Fr. Z kudos for a great idea about abandoned churches

Everyone… look at this great idea!

Fr. Z kudos.

Think about it.

Portable altar or antimension with requisite cloths, Crucifix, candles, flowers.

Choir and/or schola.

Sacred ministers and servers.

Solemn Mass in the Rite for which the church was originally built.

Safety check would be necessary, of course, making sure the flooring was okay.

¡Hagan lío!

 

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CQ CQ CQ: #HamRadio – 10 Jan – Sunday ZedNet reminder & Fr. Z makes a suggestion

Here’s a reminder about ZedNet for Sunday 10 Jan ’21 – evening at 2000h EST (0100h ZULU 4 Jan).

I hope some of you hams with DMR etc. access will check in!

Zednet
exists on the Yaesu System Fusion (Wires-X) “room” 28598, which is cross-linked to Brandmeister DMR worldwide talkgroup 31429, which essentially gives world-wide multi-mode access to a common ham radio network.  Right now, no Echolink.  It worked once but not now.

Any fellow hams who have access locally to a Yaesu System Fusion repeater, a repeater on the BM network, or a multi-mode hotspot that’s registered with BM can get on and have a rag chew…. 24/7/365

Given what we are seeing with deplatforming and social media, big tech reign of terror, HAM RADIO may become increasingly important.

Is it time for you to get that license and put some equipment together?  It is IMPORTANT that you start to NETWORK with others in your area, including a priest or two.  We don’t know what is going to go down in the next few months.

For these USA, here is one study guide for the entry level license: Technician

Make sure that any version you get is the guide for exams through 2022!

The Kindle version is about $10.

And there is this.

Also, at QRZ, for example, there is a link to practice quizzes. HERE

It could be that you hams in other countries have suggestions for your own region and language.

Also, here is something sent by WB0YLE who keeps the pieces of ZedNet together.  A diagram of how it all fits. Click for larger.

Anyone who uses Brandmeister ought to know this about their changes: HERE

In effect, they are applying security to their “masters”. They want you to set a personal password.  I did and it works.

WB0YLE gave me a clear list, with links, of everything you need to get involved in ZedNet via Brandmeister.  HERE  THIS WAS UPDATED on 6 Jan 2021

I created a page for the List of YOUR callsigns.  HERE  Chime in or drop me a note if your call doesn’t appear in the list.

 

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Daily Rome Shot 46

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Did you think you would see something in your lifetime like this?

Let me ask any of you – at least of a certain age.

Did you think you would see something in your lifetime like this?

We can multiply examples on social media, along with the explosion of irrationality and hatred.

Go ahead and explain to me how that is NOT Satan at work.

It feels like the dystopian end of the nation, the beginning of a nightmare.

And there is this from Technocracy:

Christian Purge Envisioned During Biden/Harris Administration

A group backed by congressional Democrats touting a “Secular America” has sent a 28-page document to the Biden transition team advising him to strip First Amendment rights from Christians who advocate traditional biblical positions on the sanctity of life, marriage, education and the nuclear family.

The group, calling themselves the Secular Democrats of America, sent the letter to Biden’s team under the title “Restoring Constitutional Secularism and Patriotic Pluralism in the White House: Prepared exclusively by Secular Democrats of America PAC for President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris Transition Team.”

The document, presented by Reps Jamie Raskin, D-Md., and Jared Huffman, D-Calif., and endorsed by Rep. Jerry McNerney, D-Calif., states that an incoming Biden administration must “educate the American public,” particularly those identified as the “religious right,” on the need to keep their “religious dogma” to themselves. The document calls for a purge of social conservatives from all levels of government, labeling them as “white nationalist” and “conspiracy theorists.”

“They don’t have a problem with churches, they have a problem with conservative churches that voted for Donald Trump,” Brannon Howse, a conservative radio host who aired a program on the document Monday night, told LeoHohmann.com. “And some of the people promoting this are members of the leftist neo-evangelical community.”

He said vengeful Democrats are making enemy lists and have their sights set on the traditional Catholic community as well as the conservative evangelical Protestant community – two groups that voted for Donald Trump in droves.

