Far and wide the celebration of the Feast of Corpus Christi, which properly fell last Thursday, has been transferred to this Sunday.
Was there a good point made in the sermon you heard for your Mass of Sunday Obligation? Let us know.
Also, tell us about the procession you had with the Eucharistic Lord.
Let’s have a POLL.
Anyone can answer. Only registered and approved participants can post comments.
In Rome the sun rose at 5:32 and it will set at 20:51. The Ave Maria is to be rung at 21:15 for the Curia and 21:21 for the rest of Rome. Today is the Feast of Santi Marco e Marcelliano, who were Roman martyrs in the 4th c. Their bodies are in San Nicola in Carcere, where I served as a seminarian and was ordained a deacon.
I was in the neighborhood where guys play chess in the afternoon. No, I still haven’t stopped to play yet. They set up outside a bar which has a large and shady fig tree. Thus, the place is called the Pizza der Fico. As I was watching a game, I caught odd, vertical movement out of the corner of my eye followed by a distinct *splat*.
Ripe figs were falling off the tree about every minute or so. All around us and among us.
I did not, as the Lord did, curse the fig tree, since it is clearly doing its job. I did, however, back out from under it.
You would need to wash up after getting fig-splatted. So…. remember the wonderful Dominican Soap Sisters in Summit!
And, please, if you are shopping online with Amazon, use my links to enter. Thanks in advance. It really helps me out. US HERE – UK HERE I haven’t been mentioning often these days some of the groups I really like to help out, the monks at Norcia and Le Barroux, etc. And the earnings this month from the Amazon affiliate have been way down. Thank you if you are remembering without prompting. I’d rather not have to mention it at all.
Also, for those of you who contributed to my Rome Sojourn for June, I have been regularly saying Holy Mass for your intention as special benefactors. I also have the intention at the altar of all you who are so kind as to donate and pray for me.
A member of the chess club had planted the fig. I find it charming that these guys went to the effort to put a plaque up, even such a humble one, perhaps homemade by a member. I hope they pray for him too. Perhaps in your goodness you would right now.
When I go into the churches here in Rome and see the funerary monuments and inscriptions, I often pray for the person. Sometimes there are specific requests. Yesterday we saw one in the inscription at the Ponte Sisto. Here is one that talks directly to you, as they sometimes do… The angle was a little hard.
A D G
LECTOR SISTE
NEC VIVVS NEC MORTVVS
HIC HAEREO HIC MOEREO
FILIO ERAM DESTITVTVS
CONIVGEM AMISERAM
HIC
FILIO REDDOR
ET A CONIVGE NON SEIVNGOR
ET DVM
MORTVOS SPECTANS
MORTEM EXPECTO
PRAE TIMORE LAPIS
HVNC LAPIDEM ERIGO
NEC SENSV CAREO
NAM ET IPSI LAPIDES
SVAS LACRYMAS HABENT
GABRIEL PRATVS ASTENSIS
SAECVLO XVI
POST MORTEM REGIS VITAE
To the glory of God.
O, reader, stop! / Neither alive nor dead / Here I am stuck, here I grieve / I had been left by my son / I had lost my wife / Here I am returned to my son / And I am not separated from my wife / And while / Looking at the dead / I await death / like a stone out of fear / I erect this stone / But I’m not without feeling / In fact even these very stones / have their own tears / Gabriel Prato from Asti
In the sixteenth century / after the death of King of life
Speaking of Kings…
In the afternoon I caught part of Round 1 of the Candidates Tournament in Madrid. The winner will face Magnus.
There was a lot of drama yesterday. I really felt for poor Ding Liren, who had such a hard road to get into this competition. He wasn’t at his best and lost to Ian Nepomniachtchi … with white! I don’t really mind when Nakamura loses, as he did to Caruana. I’m pulling a bit for the Hungarian, Richard Rapport, though he is unlikely to emerge on top unless something extraordinary happens.
There was exciting action, of course. High drama.
Supper involved telline and lupini.
Oil, wine, garlic. I like to let it simmer for a while to get all that garlicky goodness.
Get the parsley ready for chopping. There may be traces of a singular Gin and Tonic in this photo.
I soaked and purged the little beasties for about 8 hours, changing the salty water a couple of times.
Put them into the hot pan, cover, wait a little while.
At this point I carefully left them out and into a bowl, leaving the liquid behind in the pan, which I reduce, with just a touch of starchy pasta water.
Telline are smaller than lupini, which are a kind of vongola, though vongole are a little bigger. They also siphon differently, but that doesn’t matter much once they are in the pan.
