Was there a good point made in the sermon you heard for your Mass of Sunday obligation?
I was deacon for the Mass so I didn’t preach. However, the celebrant spoke to not being afraid of three things, temptations towards fear, the Church’s mystery, her doctrine, and her works.
The other day I posted something about churches and synagogues losing membership. HERE
This is going to happen, friends. Demographics, on top of decades of stupidity, are not on our side.
I’m not saying that this is the great “falling away” of 2 Thessalonians 2. I’m also not saying that it is isn’t. To my mind, the “restrainer” of whom Paul wrote is probably St. Michael the Archangel. We collectively stopped praying the St. Michael Prayer after Low Mass as part of the Leonine Prayers in 1965 and… all hell breaks loose. Breaking loose is what one does after the restraint stops.
I was deacon for a Solemn Mass this morning. During Mass I pondered briefly the brainless accusations many libs level at those who want traditional forms of worship. For example, they trot out the label “triumphalism”. Using gold vessels, having rich vestments, singing complex music that requires work on the part of those who hear, maintaining decorum in movement… these things are triumphalistic. The implication is that traditionalists want a Church to grow back into some kind of secular dominance. They, on the other hand, are spirit-filled rather than institutional. They are all grown up now, so they don’t have to bend the knee. Clay and cheap stuff is adequate for virtue signaling, after all.
That’s not what sober tradition is about.
Sober tradition (all liberalism is stoned) recognizes the eschatological dimension of worship. As I have been preaching and writing for years, we build our churches and fill them with beauty, we develop our worship and participate in it because we are all going to die. Awareness of the Four Last Things pulses within every word and gesture, every stitch of lace and every quilisma.
Liturgical worship, properly understand and properly activated, keeps the participant in a constant tension between the reality of Christ’s definitive, once for all time, defeat of death and the reality that, even though we belong wholly to Him in His mystical Body, we still have to die.
By our sacred liturgical worship we fulfill our obligations to God by the virtue of religion and we confront the fact of our impending death. We go to Mass because of love of God to whom we owe everything. We go to Mass because we are going to die.
At Mass, during which really hard things happen – such as the descent of heaven to earth in anticipation of the descent of the New Jerusalem – which allow us a foretaste in our worship of the liturgy before God’s throne, we come into touch with Mystery, which is transforming. All our efforts in worship must be directed at fulfillment of the virtue of religion and obtaining that transforming encounter in which God wants to give us what He knows we need to deal with our role in the economy of salvation and with death.
All of this is hard. So why should worship be easy?
All of this is mysterious. So why should liturgy be banal?
All of this is grand beyond telling. So why should Mass be mediocre?
What we do…. at least what we do here where I am involved… has nothing to do with the dopey charge of triumphalism that lazy-brained libs toss around. It has everything to do with recognition of the opposite of triumphalism. We know that the Church is going to go through a tribulation, not a worldly triumph. We who belong to Christ will have Christ’s experience. That means persecution and emptying. Our traditional worship is our propaedeutic for suffering. It is where we practice dying.
Elsewhere I have described the reason why we dress our priests and bishops in solemnity and with beautiful and costly garments. They are our priests who offer our sacrifice. They are, however, at the same time also the victim on the altar of sacrifice. Christ’s priesthood, in them, also means victimhood. Just as during the time of the Temple the sacrificial lambs were spotless and pampered, so too our priests… right up to the moment their necks are slashed open and their blood drained. We vest our priests because they are also our living offering.
Traditional sacred liturgical worship is all about learning the way up Mount Moriah.
The Church is going to get smaller. Do we want to keep what we have? Maintain our buildings and properties, etc.? Sure. But not at the expense of our role in the the economy of salvation and God’s timeline.
We will probably lose much of what our forebears built with their hope and sacrifices. We have, after all, actively squandered our patrimony like the son who fled from his father’s house.
It’s time to get up, turn, and go back to the point where we started to stray and work to get it right.
In these USA Daylight Savings begins with repercussions for Sunday Mass.
We “spring forward”, and so we lose an hour.
Reset your regular clocks before going to bed. Many phones and mobile devices automatically adjust and they have alarm clocks!
Don’t miss Sunday Mass!
I have great affection for St. Frances of Rome, Santa Francesca Romana.
When I was exiled from these USA to Rome, I lived at first in her house, the Palazzo of the Ponziani family into which she married, where you find a chapel where she died in 1440. I feel as if she took me under her wing in those first critical months in Trastevere, where Romanaccio was being fused into my marrow with great intensity.
