is that a group of lay people made a deal with the diocese to keep it open.   A long-time reader here, whom I wrote of today in the post about Ham Radio and ZedNet, is involved with that church.

A news story. HERE

Go look at the photos of the place. What a shame were it to close. What a great thing these people are doing to save that historic church!

It is true that great churches come and go.  That’s been the history of Christianity.  Not only churches… but Churches!   Christ didn’t promise that Hell wouldn’t prevail against Churches in N. Africa… or churches in Fall River.

However, we live in a time of wealth and of social communications.   If we lose these churches now, we probably won’t be able build their likes again.

 

Posted in ¡Hagan lío!, "How To..." - Practical Notes, Just Too Cool | Tagged
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Excellent twist in Alaska about tax-payer funding of abortion

If it weren’t such a serious topic this would be a real hoot.

Alaska’s governor and legislature are against public funding of abortion.  However, the Alaska Supreme Court ruled that tax payers had to pay for abortions.

To deal with that problem, the governor used his gubernatorial power and deducted from the Court’s budget the amount that had to go to pay for abortions.

Sweeeeet.

The story is a LifeSite.

Posted in Emanations from Penumbras, Fr. Z KUDOS | Tagged ,
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NEW VIDEO from Bp. Hying of @MadisonDiocese

The other day I posted a video from the new Bishop of Madison, Most Rev. Donald Hying, 5th to wield the pastoral staff in this diocese. Bp. Hying frequently made brief videos while he was still in Gary and he intends to do the same from the Dioecesis Madisonensis. They are worthwhile.

In any event, here is today’s offering. At the moment there are 473 views.

Okay, readers, let’s see if we can’t push that number a little higher! CLICK!

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PODCAzT 173: A darkly humorous look at the Amazon Synod’s Instrumentum Laboris

Today we hear an outstanding offering of William Kilpatrick who writes at Crisis.  He has had a look at the Instrumentum Laboris for the upcoming Synod of Bishops in Rome in October about the Amazon.

He has nailed it.   A German Cardinal (Germans figure big in this, btw), Card. Brandmüller, examined the Instrumentum and blasted it to smitherines.   Kilpatrick takes up where he left off and stomped on the bits and pieces remaining, with great humor.

Really.  Just dig in and enjoy.  It’s fun, but sobering.  There are really strange things going on and we will have a lot to deal with.

 

Posted in Liberals, Pò sì jiù, PODCAzT, Synod, The Coming Storm, The Drill, The future and our choices, What are they REALLY saying?, You must be joking! | Tagged , , ,
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What is he really saying?

Ideologues are totalitarians.

There is a group of hard-core ideologues grouped around Francis.

As always, these ideologues demand that you deny the evidence of your senses, including common sense, and ignore the principle of non-contradiction.  It’s the alternate universe of 2+2=5. Their positions are irrational.  With nearly sycophantic dedication they take everything Francis does as oracular, even the things that he gets wrong. And, if you decline to accept their zeal as your own, then their attitude and actions become like to the Red Guards of the Cultural Revolution, a New catholic Red Guard.

That said, here’s something to consider.

“Restored the role of conscience”.

What is he really saying?

That’s code for “Do whatever you want!” as in reception of Holy Communion by manifest adulterers and non-Catholics who don’t accept the Church’s teachings.

That’s code for pitting conscience against the teachings of the Church on a number of important issues including contraception and abortion.

 

Posted in Liberals, New catholic Red Guards | Tagged , ,
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2nd Joyful Mystery: The Visitation (Traditional 2 July)

In the traditional calendar, the Feast of the Visitation, 2 July, came at the end of the long-suppressed Octave of John the Baptist.  In the Novus Ordo it now falls on 31 May, between the Annunciation and the Birth of John the Baptist.

Here is something that I wrote years ago for the Patristic Rosary Project.

___

We continue our Patristic Rosary Project today with:

2nd Joyful Mystery: The Visitation

Commenting on Luke 1:39-45, the when Mary journeys to visit her cousin Elizabeth, St. Augustine of Hippo (+430) speaks of the infant John, to be known as the Baptist, leaping in the womb at the sound of Mary’s voice:

We see instances of leaping not only in children but even in animals, although certainly not for any faith or religion of rational recognition of someone coming.  But this case stands out as utterly uncommon and new, because it tool place in the womb, and at the coming of her who was to bring forth the Savior of mankind.  Therefore this leaping, this greeting, so to speak, offered to the mother of the Lord is miraculous.  It is to be reckoned among the great signs.  It was not effected by human means by the infant, but by divine means in the infant, as miracles are usually wrought. [ep 187.23]

