Dear readers,
I was informed today that a long-time reader and commentator here, with the handle “Supertradmum” has died. I had posted about her illness a while back. She died in St Joseph’s Hospice, London, this morning.
In your goodness please remember to pray for the soul of Marie Bernard Miller Dean (Supertradmum).
She leaves a son behind. Please, too, remember him in your prayers.
From her old version blog (newer here):
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Sunrise – 7:14, Colors – 18:40, Ave Maria 19:00.
Rome is truly “crazy town” right now.
Over at Santa Maria in Transpontina there is a display, with people stationed to offer help to the curious, of what (they hope) the Synod hopes to integrate. Involved are those who performed the probably demonic pagan rite in the Vatican gardens.
And an image I don’t want to post, but you can access HERE, of a woman breastfeeding some sort of critter.
“But Father! But Father!”, you papalatrous toadies are croaking, in your best imitation of colorful Amazon tree frogs, “That’s just Nature! Mother Nature! Get it? It’s like … like… you know… the ecosystem… which is church and… and… it’s NATURE! But you are against nature because YOU HATE VATICAN II!”
Sorry, folks. But that’s just weird.
Meanwhile, back in the Rione Regola, where I am staying, we find a fountain that might be mistaken for one of the “fontane rionali” (I posted the “pigna” fountain the other day) This is the Fontana dela Cancelleria, or Chancery which is nearby. That’s where the tree highest tribunals of the Church are housed. This fountain, however, was designed by the guy who also did the fountain in the Piazza Viminale and the monument to the Bersagliere at the Porta Pia and the “Dioscuri” out in the ghastly EUR zone. So, same sterile era as the fontane rionali.
This fountain depicts the arms of Card. Scarampi who commissioned Bramante to design the Palazzo della Cancelleria in the 15th century.
Here’s the facade of the 18th c. Santa Maria d’Orazione e Morte, on the Via Giulia,”St. Mary of Prayer and Death”. Cheerful title. There was an earlier church, dating to the 16th c.
Outside are plaques with slots for the giving of alms for the care of the dead, the lighting of a perpetual lamp (who knows if that’s still going… I doubt it) and also for widows and children of men who died while working. There was a confraternity here, which was dedicated to giving decent burial to the abandoned dead. St. Charles Borromeo was a member.
“This is my lot, today, but your’s tomorrow!” Hodie mihi, cras tibi!
Memento mori! I hope the nitwit who made the graffito got a good look.
Tempus fugit!
I haven’t seen it for years, but inside there is a room decorated with human bones, candelabra from skulls, etc. You don’t see the church or that room open very often.
The Roman poet Belli has a couple of sonnets about the church and the cemetery, which was destroyed, probably when the embankments and the roadway of the Lungotevere was put through. One of them HERE.
Meanwhile… or rather meenwhile… I have nothing to report about food. Breakfast was a cup of granola, no lunch. Last night I was out for a very pleasant supper with some great guys, but the food, while decent, was unremarkable. So, I end with this brilliant mural observation.
Yes, do. Please, just go, vegan.
I’m sure that you were wondering whether or not I obtained a spatula. I did. It is very nice. Blue. I bought it from a little shop around the corner that has a bit of everything. A nice old codger runs it with his wife. I don’t know how they keep the doors open. His grandfather, he informed me, found the amazing bronze Etruscan chariot which you can view now in the Met in NYC. I’ll do my best to buy things from them, if at all possible and as need arises. Next on the list: sewing items.
I spoke with the tailor about my new cassock yesterday after Mass. He was at the church to fit someone. He looked at me and wanted to check my details again, saying that I’ve lost weight. Sure enough, down a couple centimeters from the last check. He has a good eye.
My cold is worse. I fear it is going to morph into bronchitis, to which I am prone in Rome.