I went from the tutelage of a Roman virgin martyr, St. Agnes (in St. Paul) to a Roman widow (in Rome).
She is patroness of Rome, along with Sts. Peter and Paul, and St. Philip Neri (on whose feast I was ordained).
She had the grace of being able to see her Guardian Angel. How cool is that?
As mentioned, young Frances married into the Ponziani family, whose medieval palazzo is still in Trastevere close to the Basilica of Santa Cecilia.
At the death of her husband she founded a convent of Benedictine nuns, Oblates of the Benedictine Congregation of Monte Oliveti, headquartered in the nearby Tor di Specchi. This convent is open once a year, today, for the public to enjoy.
St. Francis body is in the church in the Roman Forum called S. Maria Nova al Foro Romano.
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia,
“With her husband’s consent Frances practiced continence, and advanced in a life of contemplation. Her visions often assumed the form of drama enacted for her by heavenly personages. She had the gift of miracles and ecstasy, (as) well as the bodily vision of her guardian angel, had revelations concerning purgatory and hell, and foretold the ending of the Western Schism. She could read the secrets of consciences and detect plots of diabolical origin. She was remarkable for her humility and detachment, her obedience and patience[.]”
During life she was renowned for her works of mercy, almsgiving, and miraculous healings.
St. Frances, pray for us. Help especially the Church in Rome! Ask your guardian angel to guide our pastors.
Here is her entry from the Martyrologium Romanum:
Sanctae Franciscae, religiosae, quae, adulescentula nupta, in matrimonio quadraginta annos vixit, uxor et materfamilias probata, pietate, humiltate et patientia admirabilis. Temporibus calamitosis, bona sua paurperibus distribuit, aegrotis ministravit et, coniuge defuncto, inter oblatas, quas sub Regula santi Benedicti Romae congregaverat, secessit.
Who wants to take a crack at it?
Today in the Extraordinary Form Francesca receives a commemoration. Here is her collect:
Deus, qui beátam Francíscam fámulam tuam, inter cétera grátiæ tuæ dona, familiári Angeli consuetúdine decorásti: concéde, quaesumus; ut, intercessiónis eius auxílio, Angelórum consórtium cónsequi mereámur.
As an update to my post about vestments the other day, here are some shots of the fabric being cut at Gammarelli in Rome for the new set we, the TMSM, are having made.
Enjoy!
Please donate. HERE
Our intrepid tailor is the always helpful and cheerful Stefano!
If you ever have dealings with Gammarelli, greet the crew and tell them Fr. Z sent you.
There is an interesting piece at the National Catholic Register about how McDonald’s put the Filet-o-fish sandwich on the menu. (Hint: market forces!) I’m not a real fan, but, hey!
Here’s more cheerful news.
The place libs love to hate, Chick-fil-A – on Fridays only during Lent, from what I understand – have their own fish sandwich.
I haven’t had one yet.
If libs hate Chick-fil-A, it must be good!
¡Hagan lío!
When Francis signed that troubling document with the Imam in the UAE, a lot of people were confused and upset by an affirmation that seemed to say that God willed a diversity of religions. Sensing that there was going to be a kerfuffle – giving the statement the benefit of the doubt – I explained that statement with the only way that it could be understood in a Catholic sense without it being heretical.
All sort of people came down on me for suggesting that we had to apply the distinction of God’s active will and God’s permissive will. Since a diversity of religions is evil, God cannot have actively willed it. However, God permits things to happen that are evil so that greater good can emerge. He has an active will and a permissive will.
I also stated clearly that I didn’t know what the true intent of the writer of the document was. I said that that is the way to parse it to keep it from being heretical regardless of the intent of the writer. For what I wrote – HERE and HERE
Now comes this from LifeSite and Diane Montagna (who sort of threw me under the bus in that debate by engaging an “anonymous Dominican” etc. etc.).
The bishops of Kazakhstan were in Rome for their ad limina visit. The great Bp. Athanasius Schneider – bless him – scored some answers from Francis!
At the March 1 meeting, Bishop Athanasius Schneider, auxiliary of Astana, Kazakhstan, also obtained from Pope Francis a clarification that God only permits but does not positively will a “diversity of religions.”
