#ASonnetADay – 103. “Alack, what poverty my Muse brings forth…”

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Your Sunday Sermon Notes – 1st Sunday of Advent – 2020

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 you churches opening up? What was attendance like?

For my part,… with the readings in English…

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An important apostolate: SEVEN SISTERS

As this new liturgical year begins, I want to bring this back up to the readership’s awareness.  I think this is an extremely important apostolate.. specially right now.  It’s an older post.


Do you know about the Seven Sisters Apostolate? I’ve written about them several times.   HERE

In a nutshell, 7 women and perhaps a couple alternates, commit for 1 year to 1 hour of prayer for 1 priest each week.   Hence, there is a lady on Monday, one on Tuesday, etc., ideally in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament.

In some cases, though this is not obligatory, the priest or bishop may not even know who they are.

There are good resources at their site.

I received a note from them:

It’s been a little over a year since we started our Seven Sisters group for you. The prayer commitment period for each Sister is for one year.

I recently received a message that one of the Tuesday persons is going to start praying for a different priest in Melbourne. She may actually be able to start a group there. As there is another person praying for you that day, you are covered. However there will soon be a vacancy on Sunday.

So I wonder if you might mention the Seven Sisters Apostolate again and that there is a vacancy in your prayer group. They should contact Janette Howe at the Apostolate website sevensistersapostolate.org and we can do the rest, finding out if they can do a Sunday or even double up on any of the other days.

[J] says every time you mention Seven Sisters she get a boatload of inquiries so that is good, your blog is spreading these Holy Hours for priests worldwide.

This post is absolutely and blatantly self-serving!  I think there has been an impact of this group over the last year.  I am grateful to all of them who participated on my behalf.

It seems particularly appropriate to post this today, the Feast of the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Perhaps some of you readers might, in your goodness, consider doing this, for me and for other priests as well.


I am not sure if there was ever another person to cover that day, for me.  However, if any of you are moved to form a group for your local priest or bishop then… my work here is done.

Contact Seven Sisters.  HERE

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#ASonnetADay – 101. “O truant Muse, what shall be thy amends…” & 102. “My love is strengthen’d, though more weak in seeming…”

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Mass schedules… then and now

Not all parishes need to have a schedule like this, which is near to Penn Station in Manhattan.

But it does tell you something about the state of the Faith then and now.

One thing that catches my is is the schedule for devotions.

I’ve been arguing for the return of these old-fashioned devotions for a long time. They are very important for those who, for one reason or another, can’t receive Holy Communion. They are important for people with heavy petitions. They are just IMPORTANT.

 

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GOOD NEWS: “Key” available for Scanlon’s “Latin Grammar: Grammar Vocabularies, and Exercises in Preparation for the Reading of the Missal and Breviary”

There is some GOOD NEWS.

It’s down below.  Meantime…

I’ve been ranting for years about the need for clerics to know the language of their Latin Church, Roman Rite.

In most cases that means that priests and seminarians have to work on their own because they were cheated and lied to in seminary (which is required by canon law to provide for competence in Latin).   Learning Latin seems to many like an insurmountable task.  It isn’t.  Priests of yesteryear were not any brighter than today’s and a whole lot were a lot dimmer.  They did it.

On approach to learning Latin for the Mass and Breviary is the system referred to as Scanlon.

Latin Grammar: Grammar Vocabularies, and Exercises in Preparation for the Reading of the Missal and Breviary

US HERE – UK HERE

on Kindle!

Second Latin: Preparation for the Reading of Philosophy, Theology and Canon Law

US HERE – UK HERE

Or else…

Latin Grammar (Ecclesiastical Latin) (Volume 1)

US HERE – UK HERE

Second Latin (Ecclesiastical Latin) (Volume 2)

US HERE – UK HERE

Here’s the news.

Frequent commentator here, Fr Augustine Thompson, OP, informs me that there is a KEY now to Scanlon, which would be a great help to those who have to learn on their own.

In my years of teaching Latin, I am convinced that the best book for liturgical Latin remains Cora and Charles Scanlon’sLatin Grammar for Reading the Missal and Breviary, first published in 1944 by B. Herder Book Co., and still in print from TAN Books.