[…]

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ASK FATHER: What is the Church’s role in creating the cancel culture?

From a priest…

QUAERITUR:

I have a bilingual parish and I refuse to accept the idea that the two communities must be separate. For that reason, I’ve tried to introduce the basics in Latin so we can have communal celebrations. The push back from the older Anglos is really interesting. Then it occurred to me that the post Vatican II crowd was engaged in the cancel culture long before 2020. They tried their best to cancel the longtime liturgical history of the Church and were quite successful at it.

My question is: What is the Church’s role in creating the cancel culture. I just offer that as a morsel for thought.

That is a really good question.   Of course I must at the top introduce the usual caveats about how complicated things are, how many and varying factors could be in play, how fraught with blah blah bleg beh blup de blup blah blah.

The Catholic Church has for centuries been a titanic force for either stability or for change.  A lot of times the force for change has been slow and carsic, fading into the background and reemerging.   However, the Church has been more obvious as a force for stability in the face of massive movements of change.   Over history there have been pretty sharp conflicts between the Church and “the world”.   When the Church stood firm in the face of the world whims, there was a productive and fruitful exchange and inculturation that flowed both ways.

However, the Church by and large abandoned her resistance role.  Modernism was on the rise and there was an overarching, overly optimistic view of man, which is why many of the documents of Vatican II seem to have an predominantly anthropocentric core.   The seminaries and leadership in the Church were being systematically infiltrated by different groups who desired to instrumentalize the Church’s structure for their own ends (Communists, homosexuals, Masons).

We saw a tipping point the other day.  The 60s were a tipping point.  In these United States we had various forces at work that shaped the minds and world-views of the very Anglo seasoned-Catholics who are pushing back against your attempts to foster unity.  What’s with that?

Liberals of a certain age were formed in those halcyon days of revolt against authority, the anti-war movement, a slurry of lies about the “spirit” of Vatican II sweeping through the Church.  This cocktail of influences changed the chemistry of their brains, such that when they now hear a call for Latin, see a cassock, or catch a whiff of tradition, a circuit in their heads blows, the fog and static begin, and they rise against the priest who is just trying to bring some Catholicism in.

And consider the cultural impact that the wholesale abandonment by the Church of tradition – often with savage vituperation against those who resisted.  “If Catholics can change their Mass and stop the fish on Friday thing…. then anything can change!”   That was disorienting and, frankly, scandalous.

So, did the Church teach others how to engage in cancel culture?

It is more the case that experts in cancel culture infiltrated the Church and used the Church for their ends.

Cancel culture is the classic weapon of the Left.    Note well the rise of what I call the New Red Guards in the Church today.  Their tactics are nearly the same as those used during the Cultural Revolution.   They are entirely without ethics or decency.  They are relentless and focused.

I’m afraid that the primary impulse in leaders of the Church today is so deeply shaped by the Left – they don’t even realize it in many cases – that it is hardly a surprise that those same leaders engage in cancel culture themselves.

“Gotta stomp out tradition! No! NO!  We have to form new committees!  We have to have a pamphlet printed!  We must craft a slogan!  But… NO TRADITION!”

“Why? Look!  It works where it is tried! For example, over here…”

“Shut up!”, they’ll explain.

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WDTPRS: Prayer for enemies

I have motive these days to pray for enemies.

QUAERUNTUR:

What can be our attitude about enemies?

Can we enjoy the death or defeat of an enemy?

Must we pray for them?

Can we pray against them?

There are beautiful orations “Pro inimicis… For enemies” in the section called Orationes diversae in the traditional Missale Romanum.  These prayers can be added to the other orations for Mass… a flexible dimension of the traditional form.

COLLECT:

Deus, pacis caritatisque amator et custos: da omnibus inimicis nostris pacem, caritatemque veram; et cunctorum eis remissionem tribue peccatorum, nosque ab eorum insidiis potenter eripe.

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.

I found this prayer in Corpus orationum.  It does not seem to be all that ancient, at least 10th c. (Fulda).  There are some variants in the manuscripts, some including vera with pax, some invoking Mary and St. Michael.  An 11th c. book, Leofric in the Bodleian adds nostris visibilibus and ab eorum invisibilibus, suggesting that the prayer is surely directed at corporeal enemies, human, rather than demonic.

