Daily Rome Shot 138

Posted on 25 April 2021 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Photo by Bree Dail.

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Your Sunday Sermon notes – 3rd Sunday after Easter (N.O. 4th of Easter) 2021

Posted on 25 April 2021 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Was there a GOOD point made in the sermon you heard at the Mass for your Sunday (obligation or none), either live or on the internet? Let us know what it was.

Too many people today are without good, strong preaching, to the detriment of all. Share the good stuff.

Also, are your churches opening up? What was attendance like?

If you are involved with preparing coffee and donuts after Mass (yes, this is returning) consider using Mystic Monk Coffee.  Use my link. You help the monks, you help yourselves, you help me.  A pretty good deal.

Posted in SESSIUNCULA |
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ASK FATHER: Bishop reimposed Sunday Mass obligation but there are still attendance numbers restrictions.

Posted on 24 April 2021 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

From a reader…

QUAERITUR:

Dear Father,

Our bishop recently ended the dispensation from the obligation to attend Sunday Mass, except in cases of old age or health. This means my young, healthy family is obligated to attend Mass once more. He has also increased the capacity allowance to 50%, but social distancing (6 ft) is still required.

When churches reopened at limited capacity (it had been 33%), our priest was opposed to any sort of registration or reservation system. Instead, he split the parish into two groups by surname, who have been attending Mass on alternating weekends. He has said that he will continue that system due to space limitations (our church building is small).

Is my family obligated to see if another local parish can fit us in on those “off” weekends?

Interesting.  Reimpose the obligation, but with restricted access to Mass in parishes.  That signals a somewhat cynical view of the numbers of people the bishop expects to return to Mass.

Here’s a thought.  Write to the bishop and ask his advice:

“We’re supposed to go every week, but our pastor will only let us go every other week.  Since you imposed the obligation, which parish should we attend on ‘off’ weekends?”

Another thought: If its not too onerous, go to another parish, maybe permanently.

And speaking of a burden, there is an adage: Nemo ad impossibilia tenetur. No one is bound to the impossible.

If it is truly burdensome, no one is bound to obligation. Say the pastor won’t let you go to Mass. The next parish is in he next county fifty miles away, with a Mass at a bad time for your family needs. The obligation is lifted.

So, in a word, no, you are not strictly obliged.

I would still write to the Bishop.

You reimposed the obligation, but it’s hard to fulfill it here. What to do?

Posted in "How To..." - Practical Notes, 1983 CIC can. 915, ASK FATHER Question Box | Tagged ,
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Linguistic machinations of the Left

Posted on 24 April 2021 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

By sure to check out my good friend Fr. Gerry Murray’s piece today at The Catholic Thing.

Fr. Murray tackles the “attempt by liberal clerics and laity to compel the Catholic Church to get rid of what they deem unacceptable doctrines on sexual morality”.

Their tactic is to “change the language used by the Church in setting out those doctrines”.

Thus, Murray…

One strategy employed uses a self-contradictory form of attack: a teaching is dismissed as being unintelligible to modern people because of the use of obscure philosophical language. At the same time the teaching is condemned as cruel and hurtful because those same modern people, it turns out, are perfectly capable of understanding the language and meaning of the teaching. They just don’t like it.

They don’t like it because, often, they want to justify their own sinning.

Certain bishops and priests are the prime movers in a relentless campaign to have the Church abandon the doctrine that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered. In line with both the Old and New Testaments and the long history of Catholic moral reasoning, the Church instructs us that such acts are intrinsically evil and can never be morally good, under any circumstance.

[…]

Furthermore, if the Church says my choice to engage in homosexual activity is wrong, it is the Church that is in fact wrong. Such a person, who wants to commit sin with a peaceful conscience, may already have had this line of reasoning endorsed by a “sympathetic and caring priest” – of whom there are a number these days, some even media celebrities – who is himself a “hero.” Our culture tends to cast such priests as bravely speaking truth to power and risking the wrath of superiors to give comfort to those hurt by unkind words from clueless, backward Catholic bullies who take the Bible literally.