God wrought something in John at that moment.  What happened?  We can look to the Greek writer Origen (+ c.254) for his view:

Elizabeth, who was filled with the Holy Spirit at that moment, received the Spirit on account of her son.  The mother did not inherit the Holy Spirit first.  First John, still enclosed in her womb, received the Holy Spirit.  Then she too, after her son was sanctified, was filled with the Holy Spirit.  You will be able to believe this if you also learn something similar about the Savior.  (In a certain number of manuscripts, we have discovered that blessed Mary is said to prophesy.  We are not aware of the fact that, according to other copies of the Gospel, Elizabeth speaks these words of prophecy.)  Mary also was filled with the Holy Spirit hen she began to carry the Savior in her womb.  As soon as she received the Holy Spirit, who was the creator of the Lord’s Body, and the Son of God began to exist in her womb, she too was filled with the Holy Spirit.  [Homilies on the Gospel of Luke 7.3]

The concept of being “filled with the Holy Spirit” is interesting.  Perhaps some of you have heard of the glosses on this phrase which compare the Blessed Virgin, John the Baptist, and St. Stephen.  All were said to be filled with the Holy Spirit.  Mary was prevented from ever having any stain of original sin.  John was said to have been forgiven the guilt of original sin before his birth, which is the moment he leapt in the womb at the coming of the Lord.  Stephen, the Protodeacon, was also “filled with the Holy Spirit”, but after his birth.  In any event, the always creative and interesting Origen speaks of John’s sanctification in the womb at the coming of Mary who was bearing the Son of God.

Each of us must prepare to bear Christ and be filled with the Holy Spirit.  St. Ambrose, the bishop of Milan (+397) said:

You see that Mary did not doubt, but believed and therefore obtained the fruit of faith.  “Blessed … are you who have believed.”  But you also are blessed who have heard and believed.  For a soul that has believed has both conceived and bears the Word of God and declares His works.  Let the soul of Mary be in each of you, so that it magnifies the Lord.  Let the spirit of Mary be in each of you, so that it rejoices in God.  She is the one mother of Christ according to the flesh, yet Christ is the Fruit of all according to faith.  Every soul receives the Word of God, provided that, undefiled and unstained by vices, it guards its purity with inviolate modesty.  [Exposition of the Gospel of Luke 2.26]

Our baptism should remind us every day that we are deeply woven into the fabric of the Church, a Church which in many ways can said to stretch back into the depths of our great “Family History”  as God’s People.  In a comment on the Magnificat, which Mary pronounced during her mysterious Visitation, Venerable Bede (+735) says:

When blessed Mary was making mention of the memory of the fathers, she properly represented them by naming Abraham in particular.  Although many of the fathers and holy ones mystically brought forward testimony of the Lord’s incarnation, it was to Abraham that the hidden mysteries of this same Lord’s incarnation and of our redemption were first clearly predicted.  Also, to him it was specifically said, “And in you all the tribes of the earth witll be blessed.” (Gen 12:3)  None of the faithful doubts that this pertains to the Lord and Savior, who in order to give us an everlasting blessing deigned to come to us from the stock of Abraham.  However, “the seed of Abraham” does not refer only to those chosen ones who were brought forth physically from Abraham’s lineage, but also to us…. Having been gathered together to Christ from the nations, we are connected by the fellowship of faith to the fathers, from whom we are far separated by the origin of our fleshly bloodline.  We too are the seed and children of Abraham since we are reborn by the sacraments of our Redeemer, who assumed his flesh from the race of Abraham.  [Homilies on the Gospels 1.4]

Did you catch that great phrase?  “Mary was making mention of the memory of the fathers…”  Perhaps we can see how the Blessed Virgin is a good model for all patristicists and, of course, patristibloggers!

Posted in Liturgy Science Theatre 3000, Our Solitary Boast, Patristiblogging, Patristic Rosary Project | Tagged
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ASK FATHER: Why not St. Louis Jesuit Music at Traditional Latin Masses?

From a reader…

QUAERITUR:

What’s wrong with the St Louis jesuits?

A Director of Music for a Latin Mass community once said that, with regards to hymns, what we sing now as traditional hymns was once new and modern at the time. In fact many of our beloved Marian Hymns were once the equivalence to the St. Louis Jesuits. This leads me to wonder, what’s wrong about introducing stuff like the St. Louis Jesuits into the EF if it’s well-discerned and the song’s words are scriptural?

What’s wrong with the St Louis Jesuits?  Nothing.  As they say, their music isn’t nearly as bad as it sounds.

Really, the thought of this stuff during a TLM brought an audible chuckle.