Meanwhile, here are a few cool things.
PLEASE use the sharing buttons! Thanks!
Registered here or not, will you in your charity please take a moment look at the requests and to pray for the people about whom you read?
Continued from THESE.
Let’s remember all who are ill, who will die soon, who have lost their jobs, and who are afraid.
I get many requests by email asking for prayers. Some are heart-achingly grave and urgent.
As long as my blog reaches so many readers in so many places, let’s give each other a hand. We should support each other in works of mercy.
If you have some prayer requests, feel free to post them below.
You have to be registered here to be able to post.
I ask a prayer for myself. I’m dealing with a particular challenge right now.
Also, please pray for “A” and her family. She is having a really tough time.
I just saw the Vatican’s Annual Disclosure about Peter’s Pence or Obolo di San Pietro for 2021. The collection is taken up around the world around the Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul. It is intended to provide means for the special projects of the Roman Pontiff.
Last year, Peter’s Pence amounted to
It seems that spending outstripped income.
Who gave?
Peter’s Pence is intended to provide means for the special projects of the Roman Pontiff, charitable works, operation of the Holy See, etc.
However, Peter’s Pence was also, according to Corriere della Sera, reported by National Catholic Register, used to fund a movie about the loudly homosexual Elton John which included, apparently, homosexual acts, so much so that it was censored in some countries.
Contributions to Peter’s Pence has dropped 40% over the last few years. HERE By 15% in 2021. HERE
That’s quite a drop. And now we are entering a global economic downturn.
Given the disdain that Francis and his closest advisors have for the United States and for us its citizens, the largest contributors to Peter’s Pence, I’d like to ask:
May we, please, have it back?
You know how this goes… 5:32 – 20:50 – 21:15.
I went into Trastevere today over the Sistine Bridge, the Ponte Sisto, my favorite Roman bridge.
My goal was to visit S. Giovanni de Matha (closed), S. Dorotea, S. M. della Scala, S. M. in Trastevere, and circle back to Campo de’ Fiori to buy clams for supper and a few other supplies.
Some shots from the morning.
These saints saw the consistory list and just rolled their eyes.
And even in a different church, St. Rita is still sad!
Pius X turned positively gray when he read it!
The relics of St. Dorothy, Virgin Martyr, are here. She was beheaded in the time of the Emperor Diocletian. Sixtus IV, same guy as the bridge, restructured the church dedicated to S. Silvester by Callixtus II in 1123.
Next, Santa Maria della Scala, a Carmelite church.
Just inside the door is a list from the time of Paul VI of the schedule for Forty Hours Devotion.
Santa Maria in Trastevere
A really fun funerary monument. Tell me this isn’t either a huge joke or a little creepy. Or both.
And here is a super fun monument… get this! A guy named Stanislaus Hosius (1505-1579, so he has on his coat of arms. He was Card. Priest of this church and also Major Penitentiary. Polish… actually Prussian. A fierce opponent of the Protestant Revolt.
Look what’s on his tomb:
Fantastic.
I wonder what Hosius would have thought of Archbp. Roche’s latest comments.
Not bad.
A modern Roman still life… “natura morta”.
Off to the shops.
Getting telline and arselle.
At Vatican News we find an interview with the Prefect of Worship, whom Francis designated as a Cardinal, Archbp. Arthur Roche, once of Leeds and less-than-successful head of ICEL.
Roche is an inveterate enemy of the Roman Rite, the Vetus Ordo, and has peculiar notions about what the Second Vatican Council mandated for liturgical reform. He reads into documents curious things. However, Roche is exemplary, in that he is one of those who wants to make Vatican II the only lens through which the whole of the Church’s history, doctrine and practice, including worship, must be reinterpreted.
The interview deals with more than just his war against his idea of the present day use of the Vetus Ordo. That section, however, is probably the most important.
You get a sense of the depth of view of the Prefect concerning the use of the Vetus Ordo and the what the Novus Ordo is from a few items.
First, Roche said:
But one of the problems, challenges, of our age is the growth in individualism and in relativism, that ‘I prefer this.’ Well, the celebration of the Mass is not something to be a matter of personal choice. We celebrate as a community, as the entire Church and the Church throughout the centuries, has always regulated the form of liturgy that it has come to believe is more pertinent for a particular age.
But then, concerning what is going on liturgically in the Amazonian region he said:
[T]he inculturation of the Roman Missal into the Amazonian culture. Well, that is something that is being worked on. But first of all, it has to be worked on by the so-called Amazonian Bishops in Brazil and in Peru, etc… So, they have established a Commission which is beginning to think about that.
