Coincidence?

On March 22, 1970, Palm Sunday, the Novus Ordo Missae was first permitted to be used in these United States.  (It did not become mandatory until the First Sunday of Advent, 1971.)

On March 22, 2020, the Fourth Sunday of Lent, the public celebration of the Novus Ordo Missae is effectively almost entirely suppressed in these U.S.A., and in much of the rest of the world, as we labor under what one priest has aptly described as God’s Interdict.

It appears that the only public Masses now being offered are the traditional Latin Masses offered by the Society of St. Pius X (at least where they are not prevented by the civil authorities).  Although the Society has less than 700 priests worldwide, it has actually increased the number of Masses in order to have fewer people attend each one.

Notice also that the Fourth Sunday of Lent is Laetare Sunday, the midpoint of Lent, when special signs of joy are permitted in the liturgy to encourage the faithful in their Lenten penance.

So, on Palm Sunday, when the Church commemorates Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem in order to undergo His Passion, she entered into the eclipse of the traditional Mass and the rise of the New Mass, in which she would become all but unrecognizable.  Exactly 50 years later, the public celebration of the new Mass is all but completely shut down, leaving only the public celebration of the traditional Mass.

Coincidence?

According to St. Padre Pio, with Divine Providence there is no coincidence.

What Does It Mean?

Masses all over the world are becoming scarce.  Dozens of dioceses all over these United States are suspending public Masses.  Just yesterday afternoon came the announcement that public Masses in the Diocese of Boise are suspended, at least through Palm Sunday (though the Cathedral parish is vastly increasing the availability of confession and Eucharistic adoration).  A few dioceses are taking the intermediate approach of carrying on with public Masses but dispensing the faithful from the Sunday obligation, or at least dispensing certain categories of people from the obligation.  The Society of St. Pius X is more or less following this middle course, though they intend to add Masses in places where their chapels are full, so that fewer people will attend each Mass.

I can only give my own, non-authoritative opinion as to what this all means.  I think it means there is an immense lack of faith and a failure to see this crisis in a supernatural light.  Some bishops in Italy, where hundreds are dying every day, have actually come out and denied even the possibility that this plague is a scourge of divine chastisement calling for repentance, conversion and propitiation.  Even some good priests say they think this is not a chastisement, despite obviously recognizing the many reasons why we so richly deserve a chastisement.  A time like this calls for an increase, not a decrease, in reception of the Sacraments and in offerings of the Propitiating Sacrifice.

Yet God, without Whose consent nothing happens, is permitting the shutting down of the Sacrifice and the restricting of access to the Sacraments even during a pandemic.  This, frankly, is a chastisement in itself, and one that I think is even more frightening than the coronavirus itself and rightly described as apocalyptic.  We should ask ourselves why God would strip us of the Mass and in some cases the Sacraments in a time of contagion.  I fear that one answer may be that, so far from propitiating God, we have actually been making the occasion of our worship a means of aggravating our guilt.

Are our hearts far away from Him, even while we honor Him with our lips?  There seems little enough to distinguish us from non-Catholics.  The Guttmacher Institute, Planned Parenthood’s research arm, says that, according to a 2011 study, 98% of Catholic women have used contraceptives at some point; 87% were currently using contraceptives; and 89% of Catholic women who have never married have had sex.  The Church has never changed her teaching on contraceptives or sex outside of marriage.  According to a 2015 Pew Research Center report, a quarter of Catholics have been divorced; 44% have lived in concubinage; 62% favor Communion for those who have divorced and remarried without an annulment.  Even our own clergy, up to the highest levels of the Church, have been outspoken proponents of Communion for the divorced and remarried, which the Church has never endorsed and cannot endorse.  A 2019 Pew study found that only 31% of Catholics believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.  Most of these do not know the Church’s doctrine of transubstantiation; but 22% of Catholics do know it but reject it.  Is God putting the kibosh on countless multitudes of unworthy and sacrilegious Communions?

What about general irreverence in church?  The noise levels inside a Catholic church surpass anything that went on even during the crazy seventies, when all sorts of excesses ran riot in the liturgy.  The last time I was present at a priestly ordination in my diocese, several years ago, people were literally whooping and yelling inside the cathedral, during the Mass, as if they were at a football game.  No one corrected them.  (Now I come to think of it, we have had very, very few priestly ordinations in this diocese since then.)  Many of us, who do not have the excuse of having just come in from hard and unavoidable labor, appear at Mass dirty and smelly, dressed like slobs, or dressed immodestly.  Maybe God got tired of looking at tramp stamps and butt cracks and cleavage and flip flops inside His house, and smelling B.O. and listening to inane sports conversations in front of the tabernacle, and tossed us out until we have straightened up.  Wouldn’t we throw people out of our houses who came over only to behave disrespectfully and ignore us?

Also on ice are bound to be a great many Masses offered by perverted and corrupt priests and bishops, such as those who, to our shame, have been exposed in recent years, and by priests who preach errors and heresies from the pulpit.  Yes, as St. Thomas More explains in his Dialogue Concerning Heresies, a bad priest does not make for an invalid Mass; but nevertheless, he also argues that it would be better to have fewer Masses than more Masses offered by bad priests.  “For though God of His goodness, however bad the priest may be, well accepts the oblation of Christ’s holy Body for the sake of other folk,” says Thomas, “He yet is highly displeased with that priest’s presumption.  And we ought never to seek our own well-being with our neighbor’s harm.  And we should, as a duty to God, rather forgo the profit that we ourselves might attain by a Mass than see His Majesty disreverenced by the bold presumption of such an odious minister as He has forbidden to come around Him.”  It is worth reflecting on what the effect is in the diocese when an evil priest is uncovered and brought to light.  Do we collectively, as a local church, put on sackcloth and ashes and try to make reparation and do justice?  Or is it business as usual?

And then there is the Mass itself, as celebrated in so many places.  We quite fail, on a constant and ongoing basis, to offer to God the best that we have.  We replace Latin with the vernacular; we replace chant with guitars and tambourines, badly played; we replace polyphony with Broadway show tunes and campfire ditties.  Consider the following from a paean to ourselves, often trotted out during Lent, in which God only gets a couple of passing mentions:

We reach out to those who are homeless/To those who live without warmth/In the coolness of evening we’ll shelter their dreams/We will clothe them in mercy and peace.

