King Alfred, the great White Horses, and today’s creeping heathen weeds

Posted on 26 October 2017 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

In the Anglican tradition – I’m not sure if the Ordinariates pick this up – today King Alfred the Great is commemorated, on the anniversary of his death.  He was a pivotal figure in the history of England, and a scholar who, among other things, translated the Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius.

Some years ago, during a trip to Blighty, I zoomed down a road to a meeting of clergy, which I fondly remember, inter alia, for the fellowship.  As we zoomed, I exclaimed, “What’s that?”

I was looking at the enormous figure of a white horse on a hillside.   It was one of the great chalk figures, which dot the countryside, the turf cut down to the chalk to expose the shape.  It was striking.  I understand that there are quite a few in southern England and I’d like to see all of them someday.

In any event, do you know G.K. Chesterton’s poem, The Ballad of the White Horse?  King Alfred is the subject of the work.

This is an epic poem, and, as such, it runs contrary to the spirit of our time, in that it is, well, an epic, and not a tweet.  However, as an epic, it is also an antedote to our day.

As Chesterton wrote of it in a prefatory note:

Alfred has come down to us in the best way (that is, by national legends) solely for the same reason as Arthur and Roland and the other giants of that darkness, because he fought for the Christian civilization against the heathen nihilism.

Isn’t that the struggle we are engaged in now?

We are in a situation where we even see, within the Church, the agents of heathen nihilism at work, much as the Red Guards did in China’s Cultural Revolution.  There are new catholic Red Guards now.  HERE

King Alfred fought an important battle on a field which, today, is overlooked by one of the great chalk horses.   It must be an enormous task to keep these horses clear of overgrowth by weeds.  Chesterton uses the image of tending the horses in his poem.

Here is a taste from Book VIII: “The Scouring of the Horse”.  As you read, think of Fishwrap… Martin… Spadaro… Faggioli… Mickens… La Civiltâ Cattolica… Amerika… (my emphases):

“I know that weeds shall grow in it
Faster than men can burn;
And though they scatter now and go,
In some far century, sad and slow,
I have a vision, and I know
The heathen shall return.

“They shall not come with warships,
They shall not waste with brands,
But books be all their eating,
And ink be on their hands.

“Not with the humour of hunters
Or savage skill in war,
But ordering all things with dead words,
Strings shall they make of beasts and birds,
And wheels of wind and star.

“They shall come mild as monkish clerks,
With many a scroll and pen;
And backward shall ye turn and gaze,
Desiring one of Alfred’s days,
When pagans still were men.

“The dear sun dwarfed of dreadful suns,
Like fiercer flowers on stalk,
Earth lost and little like a pea
In high heaven’s towering forestry,
—These be the small weeds ye shall see
Crawl, covering the chalk.

They crawl… covering the whiteness of the chalk.

They crawl.  And they don’t fight like men.

US HERE – UK HERE

Posted in "How To..." - Practical Notes, Poetry | Tagged , , ,
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Outstanding sermon! Fr. Lankeit @PhoenixDiocese – response to unscrupulous homosexualist agenda

Posted on 25 October 2017 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

The last time I was in Phoenix I didn’t have the chance to meet Fr. John Lankeit, rector of the Cathedral of Sts. Simon and Jude (a great feast day for another reason).  I have written about him before HERE.

Here is a sermon from this last Sunday. This guy’s got game. Watch how he deals with his theme.

295 views

He moves from how the enemies of the Lord worked together against Him, to how modern day enemies of marriage work together in deliberate manipulation and obfuscation about marriage and the family.

Some bullet points:

  • “What about paying taxes?” and “Do you believe in ‘gay’ marriage?”
  • “Whose image is on this coin?” and “What is marriage?”
  • The Lord exposes their maneuver to unmask his attackers.
  • What belongs to the world? What belongs to God?
  • “Whose image and inscription is on the coin?”
  • “Whose image in the human person?” God’s image in in man, created male and female.
  • Whose inscription is in the human person?” “But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel, after those days, saith the Lord: I will give my law in their bowels, and I will write it in their heart: and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” Jeremiah, 31:33
  • Juxtapose… “I identify as…” v. “I am.”
  • Dissent in the Church today centers on sex, because it concerns who we are and whose we are.
  • Hence, marriage and the family, as an icon of the Trinity, are going to be attacked by the Devil.
  • This is the decisive battle of our time.
  • So, we learn from the unscrupulous attack on Jesus, how to deal with the unscrupulous attacks on the family and marriage.
  • Chesterton said, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”

May I suggest that you, the readership, spread this sermon around?