I suppose they are waiting to hear what the Amazonians “prefer”.
Next, there is Roche’s claim that the Council Fathers mandated a “new liturgy”. Matthew Hazell capably destroys that at LifeSite.
Roche: “It was clear that the Council, the Bishops of the Council, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, were putting forward a new liturgy….”
These constant attempts by the DDW Prefect to rewrite history are so very tiresome.
The fact is that Vatican II’s Constitution on the Liturgy repeatedly proposes an «instauratio» of the liturgy (e.g. nos. 1, 14, 21, 23-24, 33, 43, 87-90): a “renewed” liturgy, not a “new liturgy”! https://t.co/ufAOvAwLZu pic.twitter.com/TLJATDeYpD— Matthew Hazell (@M_P_Hazell) June 16, 2022
If this “Holy Spirit” argument is the underpinning of his claim, then is Roche also going to campaign for returning Gregorian chant to having pride of place in the Latin Church’s worship? That’s SC 116.
The Second Vatican Council said: “The use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites.” That’s SC 36.
The Council Fathers instructed – under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, mind you – that no changes were to be made that were not organic developments, no innovations unless the good of the Church truly needs them and that changes come from existing forms. That’s SC 23. Does that mean that Roche is going to campaign for a return in the Novus Ordo to the offertory prayers of the Vetus Ordo? The Novus Ordo prayers don’t have much to do with the Roman Rite and people haven’t been overly edified by priests ad libbing whatever they prefer at that time.
You get the point.
Also, Roche speaks of the liturgical scholar Josef Jungmann. “Father [Jozef Andreas] Jungmann, an Austrian Jesuit who only died at the beginning of this century, was someone who, in his studies, showed how over the centuries the Mass has been changed in this way in order to fit the needs of the day.” Others have shown that Jungmann went way off the rails in his work on the Roman Rite and his aims for the Liturgical Movement. He essentially became like a 16th Protestant.
However, note that, “an Austrian Jesuit who only died at the beginning of this century“.
Fr. Jungmann died in 1975.
These long Roman summer days. This one started with sunrise at 5:32 and will conclude with sunset at 20:50. The ringing of the Ave Maria is scheduled for 21:15. It is the traditional Feast of Corpus Christi, often observed on the Sunday following.
Here are some odds and ends.
The new Decree about new religious groups had this effect on the Lord, waiting for you in a Roman confessional above the grate.
From a reader…
QUAERITUR:
Recently, while we were away on a vacation, my husband, children and I attended a NO Mass as that was what was available to us at our vacation destination. At the time the Gospel was to be read, the presiding Priest said that the Deacon had tested positive for COVID-19 that morning, so was not there to read the Gospel and instead the lay person, a woman, who had just read aloud the second reading would proclaim the Gospel. After she read the Gospel, the Priest came to give his homily, and before beginning provided the explanation that his eye sight is poor and he can’t read the small print of the Gospel, showing the congregation his homily notes which were printed for him in rather large font.
It has always been my understanding that in the presence of a Bishop, Priest, or Deacon, a lay person is not permitted to proclaim the Gospel. I understand that there were unusual circumstances afoot what with a Priest with poor eyesight and a Deacon unavailable owing to illness. I know that there was another Priest in the Church building during Mass, as he came out of the confessional during announcements at the end of Mass to remind people that he was there hearing confessions and the opportunity for confession would continue after Mass as long as the people needed.
Still, I am left uneasy by the laywoman proclaiming the Gospel during Mass. I wonder if it was licit for her to do so and what other solutions could have been found under such circumstances.
Thank you for all you do, Father Z. I remember you daily in my prayers and thank God that I came to find your blog, as it was instrumental in my re/conversion.
GUEST PRIEST RESPONSE: Fr. Tim Ferguson
It is not licit for a layperson, man or woman, to read the Gospel. The Mass was still (presumptively) valid, but this is something that should not have happened. Still, one has to take into consideration the circumstances. If the priest truly can’t read the Gospel (though one wonders, if this is an ongoing situation, why doesn’t the parish have a large-print lectionary or evangelary? – perhaps such could be a welcome gift from parishioners, or even someone passing through on vacation), then it sounds like he made do the best he could, or at least, the best he thought he could. The other priest, who was hearing confessions could have (and perhaps should have) come out for the brief time needed to proclaim the Gospel, but still, it’s good that he was engaged in priestly ministry, hearing confessions and thus saving the world, rather than simply sitting back in the rectory cracking a beer and catching up on Tivoed baseball games. The priest who was offering Mass, who had obviously prepared a homily, surely could recite a line or two from the Gospel by memory, even if it wasn’t the Gospel of the day, apologizing to the congregation for his lack of ability to read the fine print.
