Prof. Robert Royal, editor of The Catholic Thing, recently concluded an online course on Dante’s essential Divine Comedy. I followed it and it was excellent.
Now he will have an online course on St. Augustine’s Confessions. The online weekly classes begin on Wednesday 5 January.
As a student of Augustine, I look forward to Royal’s insights.
You can enroll…
At FNC my good friend Fr. Robert Sirico has some thoughts about Francis and the cruel attack on people who desire traditional sacred liturgical worship.
My emphases and comments:
Pope Francis should let Catholics pray like Catholics
Too many spiritual shepherds want to contain traditional worship as if it were some kind of virus
A growing share of Americans—three in ten—identify as “none.” Or, none of the above when asked about their religious affiliation. Houses of worship are emptying, and those still left in the pews probably expect their spiritual shepherds to welcome more prayer, not less. [Even as the demographic sinkhole opens up under the Church many “spiritual shepherds” would rather see a smoking crater than a sheepfold full of happy Tradition oriented Catholics.]
It’s what makes Pope Francis‘s recent ruling to restrict prayer in the Catholic Church so odd. [Maybe this is the same as what Minnesotans mean by “interesting”.] The current pope is known to some as the “Who am I to judge?” pope, but now seems to have no problem judging faithful Catholics who pray in ways he simply does not like. [That’s it, isn’t it. It’s not just the traditional rites that he doesn’t like, he doesn’t like the people who like them.]
Pope Francis told bishops from the Czech Republic in 2014 that he “cannot understand the younger generation” who flock to the old Mass. [What would a person versed in Jesuit spirituality say about moving dramatically and suddenly in way that affects a large group of people that you, self-admittedly, doesn’t understand?] A couple of years later, the pope wondered to an interviewer why so many young Catholics prefer to praise God in Latin on Sundays. “Why so much rigidity,” Francis asked. “This rigidity always hides something, insecurity or even something else.” And in 2019, Pope Francis ridiculed young priests who wear traditional cassocks along with the white collar—even suggesting they have “moral problems and imbalances.” [As Yoda might say: “Working out our own problems, we are! Hmmmm.]
Stereotypes may often be shortcuts to the truth, but not always. And certainly not in this case. In my experience, it is not just the elderly who like the smells and bells of the Church’s old rituals—a great many young people love traditional worship. I joke that my old parish’s Latin Mass is the “teen Mass.”
Yet last summer the pope released a letter that restricted the use of that Mass. It marked a disappointing departure from his predecessors, and a peculiar use of the papacy—as if the pontiff were leading a new presidential administration that reverses executive orders of prior presidents from different political parties. [Or one caudillo those of another.]
But popes aren’t presidents. [Neither are they caudillos.] The papacy is supposed to eschew politics and instead focus on the spiritual needs of the faithful. That was the late Pope John Paul II’s approach. As was Pope emeritus Benedict XVI’s. Both noticed an increasing number of faithful were spiritually enriched by the Church’s old rites and rituals.
Francis’s recent predecessors both generously expanded opportunities to believers who worshipped the old way—not simply because it is old, but because it is beautiful and true. “What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too,” the pope emeritus wrote in 2007, “and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful.” At that time only a little more than 200 Latin Masses were celebrated in the United States. Today, more than 650 venues reportedly offer the old form of worship in all 50 states and in the District of Columbia. [I would say a lot more than that, because many have been quietly started and just continued under the radar.]
Perhaps the most draconian implementation of the pope’s restrictions on communities dedicated to the old Mass came just last week—yes, at the onset of Christmas festivities—from the cardinal archbishop of Chicago, Blase Cupich. A progressive on many things, Cupich is wont to align himself with many of campaigns of the left such as conflating intrinsic moral evil with prudential policy matters. [The typical lib/dem M.O.] No matter how you view it, no Catholic should give keeping the minimum wage just the same moral weight as protecting life in the womb. Of course, Cupich’s conflation gives cover to prominent pro-choice Catholics, like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Joe Biden. [Merely for a fuller view of the picture, there’s a PETITION to get him to resign: HERE]
But that “consistent ethic of life” idea wasn’t Cupich’s. It originated with his late predecessor, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, who was also a hero for political liberals—but who also happened to be the first to expand opportunities for Chicagoans to worship the old way. Priests at St. John Cantius Church on the city’s west side seized that opportunity to restore the sacred in all things, and then watched the faithful flock from all over to what had been an all but abandoned parish. It grew from merely 30 in 1988 to more than 2,000 families today. The church itself was even voted the most beautiful in the country, and perhaps that had a lot to do with its beautiful liturgies.
