This past Saturday, May 5th, was, as you all know, the Feast of St. Pius V. On Friday afternoon, to while the hours away, I composed a few lines of verse in his honor:

Contra mores atque fidem insectator agentis
——-Perfidiosi tunc, protege nos hodie!
Tam cuius ex animo quam clara voce abolentur
——-Confractis hostis milia navigiis.

By which words I intend to convey the following sentiments: “O hounder of the perfidious one acting against faith and morals at that time, protect us today! At whose word/cry, as sincere as glorious, thousands of the enemy, their ships having been broken, are destroyed.” Rather light on content, I suppose, but until I’m being paid full-time to write Latin verses (I eagerly welcome any offers!), my output may remain slim.

There are some irregularities in there: elision at the caesura in the first line, and the second and fourth lines end in words of three and four symbols, which isn’t really ideal, but whatever. It took me long enough to put that in order without worrying about writing in perfect, Ovidian elegy.

I was in no shape to write verses after our day long party in honor of Pius V on Saturday, which we held out at Tremain Park. It was a great time! A great quantity of gin was consumed, meats were grilled, some girls ate some vegetables, the baseball was thrown, touch football was played, and Rule Britannia was sung for the entertainment of one of our guests, a Brit to whose attention I politely demurred to recall the glorious Regnans in excelsis, by which St. Pius V excommunicated “Elizabeth, the pretended Queen of England and the servant of crime”. Mint juleps were the night cap, in honor, I guess, of the Kentucky Derby.

(I apologize to anyone whom I may have injured - not limited to the Doctor Asinorum - during the football game. The next day, I felt like I had been hit by a train: every muscle in my body was sore, for some reason.)

Despite the Cornell Socity for a Good Time’s best attempts to provide a wonderful setting in which to celebrate the release of the motu proprio, it was not, alas, released. Clara, anticipating this sad turn of affairs, had ordered our extremely large sheet cake from Wegman’s inscribed with this iced imperative: “Papa, manu mitte Missam!” If only Papa would soon satisfy us traditionalists plena manu and delight the heart of his predecessor of immortal memory, Pius V!

Still, while we wait and wait, good things are happening, even if in themselves, they aren’t front page news. I bring two examples to your attention. First, I found this report from Harrisburg, PA about Bishop Kevin Rhoades encouraging. Second, I received an email last week from the Detroit Latin Mass community in which the intention of each of the auxiliary bishops in the Archdiocese of Detroit to say the Latin Mass at St. Josaphat’s was mentioned. Kind of hard to believe, really, especially in an archdiocese which has never been especially friendly to the old rite. Here’s the email:

May Crowning will be May 13th, and each of the auxillary bishops of the Archdiocese will be celebrating the Tridentine Mass at St. Josaphat over the next four months, begining with Bishop Boyea on June 10th. Our Pastor Fr. Mark Borkowski will be the celebrant on May 27th.

Of late, however, one of the auxiliaries, Bishop Boyea has often been present at the old rite at St. Josaphat’s, and it’s great to think that the others want to take part as well. Detroit has four auxiliaries.

These kinds of developments pave the way for more good things down the road - I hope - and even if we never get the motu proprio, at least for a certain amount of time, just the threat of it has been good enough, as it seems, to generate a certain degree of positive interest in the old rite. What is this I keep seeing about how publishers in Rome having been printing old rite missals in anticipation of the release of the motu proprio? Who knows where CWNews gets their silly stories, but here’s the claim:

In expectation of the motu proprio, Catholic bookstores in Rome have begun selling copies of the 1962 Missal. Expecting brisk sales, publishing houses in Italy are reprinting the old Missal.

I guess we take this to be newsworthy because we’d expect people with money at stake in the deal to be pretty confident of its eventual release, or else they wouldn’t be risking their Euros.

Franciscus told me on Friday about a friend of his here at Cornell whom he had recently heard touting the Jiminy Cricket line. Color me naîve, but I guess I hadn’t come across this “primacy of conscience” hogwash before, or at least I didn’t realize what important theological work it was doing in dismantling the Catholicity of many. It reminds me of a line in Iota Unum, in the early chapters, where Amerio is explaining what the true legacy of Luther’s revolt amounts to: the whole notion of faith was converted into that of heresy. That is, what the Lutherans called “faith” - the individual conscience assents to a given proposition, irrespective of an external authority - is nothing but heresy - picking and choosing for oneself - decked out to seem glamorous and morally noble. I look forward to reading the second part of Clara’s post.

Finally and speaking of liberal silliness, a gem for those of you who appreciate an occasional note about the life of the Cornell Catholic Faith Community. This blessed Faith Community recently sent out a very nice, expensive-looking bulletin to alumni in quest of donations. This quotation from Fr. Daniel McMullin, head of this richly diverse confluence of consciences, wrote some words for the back of this bulletin:

I wish you could have been here for Ash Wednesday. Nearly a thousand students attended one of the four Masses that day. In a departure from usual practice, we asked our community to impose the ashes on each other.

I was touched by the freedom with which they carried out the ritual. When I saw friends gently mark each other with ashes I felt their reverence for each other. In that moment of their shared intimacy I caught a glimpse of God. This is why I am a priest.

Ironically, I thought, this blithering liberal dribble was accompanied with a drawing by one Bailey Chang, an undergraduate recently received into the Church. You can see it here, along with the words of Fr McMullin, which were also used in one of the weekly bulletins for the campus.

I find the inclusion of the drawing ironic because it shows a young man kneeling in prayer in what appears to be Sage Chapel; yet kneeling - especially any kneeling which would involve giving reverence to the Blessed Sacrament during Mass - has been forbidden by the Cornell Catholic Community. Second, there are no kneelers in Sage Chapel, where the Cornell Catholic Community has a Sunday night Mass each week, which dearth would discourage many from the attempt, even if they felt so inclined. But notice, when someone wants to make a simple illustration of prayer, he shows the person kneeling - not standing and swaying and striking the orans pose. Perhaps the chaplains of the Cornell Catholic Community could learn a lesson from the drawings with which they illustrate their own mailings.