The repetition of “peace” and “charity” is significant, especially with the inclusion of vera in the second instance.  In a sense, there is no true charity in this world, nor is their true justice.  Those will be only in heaven.  Meanwhile, we strive for the best and most perfect peace and charity we can in this world.

In the second phase of the prayer, we pray that God will forgive the sins of our enemies.  These could be the sins they have committed against us or against anyone else for that matter.   A true Christian desires the best for others, even enemies.   What that “best” is can be hard to determine.  However, it absolutely excludes a positive desire that they go to Hell.

Finally, we ask God to save us from the traps and plots that our enemies lay for us.   It is hard to think like the enemy and to lay plots to harm others.  God knows their machinations and He is powerful to thwart all their schemes.  So we ask God to use His might to save us.

About those questions at the top.

We get some help from St. Augustine (who had enemies).

In his De sermone Domini in monte 76 (On the Lord’s sermon on the mount), Augustine makes the point that we cannot hate enemies.

Augustine contrasts Old Testament passages about malevolence toward enemies with New Testament passage about compassion and not judging them unjustly.  In discussing 1 John 5:16 Augustine holds that one need not pray for those who commit sins that lead to death.   He also reflects on the Judas’s sin and Peter’s denial of Christ.  Moreover, he thinks one should not pray for sinners who sin against the Holy Spirit.

For Augustine the moral obligation we have to love our enemies implies praying for them.  We should pray for sinners and even sinful enemies, even enemies of the Church, in order that they convert and become friends.  Christ, after all, while on the Cross prayed for those who crucified Him.  Augustine thought that prayers of Christians led, for example, to the conversion of Saul.  Stephen prayed for his enemies while he was being killed.

Augustine points out, however, that prayer for enemies does not exclude the hope that enemies be punished by God, just as God punished the devil (qu. eu. 2.45.2)!

Punishment in this life is in view of conversion.   If it is what they need, truly, to get their attention and result in a conversion of heart, then suffering and punishment is the best thing for them.

Merely to let them drift along without any need to take stock of their situation would be not in their best interest, their true good.

Augustine does not foresee the eventual conversion of the devil, of course.

Here is the text in its raw form. The last part is especially good.  This is from Quaestionum Evangeliorum libri duo… Questions on the Gospels.

2,45,2 hic ergo iniquus iudex non ex similitudine sed ex dissimilitudine
adhibitus est, ut ostenderet dominus quanto certiores esse
debeant qui deum perseueranter rogant, fontem iustitiae atque
misericordiae uel si quid excellentius dici aut audiri potest, cum
apud iniquissimum iudicem usque ad effectum implendi desiderii
ualuerit perseuerantia deprecantis. ipsa uero uidua potest habere
similitudinem ecclesiae, quod desolata uidetur donec ueniat
dominus, qui tamen in secreto etiam nunc curam eius gerit. si
autem mouet, cur electi dei se uindicari deprecentur, quod
etiam in Apocalypsi Iohannis de martyribus dicitur, cum apertissime
moneamur ut pro nostris inimicis et persecutoribus oremus,
intellegendum est eam uindictam esse iustorum ut omnes mali
pereant. pereunt autem duobus modis: aut conuersione ad iustitiam
aut amissa per supplicium potestate qua nunc aduersus
bonos, quamdiu hoc ipsum bonis expedit, uel temporaliter aliquid
ualent. itaque etiamsi omnes homines conuerterentur ad deum,
inter quos sunt etiam inimici pro quibus iubemur orare, diabolus
tamen, qui operatur in filiis diffidentiae, remaneret in saeculi fine
damnandus. quem finem iusti cum uenire desiderant, quamuis pro
inimicis suis orent, tamen non absurde uindictam desiderare
dicuntur.


Part 2: HERE

Part 3: HERE

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Daily Rome Shot 45

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Daily Rome Shot 44

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ASK FATHER: What do we do if the upcoming administration outlaws Mass and the sacraments?