There is a good book which explains something of the phenomenon of the bad music that has so tormented the Church since the Council was misappropriated.

Check out Thomas Day’s Why Catholics Can’t Sing: Revised and Updated With New Grand Conclusions and Good Advice

US HERE – UK HERE

Part of the problem was that, after the Council was hijacked and a false interpretation was imposed on liturgical reforms by a small group of modernists who had control of social communication back in the day, Latin was sidelined and all but banned.  Indeed, it was illicitly forbidden in many places.   That slammed the door on the Church’s vast treasury of Church music without anything to ready to fill in.  Nature abhors a vacuum.  Alas, people with the lowest musical skills started to fill in the vacuum, producing “music” that was neither artistic or sacred, and played on instruments entirely lacking a sacred idiom or body of compositions (guitars, pianos, drum sets… and don’t forget tambourines!).   Coupled with a complete lie about the purpose of sacred music, perpetrated by an advisory board on music of the committee for liturgy of the US bishops (that music was intended to produce a human experience), we got the so-called “hootenany” Mass and the rest began to spiral around the bowl on the way down.

Day also describes how the sickly sweet Irish song influenced what was sung in churches.  Many of the clergy who came to these USA from Ireland had zero sense of sacred music because they had zero chances to develop that sense under the thumb of anti-Catholic society they left.  There was no traditional of Church music or large choir tradition.  They did know their sickly sweet songs from the pub and field, however.  That’s why so many of the ditties that passed into hymnals sound like “I’ll Taaaaaake You Home Agaaaaain Kathleeeeeeen”.  (“Mother Deeeeeearest Mother Faaaaaaaairest….”) Not their fault, of course.  But they, speaking English, came to dominate the clergy over and above other imigrants from German, France, etc., who did have a huge heritage of church music.  If you look at church’s built in a certain era, you can see the differences.  German church’s tended to have big choir lofts and organs, while Irish churches didn’t.  Anyway, the influences and roots of the problem are manifold, but that’s part of the picture.

St. Louis Jesuits at a TLM.  LOL!

And so…

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Posted in "How To..." - Practical Notes, ASK FATHER Question Box, Liturgy Science Theatre 3000 | Tagged
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UPDATE- A confluence of promptings leads Fr. Z to rant and to make a plea to bishops.

UPDATE: 1 July 2019 (Precious Blood)

Concerning the video about the late Card. Bernardin (linked below) and my association with the novel Windswept House (which has identifiable real people as fictionalized characters), I bring an update.  This is one of the things that was ringing off the hook in the back of my mind.

I was contacted by someone with an autographed copy of Windswept House which he was given by the late and very traditional Fr. Alfred Kunz, whose unsolved murder in the Diocese of Madison is an open wound to this day.   He also had a list of the real people and places whom Martin fictionalized for his novel.

The linked video about Card. Bernardin demonstrates his close connection with the late Bp. John Russell (+1993) of Charleston SC.   In Windswept House Russell is recreated as Bp. “Leo” James Russeton, who is the prelate who directs and offers the parallel satanic rites (with the gory stuff) meant to complete the satanic desecration of the Church in the heart of the Vatican City in 1963.

This was ringing bells in the back of my mind.  I once had a copy of that list, which I recall tucking into a hardback of Windswept House which I now remember lending to someone and never getting back.  The copy I dug out of my storage unit was its replacement, but I had lost the list, many names on which lingered in distant memories.

___ Originally Published on: Jun 29, 2019

A confluence of promptings drove me to my storage locker.

  • There was a recent reading about the infiltration of the Church so as to obtain for the infiltrators high positions of influence. HERE The book didn’t make a strong case based on lots of evidence, but surely the main thesis of the book was dead on accurate.
  • There was the reading of the Instrumentum Laboris for the upcoming Amazonian Synod, which reads as a blueprint for making the Church more like to an NGO with interests in earth-mother worship than the Bride of Christ, indefectible and authoritative. On that, Card. Brandmüller HERE. The Instrumentum Laboris in English HERE
  • There was the video about revelations concerning the late Card. Bernardin.  HERE

In that last link, I was already starting to think about the late Malachi Martin’s Windswept House.  US HERE – UK HERE  Something about Bernardin’s connection to South Carolina stirred my memory.

Today, I cracked old Windswept House.  It’s a tangle of tortured prose and references which are usually slightly off enacted by thinly veiled real but fictionalized players.  It conveys a grim story that you can’t but help know is, its flaws aside, dead on.   In the first few rapids sections of prologue, Martin takes you from Pius XII reflecting on the Treaty of Rome in 1957, to John XXIII refusing to release the Third Secret in 1960, to 1963… specifically the Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul.

The Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, the day I write this.

In that section of the novel’s prologue there is enacted simultaneously a Satanic ritual in the Pauline Chapel next to the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican and also a place in South Carolina (where the gory stuff was to be done) in order to enthrone Satan in the heart of the Church.  The perpetrators of this evil want not so much to destroy the Church but to transform it into a human institution for the sake of creating a new world order.  Of course 1963 is when the Second Vatican Council is in session and Martin, in this novel, was also hinting that the Third Secret warned about a council.  Get it?

“But Father!  But Father!”, some of you libs and pseudointellects are tittering to the clink of ice in your highball glasses, “This is pure traddy fantasy fueled by years of bitter disappointment at not getting your way.  Since 1963 a new springtime has been blowing through us – we are church, after all – and the fresh air is driving out the stale old incense and trappings of religion you cling to.  It was greater than the Council of Jerusalem, though it didn’t go nearly far enough and … and… crush all opposition.  You… youuuuuuu…. racist climate-change denying homophobic haters!  YOU HATE VATICAN II!”

I esteem Vatican II enough not to lie about it.

I am also now reminded of a story from 2018 about a dreadful occurrence in one of the most important places in the Vatican City, the Palazzo del Sant’Uffizio, where the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is housed.  That palazzo has also some residence apartments for curial officials, normally of high rank.   There was a druggy orgy of some kind involving a low-ranking worker bee who managed, mysteriously, to get lodging there.   HERE

Certain kinds of sins, summon to and cause to attach to and oppress places and people.  They must be driven forth by exorcism.

What happened in 2018 was close to the very heart of the Church’s heart.  As I described it then:

The Devil is good at what he does and he tells us what he is up to.  Having drug/sodomy parties in the building where the CDF and where the office that oversees the use of the Traditional Roman Rite and the new traditional religious institutes are housed is a dead give away.  THAT’s precisely the sort of place to attach and infest with demonic presence.  It’s a stone’s throw from

a) the very place Peter was crucified
b) the tomb of Peter
c) the Paul VI audience hall, where the Synod (“walking together”) meets
d) the offices of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith which also handles cases of abuse
e) the offices of the Pontifical Commission “Ecclesia Dei” which, reinforced by Benedict XVI’s Summorum Pontificum is providing support for that “Marshall Plan” for rebuilding that I’m always on about.

If I were looking at this from the eyes of an enemy, that’s exactly the sort of place I would seek to infiltrate.

The Enemy is real and really good at being an Enemy.  Demons and their activities are real.

If I were a diocesan bishop, I would immediately go through my entire cathedral and chancery and residence and exorcise the places using the older, traditional Roman Ritual.

If I were a diocesan bishop, I would tell pastors of parishes and chaplains of schools, etc., whom I trusted to do it right, to do the same in their places, church, sacristy, rectory, school, all around the grounds.   Otherwise, I would send delegated priests to all the other parishes, etc., to carry out the exorcisms.

If I were a diocesan bishop, I would pronounce an exorcism over the entire diocese entrusted to my care.

If I were a diocesan bishop, I would go to the four corners of the diocese and pronounce the exorcism again at each spot and also say Masses at each, Pro Remissione Peccatorum, Pro Defensibus Ab Hostibus, Ad Poscenda Suffragia Sanctorum, Pro Gratiarum Actione.

Repeat annually.

It would be like tracing the Sign of the Cross over the whole diocese.  I got the idea from what Archbp. Sample did when he was still in Marquette.

Do it in the dead of night in a locked church or in the full light of day with public concourse.  Just do it.

This will cost nothing but a little gas money, will not require a dithering committee, and could be done in a short period of time.  But what benefits!

I think that people would flock to these “Four Corners” Masses and would be deeply edified.   And, if bishops are concerned about bring young people to the Faith and keeping them strong, this will help.  Do you doubt it?

This is serious stuff and they want something serious.

There is no more important thing a bishop does than sanctify and he wields all the weapons of spiritual warfare.

There is no more important thing that a bishop does than say Mass for the welfare of his flock.   And with the might of successors of Apostles, they command the Enemy.

If you are a bishop, please heed my plea.  If you are the secretary to a bishop, or the friend of a bishop, please make this request.

¿You want to hacer some real lío?

Find the recipe between the covers of the Rituale Romanum and Missale Romanum.

Posted in "But Father! But Father!", GO TO CONFESSION, Hard-Identity Catholicism, Liberals, Si vis pacem para bellum!, Sin That Cries To Heaven, The Coming Storm, The Drill, The future and our choices, Wherein Fr. Z Rants | Tagged , , ,
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