Loading ...
Actually, the title is something of a misnomer, I’m afraid, because I’m going to say less about good confessors and more about difficult ones. You’ll have to forgive my negativity (no pun intended); actually, I’ve been blessed to receive many excellent insights and pieces of spiritual advice in the confessional at various times. But it’s really quite a curious thing, is it not, going to confession? Here you are, giving extremely personal information to a person who you might not even know, and accepting advice and correction from him. Now, in an ideal situation, the confessor will be someone who knows you, and you will respect him and trust his advice. However, that sometimes is not possible. If you want to confess regularly (as Pope Benedict, among others, has advised us to do), you may have to settle for whatever opportunities present themselves. That may sometimes mean confessing to complete strangers, or (which is often worse) to priests you do know but don’t especially like. Where else in life do we do anything like this?
Continue reading
Archive for July, 2007
Choosing a Confessor
Could this be true?
If it is, it’s very exciting! In the email sent out this afternoon by Angelus Press, the US publishing house of the SSPX, there were these remarks:
Since the release of Pope Benedict XVI’s motu proprio “Summorum Pontificum”, we have been deluged with orders for missals and books on the Mass & liturgy and the crisis in the Church. You may want to “brush-up” on some of these topics yourself in preparation for the inevitable discussions to come with friends, relatives and neighbors.
Interest in the “old” Mass among conciliar priests is astounding. TWO inside sources tell us that an East coast diocese has over 20 priests learning the 1962 Missal and their bishop is planning a group of Tridentine parishes. Additionally, the district office of the SSPX received 25 requests yesterday from priests wanting to learn to say the old Mass. We must pray for these priests and be sure that we are educated ourselves.
Op-Ed Review
Call me foolish if you will, but over the past few days I’ve been reading, with a somewhat bemused fascination, some of the pieces that have come out in the mainstream media regarding the old mass. Of course it’s to be expected that all kinds of foolish things have been said. The Holy Father’s action, so long-overdue in our eyes, can hardly help but be quite incomprehensible in the eyes of 99% of the western world; watching the American media try to tackle it is a bit like watching one of those episodes of Star Trek in which a primitive race tries to figure out what to make of the amazing starship Enterprise. Thinking about it that way, I find in spite of myself that many of the absurd attempts to make sense of what’s happened strike me as more cute than anything else.
Take, for example, this excerpt from a little op-ed piece found in a local Austin paper, The Daily Texan:
“The restrictions Benedict XVI reversed came about in 1965, when the Second Vatican Council, commonly known as Vatican II, updated the church for the first time in nearly 100 years.”
Continue reading
On Nomenclature
With the release of the Motu Proprio I’ve been feeling more and more the difficulty of finding appropriate terms for referring to, um, the Mass according to the 1962 missal of Blessed Pope John XXIII. All the options seem unsatisfactory in one way or another.
The phrase I just used is, of course, the most precise way to designate it, but it’s too long to be practical for use in regular conversation. The “Tridentine Mass” is more usable, but it’s unfortunate in a different way since it perpetuates the mistaken idea that this form of the Mass began with the Council of Trent just as the Novus Ordo began with Vatican II. And “Tridentine” is also a bit long and clinical-sounding to my ears, though certainly better than “the Mass according to the 1962 missal of Blessed Pope John XXIII.”
Continue reading
Return to Sender
While paging through an odd little South African newspaper on a plane, I found this random tidbit of rather amusing news. It seems that Mircea Pavel, a Romanian man serving a 20-year prison sentence for murder, attempted to sue God for failing to answer his prayers. “The defendent, God, who lives in the heavens and is represented in Romania by the Orthodox Church,” was charged with fraud and “betrayal of trust”. Move over, Job.
In an interview with the Romanian newspaper Evenimentul Zilei, Pavel elaborated on the complaint. “At my christening,” he explained, “I made a deal with the defendant aimed at freeing me from evil. But the latter has not respected that agreement until now, although He received from me various assets and numerous prayers.”
