I just ran across this on vatican.va. It’s an Urbis et Orbis degree proclaiming a plenary indulgence under the normal conditions for the faithful:

if they participate in a sacred rite in its honour or at least offer an open witness of Marian devotion before an image of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, displayed for public veneration, adding the recitation of the Our Father and the Creed and exclamatory invocations to Mary Immaculate, such as “You are All Fair, Mary, and in you there is no stain of original sin!”, or “O Queen, conceived without original sin, pray for us!”.

It is true that the indulgence is given in commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the close of Vatican II. Whatever one might think of the Council, at the very least we traddies can certainly celebrate its closure.

So since you’re going to Mass anyway today, claim this indulgence!

go to main page

This is potentially interesting. The USCCB (which gives one pause, I admit) has commissioned a film, “Fishers of Men,” to promote priestly vocations. The trailer is a bit over the top, but in sort of a good way. The title of this post is a quote from the trailer (which is in turn a paraphrase of the late Cardinal O’Connor). The picture is a screen cap from the trailer. Anyway the trailer can be found here (warning Quicktime Video link).

[Via the First Things Blog]

Today, Nov 17th, is the feast day of Gregory of Neocaesarea, known as the Wonderworker for, well, working wonders. He was a student of Origen’s (and indeed converted by him). In addition to being responsible for many wonders, he was also, according to St. Gregory of Nyssa (btw, there are entirely too many St. Gregorys of someplace starting with ‘N’), the first to be honored by a visitation of the Blessed Mother, accompanied by St. John the Evangelist. He is also credited for developing and improving Origen’s speculations on the Trinity, and is responsible in part for arriving at the orthodox understanding of the Three Persons of the perfect Godhead (see his Catholic Encyclopedia entry). However, it is another fact about his life that suggests a solution to some of our problems in this diocese.

At that Catholic Encyclopedia article we read:

…he was soon consecrated bishop of his native Caesarea by Phoedimus, Bishop of Amasea and Metropolitan of Pontus. This fact illustrates in an interesting way the growth of the hierarchy in the primitive Church, for we know that the Christian community at Caesarea was very small, being only seventeen souls, and it was given a bishop. We know, moreover, from ancient canonical documents, that it was possible for a community of even ten Christians to have their own bishop. When Gregory was consecrated he was forty years old, and he ruled his diocese for thirty years. Although we know nothing definite as to his methods, we cannot doubt that he must have shown much zeal in increasing the little flock with which he began his episcopal administration. From an ancient source we learn a fact that is at once a curious coincidence, and throws light on his missionary zeal; whereas he began with only seventeen Christians, at his death there remained but seventeen pagans in the whole town of Caesarea.

Here’s our solution–the Cornell Society for a Good Time needs its own bishop! Furthermore, there would potentially be a nice symmetry with regard to His Excellency, the Most Reverend Matthew Clark, as perhaps once he’s done there will only be seventeen faithful Christians in the diocese of Rochester.

Snarkiness aside, we need more Wonderworkers like St. Gregory of Neocaesarea!

See also his entry in Butler’s Lives of the Saints.

St. Gregory, THAUMATURGUS,
ora pro nobis!

go to main page

At the Latin Mass in San Diego on the Feast of Christ the King, the priest noted that once France was known as the “Daughter of the Church” and indeed the lifeless remains of that once glorious past are still visible at Chartres, Rheims, etc., etc. But this former stronghold of the Church has more recently been the source–from Robespierre and Danton through Voltaire and Rousseau to Derrida and Foucault–of the central attack against the Church and the Christian civilization she stood, and stands, for. From the so-called Enlightenment forward this prodigal daughter has made herself a Whore, and now she is seeing what the “post-Christian” future really looks like.

Of course the mainstream media are falling all over themselves not to report what the riots in France are really about–the rise of a particularly virulent strain of Mohammeddism in the heart of “post-Christian” Europe (the Muslims have already burned churches and indeed even a crippled woman). The utopian European project is bursting at the seams, and no amount of urbane, gallic savoir-faire is going to solve the deeply systemic problems intrinsic to the militantly secularist post-war European project. From the religious perspective it seems that we are now being shown that if France (and Western Europe as a whole) will not be Christian, they will simply not survive in the long-run. Commentators (David Warren and Mark Steyn [also here], insightful as always) are invoking the name of Charles Martel who stopped the Muslim hordes at Tours in 732. But it seems unlikely that the moribund peoples of Western Europe, who cannot even summon the energy necessary to reproduce themselves, can stand against the Muslim tide. Only the cultural confidence of a renewed Christianity offers hope–but given how meagerly that flame now burns in France (the SSPX, etc. notwithstanding), we may see that former Daughter of the Church lost altogether.

go to main page

David Warren–a very good conservative columnist based in Canada and a recent convert–has some great news if it’s true. Standard provisos for rumorish sorts of things obtain, but this was published in a major Canadian newspaper this past Sunday, so it’s perhaps a bit more reliable than most:

“We learn, from some Vatican insider or other, that John Henry Newman may be beatified under the reign of the present Pope. This could be very significant, to Catholics, and beyond them, to the whole English-speaking world”

The rest can be found here