Harrowing vision of Padre Pio

Posted on 30 March 2025 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

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Daily Rome Shot 1282

Posted on 29 March 2025 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Welcome registrant:

EdwardVIII

Please remember me when shopping online and use my affiliate links.  US HERE – UK HERE  WHY?  This helps to pay for health insurance (massively hiked for this new year of surprises), utilities, groceries, etc..  At no extra cost, you provide help for which I am grateful.

Please support the wonderful traditional monks of Le Barroux.

This…

And this…

And this…

In chessy news… HERE

Black to move and mate in 4.

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Friday of the 3rd Week of Lent: Feast of the Five Holy Wounds. Did you know?

Posted on 28 March 2025 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Posted in Liturgy Science Theatre 3000 |
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Daily Rome Shot 1281

Posted on 28 March 2025 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Photo from The World’s Best Sacristan™.

Please remember me when shopping online and use my affiliate links.  US HERE – UK HERE  WHY?  This helps to pay for health insurance (massively hiked for this new year of surprises), utilities, groceries, etc..  At no extra cost, you provide help for which I am grateful.

New advances in science give us new insights into … scientia.

May God forgive these men for what they are doing to the faithful and to themselves.

And therefore…

Please support the wonderful Summit Dominican’s by visiting their store.

In chessy news… FIDE has opened up online a “digital museum”. HERE

Black to move.

NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t be “spoilers” for others.

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Daily Rome Shot 1280 – Card. Pell miracle?

Posted on 27 March 2025 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Hey Fathers!  How about a clerical Guayabera shirt?

Photo from The World’s Best Sacristan™.   This is the cupola of the Chiesa Nuova, depicting the Triumph of the Trinity.  New illumination.

Welcome registrants:

RETIRED
prrgttx

Please remember me when shopping online and use my affiliate links.  US HERE – UK HERE  WHY?  This helps to pay for health insurance (massively hiked for this new year of surprises), utilities, groceries, etc..  At no extra cost, you provide help for which I am grateful.

I had a note from the monks of Norcia with a photo of a brewing action shot. Not so long ago, monks would fast during Lent with only beer. I’m not a huge beer fan, but this stuff is fantastic. They have three kinds.

Meanwhile…

Another something beautiful…

Visitation in 5…4…3…2…

Archbishop Aguer: Vatican too full of ‘self-praise’ to recognize the serious decline of the Church

White to move and mate in 4.

NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t be “spoilers” for others.

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Daily Rome Shot 1279

Posted on 26 March 2025 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Please remember me when shopping online and use my affiliate links.  US HERE – UK HERE  WHY?  This helps to pay for health insurance (massively hiked for this new year of surprises), utilities, groceries, etc..  At no extra cost, you provide help for which I am grateful.

Elsewhere…

In chessy news… yesterday I split a pair of games in OTB. The second had me in serious trouble, as my opponent kept reminding me. I fought back in the endgame with a rather clever maneuver to promote a pawn even as his four pawn juggernaut was moving up the board at my beleaguered king and pawn defender.  Victory was sweet.

White to move and mate in 4. HERE

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“the foundations of social order have been demolished”

Posted on 26 March 2025 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Blessed Ildefonso Schuster, the great liturgist, Benedictine and once Cardinal Archbishop of Milan, has an interesting comment in his entry for today’s Mass, for the Wednesday of the 3rd Week of Lent.  He takes a cue from the Oratio super populum… the Prayer over the People which follows the Postcommunion on weekdays of Lent.  Here’s the prayer, first, and then Schuster.

Prayer over the people
Let us pray.
Bow your heads to God.
Grant, almighty God, we beseech You, that we who seek the grace of Your protection, delivered from all evils, may serve You with untroubled minds.
Through Jesus Christ, thy Son our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end.
R. Amen.

Note: The Station Church is San Sisto Vecchio which is where the body of Pope Sixtus II is found.  He is the Pope murdered with his deacons, one of whom was St. Lawrence.

Schuster:

In the final Blessing the priest—as though still moved by the cruel death of Sixtus II and his deacons who were martyred not far from there–again implores the protection of God, that being freed from danger we may with an un-troubled mind devote ourselves to his holy service. Respect and deference to parental authority, which is the first of all natural authorities, are the essential conditions and the basis of all social order. The child—and in many ways humanity is still a child—before he can understand must believe in the authority of those who teach him and guide him. Without this obedience all education and progress is impossible. If modern society is now beginning to realize all the horror of the state of anarchy into which it has fallen, it must seek the first cause of this evil in the fact that the foundations of social order have been demolished, and that the law of egoism and the worship of the State have taken the place of the Decalogue.

 

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Daily Rome Shot 1278 – The Parish™

Posted on 25 March 2025 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

The schedule at The Parish™ where I will be for Holy Week, Easter and beyond.  It will be a profound sojourn and participation, as I know from experience.

Welcome registrants:

FormerlySBC
JRLandman
Salty Muskoxen

Please remember me when shopping online and use my affiliate links.  US HERE – UK HERE  WHY?  This helps to pay for health insurance (massively hiked for this new year of surprises), utilities, groceries, etc..  At no extra cost, you provide help for which I am grateful.

This from the great Cardinal Zen:

And this…

The Ring was destroyed on 25 March…

Very cool…

In chessy news…

CRAZY PUZZLE. White to move and mate in 6.

Yesterday, I watched the Blitz tournament after the close of the American Cup in St. Louis.  Fun!   OTB for me today.