What does this morass even mean?  And then there is the gender ideology injected into the Palm Sunday Gospel reading of the Passion, where the liberal liturgists assign all the male lines to female readers, while a multitude of able-bodied men stand around mute.  Whom do we seek to please by this gender-bending?  Is God pleased?

I am among those who think depriving us of the Mass and shrinking the visibility of the Church in a time of pestilence is a failure on the part of the bishops, and the result of our experiment in bringing the Church into line with the modern world.  But whatever guilt bishops may or may not incur in this is swallowed up by the realization that none of this could have happened without the permission of Almighty God.  God has allowed this to happen for a reason.

God loves us infinitely, as though each of us were the only person who ever existed, and He sent His Son to die to unlock the gates of heaven that were closed against us on account of sin.  But He is not required to put up with our crap.

We would have no chance of making it to heaven if He did.

When Superman Refuses to Fly

So what are our shepherds doing about the coronavirus?  Among other things:

- No Communion from the chalice. (GOOD, should cut down on the use of lay Communion ministers, though certain exceptions are needed)
- Thorough washing of Communion vessels (Rome has previously ruled that this must be done by clerics)
- No hand-holding during Our Father and sign of peace (YAY!)
- Empty out holy water fonts (FAIL)
- No Communion on the tongue (ILLEGAL)

Some of these measures are prudent.  Some are welcome as purges of inane ‘70s accretions in the liturgy.  Some have nothing to do with stopping the spread of disease and are exercises of raw power, with the coronavirus as an obvious pretext for trying to quash traditional devotions and set modernist abuses in concrete.

This set of responses to the coronavirus is a bad sign.  Do our bishops really think these worldly precautions are sufficient?  Some of them don’t address the problem at all; none of them come close to bringing to bear all the powers at a bishop’s disposal.  Why aren’t bishops:

- Organizing processions?
- Using the Rituale Romanum to mass-produce holy water and exorcised salt and get them into the hands of as many people as possible?
- Imposing deprecatory blessings against plagues?
- Offering votive Masses against plagues?

Surely, the worst thing to do in a time of plague is to get rid of holy water!  Since a lot of priests use the Book of Blessings to make holy water, or even just make up their own blessings, maybe the absence of that water isn’t much of a loss; but real holy water, in which some exorcised salt is mixed, is meant to drive away disease!  Look at these passages from the blessings of salt and water out of the Rituale Romanum:

God’s creature, salt, I cast out the demon from you by the living God, by the true God, by the holy God, by God Who ordered you to be thrown into the water-spring by Eliseus to heal it of its barrenness.  May you be a purified salt, a means of health for those who believe, a medicine for body and soul for all who make use of you. 

O God, Who for man’s welfare established the most wonderful mysteries in the substance of water, hearten to our prayer, and pour forth Your blessing on this element now being prepared with various purifying rites.  May this creature of Yours, when used in Your mysteries and endowed with Your grace, serve to cast out demons and to banish disease.  May everything that this water sprinkles in the homes and gatherings of the faithful be delivered from all that is unclean and hurtful; let no breath of contagion hover there, no taint of corruption; let all the wiles of the lurking enemy come to nothing.  By the sprinkling of this water may everything opposed to the safety and peace of the occupants of these homes be banished, so that in calling on Your Holy Name they may know the well-being they desire, and be protected from every peril; through Christ our Lord.

These sacramentals are immensely powerful!  Or don’t we believe that anymore?

In the traditional Mass, there is a votive Mass for Deliverance from Death in Time of Pestilence.  It is founded on the belief, naively abandoned in our time, that plagues and pestilence are the scourges of God’s wrath for our sins.  For some reason, in the middle of the bloodiest century in human history, we came up with the idea that there is no need to appease God’s wrath.  We even got the zany idea that we can treat with God as equals.  How is that working out for us?  Why don’t we go back to praying like we used to in the Introit and the Collect and the Postcommunion for this votive Mass:

Be mindful, O Lord, of Thy covenant and say to the destroying Angel: Now hold thy hand, and let not the land be made desolate, and destroy not every living soul. 

O God, Who willest not the death of the sinner but that he should repent: welcome with pardon Thy people’s return to Thee: and so long as they are faithful in Thy service, do Thou in Thy clemency withdraw the scourge of Thy wrath. 

Graciously hear us, O God our Savior: deliver Thy people from the terrors of Thy wrath, and assure them of that safety which is the gift of Thy mercy.

These are extremely powerful spiritual weapons that only our priests and bishops can give us.  Why don’t they?  Is it because they don’t believe?

It is as if Superman is refusing to fly.

Confirmation: March 20, 1984

Future Bishop Juan Arzube in his youth.

33 years ago today, I received the Sacrament of Confirmation at the hands of +Juan Arzube, then an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, at the parish of St. Catherine of Siena in Reseda, California.  Bishop Arzube died Christmas Day of 2007 at the age of 89.  

It is good to remember, and pray for, the priests at whose hands you received your first Sacraments.  I received all mine (to date -- still haven't received the Sacrament of Matrimony) in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.  I was baptized by Rev. (later Msgr.) Austin J. Greene in November of 1970 at St. Joseph the Worker parish, then in Canoga Park, now Winnetka, California.  I made my first confession to Fr. Sergius Propst, O.P. in 1978 at the aforementioned St. Catherine of Siena, and received my First Holy Communion the same year and at the same parish from Fr. Richard McCarthy.  Fr. Propst is still living and still in ministry.  I am unable to find out how Msgr. Greene turned out, though I see that the convention hall of the parish he founded is named in his honor.  Fr. McCarthy, a native of Ireland, left the priesthood not long after my first Communion.  Bishop Arzube was unfortunately dogged in his later years by sex abuse allegations, which he denied, but which formed part of a monster settlement by the Archdiocese.  

Convalescent Cogitations (UPDATED)

Sts. Cosmas and Damian: physicians and martyrs.

