Daily Rome Shot 285

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When the Vicissitudes™ are winding you up… UPDATED

UPDATE:

I wrote to the people who handle the wine sales and distribution.  They responded:

For shipping questions outside of the U.S., please direct people to email: contact@via-caritatis.com and the European Via Caritatis team will take care of them. Note that our affiliate program only applies to purchases made from the US site.

Hopefully that can be expanded to the UK!


Are things looking grim in secular society and even grimmer in the Church?

Do you look at the present political leadership and say, “What in the blazin’ red HELL are these people doing?”, and at the leadership in the Church and say… well, I don’t even want to go there.

After all, corruptio optimi pessima.  Right?

When the Vicissitudes™ are winding you up, wind down by ordering some ….

WINE FROM TRADITIONAL BENEDICTINE MONKS!

I’m talking, of course, about the wonderful monks of Le Barroux in the ethereally beautiful area near Avignon in S. France.  They built a glorious medieval but modern abbey and they fill it with chant you can listen to online.  They have taken over vineyards that go back to the time of papal sojourn in Avignon and are making good wine.

You can have their wine in YOUR glass in no time!

And this is a way to help the works of religion and the Church in way that you know is a good cause (monks who are preserving Tradition) and your oenological enjoyment.  Win – win.

And, because you are readers here, drop my name and get 10% off.  Use the code:

FATHERZ10

10offwinesmadebymonks

These Benedictines, like the great men in Norcia and the beautiful nuns of Gower Abbey, are going to be, as has happened before, lights in the darkness, oases of preservation, until better times return.

Until better, brighter times return.

Or the Lord comes, which is fine with me.   Bring it on!

After all, motus in finen velocior.  Right?

I’m okay with living to see better, brighter times.  Even times not so obviously, palpably…. yeeeach would be okay, too.

Your Vetus Ordo (olim aka Extraordinary Form) or reverent Novus Only celebrating, and surely sorely striving, priest would like an introduction to the good Benedictines’ wine through their 3 bottle pack: HERE

I sent in a query about wine for those of you in the UK.  Patience.

So, as you contemplate the big HERE prompt, here’s is a little song to cheer you up. It was sent to me by a, O6 buddy of mine for whom I have at times asked you to pray: T.

HERE

 

Order some wine and “Help Is On The Way!”  And I don’t mean the Little River Band.

Between Tom Petty and Mahler, I like doses of good ol’ honest, pious Bluegrass.

YouTube thumbnailYouTube icon

 

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Daily Rome Shot 284

Click for larger.

Today, by the way, is his birthday, in 63 BC.

For more, see HERE.

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Cri de Coeur: “What next?” After which, Fr. Z rants.

Holy Church is indefectible. That doesn’t mean that everything we do in it or all the people who guide it are doing God’s will.

From a reader in reaction to the dialogue between Francis and Jesuits in Bratislava.  HERE

I had closed the combox on that post.  My correspondent, a long-time… loooongitime reader and very knowledgeable about the state of the Church in these USA said, “Better to keep the combox closed” and added this…

See if it doesn’t strike a chord.  Edited for anonymity.

I am starting to feel like Jonah, who complained that God took away the shade tree that grew over him. So now the Pope is going after EWTN– which, while solidly orthodox, is hardly the fringe right that some might like to portray it as being. What next? A condemnation of one of the four Gospels? I’m getting to the point where I can’t even stomach Catholic news any more much less secular news. I get the sense that the Pope is engaged in a nasty game of baiting the orthodox in an attempt to trap them into doing something stupid– and many will eagerly jump into the trap.

What a tightrope we walk these days. Perhaps the example of Jesus before Pilate is the best to follow for now for most of us.

Yes, “they win” to some extent, but we have to believe that Jesus has a plan– a grander plan than anything that Satan can concoct and certainly grander than anything you or I could develop.

