Does Pope Francis have a “long game” strategy?

Posted on 23 May 2018 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

We had a phrase in the Curia that described our approach to some questions and challenges: Cunctando regitur mundus.   This is a fundamental dimension of Romanitas: the world is ruled by delaying.

You outwait your opponents, rather than outwit them.  Think Cincinnatus and the Aequi.

There is an engaging piece at The Week about the Pope’s “cunning” long-game strategy.   Damon Linker, the writer, may be right and he may be wrong.  Either way it is a great read.

Pope Francis’ cunning long game

Pope Francis’ stealth reform of the Roman Catholic Church shows no sign of slowing down — and may even be accelerating.

Stealth is key here. If the pope had declared earlier this month that henceforth the Roman Catholic Church would authoritatively teach that homosexuals should be happy being gay, that God made them homosexual, and that God himself (along with the pope) loves them just the way they are, it would have been a massive story in the history of Catholicism — and one that quite likely would have precipitated a major schism, with conservative bishops and priests (mainly in North America and Africa) formally breaking from Rome.

But because word of the pope saying these things comes to us second hand, in a report of a private conversation between Francis and a gay man named Juan Carlos Cruz who is also a victim of the clerical sex abuse crisis in Chile, the utterance will go down as just the latest example of the pope making unorthodox statements in settings in which he has plausible deniability and in which he can claim he was speaking as a pastor rather than as an expositor of the church’s official dogmas and doctrines.

Most popes view themselves as caretakers of the church’s authoritative teachings on faith and morals. When it comes to homosexuality, they would therefore be inclined to reaffirm the position laid out in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which clearly states that homosexual desires are “intrinsically disordered” because they are not oriented to the end of procreation. (The same is true of masturbation and other non-procreative sex acts.)

If Pope Francis were a straightforward reformer, he would seek to change church doctrine regardless of the potentially dire consequences for church unity. But Francis is well aware of the limits of his power and the danger of pushing too far too fast. So he has set out on a different, and distinctive, path.

[… examples…]

What unites all of these examples is a distinctive approach to church dogma and doctrine. Instead of acting as an expositor of these core teachings of the church, the pope selectively diverges from them in his actions and statements without deigning to change the teachings themselves. The implicit message is the same in every case: The pope himself thinks it’s possible to be a member of the church in good standing while failing to abide by all of the institution’s rules.

[…]

[I] think the pope’s strategy for a longer game displays greater psychological acuity — and Machiavellian cunning. Francis may be betting that once the church stops preaching those doctrines that conflict most severely with modern moral norms, the number of people who uphold and revere them will decline rapidly (within a generation or two). Once that has happened, officially changing the doctrine will be much easier and much less likely to provoke a schism (or at least a major one) than it is in the present.

He could be right.  It could be that Francis is doing this as part of a long-term plan.   Or maybe not.

I am convinced that Pope John Paul in fact did have a few long-term plans.  I think he knew somehow that he would have a long pontificate.  He set out to shift the world’s episcopate from being nearly-out-of-the-Church weird, to being middle-of-the-road to conservative… slowly.  He started out by appointing a couple of strange guys (presented by the Congregation – which he shifted around) and a good guy.  Eventually, it was a couple of good guys and a strange guy.   He never moved hard enough to provoke a schism, which, it seems to me, could very well have happened in these USA after the chaos of post-conciliar era and the pontifical of Paul VI.

Speculation?

Sure.  This is the blogosphere, after all.

Posted in Francis, Sin That Cries To Heaven, The Coming Storm, The Drill, The future and our choices | Tagged ,
17 Comments

Interview about Honduran Card. Rodriguez Maradiaga

Posted on 23 May 2018 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Ed Pentin, the superstar of English language Vaticanistas working in Rome, has a fascinating interview with the widow of the former Ambassador of Honduras to the Holy See.   It seems that she had taken investment advice given to her but Honduran Oscar Card. Rodriguez Maradiaga, who has been implicated in some shady financial dealings.   She followed his advice and the investment company disappeared with her money.

In the interview with Martha Alegria Reichmann, Pentin also asked her opinion of the state of things in the Church in Honduras, which is a rather troubled country.   Her answers are truly alarming.

To read click HERE

Posted in SESSIUNCULA | Tagged , ,
6 Comments

Canadian Jesuit Archbp. Prendergast comments on crazy German bishops’ scheme

Posted on 23 May 2018 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

There are two kinds of Jesuits, and Ottawa’s Archbp. Terrence Prendergast is one of them.

He recently said some things that make a lot of sense about the nonsensical German bishops and their deeply dopey move towards Communion for non-Catholics and about fellow Jesuit Pope Francis and his decision to let them figure it out on their own. Check out the site of Ottawa’s Catholic weekly HERE.

Even a consensus among German Catholic bishops allowing intercommunion with Protestants cannot change Catholic teaching, says a Canadian archbishop.  [A “consensus” doesn’t make something that’s wrong into something that’s right.]

“Even more important is the challenge to remain faithful to Catholic doctrine and not to propose practices that undermine the faith, and the need to foster loyalty and communion with the universal Church,” said Archbishop Terrence Prendergast, SJ, of Ottawa in an interview. [In a way, the Germans would be splitting off from the rest of the Church.] “It is puzzling to learn that the Holy Father told the bishops that whatever they determine is acceptable as long as they all agree.”