Continue reading
A most curious paragraph:
This past June 6th I was in the Sheraton New York Hotel on the dais for a dinner sponsored by the Building and Construction sector of the Cardinal’s Committee for Charity to raise funds for Archdiocesan schools that educate children who are physically or emotionally disabled. One of the more than 600 guests approached the dais toward the end of the dinner and began in jest to recite the responses of the altar server to the opening prayers of the traditional Latin Mass. Continue reading
Society of Jesus Crowned with Thorns
For those of you who go in for this kind of thing, I just came across an interesting chapter in the life of one Father Emmanuel by Dom Bernard Marechaux. Apropos of yesterday’s post about the new posters in the Archdiocese of Manila, it may be edifying to consider the example of Fr. Emmanuel who founded The Society of Jesus Crowned with Thorns whose charism, if I may use that word without abuse, was the preservation of modesty in dress. Unusually, perhaps, he was not only concerned that feminine attire not reveal the feminine form, but also that luxury of dress, such as may be indulged by the rich, be checked. He evinced a particular zeal against innovations in women’s headgear.
I found this chapter tucked away on the website of the National Coalition of Clergy & Laity, the group that leads the annual Pilgrimage for Restoration to Auriesville. I repost here a number of the passages which piqued my interest:
. . . . A vain woman belies the promises of her Baptism; a woman who seeks to draw men’s looks to herself shows by that that she has no care to please Jesus Christ. This truth was borne in upon Father Emmanuel’s spirit, as will be seen in what follows.
Living in the midst of a population which he had made profoundly Christian - God knows at the cost of what labor! - a population which was generally poor, and which, as a consequence, preserved as completely natural the old-fashioned and very simple manner of dress, he had not had occasion to express an opinion on the question of modesty. But during the period 1867-1868, there occurred an incident which could have had the most unfortunate of consequences.
A nice collection of images of Catholic life in New France (Canada). I saw this link at Cath Con.
Not too shabby
Not too shabby, I’d say, for one of the world’s largest archdioceses. Granted, it’s not up to the standards of Our Lady of Fatima’s dress code, but it’s a good step in the right direction. Today, I think, any open discussion by diocesan officials of modesty in dress is a step in the right direction. I again give credit to Bishop Yanta for his words some while back.
Wave to the camera
I did not know that Leo XIII was a movie star, but it turns out, he was. Via the Vatican’s new Vatican State website, you can find several moving picture features, of which the first is Leo XIII waving to the camera in a few different settings. That’s all it is, just posed scenes in which he comes in, sits down, and waves to the camera. The date is 1896. It’s pretty cool. He waves to the camera like he’s directing an orchestra or trying to get the camera’s attention, as though it might not see him otherwise.
I sure hope that they’re not holding any Leo films back from us. You know, footage of him signing Libertas praestantissimum or the like that would make traditionalists riot with delight.
The 1000
As Iacbus had predicted, no one is signing up for the Summorum pontificum contact database - but for those of you who still believe (and I am one, too!), I asked Mr. Michael the other day to add another search feature to the database: you can now search by zip code. This makes sense especially for those of us in areas like Ithaca where we’re few and far in between.
Also, I continue to receive ideas on how to improve the database tool, and believe me, I’m listening. Today, the search tool has been updated to allow zip code searches (with wildcards) - this will help us find more of each other, I think, because we can broaden our searches to include larger connected regions (for example, anyone in the 495 xx zip code is within 25 miles of me).
When Mr. Michael last emailed, the number of persons in the database was just around 1000. Right now, his website indicates 1161.
Also, the State of New York now boasts a second priest in the contact database, in Yonkers. And it says that he’s #1888, so the total number of registered persons must stand at least at 1888 so far. And for those folks close enough to Jamaica Estates or Yonkers, well, I suppose that this database has already been a success.
Downgraded to “rumor”
Phil Lawler was up to his usual antics today: in a hurry to contradict the papal spokesman (via CNS) who had contradicted Phil’s “source” about Benedict’s use of the ‘62 missal, he sent out the headlines from his links blog - I’m talking about CWNews, of course - around 1:30PM instead of the usual time in the evening.
