VARIA: Concrete parish project of reparation (PDF); Fighting back in Chicago; Disasters, death and YOU!; a little Latin (AUDIO); some super Catholic trivia.

Posted on 10 October 2018 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Some various notes.

Today I received the PDF of a booklet made for Sacred Heart parish in Grand Rapids, MI (the city in which you find the HQ of ACTON INSTITUTE).    This is what one parish is doing to respond to and to combat spiritually The Present Crisis.  It is a Parish Booklet of Reparation to be used over the next 9 months.  After I looked it over, I asked if I could make it more widely available.  It is a model for parishes on how to address today’s sin-infested chaos.  HERE  There are explanations, prayers, suggestions for penitential practices.  There are events scheduled at the parish for the whole of the nine months, including a “town hall” style meeting, during which serious issues were addressed.  I’m told that the meeting was… plain spoken.   Moreover, during the whole time, except for Christmas and Easter, they will drape the doors of the church in black.   These folks are doing what they can, and what they can is great.  Quantum potes, tantum aude.  It is a concrete program that could serve as a model for parishes and, indeed, dioceses.

Next, speaking of Acton, those of you in or near or able to get to Chicago in December, you will want to “save the date” for a Gala Dinner celebrating the Reclaiming of Western Civilization initiative of Acton Institute.  P.J. O’Rourke will speak at what looks to be an amazing event on 7 December at the Peninsula.  Visit www.acton.org/chicago or contact Nick Porter at (616) 454-3080.  This isn’t going to be a “walk in” event, I think.  One of the organizers tells me that they are aiming at “black tie” (I will have to make sure my ferraiuolo is in good shape).  There may even be… may.. be skating at the top of the Peninsula.  There are different levels of sponsorship and participation.   This looks exactly like the sort of thing that, right now, Chicago really needs to combat the… you know.

As Hurricane Michael barrels down on the Florida panhandle, I channel my inner Casandra to remind you that disasters always strike other people… until it’s your turn.  Two things about this.  Some disasters are pesky, some are lethal.  In view of a lethal crisis, GO TO CONFESSION.   Nothing scares me more than the thought of a “sudden and unprovided death”.  This is precisely the sort of death that we Catholics prayed about… when Catholics still prayed serious prayers instead of fumbling around with a lot “walking together”  and vain “discernment”.  In the great Litany we pray to God to save us from a “sudden and unprovided death”, unprovided in the sense that we don’t have the chance to receive the last sacraments or even to make an Act of Contrition.  Think about that.  RIGHT NOW, think about that.  It does happen to real people.  But it’s always someone else, right?    So, GO TO CONFESSION.

Together with the spiritual issues of facing disaster, some of you would perhaps like to live through disasters and some of you have the obligation to shepherd your families through to survival.   On this note, there are all sorts of preparations you can make.  The usefulness of “preparation” is found in that “pre”… before hand.  Waiting until something is coming is probably too late.   You have to have plans and prepositioned tools and goods.  We know about this.  However, there is another element of preparation that must be part of your work now.   In last month’s issue of Concealed Carry (August/September) there is an article about how fast things breakdown during a crisis.  It focuses on the “burbs”.  The writer makes the point that part of your preparation must include getting to know your neighbors, networking with them and even reconciling with them if there has been friction.  He cites how, in one place where supplies and groceries and power was lacking, people were stealing from each other within 48 hours.  They hadn’t even experienced true hardship, and yet things were already breaking down.

VARIA: Concrete parish project of reparation (PDF); Fighting back in Chicago; Disasters, death and YOU!; a little Latin (AUDIO); some super Catholic trivia.

Next, since the Devil hates Latin, as do libs, it seems good to pray in Latin as often as possible.  A friend of mine who has a really high pressure job in the highest pressure of environments imaginable, asked me for some help with the pronunciation of the Angelus in Latin.  I cobbled up a quick recording, wherein I say the prayers slowly, according to the Roman fashion which includes the 3 Gloria and the prayers for the dead at the end.