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Questioning the “success” of frequent Communion

Posted on 25 March 2025 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

At Crisis find a piece by Michael Ortiz which delves into the long term effect in the Church of the practice of frequent Communion.   He reasonably points out what the intention of Pius X was and, in good circumstances, the benefits of frequent Communion which are hardly to be questioned.

However, he also underscores that when Pius X made the changes by lowering the age for Communion and promoting frequent reception there were two major differences from today.  

Consider how I often write that “we are our rites”.

Ortiz points to the fact that at the time of Pius X there was a true Eucharistic fast.  In fact, people were to fast from midnight.   Hence, there was bodily hunger.  Pius XII reduced the fast to 3 hours in 1957.

Elsewhere, I’ve written that we, being both soul and body and not soul only, should be properly disposed to receive in both body and soul.

In soul we are disposed to receive by going to confession and being in the state of grace.

In body we are disposed to receive by fasting.

Immediately after the Resurrection, Christ began to teach the disciples (Mary Magdalen, the men at Emmaus) that they had to learn a new way of Him being with them: the Eucharist.  When He was with the disciples in His earthly ministry, they were “feasting”.  When He ascended they were going to “fast”, but He was still with them in the Eucharist.

Let us simply admit that today’s Eucharistic fast (one hour before Communion) is a joke.

A subtle message is imparted: if we only have to fast for an hour, what we are receiving must not be very important.

Another point Ortiz makes is that, in Pius X’s time down to the 60’s we had the Roman Rite’s Vetus Ordo in which substantial sections of the Mass were in silence.

I’ll add that they required stillness.

It is in the difficult moments, the “apophatic” moments” of deprivation that we encounter mystery in a special way.

Being in the state of grace and fasting prepare us for these transformative moments.

Being unconfessed for (usually) years and being entirely unaccustomed to denying appetites and being inundated in a brightly illuminated space that looks like a municipal airport lounge while being shouted at by people with amplifiers… doesn’t.

We had not long ago an effort at “Eucharistic Renewal”.  It seems to me that a great deal of serious soul searching about reality is needed.

Moreover, there can be no Eucharistic Renewal without a renewal of the Sacrament of Penance.  PERIOD.

Ceterum autem censeo sacramentum paenitentiae redintegrandum.

Posted in GO TO CONFESSION, Save The Liturgy - Save The World, The Drill, The future and our choices | Tagged
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ASK FATHER: Is speeding a sin?

Posted on 24 March 2025 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

From a reader…

QUAERITUR:

I am a leadfoot driver, have been for decades. My wife says I could have been an Indy racer. My driving record is solidly good and I drive a well-handling sedan. To limit speeding, I set my cruise control on the highway at 10 miles above speed limit, which seems to me where about 40% of the other drivers are at (another 40% set it at 5 above, 10% maybe go exactly the speed limit, and the last 10% go even faster than I do). However, some times when I’m on a very long trip or impatient to get home, I will go as much at 15 miles over speed limit, and that’s when my conscience starts to bother me. Is this sinful? How sinful is it? What do the manuals say? I tried to find something in Prummer but there was nothing (as far as I could see).

We can start by making a distinction. There are different kinds of laws. There are laws which come from God and those which come from man. Those which are man-made laws reflect what Augustine talks about in City of God: they are, in a sense, punishment for the Fall. Also, they present to us a much lower bar except insofar as we don’t also thereby violate God’s laws. I recall from my study of St. Augustine that he finds no exception to the commandment against lying. On the other hand, I recall a debate online between the esteemed Janet Smith and … someone else, a religious I think, maybe a Dominican, about whether there are exceptions: Can one lie to a Gestapo Jew hunter about the Jews you are hiding in your attic? The answer is… yes, probably. It can be complicated, especially if your own family’s lives are on the line.

Back to speeding.

Speeding laws are sort of “one-size fits all” laws. But that’s not reality. There are times when you need to get to the hospital, for example. There are times when driving the posted limit can make you the hazard on the Interstate. Moreover, as you mention there is praxis to consider. It seems like a social convention that LEOs allow some fudging, up to a certain point (5-10 mph). Unless they don’t in Black Duck County. Then you pay a penalty. You can always challenge in traffic court and argue that your wife was having a baby (if that was true).

However, it seems that even though speeding laws seem to be one-size-fits-all laws, they seem also to be just laws, established by (in most places) legitimate authority and they seek to uphold the common good by keeping motorists, pedestrians and property safe.  The spirit of speed limits is clearly for the sake of safety.

Except when it wasn’t.  Do I remember correctly that once there was a 55 mph limit for the sake of saving fuel?   However, in states like Montana, limits were not posted because… well… driving in Montana takes a while.  The national imposed limit was certainly more honored in the breach than the observance.  It seems that a law that cannot be enforced in the face of mass violation is no law at all.

Sinful and how sinful?  Hard to say.  All things being equal, it seems that so long as your driving doesn’t endanger the common good, giving the social conventions, some additional mph are probably not mortally sinful.  Much also depends on attitude: why are you speeding?  Is it from contempt for the law and the rights of others to a safe roadway or is it from the fact that you were just struck by a nasty case of food poisoning?   Is it that you pay little or no attention while driving or because you are, precisely, paying attention and you see that the majority of drivers, including large trucks are going quite a bit faster than the posted signs and that you are becoming a hazard?  The negative attitude about your speed could shift the immortality of the instance of speeding over into the mortal sin category.

To conclude, here some Sammy Hagar from that mostly awful decade of the 1980’s. Just to make a point, the subject in the lyrics is clearly committing mortal sins.

YouTube thumbnailYouTube icon

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