[…]

I really feel bad for good orthodox priests these days. I’m not under nearly the pressure that many of you must be and I find myself muttering to myself all day and wondering how long before the stress does me in. I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t work for a tiny company that mostly flies under the radar where I can escape the worst of the nonsense that is going on these days.

Try to hang in there. You and I may yet live long enough to see the beginnings of a reversal.

When I was young, I thought that GM would always be around, but that “old” GM stock is worthless today. The Soviet Union seemed as if it was indestructible, but today it is but a memory and Eastern Europe is free of Soviet domination.

There will be a day when people talk about the collapse of China and the liberation of those subjugated by China. God may yet have a miracle in store to prevent Islamic fundamentalists from overrunning the West, though I’m not sure that we deserve such a miracle.

There are any number of things and any amount of sufferings that seemed as if they would never end or go away, but only God can make the claim of being all-powerful and ever-living.

Others can but pretend for a while, like Ozymandias.

No matter how badly those who oppose a whole, integrated understanding of Tradition will drive and harass us, we have to strive not to hate them (as many of them do hate us) and pray for their conversion by whatever means God’s knows will work.   We want as many people as possible to have the happiness of Heaven, even those who treat us badly.  This earthly life is brief, and so whatever it is that they might need for their benefit would be short compared to the unending bliss of the Beatific Vision.  The same applies to us.

We have to examine ourselves carefully and purify our loves.

O God, lover of and guardian of peace and charity: to all our enemies grant peace and true charity; and give to them the remission of all their sins, and mightily snatch us away from their plots.

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Daily Rome Shot 283

Photo by The Great Roman™

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BOOK ALERT: The Sabbatical by Michael D. O’Brien

I have just received a Kindle edition of the mystical Catholic writer Michael D. O’Brien’s new novel, The SabbaticalUS HERE – UK HERE

This is a sequel to The Father’s Tale.

I am excited to get to this soon.

The Father’s Tale – US HERE – UK HERE – was the story of a man who leaves his normal, comfortable life to go in search of his son who has fallen into a cult.   It is a
“prodigal son” story with twists and tendrils into Eliot and Hopkins and Russian writers.  That’s a massive reduction for such a massive work, over 1000 pages.    While I have often thought that O’Brien could have listened to his editor a little more often, each page turn remains oddly compelling.  Surely this is because O’Brien writes from depth and a rooting in a strong prayer life.  Look at his artwork sometime.  HERE

The Sabbatical is about one third the length of The Father’s Tale.

Sticking with O’Brien, some of you are in for a treat.  You get to discover his books.

I recommend the following.

Read…

Father Elijah

and then the series that hooks back into Father Elijah beginning with:

Strangers and Sojourners

Outside that series is his extremely successful venture into SciFi:

Voyage to Alpha Centauri

I believe his most recently released work was, brief and charming.

The Lighthouse.

I really liked that one.

In effect, you can choose where to dive in.

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Archd. of Guadalajara – the ‘Traditionis custodes’ spiritual segregation continues

Perhaps this new will give rise to a new wave of spiritual Cristeros, namely, Custodes Traditionis.   Please, everyone, I implore you to consider doing this, joining this informal confraternity.

With this news, let us now invoke also Bl, Miguel Pro and the holy martyrs of Mexico to soften the hearts of those in Mexico who will implement and then enforce the cruel Traditionis custodes.

In Guadalajara, Mexico, there has been a bad, and confusing, development.  The Cardinal Archbishop of the place is slamming down on the Vetus Ordo in the wake of Traditionis Custodes, Francis’ Plessy v. Ferguson to Benedict’s Emancipation Proclamation.

Card. Robles Ortega issued a decree – you won’t find it on the dioceses’ truly cruddy website – for their implementation of TC.

NB: I was sent an English translation.  I didn’t find the original or this translation on the truly cruddy website.

Low points and oddities.

