The Best Mother in the World

LONDON - Princess Diana's family solemnly marked the 10th anniversary of her death Friday, with her younger son eulogizing her as "the best mother in the world."

Hmm, you’d think that a royal (or, for us Jacobites, a royal pretender) would have higher standards than that.


The whole story is here, if you're in a voyeuristic, tabloid mode.

Pagan Labyrinths and Traditional Sanctuaries

How long has it been? Eight months now? What's happened in that time? The freeing of the traditional rite? What hasn't happened? There hasn't been any sign that the Archbishop has given the St. Rose Philippine Duchesne Community permission to find a real home. We still don't have a traditional sanctuary where we need not stumble around Novus Ordo furniture (excuse me, "ordinary form" furniture). We still don't have a regular place for our classes and social functions, either.

But those of us who see the Leaven from time to time can take comfort that progress is being made elsewhere in the diocese. Sacred Heart Parish in Shawnee may not have a traditional sanctuary either, but they can now proudly say they have a LABYRINTH.

“The labyrinth is very representative of who we are as a parish,” explained
Ann Daugherty, parishioner and music director at Sacred Heart. “We have young
and old parishioners, some whom have been here for years and some who are
new.”

Yeah, not exactly a grotto for the Blessed Mother, eh? Nevermind all those rosaries, let's engage in a little New Age spirituality and see if we can't find the Minotaur, while we're at it, eh? The article lamely claims that labyrinths are some sorth of primitive, or at least medieval, spiritual exercise.

Yeah, right.

Medieval? So there are labyrinth design in gothic cathedrals, sure. But the new labyrinth movement was "rediscovered" a heretical Episcopalian priestess from California as a means of shaking off the angry white male God and replacing Him with....a deified and feminized vision of onesself. Hardly medieval, unless of course you believe Dan Brown or the freemasons.

A great article exposing the labyrinth sham (written by a heretical Methodist who nonetheless recognizes paganism when he sees it) is available here.

Hey, this free access to National Catholic Distorter is interesting!

Here's the summation of their editorial on the motu proprio:

We fear that re-embracing the Latin Mass could undermine the liturgical reforms that undergird the spiritual and theological developments of the Second Vatican Council. Changes that will set off our alarms include:

• Reconfiguring seminary curricula to focus time, resources and talent on training priests to offer Mass and other sacraments in Latin and away from training that would support celebrating the sacraments in the vernacular.
• Cutting back on seminary training on pastoral duties, such as counseling and chaplaincies.
• Restricting church design and architecture in favor of old forms not conducive to the guidelines in liturgical documents written in the last 20 years.
• Discouraging efforts to use contemporary music and other artistic expressions in liturgy.
• Increasing restrictions on liturgical ministries open to all laypeople, men and women.

Some of us fear; some of us pray.

And in this article, we have some woman in Colorado Springs complaining that the traddies there preferred the company of other traddies, and preferred the old organic calendar to the "on the spot product" manufactured a few years ago, and preferred that church architecture.be....well....traditional. And she goes on to use a "we all celebrate Dad's birthday a different day" analogy. Well, of course, that's quite compelling, until you realize that Dad birthday is when it is, and SOMEBODY changed it.

Sister Joan's take?

I'd sure like to read this article, but not so badly that I'd give the National Catholic Distorter my credit card number:

Column


Joan
Chittister

The Latin Mass:
The laity will decide

OK, I guess I don't have to give them that, or anything else about me, so long as I click through a link to find .... yes.... a picture of an oppressed woman in a mantilla, following the Mass in her "Tridentian" hand missal.


This is beautiful. Yes, it's shootin' fish in a barrel, but hey:

It does not make reconciliation easier with women, who are now pointedly left out of the Eucharistic celebration entirely, or with Jews, who find themselves in the Tridentine Good Friday rite again described as “blind” and as objects of conversion. One wonders if reconciliation is really what it’s all about.

Poor Mrs. Curmudgeon, struggling to reconcile herself. I would say she reconciled with Rome much easier singing the choral part of the Aspereges Me that she did when I first took her, still a heretic, to Mass in college so she could sing kumbayas

It all depends, of course, on what you want to teach about our faith in the Eucharist. . . The Latin Mass, in which the priest celebrates the Eucharist with his back to the people, in a foreign language -- much of it said silently or at best whispered -- makes the congregation, the laity, observers of the rite rather than participants in it.

There goes the materialist, eh? If you can't measure it, it isn't happening, right? I'll tell you (as someone who has assisted from the pew in both N.O. and Tridentine Masses, and as someone who has served at the altar in both N.O. and Tridentine Masses, that I participate most fully in Tridentine Masses where I'm in the pew, alone at a low Mass, focused on the prayer, instead staring at the ceiling at an N.O. Mass while the ICEL drone goes on, or instead of (long ago) serving the N.O. in my rope belt and alb-thingy and watching the people in the Nave, and even (more recently) serving in cassock and surplice in the Tridentine Rite and focusing primarily on the my duties and trying to get the Latin pronounciation of the response to Orate Fratres right.

The symbology of a lone celebrant, removed from and independent of the congregation, is clear: Ordinary people have no access to God. They are entirely dependent on a special caste of males to contact God for them. They are “not worthy,” the liturgy says, even “to receive” the host.

This is even funnier than the caption of the oppressed woman reading her "Tridentian" Missal. Of course, Sis, the it's that goofy ICEL gloss on the Novus Ordo liturgy that says we are "not worthy...to receive." Obviously, you haven't actually been to or looked at a Roman Missal in a good long while. The Domine Non Sum Dignus is that we are "not worthy...that You should enter under my roof."