Going to the hospital for, if not a life-threatening, at least a life-inconveniencing procedure under general anesthesia causes one to pause and meditate upon one's vulnerability and mortality.  In the weeks leading up to this morning's surgery I mostly went about my daily business; but now, while I rest and metabolize the various sedatives out of my system, I have little to do except ponder Great Issues.  I probably should also make room in my cogitations to consider the wisdom of publishing their fruits while still in a condition that would make it illegal for me to drive; maybe I will hold off on clicking that button until tomorrow.  On the other hand, maybe today is the day to announce the happy news that I came through the surgery very well, with very little pain, and the doctor said everything looked good.  I should have lab results on the biopsy in a week.  UPDATE: Biopsy results were normal.

-- I have to first express my gratitude to my aunt, Margie Blake, who got up at an ungodly hour to drive out all the way from a neighboring county and get me to the hospital at 5:30 a.m.; stayed with me until I went into surgery; stayed at the hospital all morning until I was ready to go home; talked to the doctor for me after the surgery; and provided me with a very delicious potato soup and Jello.  Her response to being so sorely put out by me?  Happiness at being able to do it.

-- I have to also express my gratitude to the doctors and nurses and orderlies at St. Luke's Hospital in Boise for the extraordinary care they took to be kind and gentle, see to my physical comfort, avoid inflicting unnecessary pain and assuage my anxieties.  These were people who get up extremely early in the morning, work long hours, perform strenuous and sometimes stomach-churning duties, ford innumerable streams of government red tape, and treat difficult and demanding people with kindness and compassion on a daily basis.  I, who roll out of bed at the latest possible minute I can get away with and still make it to work, and then spend my days being difficult and demanding, don't know how they do it.

--  One point that forced itself upon me with great clarity this morning was the necessity of preparing spiritually in advance for that supreme moment when one is about to leave this life.  The only real way to do this is to get into the habit of praying -- in particular, praying for protection from a sudden and unprovided death -- and frequenting the Sacraments.  It is rash and foolhardy to count on being able to slide into heaven at the last minute after a lifetime of neglecting the things of God.  After all, even if you don't die suddenly, you may nevertheless be in excruciating pain at the end, or you may not have all your marbles, or you may suddenly lose consciousness.  (I tried but failed to be aware of the moment when I would lose consciousness in the operating room: I was waking up in recovery before I knew I had gone to sleep.)  But even if you have the capacity for quiet concentration, a hospital is too full of distractions and interruptions for it.  Make your preparations and intentions and resolutions for that time now, while you are still capable, and keep renewing them.

-- I did not seek the Sacrament of Anointing of the Sick, or Extreme Unction, before my surgery.  This was because Extreme Unction is for persons who have begun to be in danger of death through bodily infirmity and not an anticipated cause from without.  All the evidence up to now indicates that, apart from certain symptoms, I am otherwise quite healthy, so that to the extent, if any, that I was in danger of death, it was from an external source and not from one internal to myself.  However, there are other ways to prepare for situations like this: going to confession and receiving Holy Communion ahead of time; getting in the daily Rosary before going in (even if you can't quite finish it); wearing the brown scapular (though the doctors will make you wear it someplace other than around your neck); arranging in advance to have a priest contacted in the event something goes wrong.  If -- which God forbid -- my biopsy turns up something potentially life-threatening, then I will seek Extreme Unction in the hell-whipping traditional form.

-- You never want to eat a thick, juicy steak so much as on Ash Wednesday or Good Friday, and you never want to go out and run errands so much as when you're not supposed to drive.  I also would really like to take a shower tonight but can't.

-- I hope the Swedish chemist Nils Löfgren made it straight into heaven without stopping in purgatory for inventing Lidocaine.

-- One downside to the Internet is that the ready accessibility of limitless information makes people think they can be experts without the expense and arduous labor of going to school and gaining experience.  Doctors and nurses must get really tired of having constantly and daily to burst people's Internet research bubbles.

-- I told myself to pick up some dark chocolate with almonds when I went to the store last night.  Should have listened.

Notes and Images from the Mary Magdalene Retreat

Our chapter's annual Mary Magdalene retreat on July 17-19 was a success.  A big thank you to all those who made it possible, from the cleanup crew to the cooks to Maria Turner and the chant schola to the newly-ordained Fr. Gabriel Mosher, O.P. who stepped in for Fr. Vincent Kelber, O.P. as our retreat master.  He offered a Dominican Rite Mass every day of our retreat, culminating in sung High Mass on Sunday.  We were glad to see a fair number of folks from outside the chapter join us for Mass in the main room of our chapter house, where we have set up a temporary chapel with a real battlefield altar.  Herewith some images (hopefully discreetly shot) from the retreat:

Adoration on Friday night.  Father leads us in the Holy Hour of Reparation to the Sacred Heart.

The Dominican Rite, which belongs particularly to the Order of Preachers and which predates the Council of Trent, is similar in many, but not all respects, to the traditional Roman Rite.  Here the altar is set up for High Mass in the Dominican Rite.  Notice that the chalice is not set up as it would be for the Latin Rite.  In the Dominican Rite the chalice is set up at the beginning of Mass.  Also notice the extra, unlit candles at either end of the altar.  These are the Sanctus candles.  They are lit during the Sanctus.

Vesting for Mass.  Father has the amice over his head and is putting on his maniple.

The sprinkling rite, done sans chasuble.

Altar servers are much more integral in the Dominican Rite than in the Roman Rite.  There were three servers at this High Mass, and they had a lot of complicated maneuvers to perform.  There is a constant orbiting around the altar, like a solar system.  In fact, it is a kind of solar system, with Christ -- represented by the altar -- as the center around which all of creation revolves.  This makes the liturgy a sort of dance, proving that there is a legitimate form of liturgical dance, with no gauze involved.

Preparing the incense.  Notice that there are a lot of candles in the Dominican Rite.

Elevation of the Host, with incensing.

After Mass, Father blessed candles, rosaries, salt and water for us according to the traditional Dominican rites of blessing and the Rituale Romanum.  If you have access to a Dominican friar who is willing to use the traditional formulas, there is a special Dominican blessing on rosaries that allows one to gain a plenary indulgence with each use of the beads.  We have now a tsunami of holy water, and enough exorcised salt to carpet-bomb every level of hell. 

There are many places where the old guard from the '70s and '80s still has the upper hand; but, as we saw this weekend, many of our new young priests and friars love the treasures of our Catholic patrimony and have very little use for the "wonderful" "new" ideas that so captivated their elders. 

Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi

Once again, Sunday Mass featured a visiting priest who evidently thinks it's All About Him. Today's narcissism took the form of constantly interrupting the Mass -- even the Canon -- in order to insert commentaries.  Can somebody point out where in the Missal it says to do that?  Must the priest's private views, which I did not come to church to hear, constantly intrude on the Mass, which I did come to hear?  Why can't we just have -- the Mass?  

The incessant attention-seeking from today's celebrant put me in mind of a religious sister I heard speaking once, a high-ranking official in the diocese at the time, who was publicly lamenting the fact that the Church contumaciously refuses to ordain women (read: her) as priests.  It pained her so much, she said, that she could only do so much before people had to turn away from her and seek out a priest.  In other words, she wanted to be a priestess because she wanted (a) power, and (b) to be the center of attention.  This distorted view of the priesthood is wholly foreign to the mindset of a man with a legitimate vocation, who understand himself to be called to a life of service and self-sacrifice.

Then I thought: after decades of attending Holy Mass under the guise of a fourth-rate vaudeville act, can the wymynpriest crowd really be blamed for thinking the priesthood is the key to satisfying their cravings for the spotlight?  Have not priests themselves fostered this gross misconception; and is this not due in large part to what has been done to the liturgy?  Turn the priest toward the congregation and hook him up to a microphone, and of course he will think he's supposed to play to the crowd, and begin acting accordingly.  Next thing you know, Holy Mass is transformed from the highest act of worship to a show that the priest feels the need constantly to try to steal.  And just to make sure of an adoring crowd, the people in the pews are strictly regimented, while he gets away with doing whatever he wants, whatever the Missal may say -- a phenomenon we have reflected on in this space before.  Was the women's ordination movement as noisy and pestiferous before the changes to the Mass and the ensuing abuses as it is now?

The abuses in the liturgy that are now so widespread are themselves a symptom of deeper problems in the Church; but they are the proximate cause of doctrinal derailments, which foster chaos and moral impotence that ripple out into the world at large.  No wonder it is said that to save the liturgy is to save the world.

Worldwide Adoration

Pope Francis asked that today, in honor of the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, every parish in the world have a Holy Hour of adoration between 17:00-18:00 Rome time.  That was 9:00-10:00 a.m. here in the Mountain time zone, and very conveniently fills up the hour between the first two Sunday Masses at St. John's Cathedral.  The Host, placed in the cathedral's very beautiful, ruby-studded monstrance, was enthroned on the altar, surrounded by candles.  The hour ended with Benediction.  Plenty of Latin was involved.  

And, for the first time since I have attended the cathedral parish, silence reigned before Mass.  I am in the habit of arriving early on Sundays to pray the Rosary before Mass; but pretty soon, the cathedral fills up with people yapping and laughing and carrying on and generally behaving as though they were someplace else, until the noise becomes unbearable.  It is especially awful when there is a Baptism between Masses.  Today, however, a very different atmosphere prevailed.  Except for the occasional unavoidable noises, like coughs and sneezes, the cathedral was quiet.  People were on their knees, praying.  Some sat with prayer books or devotionals.  People coming in made every effort to do so silently.  If there was anyone there not praying, at least they weren't yakking, either.  

It should always be that way inside a church.  It's God's house, and the gate of heaven, and Jesus is always present there in the tabernacle.  Yet sadly, the uproarious din of the Novus Ordo Missae spills over into the hours outside of Mass, so that it's almost never quiet in churches, and hasn't been for a long time in a lot of places.  But the Blessed Sacrament, exposed in the monstrance and enthroned on the altar, makes a palpable difference.  We should have this hour of adoration every Sunday.  If the majority of Catholics -- even the Mass-goers -- no longer believe in the Real Presence, then bring them before their Eucharistic Lord, every Sunday before Mass, where they can have Him right in front of their eyes and be conscious of His presence.  He will take care of the rest.  

And I hope Pope Francis makes a habit of calling for worldwide Holy Hours.  This is a perfect use of our media of instantaneous communications.  Imagine a worldwide Holy Hour every month!  If this became a regular event, parishes would have the opportunity to adjust their Sunday Mass schedules if necessary, until Catholics in every parish on earth are kneeling before the Blessed Sacrament at the exact same hour, obtaining graces and blessings for themselves and the whole world.  This could not fail to have its effect.  Perhaps even, in the fullness of time, the conversion of every nation on earth.

In fact, we should write to the Holy Father and ask him.  Those who do not ask, do not receive.  Hopefully, some influential person will join in this petition.

Random Thoughts

-- Bl. Pope John Paul II was often criticized for having cranked out more canonizations than all his predecessors combined.  Yet this week, Pope Francis outdid them all in a single stroke by canonizing the 813 Martyrs of Otranto, who died on August 14, 1480.  Let the standard-issue, '70's-style liberal Catholics with the "COEXIST" bumper stickers spelled out in religious symbols take note of the fact that Pope Francis, who they hope will usher in the Age of Aquarius, has raised to the altar 813 men who were put to the sword because they refused to convert to Islam.

-- And the canonization of the Martyrs of Otranto is indeed timely in an age when the world is increasingly hostile to persons with religious, and especially Catholic, convictions.  Not even children are safe: a tsunami of sewage bears down on them from all directions during all their waking hours, from the media, from the culture at large, from schools, both secular and religious.  The primary aim of many schools is apparently not to educate children, but to stamp out the faith that their parents try to instill and crank out docile little sexualized atheist footsoldiers.  That is why the Church should consider lowering the age at which the Sacrament of Confirmation is administered.  This Sacrament confers precisely the grace that children need to resist the unholy pressures exerted on them even by persons in authority over them.  Perhaps infant Confirmation should be universally adopted in the Latin Rite, even as it is done in the Eastern rites.