The Cardinal body slammed the faithful there who are desirous of Tradition, and he put fetters on the FSSP, too.  By the way – if the English is accurate – the document gets their name wrong, calling them the …

You know… I am not going to quote the translation on the weird variants in the text because I am not entirely sure that there are not canary traps either in the original (which we haven’t seen yet) or in the translation.  Let’s just say that one variant for naming the FSSP might be an ironic Freudian slip of some kind or it could be an accidental conflation of their name with the parish where they serve.

In any event, if it’s in the decree this is sloppy for something that will affect a lot of people lives in a seriously upsetting way.

The decree says that Masses at that quasi-parish, St. Peter in Chains, can continue but with readings only in the vernacular.

They can’t add Masses and, once COVID winds down, the number of Masses will be reviewed.

That’s little ironic, since officialdom wants the pandemic to last until entropy cools the planet or the Lord returns.

For the other places, daily Masses can continue at Our Lady of the Pillar, on weekdays only one Mass in the Chapel of Christ the King and on Sundays and Tuesdays at the parish of St. Francis Xavier of the Hills.  I don’t know the geography of that area.  One wonders how far O.L. Pillar and St. Francis Xavier might be from each other.

As Job cried, “Blessed be the name of the Lord!  That’s “¡Viva Cristo Rey!”, I guess.

As for inside the House of Formation of those in the FSSP, present in the Archdiocese of Guadalajara, Masses will be regulated, here it comes…. by the Congregation for Religious in Rome.  These are the same pastoral ambassadors of love who tenderly regulated the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate, and who are sure to be putting forth soon an Instruction for the formation of all the new entrants into traditional communities now under their umbrella, rather than under the CDF’s.

That was one of the scariest results of TC, by the way.   That, and that regulation of liturgical issues will be under the Congregation for Divine Worship.

The decree further stipulates that people can’t go to the chapel of the Fraternity’s house.

Next, the quasi-parish of St. Peter in Chains is canonically suppressed.

¡Viva Cristo Rey!

Priests of the archdiocese must now be authorized on a case by case basis…. back to TC now from TJC.  Both older and newer priests must formally declare that, I will summarize these rather than quote because of possible canary traps in the text.   That’s how bad things are now, I think.

So… summarized, the priests who want to use the Vetus Ordo must formally declared that

a – they don’t deny the validity of the Novus Ordo and the Council and the Magisterium of the Supreme Pontiffs,

b- they recognize that the “only” expression of the Roman Rite is in the books promulgated by Paul VI and John Paul II (which seems false, because clearly the Vetus Ordo is the Roman Rite and always will be… it can’t be anything else, but I digress),

c – they are obliged to use the Novus Ordo and, if they don’t have explicit permission, they can’t use anything other than the 1962 Missale Romanum for anything, because – as the decree claims – all other provisions of Summorum were abrogated.   Not sure about that.

This loyalty oath business is deeply insulting and also – I suspect – indicative of a potential double standard of treatment of priests.

Will priests who are so poorly trained that they don’t know how to celebrate Mass with the 1962MR, who can say only the Novus Ordo, be required to take a loyalty oath about the Magisterium and that they will hereafter always stick to the rubrics of the Novus Ordo as they are written?

I’m thinking about the probability that in Mexico all the Novus Ordo Only priests are, even now, following the Novus Ordo rubrics precisely and not changing any texts.

Later, under the business section, in the part where he gives his little peroration he says –  again I don’t want to quote exactly because of the possibility of canary traps – that it is his, the Cardinal’s, duty to ask everyone commit to celebrating the liturgy with fidelity to the books.  He says that there is a healthy liturgical tradition there now and it is like a beautiful garden to be tended and not treated with laziness which degenerates into abuses.

Again, will all the Novus Ordo Only priests have to take a loyalty oath? 

Will they be disciplined if they stray from the rubrics and official text of the Novus Ordo Only books?   (And there’s the problem of the language “only” expression of the Roman Rite, because we don’t have a Latin document of TC so we can figure out the ambiguity between the possible meanings of the vernacular versions – German, Spanish, English, Italian.)