This is just great. The Communist founder of the anti-Catholic La Repubblica, Eugenio Scalfari had a chat with the Pope. Scalfari, slightly younger than dirt and no doubt still enjoying a perfect memory so he doesn’t have to – you know – take notes or anything, records Francis as saying that Jesus:
“granted a man of exceptional virtue, was in no way a god… sia pure un uomo di eccezionale virtù, non era affato un Dio.”
The Press Office issued a statement. Blah blah blah.
Right right… the Lord didn’t walk around shooting light out of His eyes… except when he did on that mountain. But let that pass. Never mind the whole issue theandric acts. You know, those raisings from the dead, healings, stuff like that.
Please… Holy See… just keep doing this. What a great idea it is to talk to Scalfari on the record. What could possibly go wrong?
Papal friend and occasional interviewer Eugenio Scalfari claims Pope Francis told him Jesus was a “man of exceptional virtue, not at all a God.” https://t.co/2yTopNDzZR pic.twitter.com/IXCql8r25h
— Francis X. Rocca (@FrancisXRocca) October 9, 2019
Ed Pentin has the interview in a working translation HERE
I like this part from the interview:
“Once incarnated, Jesus ceases to be a God and becomes a man until his death on the cross.”
Wellll… you know what he means. Right? No? In fact… no, I don’t know what he means.
Scalfari concluded… marvel at this genius…
These talks were all and always reported literally in our newspaper and that is why today I feel the need to remember them, because Francis addresses the theme of ‘Amazonia but broadens the scope and comes to the conclusion that men are substantially all equal and all different. This is the trait that differentiates us from the animal genus to which we belong, we are also endowed with instincts but we do not limit ourselves to these: we have feelings. They can be good or bad, selfish or altruistic; our body and our vital organs develop these moral diversities and create a precious yet completely incorporeal organ that is our Mind. This is the reason why I have once again recalled the interests of Francis in the corporeal and spiritual knowledge of man.
I like my word salad with a light Dijon vinaigrette.
But…it’s a break from the SYNOD… right?
Hey… LOOK!
A GOAT!
Let’s think about “optional celibacy” which the Germans and other iconoclasts want in order to drive the Church towards becoming a well-connected NGO.
Let’s use Amoris laetitia (“The Joy of Sex”) as a lens.
So, Father is married. The marriage doesn’t work that well because.. well… it’s obvious, why it might be strained. Father and Mrs. Father divorce. So sad.
So, if Father marries without a declaration of nullity, say a divorcee, former wife of a former priest friend, can he receive Communion at Mass?
Of course, if he doesn’t, it wouldn’t be a Mass, right? In that case, by consecrating the Eucharist outside of a Mass, he would commit one of the worst canonical crimes on the books.
And he took a stipend for it.
Ahhhh… the possibilities.
But we would have to accompany Father and Mrs. 2nd Father because in the internal forum, they discerned (maybe with the help of the Mrs. 2nd Father’s former priest husband) that they can receive Communion.
Marriage is, after all, an ideal and not something that real people can actually live.
Priesthood too.
See how it all fits together?
That’s all for now.
Signed… Internal Forum Msgr. Zuhlsdorf.
UPDATE:
I had the moderation queue on, but I think I’ll only let the funny stuff through. I’ll read it all, however.
Sunrise was 7:13 and Colors will sound tonight at 18:41. Once again 19:00 is the Ave Maria (as if anyone even bothers with that any more).
One of the great rivals of the history of art in Rome was between Lorenzo Bernini, who in worldly terms admittedly won the war, and the horizon-vaulting Francesco Borromini.
Yesterday I met for lunch at a newish, trendy place in the entrance to the Palazzo Braschi (lousy food, avoid it) a friend who I have not seen for years, a art historian and polymath who whose late husband was one of the great experts in the world on Caravaggio, Velasquez, and the whole gamut of that age. She’s working on an exhibition of female artists of the Baroque period. Very interesting. In any event, she was doing some research at the nearby State Archive (thieved from the Church by the State) which includes the magnificent church of Sant’Ivo brought into being by Alexander VII (Chigi) and Borromini. It’s lantern, on top of the cupola, is one of the most recognizable features of the Roman panorama.
