Daily Rome Shot 1266

Posted on 10 March 2025 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

On one day of the year, 9 March, the Feast of St Frances of Rome, the Benedictine sisters (founded by Francesca) allow people into the convent to see her rooms, etc.

Photo from The World’s Best Sacristan™.

My tech continues to fight me.  Yesterday for the live stream the video was terrible and for no apparent reason, but I am pretty sure it was on my end.   Also, the shoulder and neck pain… is now also in my left foot.  Pretty obvious what’s going on.  I might need a cane before the day is out.

Please remember me when shopping online and use my affiliate links.  US HERE – WHY?  This helps to pay for health insurance (massively hiked for this new year of surprises), utilities, groceries, etc..  At no extra cost, you provide help for which I am grateful.

A long time reader who travels a lot wrote:

Saw your video of the hotel door being broken into/opened.

This happened to me once in OK City and I ended up in an altercation.

He says he found a solution: HERE

From the Getty, St. Hedwig and the nun with a Hedgehog HERE 

 

In chessy news…. World #1 Magnus Carlsen scored 3/3 in the Norwegian Team Chess Championship. His wins saw him gain 4.1 rating points to climb to 2837.1, 35 points above Hikaru Nakamura and 50 points above World Champion Gukesh Dommaraju.

White to move and mate in 4.

NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t be “spoilers” for others.

Posted in SESSIUNCULA | 3 Comments

Your Sunday Sermon Notes – 1st Sunday of Lent 2025

Posted on 9 March 2025 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Too many people today are without good, strong preaching, to the detriment of all. Share the good stuff.

It is the 1st Sunday of Lent in the Novus Ordo and in the Vetus Ordo.   Surprisingly, the experts of the Consilium didn’t do away with Lent completely.

The Roman Station is St. John Lateran.  QUESTION: At the Mass you went to, was the Station mentioned?  Let us know in the combox.

We are now in the first stage of Lent.

Was there a GOOD point made in the sermon you heard at your Sunday Mass of obligation?

Tell about attendance especially for the Traditional Latin Mass.

Any local changes or (hopefully good) news?

I have a few thoughts about the orations in the Vetus Ordo for this Sunday: HERE

A taste:

These are the three root causes of all sins, as described in 1 John 2:16: “the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life”.   “Lust of the flesh” is the disordered desire for pleasure, such as eating something that is forbidden.  “Lust of the eyes” is the desire to possess that which doesn’t belong to us.  It is generally true that people come to desire what they see.  This is why we should maintain “custody of the eyes”.  Remember: You can’t unsee something.  “Pride of life” is the disordered self-love that results in pride, vanity, the desire to put ourselves in the place of God.

Therefore, the Tempter comes to the New Adam in the wilderness (not a Garden), terribly hungry and thirsty (not satisfied with every good thing the Garden had).  The Lord’s temptations were essentially the same as those of Eve in the Garden: change these stones to bread to satisfy your appetite (“the tree was good for food” which is “lust of the flesh), worship me to possess all the world (“delight to the eyes” which is “lust of the eyes”), and show how wonderful you are in everyone’s full view by throwing yourself from the Temple (“pride of life” which is to displace God by putting yourself in the center of your universe).

Posted in Liturgy Science Theatre 3000, Sermons | Tagged | 2 Comments

Daily Rome Shot 1265

Posted on 8 March 2025 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Please remember me when shopping online and use my affiliate links.  US HERE – WHY?  This helps to pay for health insurance (massively hiked for this new year of surprises), utilities, groceries, etc..  At no extra cost, you provide help for which I am grateful.

If it is Minnesota, its the State Boys High School Hockey Tournament and time also for a blizzard (10 inches recently) This goes to show why there are more players in the NHL from Minnesota than anywhere else. And… that Rogers, where my friend the late Fr. Mike (“Dead Mike”,… God rest him) was as pastor on this goal attempt beat hated Edina (which was next to S. Minneapolis where I grew up) makes this better.

White to move and mate in 5.

[NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t be “spoilers” for others.]

Posted in SESSIUNCULA | 2 Comments

Lent brings an old Roman tradition for Mass: the Oratio super populum… the Prayer over the people

Posted on 7 March 2025 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

The Oratio super populum… the Prayer over the people at the end of Mass was reintroduced in the Latin edition of the 2002 Missale Romanum.   It never left the Vetus Ordo.  With the new 2011 English translation we’ve had this back in use in these USA and elsewhere for some years now.

