In aestu, solacium

Having found an internet connection, and a rare half hour, I thought I'd just do a little post to keep you amused...
Thanks to anglicana ecclesia (despite the name, I think it's a Catholic site) for this:

"The Work of the Parish Priest"
During a Eucharistic Congress, a number of priests from different orders are gathered in a church for Vespers. While they are praying, a fuse blows and all the lights go out. The Benedictines continue praying from memory, without missing a beat. The Jesuits begin to discuss whether the blown fuse means they are dispensed from the obligation to pray Vespers. The Franciscans compose a song of praise for God's gift of darkness. The Dominicans revisit their ongoing debate on light as a
signification of the transmission of divine knowledge. The Carmelites fall
into silence and slow, steady breathing.
The parish priest, who is hosting the others, goes to the basement and replaces the fuse.
Source: http://catholicfire.blogspot.com/

I have to say it rings bells!

I love this one:

A young man is thinking of becoming a Catholic priest, so he goes to talk to his pastor about the different religious orders. "What can you tell me about the Dominicans?" he asks. "Oh, they were formed in the Thirteenth Century to combat the Albigensian heresy," the priest replies.
"And the Jesuits?"
"They were formed in the Sixteenth Century in response to the Protestant Reformation."
The young man looks puzzled. "So what's the big difference between them?"
"When was the last time you saw an Albigensian?"

Laptops and Hotspots.

Posting is, I'm afraid, going to be somewhat erratic over the next couple of weeks. In fact it may be nonexistent, as it will depend on getting my laptop near hotspots. In fact, I won't be able to rely on getting my emails, so you may find a few days elapsing before I can post your comments. Please be tolerant.
Note picture of lap-top near hot-spot.

The rite of the Holy Father himself

Catholic World News.com tells us:

Pope Benedict XVI, who recently issued a motu proprio allowing all Catholic priests to celebrate the old Latin Mass, uses the older ritual himself for his private Mass, CWN has learned. Informed sources at the Vatican have confirmed reports that the Holy Father regularly celebrates Mass using the 1962 Roman Missal.

There is a YouTube video circulating, showing him celebrating the Novus Ordo, in Italian. I do hope CWN has got it right.

Climate change

Well, I don't really know what to make of climate change. Until my good friend Fr Michael Brown starts his own vignoble, I can't make myself worry too much. Others are doing plenty for me. However…
In my own garden, I have growing at the moment, and flowering/fruiting simultaneously,
Olives (I expect what I can see are tiny blossoms), grapes (doing fantastically), raspberries, blackberries, a few strawberries left, buddleja, a few gentians left, lots and lots of other flowers (roses not so good this year) but, still, PRIMROSES! Yes, I still have lots of primroses. It's July, folks; but I don't think my primroses have noticed. They have bloomed constantly and continuously since March. God bless them!
Now, maybe one of you is smiling indulgently and knows what this phenomenon is all about. Ah, you'll say; he's obviously growing Primrosius Aestatis Idiotii.
But I'm impressed, anyway.
I'm glad Fr Ray is away; I think he'd say I was boring him again.

The Biretta is back, baby!

Apparently.

Motu Proprio from the Vatican, Rome, Italy, Europe, The World, The Solar System, The Milky Way, The Universe, Space, Near More Space.

An interesting and not bad account of the new Motu Proprio here, from Boston (that's Boston USA, not the better-known Boston, Lincolnshire).
Excuse the heavy humour; I got annoyed last night watching a fillum where shots of the Houses of Parliament or Trafalgar Square with Big Red Buses were invariably accompanied with a ticket assuring me that this was London, England, Europe, in case I (or anyone) confused it with London, Melonsquashville, NB.

From Pius V to Pius Ncube

I'm interested in the deeply courageous Archbishop Pius Ncube's efforts to rid Zimbabwe of Mugabe's less-than-decent government. It all depends, however, on who wins in the end.
I mean that there is a parallel, though not an exact one, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I of England. While not as rapacious as her father, Henry VIII (I just read in a footnote to More's Utopia that he executed 72,000 people for theft alone, and restitution was made to him, not the victims), she nonetheless made life very unpleasant for her Catholic subjects, who were yet required to swallow the idea of Gloriana and the Virgin Queen. And yet, to this very day, there is a certain discomfort among English Catholics about the fact that some of them supported the idea of the Spanish Armada. This is played down, and even denied in some quarters, and yet Ncube's plea that foreign forces come to the aid of Zimbabwe's suffering people is not that dissimilar. My sympathies are with Ncube, I have to say, and yet, even though I am not English, I still instinctively hesitate (a product of my English education, no doubt) to say that a conquering Armada would have been a good thing.
Funny old world.

From Ma Beck

Father (and all)
Please pray for the baby whose mother has an abortion scheduled for tomorrow.
Thank you.

The Church and a scienctist

"Being a lover of freedom, when Nazi revolution came in Germany, I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but, no, the universities immediately were silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers, whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love of freedom; but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks. Only the Catholic Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for suppressing the truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised, I now praise unreservedly."
Author: Einstein.
Thanks, a Hawaiian Catholic Mum.

This pope.

Oh, dear God, I do love this pope. Now I honestly feel I can sing 'God bless our Pope, the great, the good' without irony.

Do you understand what that really means? I feel I am a catholic again.