-- Arch-abortionist Kermit Gosnell has been convicted, among other things of three counts of murder and one count of involuntary manslaughter.  In order to avoid the death penalty, he waived his appeals in exchange for a recommendation of fixed life (without parole).  Unable any longer to ignore the story, and in an extraordinary display of chutzpah, the abortion lobby spins it into a cautionary tale against the abrogation of Roe v. Wade.  We are solemnly warned (e.g., by Harry Reid, the creepy Senate Majority Leader from Nevada) that Gosnell provides an example of the sort of back-alley butchery we would get if we again made abortion illegal.  Yet we had been equally solemnly promised that if we legalized abortion, that would be the end of coat-hanger abortionists like Gosnell, whose house of horrors emerged at a time when abortion on demand has been enshrined as a constitutional right for decades.

-- As I have previously made the case in this space, we should seriously think about restricting the franchise to persons who own property.  This is not unprecedented, nor is it on a par with conditioning the right to vote on some arbitrary factor like race.  There is a logic to giving the vote to property owners, because they are the ones who pay for government.  A great evil would be removed from society if those who do not pay taxes were prevented from voting themselves largess out of the pockets of those who do pay taxes.  And, by the way, if owning property were required to be able to vote, I myself would be disenfranchised.

-- For the 37th time tonight, the House of Representatives voted to "repeal" Obamacare.  This has no chance of surviving in the Democrat-controlled Senate, and everybody knows it.  Yet the House, with its power of the purse-strings, really could kill Obamacare, by the simple expedient of de-funding it.  That it does not do this proves it is not serious about getting rid of Obamacare.

-- The Obama administration's line on its burgeoning scandals is, in essence, that the scandals are the work of rogue operatives and Obama is too out-of-touch and too ignorant to have known what has been going on on his watch.  The idea was considered laughable that Ronald Reagan did not know about the Iran-Contra affair, yet we are being propped up to believe that Barack Obama did not know about the massive corruption of his own administration until he read about it in the papers.

-- The IRS scandal proves, not that the IRS has rogue employees, but that the entire agency itself is rogue, and needs to be abolished.  

-- And speaking of the IRS, it is the IRS, with its famous bedside manner, that is slated to administer Obamacare.  That should keep anybody with a brain awake at night.

-- At any rate, there is still pistachio almond ice cream from Baskin Robbins, topped with hot fudge.  Even better than booze.  At least until the Obama administration gets around to abolishing ice cream, on Obamacare grounds.  But then, maybe the abolition of ice cream is what it would take to get people to wake up to the fact that the Obama administration is the thing that really needs abolishing.

Thou Art a Priest Forever

Fr. Scott Carroll, probably as a seminarian.  Source.

The Holy Mass and the Sacrifice of Calvary are one and the same.  At Mass, we are really at the foot of the Cross.  What the priest does at Mass is really done by Christ; and what Christ does is also really done by the priest.  Christ offers Himself; the priest offers himself.  The priest and the victim are one.  This identity of the priest and victim is shown in the traditional Mass, where each article of the priest's vestments is a symbol of the Passion, and the chalice is also clothed in vestments to match those of the priest.  The priesthood is about self-sacrifice.

Sometimes God is pleased physically to accept this sacrifice.

Deacon Scott Carroll, aged 45, was a seminarian for the Diocese of Toledo and was to have been ordained to the priesthood on June 22nd.  But the deacon had been battling cancer for some time, and during the week of May 6th, it became clear that the disease had taken a grave turn.  Confronted with these circumstances, Bishop Leonard Blair rose to the occasion.  To fulfill the desire of this son of his, and to ensure that he would not die without the indelible character of Holy Orders on his soul, Bishop Blair ordained Scott Carroll to the priesthood at his parents' home on Wednesday, May 8th, and assigned him as associate pastor of his home parish of St. Joseph in Maumee, Ohio.  

Now Father Carroll, failing in body, could unite his sufferings to Christ's on the cross in a new and greater way.  On Friday, May 10th, the new priest, alter Christus, offered Mass -- Christ offering Himself, Father Carroll offering himself.  He fell asleep after it was over, and opened his eyes on eternity.

How great is the goodness of God, to implant in this man the desire to be His priest; to sustain him in his sufferings; to bring him through cancer to the end of his priestly studies -- and then, in the last hours of his life, to lavish him with graces to strengthen him at the moment of death and increase his glory in heaven!  If He wills, God can give us everything in an instant.  Nor should we be surprised if it should turn out that Father Carroll was a man of constant and fervent prayer.  That his last acts on earth should be the reception of Holy Orders and the offering of Holy Mass was surely a reward for perseverance in prayer not only for himself but also for the consolation of his family and friends, who were privileged to be shown such evident proofs of God's love and mercy.

We should pray for the family and friends of Father Carroll, newly bereaved, and also for his soul, in case he still has some Purgatory time to serve -- it is a very bad habit we have fallen into of instantly canonizing the dear departed, and leaving them without the assistance of our intercession.  

Yet it seems more likely that it is Father Carroll, a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek, who is busy doing from heaven the work he intended to do on earth, interceding for his family and friends, and for us.

Source.

Go to Confession!

What Jesus promised to those who go to confession and receive Holy Communion on (or near) Divine Mercy Sunday:

Our Lord Jesus said, "The soul that will go to Confession and receive Holy Communion shall obtain complete forgiveness of sins and punishment. On that day all the divine floodgates through which graces flow are opened. Let no soul fear to draw near to Me, even though its sins be as scarlet...Mankind will not have peace until it turns to the Fount of My Mercy."  [Saint Faustina, Diary, 699.]

The world, and especially what now passes for Christian civilization, is swirling down the toilet.  Less than a quarter century after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the West is reduced to decadence and confusion, and our enemies are openly threatening us with physical annihilation. Are we, as individuals, innocent in all this?  How can we have peace and order if we not only do not live in the state of grace but do not care whether we are in it or not?  "There can be freedom without justice," said Ven. Fulton Sheen, "and that is the basic reason why there is war today; men wanting to be free from discipline, and particularly from dependence on the Justice of God."

Don't miss tomorrow's opportunity, and especially don't miss your chance to go to confession.

A priest commented to me today that now is the time of mercy, but Jesus made clear to St. Faustina that this time is limited; indeed, it is running short.  Don't waste it.  We have no idea how much is left.  The one thing we will clamor for when disaster overtakes us is time.  We will not get it.