This is an important custom for Lent.

The origin of the Oratio super populum is quite complex and hard to pin down. The use of this prayer is ancient, found in both the Eastern liturgies of Syria and Egypt and in the West.  It became part of the Roman liturgy very early on.

Turning to Fr. Joseph A. Jungmann’s monumental two volume The Mass of the Roman Rite: Its Origins and Development we find a history of this prayer at the beginning of the section concerning the close of the Mass (II, pp. 427ff). Something Jungmann emphasizes that caught my attention is the fact that we are at a “frontier” moment, the threshold of the sacred precinct of the church and the world.

When properly formed we want the influence of our intimate contact with the divine to carry over into the outside world.  This happens especially through our lectio divina and time in prayer and in our full, conscious and actual active participation in our sacred liturgical worship.  We are our rites.

Unlike the Postcommunio, the object of the prayer is not “us”. Instead, the priest prayers for and over the people, not generally including himself as he does in the prayer after Communion.

By the time of Pope Gregory the Great (+604) this Prayer over the people was only in the Lenten season, probably because this is perceived to be a time of greater spiritual combat requiring more blessings. Indeed it was extremely important for those who were not receiving Holy Communion, as was the case of those doing public penance before the Church, the ordo poenitentium.

How important was this prayer to the Romans?

In 545, when Pope Vigilius (537-55) was conducting the Station Mass at St. Cecilia in Trastevere, troops of the pro-Monophysite Byzantine Emperor Justinian arrived after Communion to take the Pope into custody and conduct him to Constantinople. The people followed them to the ship and demanded “ut orationem ab eo acciperent… the they should receive the blessing prayer from him”, by which was meant the Prayer over the people. The Pope recited it, the people said “Amen” and off went Vigilius who would return to Rome only after his death.

Lent is a time of spiritual combat. The Prayer over the people is meant to strengthen you on the threshold between the sacred precinct of the church and the world which you are charged both to shape and to endure.

Posted in Liturgy Science Theatre 3000, Save The Liturgy - Save The World | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Daily Rome Shot 1264

Posted on 7 March 2025 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Please remember me when shopping online and use my affiliate links.  US HERE – WHY?  This helps to pay for health insurance (massively hiked for this new year of surprises), utilities, groceries, etc..  At no extra cost, you provide help for which I am grateful.

Welcome Registrant:

Padre Foley

There is a new TLM app available called Sanctifica. May I recommend that you click over and visit? At least boost their stats and… maybe check out the app! (It looks good.)

I can’t unsee this…

In chessy news… HERE

Interim, motus ad lusorem cum militibus albis pertinent. Scaccus mattus, scilicet mors regis, duobus in motis veniat.

Posted in SESSIUNCULA | 3 Comments

“Ministerial Miranda”? Another attack on the Seal of Confession on priests… and on YOU.

Posted on 7 March 2025 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Most American and many illegals know a little about the Miranda Warning, sort of. In short, it is a notification given to “suspects” advising them of their right to silence and protection from self-incrimination and legal representation. There was a famous Supreme Court case Miranda v. Arizona in 1966 about these rights which found that the Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights of Ernesto Arturo Miranda had been violated. There are exceptions. Don’t assume you know all about Miranda rights if you are in a jam.

A canonist and civil lawyer whom I occasionally consult, a zealous advocate for priests, sent an article about Washington State DEMOCRATS. HERE

A Ministerial Miranda? Washington State Democrats Target Priests in Latest Attack on Religion

Washington Democrats are adding a fifth stage for confessions under a new law. If passed, examination, confession, absolution, and penance will be followed by arrest. The blatantly unconstitutional legislation would target priests who learn of any “reasonable” basis to believe that a child “has suffered abuse or neglect.” Putting aside the obvious violation of the sanctity of the confessional, it presents a novel problem for priests if they both encourage the faithful to unburden themselves while at the same time reminding them anything that they say can and will be used against them in a court of law.

The bill would amend the state law that currently applies to law enforcement, teachers, medical professionals or child care providers to report cases of child abuse or neglect. Clergy would be added to the list. The sponsors would also exempt clergy from the exception afforded to lawyers and others who obtain information “solely as a result of a privileged communication.”

The law would apply to any “ordained minister, priest, rabbi, imam, elder, or similarly situated religious or spiritual leader of any church, religious denomination, religious body, spiritual community, or sect, or person performing official duties that are recognized as the duties of a member of the clergy.”