Interestingly enough, it was a letter of Bernini that secured the commission for Borromini. Bernini had recently taken credit for some of Borromini’s work at St. Peter’s. It could also have been partly a “favor” for keeping quiet about some of Bernini’s dodgy activities.
Here’s the courtyard. Consider the beauty of the symmetry. Then consider the trash that is passed off as church architecture today, nay, rather the whole thought of undertakings in the Church right now. I digress.
I sang a Mass in this church many years ago, and the schola cantorum (all women) which I directed did the Gregorian chant.
Borromini was a genius at working within narrow constraints of space. Anthony Blunt noted, “Never perhaps did the Baroque ideal of movement attain more complete and perfect expression” than Sant’ Ivo, in and out. The courtyard has bees for Barbarini (Urban VII) who started this project with Borromini at Bernini’s prompting. On commentator said that a stylized bee is the key to Borromini’s design as well as the 6-point star (inside). In one of my favorite books on the art and architecture of the day, I read that in early designs you can see that Borromini wrote verses from Proverbs 9, which were to be carved over the entrance: Sapientia aedivicavit sibi domum. And this is, of course, the seat of the original “Sapienza” University.
The lantern is a kind of altar, twisting up like a horn or a ziggurat, topped with a flame for knowledge. Borromini was a great collector of sea shells.
When I lived nearby, I had a beautiful view of Sant’Ivo from my window.
One of my old photos. You can see how high my apartment was. 2007! Happier days.
Look at what the clouds are doing.
There was a conference in the library, so I stuck my head in.
On display was a book mentioning one of my favorite Popes, Benedict XVI, of happy memory. It is about fabric, and since I’ve been dealing a lot with fabric for vestments, it caught my eye.
Off for errands. Passing by the entrance to the French College’s chapel, I popped in to the place across the street which houses both an cultural association dedicated to Roman dialect (presentations on Monday evenings) and also the room, now chapel (now disused) where St. Catherine of Siena died. She is interred (most of her) at Santa Maria sopra Minerva around the corner.
This was the room, I suppose, where Catherine survived on the Eucharist.
Please, O heavenly Father, raise up now in our midst great women like St. Catherine, who have the Spirit-filled confidence to offer guidance and even correction to those to whom You have entrusted Your flock. I ask this in the Name of Your Son. E Così Sia!
In the evening, after Mass I met with my tailor. Since cassocks are under attack, I’ll have another cassock made. Then, to supper with one of the very best English language writers and commentators on all things Catholic. He is here in Rome to cover the Synod. We had a splendid supper at a place suggested to me by another personage of the blogosphere, and it was terrific. The approach was a bit Borromini-esque, somewhat nuovo, but it was mighty fine.
Here is their rendition of vitello tonnato. Different presentation, and really good. There were four of these little amuse -bouche.
Here’s a half portion of bucatini all’amatriciana. Like the latern of Sant’Ivo, all twisted up. That’s the thing these days.
Shank of sucking pig cooked for 36 hours. There was a hint of clove.
Not bad. And it was quite reasonable for Roman restaurants.
All in all, a great day.
Today, my principle chore is to find a rubber spatula.
My cold is not better. Tough night for sleeping.
From Ed Pentin at the National Catholic Register about topics raised at the Amazon Synod:
According to a Vatican-provided synthesis of interventions, subjects so far discussed have included a reflection on “indigenous rites” of the Sacrifice of the Mass that, it was said, should be looked upon “benevolently” if they are “not linked to superstitions,” and provided they “harmonize with a true liturgical spirit,” a synod father said.
Related to this, and as part of inculturation, it was proposed that “according to the right theological, liturgical and pastoral discernment,” a “Catholic Amazonian rite” should be considered ad experimentum. After all, it was stressed, “just as there is an environmental ecosystem, so there is an ecclesial ecosystem.”
Yes, pick up your jaw. “Ecosystem”. It’s crazy town in the Synod Hall.
One wants to pound one’s head on the table. Nay rather, one want to pound someone else’s head on the table, namely, anyone who would bring up such a dopey notion as an “Amazon rite”.
We’ve been over this ground before in the matter of an African rite. I remember one bishop from Cameroon at a conference I attended nearly groaning with frustration as a blinkered European brought up an African rite. The bishop pointed out that in his country alone there were dozens of languages and cultures: which were they going to exclude to have a rite? Instead, he underscored that there was a rite which they could all use: the Latin Rite.
Amazing thought.
If only there were a rite and one language we could use to bring us all together, one that cut across borders and generations.
Mind you, this dopey Amazon rite thing sheds light on the mind-set of those who are pushing pushing pushing their agendas.
When, for example, will we have someone like Card. Kasper amaze us with another scintillating remark, such as he left us (recorded by the above-mentioned Ed Pentin) during the Family Synod about how Africans oughtn’t tell the Synod members what to do. A spectacular gaff, on par with those uttered by the gaffmeister himself, running for office in the United States, former VP Joe Biden.
I can hear Card. Kasper, having another bout with the microphones, talking about how the South Americans are so “clean and articulate”.
This Amazon rite notion is condescending.
I received this from a priest friend who, for reasons that are riotously obvious these days, desires anonymity.
He reflects on the discussion of optional celibacy that the Amazon Synod is sure to push. Of course the Germans, who are pouring their Rhine into the Amazon, know exactly what they want to accomplish by their ongoing destruction of all things Catholic. It’s good to think this through as, at the least, a mind exercise.
Thus, my priest friend:
So it occurs to me that allowing men to marry before being ordained (as priests) will do four things:
1) Encourage a significant portion of young men with a normal sexuality, who were open to the priesthood, to postpone that decision, to pursue marriage first. If they enter, it will be after raising a family, 20-30 years later;
2) Saddle those young men with a normal sexuality who nevertheless are willing to embrace celibacy with an additional stigma (if they still don’t marry, they must be homosexual); some subset of this group will, therefore, opt for path of option 1;
3) Have little to no effect on those young men with a disordered sexual attraction entering the seminary and becoming priests as they would face the same stigma regardless. Nevertheless, would they not inevitably become a more significant portion of the young seminarian population?
4) And, given that married priests would, as they always have, be excluded from consideration as a bishop, what now becomes more likely?
In short, this would seem to be a very useful way to strengthen the “Lavender Mafia,” no?
It’s interesting to see where that mind exercise went.
I can’t say that he’s wrong! This would indeed play directly into the hands of the corrosive homosexualist agenda.
UPDATE:
I’m getting some really interesting feedback on this. One of my friends wrote:
It will push all the (even latently) same-sex attracted or those who “aren’t interested in marriage” into religious orders.
All bishops will be chosen from religious orders.
The diocesan clergy will then have either young men enter seminary who will have to find a wife before ordination to the diaconate; or we will only be ordaining men who are already married — and where will his wife and kids be while he is in seminary? [And there’s the problem if DIVORCED priests.]
Most of the Eastern Catholic Churches have a history of issues with this, having both married men and single men often training together in the same seminary. Dating during seminary…..has its challenges. [Indeed.]
Or do we wait until the man’s children are all adults, and thus we will be ordaining men who are significantly older, investing years of training for someone who might only serve 15 to 25 years at the most, instead of 40 or 50?
Also, moving a married pastor means moving his whole family. Pastor’s terms (6 years) probably would have to be scrapped (not a bad thing, but…).
[NB:]The dollar in the collection basket that people put in will not work: we will have to do what synagogues or some Protestant communities do and charge parishioners a membership fee (in the case of a synagogue, the cost of running the place — staff salaries, heating and electricity, music, etc. — is divided up by the number of registered members and then everyone is sent a bill; and if you are not a member, you buy a ticket at the door for the high holy days). The cost of a married man, his wife, and their ten kids (they’ll have ten, right? not just the politely contracepted 2.2 kids……) will require a lot more money — especially braces for all ten children plus their schools. etc.