In Rome and other places – such as here at the Cupboard Under The Stairs – you can hear the Angelus rung.  Ideally we ring it at 0600 – 1200 – 1800.  The pattern of the bells can vary.  Sometimes there will be three sets of three (or an ascending number) strikes followed by peeling.  Many parish churches still have an “Angelus bell” in their towers, though it may not be used for that purpose any longer.  What a shame.   Only people with bad consciences are bothered by the sound of bells.

On a related note.  Besides the Angelus in Rome, once upon a time you could hear the ringing of the “Ave Maria” bell, especially around the Roman Curia.

This is a relic of time calculation from when accurate clocks were not simply everywhere.

The Ave Maria sounded a single bell struck 3 times, then 4 times, 5 times, and then 1 time.  The Ave Maria indicates the change of the religious day from day to night.

The Ave Maria is rung half an hour after sunset. If the Ave Maria is rung at 1800, as it is from 4-13 October, therefore today, then 1700 starts the 23rd hour of the day and 1900 is the 1st hour of the next day.  (From 13-22 Oct, it’s at 17:45)

When there were large religious communities in Roman churches and chapters of canons, Vespers would be sung an hour before the Ave Maria Bell. Today, for example, they would be sung at 1700.  However, in the Roman Curia, Cardinals and other officials would still receive people in audience for the hour after the Ave Maria Bell rang. An hour after the Ave Maria, a single bell would toll, thus ending all business for the day, since it was the first hour of night.

Thus, the Roman Ave Maria Bell.

There may be some parallels with the naval watches.  I have a ship’s bell that merrily chimes the nautical hours in their pairs of little tones.  It would be fun to have a clock set to ring the ecclesial hours.  It could be programmed also to toll at 3 PM on Friday and, on Saturday evening, to ring for a while to remind us of the coming Sunday.   Nice to think about.

Tempus autem fugit.

GO TO CONFESSION!

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Posted in "How To..." - Practical Notes, SESSIUNCULA | Tagged , , ,
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Is watered-down faith of #Synod2018 “worth dying for when the man with the machete shows up at your door?”

Posted on 10 October 2018 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Once upon a time I remarked to The Great Roman, raising his children in this increasingly dreadful time, that lay people like him each day face problems that would make most clerics curl up in a ball in the corner of a dark room.

With that as a preface, I would like to reproduce every sobering and mordant word of William Kirkpatrick’s piece today at Crisis about the ongoing Synod (“walking together”) on youth. I shan’t reproduce it all, but I can some. Let’s see the beginning.

My emphases, comments.

The Misplaced Priorities of Youth Synod Organizers
WILLIAM KILPATRICK

Reading through the Instrumentum Laboris (IL)—the working document for the Youth Synod—one gets the impression that the biggest challenge young people face in life is discovering their sexuality. Fortunately, the Synod Fathers stand ready to “accompany” youth on their journey of self-discovery wherever it may lead. The bishops have particular solicitude for LGBT youth who “face inequality and discrimination” because of “sexual orientation” (48).

Meanwhile, quite a few young Christians in Africa and elsewhere have other things to worry about than their sexual orientation. Not only do they face “inequality and discrimination,” they also face machetes and AK-47s. The day before the Synod opened, 17 Christians in Jos, Nigeria were slaughtered by Muslim jihadists. A week before that, 14 Christians, mostly women, were hacked to death by Islamic militants in the Central African Republic.

They were killed not because of their sexual orientation, but because of their faith—the faith that many of the synod bishops seem eager to water down to make it more palatable to youth. One suspects they also hope to make it more palatable to themselves. The language of the IL suggests that the framers of the working document favor “dialogue” over doctrine and non-judgmental flexibility over “unbending” judgment. It’s not surprising that the synod organizers would prefer a less judgmental Church since, as Julia Meloni documents in a recent Crisis piece, many of the key players at the Youth Synod are named in Archbishop Viganò’s testimony as being complicit in sex-abuse cover-ups.