[…]

This is one of the brass rings of the Democrats, destroy the Church through prosecution of even frivolous cases, eliminate tax exempt status, drive the clergy underground or hamstring them to the point of enervation.

Putting aside the unconstitutionality, it is a law that is ripe for abuse. The state would be using the church as an agent to compel confessions on the threat of damnation and then turn over the evidence to the police. Worse yet, if the priest does not give a type of ministerial Miranda, the confessant may not realize the danger. However, it is rather hard for a priest to say that a person must confess their sin while reminding them of the right to remain silent.

Posted in GO TO CONFESSION, Pò sì jiù, Si vis pacem para bellum!, The Coming Storm, The Drill, The future and our choices, The Last Acceptable Prejudice | Tagged | 1 Comment

“Remember, boy, it’s 20 minutes, amice to amice.”

Posted on 6 March 2025 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

At Rorate I read some Q&A with Card. Roche of the Roman Dicastery tasked with liturgical issues, including persecuted the people who desire the Traditional Latin Mass. It’s not just about the form of Mass, it’s about the people… they don’t like the people.

In the interview Card. Roche said something that caught my attention. Do you read anything contradictory in this?  Emphases mine.

For very good reasons, the Church, through conciliar legislation, decided to move away from what had become an overly elaborate form of celebrating the Mass.

When I was at school, I used to serve Mass, and the priest would say to me: “Remember, boy, it’s 20 minutes, amice to amice.” What he meant was that as soon as he put the amice [liturgical vestment] around his neck, I was to start counting the minutes until he took it off at the end of Mass. If, by chance, he reached the last Gospel by 15 minutes, I had to pull the back of his chasuble. It was a sort of scruple, I suppose, but something very different from what people experience in the Extraordinary Form today.

Very different from what people experience in the TLM today.  Exactly.

On the one hand he said that the TLM was “overly elaborate”.   On the other hand it could be said in 15-20 minutes.   But it’s overly elaborate?   One can surmise from this that that priest, whom Roche used as a negative example, was a massive liturgical abuser of the older rite.   So the Rite he perhaps thinks of as the older, Traditional Rite, is not a good example.  His thoughts are based on abuse, rather than proper use.

I don’t think that I could, even with my experience and speed, say Mass in 15 minutes.   Even omitting the Dies Irae in a daily Requiem I don’t think I could do one in 20 and actually do everything.  I am having a hard time getting my mind around what Roche said.

Okay, there’s another thing I didn’t quite get (and comments):

One of the things that has been very interesting to me is observing this situation worldwide. [Funny, that.  Given that the TLM was “worldwide”.] The numbers devoted to the Traditional Latin Mass are, in reality, quite small, but some of the groups are quite clamorous. They are more noticeable because they make their voices heard.  [I thought this was the age of “walking together”.]

So, they make their voices known.  That’s good right?  I think there is even a canon in Canon Law about that (cf. can. 212).

Oh yes… there is this.

In the lectionary from the Novus Ordo, there is a three-year cycle for Sundays and a two-year cycle for weekday readings. There is a much lower percentage of scriptural readings in the 1962 missal than there are in the newer missal.

There might be a lower percentage of total Scripture, but there is a vastly lower percentage of people hearing any readings in the Novus Ordo these days.  So, how is that working out?   Not only, ask people what the readings were as they are walking out of your average suburban church.   The annual repetition of a core selection of pericopes helped to assure that Mass going Catholics – and so many more went to Mass – remembered and were, therefore, affected by what they heard.  Am I wrong?

There’s a little more:

What interests me is why people get hot under the collar[that’s not dismissive] about others celebrating the Tridentine Mass. I think this has been a mistake. Bishop Wheeler, of the Diocese of Leeds, insisted that a Holy Mass be celebrated in Latin according to the Novus Ordo at least once every Sunday in every deanery. That showed considerable wisdom.   [IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT LATIN.]

[…]

I often hear people say, “Cardinal Roche is against the Latin Mass.” Well, if they only knew that most days I celebrate Mass in Latin because it is the common language for all of us here. It is the Novus Ordo Mass in Latin. I was trained as an altar boy until the age of 20, serving the Tridentine Form.

Apparently his exposure to the Tridentine Form was… well… not what we have today.  What did he say”

“something very different from what people experience in the Extraordinary Form today.”

Maybe, rather than crush out what is going on today, it should be given a try?