Posted in Mail from priests, One Man & One Woman, Our Catholic Identity, Sin That Cries To Heaven, The Coming Storm, The future and our choices | Tagged , , ,
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Canonist Ed Peters contributes: A note on Madison’s funeral policy

Posted on 25 October 2017 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

From the spasmodic reactions of hysterical homosexualists and their abettors, you would think that the chancery personnel in the Diocese of Madison were clubbing babies… no, that wouldn’t be so bad…. baby seals … no, gay baby seals and eating their beating hearts … while cranking up sinful air conditioning…. in October… in Wisconsin.

And then denying them funerals.

However, what the Diocese of Madison has suggested to pastors of parishes in regard to funerals for manifest sinners (which includes homosexual couples) is entirely consistent with the Church’s laws.  Moreover, what was sent out to the priests of the diocese – including a Judas – was judicious, prudent and pastoral to a fault.

Here is canonist Ed Peters on the matter from his exceptionally helpful blog In The Light Of The Law:

A note on Madison’s funeral policy

One might be willing to have an informed and dispassionate discussion (that pretty much rules out the internet) [most of the internet] about whether Canon 1184, (which in mildly obtuse terms denies ecclesiastical funeral rites to “manifest sinners who cannot be granted ecclesiastical funerals without public scandal of the faithful”) reflects a good understanding of what ecclesiastical funerals do and don’t accomplish for the dead and their familiars*, [a matter for legitimate discussion] or about whether these points are generally correctly understood by the faithful, [I’m pretty sure they aren’t – but this is now a “teaching moment”.] but about whether persons who enter civil “same-sex marriage” qualify as “manifest sinners” under canon law, no, that is simply not a question.  [Marriages are public matters.  Homosexual unions that ape marriages are scandalous.]

Analysis of the terms used in Canon 1184 essentially tracks that used to understand Canon 915 and, as has been demonstrated many times, persons who enter “same-sex marriage” plainly manifest their opposition to crucial and infallible Church teaching that restricts marriage to one man and one woman. [OBVIOUS.] The positions taken by Springfield IL Bp. Paprocki and by the Diocese of Madison, restricting funerals in such cases and outlining possible exceptions to those restrictions, are thoroughly consistent with the canon law of the Catholic Church. + + +  [BAM… drop the keyboard!]

* “I should like to interject a comforting remark at this stage. It should not be forgotten that [even] an error in this matter of denying Christian burial has none of the consequences that could arise from a refusal to grant the sacraments. This law is purely of the external forum, and the external state of the soul is in no way determined by it. Where the reception of the sacraments may mean the difference between salvation and damnation, Christian burial cannot decide the eternal status of a soul which is already before God, and beyond the power of the Church either to save or to condemn.” Charles Kerin, “Christian Burial Problems” The Jurist 15 (1955) 252-282, at 262.

Posted in "How To..." - Practical Notes, Canon Law, One Man & One Woman, Our Catholic Identity, Sin That Cries To Heaven | Tagged , , ,
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“By the pricking of my thumbs…”

Posted on 25 October 2017 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

At LifeSite there is an interview with Peter Kwasniewski.  He opines that the decentralization of authority in liturgical matters could recreate an environment in the Church much like the 70’s.

Of course that would accelerate the growth of desire for traditional forms.  Younger Catholics don’t have the baggage of the 70’s.  Nor do they pine for those halcyon days of protests, revolt against authority and Vatican II.

The latest move of Pope Francis with Magnum principium was a harbinger.  His Holiness seems to be lining up pretty closely with the will of the wealthy German bishops conference.  If that is indeed the case, then we are in for a rough ride, quod Deus avertat.