[QUAERITUR:] The question is, is the watered-down form of faith that is proposed in the IL worth dying for when the man with the machete shows up at your door? [There it is.] As a number of others have observed, the IL document suggests that the role of the Church is to listen and accompany, but not to teach. What the document authors envision is the “emergence of a new paradigm of religiosity” which is “not too institutionalized” but “increasingly liquid” (63). [?!?!]

“Increasingly liquid”? Isn’t that just another way of saying “watered-down”? It’s a characteristic of youth—especially of the male variety—that they don’t want to be tied down. And that’s the appeal of this ever-changing liquid faith. It leaves you free to float around. The synod organizers understand this adolescent predisposition and in the IL document they cater to it shamelessly.

One can’t help but wonder if they share the same predisposition. In an intervention critiquing the IL, Archbishop Chaput characterized “developed” societies as being “frozen in a kind of moral adolescence; an adolescence which they’ve chosen for themselves and now seek to impose on others.” Much the same could be said of some of the prominent prelates at the Youth Synod. They seem over-concerned with adolescent wants, and they seem eager to legitimize whatever it is that young people (from whom we have so much to learn) want to be or do.  [Could it be that they, too, have adolescent wants?]

But religion is not a free-flowing, New Age, follow-your-bliss affair. The word “religion” is derived from the Latin “religare”—meaning “to bind fast.” At some point, youth has to grow up. And growing up in the faith means binding yourself to a set of beliefs and behaviors and, above all, to Christ.  [The task of a parent, a father, is to to raise children, from birth through the stages, to growing up and getting out into the world. True fathers don’t infantalize their children.  Instead of walking together, they kick their butts out or thrown them into the drink to swim.]

Even a good many non-religious people understand that growing up means tying yourself down—to your spouse, to your children, and, often, to a 30-year mortgage. It’s not entirely clear, however, that the synod organizers understand this. A main focus of the synod is “vocational discernment,” yet, as Thomas Ascik points out in a review of IL, “the document has nothing to say, recommend, or advocate whatsoever about the prospects, possibilities, or ‘vocational discernment’ of young Catholic women concerning motherhood.”

[…]

A visual aid for the participants of the Synod (“walking together”), in honor of the Great Roman.

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Divisions are growing

Posted on 10 October 2018 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

One of the things we have seen over the last few years is that there is a manifest division in the Church and that it is getting bigger.   For a long time we’ve seen that parishes within the same diocese are seriously different from each other in doctrine and in worship (the same thing).   Now we see sharp divisions between dioceses and even conferences of bishops.  For example, since Amoris you can step from one country into another country, like Poland into Germany, and find entirely different policies from bishops conferences on whether or note unrepentant adulterers can be admitted to Holy Communion.

Here is an example of neighboring dioceses in these USA having a sharp difference.

From CNSNews:

Chicago Cardinal Cupich: ‘Not Our Policy’ to Deny Communion to People in Same-Sex Marriages

[…]

During an interview on WTTW’s Chicago Tonight, host Phil Ponce raised the topic of Springfield, Illinois Bishop Thomas Paprocki, who had issued a decree in June 2017 on “Same-Sex ‘Marriage’ and Related Pastoral Issues.”

[…]

On the other hand, Chicago’s neighbor, Springfield has a different approach.

[…]

In his decree, citing scripture and the Canon Law that governs the Catholic Church, Bishop Paprocki said that homosexual “marriage” marked “a reversal of millennia of legal and judicial recognition of the marital union as possible only between on man and one woman.” He also said he had a “responsibility as diocesan bishop to guide the people of God entrusted to me with charity but without compromising the truth.”

[…]

The divisions are growing.

We know the truth.

We know who is consonant with the teaching of and the perennial practice of the Catholic Church.

Posted in Hard-Identity Catholicism | Tagged ,
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2nd Sunday of October: Votive Mass of the Good Thief in prisons, jails, etc.