Eucharistic Adoration

Find out about Eucharistic adoration in your town.  Find out about Forty Hours devotions.  Look for parishes that have perpetual adoration.  You might be surprised.  For example, I live in a liberal deep-freeze, a Tridentine-Mass-free zone swaying to the beat of Marty Haugen ditties and even worse things.  Yet there are no fewer than three (3) parishes here within a 15-mile radius that have perpetual adoration, and one of them has some of the nuttiest Masses I have ever attended.  It also has the most beautiful monstrance.  If you can't find any parishes that have regular adoration, work on getting it started.

One thing we all ought to resolve to do during Lent -- which is just around the corner -- is to make more visits to Jesus in the Sacrament of Love.  Ven. Fulton J. Sheen made a Eucharistic Holy Hour every single day for decades, and said it was precisely that which gave power to his preaching.  St. Alphonsus Liguori says that the time we spend in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament will bring us the greatest consolation at the hour of death.  It is not possible to count as wasted the time we spend in devotion before the tabernacle.  Most of us could not get in to see the Queen of England, or the President of the United States if our lives depended on it, yet the King of the Universe waits for us anxiously, straining for the sound of our footsteps at His threshold.  Every minute we spend with Him in the tabernacle, or the monstrance, we advance in holiness, whether we know it or not.  All the time, He is working on us, correcting faults, enlightening our minds and hearts, detaching us from sins, until one day we realize we are no longer the same.  All we have to do is show up with at least a glimmer of good will, and He takes care of the rest. He does not turn away even His bitterest enemies.

And that is the answer to the skeptics.  Let them take their glimmer of good will to the nearest church or chapel and find out what comes of it.  And let them not be deceived by appearances.  The Host in the monstrance doesn't look like anything very special.  It looks like a dry, lifeless piece of unleavened bread.  Yet even if the monstrance were solid gold set with rubies and pearls, or intricately carved from a single huge diamond, it would be trash compared to that which it holds.  

Here, incidentally, is some real trash holding the Eucharist.  

I'm sorry, but this just stinks.  We should perhaps make a special point of visiting parishes where this sort of thing goes on, to console the Eucharistic Lord and make reparation to Him for such disgraceful accommodations.  And also raise money for the purchase of a real monstrance.

Finally, while there is no substitute for a live visit to a church or adoration chapel, in case you can't make it to one, there are adoration chapels with live webcams.  This one is located at St. Martin of Tours Catholic Church in Louisville, Kentucky, where -- not surprisingly -- they have the Tridentine Mass.

So go visit the Lord in the Sacrament of Love, and let Him love you.

O Sacrament, most holy, O Sacrament Divine: all praise and all thanksgiving be every moment Thine.

What We Are Up Against

The Democrat National Convention is a good occasion to stop and think about Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals -- the primer of today's generation of Democrat leaders.  Supertradmum and Fr. Z have posted them -- in the interest of stimulating as much though as possible at this critical time, I hereby jump onto the bandwagon.  In contemplating these rules, it is important to consider their ultimate origin, and how susceptible we all are to the techniques they describe, no matter smart or educated or well-meaning we may be.  In fact, it is precisely the highly-educated and the intellectuals, long on degrees and short on humility, that are in most danger of being overmastered by these techniques.

RULE 1: “Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.” Power is derived from 2 main sources – money and people. “Have-Nots” must build power from flesh and blood.

RULE 2: “Never go outside the expertise of your people.” It results in confusion, fear and retreat. Feeling secure adds to the backbone of anyone.

RULE 3: “Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy.” Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty.

RULE 4: “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.” If the rule is that every letter gets a reply, send 30,000 letters. You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules.

RULE 5: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” There is no defense. It’s irrational. It’s infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions.

RULE 6: “A good tactic is one your people enjoy.” They’ll keep doing it without urging and come back to do more. They’re doing their thing, and will even suggest better ones.

RULE 7: “A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.” Don’t become old news.

RULE 8: “Keep the pressure on. Never let up.” Keep trying new things to keep the opposition off balance. As the opposition masters one approach, hit them from the flank with something new.

RULE 9: “The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.” Imagination and ego can dream up many more consequences than any activist.

RULE 10: “If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive.” Violence from the other side can win the public to your side because the public sympathizes with the underdog.

RULE 11: “The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.” Never let the enemy score points because you’re caught without a solution to the problem.

RULE 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.

So what are we to do in this war of nerves against Alinskyite assaults?  The most crucial thing, surely, is to possess sanctifying grace.  Sanctifying grace comes from participating in the sacramental life of the Catholic Church.  We can't hope to resist evil without it.  We are in a war against devils who still possess their native angelic intelligence and powers, and we cannot hope to defeat them on our own, without grace.  We can have brains, we can have courage, we can have skill, but without sanctifying grace, we are marching into battle, starving and completely naked, armed with nothing but a pocket knife and a trash can lid.  And I greatly fear, based on the way I see people living their lives, that many of us -- maybe even most of us, and even many Catholics -- do not possess sanctifying grace.  That is why our country is collapsing.  That, surely, is why so many people at the Democrat convention booed the resolution to put God back into the party platform.  It is a foretaste of hell on earth.

Any hope we have of pulling our country back from the brink of the abyss lies in doing the two things so many of us will do anything to avoid: repent and convert.

Put you on the armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the deceits of the devil.  For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood; but against principalities and power, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places.  Therefore take unto you the armour of God, that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and to stand in all things perfect.  Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of justice, and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace: in all things taking the shield of faith, wherewith you may be able to extinguish all the fiery darts of the most wicked one.  And take unto you the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit (which is the word of God).  Ephesians 6:11-17  

Fortnight for Freedom: Votive High Mass of St. Thomas More

It has been a red-letter week for some of us who love pre-conciliar rites.  Last weekend, my chapter had a visit from our religious assistant, Fr. Vincent Kelber, O.P., and he gave us sung High Mass for the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart in the Dominican Rite.  Yesterday, we had a visit from our dear friend, the Inimitable Fr. Andrew Szymakowski of the Baker Diocese,  on vacation from canon law school, who gave us sung High Mass of St. Thomas More in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite.  

Although yesterday was the feast of Thomas More on the new calendar, on the preconciliar calendar it falls on July 6th -- the actual date of his martyrdom -- so this was a votive Mass.  This was our contribution to the Fortnight for Freedom: this Mass was offered for the intention of religious freedom in our country, and the crushing, humiliating defeat of the Church's enemies.