From a reader…

QUAERITUR:

What are the best ways for the laity to remain in a state of grace should the Holy Mass and the sacraments eventually be outlawed by the upcoming Biden/Harris administration?

The simple answer, which isn’t simple at all, is “Don’t commit any mortal sins.”

Also, disciplining yourself over time and working to eliminate your principle faults would be key.

A fervent and sincere Act of Contrition is important.  The Act of Contrition and Acts of Faith, Hope and Love are always important, in good time and in bad.   A good prayer life and a regular examination of conscience militates against habitual sin.  Keeping busy with your tasks is also good preventative medicine.  Idle hands, they say, are the Devil’s workshop.

In a way, the lockdowns and closure of churches should have by now served as a wake up call to a lot of Catholics about how precious our sacraments are, how important our sacred liturgical worship is.

I fear that, after decades of shoddy liturgy and preaching and catechesis, resulting in a decline in belief in the Church’s teaching about the Eucharist, we are not going to recover Sunday participation in our churches.   The demographic sink hole that was opening up under the Church has now been massively accelerated.

I want to take the proposition seriously: outlawing of church services by the upcoming Harris administration.   Yes… I think that can happen.  Seeing what we are seeing after 6 January (the day freedom died?) it looks like it only a matter of time.

Consider something I read today: there is a bill in the New York legislature that would give power to the governor to have individuals or groups arrested and interred for 60 days if they are suspected of being a danger to public health.   And consider that in Washington state counties have said that “racism” is a public health issue.

In other words, any damn thing they don’t like will be cause to put you in a camp.

And to those who will say, “C’mon man! That’ll never happen!”, I say: look around at where we are now after months of COVID-1984.

I read that the Mayor of London is calling for a ban on public worship.  HERE

Sometimes people bring up the idea of priest holes, as in the Elizabethan persecution of Catholics.   I’m afraid that technology today will make that unrealistic.  However, a priest friend in England, where lockdowns have been rather severe, told me some time ago that he had been going about to say Mass in homes for small groups.

I suppose that something along those lines will be necessary.

It might be a good idea for people to start collecting all the things they would need for Mass should a priest be able to come around occasionally.   Have everything he needs so that he doesn’t have to bring it.   Perhaps purchase a portable Mass kit and prepare a suitable space for Mass.  Of course this also means forming a network of like minded Catholics and also supporting a priest or two.   I’d start working on networking like that anyway.

As Propertius wrote, “Semper in absentes felicior aestus amantes” which is more or less “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

Don’t wait until it is too late.

Make some plans.   Make it part of your preparedness program.

It can’t hurt and it might help.

 

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“Those who support Donald Trump should no longer be allowed to publish books or use the Internet or fly on airplanes.”

So here I am again posting something that Tucker Carlson said.  Once again, I think he nailed something.  You’ve been warned.

From 7 January 2021 with my emphases and comments.

Within minutes of Trump supporters breaching the U.S. Capitol building Wednesday, virtually every powerful person in the country erupted in rage at the president.

Business leaders demanded that Trump be removed from office immediately under the 25th Amendment. Members of Congress clamored to impeach him, and at least one Democrat suggested that anyone in Congress who supported his claims of election fraud must be expelled. Meanwhile, the media set about denouncing Trump as a terrorist and a murderer, etc.

Notice a theme? The reaction was all about Donald Trump. The people in charge of every institution in American life spend all day talking about Donald Trump. You may not have noticed, because that’s not very different from any other day over the past five-and-a-half years since he announced his candidacy.

It has been all about Donald Trump all of the time. And the effect on us has been noticeable. We’ve gone from being this big, sprawling country with an enormous span of concerns and interests to a kind of sweaty, airless chat room of 330 million people, all of whom are simultaneously focused with monomaniacal intensity on a single man. That is not healthy, no matter how you feel about Trump.

Is any president worth all of this time and attention? All politicians come with a shelf life. In Trump’s case, the expiration date arrives in 13 days.

Just for a moment, let’s think about what life will be like next month. Two weeks from Thursday, Donald Trump will no longer be in control of our nuclear arsenal. He will not have command of federal agencies or even, most likely, his own Twitter account.