Pope Benedict the Good

I met our present holy Father early in 1990; I had been ordained only a few months, and by the kind offices of a priest of my diocese who worked in the curia, I was permiited to concelebrate a Mass with Pope John Paul early one morning,. That was an experience in itself, which perhaps I will blog about some other time. But, emerging from the Vatican, I happened to come across Cardinal Ratzinger, on the way to his office.
Here was a man I had very much wanted to meet. In particular, I wanted to thank him for his defence of the Catholic faith. He had been someone who had made me persevere with my vocation in the seminary, knowing that I wasn't entirely alone. I tried to tell him what I felt in my halting German; he smiled, and tried to speak to me in English. His English then was little better than my German, so we compromised on Italian, and finally I managed, more or less, to deliver my message.
Never, never, in my life, have I forgotten the kindness of that man in stopping to speak to a nobody, a newly-ordained priest. In the later years, when he was hailed as Panzer-Kardinal, God's Rottweiler &c, I never forgot his gentleness, civility and charity. I was never surprised when the world finally realized what a lovely man he is.
I count those moments when he stepped out onto the balcony as Benedict XVI as among the happiest in my life. I literally cried for joy—something I have very rarely, if ever, done before. I was never in the slightest doubt about his good will on almost every level.

If I were not convinced before……

From We Are Church:

There haven't been any convincing arguments for the supposed deficits of the current Missal. Often such argumention uses the concept of sacrifice which is neither Biblical nor tenable within the Roman liturgy.

This itself would certainly be enough to send me scampering away from the 1970 missal. If the Mass is not a sacrifice……

Has this really been written by a malicious traditionalist?

Read the whole article here (from The Closed Cafeteria).

A tag, sir, a palpable tag…

Mac has tagged me to write about blogging.

1. How did you start blogging?
Well, really, because a good friend, also a blogger, persuaded me. I didn't really think I would stick with it, and that is why I was so reluctant to begin. I have been writing (under my own name) occasionally for the Catholic Herald over the last dozen or so years, and enjoyed the experience of the exchange of views. I think I'd have like to have been a journalist, in a different world. Blogging gives me a larger audience than my own parish. I love my parish very much, but there are hardly any people who see things the way I do, which is a rather lonely place to be. Through the medium of the blog, I can interact with lots of people and share views with many who understand where I am coming from. Those who don't will self-select and surf on to other sites.

2. What do you hope to achieve or accomplish with your blog? Have you been successful?
My blog is intentionally different to, say Fr Tim's or Fr Ray's. Both of those are quick with the news and to provide reflections on it. Unless I get a real scoop, I don't see much point in going over the news yet again when it has been done better elsewhere. What you will find on Nova et Vetera is simply my take on the world. What I find interesting or worth comment, in other words. So I make no apology for writing about supermarkets, Fr Ray, and likewise I make no apologies for not giving everyone yet another full text of the Motu Proprio (a topic in which, though, I am passionately interested); why reinvent the wheel?
In that sense, my blog is really a sort of on-line diary, not an Ecclesiastical Reuter's.
As to whether I have been successful, well, that isn't for me to say, really. I mean, in the sense that I have written quite a lot of what I am thinking, then yes, it has been successful. As to whether anyone else is interested in it, well, you tell me.

3. Has the focus of your blog changed since you started blogging? How?
Well, yes. I don't write about my parish on Nova et Vetera, for reasons which some of you will understand. That saddens me, because really the parish is the most important single element in my life, and you, the reader, are seeing only a two-dimensional image of me.

4. What do you know now that you wish you'd known when you started?
How some people will twist and maliciously use what one writes. How nasty people can be under cover of anonymity. But that's good for me; it toughens me up. I have always said that every priest should pray for two things; a tender heart and a tough skin.

5. Does your immediate or extended family know about your blog? If so, do they read it? If not, why?
I don't really have much family any more; I'm an only child, and my cousins have their own lives and families which I'm reluctant to disturb. No doubt if I had a wife and children of my own, that would be different, but I suppose it's a bit embarrassing for them to have a priest in the family. Not that they've ever said anything of the sort; it might just be my imagination. I think one cousin used to read a different blog of mine occasionally.

6. What advice would give to a new blogger?
Be a bit circumspect about what you write; not all readers will be friendly. Just look at Damian Thompson's blog to see how nasty people can be in the comment box. But if you put your thoughts out there, you must be prepared to see them being shot down, and you must be prepared to take criticism, and post all fair comment even if it doesn't agree with your opinions. However, don't be afraid not to publish every comment you receive; sometimes people will be unfair, or even malicious, and it's okay to edit these out. Fair comment is one thing, unfair is another.

So there we are; I may have written more openly and honestly than I should. But that's blogging!

Oh, puhleeeeeeze……

"I can’t fight back the tears. This is the saddest moment in my life as a man, priest and bishop," Luca Brandolini, a member of the liturgy commission of the Italian bishops’ conference, told Rome daily La Repubblica in an interview on Sunday.

"It’s a day of mourning, not just for me but for the many people who worked for the Second Vatican Council. A reform for which many people worked, with great sacrifice and only inspired by the desire to renew the Church, has now been cancelled."

Well, I think this wins the queeny over-reaction award hands down. You can almost see the lavender tears at his pity party. Grow up, for heaven's sake! Get a grip on yourself!
Anyone would think that he had been forced, screaming and kicking, to vest in full traditional pontificals, burn the documents of Vatican II, and celebrate the Old Mass at gunpoint.
All that has happened is that he is now unable to bully and be very unkind to a few people who disagree with him.
Quotation taken from Fr Zuhlsdorf's blog, for which, thanks.

Delicious irony…

Guess who's been appointed to be the new secretary of Ecclesia Dei? Mgr Marini, once secretary to Annibale Bugnini. He'll actually have to administer (without the opportunity to make any real decisions) the growth of the traditional Mass!

And who said Bavarians have no sense of humour?

Nunquam abrogatam

ALLELUIA!

How to dress, and how not to dress.

St Peter and St Paul in the Vatican:

and in Westminster Cathedral:

Oh dear; talk about a pimple on a haystack. Perhaps they shrunk in the wash.