Please go read the whole thing over there.

Force the Church to change language in, say, the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

NB: The same machinations are used by other libs/progressivists/etc. in other realms, not just sexual morality.   For example, this is being done regarding capital punishment.   Introduced into the discussion are vague terms such as “inadmissible”. For example, this is being done regarding the ordination of women.  Make claims about inequality with a smattering of unsubstantiated claims about ancient times, marinated in misleading statements about the sacrament of Holy Orders.  For example, this being is done in regard to Holy Communion for manifest adulterers.  Bring in a words like “accompaniment”.

Posted in Hard-Identity Catholicism, Jesuits, Sin That Cries To Heaven, The Drill | Tagged ,
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Fr Z with a question: TV, wifi, etc.

Posted on 24 April 2021 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Whenever I ask the readership a question, I am amazed at the number of well-informed people pipe in.

Question about TVs.  Actually about those big monitors, which is pretty much what they are now.

As I contemplate some relocation issues, I am wondering if there are good, fast “wireless” TV/monitors which don’t need a cable, coax or cat-5, from the wall or satellite box, etc.

I am thinking I won’t get “cable” at all, just internet.   After all, with cable there are “57 channels and nothing on”, as the song goes.  More like 357, and I don’t mean “magnum”.  You can subscribe to channels and get news on youtube, even live events.   And I don’t watch much news anyway, lately.  It’s all just too… dreadful.

The idea is to have the monitor on a large rolling stand.  There will be need for a power cord, of course.    Without having to have a specific cable connection, the whole thing could be easily relocated to another wall power plug.

I would probably attach a UPS on the bottom of the stand.  Any components (e.g., a region-free blu-ray player) I want to plug into the monitor would go on the stand’s shelves and would draw their power also off the UPS.

Fast router for fast wi-fi directly to the “TV”.

Any thoughts?  Have any of you been down this path?  Minimum speeds?  Hardware?   Get my own router?  Use the internet provider’s router?

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ACTION ITEM! Support a worthy apostolate: TREASURES OF THE CHURCH

Posted on 24 April 2021 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Not too long ago, I posted about a miraculous healing that occurred in New York, Long Island area.  The occasion was a presentation about holy relics by Fr. Carlos Martins, who has an apostolate called Treasures Of The Church.

It is a fantastic apostolate and I know Fr. Martins, whom I consider a good friend.

You might remember that, a few years ago, the body of St. Maria Goretti was brought to these USA and she was taken to many parishes around the country.  Fr. Martins organized that tour.

PRIESTS AND BISHOPS!   

If you want to do something amazing for your people, a great moment of evangelization, contact Treasures Of The Church.  Ask if Fr. Martins could come with his amazing presentation about relics.  He has told me about spectacular conversions and physical healings that have come about from contact with the astonishing collection of holy relics he brings and displays.

Dear readers, drop in at the site – Treasures Of The Church.  There is a donation button.  The apostolate depends on donations.  People are looking for good causes these days.  Along with those I have always presented – the TMSM of which I am president, the Military Archdiocese, Our Lady of Hope Clinic – you can hardly imagine a better cause than Treasures Of The Church.   Send him a donation and tell him I sent you.

BTW… the schedule on the website shows that Fr. Martins will be working in Wisconsin and Minnesota during the rest of April and into May.

Posted in ACTION ITEM!, Saints: Stories & Symbols, The Campus Telephone Pole | Tagged , ,
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ASK FATHER: Face mask vesting prayer in Latin?

Posted on 24 April 2021 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

From a reader…

QUAERITUR:

Dear Father, do you know a good vesting prayer in Latin, or could you compose one, for putting on a facemask?

The questioner seeks to tickle the funny bone, of course.