At the end of the day, this was illicit, but not the sort of thing that would seem to require a phone call to the bishop’s office and rallying the pitchfork and torch brigade outside the rectory. It seems to me the best resolution to this scenario would be for a well-meaning parishioner, or vacationer, to purchase for Father a large-print lectionary, lest the scenario repeat itself.
FR. Z RESPONSE:
I get that “things happen” and sometimes those things are truly at 11:59. I really do. Still, I’m having a hard time buying the priest’s scenario and explanation. If Father could have “homily notes which were printed for him in rather large font”, then he could also have the Gospel reading “printed for him in rather large font”.
It might be interesting to see if this is some sort of running gag that he regularly uses precisely in order to get a woman to read the Gospel. Still, having a priest hearing confessions at that time rather militates against that.
That’s pretty cynical of me, isn’t it. Such are the days we are in. Keep in mind some recently posted videos of crazy goings-on in churches.
For sure, it would help to have a large-print book for Father. That’s an investment that should be made right away. In the interim, print out the readings for him head of time just in case.
Finally, there will never be sacramentally ordained female deacons. Can’t happen.
The trend over the last few years, from “high atop the thing”, has been to distance Cult, Code and Creed (worship, discipline and doctrine) from anything that happened before 11 October 1962. Marked for special treatment is whatever came out of the Council of Trent (namely clarity in our Cult, Code and Creed). They are forcing, imposing, pressuring, constraining that the Second Vatican Council be the interpretive lens through which the entirety of the Church’s history, and her Cult, Code and Creed, be reinterpreted. That’s the goal. Hence the constant undermining of the magisterial teaching of St. John Paul II and the savage attacks on anything associated with Trent.
On the Feast of Corpus Christi let’s have a taste from St. John Paul’s 2003 encyclical letter Ecclesia de Eucharistia:
9. The Eucharist, as Christ’s saving presence in the community of the faithful and its spiritual food, is the most precious possession which the Church can have in her journey through history. This explains the lively concern which she has always shown for the Eucharistic mystery, a concern which finds authoritative expression in the work of the Councils and the Popes. How can we not admire the doctrinal expositions of the Decrees on the Most Holy Eucharist and on the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass promulgated by the Council of Trent? For centuries those Decrees guided theology and catechesis, and they are still a dogmatic reference-point for the continual renewal and growth of God’s People in faith and in love for the Eucharist. In times closer to our own, three Encyclical Letters should be mentioned: the Encyclical Mirae Caritatis of Leo XIII (28 May 1902), the Encyclical Mediator Dei of Pius XII (20 November 1947) and the Encyclical Mysterium Fidei of Paul VI (3 September 1965).
The Second Vatican Council, while not issuing a specific document on the Eucharistic mystery, considered its various aspects throughout its documents, especially the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium and the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium.
If you, as many do, want to uphold and even emphasize the Second Vatican Council, it isn’t necessary to cut it off from everything that went before. If you, as many do, want even to turn a blind eye to pointed and important questions that have been raised about the Council’s documents, it isn’t necessary to ignore the past. It is possible to embrace a continuity between all the Councils rather than impose, as some influencers are now doing, a “hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture”. (Oh, how they despise poor Pope Benedict XVI, who put his finger directly on the Rahnerian wound in that 2005 Christmas address.)
In many places the Feast of Corpus Christi gets an “external celebration” on Sunday. It is wonderful to see the multiplication of Eucharistic processions especially with the growth of the Traditional Latin Mass. TLM began, processions generally followed.
In 2008 Pope Benedict taught about processions, a message we could all use today. The full text is HERE.
“The Corpus Christi procession teaches us that the Eucharist seeks to free us from every kind of despondency and discouragement, wants to raise us, so that we can set out on the journey with the strength God gives us through Jesus Christ … Each one can find his own way if he encounters the One who is the Word and the Bread of Life and lets himself be guided by his friendly presence. Without the God-with-us, the God who is close, how can we stand up to the pilgrimage through life, either on our own or as society and the family of peoples? The Eucharist is the Sacrament of the God who does not leave us alone on the journey but stays at our side and shows us the way. Indeed, it is not enough to move onwards, one must also see where one is going! “Progress” does not suffice, if there are no criteria as reference points. On the contrary, if one loses the way one risks coming to a precipice, or at any rate more rapidly distancing oneself from the goal. God created us free but he did not leave us alone: he made himself the “way” and came to walk together with us so that in our freedom we should also have the criterion we need to discern the right way and to take it.”