Posted in Liturgy Science Theatre 3000, Save The Liturgy - Save The World, SESSIUNCULA, The Drill | Tagged | 23 Comments

Daily Rome Shot 1263 – so it begins

Posted on 6 March 2025 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

WELCOME REGISTRANT:

MCZT

A few years ago, I gave a talk at a conference in Napa Valley for a men’s group. It was a fine event with great guys. Two other priests spoke, Fr. David Jenuwine and Fr. Edward Looney. I was so grateful that I was the last speaker and not the first so that the poster did not read “Zuhlsdorf Jenuwine Looney”. It was the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. The next day a fire swept through Napa. That night, in the hotel near the airport for my next day flight, it hit me. A severe, nearly paralyzing, burning stabbing pain seized my left shoulder and stabs up the side of my skull. It was so bad that all I could do was sit in a chair. Moving was agony. I had some pain killer with me and loaded it up in the morning in order to get home. I don’t know how I did it. That pain stuck with me for a long, except, it moved around. Sometimes lower in my back, sometimes sliding over to the right side. Sometimes worse, sometimes less bad, sometimes so bad I couldn’t raise the chalice at Mass and all I could do was sit in a chair. The pain left, entirely, on the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary exactly one year after it started.   I talked to an exorcist friend about it and we compared notes.

Yesterday, Ash Wednesday, my tech started to fight me. I had desktop problems, laptop problems, TV box problems. I was making a podcast and the software I’ve used so many times fought me. The microphone wouldn’t record above a whisper though I adjusted it way up. I worked through these things and got the recording posted. I read something from Sheen’s On The Demonic in the LENTCAzT.  I said Mass in the afternoon, with only a minor audio glitch in the stream at the start. Supper. Then it hit me. The same massive pain over my left scapula and up the side of my skull. During the night it drifted over to the right. I reflected on Paul and the thorn in his side as I asked Mary to put her mantle over me, the angels to defend me and Christ to pour His Precious Blood upon me.

This morning I find that my refrigerator ice maker is not working and that it is not cooling below 40°F.

A connection with the podcasts, maybe?  Some other resolve I made?  I note that the podcasts for Lent began on Shrove Tuesday, which this year 4 March is the Feast of the Holy Face.  Also, recently, with the TMSM society I’m still involved with I obtain new reliquaries and relics for the chapel where the TLM is celebrated.  No good deed goes unpunished?

I don’t often get very personal in my posts.  Whatever this is, I ask for your prayers.  I’d really like this to stop but I’ve offered the pain for my mother’s healing.

And I still don’t understand what’s happening with my amazon affiliate accounts (US and UK).   The links seem to work but I am not showing any sales in my stats.   This is a deep concern.

It feels like an all out attack.

Please remember me when shopping online and use my affiliate links.  US HERE – WHY?  This helps to pay for health insurance (massively hiked for this new year of surprises), utilities, groceries, etc..  At no extra cost, you provide help for which I am grateful.

 

In chessy news… HERE

White to move and mate in 2. Tricky.

Posted in SESSIUNCULA | 11 Comments

“Ash Wednesday” by T.S. Eliot

Posted on 5 March 2025 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Back in 2013, with a remnant of a cold, I read T. S. Eliot’s Ash Wednesday.

It’s interesting to go back to that post and see the comments.  For example, Supertradmum is no longer with us.  Say a prayer for the repose of her soul.  There are names of some commentators we haven’t see around for a while.

HERE

 

Posted in Linking Back, Poetry | Tagged , | 1 Comment

POLL: Your Ash Wednesday 2025 Sermon notes and ASHES – Did you get your #ASHTAG?

Posted on 5 March 2025 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Ash Wednesday is NOT a holy day of obligation.

That said, many people try to go to Mass on Ash Wednesday.  Many, however, cannot.

Therefore, let us know about your good experiences of Holy Mass and the good points in the sermon, if there was on.

Was there a GOOD point made in the sermon you heard?

I wrote “good”.  Let’s make this positive and edifying for the benefit of those who had to work or who were shut in or otherwise not able to go to Mass.

Tell about attendance especially for the Traditional Latin Mass.  I hear that it is growing.  Of COURSE.

Any local changes or (hopefully good) news?

Let’s have a poll.

Anyone can vote. Only registered and approved users can comment. And I hope you do!

[poll id=”356″]

And also.

[poll id=”357″]

Posted in SESSIUNCULA | Tagged , | 16 Comments