The Eucharist in such a setting is certainly not a celebration of the entire community.

Indeed it is not. What a relief, to spend 45 minutes at a low Mass, or 90 minutes at a high Mass, and escape from the our worldly society wherein everything is a celebration of yourself!

At the same time, the sense of mystique, the incantation of “heavenly” rather than "vulgar” language in both prayer and music, underscores a theology of transcendence. It lifts a person out of the humdrum, the dusty, the noisy, crowded chaos of normal life to some other world. It reminds us of the world to come -- beautiful, mystifying, ordered, perfumed. It takes us beyond the present, enables us, if only for a while, to “slip the surly bonds of earth” for a world less mundane. It privatizes the spiritual life. This is a God-and-I liturgy.

Careful, there, Sis. An objection to transcendence, beauty, and order? You're running the risk of making your agenda a little more clear than your spiritual handlers might want you to!

"The Vatican II liturgy, on the other hand, steeps a person in community, in social concern, in the hard, cold, clear reality of the present. The people and priest pray the Mass together in a common language, with a common theme. They interact with one another. They sing “a new church into being,” non-sexist, inclusive, entered together in the Jesus who walked the dusty roads of Galilee -- curing the sick, raising the dead, talking to women and inviting his community to do the same.

The Vatican II liturgy grapples with life from the point of view of the distance between life as we know it and life as the Gospel defines it for us. It plunges itself into the sanctifying challenges of daily life.

It carries within it a theology of transformation. It does not seek to create on earth a bit of heaven; it does set out to remind us all of the heaven we seek. It does not attempt to transcend the present. It does seek to transform it. It creates community in an isolating society. "

Aw, now you've gone and showed just a few more cards than you should have. Nevermind that the Latin is less "sexist" than the N.O. thanks to the useful noun homine. Oh well, and I'm quite sure your typical reader doesn't know who Robert Hugh Benson is, much less recall the humanist liturgy he imagined in his 1907 apocalyptic novel Lord of the World. And your typical reader has to be delighted that what passes for Catholic Mass is, ideally, more like the neo-pagan opening ceremonies of the modern Olympic Games than like the Mass of the saints.

"In their fundamental message, they present us with more than two different styles of music or two different languages or two different sets of liturgical norms. They present us with two different churches.

The choice between these two different liturgies brings the church to a new crossroads, one more open, more ecumenical, more communal, more earthbound than the other. The question is which one of them is more likely to create the world of which we dream. "

Yes, one more earthbound. Yes, one "to create the world of which we dream." No disagreement there, Sis. Here's the first time (and perhaps the only recent time) you've expressed a Catholic truth more clearly than the Holy Father.

Now it’s up to the laity to decide which church they really want and why. Which we choose may well determine the very nature of the church in years to come.

Yes, and once again, I still can't seem to find any New Coke at Hy-Vee?

Yes, we shall see soon....

I guess I haven't taken Father Zuhlsdorf's advice. I stated earlier that we wouldn't know the value we can assign to this motu proprio until we see what the Ecclesia Dei Commission really does for the faithful, particularly with the most recalcitrant ordinaries.

And well, I guess we shall see soon. Father Z has got his hands on a statement from Tod Brown, Bishop of Orange. In it, we see the bishop (1) dividing and conquering, isolating the "stable groups of the faithful" by requiring them to go to their geographic pastors, and (2) mildly threatening any decent clerics that might be left in the diocese to wait for him to take the lead, (3) contain the Mass at the tiny chapel in San Juan Capistrano and (4) wreck any new attempt at restoring the Mass by calling on the use of the modern lectionary (with, we can only assume, the crappy ICEL translations we've all fled.)

Anyways, if you want to read it with Fr. Z's commentary, CLICK HERE. Or see below for snippets with no commentary (my own, perhaps less charitable, commentary has been attempted, but deleted). We'll see what happens in the Diocese of Orange, and we'll know where the Church is headed.

OFFICE OF THE BISHOP
Marywood Center
P.O Box 1419
2811 E. Villa Real Drive
Orange, California 92863-1595
PHONE (714) 282-3105
FAX (714) 282-3029

MEMORANDUM

To: The Presbyterate of Orange
From: Most Reverend Tod D. Brown
Re: The Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum
Date: 10 July 2007...

I urge all pastors to join me in a common pastoral approach to the implementation of the Moto Proprio. It is the prerogative of pastors when requested by “a group of faithful (coetus fidelium) attached to the previous liturgical tradition exists stably (or continuously) (continenter exsistit),” i.e., parishioners in the full canonical sense of that term, and who request the celebration of the Holy Mass according to the rite of the Roman Missal published in 1962, together with the other liturgical celebrations as specified in the Apostolic Letter, it is their prerogative to “willingly accede (libenter suscipiat) to their requests, if the following conditions can be pastorally met:

• The availability of a priest, in good standing, who can demonstrate a minimum rubrical and linguistic ability to celebrate the extraordinary form.

• The ‘group’ of the faithful (that) exists ‘stably’ needs to be of sufficient number to warrant the public use of the forma extraordinaria. Individuals who are not geographically or intentionally part of a particular parish community should have recourse to their proper parish with their request or to the existing public celebrations that presently are offered in the Diocese of Orange at Mission San Juan Capistrano and Pope John Paul II Center.