A majority of German bishops would like to offer communion to Protestant spouses of Catholics under some circumstances. A minority disagrees. After a meeting May 3 at the Vatican of representatives of both sides of the debate, the prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith told them Pope Francis wanted the German bishops to find consensus on the matter.  [When We are Pope, We will immediately remove from office any bishop would would even whisper such a thing.]

Dutch Cardinal Willem Eijk, [May God bless him….] Archbishop of Utrecht, in an open letter May 5, urged the Pope to provide clarity, explaining both the Catechism of the Catholic Church and Canon Law do not permit intercommunion with Protestants.

“Pope Francis is right when he says that not every theological debate needs to be settled by authoritative interventions of the papal magisterium,” Prendergast said. “And Cardinal Eijk is right when he says that the question of intercommunion is a doctrinal matter that cannot be settled by an isolated decision of a national conference of bishops.”

“This is, in fact, a classical situation of discerning between things that are changeable — or possible — and others that are not,” the Jesuit archbishop said. “It seems clear by now that many bishops and Catholics in the world consider ill-advised and doctrinally impossible what a number of bishops in Germany have proposed.”

The intercommunion debate reaches the limit on pastoral diversity, he said.

“Receiving the Eucharist is intrinsically linked to the faith, my personal faith and the faith of the community to which I belong,” Prendergast said. “What the majority of bishops in Germany proposes means that a person who does not belong to the Catholic Church routinely, perhaps every Sunday, receives the Eucharist in the Catholic Church.

“This kind of open communion is against Catholic teaching and from what I can see in non-Catholic congregations that follow a discipline of ‘open communion,’ it is also spiritually and pastorally unfruitful.”

[NB] The archbishop said he cannot ignore the German intercommunion debate because “the church is a close-knit network” and people of Ottawa are asking about it.  [It sounds as if the German bishops are causing scandal.]

“Catholics in Canada generally know that receiving communion requires belonging to the Church, among other things,” he said. “This discipline is well-known and widely appreciated in our parishes.”  [A 7 year-old should know this!]

The intercommunion debate offers an opportunity for Catholics in Canada to reconsider their own Eucharistic practices, he said, noting often Catholics who come to church after years of not attending receive communion “as a matter of course.”  [This is important.  I often write back to people who are really frustrated, especially to priests, that every time one of these controversies pop up – which is pretty often right now – we have an opportunity to stand in the pulpit with a copy of a good catechism and teach and explain the TRUTH.]

More needs to be taught concerning the benefits of attending Mass without receiving communion as well as what it means “to be properly disposed and in the state of grace,” the archbishop said. [YES YES YES!] “I feel we need to invest more in receiving the sacraments worthily and fruitfully. This is true for the Eucharist, but also for Baptism and Confirmation.”

“Formalism and cultural routine alone will not cut it,” he said. “Receiving communion has to make a difference in our lives, and be meaningful. Otherwise we are deceiving ourselves, and as pastors we are deceiving others.

“In Holy Communion we receive the Lord, and so, to receiving worthily, we need to be fully open to Him and connected to His Church, visibly and invisibly, institutionally and internally. That and nothing less is Catholic teaching.”

On a personal note, the Archbishop had some words for Pope Francis as a fellow Jesuit.

“I would say thanks for reminding us that accompanying people through their lives, especially in dark times, is essential for being a priest,” he said. “And thanks for resisting much media hysteria. We Jesuits always have to remember that most Catholics are not Jesuits[Are most Jesuits Catholics?  That’s another question.] — a fact we tend to overlook sometimes. Our spirituality is not for everyone — perhaps hard to say, but so true.

“For me, becoming a bishop was a real change, for then I had to recognize the whole spectrum of theologies, spiritualties, ministries and charisms present in the diocese entrusted to me,” he said. “Through this I came to realize what a great gift doctrine is for the Church, enabling it to be one, holy, and catholic.”

Fr. Z kudos in the extreme.

Posted in Fr. Z KUDOS, Liturgy Science Theatre 3000, Our Catholic Identity | Tagged , ,
9 Comments

Pope’s words about God making someone “gay”

Posted on 22 May 2018 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

First, I hate that term “gay”.  There’s nothing “gay” about it.

The liberal Left is slobbering all over alleged words of Pope Francis to a young homosexual man, who says that Pope told him that God made him homosexual.

I am not going to accept the claim that that is what the Holy Father actually said.  Gratis asseritur…. And, were he to have said that, that would do nothing in any official way to change or to redirect the Church’s teachings about homosexual persons.

Doctrine is not officially taught and Pope’s don’t change the Church’s teachings in off-the-cuff private remarks that can’t be substantiated one way or another.

It seems to me we’ve seen this movie before… and it ain’t The Bells of Saint Mary.

