Carracci, The Beaneater – Il Mangiafagioli, painted in Bologna, now in Rome
I am making my way through various links which the trusted and not so trusted have sent for my attention. It is like mucking out a stall each day.
That said, here is an Omnium Gatherum post with some comments.
The Great Roman today alerted me to a fascinating post which is sure to have Great Beans simmering in his fiasca. At Politico.eu there is a piece about how Catholics in Italy, particularly those who go to Mass once a week, are turning on Francis because of his immigration stance. Their Interior Minister is taking a harder line about the literal invasion of Italy from North Africa.
If Italian Catholics were following Francis’ example, one would expect them to shy away from [Interior Minister] Salvini. Instead, they, like the rest of country, are flocking in his direction.
Among Catholics who attend mass at least once a week — about a third of Italians — support for Salvini has doubled, from 15.7 percent in March to 31.8 percent in July, according to a poll by Ipsos.
[…]
He took his oath, holding a Rosary.
[…]
Meanwhile, the pontiff’s popularity in Italy has dropped from 88 percent in 2013, when he was elected, to 71 percent, according to a recent poll. Among the key reasons, according to the poll’s author, Ilvo Diamanti, is migration.
“The atmosphere has worsened, and Catholics are not immune from it,” said Oliviero Forti, head of migration policy at Caritas Italia, the umbrella organization for Catholic aid agencies. “For many of these Catholics, the Holy Father is not perceived anymore as a spiritual guide. On the contrary, in some cases he’s accused of being far from the real problems people are facing.”
In June, after Salvini refused to allow a ship carrying migrants to dock in an Italian port, Francis tweeted out a message of solidarity with its passengers. The response was a flood of attacks, asking “Why you don’t take them to the Vatican?” and accusing the Catholic Charity Caritas of making money off of migrants in the country.
[…]
Italy is in big trouble in a lot of ways. It is noteworthy that some have proposed that Crucifixes should be displayed in public offices.
Frankly, as a response to a certain mangiaprete this makes me want to make Fagioli al fiasco. I shall take steps and report back.
Sticking with Italy, I read that in July there was a Requiem Mass celebrated for the celebrated author of thebeloved “Don Camillo” books. HERE Pretty good movies were made from them, staring a French actor as the cantankerous parish priest.
The Mass.
I wonder if anyone will do that for me. Hope so. The priest, don Marino Neri (one thing I do miss about being in Rome is “don”) gave a sound sermon. A couple tastes in my translation:
Dear faithful, by this solemn liturgy of suffrage, which marvelously praises and implores Divine Mercy upon the soul of the deceased, we are spurred to reflect on what is the end (purpose) of a man’s life, from which it can ultimately, be said to have been fully realized or irretrievably failed!
[…] He pointed out that Guareschi, a great gentleman, saw vast changes in the society politically and in the Church… […]
… [A]s a Catholic he saw the advancement of “the new” in the Church, which seemed to promise a springtime of the Spirit, only to have been discovered to be a cold winter.
[…] He quoted from a letter the writer penned to his character, don Camillo… […]
Still speaking of “his” don Camillo, with Catholic commonsense, he said: “Everyone has his own personal issues to confide to God (during Mass). And we come to church precisely because Christ is present in the consecrated Host and, therefore, we sense His nearness. You do your job, Reverend (celebrating Mass) and we’ll do our job (praying). Otherwise if you are the same as we are, what is a priest for?” And for us, 50 years after his death, we bring ourselves to recall, liturgically, the loss of a great man, a great Italian and a great Catholic. What are we supposed to do?
[…]
Channeling my inner don Camillo, I’ll say…
What are you supposed to do?
GO TO CONFESSION!
Then TAKE UP YOUR CROSS!
And please work for the wide and frequent celebration of Holy Mass in the Extraordinary Form and, for the Novus Ordo, ad orientem.
BTW… what Guareschi wrote about Latin is precious:
“Latin is a precise, essential language. It will be abandoned, not because it is unsuitable for the new requirements of progress, but because the new men will not be suitable for it. When the age of demagogues and charlatans begins, a language like Latin will no longer be useful, and any oaf will be able to give a speech in public and talk in such a way that he will not be kicked off the stage. The secret to this will consist in the fact that, by making use of words that are general, elusive, and sound good, he will be able to speak for an hour without saying anything. With Latin, this is impossible.”