Now we wait for the next portent in this series of signs of the times.

As I put on my haruspex cap and slit the belly of this bull, one such portent could be a project to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem or, in a less apocalyptic way, a change of personnel in, say, the Office of Pontifical Liturgical Celebrations.

YouTube thumbnailYouTube icon

Posted in Liturgy Science Theatre 3000, The Coming Storm, The future and our choices | Tagged , ,
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“The darkness of Satan has entered and spread throughout the Catholic Church, even to its summit.”

Posted on 25 October 2017 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Hunwicke has posted at his blog, inter alia, a stunning quote of Paul VI:

“The tail of the Devil is functioning in the disintegration of the Catholic world. The darkness of Satan has entered and spread throughout the Catholic Church, even to its summit. Apostasy, the loss of the Faith, is spreading throughout the world and into the highest levels within the Church”.

He also reminds people of Card. Burke’s great talk at Buckfast Abbey, which I posted about HERE.

Posted in The Coming Storm, The future and our choices | Tagged , , ,
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Expert canonist Ed Peters explains the sit to Matthew Boudway (Nihil habens) re: Fr. Murray

Posted on 25 October 2017 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

This is something that every parish priest and seminarian should read and commit to memory.

It is at the heart of many controversies (not excluding the mendacity of the Left trying to edge out the Truth with innuendo and ambiguity).

From canonist Ed Peters… who doesn’t have a combox:

Boudway vs. Murray is not even close

October 25, 2017

The nonchalance with which some non-canonists try to argue canon law with canon lawyers these days verges on the remarkable. But, folks, these aren’t fair fights; [I take fair warning, though I do my best when I do and I bend to expertise.] they are scarcely even interesting. The latest example is Matthew Boudway over at Commonweal.[See my post on the new catholic Red Guards.]

Somehow Boudway has gotten it into his head that Fr. Gerald Murray (J.C.D., Gregorian University, 1998) thinks that the Catholic Church holds that “all valid marriages are indissoluble” even though the Code of Canon Law (which apparently Boudway looked at the other day) indicates a few instances wherein valid marriages can be dissolved (i.e., the papal dissolution of non-consummated sacramental marriages and of certain non-sacramental marriages per Canon 1142 and the Pauline Privilege dissolution of marriage per Canons 1143-1147). Thinking he has fingered a truth that Murray should find inconvenient, Boudway wonders why Murray (who opposes the assault on the Church’s teaching on marriage being conducted under cover of Amoris laetitia) is not embarrassed by these supposed examples of “the Catholic Church … condoning a narrow category of adultery for much of its history.”

Yes, it’s embarrassing, alright. For Boudway.

I’ll do this quickly.

The Catholic Church does not teach that “all valid marriages are indissoluble”. She teaches, more precisely than Boudway grasps, that all valid marriages are ‘intrinsically indissoluble’ (not a happy adjective, but one that trained canonists understand in this context) meaning that the parties to a valid marriage (be it natural, merely sacramental, or sacramental and consummated) cannot dissolve it. There are no exceptions to the intrinsic indissolubility of marriage. None.

The notion of intrinsic indissolubility leaves open the possibility, however, that an ‘extrinsic’ power might, might, under certain, unusual-to-rare, circumstances be able to dissolve a valid marriage (say a pope with regard to non-sacramental marriage between a baptized and a non-baptized party); that a subsequent marriage might dissolve a non-sacramental marriage between two non-baptized persons (the Pauline Privilege); or even that a sacramental but non-consummated marriage could be dissolved by papal act (the ‘Petrine Privilege’). But these cases are not “exceptions” to some ‘rule’ whereby all valid marriages are supposedly ‘extrinsically‘ indissoluble because such a rule does not exist.

What rule does exist, as Murray knows, and as the Church has held since her inception, is the rule now set out in Canon 1141 (but incredibly not cited by Boudway!) that: “A marriage that is ratified [i.e., between two baptized parties] and consummated [i.e., the conjugal act has taken place between the spouses] can be dissolved by no human power (i.e., not a pope, not the state, and not the parties) and by no cause, except death” (my emphasis). Period. End of discussion.