Posted on 10 October 2018 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

As you may recall, 25 March is also the Feast of the Good Thief who, as Fulton Sheen said, “stole heaven”.

However, in your copies of the traditional Missale Romanum, in the back in the section on Masses for Various Places, we find this:

On the second Sunday of October
In prisons and in houses of reform of mores and of the discipline of amendment

On this day two II class Votive Masses of the Holy Good Thief can be said.
A commemoration of the Sunday is made and the Credo and Preface of the Trinity is said… 

2nd Sunday of October: Votive Mass of the Good Thief in prisons, jails, etc.

I have in mind the very cool news about what is going on liturgically at San Quentin Prison in California.  HERE

The Benedict XVI Institute in the Bay Area is doing good things.

Posted in ¡Hagan lío!, Just Too Cool, Liturgy Science Theatre 3000 | Tagged
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BOOKS RECEIVED: Why We Fight: Defeating America’s Enemies – With No Apologies @SebGorka

Posted on 9 October 2018 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

I am happy to report that a fresh new copy of Sebastian Gorka’s new book has arrived. I look forward to delving into it. His previous book was a sobering and realistic education.

Why We Fight: Defeating America’s Enemies – With No Apologies

US HERE – UK HERE

BOOKS RECEIVED: Why We Fight: Defeating America's Enemies - With No Apologies @SebGorka

And… it’s inscribed!

BOOKS RECEIVED: Why We Fight: Defeating America's Enemies - With No Apologies @SebGorka

If you have not already obtained and read it, I warmly recommend

Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War by Sebastian Gorka.

US HERE – UK HERE

More on this HERE.

 

Posted in REVIEWS | Tagged
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Good News: 1939 Dominican Rite Altar Missale – REPRINTED

Posted on 9 October 2018 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Good News: 1939 Dominican Rite Altar Missale - REPRINTEDAt NLM we have great news!

Dominican Rite 1939 Altar Missal Reprinted
FR. AUGUSTINE THOMPSON, O.P.

A piece of happy news has come to my attention. A hard-working friar of St. Vincent Ferrer Priory in New York City has gotten out a reprint of the 1939 Dominican Rite Altar Missale. This Missal is in smaller format than the large 1933 and 1965 Altar versions, as it was intended for travel. Use of it still requires updating the calendar to 1962 (download this on the left-sidebar at Dominican Liturgy), and use of the 1961 revised rubrics for collects as well as a couple other rubrical items, but it is eminently usable and in print!

A friar who uses it tell me that since the paper is thicker than that used in the original printing, so users will probably want to get a book-cover, e.g. one for a large Bible, so that lies flat. I believe it also needs ribbons and tabs. You can purchase it at Amazon or at many other used-book sites on the web.

US HERE – UK – not yet

Posted in Liturgy Science Theatre 3000 | Tagged
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The horrors of the lib dem agenda presaged in the horrors of the past

Posted on 9 October 2018 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

The horrors of the lib dem agenda presaged in the horrors of the pastThe horrors of the goals of liberal dems are presaged in the horrors of the past.

You should read this and remind yourself of the graciousness of God and the intervention of Our Lady in the New World.

HERE

Feeding the gods: Hundreds of skulls reveal massive scale of human sacrifice in Aztec capital

The priest quickly sliced into the captive’s torso and removed his still-beating heart. That sacrifice, one among thousands performed in the sacred city of Tenochtitlan, would feed the gods and ensure the continued existence of the world.

Death, however, was just the start of the victim’s role in the sacrificial ritual, key to the spiritual world of the Mexica people in the 14th to the 16th centuries.

Priests carried the body to another ritual space, where they laid it face-up. Armed with years of practice, detailed anatomical knowledge, and obsidian blades sharper than today’s surgical steel, they made an incision in the thin space between two vertebrae in the neck, expertly decapitating the body. Using their sharp blades, the priests deftly cut away the skin and muscles of the face, reducing it to a skull. Then, they carved large holes in both sides of the skull and slipped it onto a thick wooden post that held other skulls prepared in precisely the same way. The skulls were bound for Tenochtitlan’s tzompantli, an enormous rack of skulls built in front of the Templo Mayor—a pyramid with two temples on top. One was dedicated to the war god, Huitzilopochtli, and the other to the rain god, Tlaloc.