Here, then, appropriately enough, is our battlefield altar -- an actual, collapsible altar for use on the battlefield -- at our temporary chapel in the big room at Chapter House in Homedale, prepared for Mass.  Though this was not an actual battlefield Mass, our conditions are nevertheless pretty primitive: we don't even have matching candlesticks, and we have to borrow supplies anytime we have Mass in the Extraordinary Form.  Fr. Joseph Levine, also of the Baker Diocese -- and who, by the way, preaches a rocking homily and celebrates a beautiful TLM -- was kind enough to lend us the altar cards, altar missal and a set of red vestments.

We tried to get Father to pose for a nice picture in those beautiful vestments, but unfortunately, he wasn't cooperating.  He does love to clown around...  

...but once Mass starts, he's all business.  I have to say that Fr. Andy is a character and a half and has as much personality as any priest, or indeed, any human being I have ever known.  He is highly intelligent, gifted, a great conversationalist, a talented speaker (in no fewer than three languages), and loves to laugh.  But not one iota of any of this shows while he is at the altar.  When he celebrates Mass, Andy Szymakowski is totally hidden -- as he should be, as Holy Mass is not his work or indeed the work of any mere mortal.  Here is a priest who gets out of God's way, and he does it by the simple expedient of saying the black and doing the red.    

Which, frankly, he finds it much easier to do in the Extraordinary Form than his inexperienced little congregation, which made many mistakes.  Here we are.  The best part of this pic is you can't see me in it.  But I'm there!

Father says the words of institution.

The Bread of Life.

And the Chalice of Salvation.

Here is a close-up of that image embroidered on the back of his chasuble.

And Holy Communion on the prie-dieux.

Incidentally, one thing that is not captured by any of these pictures is the howling dust storm that began raging during Mass.  The ferocity of the wind outside, while the August Sacrifice proceeded calmly inside, seemed a perfect analogue of the world's wrack and turmoil as the forces of hell vent their fury on the Church, which nevertheless enjoys the peace the world can neither give nor take away.

The time has come for America to decide where she prefers to be during the storm: outside or inside?  May she choose wisely.   St. Thomas More, pray for us.

Ireland's War on the Church

St. John Nepomucene: preferred to die rather than give up the secrets of the confessional.

Ireland -- the island that gave the world spiritual giants like Brendan the Navigator, Brigid of Kildare, Columba, Fr. Willie Doyle -- will soon be filling its jails with priests.  At any rate, there is no other way to understand the holding of Ireland's Minister for Justice (or should that be Minister for "Justice") Alan Shatter that the seal of the confessional does not exempt priests from reporting the abuse of children or vulnerable adults.  There is no basis for a claim of privilege, says Shatter, now that the special position of the Catholic Church has been written out of the Irish Constitution.

So, then, it seems priests will be going to jail for the iniquitous crime of upholding the sacramental seal -- and they will go to jail, even the most off-the-wall liberal ones.  And how, it may well be asked, will the police know that priests aren't violating the seal?  Will molesters give themselves up?  Will the government resort to sacrilege in the form of undercover sting operations?  Or will it simply start rounding up priests who haven't reported any abusers, on the assumption that they must be withholding information?   

What are the people of Ireland going to do about this outrage?  In an age when only 31% of Irish attend Mass every week, can we expect an uprising?

The country that once held stubbornly to her Catholic faith in defiance of English oppression is not only abandoning the faith, but peopling her government with evil men of the same stamp as the old oppressors.  God help Ireland.

Fr. Guarnizo Sheds Light

The embattled Fr. Marcel Guarnizo has issued a public statement regarding the lesbian-Communion affair and his removal from public ministry in the Archdiocese of Washington.  The entire text of his statement can be found here.

In my first round of comments on this ugly business, I asked what effect the occasion (a funeral) had on the Can. 915 requirement of "manifest grave sin" to justify withholding Communion.  I pointed out that the daughter of the deceased was a prominent attendee of this particular Mass, rather than just another face in the crowd, and that the congregation most likely knew about her lifestyle.  I think Dr. Ed Peters has now answered my question, based on Fr. Guarnizo's public statement.  Addressing Can. 915, Peters says (emphases and comments added):

Prescinding from rarely encountered excommunication and interdict situations, Canon 915 lays out several distinct conditions that must be simultaneously satisfied before a minister of Holy Communion may (and indeed, should) withhold the Eucharist from a member of the faithful. To justify withholding the Eucharist under Canon 915 according to its plain terms, the conduct in which a communicant perseveres must be obstinate, manifest, grave, and sinful. [In other words, the conjunction "and" tells us all of these conditions must be met.  This principle of statutory construction also applies in the secular world.]These conditions must be understood and assessed according to the Church’s canonical tradition, else, one is no longer talking about the law of the Catholic Church.

Given the very strong canonical presumptions accorded the faithful in regard to reception of the sacraments, and given the strict interpretative hermeneutic set out in Canon 18, the burden is, without question, on the minister of holy Communion to verify that all of the conditions listed in canon 915 are satisfied before he withholds holy Communion from a member of the faithful who approaches for it publicly. Put another way, the burden is not on Guarnizo’s critics to prove that he should not have acted as he did in this case, rather, the burden is on Guarnizo to prove that he acted in accord with Church discipline.

...

Guarnizo did not know, and could not have verified, whether Johnson’s sin (speaking objectively), which could be grave (a conclusion I think a Catholic could reach based on the words used here) was also manifest, as well as obstinate and perseverating. Yet such factors, according to a host of respected commentators writing over many decades, must be verified before withholding holy Communion from a member of the faithful. Consider:

“If the priest … doubts the publicity or notoriety of the crime, it would certainly be safer to give the Holy Eucharist to one who publically asks for it.” Dom Augustine, COMMENTARY (1920) IV: 230.

“Occulto peccatori qui publice accedit ad sacram Mensam administranda vero est sacra communio … si fideles, quippe cum eis indignitas non sit nota, timore afficiantur, ne et ipsi infamentur, si sacerdos ob … ignoratiam, errorem, etc, eos praetereat.” Jone, COMMENTARIUM (1954) II: 100.