In short: Valid, consummated marriage between two baptized peopleis (intrinsically and extrinsically) indissoluble (see Canon 1056) except by death; persons in such marriages attempting other marriages enter a state of “public and permanent adultery” (CCC 2384) and thus may not be admitted to holy Communion (Canon 915).

Fr. Murray understands this perfectly and proclaims it faithfully.

Game. Set. Match.

Read that again, and remember it.

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Cri de Coeur from a Catholic married couple. Wherein Fr. Z rants from his heart.

Posted on 24 October 2017 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

I’m tired of the whine from certain homosexualists and their agenda, to the detriment of concerns of people to adhere to God’s plan and nature and many other serious concerns which we face as a Church and society.

I was alerted today to a post at the blog of a priest, Fr. David Nix.  He posted an “Open Letter” to priests written by a married couple… a real married couple.  I reproduce it here.  My emphases.

Open Letter to our spiritual Fathers

Dear Fr. ___________,

I am so very thankful that you have given your life to be our spiritual father. I am grateful for the gifts you make available to us in the sacraments. We know you work tirelessly to keep everything balanced and running smoothly. For that, we are thankful. But we have to be honest and share our concerns and frustrations: We have heard more about the LGBTQ community and the acceptance of that more than we have ever heard about our own marriage.

Father, we struggle with communication, we struggle with infertility, we struggle with forgiveness over infidelity, we struggle with finances, we struggle with contraception and Natural Family Planning, we struggle with in-laws, we struggle with so much and yet feel so alone.

Please Father, give us some hope and encouragement; let us know what we are supposed to do. Please don’t have your answer be “you can get an annulment.” We don’t want to get out of our marriage; we just need you to let us know that sacrifice and suffering are part of marriage. Most of us have not heard what God’s plan for marriage is, yet we have heard that everyone is arguing about what constitutes a sacramental marriage.

It feels like we have been abandoned and left to figure it out in our own. As we strive to live God’s plan, we are burdened with what the society tells us. The culture screams its message, but the silence of the Church is at times louder than the screams.

Help us Father—for we know not what to do.

Love and blessings,
Your Sons and Daughters

We are entering into a dire stage of spiritual warfare over souls.

War is by nature messy and chaotic.  It is easy for officers to get distracted by tactics on a hill and lose sight of strategy on a front.  We priests and bishops must stay clear-eyed, smart, and faithful for everyone’s sake.

However, we need the support of lay people.  We need you to encourage and to fast and pray for us.  You have to make acts of reparation for our faults and defects.

In this coming battle, we priests will grow weary under the assaults from the agents of Hell and their earthly operatives.  So will you.

In this coming battle, the Church’s perennial teaching and the sacraments will be for us priests like the stone upon which Moses sat during the battle against the Amalekites, while you good lay people must stay on either side of us, like Aaron and Hur, holding up our weary arms so that the sword of Joshua shall prevail.

According to Sr. Lucia, the visionary of Fatima, Our Lady foretold that

“final battle between the Lord and the kingdom of Satan will be about marriage and the family. Do not be afraid, … because anyone who works for the sanctity of marriage and the family will always be fought and opposed in every way, because this is the decisive issue.”

Married couples.  Listen up.

It is not possible to squeeze everything into a blog post, or even a book, but here are a few words from my heart and experience.

First, please know that we priests understand that you face problems every day that might make a lot of us priests curl up in ball in a dark room.  However, you have the vocation to face those problems as married Catholics.  Just as we priests must call upon the graces that come from Holy Orders when we are in the thick of it, so to must you call upon the graces that come from matrimony and confirmation.

You have difficulties.  These difficulties are your road to heaven.   Remember always that your primary calling as married Catholics is to help your spouses get to heaven.  Hence, you must chose daily to embrace the life of your spouse with charity, the sacrificial love which seeks, first, the true good of the other.  This is what Christ modeled for his Spouse the Church while enduring His Passion and death.  Embrace the pains and make the choice for sacrificial love. To love is to choose.  Choose to love. You can choose love even when feelings or appetites or temptations push and pull.