In an exclusive interview with LifeSite, Bishop Schneider said the concerns raised during the two hour meeting with the Holy Father included “Communion for divorced and civilly ‘remarried’ Catholics, the issue of Communion for Protestant spouses in mixed marriages, and the issue of the practical spread of homosexuality in the Church.”
In a direct exchange between Pope Francis and Bishop Schneider, the claim that the “diversity of religions” is “willed by God” was also discussed. The expression, contained in a joint statement that Pope Francis signed last month with a Grand Imam in Abu Dhabi, has incited considerable controversy.
The Pope explicitly stated that Bishop Schneider could share the contents of their exchange on this point. “You can say that the phrase in question on the diversity of religions means the permissive will of God,” he told the assembled bishops, who come from predominantly Muslim regions.
So, that doesn’t change the text of that dreadful statement, but it brings a little more clarity to the situation. Of course, what else was Francis supposed to say? The only way out of that quicksand was the rope of “permissive will”.
The whole interview is at LifeSite. Read it.
I enjoyed this in particular.
LIFESITE: You mentioned the statistic that 80 percent of victims were post-pubescent males. How do you respond to Cardinal Blase Cupich and others who point to the John Jay report and other studies as evidence there is no causal relationship between homosexuality and clerical sex abuse?
SCHNEIDER: It’s a denial of reality. How can I speak with a man who denies reality? This is only explainable as an ideological position.
In any event, do read the interview. Montagna asked good questions and got great answers from Bp. Schneider.
And say a prayer for Bp. Schneider. He is a treasure in these times of dross and confusion.
For more from Bp. Schneider…
This Friday is poignant. Friday after Ash Wednesday is traditionally the Feast of the Crown of Thorns.
A significant portion of the Crown is preserved is preserved in Notre Dame de Paris. They have a special Crown of Thorns Mass on Fridays of Lent, and the relic is exposed. I’m not sure if the propers were changed under Novus Ordo, but am attaching the traditional propers for your convenience.
As an interesting point, in the appendix of pre-1962 missals there are other interesting votives connected to pre-Lent and Lent.
For example:
Tuesday after Septuagesima: The Agony in the Garden
Tuesday after Sexagesima: Passion of the Lord
Tuesday after Quinquagesima: Holy Face
Friday After Ash Wednesday: The Holy Crown of Thorns
Friday 1st Week of Lent: The Spear and Nails
Friday 2nd Week 2: The Sacred Shroud
Friday 3rd Week 3: The Five Wounds
Friday of 4th Week: The Most Precious Blood
And in Passiontide we have the Seven Sorrows of the BVM.
The history of the Crown of Thorns is intriguing. It was transferred from Jerusalem to Constantinople, pledged to Venice for a heavy loan, redeemed by the saintly Louis IX and taken to Paris. It survived the Revolution and remains today in a chapel directly behind the cathedral’s main altar.
While the Crown of Thorns feast would not be celebrated under the 1962 rubrics, I believe it would be licit as a Votive Mass on some ferial Friday per annum. Perhaps a priest assigned to a liberal tyrant pastor could use it on or near the anniversary of his assignment. Of maybe some priests could say it with a special intention for the bishop… or another prelate.
On that poignant note, I celebrated a TLM Requiem at Notre Dame, in the Chapel of the Crown of Thorns, when the late, great Bp. Morlino died. I was in Paris when the Extraordinary Ordinary passed away.
I was promptly hit by a motorcycle.
Pray for Bp. Morlino.
Pray for good successor to the Extraordinary Ordinary.
One of the things I have tried to accomplish with the Tridentine Mass Society of the Diocese of Madison (the TMSM is 501(c)(3)) is to provide worthy vestments for the celebration of the sacred mysteries. YOU readers, from all over the world, have helped in this regard through your donations. My gratitude is expansive.
The idea has been, along the lines of the vision of Benedict XVI and Summorum Pontificum, is that there should be a mutual enrichment of the Ordinary Form as well as an expansion of the use of the traditional Roman Rite. The TMSM vestments are available for celebrations great and small. For example, our white Pontifical set with the diocesan arms has been augmented by an addition half dozen chasubles and dalmatics so that they could be used for ordinations. We also have extra red chasubles for the same reason, since ordinations here take place at the end of June. Our purple pontifical set was used for the funeral Mass of the late, great Extraordinary Ordinary, Bishop Morlino (though the celebrant – grrrr – brought his own mismatching vestment).
In any event, because many of you have been so good to us, I wanted to let you know what we are up to.