Some months ago I wrote a post after a priest “outed” himself as being homosexual.    HERE   I stand by it now.   It is appropriate to review the substance of it:

Homosexual acts are clearly wrong. Our parts are intended by God to fit a certain way.  They are ordered to each other in a complimentary way.  God made us to live the human life in a properly ordered way, according to our human nature which He created.  We can choose not to live that way.  If we have inclinations not to live as God made us, that doesn’t mean that God made the aberrant inclination.   God makes all people.  People with disordered inclinations are, of course, people and, hence, God made them.   But God didn’t make them to be people with disorders.  God foresees and allows disorders, but that doesn’t make the disorders the norm.  All human beings are intended to live the human life in a properly ordered way.  Those who have some disorder have a harder time doing that.

We believe, however that overcoming that disorder, which will entail suffering, will bring them great merit and beautiful rewards in heaven, if not on earth.

Same-sex attraction is a disordered attraction.   God doesn’t make disordered attraction.  He foresees and permits disorders, according to His plan.  But it is not part of the normal ordering of living the human life.

All analogies limp a little, but let’s look at this another way.

If we study, say, 10000 beavers, we get a good picture of what beavers are made by God to do, what Beaver Life™ is.  Beavers are semi-aquatic. They gnaw down trees, make dams and lodges out of branches, logs, stones and mud. They work at night and slap the water with their tails when there is danger. They do not hibernate, so they stockpile food for the winter. They eat plants and bark and roll up lily pads like cigars to munch on. They mate for life, live in colonies, and they make little beavers during the winter.

That’s pretty much it. That’s what living the Beaver Life™ is. God makes all beavers and makes the Beaver Life™ which all rightly, beaverly, ordered beavers live.

However, say that among the 10000 beavers we have studied to determine what Beaver Life™ is, we find a beaver who, instead of gnawing trees and building dams, collects discarded aluminum cans out of which he constructs abstract art. Instead of stockpiling food before the winter, he lounges in the sun. Instead of rolling up lily pads before eating them, he eats frogs.  Instead of using his tail as a rudder and to signal danger, he swims backwards and ignores danger completely.

You would have to say that God made that beaver, but you wouldn’t say that that beaver was living Beaver Life™ properly. You would probably say that this beaver has a disorder of some kind. He’s doing the wrong things. Furthermore, if other beavers start to imitate the beaver with the disorder, there could be a problem for the survival of that colony.  You would hope that that beaver would correct his ways, stop giving a bad example to the other beavers, and cease to undermine Beaver Life™ which God intended for all beaverkind.

Frankly, a beaver like that wouldn’t last very long in the wild.  A beaver with that disordered inclination would probably win the Darwin Award, so to speak, and leave the gene pool.

Living Human Life™ as God intended is more complicated than living Beaver Life™ as God intended.  We aren’t governed by instincts as critters are.  We have reason and will, unlike brute beasts.  Still, natural law holds for us as it does for beavers.  Our natures are written into us by God.

Homosexual acts are wrong in themselves.  They are intrinsically disordered.  They are sinful in themselves.  They can never be right.  Never.   They are identified as intrinsically wrong by reason, observation of nature, and because of divine revelation.

The inclination to disordered acts is a disordered inclination.

[…]

Having an attraction to, an appetite for someone of the same-sex is disordered, contrary to the complimentarity which God wrote into our human nature as males and females.  God makes order, not disorder.  He foresees and permits that their be disorders and sins and even defects all through nature, and somehow they can serve to His greater glory.  But the disorders and the sins and the defects are not God’s will.

We will see how that all works out only in the general judgment after all things are submitted to the Father and God is all in all.

In sorting out questions about why some people have same-sex appetites, we have to understand something about God’s positive or ideal will and God’s permissive will.

God is perfect, infinitely good. God can only will that which is good, true, beautiful and holy.

So why is there evil in the world? Why are there disorders?

God willed that Adam and Eve remain holy. But because He willed that they have a free will, as He has a free will, He permitted them to fall. He did not will them to fall. He permits that sins be committed, he does not will them to be committed. Because of the nature of… well… nature, he permits that there be defects or weaknesses. He does not will them.

God doesn’t make people sin. He permits it. He foresees and uses it. But God the perfect Orderer cannot be the cause of disorder.

I suspect that in most cases, homosexual relationships that involve genital, etc., acts are really a twisting and warping of friendship.  But that might be a topic for a different entry.

Homosexual persons with same-sex attractions or desires have disordered, improperly directed, attractions or desires.  That doesn’t mean that they are “bad people” or “automatically sinful” or name your label.   They are made in God’s image and likeness and, therefore, have the dignity inherent in all human beings.  God permitted the disordered inclination and, somehow, we shall see what it all means in the vast scheme of His plan when the General Judgment rolls around.  Meanwhile, I firmly believe that people with those inclinations, if they remain chaste and continent or learn to redirect themselves, will – because of their trials and sufferings – have a high place in heaven.

Great challenges bring great graces and, eventually, great rewards, though those rewards may not be realized until heaven.

Meanwhile, I utterly reject and abhor strident efforts to normalize these disordered inclinations and the acts that follow upon them.  I also find loathsome the efforts of those who vilify people who uphold the dignity of human sexuality as God clearly intended it.

 

Posted in SESSIUNCULA | Tagged , ,
22 Comments

Some cool stuff, old and new, in Rome and Detroit

Posted on 22 May 2018 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

First, I am glad to report that Gammarelli is ready to ship our new processional canopy, and we will have it in time for Corpus Christi.  It will match our white Pontifical Mass set.  Here are some shots of the guys playing with it before boxing it up.

Hmmm… I must get in touch right away with La Lame in NYC about appropriate appliqués.

Today a priest friend and I went to the Detroit Institute of Art.   The Star Wars exhibit is now open.  Obi-Wan’s gear…

C3PO’s stuff.

What Chewy might have looked like…. whew.

Ooops… that was Federico, Prince of Urbino at 18 months old.

This, however, is from Star Wars…

The detail and textures are simply amazing.

And the concept for the opening credits… notice anything?

And, just so that you don’t think that we spent the entire time in there, here is a magnificent French ivory.  Read it from the bottom up, left to right on each level.  Each box has two scenes, and they magnificently blend against each other.  Note in the first panel, the lovely S curves, typical to French Gothic.  I loaded a large image so you might be able to click it for a new tab and see it larger.

Wow, right?  What a happy lexicon of images, also like poetry.

And speaking of multiple images, there was a good display of tobacco baseball cards, an entire series for 1909-11.

Yes, they had a Honus Wagner, in another case.  Here are a few highlights… passing over Ty Cobb and Christy Mathewson and Cy Young.

I wonder who will pick up on these guys…

That last bit was for a friend who is a bit of a Cubs fab.   Eamus Catuli.

And these houses are just around the corner from where I am presently writing.  There are blocks and block and blocks like this in every direction.

Posted in Just Too Cool, On the road, What Fr. Z is up to | Tagged , , ,
14 Comments

@Card_R_Sarah terrific sermon for Pentecost and pilgrimage

Posted on 22 May 2018 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

His Eminence Robert Card. Sarah gave a terrific sermon at Chartres for the conclusion of the traditional Pentecost pilgrimage. NLM has the text in English.

Shall I touch some items that really caught my attention?  My emphases and comments.

Allow me first of all to warmly thank His Excellency Bishop Philippe Christory, Bishop of Chartres, for his fraternal welcome to this wonderful Cathedral.

Dear Chartres pilgrims,

“The light has come into the world,” Jesus tells us today in the Gospel (John 3, 16-21), “and men have preferred darkness.”

And you, dear pilgrims, have you welcomed the only light that does not deceive: that of God? You walked for three days, prayed, sang, suffered under the sun and in the rain: did you welcome the light in your hearts? Have you really given up darkness? Have you chosen to pursue the Way by following Jesus, who is the Light of the world? Dear friends, allow me to ask you this radical question, because if God is not our light, all the rest becomes useless. Without God all is darkness!

God came to us, he became man. He has revealed to us the only truth that saves, he died to redeem us from sin, and at Pentecost he gave us the Holy Spirit, he gave us the light of faith … but we prefer darkness!  [He is barely into his sermon and he has plunged right in.  BAM!]

Let’s look around us! Western society has chosen to establish itself without God. Witness how it is now delivered to the flashy and deceptive lights of a consumer society: to profit at all costs, and frenzied individualism.

A world without God is a world of darkness, of lies and of selfishness!

Without the light of God, Western society has become like a drunken boat in the night! She does not have enough love to take in children, to protect them beginning from their mother’s womb, to protect them from the aggression of pornography.

Deprived of the light of God, Western society no longer knows how to respect its elderly, accompany unto death its sick, make room for the poorest and the weakest.

Society is abandoned to the darkness of fear, sadness and isolation. She has nothing to offer but emptiness and nothingness. It allows the proliferation of the maddest ideologies.

A Western society without God can become the cradle of an ethical and moral terrorism more virulent and more destructive than Islamist terrorism. Remember that Jesus told us, “And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matt. 10, 28).

Dear friends, forgive me this portrayal. But one must be clear and realistic.

If I speak to you in this way, it is because, in my priestly, pastoral heart, I feel compassion for so many wayward souls, lost, sad, worried and lonely! Who will lead them to the light? Who will show them the way to the truth, the only true path of freedom which is that of the Cross? Are we going to leave them to be delivered to error, to hopeless nihilism, or to aggressive Islamism?

We must proclaim to the world that our hope has a name: Jesus Christ, the only Savior of the world and of humanity! We can no longer be silent!  [Pulling no punches… in France.   And, I tried to cut it here, but I couldn’t….]

Dear Pilgrims of France, look upon this cathedral! Your ancestors built it to proclaim their faith! Everything, in its architecture, its sculpture, its windows, proclaims the joy of being saved and loved by God. Your ancestors were not perfect, they were not without sins. But they wanted to let the light of faith illuminate their darkness!

Today, you too, People of France, wake up! Choose the light! Renounce the darkness!

How can this be done? The Gospel tells us: “He who acts according to the truth comes to the light.” Let the light of the Holy Spirit illuminate our lives concretely, simply, and even in the most intimate parts of our deepest being. To act according to the truth is first to put God at the center of our lives, as the Cross is the center of this cathedral.

My brothers, choose to turn to Him every day! At this moment, make the commitment to keep a few minutes of silence every day in order to turn to God, to tell him “Lord reign in me! I give you all my life!”

Dear pilgrims, without silence, there is no light. Darkness feeds on the incessant noise of this world, which prevents us from turning to God.

Take the example of the liturgy of the Mass today. It brings us to adoration, filial fear and love in the presence of God’s greatness. It culminates in the Consecration where together, facing the altar, our gaze directed to the host, to the cross, we commune in silence in recollection and in adoration.  [ad orientem is what he is pushing here]

Dear friends, let us love these liturgies that enable us to taste the silent and transcendent presence of God, and turn us towards the Lord.

Dear brother priests, I want to address you specifically. The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is the place where you will find the light for your ministry. The world we live in is constantly petitioning us. We are constantly in motion, without taking care to stop and take the time to go to a deserted place to rest a little, in solitude and silence, in the company of the Lord. There is the danger that we regard ourselves as “social workers”. Then, we would not bring the Light of God to the world, but our own light, which is not that which men expect from us. What the world expects of the priest is God and the Light of his Word proclaimed without ambiguity or falsification.

Let us know how to turn to God in a liturgical celebration, full of respect, silence and sacredness. Do not invent anything in the liturgy. Let us receive everything from God and from the Church. Do not look for show or success. The liturgy teaches us: To be a priest is not above all to do many things. It is to be with the Lord, on the Cross! The liturgy is the place where man meets God face to face. The liturgy is the most sublime moment when God teaches us to “ to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the first-born among many brethren” (Rom. 8, 29). Liturgy is not and should not be an occasion for grief, struggle or strife. In the ordinary form, just as in the extraordinary form of the Roman rite, the essential thing is to turn to the Cross, to Christ, our East, our Everything and our only Horizon! Whether in the ordinary form or the extraordinary form, let us always celebrate, as on this day, according to what the Second Vatican Council teaches: with a noble simplicity, without useless additions, without factitious and theatrical aesthetic, but with the sense of the sacred, with the primary concern for the Glory of God, and with a true spirit of a son of the Church of today and of always!

Dear fellow priests, always keep this certainty: to be with Christ on the Cross is what priestly celibacy proclaims to the world! The plan, again advanced by some, to detach celibacy from the priesthood by conferring the sacrament of the Order on married men (“viri probati”) for, they say, “pastoral reasons or necessities”, would have serious consequences, in fact, to definitively break with the Apostolic Tradition. We would to manufacture a priesthood according to our human dimension, but without perpetuating, without extending the priesthood of Christ, obedient, poor and chaste. Indeed, the priest is not only an “alter Christus”, but he is truly “ipse Christus”, he is Christ himself! And that is why, following Christ and the Church, the priest will always be a sign of contradiction! ~ To you, dear Christians, lay people engaged in the life of the City, I want to say with force: “do not be afraid! Do not be afraid to bring the light of Christ to this world!  [And yet this will be discussed at length at the upcoming Synod.]

Your first witness must be your own example: act according to the Truth! In your family, in your profession, in your social, economic, political relations, may Christ be your Light! Do not be afraid to testify that your joy comes from Christ!

Please, do not hide the source of your hope! On the contrary, proclaim it! Testify to it! Evangelize! The Church needs you! Remind all that only “the crucified Christ reveals the true meaning of freedom! “ (Veritatis Splendor 85) with Christ, set free liberty that is today chained by false human rights, all oriented towards the self-destruction of man.

To you, dear parents, I want to send a special message. Being a father and mother in today’s world is an adventure full of suffering, obstacles and worries. The Church says to you: “Thank you”! Yes, thank you for the generous gift of yourselves! Have the courage to raise your children in the light of Christ. You will sometimes have to fight against the prevailing wind and endure the mockery and contempt of the world. But we are not here to please the world! “We proclaim a crucified Christ, scandal for the Jews and folly for the Gentiles” (1 Cor. 1, 23-24) Do not be afraid! Do not give up! The Church, through the voice of the Popes – especially since the encyclical Humanae Vitae – entrusts to you a prophetic mission: to testify before all of our joyful trust in God, who has made us intelligent guardians of the natural order. You announce what Jesus has revealed to us through his very life: “Freedom is accomplished in love, that is to say, the gift of oneself.” (Veritatis Splendor 87)

Dear Fathers and Mothers, the Church loves you! Love the Church! She is your Mother. Do not join those who laugh at her, because they only see the wrinkles of her face aged by centuries of suffering and hardship. Even today, she is beautiful and radiates holiness.

Finally, I want to address you, you the younger people who are numerous here!

However, I beg you first to listen to an “elder” who has more authority than me. This is the Evangelist St. John. Beyond the example of his life, St. John also left a written message to young people. In his First Letter, we read these moving words of an elder to the young people of the churches he had founded. Listen to his voice full of vigor, wisdom and warmth: “ I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one. Do not love the world or the things in the world”(1 John 2, 14-15).

The world we must not love, as Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa commented in his homily on Good Friday 2018, to which we do not have to comply, is not, as we all know, the world created and loved by God, it is not the people of the world to whom, on the contrary, we must always go to, especially the poor and the poor of the poor, to love them and serve them humbly … No! The world not to love is another world; it is the world as it became under the rule of Satan and sin. The world of ideologies that deny human nature and destroy the family … structures from the UN, which impose a new global ethic, play a decisive role and have today become an overwhelming power, spreading through the airwaves through the unlimited possibilities of technology. In many Western countries, it is a crime today to refuse to submit to these horrible ideologies. This is what we call adaptation to the spirit of the times, conformism. A great British believer and poet of the last century, Thomas Stearns Eliot wrote a few verses that say more than whole books: “In a world of fugitives, the person taking the opposite direction will appear to run away”.

Dear young Christians, if it is permissible for an “elder,” as St. John, to speak directly to you, I also exhort you, and I say to you, you have overcome the Evil One! Fight any law against nature that would be imposed upon on you, oppose any law against life, against the family. Be of those who take the opposite direction! Dare to go against the grain! For us, Christians, the opposite direction is not a place, it is a Person, it is Jesus Christ, our Friend and our Redeemer. A task is especially entrusted to you: to save human love from the tragic drift into which it has fallen: love, which is no longer the gift of oneself, but only the possession of the other – a possession often violently tyrannical. On the Cross, God revealed himself as “agape”, that is to say as a love that is given to death. To really love is to die for the other. Like the young gendarme, Colonel Arnaud Beltrame!

Dear young people, you often, without doubt, suffer in your soul the struggle of darkness and light. You are sometimes seduced by the easy pleasures of the world. With all my heart of a priest, I say to you: do not hesitate! Jesus will give you everything! By following him to be Saints, you will not lose anything! You will win the only joy that never disappoints!

Dear young people, if today Christ calls you to follow him as a priest, as a religious, do not hesitate! Say to him: “fiat”, an enthusiastic and unconditional yes!

God wants you to have need of you, what grace! What a joy! The West has been evangelized by the Saints and the Martyrs. You, young people of today, will be the saints and the martyrs that the nations are waiting for in a New Evangelization! Your homelands are thirsty for Christ! Do not disappoint them! The Church trusts you!

I pray that many of you will answer today, during this Mass, the call of God to follow him, to leave everything for him, for his light. Dear young people, do not be afraid. God is the only friend who will never disappoint you! When God calls, he is radical. It means He goes all the way to the root. Dear friends, we are not called to be mediocre Christians! No, God calls us all to the total gift, to the martyrdom of the body or the heart!

Dear people of France, it is the monasteries that made the civilization of your country! It is men and women who have accepted to follow Jesus to the end, radically, who have built Christian Europe. Because they have sought God alone, they have built a beautiful and peaceful civilization, like this cathedral.

People of France, peoples of the West, you will find peace and joy only by seeking God alone! Return to the Source! Return to the monasteries! Yes, all of you, dare to spend a few days in a monastery! In this world of tumult, ugliness and sadness, monasteries are oases of beauty and joy. You will experience that it is possible to put concretely God in the center of his whole life. You will experience the only joy that will not pass.

Dear pilgrims, let us give up the darkness. Let’s choose the light! Let us ask the Blessed Virgin Mary to know how to say “fiat”, that is, yes, fully, like her, to know how to welcome the light of the Holy Spirit like she did. On this day when, thanks to the solicitude of the Holy Father Pope Francis, we celebrate Mary, Mother of the Church, let us ask this Most Holy Mother to have a heart like hers, a heart that refuses nothing to God, a heart burning with love for the glory of God, a heart ardent to announce to men the Good News, a generous heart, a heart as profuse as the heart of Mary, as abundant as that of the Church, and as rich as that of the Heart of Jesus ! So be it!

Posted in Liturgy Science Theatre 3000 | Tagged
6 Comments

A Bishop calls on his brother Bishops to celebrate the Traditional Pontifical Mass, TLM

Posted on 22 May 2018 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

A few bishops have blogs.  A few blogs of bishops are worth looking at.   Here is a blog post on a bishop’s blog which every bishop should read.

Most Rev. Thomas E. Gullickson is the Papal Nuncio in Switzerland.  He has a blog called Ad montem myrrhae, a reference to the Song of Songs.

His Excellency wrote and specifically mentions other bishops and cordially calls them out.

My emphases, comments:

I guess it would be fair enough to say that blogs are within the scope of propriety even if in a very public sphere they offer personal, bordering on intimate, reflections. With the wonderful celebrations at the Basilica in Fribourg on 8 December, I guess you could say that my heart is overflowing and I must speak.

2017 here in Switzerland has gifted me with three occasions, all of them Marian, to celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass: in Fischingen, a Pontifical High Mass on the occasion of a pilgrimage for the Fatima Centenary, a Missa Praelatitia in Sankt Pelagiberg for the Holy Name of Mary, and now for the Immaculate Conception a Pontifical High Mass in the Basilica Notre Dame de Fribourg. These three moments have had their positive, yes warming and reassuring impact on my heart. No doubt a person has to do something to prepare his heart to receive them in this way, but in any case, the Tradition, or should I say the Blessed Mother has won my heart in most delicate fashion.

Without having such a chair, I’d like to say ex cathedra, [NB] that the Vetus Ordo is how a bishop is meant to celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. [Do I hear an “Amen!”?] The Traditional Latin Mass in all its solemnity really carries the bishop. The above picture captures it quite well, as I sit front and center, with my old knees covered!, while the subdeacon reads the Gospel in French, I listen waiting to preach my homily. With the Novus Ordo, we were taught in the seminary at Mass practice or in homiletics to be sharp, to be proactive… in the Vetus Ordo, the liturgy, with Christ the High Priest, Mary with all the angels and saints, carries me in most attentive fashion and challenges me to allow myself to be changed, transformed, really made over to Christ Jesus. The liturgy carries the old man in me and makes me an icon of something of which I am not worthy and for which from beginning to end I repeat my Domine, non sum dignus… and my miserere nobis! [WHEW!  Yes.  So true, also for the lowly priest.] It is so right and so age appropriate!

It took me really too long to let go and allow others to carry me through this experience. Obviously, a priest who celebrates his daily low Mass or a Sunday High Mass, Missa Cantata, without assisting ministers, well, he has to be at the top of his game, so to speak. I just want to go on record that bishops get the better part of a free ride, even if they should really interiorize it all by memorizing a goodly part of the liturgy.

Bishops, do yourself and the Church a favor by accepting the invitation should it come your way and doing your little, old part to let this great icon shine forth from the heart of Christ’s Church!

From the bottom of my beady black heart I thank Bp. Gullickson, whom I met once years ago when he was, if memory serves, still Bp-Elect.   He put it well.

He allowed others to do the work.  Bp. Gullickson sees things from a perspective I can’t see, but he explains himself: the bishop always has to be proactive.  And if as a priest he didn’t celebrate the older, traditional Mass, solemnly, then he is used to doing almost everything.   It can be a foreign notion to them. let the sacred ministers do their roles.   One of the things that the Novus Ordo beats into a priest is that he has to be doing something.  He has to be in charge.   The older, traditional form keeps the celebrant under close reins.  That’s a huge advantage to a man who really wants to pray.

I think that some bishops are afraid to accept invitations to pontificate in the traditional form because a) they may not know Latin well and bishops rarely are willing to show that and b) because they think that the ceremonies will demand a great deal from them.

However, there isn’t all that much Latin for celebrants in the solemn forms that people will hear: a greetings (easy), a couple of orations (a little harder), the preface (needs some practice), the Pater Noster (he should know that anyway) and that’s about it.   If the bishop just allows himself to be steered around by the MC and the sacred ministers, he doesn’t have to “work” so hard to be “proactive”.  In fact, the last thing that MCs need in a Mass is a proactive bishop.

I warmly second Bp. Gullickson’s call.   Please please please, Your Excellencies!   When you are invited, please say YES!   You should not go to your grave without having celebrated the Roman Rite truly as a bishop, and that means the traditional Pontifical Mass.   Just says YES!   You will get all the help you need (or accept) and, if you relax and are a little docile, it’ll be the greatest of experiences.   Talk to some of your brother bishops who are known to pontificate traditionally once in a while.

Posted in "How To..." - Practical Notes, Just Too Cool, Liturgy Science Theatre 3000, Mail from priests, SUMMORUM PONTIFICUM, The future and our choices | Tagged ,
3 Comments

“I originally sent you this story 8 years ago, for the brick by brick file…” UPDATE

Posted on 21 May 2018 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

From a reader about a parish in Williamston, MI:

I originally sent you this story 8 years ago, for the brick by brick file:

After decades with no crucifix and no tabernacle in the sanctuary (other than a processional cross), both were installed this week in anticipation of the Christmas season. This is a temporary solution, using what was available to us, but is definitely a great first step. Our parishioners (99.9% of them) are overjoyed, at least one even breaking down into tears. Our priest has been slow in steady, catechizing for over a year, in preparing for these changes and is truly to be praised and continued to be encouraged for working towards this.

As a reminder, this is what the church looked like after the initial renovation under Fr. Peter Clark (retired), returning the tabernacle to the central axis of the church, behind the altar, with the baldacchino from a private chapel on a budget of $0. Previously the tabernacle resided in a side chapel, there was no crucifix, and and the sanctuary space was mostly empty except for some quilts that served as backdrops during different liturgical times.

Fast forward 8 years and I received this picture of the new sanctuary after years of prayer, fasting, fundraising, and more prayer.

To your readers – never give up hope.

 

Posted in "How To..." - Practical Notes, Just Too Cool, Linking Back, Liturgy Science Theatre 3000 |
8 Comments

“Where there is no temple there shall be no homes.”

Posted on 21 May 2018 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

With my emphases from Choruses from “The Rock” by T. S. Eliot:

We build in vain unless the Lord build with us.
Can you keep the City that the Lord keeps not with you?
A thousand policemen directing the traffic
Cannot tell you why you come or where you go.
A colony of cavies or a horde of active marmots
Build better than they that build without the Lord.
Shall we lift up our feet among perpetual ruins?
I have loved the beauty of Thy House, the peace of Thy
sanctuary,
I have swept the floors and garnished the altars.
Where there is no temple there shall be no homes.
Though you have shelters and institutions,
Precarious lodgings while the rent is paid,
Subsiding basements where the rat breeds
Or sanitary dwellings with numbered doors
Or a house a little better than your neighbour’s;
When the Stranger says: “What is the meaning of this city?
Do you huddle close together because you love each other?”
What will you answer? “We all dwell together
To make money from each other”? or “This is a community”?
And the Stranger will depart and return to the desert.
? my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger,
Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions.

? weariness of men who turn from God
To the grandeur of your mind and the glory of your action,
To arts and inventions and daring enterprises.
To schemes of human greatness thoroughly discredited.
Binding the earth and the water to your service,
Exploiting the seas and developing the mountains,
Dividing the stars into common and preferred.
Engaged in devising the perfect refrigerator,
Engaged in working out a rational morality,
Engaged in printing as many books as possible,
Plotting of happiness and flinging empty bottles,
Turning from your vacancy to fevered enthusiasm
For nation or race or what you call humanity;
Though you forget the way to the Temple,
There is one who remembers the way to your door:
Life you may evade, but Death you shall not.
You shall not deny the Stranger.

Later in the Choruses we read, something applicable to the debate about mass school shootings…

If humility and purity be not in the heart, they are not in the
home: and if they are not in the home, they are not in the City.
The man who has builded during the day would return to his
hearth at nightfall: to be blessed with the gift of silence, and
doze before he sleeps.
But we are encompassed with snakes and dogs: therefore some
must labour, and others must hold the spears.

Posted in SESSIUNCULA |
4 Comments

Pastor Iuventus on the appalling Met “Gay-la”

Posted on 21 May 2018 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

From the UK’s best Catholic weekly the Catholic Herald comes a commentary on the Met “Gay-la”.   Yes, we are still talking about that horrid blotch on the Church’s reputation, lest we forget.  My emphases and comments:

Pastor Iuventus: ?In today’s Church, satire is becoming impossible

There is a comic novel by AN Wilson called Kindly Light in which Norman Shotover, a priest from the fictional Catholic Institute of Alfonso (CIA), wants to leave his order, but fears it is so powerful and controlling that it won’t release him. So he devises schemes he hopes will result in disgrace and expulsion. They all backfire, bringing him instead fame and celebrity. In desperation he contemplates appearing on a Sunday night religious broadcast and dropping his trousers, but reflects ruefully that someone would be bound to construe this as a deeply meaningful statement about human alienation, sexual politics or the crisis of faith. One day, having forgotten to prepare anything for a keynote preaching engagement, he plagiarises one of Father Faber’s sermons on the Precious Blood. The old-fashioned theology results in his summary expulsion. [That sounds about right.]

Increasingly Catholic life is starting to imitate art, [Instead of, as she always did, produce it, faith having logical priority (once upon a time).] and the continuing defence of the frankly indefensible leaves me with something of Shotover’s frustration that anything is now “meaningful”, unless you dare to assert that the cultural values of the pre-Vatican II Church retain religious significance.

Let us muse on the fact that the Vatican decided it was a good idea to lend vestments and precious items in some cases worn by saints to an exhibition entitled “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination”. “Heavenly Bodies?” Given that this wasn’t an astronomy exhibition, did no one think to question what lay concealed in plain sight in that blatant innuendo? And then there’s the oxymoronic “Fashion and the Catholic Imagination”. The object of fashion is by definition the beautification and enhanced desirability of the wearer of its products. I would love to ask those who decided to lend these exhibits what in the name of all that is holy they thought they were doing. But if your definition of holiness doesn’t already include the idea that some things are set apart for the specific worship of the Almighty by the spiritual end for which they were created and by their function and proximity to the sacramental mysteries, I am not sure where one might begin a dialogue.

The fashion designer’s art stems from an entirely different aesthetic to that of sacred art. The beauty of fashion is not intended to point beyond itself. Fashion seeks no other meaning than the appearance of the appearance, so to speak. Its world of images “does not surpass the bounds of sense”, as Joseph Ratzinger would express it. We used to speak of faith baptising culture. A few mocking imitations of sacred vestments and clerical attire are not evidence that secular culture wishes to dialogue with the sacred or has engaged with the Catholic imagination. Satanists, after all, admire Catholic culture to the point of imitating it. It’s what you need if you want to subvert goodness as much as possible. When Satanists ape Catholic ritual, objects and vestments, should we see this as an endorsement of Catholic imagination?

A Catholic imagination in sacred art is not directed towards the creation of beautiful objects to glorify the wearer. The jewelled pectoral crosses of former ages, for example, were not “bling” for the bishop. They were jewelled because the cross is the most precious and beautiful sign of God’s love in the created universe. Any image must do justice to the spiritual reality of what it points to, its metaphysical rather than decorative value.

Sacred art always points to something beyond itself, because the beauty of the created world points beyond itself – to the Creator Spiritus poured out on creation and to the Incarnation of Him who is the firstborn of all creation. Sacred art, says Ratzinger, “Stands art beneath the imperative stated in the second epistle to the Corinthians: gazing at the Lord we are ‘Changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.’ ” Catholic art is a form of contemplating the divine. It is the antithesis of fashion. The Catholic imagination is not just another imaginative world created by designers, like a fashion brand; it is the direction of the creative endeavour towards the greater glory of God. If there is no longer any sacred meaning in the Vatican-lent exhibits worth protecting beyond that of appearance, then there is no meaning in the faith that inspired them.

Pastor Iuventus is a Catholic priest in London

Fr. Z kudos.  Well said.

I suggest that Pastor Iuventus doesn’t have “SJ” after his name.

Posted in Fr. Z KUDOS, Mail from priests, The Drill, You must be joking! | Tagged ,
20 Comments