Choose, as a couple, to love God more than you love each other.  Only when God is the true king of your two hearts, can your one married heart beat properly.  Only when you love God first, can you love and treat each other and your children properly.

Stay close to the sacraments.  That means that you have to make good and regular examinations of your consciences and then GO TO CONFESSION.  Go together.  Go separately.  GO!  Don’t allow mortal sin to cloud your intellect and weaken your will or give a chink for the Devil to pry at.  Hence, also use sacramentals.  The Devil really hates them.

Make your home, however grand or humble, into your “domestic church”.  Just as a church should be filled with beautiful reminders of heaven and the saints and angels, so too should your home.  Just as a church should be filled with prayer, so too should your dwelling place. Traditionally, church buildings will have over their doors inscriptions like, “House of God and Gate of Heaven”.  This, too, is your ideal. Pray at meals.  Pray when you rise and rest.  Especially say the Rosary together, perhaps holding hands.  The other side of prayer is silence.  

Be humble in consideration of your vocations and your own human abilities.  However, be confident that, as the Father’s adopted chosen children in Christ, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, the Trinity whose love your lives reflect will give you every grace you need to fulfill your vocations in obedience to His commands and the commandments of the Church.  God’s commands and will are not mere “ideals”, which some today falsely claim cannot be attained by everyone.  They can be and are realized, and have always been attained through the millennia, by people just like you.  God doesn’t impose anything that is impossible.

Finally, some quick points.

We could all avoid a lot of sins and a lot of conflict by keeping our mouths shut more often.  Weigh your words.

Be cheerful.  Joy is a Fruit of the Holy Spirit.  When you cannot detect or show joy, that’s probably a sign that you have spiritual maintenance to do.  This joy is not the blithering gaiety of the foolish: risus abundant in ore stultorum.

Speak well of and kindly to each other.

Read Scripture.  Read especially Ephesians about spouses.  Pay close attention to Paul’s wise admonition, “Let not the sun go down upon your anger.”

Ask your Guardian angels to help you in every conflict.

In charity, you must strive always make the sacrifice needed for the other’s true good.

Thank God – on your knees – for the gift of the vocation of marriage.  Really.  Get down on your knees and say, “Thank you, God, for giving me my vocation and my spouse.”  Never forget that you two are one flesh now.  You are you and you are also “we”.

Be who are are, and never think again about being anything else until the day you draw your last breath.

Eat meals together, at a table.  Talk.  And then let there be silences.

When you look at your spouse and at your children, consciously remind yourself that each one is a gift.  And if you do not, in sorrow, have children, remind yourself that God knows you better than you know yourselves and that He doesn’t allow burdens without giving the strength to bear them.  You may have another path when it comes to children.

Anything worth doing well in life requires suffering, patience and practice.  You have to practice being married, by living marriage.  You will be under attack, so you must plan your tactics for when you being to suffer, and you will suffer.  Embrace your crosses.

Listen to the good advice of older people.

When real trials come or sudden frustrations strike, say what Job said and say it with a smile: “Blessed be the name of the Lord!”

Posted in "How To..." - Practical Notes, Hard-Identity Catholicism, One Man & One Woman, Our Catholic Identity | Tagged , , ,
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Fishwrap (@NCRonline) commits another error in their work to smear Bp. Morlino (@MadisonDiocese)

Posted on 24 October 2017 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

At Fishwrap (aka National Sodomitic Reporter) there is a “news” piece about the coverage … a news piece about the coverage… sheesh… which was given to a post at the notoriously liberal liturgy blog Pray Tell, which incorrectly attributed to Bp. Robert Morlino of Madison, some notes sent by the Vicar General to priests of the same diocese in a regular Saturday communication.

Pray Tell did this in order to smear the bishop.

They later corrected their post, but the damage was done to the Bishop’s reputation and to the truth.  Homosexualist activist Jesuit James Martin and other promoters of deviant sex such as DignityUSA and New Ways Ministry picked up the false version of the story.