It might be understandable to imagine that this Cardinal might drop the weight of the world on a priest who continues without his extra-special motu-inappropriate super-double-top-secret permission to say what is not unjustly called “the Mass of ages”.

How bad will the double-standard be?

¡Viva Cristo Rey!

Here’s a helpful suggestion.

Perhaps the faithful of Guadalajara might start documenting with their phone cameras how the Novus Ordo is being celebrated in the diocese, and share those video and audio proofs on social media, so that we can all be edified and motivated to do our very best.

¡Hagan lío!

Mind you, I am working with a translation that was provided.   The official version will eventually be extruded into public view and we will have to double check this.   I don’t have a strong reason to think that the translation was off base.  However, little items in it seem just a tad bit … off.

UPDATE:

The Spanish.

Posted in ¡Hagan lío!, Pò sì jiù, Priests and Priesthood, Save The Liturgy - Save The World, The Coming Storm, The Drill, The future and our choices, Traditionis custodes, You must be joking! | Tagged , ,
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Look at what is happening in the Church and in these USA. A visual image.

I’ve been on the phone talking and texting for a good portion of the day.  A lot of people I know are feeling a bit grim right now, but they know that this world is passing.

Tonight I was sent a video.

Look at what is happening in the Church and in these USA, in both the (supposedly) sacred sphere and in the (ever more) secular: the relentless terrorizing from the press and civil authorities about COVID, the unfathomably large goat rodeo that is federal government, budget, and the national debt, motu proprios and interviews and transcripts with Jesuits, wokeness and race theory and the incessant slithering of the homosexualist agenda, … a visual image is needed.

Inexorably destroying everything good and orderly in its path.

YouTube thumbnailYouTube icon

Hmmm… the Spanish PM isn’t in hiding somewhere.

I’ll add some points I’ve made before many times on this blog.  They bear repetition.

I. Of all the universes God could have created, He created this one, into which He called us into existence at exactly the right point in time and with exactly the right set of tools to carry out our little piece of His overarching, divine Plan. If we dedicate ourselves to our state in life, as it is hic et nunc, here and now, God will give us all the actual graces we need to fulfill our part in His economy of salvation. It is an honor to have been called by God to live in these difficult times.  WE are the team He has assembled for His purposes hic et nunc.  Fidelity and the pursuit of His will bring greater graces than if our paths were smooth.

II.  Popes come and go.  There have been good Popes and bad Popes, important Popes and forgettable Popes.  Men pick them, not the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit’s role in their election is to make sure that the Pope isn’t a total disaster for the Church.  Some disaster, maybe.  Total disaster, never.  Moreover, generations of faithful Catholics lived and died without even knowing the Pope’s name.   In a lot of ways, in daily life, they just aren’t that important.  Modern communication our perception, and the media changed the role.  That said, the RUACH hasn’t stopped either in the Church or in your soul.  The day to day is what you need to work on.

III. For priests, especially…. learn the Traditional Latin Mass.  Time and again, priests have told me that learning the TLM changed them profoundly.  They began to grasp aspects of their priesthood which they hadn’t gleaned before.  In turn, that produces a knock on effect in other aspects of their work, in particular how they celebrate the Novus Ordo.  Congregations note the differences.  The knock on effect continues to knock.  This will be for you a suit of armor.   You can tell how important it is by how much certain people are afraid of it and work to shut it down, denigrate it with utterly absurd claims that both the Rite itself and people who desire it are at odds with an Ecumenical Council.  They are practitioners of The Big Lie.  We must persevere.

IV.  For priests, seminarians, lay people alike… consider your CONFIRMATION. Confirmation strengthens us to make the hard call and then stand firm when we are challenged in our Christian living.  We can call upon the power of this sacrament, which has imparted an indelible character, like the potter’s mark of ownership, into our souls.  Confirmation is an ongoing reality in our lives just as the Pentecost event is an ongoing reality in the Church. In these troubled and troubling times, make a conscious choice to call upon that mighty sacrament you received.  Activate it. The sacrament will be mighty in you when you are in the state of grace.    A daily prayer HERE.