Eventually, after months or years in the sun and rain, a skull would begin to fall to pieces, losing teeth and perhaps even its jaw. The priests would remove it to be fashioned into a mask and placed in an offering, or use mortar to add it to two towers of skulls that flanked the tzompantli. For the Aztecs—the larger cultural group to which the Mexica belonged—those skulls were the seeds that would ensure the continued existence of humanity. They were a sign of life and regeneration, like the first flowers of spring.

But the Spanish conquistadors who marched into Tenochtitlan in 1519 saw them differently. For them, the skulls—and the entire practice of human sacrifice—evinced the Mexica’s barbarism and justified laying waste to the city in 1521. The Spanish tore down the Templo Mayor and the tzompantli in front of it, paved over the ruins, and built what would become Mexico City. And the great rack and towers of skulls passed into the realm of historical mystery.

[…]

It’s being excavated.

And what the lib dems and the traitorous catholic enablers have outstripped the Aztecs on an industrial scale by their support of Big Business Abortion™.

Imagine what it sounded like, back then.  Perhaps the screams were echoed in the howlings of the unhinged lefties to which we were recently treated on television.  The same spirit drives them.

Posted in Emanations from Penumbras, Liberals | Tagged ,
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Fr. Z’s Voice Mail: Message from a Ham, follow up to Catholic Psychiatrist info

Posted on 9 October 2018 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z’s Voice Mail: Message from a Ham, follow up to Catholic Psychiatrist infoI have been able to review… rehear?… my recent voicemail.  Among the various (no doubt well-meaning) messages concerning how I ought to live, how I ought to think, and how I ought to change pretty much everything I have ever been, said, done, or thought, there was this one, which I found energizing.

I always try to anonymize your messages.  This is from a fellow Ham Radio operator, which explains in part the reference to St. Maximilian Kolbe, who was also a Ham.

I really need to get back on the air.   FRUSTRATION.

Also, the last time I posted about Voice Mail, HERE, I mentioned that I had been contacted by a traditional Catholic psychiatrist who is willing to help out any priest who may be getting jammed up by his bishop or superior with a mind to force him into some kind of clinic for “evaluation” and “treatment”. This came on the heels of my post: HERE and HERE and HERE.  As it turns out, this produced a contact and a passing along of information.  Please, Lord, it may do some good or… even better… that it not be needed.

Wanna leave me voice mail?  You have three options:

Fr. Z’s Voice Mail: Message from a Ham, follow up to Catholic Psychiatrist info WDTPRS

Fr. Z’s Voice Mail: Message from a Ham, follow up to Catholic Psychiatrist info 020 8133 4535

Fr. Z’s Voice Mail: Message from a Ham, follow up to Catholic Psychiatrist info 651-447-6265

Since I pay a fee for the two phone numbers, USA and UK, I am glad when they get some use.

TIPS for leaving voice mail.

  1. Don’t shout.  If you shout, your voice will be distorted and I won’t be able to understand you.
  2. Don’t whisper.  C’mon.  If you have to whisper, maybe you should be calling the police, instead.
  3. Come to your point right away.  That helps.
  4. I don’t call you back.  I do listen to every message.
  5. Say from the onset if I can use your message in a post.

Send snail mail to:
Fr. John Zuhlsdorf
733 Struck St.
PO BOX 44603
Madison, WI 53744-4603

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9 Oct – Feast of Bl. J.H. Newman: “To be deep in history” Mug

Posted on 9 October 2018 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

It’s the feast (in some places and for some groups) of Bl. John Henry Newman.  Who can forget his beatification by Benedict XVI?

