Have I ever urged you … GO CONFESSION! Yes, I believe I have. I have also urged priests and bishops to preach, teach, admonish, in season and out, about the Sacrament of Penance and to hear confessions. Get into the … Read More →
There is a good piece at Crisis today about the Sacrament of Penance. It touches on many issues, including availability of confession times, some poorly formed confessors who don’t acknowledge certain sins as sins, and the lack of support some … Read More →
I saw an article at CNA which had a great point in it. [Fr. Fortea] also noted the importance of ensuring truly anonymous confessions. In each city, he said, “there ought to be at least one confessional where instead of … Read More →
Not long ago I answered a question about why priests might not offer opportunities for confession on feast days. HERE As part of that entry we moved into the issue of priests hearing confessions during Mass (not the celebrant, obviously). … Read More →
From a reader… QUAERITUR: At the end of today’s mass (Feast of the Assumption), the priest announced no confessions would be heard because “Sundays and solemnities are joyous occasions, so we don’t hear confessions.” I was dismayed. I find reconciliation … Read More →
Pope Francis does things that annoy me, that puzzle me, that surprise me and that please me. Today was one of the later. He could stick to this sort of thing, in my book! Everyone… GO TO CONFESSION! From The Daily … Read More →
From a reader… I would like to know why many parishes do not offer the Sacrament of Penance on Holy Saturday? There’s only 1 parish in my area that hears confessions on Holy Saturday and I often wonder is there … Read More →
For the Year of Mercy Pope Francis has (in an indirect way) granted to the priests of the SSPX the faculty validly to absolve penitents in routine sacramental confession. HERE Under normal circumstances, the priests of the SSPX do … Read More →
How I would like to have been in Manhattan on Sunday at Holy Innocents parish for their Patronal Feast! Holy Innocents, once considered for the guillotine, was given a reprieve by His Eminence Timothy Card. Dolan. Many people expressed their dismay that such … Read More →
From CNA: Pope urges Curial officials to hear confessions at local parish Vatican City, Dec 18, 2013 / 12:09 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis has strongly encouraged the bishops and cardinals of the Roman Curia to spend time hearing confessions … Read More →
Under another entry concerning “confessional etiquette” a commentator raised the good point that people from different language/ethnic backgrounds have different formulae for beginning and ending their sacramental confessions. Most Americans of a certain age learned to begin “Bless me Father, … Read More →
Yes, this one got me a little excited. In the past I have posted about a very cool priest, Fr. Richard Heilman, pastor of glorious Pine Bluff, WI. You may recall that he founded a group called the Knights of … Read More →
On several occasions Pope Francis has spoken about the importance of the Sacrament of Penance. Remember: Our Lord Himself established the Sacrament of Penance. This is the ordinary means by which JESUS desires you to ask for forgiveness of sins. During … Read More →
A priest reader sent me a link to an article on the site of The Remnant, which is I believe a bi-monthly newspaper staunchly on the traditional side of our Catholic spectrum. The article in question concerns the validity of … Read More →
From a reader: I am trying to figure out what was the rationale to change the rite of confession to allow for face-to-face confessions. I have read the documents of Vatican II, but did not see anything there specifically addressing … Read More →
Here is a little Patristiblogger offering for your midday consideration. This morning a priest friend and I were talking about the problems of leadership and being hated, loved, or feared. Classic question: Is it better to be loved or feared? … Read More →
From a reader: This past Saturday, I experienced several of the issues you have written about regarding going to confession. Seeing it was getting late in the afternoon, I attempted to go to confession at the parish nearest where I … Read More →
From a reader: I had to tell you about what happened at our parish ___ this Good Friday. We had confessions on Good Friday for the first time that I can remember since coming here in the early 1990s. Not … Read More →
From a reader: Would it be appropriate to write a bishop asking if diocesan priests under his leadership be encouraged to hear confessions more regularly? Most parishes seem to only have confessions on Saturday afternoons. I know our priests are busy, but … Read More →
From a reader: Yesterday (Friday) and I was rushed to the E.R. with a possible aortic dissection. It turned out that it was just muscle pain. I asked for a Catholic priest, and, to my great fortune, my regular parish … 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.
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.
UncleBlobb on Daily Rome Shot 804: “Rome Shot: Church of San Eustachio https://www.walksinrome.com/blog/a-stags-head-crowns-the-church-of-sant-eustachio-in-rome”
UncleBlobb on Daily Rome Shot 805: “Rome Shot: Fontana Torlonia, at Via Bocca di Leone, 16, 00187 Roma https://www.tripadvisor.it/Attraction_Review-g187791-d10158379-Reviews-Fontana_Torlonia_a_via_Bocca_di_Leone-Rome_Lazio.html”
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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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"Rev. John Zuhlsdorf, a traditionalist blogger who has never shied from picking fights with priests, bishops or cardinals when liturgical abuses are concerned."
- Kractivism
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Rev. John Zuhlsdorf, a scrappy blogger popular with the Catholic right.
- America Magazine
RC integralist who prays like an evangelical fundamentalist.
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[T]he even more mainline Catholic Fr. Z. blog.
-Deus Ex Machina
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And I am in a state of grace today, in no small part, because of your blog."
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"Fr. Z disgraces his priesthood as a grifter, a liar, and a bully. - - Mark Shea