In so targeting Bp. Morlino for ridicule and slander from their constituencies, they accomplished the work of committed cadres in the new catholic Red Guards.  It matters not a whit that they correct their stories or not: their deeper purpose was already achieved.

Circling back to the coverage in the Fishwrap, which never loses an opportunity to promote disordered acts, I took note of this paragraph in particular:

Both sets of directives [from Madison and from Springfield] cite Canon 1184 from the Code of Canon Law, which says that “manifest sinners” whose funeral would cause “public scandal of the faithful” should be denied ecclesiastical funerals “unless they gave some signs of repentance before death.”

That isn’t accurate either.

Canon 1184 really says that these people, unless they repent, MUST be deprived ecclesiastical funerals.

Not “should”… “must“.

The Diocese of Madison, in fact, has a careful and gentle approach to these situations.  That’s lost on the haters, of course.  They have their agenda, and it isn’t charity.

Posted in Biased Media Coverage, Canon Law, Green Inkers, Liberals | Tagged , , , , ,
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War, described.

Posted on 24 October 2017 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

You might want to pause in your busy busy day to visit First Things and read a piece by Italian vaticanista Marco Tosatti.

THE WAR AGAINST CARDINAL SARAH

Do you want to know the sort of man Card. Sarah really is?

US HERE – UK HERE

UPDATE:

At LifeSite there is a piece about the lib “feeding frenzy” surrounding Card. Sarah.

You all should read and reread my post about the new lib Red Guards.  HERE

The LifeSite piece names some names:

[…]

Liberal Catholics and the news sources they controlled smelled blood and immediately struck out at the Cardinal.

Joining in the feeding frenzy was Vatican communications consultant Fr. Thomas Rosica, who ripped Sarah for pushing a “personal agenda,” even though Cardinal Sarah was simply doing his job. Vatican adviser and Jesuit priest James Martin called the Pope’s move an “extraordinary … public rebuke.”

Commonweal contributing editor Massimo Faggioli said he didn’t “remember a cardinal prefect in the Roman Curia in need of such public and constant corrections.” La Croix editor Robert Mickens likely spoke on behalf of all when he wondered “why doesn’t Pope Francis just remove Cdl Sarah from his post?”

[…]

Because he has boldly spoken the truths of the Catholic faith, Cardinal Sarah is now treated as one of the most dangerous men in Christendom.

His critics have outlined their fears of what would happen to the new “openness” in the Church if Sarah were to become the next pope.

[…]

 

Posted in The Drill | Tagged ,
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ASK FATHER: Can a Permanent Deacon perform a Baptism according to the Old Rite?

Posted on 24 October 2017 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

From a permanent deacon…

QUAERITUR:

Can a Permanent Deacon perform a Baptism according to the Old Rite? I would be using the booklet entitled “Baptism” published by Angelus Press.

My old pastor, the late Msgr. Richard Schuler, used to tell a story about the furor and cross looks he kicked up when he asked – as a transitional deacon – to baptize a relative at his home parish.  The old pastor didn’t like the idea at all, but grudgingly conceded.

However… a deacon is a deacon is a deacon.  It matters not if one is a permanent or transitional deacon in this matter.

Back in the day, the deacon was the extraordinary minister of solemn baptism.   He had to have permission from the local ordinary or the local pastor to do it.

Therefore, the pastor of the parish can let you, as a deacon, baptize in the newer form or in the older form.

That said: You MUST have the pastor or some other priest (or a bishop) ahead of time, exorcise and bless the salt with the older, traditional rite, and then exorcise the bless water to be used in the baptism in the older, traditional rite.

Also, I would make sure to know the rite inside and out, forward and backward, and be able to read it properly, understanding also that water must flow on the head.

Finally, when I consider both the newer and the traditional rite of baptism, with the exorcisms and so forth, I would choose the older, traditional form every time… if baptism could be repeated… which, of course, it can’t be.  And I would have it done by a priest or a bishop.

Posted in "How To..." - Practical Notes, ASK FATHER Question Box, Liturgy Science Theatre 3000 | Tagged , ,
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