Here is the new purple set (different from the purple pontifical set). We had this made with chasuble, dalmatics, cope, humeral veil, antependium, and tabernacle veil. We had a gremial made for it as well, so that it could be easily used for a Pontifical Mass at the Faldstool. This set remains at the parish where it is to be frequently used. This way we are not using pieces from the complete pontifical set, and moving them around town, thus exposing them to more wear.
Here are some action shots from Quinquagesima Sunday.
And for Ash Wednesday, from the stream. Same crew, but the diocesan vocation director took the role of celebrant for this.
Also, we have now in the works a new set. The tailors at Gammarelli are cutting the fabric today or tomorrow.
This will be the full pontifical set again, with all the dalmatics, tunics, needed for Mass at the Throne. In addition we are getting a “plus” size dalmatic and chasuble for a couple of the bigger boys on the team.
I will have special labels made to sew into these vestments with the name of the generous donor who made this set possible. When they are used, I will ask the sacred ministers, every time they put them on, to say a prayer for the donor.
There is the chance that we will have some embroidery of coats-of-arms of a priest or two on extra chasubles.
After this, dear readers, I intend to have a truly magnificent set made in BLACK to replace to dreadful set we obtained as a stop gap early in my administration. Of course I am looking for lots of money!
We will dedicate the new set to the memory of Bp. Morlino, who did so much to promote beauty in worship, and who so willingly celebrated Requiem Masses for the deceased priests and bishops of the diocese. The All Soul’s Requiem was his last Pontifical Mass on earth. His intention will be included in the next one.
¡Hagan lío!
Tridentine Mass Society of Madison
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This is the sort of dreck that Fishwrap publishes on Ash Wednesday – destruction of the Church’s identity and life through “updating” the sacraments.
Keep in mind that Christ instituted the sacraments during His earthly life. The Church has authority over how they are celebrated. The Church can and has altered the way that they have been celebrated. However, the Church has always been faithful to the Apostolic origins of the celebrations of sacraments and the changes have been made in continuity and not rupture.
Along comes Fishwrap (aka National Schismatic Reporter) which touts a book reviewed by a feminist at a non-Catholic generic seminary in NYC. The writer, Dr. Joseph Martos co-authored four books on spirituality with Fr. Richard Rohr, and has been involved with as Pax Christi and the Southern Poverty Law Center. His involvement in Catholic institutions includes a string of ultra-liberal places, such as St. Norbert’s in De Pere, St. John’s Collegville, CTU (blech). He was in a seminary in the 1960’s and did an STB at the Greg in Rome in 1967-68, so I assume he is an ex-priest.
What does the review say the book says? My emphases and comments.
[…]
Given that centuries have passed since the schoolmen fashioned this interpretation of the sacraments [NB: a poorly described version of the Church’s understanding of sacraments], it is time for the church, Martos argues, to reimagine and redesign the sacraments [“you shall be as gods” said the serpent] so that they once again express the genuine spiritual experiences of the Christian community.
Some examples: We should celebrate the sacrament of ordination not as the according of miraculous powers to an individual but as the communal recognition of those who have the skills needed for ministry — preaching, administration, counseling, governance — skills that are not limited by gender or sexual orientation. [NB: reduction of priesthood to tasks, and “recoginition” smacks of Rahner and recognition by celebration of pre-existing realities. The whole nasty business stinks of Schillebeeckx.] Marriage becomes the celebration of the spiritual reality at the heart of a mutually supportive, agape-type relationship, not a purity-based commitment to procreation. [That’s right, get procreation out of there, so that men can inseminate each others orifices and have the Church celebrate their sin.] Reconciliation should mean reaching out into the community to bring alienated groups and individuals together, not an individualist ritual of forgiveness for having broken some rules. [That bad ol’ institutional Church with all its “rules”!] The anointing of the sick, Martos believes, is already an “honest ritual” because the forms have expanded from a ritual exclusively for the dying to a variety of ceremonies, [?!?] in hospitals and nursing homes, at healing Masses in parishes (though the exclusion of women celebrants continues to be a problem). [It’s only a problem if you don’t care about efficacy of sacraments. But get this…] And the Eucharist should become the celebration and affirmation of what brings people together in a particular community around the vision and values of Jesus. Local church communities, under the leadership of local bishops, should implement these changes.
[…]
More dangerous garbage from the National Schismatic Reporter.
I refer the readership to my
Coat of Arms by D Burkart
A Daily Prayer for Priests
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