• If the public celebration of the Eucharist in forma extraordinaria is conceded in accord with the norms as articulated in the Apostolic Letter (Art. #6), serious consideration should be given in using the Readings in the vernacular using the reformed Lectionary for Mass and its expanded cursus of Scripture texts. In this way, the entire parish community, whether utilizing the forma ordinaria or the public forma extraordinaria may be united in heart and mind around a single proclamation of God’s word.

While great responsibility is placed upon the pastor of the local parish in making these pastoral determinations, it remains for the Bishop of the Local Church in his role as moderator of the liturgy in his own diocese, to insure peace and serenity in the implementation of the universal norms of the Church regarding the worthy celebration of the liturgy as well as to intervene to prevent abuses from arising with regard to liturgical celebrations in his diocese. As pastors charged with the care of souls it is incumbent upon us to do whatever we can to help build a greater sense of communion in our local Church where divisions may exist particularly in areas of liturgical praxis. May this Apostolic Letter be an opportunity for us all to renew our commitment to being worthy stewards of the Holy Mysteries faithfully celebrated in accord with the rich Tradition of the Church.

Hey, dude, where in this store do you keep the New Coke?

The Coca Cola Company allows production of "Coca Cola Classic"
By John Thavis Coca Cola News Service

ATLANTA (CNS) -- In a long-awaited overture to disaffected soda traditionalists, the president of the Coca Cola Company allowed limited production of "Coca Cola Classic," the original formula soft drink which was recently replaced by New Coke.

The president said the Classic formula should be made available in to consumers who desire it. He said that while New Coke, introduced a few months ago, will remain the flagship product of the brand, Classic Coke should be considered "the extraordinary form of the Coca Cola product."

This reintroduction implies no failure of the New Coke production and marketing plan, but simply "two variations on the one flagship Coca Cola product." The president's directive came July 7 in a four-page letter to bottlers titled "Introducing Coca Cola Classic." The old formula will begin appearing in bottles and cans--not in fountains--Sept. 14. An accompanying personal letter from the president dismissed fears that the decisions would foment divisions among Coke drinkers or be seen as a retreat from the New Coke campaign.

The president said New Coke would certainly remain the company's predominant product. Drinking Coca Cola Classic presupposes a certain degree of sophistication and traditional preferences and "neither of these is found very often," he said. But the president expressed sympathy with consumers who are attached to the old Coke formula and uncomfortable with New Coke.

In the period since the introduction of New Coke, he said, excessive, Pepsi-like sweetness often led to "unfinished bottles and unsatisfactory mixes with rum and bourbon which were hard to bear.""I am speaking from experience, since I, too, lived through that period with all its hopes and confusion. And I have seen how arbitrary changes in the formula caused deep pain to individuals totally rooted in the old formula," he said.

The president noted that many older consumers have a long connection with the Classic formula. But in recent years, he said, it has been clearly demonstrated that young people are also attracted by the old formula.

By widening its availability, the president said, he hoped to make the new and old Coca Cola formulas "mutually enriching."

The old formula has been hoarded and bottled by small, out-of-the-way bottlers since shortly after the introduction of the new formula, but customers had to make special trips--often hundreds of miles and beg bottlers for it, who did not always consent.

...[T]he new policy did not explicitly state that those buying Coca Cola Classic were also expected to buy New Coke. The company said that crossover purchasers would be presumed, however.

He emphasized that although the new formula was designed to replace the old formula, the old formula was "never formally abandoned." Its restoration as an extraordinary product thus does not undermine the company's decisions with respect to New Coke, he said.

"There is no contradiction between the two formulas. In the history of our company there is growth and progress, but no rupture," he said."What earlier generations held as a good product remains such, and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful," he said.

Hmm. Anytime Skylstad is involved....

OK, while it's great to see pious women abandoning the dispair of the sedevacantist position, I have to wonder:

(a) Why would the choose to make their obedience under the care of such a lousy steward as is Bp. Skylstaad? Maybe they could have jumped over to Bishop Vasa's diocese and had a much more sane reintroduction into full communion.

(b) How much have these nuns agreed to pay on the Spokane bankruptcy settlement?

(c) How do they like the new Mass? Skylstad isn't known as one particularly solicitous of traddies. How many kumbayas will it take before they start wondering if the seat of Spokane is really empty?

(d) If they reach the conclusion I fear they might in question (c) above, would they then be"Sedespokantists?"

I remain the skeptic

Yes, despite what everyone says, I still remain skeptical. Maybe, just maybe, if the people in Springfield, and in Orange, and in Houston, and elsewhere, are accommodated in short order (especially if that accomodation comes quickly from the Ecclesia Dei commission over the local ordinary's stalling tactics, and we see Rome taking care of traddies), that skepticism will fade. But for now, I remain skeptical.

For instance, a statement that priests of the old-rite orders (sorry, I'm not good enough at Romanitas to go along and say "two forms of the same rite")....ahem, a statement that priests of the old-rite orders can't in principle refuse to say the newfangled Mass....such a statement seems like a little time bomb.

I'm sorry, Fr. X, but your objections to the N.O. as a baser form of liturgy are unacceptable. You're assigned to say the N.O. every Sunday at 9am--maybe it would ok if you said a public Tridentine Mass Sunday at 3:30 pm.

On the other hand, if Fr. Y can't say the N.O. because he has a tee time....well....that's a practical reason, not a principled one. Perhaps Fr. X oughta take up golf.

How many does St. Vincent's seat?

It may be crowded at St. Vincents during the Triduum next year:

Art. 2. In Masses celebrated without the people, each Catholic priest of the Latin rite, whether secular or regular, may use the Roman Missal published by Bl. Pope John XXIII in 1962, or the Roman Missal promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1970, and may do so on any day with the exception of the Easter Triduum. For such celebrations, with either one Missal or the other, the priest has no need for permission from the Apostolic See or from his Ordinary. [emphasis added].

As I feared, this motu proprio restores nothing to us, the laity, nothing, either in principle or in practice. And in practice, it actually takes away from the clerics: they can no longer celebrate the holiest liturgies of the year in the old rite, and those haggard diocesan clerics, ordinarily limited to one Mass on a feria, in practice won't have the ability to say the old Mass as they want to. The reprehensible modernist bishops have one another battle. You can just hear Cardinal Murphy Cormac O'Connor gloating about it, happy to avoid any prayers that would lead infidels, heretics and schismatics to the one true faith.

So all of you in Springfield, Missouri, and other places subject to oppressive modernist regimes, you won't be assisting at an authorized traditional Mass anytime soon.

I guess it really isn't just a rumor....

Vatican Press Release:

28.06.2007

COMUNICATO DELLA SALA STAMPA DELLA SANTA SEDE
Si è svolta ieri pomeriggio in Vaticano una riunione, presieduta dal Cardinale Segretario di Stato, in cui è stato illustrato ai rappresentanti di diverse conferenze episcopali il contenuto e lo spirito dell’annunciato "Motu proprio" del Santo Padre sull’uso del Messale promulgato da Giovanni XXIII nel 1962. Il Santo Padre si è recato a salutare i presenti e si è intrattenuto con loro in un’approfondita conversazione per circa un’ora. La pubblicazione del documento – che sarà accompagnato da un’ampia lettera personale del Santo Padre ai singoli Vescovi - è prevista entro alcuni giorni, quando il documento stesso sarà stato inviato a tutti i Vescovi con la indicazione della sua successiva entrata in vigore.
[00979-01.01]
[B0356-XX.01]

Let's pray that my fears from last night are unfounded!

Worse off than before...?

Having been on the farthest fringes of the Catholic news loop for some time, Mrs. Curmudgeon was the one who pointed me to the news that the Vatican had released the motu proprio to representatives of the various episcopal conferences. Rorate Caeli has the details; no point in pretending that I'm telling anyone any thing they don't already know.

But of course, there are two points which weren't, perhaps, emphasized enough on that site and in the comments that followed. They bear out a concern I've had for the last couple of years that under the guise of preserving Tradition, the Vatican apparatchiks will destroy it.

The froggie liberal Catholic paper La Croix reports, among other things, that (per Rorate Caeli's translation):

• "The motu proprio should predict safeguards to guarantee the last word to the bishop, in case of a disagreement between faithful and priests on this matter."

...and....

• "... the motu proprio could establish that the lectionary be, in both rites, the one established by Paul VI in 1967. [sic]"

Well, if the La Croix report is true, in a few weeks, the Vatican will find itself farther than it has been in years from any sort of reconciliation with the SSPX or other "irregulars." And the SSPX and other irregulars with find themselves with an influx of now-indulterous priests and laity who recognize this "liberalization" for what it really is...a wolf in sheep's clothing (in fact, not very convincing sheep's clothing). Nothing has been liberalized; the Ecclesia Dei regime will continue, but with the new burden of substituting the ridiculous, pointless calendar novation imposed by Pope Paul for no other purpose than to break with tradition, and with the awful Pauline lectionary that destroys the wonderful annual cycle that (even after just a few years) I so look forward to.

And I'm sure that the distance will be just fine for many of the wicked men in Rome and various chanceries about the world who are eager to drive the last vestiges of the Church out of their little modernist organization. Anyone who's not asleep can recognize that any changes to the preconciliar Missal right now will be identified by traditionalists as an attempt to co-opt and divert. If there's to be any hope of healing any wounds in the church, that healing certainly won't come if there's tinkering with the Tridentine rite. The Tridentine rite must remain static in order to survive within the formal boundaries of the Church. The Wuerls and Ricards and (closer to home) Liebrechts of the world will certainly cheer this motu proprio, if La Croix is right, because it very well could cause the movement to regularlize the old rite to splinter, and it will leave them free of the last remnant of tradition so they can continue their Barney Masses and their Clown Masses and their Young-Halfdressed-Hottie-Liturgical-Dancer Masses without that embarrassing reminder of how it used to be, when we worshipped the Almighty instead of ourselves.

The only hope we have is that, in fact, La Croix is simply assisting the froggie bishops in a last ditch effort to sabotage this project. Will the Vatican screw this up? Hmm. I'm hoping they don't, of course, but there's a good four or five decade-long history of the Vatican screwing things like this up, isn't there?

But if it's not sabotage, and the Vatican is determined to screw this up, then the Curmudgeons (and others) will have a decision to make. Are we willing to participate in the final destruction of the old rite? Are we willing to go along the latest fabricated, on-the-spot, half-assed nonsense? And are we willing to listen to the see-Spot-run banal translations that the wretched ICEL and USCCB have imposed on everyone else every Sunday?

Hmm. My preliminary answer to that question will certainly disturb some of my indulterous clergy and lay friends. Let's just hope the question isn't asked.

I'm still here.

As for the last couple of months, I've got all kinds of excuses:

Been busy. Lost my password for the new blogger for a while, and had trouble logging on to the old computer. We finally sold the old Cave, and moved to temporary lodgings while we search for a new one, so I've been carting boxes. Didn't have a place to set up the old desktop (which was really cranky anyways) so it wasn't convenient to blog until recently, when we got the laptop. Employment circumstances have changed (for the better), and commute has extended, so haven't had so much lazy time at home to blog, or to surf the internet and find things to get mad and blog about. I've also been traveling some. I've been waiting for the motu proprio and our liberation. I've been reading real, printed books.

I could go on--I've got plenty more excuses where that one came from.

But I won't.

I just want folks to know that I'm still out there, and I still have the best of intentions about returning to the blog.

In the meantime, enjoy a lousy camera phone picture of a beautiful sanctuary.

I was in the Denver area on business a while back and had an opportunity to stop by the Our Lady of Mount Carmel Community, the FSSP apostolate in Littleton, Colorado. Another great story, alongside that of St. Stephen Protomartyr in Sacramento: the indulters in Denver, unobstructed by (although still hassled by) modernist chancery rats or an indecisive archbishop, located a suitable facility built by a Protestant sect that had contracepted itself out of existence, and turned it into something beautiful (too small, of course, but beautiful). I knocked on the door and met a few really nice folks who showed me the church, and we had a nice visit. I learned that OLMC is, only a few years after starting their project, debt free with quality facilities (too small, of course, and not as beautiful as something built by our great granparents before the modernists destroyed ecclesiastical architecture in the 1940s, but quality).

And it's all theirs! No working around the novus ordo table in the middle of the sanctuary for them. No clearing out early so the rappers can come in and profane the sanctuary with their "music" for them. No scrambling to figure out what to do with the liturgical gear between Masses for them. What a joy it must be to be able to live a normal Catholic parish life, instead of being a tenants at a dying novus ordo parish, and getting short shrift from the chancery rats who are only interested in our money!

Just another Thursday after Easter....

This, from the short-lived Slackjawed Trad, is rather fitting on this random Thursday after Easter:


Sunday, February 4, 2007

Ascension on Sunday?

Sure, it's nowhere near the feast of the Ascension. But we can anticipate it, can't we? Every year I get bugged about it, and this year I'm getting bugged about 100 days early. Seriously, if we start talking about it, and whining to our bishops about it NOW, maybe they'll have had enough by the time they and their other provincial bishops get together and he'll fix the latest mistake in the novus ordo calendar.

Anyways, what's this about? Well, I know it's 100 days ahead of the liturgical schedule, but I just got the bishops' new translation of the novus ordo readings for this year's feast of the Ascension (Luke 24:46-53), which are based on Latin texts which were not available to St. Jerome, or even the more recent translators of the Neo-Vulgate:

[Jesus] said to them: "Thus it is written that the Messiah must suffer and rise from the dead on the third day. In His name, penance of the remission of sins is to be preached to all the nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses to this. See, I send down upon you the promise of my Father. Remain herein the City until you are closed with power from on high."

Then He led them out near Bethany, and with hands upraised, blessed them. And as He blessed, He began to leave, but James, the brother of Jesus, spoke: "O Lord, it is but the the fortieth day since your Resurrection from the dead, and but the fifth day of the week. It would not be fitting to mark such a common day such as this for Your Ascension; rather, you should wait to ascend on the first day of the week, verily, a much holier day than the fifth day.

And Andrew grasped the garment of Jesus as He began to rise to heaven and said "Teacher, please don't leave us until the forty-third day, as truly the Father's chosen People wandered the desert for forty-three years, and the the rain fell upon Noah for forty-three days, and you yourself fasted in the desert for forty-three days before you commenced your ministry."And Jude said, "O Lord, if you were to leave today my family might not be able supp together. And some disciples might neglect the commemoration of your glorious ascension and instead remain home to watch television. Should you leave on this day many disciples would neglect to commemorate it. If you wait until the first day of next week, the day of your glorious resurrection, it shall be Mother's Day and the disciples might attend Holy Mass to please their mothers. Please remain with us."

And Simon-Peter said, "Teacher, I beseech you to wait until the forty-third day, for John, the apostle whom you love, has scheduled a haircut and has not come with us to witness this."And the other apostles grasped His robes and pulled Him to the ground and bid Him "Yea, Lord, do not leave us on such an inconvenient day. Truly if thou art the Christ, the Son of God, Thou canst delay Thy departure to a day more suitable for us."

And thus, my friends, we have Ascension Sunday. What a shame Holy Mother Church was so wrong for so many centuries! To celebrate it on a Thursday? Bah!If you offended by this....well, if you're offended by it....well, write your bishop about it; don't write me.

Posted by Slackjawed Trad at 9:58 PM 1 comments Links to this post

What happened to me?

I was blogging.

Then I quit in October.

Then I was blogging again about the November cloning election.

Then I quit again.

Then I started blogging again in January.

And now I've disappeared.

Pretty much everyone's given up on me, I know (and there weren't that many to start with).

But here's the deal: In late March, I received an email from the Netherlands Lottery Board announcing that I'd won a million Euros.

Since then, I've been furiously working to get my financial and legal affairs in order, doing tax planning, setting up trusts, etc., etc.

In the next couple of days, I'm going to fly to Amsterdam and claim my prize. (Don't worry, I'll be wearing a bracelet that says "DO NOT EUTHANIZE ME!" in English and Dutch.)

And once I do that, I'll have plenty of time to devote to the blog. I'll make it what it once was....and more.

Report on the "Loyal Dissent" lecture.

A report from our mole on the Topics-to-Go lecture by "'loyal' dissident theologian" Fr. Charles Curran yesterday, March 24. He promises more later.

Curmudgeon, Wolftracker,

Once again, I ventured into the deep and attended the Kansas City Catholic dissenters’ Topics-to-Go lecture series at the All’s Souls Unitarian Universalist "Church." And once again, I sacrificed a morning of my life (a beautiful spring morning, by-the-way) to hang out with a bunch of liberal gray-hairs.

You guys really need to start paying me for this. Really! At least cover the cost of the almond croissant and coffee I got at Napoleon’s Bakery to carry me through the ordeal. And give me five bucks to put into the "freewill offering" basket so they can pay airfare for the next dissident to Kansas City (don’t worry…I wouldn’t really do the latter).

So now I’m flipping through 15 smallish pages of notes looking for something interesting to say about Fr. Charles Curran’s talk. This time a professor was talking, so there were some outrageous things said, but not in a particularly outrageous way, unlike the antics of Bishop "Just Tom" Gumbleton (or Sister Joan Chittister and Kathleen Sebelius) last year. I’ll get to the summary in a moment, but as with the other talks, the most interesting things were the setting, the crowd and the Q&A session.

The setting was more subdued than last time. The only literature available as you walked in was a Voice of the Faithful brochure and a free copy the current issue of National Catholic Reporter (more on that later). I didn’t see literature or hear any new announcements about the KCSJ People of God organization that they were trying to start last year. The auditorium was as it was last time, except that additional chairs were set up in the foyer so that the huge crowd could be comfortable as it spilled out of the auditorium (it never did, BTW. There were a good number of empty seats. Attendance has fallen off since "Just Tom’s" talk in the heady early days of their project).

The front wall of the "sanctuary," the UU’s auditorium, still had that 25-foot tall nonrepresentational fabric-and-rope thingamabob that reminded me of a woman’s reproductive system. I used to think that there’s no place in this world for nonrepresentational art of that sort. I was wrong. The UU "sanctuary" is the perfect place for such a thing. This time I also noticed that beside the podium was a hoop-and-lamp doo-dad which is the UU logo. However, the lamp wasn’t lit. Rather fitting for it to be there in front of a dissident priest. And rather fitting that the lamp’s fire was out.

Anyways, the crowd was—as noted above—gray. Very gray. Lots of old women, fewer old men. A dozen or so younger folk (out of a total of around 200 people). And lots of women (old and young) dressed like men, with their hair cut like men. I didn’t sit next to anyone this time—there were plenty of seats available, but the woman down the row (30 to 40-ish, with the regulation manly haircut, manly khaki pants, and manly white button-down blouse) was apparently a true believer. She chortled at the typical applause lines (e.g., from Fr. Curran, "We tend to idolatry, making God in our own image, but we really don’t know what She looks like!") and guffawed and sighed at all the right places.

There was another amusing incident (amusing…like all of this…in a dark sort of way). Before the lecture started, the leader of the pack stood up and announced that there were copies of Curran’s book, Loyal Dissent, available in the back. Then she announced that someone had accidentally been given an autographed copy of the book, and she asked everyone who bought a book to examine theirs to see if there was a greeting scribbled to Sister Farrah Far-Out. Some guy raised his hand, and Sister Far-Out herself marched up to make the exchange. Her habit was indistinguishable from that of most of the other women in attendance: Regulation haircut, khaki pants, and a white button-down shirt. Perhaps they’re all sisters of the same order?

Anyways, there were no Roman collars in sight (certainly not from Fr. Curran, a suit-and-tie priest all around), but I recognized the former pastor of a midtown KCMO church behind me, and I also recognized my parents’ former rural pastor (now, I think, at some JoCo assignment…one of the "Holy Something-or-Other" parishes that seem to run together in my mind). I tried to get a couple of solid orthodox priests I knew to attend with me, and ask a few difficult questions, but I suppose Saturday morning confessions and other duties—or perhaps good sense—kept them away.

Now, I should discuss my talk, but I’ve just got to jump ahead. I’ll get to the bulk of Curran’s talk later in this email…or perhaps in the next. The Q&A session featured two or three queries and comments from the audience (two from some of the few members of the audience under 60), expressing fear for their progressive movement in the face of …. people like us: young conservative Catholics. One young woman (conspicuous due to her rather feminine haircut) asked "I look around, and I see a striking age difference here. We all see it. Most people who are young see things in black and white and are more conservative and legalistic. What are we to do?" A second woman, whose appearance I didn’t note and don’t recall, said she was concerned about the lack of youth in the room and asked "What do you think about the future of loyal dissent?" A third guy…thirtyish…stood up and announced that he was not so conservative as he used to be, and asked Curran to comment on "conservative dissent" on issues like bringing back--gasp--the Latin Mass.

In response to the first question, Curran took a mild track. He acknowledged that there was danger in certitude, and also that it was important that "groups like this" got together and dissenters drew support from one another. However, said Curran, it’s important that we all get along: it’s a big Church, and there is a need for Diversity as well as Unity. Curran then moved a little farther down the trail and cautioned the first questioner and the audience about the dangers of young Catholics looking for certainty, and he likened the conservative revival to the upsurge of evangelicalism that has eclipsed moderate protestantism in the last 40 years.

(Here, I noted that it was highly unusual…if not unheard of…for the dissenters to describe reactionary Catholic nuts like me as a source of "Diversity." Usually the Topics-to-Go crowd seems themselves as the sole source and arbiter of Diversity. We’re not ordinarily scored as "Diverse" notwithstanding that we’re often a minority of one in a room such as this).


To the second and third questioners, Curran opened up a little more, noting that keeping the interest of youth is a problem for every Church of every demonination. He noted that the average age of the subscribers to National Catholic Distorter was 67. That’s right….67 (!)...and they’re struggling to get younger readers. He sees real problems in the future. Curran’s suggestion was that younger people are too busy playing soccer-mom to get involved like the gray-heads in the room.

(Here I repressed an urge to jump up and answer the obvious question. So dissenters aren’t reproducing? Imagine that! I wonder if it has anything to do with disregard of the "non-core" teachings about artificial contraception? Or with the attitude of religious indifferentism? Too busy enjoying themselves to trouble with more than one designer child and too busy celebrating themselves to give that one designer child a solid leftist formation. Fr. Charlie oughta come to Blessed Sacrament. It’ll scare the hell out of him.)

Anyways, I have a few chores to do, so I’m going to postpone the writeup of the whole talk until latter on. I will say, though, that at the end of the talk, I lingered a little bit in the corner, pondering mischief. Do I kneel down and ask my parent’s old pastor for a blessing? Or perhaps as Fr. Curran? After all….St. Francis said that his first act on meeting a particular wicked priest would be to kiss his hands, because of their indellible sacerdotal character. Naw, I decided…my chaplain describes sacramentals as "spiritual bullets," but there seemed to be something wrong with firing such a bullet off in that setting.


More later.

Your unjustly-paid correspondent.

No problem at all

A couple of weeks ago, I took down a comment that directed readers to audio files of the St. Rose Philippine Duchesne Lenten mission, out of a concern (thoughtfully raised by Indulter X) that providing the recordings for free would interfere with the preacher's CD sales and make it harder for him to continue his ministry. Last week I was assured...indirectly...that the concern was unfounded, and that the preacher, Fr. Isaac Mary Relyea, is happy to have the conferences available.

They're available by CLICKING HERE.

Who needs the CD's when you've got the guy himself?

Tonight was the first of four nights of our parish mission. We're quite fortunate to have Fr. Isaac Mary Relyea with us. Tonight he preached on death. Tomorrow night is judgment, then heaven and hell on Wednesday and Thursday (actually, I think Wednesday will be hell. I'd never heard of the guy before yesterday, but he's pretty darned good (and he's got a high standard to compare to with our FSSP priests).

If you're interested, a few pews remain: Mass is at 6:30pm , and Rosary and Fr. Isaac Mary's talk follow. Blessed Sacrament, 20th and Parallel Parkway (or thereabouts...just look for the steeple). There's also Mass and a talk at noon.

Come, but just don't take my seat.

I'm glad this thing doesn't conflict with Fr. Charles Curran's upcoming talk. I'm sure they'll be in the same league, eh?

UPDATE MARCH 13: Mea culpa. Apologies to Fr. Isaac Mary, and to the Fathers of Mercy. I had found a CPM designation for him on the Google search I did yesterday. Turns out that it's just plain wrong. He's not a member of that institute (which, judging from the one Father of Mercy I know, is nonetheless to be highly regarded). Guess that goes to show you can't always trust the internet. Except for Wikipedia. Wikipedia is never wrong, of course. Oh, and this website...another one that is totally free from error or deception.

Remember . . . they said it wouldn't cost Missourians a dime?

I'm sure it's been prudently taken down from the Clone & Kill website now that they've won, but you'll recall that one of the grand lies that Jim Stowers' mouthpieces repeated ad naseum during the Amendment 2 campaign was that Amendment 2 wouldn't cost Missourians any money--there would be no public funding for scientists who created and then ground up babies for medical experiments.

Of course, that's 180 degrees from what Amendment 2 actually said (see Sec. 38(d)5) but of course, one isn't expected to be truthful in political campaigns, and if you have the right judge, and you've promised big bucks to the Secretary of State's future gubenatorial campaign, one isn't even obliged to be truthful on ballot language.

Now, of course they're all up in arms over there in the Missouri legislature, because some members really had the audacity to hold the cloners to their word. Blunt's plan to sell off state university assets to build cloning labs has been stymied.

And our own State Senator, Jolie Justus, towing the line of the party of death, is of course posturing her outrage.

Because you see, if it isn't about cloning, it also isn't about funding.

Of course not.

Let's not forget Satan's little helpers at the plaintiff's bar

Of course, remember, it's about healing, not about money. It's also about justice (but please don't ask us to explain to you how getting 40% contingent fees on a judgment paid by expropriating the patrimony accumulated by generations of sacrificial giving from innocent fellow Catholics, instead of the perverts and their enablers themselves, is just).

Now, one of my big blogging regrets is that early on, I intended to focus on the modern theives and scoundrels at bench and bar who are exploiting the misdeeds and misgovernance of the clergy and hierarchy in order to destroy the Church and enrich themselves in the process. I got a few posts off on the subject, here, here and here, for instance, but I wandered off into other rants. The bad guys are still at it, of course, and Satan's own Marci Hamilton is still scribbling away in her comfy-chair at Cardozo, putting out unsupportable nonsense that a law professor--even one all- consumed with the project of ridding the world of religion--should not be allowed to print under her credentials. If I start posting regularly, I need to get back to this topic. Really, because it's one that nearly everyone else ignores.

But, Oh, Mr. Curmudgeon, though, where did you get this ad?

Well, I got it from Orville, with many thanks. Orville cut it out of a newspaper.

But from which newspaper, you ask?

1. The Davenport Leader
2. The Quad City Times
3. The Kansas City Star
4. Pitch Weekly
5. The Quad City GLBT News
6. The Catholic Key

Yes, of course, he cut it out of the Catholic Key (page 10 of the March 9, 2007 issue, vol. 39, no. 10).

Obviously, things are still rudderless at the Key (which is, of course, better than having a firm hand at the tiller steering the paper purposefully in the wrong direction). But we see our own diocesan newspaper being used as a tool of the enemies of the Church (which isn't new, of course, but this is noteworthy for its brazenness). Something must be done.

Hilary, we need you down here!

Regnans in Excelsis

Pius Bishop, servant of the servants of God, in lasting memory of the matter.

He that reigneth on high, to whom is given all power in heaven and earth, has committed one holy Catholic and apostolic Church, outside of which there is no salvation, to one alone upon earth, namely to Peter, the first of the apostles, and to Peter's successor, the pope of Rome, to be by him governed in fullness of power. Him alone He has made ruler over all peoples and kingdoms, to pull up, destroy, scatter, disperse, plant and build, so that he may preserve His faithful people (knit together with the girdle of charity) in the unity of the Spirit and present them safe and spotless to their Saviour.

1. In obedience to which duty, we (who by God's goodness are called to the aforesaid government of the Church) spare no pains and labour with all our might that unity and the Catholic religion (which their Author, for the trial of His children's faith and our correction, has suffered to be afflicted with such great troubles) may be preserved entire. But the number of the ungodly has so much grown in power that there is no place left in the world which they have not tried to corrupt with their most wicked doctrines; and among others, Elizabeth, the pretended queen of England and the servant of crime, has assisted in this, with whom as in a sanctuary the most pernicious of all have found refuge. This very woman, having seized the crown and monstrously usurped the place of supreme head of the Church in all England to gether with the chief authority and jurisdiction belonging to it, has once again reduced this same kingdom- which had already been restored to the Catholic faith and to good fruits- to a miserable ruin.

2. Prohibiting with a strong hand the use of the true religion, which after its earlier overthrow by Henry VIII (a deserter therefrom) Mary, the lawful queen of famous memory, had with the help of this See restored, she has followed and embraced the errors of the heretics. She has removed the royal Council, composed of the nobility of England, and has filled it with obscure men, being heretics; oppressed the followers of the Catholic faith; instituted false preachers and ministers of impiety; abolished the sacrifice of the mass, prayers, fasts, choice of meats, celibacy, and Catholic ceremonies; and has ordered that books of manifestly heretical content be propounded to the whole realm and that impious rites and institutions after the rule of Calvin, entertained and observed by herself, be also observed by her subjects. She has dared to eject bishops, rectors of churches and other Catholic priests from their churches and benefices, to bestow these and other things ecclesiastical upon heretics, and to determine spiritual causes; has forbidden the prelates, clergy and people to acknowledge the Church of Rome or obey its precepts and canonical sanctions; has forced most of them to come to terms with her wicked laws, to abjure the authority and obedience of the pope of Rome, and to accept her, on oath, as their only lady in matters temporal and spiritual; has imposed penalties and punishments on those who would not agree to this and has exacted then of those who perserved in the unity of the faith and the aforesaid obedience; has thrown the Catholic prelates and parsons into prison where many, worn out by long languishing and sorrow, have miserably ended their lives. All these matter and manifest and notorius among all the nations; they are so well proven by the weighty witness of many men that there remains no place for excuse, defence or evasion.

3. We, seeing impieties and crimes multiplied one upon another the persecution of the faithful and afflictions of religion daily growing more severe under the guidance and by the activity of the said Elizabeth -and recognising that her mind is so fixed and set that she has not only despised the pious prayers and admonitions with which Catholic princes have tried to cure and convert her but has not even permitted the nuncios sent to her in this matter by this See to cross into England, are compelled by necessity to take up against her the weapons of juctice, though we cannot forbear to regret that we should be forced to turn, upon one whose ancestors have so well deserved of the Christian community. Therefore, resting upon the authority of Him whose pleasure it was to place us (though unequal to such a burden) upon this supreme justice-seat, we do out of the fullness of our apostolic power declare the foresaid Elizabeth to be a heretic and favourer of heretics, and her adherents in the matters aforesaid to have incurred the sentence of excommunication and to be cut off from the unity of the body of Christ.

4. And moreover (we declare) her to be deprived of her pretended title to the aforesaid crown and of all lordship, dignity and privilege whatsoever.
5. And also (declare) the nobles, subjects and people of the said realm and all others who have in any way sworn oaths to her, to be forever absolved from such an oath and from any duty arising from lordshop. fealty and obedience; and we do, by authority of these presents , so absolve them and so deprive the same Elizabeth of her pretended title to the crown and all other the abovesaid matters. We charge and command all and singular the nobles, subjects, peoples and others afore said that they do not dare obey her orders, mandates and laws. Those who shall act to the contrary we include in the like sentence of excommunication.

6. Because in truth it may prove too difficult to take these presents wheresoever
it shall be necessary, we will that copies made under the hand of a notary public and sealed with the seal of a prelate of the Church or of his court shall have such force and trust in and out of judicial proceedings, in all places among the nations, as these presents would themselves have if they were exhibted or shown.

Given at St. Peter's at Rome, on 27 April 1570 of the Incarnation; in the fifth year of our pontificate.

Pius PP.

The fashionable historians denounce it as the rash act of a holy, clear-thinking, but politically naive man. It wasn't fashionable, but it was right. Indeed, perhaps we need a little more holiness and clear thinking from Roman quarters (and from other points in the hierarchy), and a little more political naivete. A click of the news....from the UK, from the Czech Republic, from Red China, from the United States confirms it. I hinted at such myself last year. Perhaps Cardinal Biffi will give us a taste of that very sort of thing...the thing we had a taste of back in the days of Cardinal Ratzinger.