This is a key point for our times in the Church right now….
“[I]f one loses the way one risks coming to a precipice, or at any rate more rapidly distancing oneself from the goal.”
We’ve gone down the wrong road for too long and we are paying the price.
As in geometry, the farther two rays extend from a point, the farther apart they get. As in making a journey, if you want to get from, say, Chicago to Texas and, after driving for a long time, discover you are at the Canadian border, you would do well to turn around, retrace your MISTAKE, and start again on the right road. As a matter of fact, you would be stupid to keep driving north.
Bashing Tradition to promote the Second Vatican Council is like driving north from Chicago in order to get to Texas.
No new initiative we undertake in the Church is going to succeed unless we revitalize our sacred liturgical worship and seek to fulfill the virtue of Religion, to give God what is His due. Everything we do must flow from the Eucharist – by which we must understand both the sacred Eucharistic species and also its celebration which is Holy Mass. Everything we do must then be brought back to the Eucharist.
Among the things that we can do relatively quickly are reinstitute many of our devotional practices: recitation of the Rosary (perhaps with a priest in the confessional), exposition and benediction (perhaps with a priest in the confessional), novenas on weeknights (perhaps with a priest in the confessional), processions, litanies, vespers, Forty Hours Devotion.
FORTY HOURS! If there was ever a time in the life of the Church when we needed to recover the practice of FORTY HOURS DEVOTION… not pretend Forty Hours… not dumbed-down Forty Hours… not updated (see previous) Forty Hours… but REAL Forty Hours, it’s now.
Undiluted… unblended… undaunted… unmodified… unapologetic… traditional Forty Hours Devotion.
Thus endeth the rant.
We are our rites.
God, Our Father, with Your mighty steering hand guide Your priests and bishops out of the fog of worldly notions and onto a course of true renewal.
God, Our Savior and High Priest, chart onto the minds and hearts of Your sons a destination of a traditional priestly identity for our turbulent context here and now.
God, Holy Spirit, fill Your sons with zeal and with the courage to persevere when stormy resistance will rise from the agents of the Enemy.
Mary, Queen of the Clergy, put your protecting mantle over your sons who will be persecuted by their brethren and superiors when they implement traditional worship.
St. Joseph, Protector of Christ, Protector of the Church, guide the efforts of your sons to build up the Temple of God for worthy worship according to the virtue of Religion.
Holy Angels, guard us from evil and prompt us to do good.
Coat of Arms by D Burkart
hwriggles4 on ROME 26/10-11 – Day 33: All Souls: “Like many others I have some family members that I disagree with on several issues. However, one thing a few…”
on ROME 26/10-11 – Day 35: Penultimate: “Safe travels to your destination. Let us know how +Atticus is doing. Saw an interview of the CEO of United…”
on Germans… “for many” in the Consecration formula, rather than “for all”: “Jesus, save your Church.”
on ROME 26/10-11 – Day 35: Penultimate: “The illumination is a fun one. It literally shows Christ the Pharmacist, which is not a title you read every…”
on ASK FATHER: “Why isn’t the Male Only Holy Orders a Dogma?”: “TonyO: Don’t you realize that the “spirit of Vatican II” only speaks in one direction can can only be discerned…”
on ROME 26/10-11 – Day 33: All Souls: “Whoever thought it was a smart idea to link the refrigerators and freezers to the Internet should have to thoroughly…”
on ASK FATHER: “Why isn’t the Male Only Holy Orders a Dogma?”: “@TonyO Well, you don’t listen to the voice of the spirit^tm by listening to the vox populi. The hoi polloi…”
on WDTPRS: A charming translation for the Feast of St. Charles Borromeo – 4 November: “Dear Fr. Z. Thank you for your wonderful mention of John, Marquess of Bute (+1900), whose translation of the Roman…”
A Daily Prayer for Priests
They find you a pro-life agent in your area who commits to giving a portion of the fee to a pro-life group!
PLEASE subscribe via PayPal if it is useful. Zelle and Wise are better, but PayPal is convenient.
A monthly subscription donation means I have steady income I can plan on. I put you my list of benefactors for whom I pray and for whom I often say Holy Mass.
In view of the rapidly changing challenges I now face, I would like to add more $10/month subscribers. Will you please help?
For a one time donation...
Help Monks in Wyoming (coffee – UPDATED LINK) and Norcia (beer) and the wonderful "Soap Sisters" of Summit, NJ!
Please follow me on Twitter!
Visits tracked by Statcounter
since Sat., 25 Nov. 2006:
