Benedict XVI penned a letter for Card. Müller’s 70th birthday.

Posted on 27 December 2017 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Pope Benedict has written a longish letter to Card. Müller, once Prefect of the CDF and now… Card. Müller, on the occasion of his 70th birthday.

The German text is HERE.

The letter was written for a “Festschrift”, a commemorative collection of essays on the some important occasion or anniversary for an honoree.

I’m not in mood to work real hard tonight, but the thrust of Benedict’s letter, is that, even though Müller does not present have an office, he remains a role in the Church as a cardinal.  (Benedict knows something about not having an office, but retaining a “role”.)

A cardinal isn’t really ever “retired”.

Benedict praised Müller for defending the Faith but also for accepting the spirit of Pope Francis.  He praises Müller’s work as a theologian.

I am sure that the English translation will soon appear.

UPDATE:

A reader sent this:

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI: Cardinal Müller will continue to serve the Faith.
Even though His Eminence Gerhard Ludwig Cardinal Müller is no longer the Prefect of the Holy Office, “A Cardinal never simply retires”. So says his friend and patron Benedict XVI very convincingly.
Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller will continue to “serve the faith publicly”. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI shows this in the introduction to a series of writings to celebrate the 70th birthday of the former Prefect of the Congregation of the Faith. Although Cardinal Müller, after the end of his five-year term as Prefect, “no longer holds a specific office, he is still a Priest and certainly a Bishop and Cardinal, and he cannot simply retire.”
In his welcoming address, the Pope Emeritus honoured the work of Cardinal Müller in Rome, first as a member of the International Theological Commission, where he was especially struck by the wealth of his knowledge and the fidelity to the Catholic Faith. After the retirement of Cardinal William Levada as Prefect of the Congregation of the Faith, Cardinal Müller was “the most suitable Bishop” to succeed the American. As Prefect, the former Bishop of Regensburg endeavoured to work “not only as a scholar, but as a sage, as a father in the Church.”
“You defended the clear traditions of the Faith, and in the spirit of Pope Francis sought an understanding, of how these can be lived today.”
In the four-page letter Pope Emeritus Benedict recalls how Cardinal Müller gave him an edition of his “Catholic Dogmatics for the Study and Practice of Theology” in 1995. In the Cardinal’s Dogmatics, the Pope Emeritus sees the project of a compact compilation of the Faith of the Church in a single volume. Benedict himself had not been able to realise a plan of his own accord because of his manifold duties as a theologian at Vatican II, as Archbishop of Munich and Freising, and finally as the Prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. He pays particular tribute to Cardinal Müller’s account of the Faith of the Church “as unity and wholeness,” so that “the ultimate simplicity of faith becomes visible through all complicated theological reflections.”
This is the mark of a good theologian, says Pope Benedict: “In my opinion, a great theologian will not be treated by handling clever and difficult details, but by representing the ultimate unity and simplicity of the Faith.”
The greeting is preceded by the commemorative publication “The Triune
God: Christian Faith in the Secular Age”, which commemorates the 70th birthday of Gerhard Ludwig Müller on 31 December. It is published by Christian Schaller, director of the Benedict XVI Foundation in Ratisbon, and by George Augustine, lecturer in Dogmatic Theology in Vallendar, Germany. The authors include His Eminence Reinhard Cardinal Marx, recent Ratzinger Prize award-winner Bonn dogmatist Karl -Heinz Menke, and Karl Wallner, former Rector of the Holy Cross Philosophical-Theological College. Benedict XVI himself regrets in his greeting that he himself was “no longer able” to write a “proper scientific contribution”.

Posted in ¡Hagan lío!, Just Too Cool | Tagged ,
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Prophetic words from 1966 about the post-Conciliar state of the Church

Posted on 27 December 2017 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Put aside everything else and go to First Things.

They have reprinted a piece written for The Tablet in May 1966… 1966… by Christopher Derrick, a student of CS Lewis and WWII RAF pilot.

He writes … in 1966… of how the fathers of a Vatican III would look back at Vatican II.  Amazing insights.

Here are some snips…

[…]

Brows will be furrowed, analyses undertaken, theses written. It may become a cliché to speak of our generation as having enacted a further chapter to Knox’s Enthusiasm. The ghost of Abbot Joachim was walking again, and we were restless for a new Pentecost in the fullest sense, impatient with the mixed and imperfect character of the Son’s dispensation; and with these things came the inevitable antinomian tendency, leading good men to propose obscenities in the name of love. More generally, we showed a remarkable lack of interest in balance, in trimming the boat. The ark had certainly been listing to starboard [the right] for a few centuries, a situation that called for some balancing action, tempered and cautious; but when this fact was officially admitted we smelt a trend, an intoxicating prospect of change, and we all crowded across to port [the left] in high excitement. The ark tilted the other way, and more sharply; many of us climbed and swung on the port railings, each trying to be further out than his neighbour; some gazed longingly overboard, in love with visionary calentures, [fevered delusions] privately suspecting that we could now walk upon water and needed this shabby old tub no more.

This imbalance, this fretful one-sidedness, will be capable of endless illustration. Theologically, we shall seem to have gone absurdly far in a Pelagian direction; and all the more so if our descendants have been driven the other way by the grief and pressure of events, and have come to remember that this religion of the Resurrection starts with the Cross, has evil and suffering and death as its raw material, its prime subject-matter. In other and particular matters, great and small, we shall be remembered as a generation that saw only one side of things. We loved “becoming” and hated “being”: We cherished the idea of an emergent and evolutionary Christianity, and looked in some apathy upon the faith once delivered to the saints. We stressed the priesthood of all believers and played down the particularity of order; we indulged a passion of ecumenicism, and hushed up the painful fact that schism and heresy are still sins. We wanted the Church’s outward seeming to reflect the poverty of Christ, never his majesty. We stressed the spiritual and symbolic, at the expense of gross incarnational fact: Hence, we played down the material element in morality, the ex opere operato aspect of the sacraments, the biological purpose of sex, the concrete burden of the historic Church. We asserted freedom, at the expense of responsibility; we asserted the corporate aspect of worship so overwhelmingly as to suggest that the individual had somehow ceased to carry his own conscience, that prayer and (especially) fasting had become back numbers. We cheerfully asserted the goodness of the world, seldom its taint, its spoiling, its death wish: We were always ready to judge the Church by the world’s standard, reluctant to do the opposite.

[…]

Please do read the whole thing.

Posted in Cri de Coeur, Hard-Identity Catholicism, The Coming Storm, The Drill, The future and our choices | Tagged ,
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ACTION ITEM! Fr. Z calls for help for a wrongly imprisoned priest

Posted on 27 December 2017 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

It is possible that not all of you noticed a special feature in my “Christmas cards received” entry, which I am occasionally updating.

Fr. Gordon MacRae – falsely accused, unjustly imprisoned – sent me a kind Christmas card.

At his blog, These Stone Walls, Fr MacRae provides some interesting news:

The New Year will be ushering in a major change behind these stone walls. I don’t mean the blog, but rather the place in which it is written. The New Hampshire Department of Corrections is following a trend sweeping prisons across the United States.

After 23 years with severely limited contact with the outside world, a computerized tablet system will become available for sale to prisoners here in the first months of 2018.  [Get that?]

This prison has contracted with a company called Global Tel link (GTL.com) to sell tablets to prisoners with a series of paid subscription services to include email, video email, telephone, ebooks, subscriptions, and a list of other paid services such as music and movies. The nine-inch tablet will be similar to an Android-based Samsung with touchscreen for $149.00.

The biggest change for me will be the availability of Internet-based telephone and email services. Presently where I live, there are two telephones available for 96 prisoners. The phones are outside which means that placing a call during a New Hampshire winter to hear your messages and comments requires up to a one-hour wait bundled up against the cold and wind.

When I purchase a tablet, it will have a headset and the ability to place calls right from our toasty 60-square-foot cell with no waiting outside for an available telephone. Friends can still not call me but will be able to leave me messages. This will be the first time in my 23 years here that anyone can reach me directly from the outside world.

[…]

In addition to the initial costs for the tablets and services, telephone calls will have a per-minute charge, and emails will be charged per message and by volume of text, but the fees seem reasonable. Readers who are able and want to assist with the expenses may do so here at These Stone Walls or through the means described at our “Contact” and “Donate” pages. I will have further news about this in January.

In the year to come, May the Lord bless you and keep you. May He let his countenance shine upon you. May He bring you peace.

In your charity, please consider helping Fr. MacRae.

>>HERE<<

Posted in ACTION ITEM!, Priests and Priesthood | Tagged
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ASK FATHER: Mary was an “unwed mother”? The Holy Family were “refugees”?

Posted on 26 December 2017 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

From a reader…

QUAERITUR:

At this time of year the inevitable ‘Mary was an unwed mother‘ and The Holy Family’s flight into Egypt makes them migrants sermons are very confusing. Can you clarify these interpretations? Or recommend a source that does.I discount them as political or ‘Social Justice’interpretations that use both events to their own purposes, which I think is wrong! A recent example was USCCB using the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe as ‘a day of Solidarity with Migrants’. I see my church becoming way too political. Thank you and Merry Christmas to you!

Yes… this sort of thing is inevitable: force the narrative into an agenda.

1 – Mary was an unwed mother… not.   

The Jewish marriage practice was to make the contract with the bride’s father and pay a bride-price (mohar) and the betrothal was the legal equivalent of a marriage ceremony. The bride would remain in her father’s home for up to a year, but she was considered to be married. Joseph would have paid the bride-price at their engagement, when the marriage contract was solemnized, but Mary would have remained in Joachim’s house. They were formally wedded in a ceremony after the angel instructed Joseph in the dream.

So, from the moment Mary was betrothed to Joseph she was legally considered to be the wife of Joseph.  Their relationship was sacred as if they had already had the wedding ceremony.  The bond could not be dissolved except, as after formal marriage, by divorce.

Calling Mary an “unwed mother” is dangerously close to blasphemy.

2 – The Holy Family were “refugees”.   Sort of, but not in the way that liberals want you to believe.

The Holy Family goes first to Bethlehem because of the census.   If you are going to your ancestral town mandated census, you are not a refugee.

“But Father! But Father!, libs are squealing, “They were denied a room in the inn.  Those innkeepers were mean refugee hating meanies!  They were undocumented migrants and the haters refused to let them in.   That’s what YOU would do!   That’s because you HATE VATICAN II!”

If you register in the census, you are not “undocumented”.

They weren’t migrants, because they were only there to register and then return home to Nazareth.

They didn’t get to stay at the inn or the khan, because – try to follow this – there was no room at the inn.  Which means there was no room at the inn.   They weren’t give room because there wasn’t any.  If there had been a room, they would have been given a room.  It was customary to take travelers into homes, as when people journeyed to Jerusalem to offer sacrifice.  As Alfred Edersheim explains the denial of a room had nothing to do with their poverty.  The rabbinic teaching was that travelers were to be received as the shekinah should be received.   So, they weren’t rejected because they were poor, or “different” or foreigners, blah blah blah.  The inn or khan was FULL.

The Holy Family went to Egypt.  Why?   Just before the Patron Saint of Planned Parenthood, Herod, ordered the slaughter of all the babies, an angel told Joseph in a dream to take his family to Egypt.   If an angel tells you to do something, you do it.  So, the flight into Egypt was not just due to the awful circumstances caused by Herod, it is also divinely directed because of what Herod was going to do.

Also, they had to to Egypt so that the prophecy would be fulfilled:

That it might be fulfilled which the Lord spoke by the prophet, saying: Out of Egypt have I called my son. (Matthew 2:15)

So, no, they Holy Family, seeking refuge in Egypt at the specific direction of God, is not the archetype of all refugees today.

If they sought refuge in Egypt, they were, in a sense, “refugees”.  However, they were a) three people, not thousands and they were b) fleeing the concrete danger of murder of their Child.  They sought sanctuary.

Moreover, the Holy Family were no threat to the national security of Egypt.

Finally, when the danger was over, they went home.

It is interesting to note that the Joseph of Genesis was driven into Egypt – sold as a slave and not a refugee – which led to the enslavement of the People. Joseph of the New Testament was driven into Egypt, which led to the salvation of the People.  Herod and Pharaoh both ordered the slaughter of infants. Moses and Jesus both escaped slaughter in Egypt and both led an exodus from bondage.

Just because biblical figures traveled somewhere – usually because God told them to go there – that doesn’t make them refugees. Adam and Eve were not refugees from Paradise, they were being punished.  Cain was not a refugee after he killed Abel, God punished him with wandering.  Abraham was called by God to go places.  Etc.

 

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Nuncio in Switzerland, “The Old Latin Mass is the future of the Church”

Posted on 26 December 2017 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

From Gloria.TV:

“The Old Latin Mass is the future of the Church”, Archbishop Thomas Gullickson (67), the nuncio to Switzerland and former nuncio to the Ukraine, said in September during a meeting with old rite priests in Sankt Pelagiberg, Switzerland.

The quotation is reported by Father Michael Wildfeuer, a mathematician and former member of the Priestly Society of Saint Pius X, in an interview published on Gloria.tv (December 23).

Wildfeuer describes Gullickson as a very educated and easygoing American.

I met him once, years ago, in Camden.  A fine gentleman.

I concur.

Posted in SUMMORUM PONTIFICUM, The future and our choices | Tagged
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Father’s “shred clinic”

Posted on 26 December 2017 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

With a tip of the biretta to Rev. Mr. Kandra (open invitation to him to be the deacon in a Solemn Mass sometime).

In answer to his question: No, I can’t do that.  And he makes it look easy. Fr. Kenneth Petrie and “Runnin’ Down a Dream”.

YouTube thumbnailYouTube icon

Not in church but… whew!

Posted in Lighter fare | Tagged
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The official Parodohymnodist strikes again! “Baby it’s Springtime now!”

Posted on 26 December 2017 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Newly received from the official Parodohymnodist, Fr. Tim Ferguson:

Listening to one of my least favorite Christmastime songs, this popped in my head. I call it: “A dialogue between a traditionalist and a modernist”

Baby it’s Springtime now!

I really can’t pray – Baby it’s Springtime now!
The color’s gone grey – Baby it’s Springtime now!
This Mass is so bland – laity’s participatin’
So very bland – wait ‘til you hear the guitar band!

I’m missing the sound of chanting – Pelagian, stop your ranting.
The rev’rence ain’t here no more – The kneelers are off the floor
The Latin was so enchanting – you’re rabid and now you’re panting.
I just want to go out the door – The renewal is what you’ll adore!

We used to have schools – Baby, it’ Springtime now!
We all knew the rules – Look at the Springtime, wow!
I miss all the grace – you just miss the dusty lace
So sad it’s gone – You all must hail the coming dawn.

The doctrine was clear and warming – Doctrine can be so boring
At least I could’ve said that I tried – We now have parades for our pride!
I really can’t pray – Baby don’t hold out
I guess that it’s Springtime now.

I lived through Montini – Baby the Spring is here
Endured Pete Marini – It’s Spring, it’s clear
How splendid was truth! – sip more gin and vermouth
Why can’t you see – How magic all this can be?
How tragic all this can be?

I know that there’s hope in sorrow – Think of our bright tomorrow!
I know there’s life after we’ve died – Wait until this new stuff is tried!
I really can’t pray – Get over that hold out
I guess that it’s Springtime now!

But boy is it cold outside….

[Fr. Z continues…]

I checked with Zuhlio about recording this, but the whole duet thing…. well…

And I concur, this is not one of my seasonal favorites.  Perhaps this is the best use of it we will ever have.

Thanks and kudos to the Parodohymnodist.

If you don’t know the song… here’s Deano from 1959.

YouTube thumbnailYouTube icon

Posted in HONORED GUESTS, Lighter fare, Parody Songs, SESSIUNCULA | Tagged ,
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ASK FATHER: Why do servers lift the chasuble during the elevation of the Host?

Posted on 26 December 2017 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

From a reader…

QUAERITUR:

Why do servers elevate the chasuble during the elevation of the host? I was looking for a good answer after my mom asked me. Thanks!

The practical answer is the best answer.

It is a custom to lift hems of chasubles and albs and copes which arose from practical need.  This is not prescribed in the rubrics.  [Actually, it is!  See below.]

Vestments of yore – and today – were fuller, draping lots of material over the arms, which could sometimes be heavy.  The weight of vestments were increased by ornamentation.  At the consecration, the edge of the the chasuble would be raised to assist the priest or bishop in raising his arms high enough so that the congregation could see the Host and chalice (as per the rubrics).

The same applies while the celebrant incenses the altar and other things.  Copes are held up and away from the arms so that the priest can move.  Yesterday, I used a heavy cloth of gold “Gothic” vestments instead of a Roman.  Hence, I had to instruct the server – not used to the Gothic – to hold it out of my way while incensing the altar.  It makes a difference.

Similarly, the lower hem of albs are held up as priests ascended the stairs, lest he trip or, worse, put his foot through precious handmade lace.

Don’t laugh.  Women would spend years making beautiful lace for albs out of their love for the Lord, because Holy Mass was the center of their lives.  Then some priest puts his foot through it.  I have seen that happen.  I’ve done it once by accident!

The worst case I’ve experienced was watching a know-it-all priest, whose half-baked partial knowledge of what to do inspired him in false know-it-all-ist “humility” to refuse to allow the deacon to lift the alb away from his foot.  Fr. Smarticus Pantsicus promptly put his foot through the beautiful lace.  Thus, he ruined a someone else’s alb.

So… Frs. Smartici Pantsici out there… when it is time for the servers to help you, shut the hell up and let yourself be helped!  Get over yourselves.

That’s the practical.  However, the practical, over time, can also take on symbolic meaning.

Sometimes you might hear that this physical contact with the eminently priestly vestment associates the server more closely with the priest.  Sure.  That’s works for me too.   Think of the woman who wanted to touch the hem of Christ’s garment to be healed.

I’ll conclude with this.

Servers, lift the edge of that chasuble…. BUT… just a little, okay?  Don’t lift it too high. Just a little, okay?  You don’t have to lift it half way up Father’s back.  Less is more.  This especially applies with the more modern Roman vestments which don’t impede the arms and aren’t very heavy.

UPDATE:

In the comments someone corrected my error. It is in the rubrics!  I looked it up.

However, I stand by not “not too high” because too much is too much.

Posted in "How To..." - Practical Notes, ASK FATHER Question Box, Liturgy Science Theatre 3000 | Tagged ,
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Your Sunday and Christmas sermon notes

Posted on 25 December 2017 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Were there any good points in the sermons that you heard for your Sunday and for your Christmas Masses of obligation?

Let us know.

Yesterday, at Midnight Mass I spoke about what “good will” means in the angels proclamation of good news to the shepherds. Whose “good will”? And what “good will” involves. It involves, among other things, such an orientation to God and His will that we hasten to see wonders, as they did, as Mary did to Elizabeth, and how we can hasten to see wonders in others and perform good works when they are need, for the circumstance that require good works are manifestations of God with us as well. This is the basis of salvation and joy.

This morning I spoke about how the three Masses of Christmas reveals the Sons birth in eternity (in still darkness), in time (at dawn), and in our hearts (in the full light of day). When the perfect image of the invisible God was born, He immediately set about saving us from our sins and teaching us who we are, at first in vulnerability. I suggested contemplating in home nativity scenes or in church the soft little hands of the Infant, which were, even as they reached out, already strong enough to bear the sins of the whole world. One of the things that makes this feast so moving is precisely His vulnerability. His tiny hands are already mighty enough to smash through barriers pride and touch hearts that are scarred from circumstances or from sin.

And, we had the 2nd Mass this morning, Lux fulgebit, which not many people get to hear.

 

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Christmas greetings, dear readers!

Posted on 25 December 2017 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

There is time for the complicated, and there is time for the simple.

Today we celebrate the moment in history when our God, entirely transcendent, lowered Himself to take our human nature into a bond with his divine nature that could never be broken for eternity.

He was born into this world to save our human race because our whole human race had sinned and we could not be reconciled by our own actions alone, no matter what we did.

We needed a Savior like us in all ways but sin.

Today we celebrate the birth of our Savior.

There it is.

Dear readers, you are a real gift to me.

A happy and holy Christmas to everyone!

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