The rest of us, and this is key, will still be here. We’ve got nowhere to go. So what is life going to be like for us on Jan. 20? Not many people seem to be thinking about that, up to and including the people we pay to think about it. Donald Trump thinks almost exclusively about Donald Trump, but so does almost every single Democrat and Republican in the Congress. [NB] Who’s got your concerns top of mind? Who wakes up in the middle of the night worried about your family? As far as we can tell, no one.

That’s the main thing we need to change. It won’t be easy, but the themes are pretty clear. Here are the basics: The point of the Republican Party is not to protect the personal reputations of its leaders, but its voters. In practice, that means protecting the Bill of Rights, the bedrock promises of American life. Without them, you wouldn’t want to live here. Those freedoms are incalculably more important than any single politician.

Donald Trump could become immortal and win the next 40 presidential elections and his daughter the next 40 after that. But if America becomes a place where you have to violate your own conscience in order to hold a job, you’re not allowed to protect your family from mob violence and your children can’t afford to get married and raise your grandchildren because employers don’t like their skin color, then what’s the point of all of it? There is none. No one wants to live in a place like that or should have to, no matter who the president is.

We should be very concerned about all of this right now. Wednesday’s riot is already being used as a pretext for an unprecedented crackdown on civil liberties. Just in the last several hours, we have heard people in positions of power demand that those who support Donald Trump should no longer be allowed to publish books or use the Internet or fly on airplanes. Driving cars, holding jobs and staying in hotels will certainly be next and we’re barely exaggerating. [This is really going to happen, folks.  Start making plans.]

To justify these mind-bending, terrifyingly un-American demands, they are, as usual, relying on lies and hysteria. What happened Wednesday wasn’t simply a political protest getting out of hand after the president recklessly encouraged it (Which is, you know, what actually happened). Instead, they’re calling it domestic terrorism and, needless to say, White supremacy.

Why are they doing that? Simple. They know that if they keep saying it, history will record it as true. They understand the power of language, and that’s why they try to control it. They know that words have consequences. This is scary, and the party that should be stepping in to stop it, to push back, to tell the truth in the face of lies and to protect its voters from this deception and the destruction that inevitably comes next, does nothing. Often, in fact, they join in.

With bodyguards like this, tens of millions of Americans have no chance. They’re about to be crushed by the ascendant left, the people who say, “Well, I don’t think they should be allowed to fly on airplanes.”  [You know that that’s where this is going, don’t you.]

Why is no one defending them? The main problem, and this really is the main problem on the right, is that the people who run the Republican Party don’t really like their own voters. They especially don’t want the voters that Trump brought. Trump brought a noticeably downscale element to the party’s ranks, and this horrifies them.

Many Republicans in Washington now despise the people they’re supposed to represent and protect. In fact, it’s not just Republican leaders who feel this way, but our entire leadership class. You rarely hear it spoken out loud, but it’s the truth.

A very specific form of internal loathing is at the core of the reaction to Donald Trump. Nothing is more repulsive to socially anxious White professionals than working class people who look like them. The proles are their single greatest fear. They remind them of where they may have come from or where they could be going if things turn south.

So if you want to understand the hatred — not just disagreement, but gut-level loathing and fear of Trump in, say, New York or Washington or Los Angeles — you’ve got to understand that first. It’s not really Trump, it’s his voters. The new money class despises them. [People who have power don’t want to give it up.  Inevitably, when power is only will and not informed with charity, that’s where the death camps start.]

Trump didn’t despise them, and that really was his secret. In the end, Donald Trump did not judge his own voters. Trump ate McDonald’s and his voters were very grateful for it. You’d be grateful for it, too, if everyone else hated you.

Thirteen days from now, tens of millions of these voters will not have Donald Trump to protect them. They won’t have anyone. And unless the Republican Party decides to wake up and push back against the lies and acknowledge the purpose of those lies, which is an unprecedented crackdown on the way you live, you have no chance, either.

This article is adapted from Tucker Carlson’s opening commentary on the Jan. 7, 2021 edition of “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”

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