In any event,…
US HERE – UK HERE
We turn to the oily dumpster fire that is the present scandal tearing at the Church in these USA. An interesting contribution to the discussion comes in the form of a video interview by Fr. Rosica with Card. Wuerl at the KofC convention. I won’t comment on it other than to point out an interesting reaction from Fr. Rosica about UnCard. McM after Card. Wuerl speaks of what’s going on as not being a “massive crisis” but rather a “disappointment”. About 3:00.
You decide.
Decide about this, too. On the same theme, this is a tweet from Rocco Palmo, who is experiencing a transfusion of new energy these days.
What’s up with this?
First, if you hadn’t heard, former Fr. Richard Sipe, who has been battling clerical abuse for decades, has gone to his reward. May God be merciful to him. HERE
However, in that tweet you read a blurb about San Diego’s Bp. McElroy. While bishops have fallen over themselves to say that “They knew nuh-sing!” about L’Affaire McCarrick, it seems that McElroy was, in fact, alerted to the details some time ago.
McElroy likely owed his rise to the UnCardinal. I also remember with fondness how he compared faithful Catholics to a “cancer” in the Church. Bp. McElroy has also championed homosexualist activist Jesuit Fr. James Martin. McElroy thinks that the term “intrinsic evils” should be dropped. He also has allowed the divorced and civilly remarried to receive Communion.
There had been rumors that Most Rev. McElroy would be moved to Washington DC or perhaps New York City.
In the meantime, at Fishwrap Madame Defarge has called the reaction to L’Affaire McCarrick a “witch hunt”. Of course the Fishwrap is a long-time promoter of homosexualism.
This seems a good transition point…
Folks, I admit that I forgot this year to submit my press credentials for the annual conflab of the LCWR. Fishwrap, HERE Apparently I missed their support for Black Lives Matter and their reflections on shared visions:
Stare and the “mandala of communion”. You are getting sleeeeeepy. A mandala is a Buddhist symbol.
Read that slide aloud a couple of times. Try not to get woozy.
In the article, I found this interesting quote… granted, out of context:
Invoking Catholic theologians throughout history, she added, “The persons of the Trinity do not have relation to one another; their divine nature is relation. … We are patterns that connect,” said the professor and chair of the department of theology and philosophy at Barry University.
Ummm…
BTW… wasn’t it now-Card. Tobin of McCarrick’s former Archdiocese of Newark who, as then Secretary for Religious in Rome, torpedoed the investigation of US women religious? Perhaps I remember that incorrectly.
Here is some more:
An associate professor at the Institute of Pastoral Studies at Loyola University Chicago, Russell said, “God who is Love means we are called to confront the evils and fragmentation of the world. … God’s promise is not to fix it for us, but to be with us and in us.”
Russell cited physicist David Bohm, who “has an image of the way in which wholeness enfolded, meaning folded into, and then unfolded in the world.”
“Bohm’s idea of implicate order is the idea that the whole creates and organizes the parts in such a way that the order or design of the whole is enfolded in each part,” she said. “The whole dwells at the core of each part and then unfolds itself in and through all of the parts. Each part is unique, in that it unfolds its own independent yet interconnected existence, but as it does so, it participates in the unfolding of the whole.”
Try to read that aloud, too. Especially that last part.
I wonder if someone checked the carbon monoxide levels in the hall.
Also, at the LCWR site there is a press release about clerical sexual abuse against nuns. It wasn’t long ago that the nuns were being called out for abuse of children by nuns. Right? HERE and HERE (cover up by Fishwrap?) and HERE. The late Richard Sipe looked into this. SEXUAL ABUSE BY NUNS
Finally, a well-formed source told me recently that, at this time, for the Archdiocese of Chicago, there is only ONE man going into major seminary, theology, and he is for the Canons of St. John Cantius. Of course the Canons, at this point, belong to the Archdiocese. Still, if we consider them as a group within but separate from archdiocesan efforts at promoting vocations, then Chicago would have, unless the situation changes, ZERO new guys for the major seminary this season. I hope this is not the case, but my interlocutor has impeccable credentials as a source for this.
One guy for Chicago. And he is in a traditional group.
See how this is going to play out?
This is why we have to double-down in our support for seminarians and young priests who are interested in our Traditional Rites.
And since a recently the world marked the 50th anniversary of the death of Giovanni Guareschi, we have another installment about the fictional not-quite-saint don Camillo Tarocci, (+ A.D. … ?), tough guy and parish priest.
The next step in “normalizing” perversion, what I call their “brass ring“, is the legal lowering of the age of consent. That’s the trajectory.
This is… unsettling.