As you know there are beautiful and quite serious prayers that priests and bishops ought to be saying when they vest for Mass, each piece having its own prayer. There are also prayers for washing hands before vesting and also for the cassock and surplice for servers.

The prayers are important. An exorcist friend told me that one of the people he was helping was able to see, during Mass, the demons attacking the priest and, like armor, his vestments and the holy angels protecting him.

That said, we can also have a sense of humor.

I once posted a prayer for the clipping on the microphone (I hate those things).

Here is something I cobbled up for your amusement.

Ad personam dum in faciem imponitur

Dómine, qui me indígnum Tuam índuisti in persónam, fac ut quámvis personátus isto faciáli integuménto ad sacra mystéria accédo, fidélium tamen ánimas ad Te condúcere váleam et coram Te Tuam claritátem una cum eis fácie ad fáciem videámus.

You can ponder your own perfect and yet smooth translation after your purchase of delectable…

Posted in "How To..." - Practical Notes, ASK FATHER Question Box, Latin, Lighter fare, Liturgy Science Theatre 3000 | Tagged ,
16 Comments

#ASonnetADay – Sonnet 154. “The little Love-god lying once asleep…”

Posted on 23 April 2021 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Posted in Poetry, Sonnet A Day | Tagged ,
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Happy Talk Like Shakespeare Day 2021!

Posted on 23 April 2021 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

In the past, National “Talk Like Shakespeare Day” has like a prefatory defalcator stealthily crept in upon my dawning awareness.  Not so this year.

During this last year, under the inspiration of Sir Patrick Stewart and at the admonition of a reader, I undertook to record my own surely inadequate readings of all 154 of the Bard’s well-known Sonnets.   Well- known, I say, though not will much conviction.  I suspect that their reading in the schools has been scant of late.  Indeed I speculate that fewer and fewer young skulls-full-of-mush have been exposed to the opera of Avon’s Swan.  It’s, after all, racist… or something.

On this 113th day of the year I have of yore posted short vignettes gleaned from the Bard’s lesser know oeuvres.  Last year, for example, we read part of Two Gentlemen of Corona.    On another anniversary of Will’s birth – and also his death! – two dies natales on one day – we explored A Most Tragikal Hystory of Obama I and The Trumping of the Shrew.

This year I became distracted from Shakespeare’s lesser know play Trump’s Ballots Lost – a dark comedy involving fraud and elder abuse – by my alarming discovery that some of the pages I was studying were actually signed by Christopher Marlowe.  No, really… Christopher Marlowe.  Over and over again on the margins with increasingly unsteady hand.

I’m still working on deciphering the wretched thing, hastily scribbled as it was on the back of cocktail napkins and stained paper placemats from some thermopolium in Deptford.   It’s an abruptly unfinished play called, The Tragical History of the Rise and Fall of Doctor Fauci. A curious work, along with a sonnet possessed of a rather inept incipit, “Here’s looking at thee, Kyd, thou three inch fool…”.   That “three inch fool image could only be ripped off from the “shrew play”, though the beginning of that phrase also rang a far off bell.  It’ll come to me.

Bottom line: I think that “Here’s looking at thee, Kyd” and and Doctor Fauci were really written by Shakespeare himself and not Marlowe at all, though Shakespeare took great pains to make it look like Marlowe’s work!  The practicing of the signature, the strange choice of paper, from Deptford.  Think about it.

Anyway, I’ll get these out to the readership in good course.

Meanwhile, Happy Talk Like Shakespeare Day!

And remember this sage advice you male readers out there….

Play video

Posted in Lighter fare, Poetry | Tagged , ,
2 Comments

IRELAND – extreme COVID-1984 repression – OUTDOOR confession illegal

Posted on 23 April 2021 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

The last acceptable prejudice.

I, for one, welcome our Great Reset Overlords.

I won’t ever again have to tell you to…

GO TO CONFESSION!

(While you still can.)

Posted in Religious Liberty, The Last Acceptable Prejudice | Tagged
14 Comments