When I was pastor of Sacred Heart of Jesus Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, we had a very similar experience. It, too, was on the verge of closing in 2012, but as we sought to restore the sacred in the liturgy (we, like Cantius, celebrate both the old and new Masses) our school grew from 68 students to about 400 today—and it’s still growing.
In this moment of the “nones,” some of the most remarkable growth in the Catholic Church seems to come from churches where the liturgies are “ever ancient, ever new.”
Too many spiritual shepherds now want to contain that contagious growth as if it were some kind of virus. But perhaps what the Church—and our world—need most right now is a pandemic of prayer.
Fr. Z kudos.
Yes, a pandemic of prayer. But also an epidemic of enterprise.
We need a syndemic, both prayer and strong action.
St. Bernard of Clairvaux, whom I quoted elsewhere today told the men he was recruiting:
“All you who hear me, make haste to calm the wrath of Heaven! Leave off imploring His goodness with futile lamentations or mortifying yourself with disciplines, but rather take up your invincible shields. The clamor of arms, the dangers, difficulties and fatigues of war, these are the penances that God imposes on you.”
There is no way that St. Bernard would have wanted me to STOP with mortifications and INSTEAD take up arms. He would have wanted BOTH.
Prayer and action.
Grace and elbow grease.
I’ve had some emails over the last months and weeks from deeply wounded, anxious souls who fear that, in regard to traditional sacred liturgical worship (TSLW), we have gone back to the 70’s and 80’s, all the gains from Ecclesia Dei and Summorum Pontificum wiped out by two strokes of a pen.
I have good news and bad news.
The bad news is, as The Fat Man’s Laws of the House of God affirms: VIII. They can always hurt you more.
The “House of God”, in the homonymous novel, is a hospital, in which it is always possible to make patients feel even more pain. So, too, in the Church. Bet on the fact that the powers that be, in their fear of TSLW, are even now thinking up ways to hurt people more. It is just a matter of time.
That’s the bad news. However, as I have seen online recently as well as in a brand new book by Kennedy Hall from good old faithful TAN, Terror of Demons: Reclaiming Traditional Catholic Masculinity, effeminacy is undermining and sapping the vigor from the Church and larger society. It is a tool and temptation from Hell and it must be resisted. Hall writes:
Effeminacy does not mean “femininity,” as femininity is a perfection, like masculinity. Effeminacy is a different word entirely, and in its etymology, we find a definition for things like “softness” in its Latin usage. The Greek word for effeminacy in the New Testament is malakia (μαλακία), which means “softness.”
St. Thomas defines effeminacy as a reluctance to suffer due to an attachment to pleasure. He explains that effeminacy is a vice opposed to perseverance. In essence, effeminacy is a vice that is opposed to the cross, which is an unfortunate characteristic that might explain the multitude of soft men who reject life’s redemptive sufferings in pursuit of temporal pleasure.
Effeminacy is not the jesuitical limp-handed lisping of a confused boy-man with a streak of sullen teen-age girl purple across his half-shaven skull full of mush. Women can be effeminate, too. We want women to be feminine, not effeminate. We want men to be neither, but rather, both virile and masculine. Get the distinction?
There is another kind of effeminacy, by the way. It’s the sort whereby, in defiance of their wiring, they relate to others more as women might than men, thus leading to one of the wisest premonitory insights I ever received from a bishop about clergy: “There are old women of both sexes.” Another analogy about how some of clergy with power work is: high-school mean-girls in the bathroom.
In any event, they can always hurt you more. Get ready for another blow upon the bruise.