What about “simplex priests”? You and I both know some devout Catholic single men, middle-aged, who could be given a short program of training, just to offer Mass — they would not be given faculties for confessions or preaching, …. And after all, so few people go to confession, that it’s not like there’s a huge demand for it.
We are now getting brass tacks.
You know that the issue of deaconettes is going to be raised at the Synod (“walking together”) on the Amazon.
The former Prefect of the CDF, Gerhard Card. Müller responded to something a wacky S. American suggested, namely, that the impossibility of the ordination of women to the priesthood is not a dogma. Fail.
“But, even if the Pope explained at the time that ‘all the faithful of the Church are definitely to hold this decision,’ it is nevertheless not a dogma,” [wacky] Bishop Kräutler stated in an interview with Blickpunkt Lateinamerika, the journal of the German relief agency Adveniat – a group which heavily funded [the Rhine flows into the Amazon] the preparations for the upcoming Synod. Kräutler also stated in the same interview that the Amazon Synod “must” allow a female diaconate. [MUST! Well! That’s that!]
The Amazon Synod’s controversial working document proposes “to identify the type of official ministry that can be conferred on women, taking into account the central role which women play today in the Amazonian Church” (14). But the participants of one preparatory meeting for the Amazon Synod – among them Cardinal Lorenzo [“Clergyman”] Baldisseri, the Secretary General of the Synod of Bishops – explicitly called for the allowance of female deacons.
Card. Müller points back to the document of John Paul II that simply will not go away: Ordinatio sacerdotalis. Also, the CDF put out its own document explaining the former. OS says clear that this is definitively to be held by the faithful. The CDF explained that, because of the consistent teaching of the Church, this is infallibly taught.
At LifeSite read the whole thing.
In effect, Card. Müller underscores what I’ve been repeating all along. Just as Vatican II reaffirmed, while diaconate is different from the priesthood (priest and bishop) nevertheless it is one of the Holy Orders. The three orders are intimately tied together in one Sacrament of Holy Orders. If the priesthood cannot be conferred on women (absolutely clear) then none of the grades of Holy Orders can be conferred on women. Period. Exclamation point.
It stands to reason.
But will that make a difference in this crazy age?
Roman Sunrise was at 6:47 and Colors will sound at 18:43. The Ave Maria is still pinned at 19:00.
The walls of Rome provide both endless fascination and deep contempt for its moronic youth, some of whom seem to have a rather canine need to piddle on the walls with their tiny sprays. Hence, you can find treasures in the inscriptions, many in Latin, and monuments to the piety of generations past, along with the dimwitted scrawls of puerile Roman blockheads.
I would bring back public corporal punishment, perhaps the stocks, for those caught defacing public and private property.
But I digress.
Here’s a sight to exemplify my point.
The inscription concerns an indulgence granted for the recitation of litanies and their application to the souls in Purgatory.
Since it was the Feast of St. Mark, Pope, I headed to the church wherein that Pontiff is interred, indeed, San Marco near the Capitoline Hill.
Of course as you draw near you notice this monstrous thing.
Tucked into the corner is one of the “talking statues”. This is Julia. In days past, these statues were used by various groups to post written opinions on public matters. The statues “talked” to each other. The most famous is Pasquino, near the Piazza Navona.
San Marco, named after the Evangelist, and associated with the Venetians. Remember, that Mark’s tomb is in San Marco in Venice.
The facade is reminiscent of Old St. Peter’s from the time of Constantine.
From one angle it is hard to see San Marco, because Mussolini planted the trees in the square specifically to block its view.
In the loggia we find a pair of medieval lions. Again, think Mark.
“I’ve got a secret!”
This spiffy well has an inscription which says that anyone who sold water from the well would be “anathema”. Would that that applied to graffiti vandals.