Last weekend, Phil had promised us that CWNews (i.e. Phil Lawler) was working on confirming a big “scoop” which he hoped to have established by this week. This big scoop was the news that Benedict XVI routinely uses the ‘62 missal in his private celebrations of Mass. That’s cool - I linked to it in our Ephemeris column - but nothing particularly shocking. In fact, I had heard this rumor a couple summers ago from a seminarian at the NAC, who in turn had probably heard it from ten other people, that some guy who had been in Castel Gandolfo had descried the ‘62 missal on some altar set up to say Mass. (Unless he went up and fondled the thing, I don’t know how he could know that it was the ‘62 missal - was it flipped open to the giant, illustrated TE igitur page? Do new missals have the fancy Te igitur page too?)
This was a rumor; it’s a nice thought, it has no small ground of probability, but it also savors of the kind of thing traditionalists say to keep themselves entertained between shots of Jaegermeister (I speak from experience).
Not enough?
First of all, apologies to all for missing my weekly column last week. I was in the African bushveld and had no internet access — this also meant that the Doctor and I unfortunately missed the celebrations of the release of the Motu Proprio. But I’ve been enjoying catching up on the happy news now that we’ve returned, and I have several ideas relating to recent events which I may air here in the coming weeks.
I greatly appreciated the Holy Father’s remarks in the letter accompanying the Motu Proprio, and I thought it was good of him to make clear that there are multiple groups of people with a love of the traditional liturgy; its proponents are not limited to schismatics and a handful of nostalgic retirees. Nonetheless, with release of the Motu Proprio, closely followed by the One Church document, it does seem that the Holy Father is making a serious and sustained effort to woo the SSPX back into a full and clear communion with Rome. I hope all of us are praying for a happy outcome to this endeavor.
Continue reading
Simplex Sacerdos on Archbishop Edwin O’Brien
Unlike many appointees from mid-level sees to major archbishoprics, less is known about Archbishop Edwin O’Brien because these past ten years he has headed the military archdiocese, a post which is not exactly in the media limelight. He received some brief attention concering a controversy over the use of Our Lord’s Holy Name in inter-faith prayers within the military ordinariate. Now he is the Archbishop of Baltimore, the oldest see in the United States. I asked Simplex Sacerdos, a Navy chaplain who has served with the Marine Corps in Iraq, to share his thoughts with us on the appointment of Archbishop Edwin Frederick O’Brien as the 15th Archbishop of Baltimore.
My first reaction to the news was one of gladness: Archbishop O’Brien is a faithful Catholic and has always demonstrated himself to be very loyal to the Holy See. Also, he is very conscientious and hardworking, embodying the best of the “old school” clerical character. Continue reading
Belated news from Rome: Pallium Mass
Greetings to you all! As you may or may not know, I have been in Rome since June 2 in order to study with Fr. Reginald Foster, the world-renowned Vatican Latinist from Milwaukee. I thank you for your prayers regarding this trip and look forward to sharing with you something of what I have experienced here. Nor have you been forgotten in my prayers at the “big name,” big-indulgence churches here.
So where to begin? Despite all the gloomy naysaying you may have heard from some quarters, Rome is still the place to go for a Catholic seeking testimonies and monuments of the Faith. I have venerated the relics of saints and martyrs I read about in Fr. Lord’s picture books when I was barely able to read. Every turn of the street — wrong turns especially — and every side chapel opens up a vista into an historical event perhaps two millennia old, into a divine reality perhaps never incarnated in human art and history so thoroughly as in this City. So in case you ever get the opportunity to spend the summer in the Eternal City, take it immediately. I’ll have to write up most of my stuff for the blog when I am back in the States and can post the photos (including the one of His Holiness from ten feet away, and the ones of the famous statue of St. Peter wearing the Papal Tiara). Here’s the scoop for the time being.
First, Fr. Foster (who prefers to be called Reggie) provides us with numerous insights into Vatican affairs. He actually worked on the final version of the motu proprio, but apparently only in the week before its publication. However, there is really not much more to say on that end, like it or not. Academically, of course, the class itself is wonderful. I recommend it for anyone who is ready for serious Latin studies . . . and has the time and resources for eight weeks abroad.
St. Louis-Marie de Montfort,
Pope St. Pius X,
St. Joseph,
St. Ambrose of Milan,
St. Thomas Aquinas,
St. Francis (and St. Clare),
St. Catherine of Siena,
St. Alphonsus Ligouri,
St. John Chrysostom,