V. Therefore… GO TO CONFESSION!

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Francis’ dialogue with Jesuits in Bratislava about the Vetus Ordo, homosexuality, people who “wanted him dead”, a global Catholic TV channel doing the “work of the devil”

From La Civiltà Cattolica, which is run by Jesuit Fr. Antonio “2+2=5” Spadaro, a transcript of a meeting between Francis and Jesuits in Bratislava.   HERE

I think it’s best for me simply to send you over to LCC to read Francis’ words and to form your own opinions about the people who “wished him dead” and homosexuality, etc.

Since I tend to focus on liturgy I’ll only pull out something he said about the traditional Roman Rite.

BTW… it is important that you go to the LCC site and read that whole section of the Q&A carefully.   His comments on what he did about Vetus Ordo flow from his answer to a question about the people who don’t like him, look at him with suspicion.  He also takes a shot at what can only be EWTN as doing the “work of the devil”.

Back to liturgy.

My emphases and comments

“Now I hope that with the decision to stop the automatism [“the performance of actions without conscious thought or intention … ” for example, used in a sentence… “diabetic patients who commit crimes while hypoglycemic may be able to plead automatism” – and in art automatism produces mainly semi-conscious scribbles.] of the ancient rite we can return to the true intentions of Benedict XVI and John Paul II. My decision is the result of a consultation with all bishops of the world made last year. From now on, those who want to celebrate with the vetus ordo [There it is.] must ask permission from Rome as is done with biritualism. [Two rites.] But there are young people who after a month of ordination go to the bishop to ask for it. This is a phenomenon that indicates that we are going backwards “.  [But… why do young priests and young people want the Vetus Ordo?]

A cardinal told me that two newly ordained priests went to him asking to study Latin to celebrate well. He, who has a sense of humor, replied: ‘But there are many Hispanics in the diocese! Study Spanish to be able to preach. Then when you have studied Spanish, come back to me and I will tell you how many Vietnamese there are in the diocese, and I will ask you to study Vietnamese. Then, when you have learned Vietnamese, I will give you permission to study also Latin ‘. So he made them ‘land ‘ [“atterrare”, used for landing an airplane], he brought them back to earth. I go forward, not because I want to make the revolution. I do what I feel I have to do. It takes a lot of patience, prayer and a lot of charity”.

A sense of humor.

Permission to study Latin.

It’s all really hysterically funny, isn’t it.

Tell me how a bishop playing cat and mouse with young priests that way is charitable?

First, one doesn’t need permission to study Latin.  If anything, because of the unequivocal clarity of can. 249, seminarians should have to obtain explicit permission not to study it.

This is the world turned inside out and upside down, colors inversed, polarities shifted.

Read the rest of that piece.

And, while you are at La Civiltà Cattolica, notice the rotating graphic on their right sidebar which had endorsements from the people whom Spadaro must hold in high esteem.

Can’t disagree with that.

Followed by two of the most harmful voices in the Church today.

By the way, Fr. Spadaro is deeply interested in the life and works of Italian homosexual writer Pier Vittorio Tondelli, so much so that he created his own website about him (HERE).

I’m closing the combox on this.  You can mail me your comments if you wish.

UPDATE:

Fishwrap‘s coverage of this, from the very first words, latched onto Francis’ thinly veiled attack on their hated rival and polar opposite EWTN.   As the New catholic Red Guards do, they named some people in order to let the troops know whom to attack.

Posted in Francis, Pò sì jiù, Traditionis custodes, What are they REALLY saying?, You must be joking! | Tagged , ,
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Daily Rome Shot 282

Photo by The Great Roman™

ElegantFrenchWinesMadebyMonks10% off with code
FATHERZ10

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