But that’s okay. We have to have the fight. When St. Bernard of Clairvaux (+1153) at Vézelay preached to men to raise troops for Second Crusades, he said
“How can you not know that we live in a period of chastisement and ruin? The enemy of mankind has caused the breath of corruption to fly over all regions; we behold nothing but unpunished wickedness. Neither the laws of men nor the laws of religion have sufficient power to check the depravity of customs and the triumph of the wicked. The demon of heresy has taken possession of the chair of truth, and God has sent forth His malediction upon His sanctuary.
“Oh, ye who listen to me, hasten then to appease the anger of Heaven. But no longer implore His goodness by vain complaints; clothe not yourselves in sackcloth, but cover yourselves with your impenetrable bucklers. The din of arms, the dangers, the labors, the fatigues of war are the penances that God now imposes upon you. Hasten then to expiate your sins by victories over the infidels, and let the deliverance of holy places be the reward of your repentance.
“If it were announced to you that the enemy had invaded your cities, your castles, your lands; had ravished your wives and your daughters and profaned your temples – who among you would not fly to arms? Well, then, all these calamities, and calamities still greater, have fallen upon your brethren, upon the family of Jesus Christ, which is yours. Why do you hesitate to repair so many evils; to revenge so many outrages? Will you allow the infidels to contemplate in peace the ravages they have committed on Christian people?
“All you who hear me, make haste to calm the wrath of Heaven! Leave off imploring His goodness with futile lamentations or mortifying yourself with disciplines, but rather take up your invincible shields. The clamor of arms, the dangers, difficulties and fatigues of war, these are the penances that God imposes on you.”
Tell that that doesn’t describe what is being done to the Church and wider society. We could use a little more of this spirit rather than the Starbuck cinnamon-chai mocha latté infused spirit of Vatican II.
So, the bad news is out of the way. They are going to hurt us more.
The good news is, 2022 is NOT 1982 or 1992.
Catholic media and information sources are no longer dominated by diocesan newspapers (insert eye-roll), the vile Fishwrap, the feckless bishops’ news platform. Just as Rush changed talk radio and provided an alternative to the mainstream media, and Fox News did on visual media, the internet has changed the whole vista before us.
In 1992, for example, working from an office in Rome, I wound up being the “wizop” of the Catholic Forum in ancient Compuserve: people from around the world were in immediate contact, with message boards having friendlier user interfaces and even by live chat. It was a whole new ballgame, and very quickly the sides were delineated. The point is, however, that the silent majority – still silent in many respects – had access to more and better information. Scales stared falling from people’s eyes. One of the things that Compuserve spawned was an occasional post from me about how the English translations of prayers on Sunday didn’t match the Latin, I was asked the question “What Does The Prayer Really Say”? In turn, that was picked up by Catholic legacy print media, The Wanderer – STILL AROUND! SUBSCRIBE AND KEEP IT GOING! – and a weekly column lasted over a decade. Those columns were used in meetings of the Vox Clara Committee after Liturgiam authenticam changed the rules for translations, resulting in better English versions of the Novus Ordo prayers.
I remember furious hate-mail from people who saw my commentaries: “HOW DARE YOU question the translations! They were done by EXPERTS!” and “YOU RUINED IT! I can’t stand hearing those prayers anymore! Why couldn’t you just LET IT BE?!?” That sort of thing.
De-scaling is painful. As Augustine wrote, based on the medical practices of the time, about Christ the Physician of the soul, the doctor doesn’t stop cutting just because the patient is screaming for him to stop.
A chance to cut is a chance to cure, as a surgeon friend of mine once told me. They can always hurt you more. But WHY? To cure or to hurt for the sake of hurting?
Someone referred to the Church as a “field hospital”. Fine. Not original in the least.
Think about that image.
Field hospitals are places of wondrous horror. Triage separates the wounded into categories and one of those is “no chance”. While it is heart-rending for those to do triage later, it is icy at the time. Screaming, ugly sights, terrible smells, fear.
Field hospitals are temporary: they exist to send patients elsewhere. Some people don’t make it.
