Last September 2020, my friend Fr. Paul Mankowski, SJ, died, far too young. Fr. Mankowski was everything that several highly visible Jesuits are not: Catholic, deeply faithful and amazingly intelligent. He was a Biblical scholar who taught in Rome for … Read More →
At Catholic World Report George Weigel reacts to the 2021 Plessy v. Ferguson move Traditionis custodes. First, let it be said that in his writings about what the Church needs today viz. “new evangelization” and the like has not included the Traditional Latin … Read More →
No one can give what they don’t have. In fun-Latin, nemo dat quod non ‘got’. And yet the universal vocation to evangelize is predicated on what we have, what we have received. We haven’t been evangelizing well. Rather, we seems to … Read More →
At the Pontifical Mass at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception last week (HERE with VIDEO), you could tell that quite a few of the congregants were unfamiliar with the Traditional Mass by the fact that they sang the Pater … Read More →
At the UK’s (and soon to be also USA’s) best Catholic weekly, the Catholic Herald, you must… I repeat MUST… read George Weigel’s biting postscript on the 2018 Synod (“walking together”). HERE Weigel’s is the first of several postscript “letters” posted … Read More →
George Weigel described the guiding document for the upcoming 2018 Synod of Bishops and Non-Bishops. Anyone looking for a remedy for insomnia might try working through the Instrumentum Laboris, or “working document,” for the XV Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod … Read More →
We had an honorable mention in a piece by George Weigel today, not by name, but pretty much everyone knows what’s what. In First Things, Weigel is rightly worked up about priests who, contrary to law and good sense, impose … Read More →
In my other day job I am the captain of HMS Surprise. Therefore I took note of something I read about Bl. Pius IX and USS Constitution. You will recall from your reading of The Fortune of War that Jack and Stephen were aboard … Read More →
I bring to your attention three interesting analysis pieces about Pope Francis following his trip to South America. First, check out George Weigel at National Review. My impression is that Mr. Weigel has drawn a line through the pontificate (at … Read More →
I saw this at First Things: Protesting Too Much Matthew J. Franck At National Review Online over the weekend, the familiar-to-First Things-readers George Weigel published a talk he gave recently in Green Bay, Wisconsin, in the course of which he … Read More →
Sometimes when I hear talk, often vapid, about the New Evangelization, I cynically wonder when it was that we completed the Old Evangelization. On the other hand, we are living in a post-Christian era, most of us in countries that were … Read More →
The first talk today is by George Weigel. Weigel is explaining that the three footings of Western Civilization, termed “Jerusalem (Biblical truths and revelation), Athens (rationality – we can know truths) and Rome (the rule of law is better than … Read More →
From NRO: The Sisters of Life were founded in 1991 by Cardinal John O’Connor and Mother Agnes Mary Donovan (a former Columbia psychology professor and clinician) as a new religious community of women dedicated to the defense of life at … Read More →
At the site of First Things, there is a piece by George Weigel which includes a rather spiffy idea. He relates a recent experience of a priest screwing around with the texts of Mass and then continues: Bad habits built … Read More →
On the site of National Review George Weigel has a piece about the bishops and Pres. Obama’s attack on the Catholic Church and the 1st Amendment rights of all Americans. Among other things he wrote: […] In his appearance on … Read More →
Did you see the analysis by George Weigel about the John Jay Study? I am just getting to it. Weigel makes good points for National Review Online. My emphases and comments. May 19, 2011 4:00 A.M. Priests, Abuse, and the … Read More →
There is a slow seismic tremor running very deep, but it is discernible. For example, some in the UK are saying that the Bishops meetings there ought to be live-streamed so that the Catholic people know what is going on. … Read More →
The nice folks at First Things… do you subscribe? … have performed a fine public service – and some smile provoking entertainment – in the form of an open letter from George Weigel to none other than, wait for it, … Read More →
Preface: I urge priests and bishops reading this to at the very least skip to the last part if you think you don’t have time to read the whole. _____ George Weigel has a piece in First Things which merits … Read More →
Now this is a good day’s work. From First Things with my emphases and comments. Mar 29, 2010 George Weigel The sexual and physical abuse of children and young people is a global plague; its manifestations run the gamut from … 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.
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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"Rev. John Zuhlsdorf, a traditionalist blogger who has never shied from picking fights with priests, bishops or cardinals when liturgical abuses are concerned."
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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.
-Austen Ivereigh on Twitter
[T]he even more mainline Catholic Fr. Z. blog.
-Deus Ex Machina
“For me the saddest thing about Father Z’s blog is how cruel it is.... It’s astonishing to me that a priest could traffic in such cruelty and hatred.”
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"Fr. Z's is one of the more cheerful blogs out there and he is careful about keeping the crazies out of his commboxes"
- Paul in comment at 1 Peter 5
"I am a Roman Catholic, in no small part, because of your blog.
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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