Two from Fr. Z on the upcoming Synod (Session II) this fall

• "Polish Archbishop predicts ugly confrontations at Synod: 'innovators have not been idle'” (Fr. Z's Blog, February 4, 2015).
  
  
• "John Allen pulled a fast one over at Crux about the Synod" (Fr. Z's Blog, February 5, 2015).

I'm finding myself rapidly becoming a fan of the new Mic'd Up!

In this Mic'd Up, Michael Voris explores the origins and rise of the New Catholic Media. Guests include: Chris Manion, Jim Hughes, Judie Brown, Michael Hichborn and John-Henry Westen. Very informative.

Stand with the Church: Support faithful priests, bishops, and the Pope

"I was pleased to see that some Catholic journalists and internet bloggers ... drew attention to this clerical agenda of undermining the perennial teaching of Our Lord."

- Archbishop Athanasius Schneider, "Against Pharisees"
(Polonia Christiana, November 5, 2014)

"Christians are born for combat... The chief elements of this duty consist in professing openly and unflinchingly the Catholic doctrine, and in propagating it to the utmost of our power."

- Pope Leo XIII, "Sapientiae Christianae" (January 10, 1890)

Related: Benedict Constable, "Why blogs must expose the goings-on in Rome" (Rorate Caeli, February 6, 2015).

Good discussion: On Atheists & Evolution: From Stephen Fry to Bono

British actor Stephen Fry blasphemes God and arrogantly proclaims his faith in dogmatic atheism. Michael Matt uses Adam, Eve, Genesis and Bono to answer Fry and challenge de facto false "religions" such as atheism and evolution. A couple of bracing moments.

A (not so) Modest Proposal

The following proposal, apparently originating with a Princeton professor, reportedly had a very short life as U.S. House Bill 01-666 in the House of Representatives before it was killed by a panic-stricken sub-committee moments in advance of coming before the full House for a vote, and it should not be necessary to tell you why:

A Not So Modest Proposal:
On Prohibiting Procreation/Sexual Intercourse... To Save the Planet
Prof. Dieter Winger
The Not One More Child Institute / Summer 2020

Who can deny our globe has reached a tipping point of epic proportions. For many decades now, a number of esteemed scientists have warned of the grave dangers posed to the planet by overpopulation and global warming/climate change. Some of these scientists have suggested that an effective solution to these problems would be a new black plague (e.g., a new world-wide Ebola-like virus) that would wipe out the entire human population – permanently. But why leave this goal up to fate rather than human will and ingenuity?

A better strategy would be to persuade the United Nations and NGOs favorable to population control to pressure governments to pass laws that would criminalize sexual intercourse, not simply procreation. China has been very successful in reducing its population through its one-child-per-family policy. It has been implemented over the past decades by means of the instruments of a police state: forced abortions and sterilizations, stiff financial and social penalties, and so forth. But our proposal would be much more radical in that the goal would be to reduce world population to zero. Coercive measures – both covert and overt – would obviously need to be employed on a global scale, in many instances, for this proposal to be truly effective.

For the record: ISIS burned Jordanian Pilot -- alive -- in a cage

ISIS burned Jordanian Pilot – alive – in a cage.

A provocative defense against the charge of a "pandering" pontiff

Dr. Maike Hickson, a convert to the Catholic Faith, has written an open letter to Pope Francis as a sort of Cri de Coeur for clear leadership. In many ways it is a thought provoking piece. In one place she says:

"I am a convert of ten years, born in 1972 and raised in Germany and now living in the United States. I came out of a world that is now more and more subverting and invading, if not permeating, the life of the Catholic Church and a world to which you now seem to bow down and to pander."

Hmmmmmm ...

Yet one of our own readers writes in with the following observation about this very statement:

The palpable frustration felt by so many tends to obscure a certain possibility. The Pope may not be kissing up to the world, or trying to sabotage the Church. He may just be sincere. His whole approach, if we are honest, is that of Vatican II. He is trying to woo a world that he thinks is just not all that bad. People are well-intentioned, but just muddled. If that is so, trying to speak their language is not betrayal but empathy.

Again: Hmmmmmm ....

The reader goes on:

But [Hickson's] is the FOX News mentality, and I agree with [mainline conservatives] here. In the final analysis she may sound slightly naive. Such phrases communicate only something about our own exhaustion. If we are frustrated, angry, or bitter, it should be at the institutional Church Francis represents and of which he is its natural born child. He is not an aberration but a growth. 50 years of Vatican II, of canonizations of John Paul the Great and Pope John, of seeing Papa Ratzi[nger] as the Second Coming of Thomas Aquinas and proposing the likes of [Evangelical convert apologists] as updates of Fulton Sheen or Joseph Fenton... Decades of hardly blinking at gay priests or parish libraries stuffed with titles by Richard O'Brien, Raymond E. Brown, and Sister Joan... Years of bewailing bad liturgies, anti-Jesus Jesuits, anti-Catholic Catholic universities and unbiblical Biblical scholars... And we think the Pope a sudden phenomenon, an usurper versus a carefully-groomed prototype? Is Francis pandering? No, probably not in his mind. No wonder he and his fellow more liberal Catholics take offense: they are not pandering, but simply being. Just who they are. We may have provoked a schism-worthy situation simply by being afraid to be less than deferential to papal authority, and now we have no place in the pecking order of a hen house afflicted with heretical gradualism. Its like allowing public school to educate your kids, gushing over all their friends, both better and worse, and then accusing them of pandering to their queer friends when they refuse to comment negatively on them or decide to mimmic them. Just what did you expect?