The Church is like a field hospital. Some people will be damned. Correcting and patching up the wounded – Original Sin is a wound, actual sin is a stiches-tearing blow upon the wound – hurts a lot. It is not pretty. Mind you, it’s beautiful in one sense, but it isn’t pretty.
There is nothing pretty about a really good, really needed, difficult confession. There is nothing more beautiful.
Getting back to the point, these are NOT the 80’s or 90’s for people who desire traditional sacred liturgical worship (TSLW). We have the insights from those times, from those who fought through them once before. We have vastly more people involved. We have years of new experience. We have scores of young priests who want to day the TLM and, one day, some of them will be bishops. Do the math. We have a huge advantage of tools, like vestments, books, videos even at the touch of a screen to show us how to do pretty much anything.
Do you have any idea how hard it was to get a 1962 Missale Romanum back in the day?
No, these are not the 80’s or 90’s.
Could we have in 1992 imagined an online petition, already signed by over 50,000 people calling for the resignation of Cardinal Cupich of Chicago? In 2022 we don’t have to imagine it. There is one. HERE. They are aiming for 75K signatures.
We might then have dreamed but we couldn’t imagine. Now we can make happen all that we dream and imagine.
The enemy knows these are not the 90’s. Therefore, they will hurt us more.
Good luck with that. Their cruelty has forged their downfall.
There are serious problems in the world today. For example, at the grocery store I was recently confronted with this dire turn of fate’s merciless wheel.
There is, it seems, a nationwide shortage of…
CREAM CHEESE.
Good grief… it’s like… like.. shopping at Moscow’s GUM in 1979! Like Jimmy Carter’s gas lines!
This casearian lacuna was apparently brought about by a perfect storm: a supply chain breakdown (“Let’s Go Brandon!”) and a debilitating cyberattack (also probably Biden’s fault… or the Jesuits… or, given their proclivities, both) last October on Wisconsin based Scheiber Foods, which makes stuff from locally abundant milk.
So, bad is this problem that Kraft literally offered to PAY people NOT to use cream cheese desserts over the holidays.
What, I want to know, is the status of the Strategic Cream Cheese Reserve? Was there no plan? We have bagels to schmear!
When the going gets tough, the turophile gets going. It’s time to make our own cream cheese, which involves the addition of salt and a bacterial culture to milk.
To start the project I’ll try to hunt up some lacteous caprine coagulant today after my rounds of Fight Club (weekly chess meeting), and give it a go.
Affinage to follow.
I direct the readership to the blog of a good friend Fr. Cliff Ermatinger, a priest in Milwaukee. HERE
He will be putting his reflections and other good items… which I assure you will be worthwhile. You might bookmark it right away.
If bishops want to have any credibility at all when they ponder how to implement Traditionis custodes (the best way is simply to apply can. 87 and ignore it entirely), they have to say the Traditional Latin Mass for people themselves. Otherwise, bishops are merely “experts of the law” who, as Jesus describes, “bind heavy and insupportable burdens, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but with a finger of their own they will not move them.” (Matthew 23:4)
Therefore, I was please to see that His Excellency, Most Rev. John Doerfler (whom I knew many years tangentially in St. Paul when he was in minor seminary) of the Diocese of Marquette, celebrated a Pontifical Low Mass. If I am not mistaken, his predecessor, then Bp. Alex Sample regularly did the same at the cathedral.
I have limited photos, but here is one.
Fr. Z kudos to Bp. Doerfler for doing this.
For you readers… I urge you to ACTION!
Too many people today are without good, strong preaching, to the detriment of all. Share the good stuff.
Was there a GOOD point made in the sermon you heard at the Masses for the Octave of Christmas (aka Novus Ordo Mary, Mother of God), and Holy Name (aka – insulting dopey transferred Epiphany in the Novus Ordo) either live or on the internet? Let us know what it was.
Tell about attendance especially for the Traditional Latin Mass. I was getting reports that it is way up.
Any local changes or news?
Those of you who regularly viewed my live-streamed daily Masses – with their fervorini – for over a year, you might drop me a line.
I have some written remarks about the TLM Mass for Christmas – HERE
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