This came into my email and I am eager to get the news out to you. Sure, I push chess in my Daily Rome Shot posts. I wanted to make sure you saw this. Some time ago, I bought a … Read More →
In Rome sunrise, still to take place as I write this part of this post, will be at 7:08. It will appear to set at 18:49 and the Ave Maria is in the 19:00 phase. It is the Dies Natalis … Read More →
There’s a shop on the Piazza Navona where there are many chess sets for sale. Note also special decks of cards for Italian games like scopa and briscola. There are decks from different regions for their games, Brescia, Naples, Lombardy, Piacenza, Sardinia… Salzburg. Click … Read More →
Catholic? Have a site or web project? The Catholic Signal Corps might be just the right resource for you. Recently we helped Padre Pio Press. Please remember me when shopping online. Thanks in advance. US HERE – UK HERE These links take you … Read More →
I’ve been updating the “Day in Rome” project. Thanks to the donors! Also, I learned that Wyoming Catholic College is looking for a chaplain. HERE In Chess News… 50 years ago today in Reykjavik, It was challenger Fischer v. Spassky in Game … Read More →
It’s Amazon Prime Day and there are lots of deals. Please remember me when shopping online. Thanks in advance. US HERE – UK HERE To try Amazon Prime for free – US HERE – UK HERE Health report: As you may recall, I … Read More →
I had learned to play chess from my grandfather and, by the time 1972 came around, I was well into competitions. I spent a good share of my youth in the summers in the West, Montana and Wyoming. Let’s just … Read More →
This is a really fun bit of correspondence. For you chess lovers, or … perhaps flea market and collecting lovers… From a reader… Dear Father Zed, or Father Zee (as we say up here north of the 49th!!) For several … Read More →
In Rome sunrise was at 5:32 and, though we may not see it for the clouds, sunset is scheduled for 20:47. The Ave Maria bell ought to be a 21:00. This is the splendidly illuminated S. Maria in Monserrato, named … Read More →
From Twitter… Keep in mind that Fischer probably was received into the Catholic Church before he died. Just… suggestin’ So, two childhood heros named Bobby. One is still alive.
UPDATE 9 Dec 21: One of you wrote: “But Father! But Father! You showed interior of the finished board and some pieces, but you didn’t show a photo of it set up! Inquiring minds…” Okay, that’s fair. Scroll to the … Read More →
First and foremost, thank you to the reader who sent from my wishlist (‘happy birthday to me’) the wonderful “Lewis” chessmen, found on Lewis Island in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland, not at Lewes in Sussex where friends of mine … Read More →
After several decades, and not of the Rosary in this context, along with other things I had loved to do and that I was good at and I that I had shelved because of seminary and priesthood, I’m getting back … Read More →
From a reader reacted to THIS post… I see from your recent post that you are a denier of the Fifth Lateran Council. You resist its Canons on the playing of chess and association with actors. After 800 years, we … Read More →
UPDATED: See end. Did you know that Canon 16 of the Fourth Council of the Lateran in 1215 forbade priests from playing chess? It was considered a game of chance (clearly by non-chessplayers). That canon also forbade participation of clerics … Read More →
Out of curiosity, en passant as it were, are there any Catholic clerical chess players among the readership? I don’t mean just clerics who know how to play, but rather clerics who do play. More often than a couple times … Read More →
From Chess.com today, the Daily Puzzle is from one of the 18th c. “Modenese Masters”, Domenico Ercole del Rio (+1802). There is an elegant forced mate here in 3 but it requires a bold sacrifice. White to move. What a … Read More →
My boyhood summers – when there was still such a thing as boyhood – were in large part spent in Montana and N. Wyoming, running like a brown animal, riding bare-back, swimming, biking, and going to minor league ballgames with … Read More →
Before it isn’t the 20th any longer (soon, where I am), I wish all of you a happy International CHESS Day! In honor of this esteemed occasion, I repost… Animi caussa… the names of the pieces. 1 rex, sive scaccus 1 regina (vel virgo, vel amazon, … Read More →
I remind the readership that the second Saturday of October is designated as National Chess Day. Don’t be board. Get out there and start mating! I’ll check on your progress. Also, en passant, many thanks to the readers who, some … Read More →
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“This blog is like a fusion of the Baroque ‘salon’ with its well-tuned harpsichord around which polite society gathered for entertainment and edification and, on the other hand, a Wild West “saloon” with its out-of-tune piano and swinging doors, where everyone has a gun and something to say. Nevertheless, we try to point our discussions back to what it is to be Catholic in this increasingly difficult age, to love God, and how to get to heaven.” – Fr. Z
Everyone, work to get this into your parish bulletins and diocesan papers.
“Until the Lord be pleased to settle, through the instrumentality of the princes of the Church and the lawful ministers of His justice, the trouble aroused by the pride of a few and the ignorance of some others, let us with the help of God endeavor with calm and humble patience to render love for hatred, to avoid disputes with the silly, to keep to the truth and not fight with the weapons of falsehood, and to beg of God at all times that in all our thoughts and desires, in all our words and actions, He may hold the first place who calls Himself the origin of all things.”
grateful on 8 December: Happy Birthday BLOG!: “May God continue to shower you with blessings. Thank you for your faithfulness. I’m sure Our Blessed Mother is happy…”
Venerator Sti Lot on 8 December: Happy Birthday BLOG!: “Echoing the five comments I see as I write – indeed! Many thanks (for such fruitful and delightful variety), and…”
The most evident mark of God’s anger and the most terrible castigation He can inflict upon the world are manifested when He permits His people to fall into the hands of clerics who are priests more in name than in deed, priests who practice the cruelty of ravening wolves rather than the charity and affection of devoted shepherds.
St. John Eudes
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“He [Satan] will set up a counter-Church which will be the ape of the Church because, he the devil, is the ape of God. It will have all the notes and characteristics of the Church, but in reverse and emptied of its divine content. It will be a mystical body of the anti-Christ that will in all externals resemble the mystical body of Christ. In desperate need for God, whom he nevertheless refuses to adore, modern man in his loneliness and frustration will hunger more and more for membership in a community that will give him enlargement of purpose, but at the cost of losing himself in some vague collectivity.”
“Who is going to save our Church? Not our bishops, not our priests and religious. It is up to you, the people. You have the minds, the eyes, and the ears to save the Church. Your mission is to see that your priests act like priests, your bishops act like bishops.”
“The modern habit of doing ceremonial things unceremoniously is no proof of humility; rather it proves the offender's inability to forget himself in the rite, and his readiness to spoil for every one else the proper pleasure of ritual.”
- C.S. Lewis
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As for Latin…
"But if, in any layman who is indeed imbued with literature, ignorance of the Latin language, which we can truly call the 'catholic' language, indicates a certain sluggishness in his love toward the Church, how much more fitting it is that each and every cleric should be adequately practiced and skilled in that language!" - Pius XI
"Let us realize that this remark of Cicero (Brutus 37, 140) can be in a certain way referred to [young lay people]: 'It is not so much a matter of distinction to know Latin as it is disgraceful not to know it.'" - St. John Paul II
Grant unto thy Church, we beseech Thee, O merciful God, that She, being gathered together by the Holy Ghost, may be in no wise troubled by attack from her foes. O God, who by sin art offended and by penance pacified, mercifully regard the prayers of Thy people making supplication unto Thee,and turn away the scourges of Thine anger which we deserve for our sins. Almighty and Everlasting God, in whose Hand are the power and the government of every realm: look down upon and help the Christian people that the heathen nations who trust in the fierceness of their own might may be crushed by the power of thine Arm. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. R. Amen.
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