The one problem with this book is that there was no available full Answer Key.  I am happy to announce that we have now published one for all the exercises of every lesson. You may order copies of this Key from Dominican Liturgy Publications, which also has available many other resources for the Dominican Rite and the Latin liturgy.

It will take work and patience, BUT it CAN be done!

C’mon, Fathers!

Let’s recover what they stole from us!

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Is it time to exorcize the Democrat Party?

Each day for a while now, after saying Mass I’ve been saying the Exorcism Against Satan and Apostate Angels, which is chapter 3 of Title XI in the Rituale Romanum.

I’ve been doing this with the authority of the bishop for the diocese and I’ve asked God to extend this exorcism to all places and equipment and people involved in the US election, for the sake of “election integrity”.

Priests and bishops have to do what only they can do, for the sake of the common good.  And the matter of “election integrity” is central to the common good of the nation.  It is wrong for us to act like senators or congressmen or representatives of government (which is an affliction rising from Original Sin).  We sacerdotes have to do sacerdotal things.

If we don’t, no one else can.  And THAT is what the Enemy of the Soul is counting on.

My instinct to do read this exorcism seems to be spot on.

I read this at the news feed of the SSPX:

The Day the Pope Exorcised Adolf Hitler

Pope Pius XII performed exorcisms on Adolf Hitler, the Nazis, and the Communist Party. The work of an Italian Vaticanist published this autumn lifts a corner of the veil on exorcisms practiced by the popes and long clothed in papal secrecy.

“The devil’s greatest malice is to make people believe that he does not exist,” Baudelaire said. For those who still have doubts, the Vaticanist Fabio Marchese Ragona, has just published in September 2020, a book entitled Il mio nome è Satana – My Name is Satan.

One of the work’s interests lies in several accounts of exorcisms carried out in the Vatican itself, by various sovereign pontiffs, in particular by Pope Pius XII, who tried to cast out the demon by whom he estimated that Adolf Hitler was possessed.

It was not until 2006, recalls Fabio Marchese Ragona, that the Holy See decided to make this unprecedented fact public: anxious to take all natural and supernatural means in order to put an end to the mass killings committed, particularly against the Jews, by the Third Reich, Pope Pacelli decided to perform an exorcism ritual “from a distance,” from the private chapel of the pontifical apartment.

Fr. Gabriele Amorth – famous Roman exorcist called to God in 2016 – told Vatican News at the time that Pope Pius XII was convinced that the atrocities committed by Hitler and the Nazis could only have a diabolical origin.

But this is not the only exorcism that John XXIII’s predecessor performed from the Vatican. The author of Il mio nome e Satana confides in having discovered, during the investigation which enabled him to write his book, documents attesting that the Pope had also carried out an exorcism on the Italian Communist Party, on the eve of the elections of 1958.

Pius XII was hoping to prevent the Communist Party, notoriously anti-Catholic, from winning the elections. It should be remembered, ten years earlier, the same Roman pontiff had approved a decree of the Holy Office prohibiting any Catholic, under pain of canonical sanctions, from joining or supporting the Communist Party.

Long after his death, in a 1969 report, Pius XII’s own nephew testified to seeing that his uncle was very anxious and had trouble sleeping in the days leading up to the 1958 election: “in the three days leading up to the vote, the pope also performed exorcisms,” ensures Carlo Pacelli.

He also noted that Pius XII had prayed and offered penance and his own sufferings for this intention: a sign of Providence, the Pope’s prayers were answered, and the Communists lost the election.

As Fabio Marchese Ragona points out at the beginning of his book: “The devil can win battles. Sometimes important ones. But never the war.” Enough to give a little hope when the darkness of circumstances seems to prevail.

It seems to me that the US bishops would do well to perform an exorcism of the Democrat Party, which has become the Party of Death.  Abortion is one of those hideous sins that attracts the attachment of demons.  For the spiritual well-being of anyone in that Party of Death, bishops have to exorcism and invoke canons 915 and 916.

I hope all priests and bishops will say Ch. 3 Title 11, at least privately.

Fathers, ask your bishops or superiors for permission to recite Title XI, Ch. 3.  I have audio recordings to help you with the Latin.  HERE  This is WAR, my brothers, serious spiritual war!   Let us do what only we can do.

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