Other traces of our past. Note the sarcophagus relief with the wavy lines, which represent the strigil, an instrument used by athletes to scrape off dirt and oil, thus a symbol of the struggle of the Christian life.
This is quite dear. I take the pitcher to have to do with baptism.
Greek was used by the early Christians in Rome. We put a stop to that! Whew.
And now a message from Pope Paul.
How would you like to untangle this?
Down we go into the basilica.
This was a low lying area beneath the looming Capitoline Hill, center of pagan Roman religious life. Many churches sprang from the houses where Christians gathered. This is perhaps a place where Mark the Evangelist lived and worked, thus the dedication. In 336 Pope Mark built this place. Mark was the first Pope not to die a martyr.
The tomb of St Mark, Pope, under the mensa of the altar.
The mosaic in the apse is fabulous. You see the Risen Christ in imperial purple holding the inscription “I am the Resurrection”. Courtly sheep process to the safe pasture by the Lamb. Christ is flanked by Pope Mark, in red with pallium, St. Agnes, so important to the Romans, and St Pope Agapitus (hey! Fr. Pasley!). On the left at Felicissimus and Mark the Evangelist, who is bringing in Gregory IV, alive at the time the mosaic was made, so he has a square halo.
You see the arms of Paul II, who built the portico and this ceiling, which is the oldest wooden ceiling in Rome.
Heading out, stop and have a drink of cold water at one of the special fountains made, again by Mussolini, to symbolize the different regions of the city. They are distinctive.
In the evening, I put my head into the Chiesa Nuova for a little bit of a weird “oratorio” in honor of John Henry Newman: readings from his writings punctuated by selections of Bach, involving flute, both solo and orchestral. Well performed, but the choices made no sense to me in that context. Lots of people!
And so my day came to its end. And I still have a cold.
Tonight I will meet with my tailor, defiantly to discuss a new cassock.
Throughout history, anti-Catholicism and anti-clericalism has specifically targeted the cassock for a great share of its fear and hatred.
In some places the cassock could get you killed.
Today as the Amazon Synod opens – during which we fully expect open attacks on the priesthood – the first thing the head of the meeting, Card. Baldisseri, announced is that the cassock is optional for the members.
The fools applauded.
Innovation at #SinodoAmazonico: Cardinal Baldisseri announces that beginning with this afternoon’s session, members of the synod may wear clerical suits rather than their cassocks/soutanes. Applause follows. pic.twitter.com/YEyK3wv7wR
— Cindy Wooden (@Cindy_Wooden) October 7, 2019
VIDEO HERE
I’m going to call my tailor here in Rome and have him make me an extra. Pitch in.
I am no cassock fanatic. Suits have their place.
But this is not just a meeting of the guys after work at the local pub.
Or, since its probably rigged from top to bottom, maybe it is.
Since outcomes are going to be predetermined, why not dispense with the cassock? It’s symbolic of how serious the “walking together” really is.
To hell with decorum. Why not come in highly symbolic flip-flops? The Jesuits will be on board.
UPDATE:
During his address to the Synod, Francis actually said this. He said that he heard a light remark about someone bringing gifts to the altar with feathers on his head (never mind that it’s in St Peter’s, not a jungle) and that made him “sad”.
NOW Francis is “sad” if some makes fun of a headdress when HE did exactly that on more than one occasion.
Then he went on.
“[W]hat is the difference between this headdress, and the biretta used by officials of this dicastery?”
And those sycophantic bishops applauded.
I am NOT making this up. Video with audio translation, HERE. Ooops, wrong video… HERE!
Those members were chosen for a reason. It’s like the Supreme Pueblo’s Assembly.
If they don’t know the difference between a pagan headdress and a biretta, then there is little hope for them.
There are “issues” here, my friends. “Issues” underlying this obsession to ridicule our heritage.
Coat of Arms by D Burkart
A Daily Prayer for Priests
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