“If there is doubt about the notoriety of the sin, the communicant is to be favored in public.” Abbo-Hannan, SACRED CANONS (1960) I: 854.

“Before a minister can lawfully refuse the Eucharist, he must be certain that the person obstinately persists in a sinful situation or in sinful behavior that is manifest (i.e. public) and objectively grave.” Kelly, in GB& I COMM (1995) 503.

“The minister of holy communion should not publicly deny communion to a person who, being afflicted by grave sin and/or subject to a non-declared penalty latae sententiae [e.g., for apostasy] is not notoriously under those situations.” Gramunt, in EXEGETICAL COMM (2004) III/1: 615-616.

I know of no commentator who disputes these views. In terms of Canon 915, and given Guarnizo’s factual admissions above, I conclude that Guarnizo erred in withholding Communion.

So basically, what I understand Dr. Peters to be saying is this: at the very moment that Holy Communion is withheld, (1) the requirements of obstinacy, manifestness, gravity and sinfulness must exist simultaneously; and (2) the minister of Holy Communion must have a subjective knowledge that all these conditions exist.  So even if the four requirements of Can. 915 are in fact in place, the minister who denies Communion is still not covered as long as he has a doubt (which I take it means legitimate doubt, not born of willful blindness) that they were in place.  What the minister finds out afterwards, or what later turns out to be the case, is not relevant: what is relevant is what he knows at the moment of the incident.

The inescapable conclusion, then, is that Fr. Guarnizo did not comply with Can. 915 in withholding Communion.  For reasons that he delves into in his post linked above, Peters also concludes that Fr. Guarnizo's action was not covered by canon law on any of the other potential grounds for denying the woman Communion.  In short, Fr. Guarnizo was wrong and stands in need of correction.

But what Fr. Guarnizo doesn't stand in need of is persecution.  He erred, but he erred on the side of love for the Eucharist and for the deluded soul of the woman who provoked him: on that point, he requires no correction.  I have said before, and continue to maintain, that this whole thing was a set-up, and that the penalties visited upon Father are out of all proportion to the offense.  Yes, there has been a firestorm, but Fr. Guarnizo's error was merely the excuse for the firestorm: it is the so-called injured party who has fanned the flames.  The lesson that needs to be drawn from this is that a priest's best defense against attacks of this kind is solid, thorough training in the proper application of canons governing the administration of the Sacraments.

Based on the foregoing, I accept that Fr. Marcel Guarnizo erred under canon law in this incident.  But (a) he has received a vastly disproportionate, and therefore unjust punishment; and (b) the Archdiocese of Washington gives every appearance of throwing him under the bus, all while coddling the woman who put him in such a dreadful position.  To my way of thinking, that is the greatest scandal in this whole affair.      

The Persecution of Fr. Guarnizo

In re the campaign to destroy Fr. Marcel Guarnizo in Gaithersburg, Maryland, a few observations:

-- The whole business smells like a set-up. It appears that Fr. Guarnizo has a reputation as a faithful and orthodox priest.  It appears further that the complaining party in this ugly affair is not a reliable source of information regarding what actually happened. Good priests can expect more of this sort of thing.  Bishops need to be fathers to their priests and defend them against unjust attacks.   Catholics in the pews need to pray harder for their shepherds. 

-- Canon 915 of the Code of Canon Law provides:

Those who have been excommunicated or interdicted after the imposition or declaration of the penalty and others obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to holy communion.

It would seem that if any part of this canon applied in this case, it would be the language about "obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin."  Not being a canonist, and not being familiar with canon law evidentiary standards, I hesitate to undertake a legal analysis.  I do note that at least one prominent canonist, Dr. Ed Peters, is of the opinion that Fr. Guarnizo erred, and his opinion appears to derive from the conclusion that the requirement of manifestness is not satisfied in this case.  Dr. Peters says:

Unless a substantial majority of the community in question (I’m assuming them to be adults, reasonably aware of Catholic life around them, etc.) knows at the time why a given individual is being denied holy Communion, that’s a pretty good sign that Canon 915 has not been satisfied, and that Canon 912 (and some others norms) has been violated.

However, Peters pursues his analysis as though this incident took place at an ordinary Sunday Mass, whereas it took place at a funeral.  The woman who was denied Communion was not just another face in the crowd, but the daughter of the deceased -- a prominent figure among those assembled.  It is not unreasonable to suppose that those gathered for the funeral were family and friends, and thus knew about this woman's living arrangements.  What I would like to see a canonist address is whether these factors change the Canon 915 analysis, and if not, why not.

-- Even if the priest erred, the punishment sought by the putative injured party is out of all proportion to the offense.  The high-tech lynching Fr. Guarnizo is currently undergoing is also out of all proportion to his alleged offense, and stands as stark proof that charity has gone cold in the world.  His apparent abandonment by the archdiocese is shameful.  If Fr. Guarnizo did indeed err, then, as Dr. Peters says in one of his posts linked above, it is correction rather than punishment that is called for.

-- Canonists and clergy who opine that Fr. Guarnizo did the wrong thing in this case should not be surprised by the fact that so many laymen are anxious to justify his actions, even on erroneous grounds -- even regardless of what canon law provides.  Such a reaction is the natural and inevitable product of decades of anger at the spectacle of hired hands allowing the wolves to ravage the fold with impunity while putting the smackdown on holy priests.  Monumental injustices continue unabated: national pro-abortion figures continue to be admitted to Holy Communion; certain parishes continue to be homosexualist playgrounds; gross liturgical abuses are still the order of the day in many places, and not a peep out of those charged with the responsibility of putting a stop to all this.  Naturally, the lay faithful are outraged to see the hierarchy straining out the gnat of a priest denying Holy Communion to a lesbian (if indeed this can be characterized as a "gnat") while swallowing all these camels.

-- In my judgment, the person most deserving of sympathy and support in this situation is not the lesbian who rushed into print with a sensational account of this business, but Fr. Marcel Guarnizo.  He, not she, is the real target of hatred in this whole affair.  It must have made him feel sick to be placed in such an awful position -- a situation every faithful priest must dread.  Whether he was right or wrong, he surely did the best he could in very trying circumstances.

Pray for Fr. Marcel Guarnizo, and for all our priests and bishops.