Also, Fr. Hunwicke suggests recitation of the Athanasian Creed for Oratorian families.  HERE    Oratories are springing up all over.  I’ve been deeply tempted to try to form one, which I believe would be a blessing where I am.

Those of you who may be new readers may not know about the mug I made with a phrase of Bl. John Henry Newman: “To be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant.“

Around this 2018 Synod perhaps we could say, “begin to be Catholic”?

Thinking back on the course of my own conversion, the elements which made it easier to take the plunge, and considering the growing projects of the Anglican Ordinariates, and also remembering that Benedict XVI – The Pope of Christian Unity – beatified John Henry Newman…. I put the phrase on a coffee mug.

Fill yours with Mystic Monk Coffee as soon as humanly possible.

Here is a shot of the regular sized coffee mug… I’ll bet you could put your yogurt and granola in it too.

To be deep in history

The Z-Swag Store is HERE.

A shot of the larger coffee mug.. I’ll bet that you could put … hot chocolate in it too!

T

You see that for this mug I really wrapped the design across most of its surface.

Here is the largest mug, the stein.  I suspect that this might be coaxed into holding a beer.

T

The image itself (it’s larger on the mugs):

To be deep in history

Here are three shots of the ur-mug, the larger coffee mug.   It is made from the same durable stuff I punished for years in the microwave and dishwasher.  Though I don’t have a dishwasher now… other than my hands.

9 Oct - Feast of Bl. J.H. Newman: "To be deep in history" Mug

9 Oct - Feast of Bl. J.H. Newman: "To be deep in history" Mug

9 Oct - Feast of Bl. J.H. Newman: "To be deep in history" Mug

I also made another version, with the phrase tighter on one side to make it easier to read:

9 Oct - Feast of Bl. J.H. Newman: "To be deep in history" Mug

 

After years of treating these things with great brutality in the nuclear reactor and the bottom rack of the washer near the heat, I succeeded in getting a crack in one of them, cosmetic, but not fatal.

It might start a conversation.

But I suggest that before flashing it about, you might brush up on why being deep in history leads to the Catholic Church.

 

Posted in Saints: Stories & Symbols |
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Google Staff about SCOTUS Justice Kavanaugh: ‘F—. YOU. ALL. TO. HELL.’

Posted on 9 October 2018 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

I’m entirely convinced that this blog is badly treated by Google.

From Newsbusters:

Google Staff Reacts to Kavanaugh: ‘F—. YOU. ALL. TO. HELL.’

It’s hard to believe that people with political agendas are capable of building unbiased products. Google certainly faces that test.

After Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court on Saturday, October 6, several employees and executives at Google expressed their rage on Twitter. Design lead Dave Hogue tweeted, “You are finished, GOP. You polished the final nail for your own coffins. F[***]. YOU. ALL. TO. HELL. I hope the last images burned into your slimy, evil, treasonous retinas are millions of women laughing and clapping and celebrating as your souls descend into the flames.”

Later, Hogue deleted the tweet and posted, “Yes, those opinions are mine personally, and I am responsible for them. Yes, I should have been more eloquent and less condemning. Yes, I still believe the @GOP is wrong and not serving your best interests. Yes, I still believe we can do much better.”

He wasn’t alone in his stance. Other Google employees had similar opinions. Google Ventures partner and product manager Ken Norton shared a tweet promoting a PAC to tell Senator Collins to vote no on Kavanaugh. He also tweeted, “Abolish the Senate.” Someone in charge of funding new technology projects wants to alter the branches of the government to suit his needs. That’s concerning.

Julia Ferraioli, an OpenSource Senior Developer Advocate at Google, responded to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s quote, “These things always blow over.” She wrote, “We will prove you wrong,” and then later tweeted that while she had planned to go protest at the Capitol, she could not because of illness.

Google was quoted by Fox News as saying, “What employees say in their personal capacity has no bearing on the way we build or operate our products.”

[…]

Posted in Liberals | Tagged , ,
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