[Diclaimer: Rules 7-9]

Preveously unseen video released of Franciscans of the Immaculate Seminary the day it was shuttered

In a video, claimed to have been obtained exclusively by Rorate, the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate filmed the entire day, documenting the way of life in their seminary for posterity. On that same day, December 8, 2013, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, the Theological Seminary of the Immaculate Mediatrix (STIM) was closed by their Apostolic Commissioner, Fr. Fidenzio Volpi.


For the unsettled questions at issue over the suppression of the Franciscans of the Immaculate, Read more >>.

Banned Super Bowl commercial

According to Fr. Z, the NFL apparently didn't want this commercial during the Super Bowl:

Voris: late Fr. Richard Mcbrien had a "common law wife" while at Notre Dame

Starting at the time signature of 4:50: https://www.youtube.com/watch?x-yt-ts=1422579428&x-yt-cl=85114404&feature=player_embedded&v=dXgcjuBJlsw#t=284

After-the-fact rare humor in the midst of crisis: "Preview from 'The Garage' of the Argument of the Month" for Jan. 2015

AOTM - Argument of the Month [TM]: The Men's Forum for Catholic Apologetics presents a monthly debate on hot button issues in the basement of St. Augustine's Catholic Church in South St. Paul, MN. The featured speaker for February 10, 2015 is Steve Wood on the subject of Pornography and the Catholic Man.

In case you missed it, however, here is some rare humor in the midst of the crisis from a "Preview from 'The Garage' of the Argument of the Month" for January 13, 2015, posted online just the day before, with some welcome levity amidst "the crisis":



[Hat tip to A.Q.]

The war for the minds of our children: will you watch from the sidelines?

“The class-war of the future will be a war of intellectual classes and the conquest will be the souls of the children.” For effective soldiering, we must give our minds to the study of both minds at war, Christ’s primarily, but the world’s too....To think we can do this by giving it as much of our free time as we can comfortably spare is foolishness. Paul would have delighted in Rudyard Kipling’s phrase, “There’s no discharge from the war.” Unless we see it as of that urgency, we may as well stay on the sidelines while others fight for the souls of the children. —F.J. Sheed, Theology and Sanity,Pg.13.

[Hat tip to JM]

Fr. Perrone: Cognitive dissonance, doubts, and reassurance about Catholic truth in the postmodern world

Fr. Eduard Perrone, "Pastor's Descant" [temporary link] (Assumption Grotto News, February 1, 2015):

During the past week I have intermittently suffered from a feeling of disorientation (I pray you, do not dial 911 until you have read unto the end.) I have had the recurring thought that maybe the Catholic Church is now something other than what I have always known it to be (jargon of the day would have it that the Church has “morphed” into something else–hideous expression!). This followed upon reflection on several things: some proposals that were made to the Pope at the inconclusive Extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the family (sic!) last fall; reading an article proposing a new kind of Catholicism; being reminded of some bizarre liturgical practices that are the norm in some diocesan parishes; and the report that sexual practices among the young have now little to do morality but only with their measure of the personal freedom. My self query is whether or not some new Church and new society have emerged having left me behind in a now passé world. Am I a remnant of some former time who has simply failed to grasp the “new truth,” or who has not come to realize that there are no fixed truths? Alienation from reality is a psychotic condition, of course, but at least I am hesitant about being in doubt. On the other hand, if what I have always believed is correct, and if truth is truly obstinate, and if the teaching of the Church is infallibly true, then some things in the world are far, far off kilter. 

In my home school class this last week, the word “immutability” came up in a passage of text referring to God–He who is unchangeable by His very nature. This is characteristic of truth itself, ordained by God as irreformable. Why then the confusion? The human mind, howsoever stable, can tolerate only so much questioning of truth without suffering ill consequences. It seems that the time, being “out of joint,” has made me wonder whether I have had it wrong all my life about realities which have been known as stable and unchangeable. I have felt what a famed atheist (J. P. Sartre) in another context called “nausea.”

Now having recovered from this mental delirium, I wish to declare confidently that the Catholic Church teaches the infallible truth revealed by God in matters of faith and morals. I also declare that what is true of the nature of things must always be true. 

Now with my foot once again on level ground (cf. Psalm 26) I can remind you about Candlemas Day. Our solemn high Mass will take place Monday at 7:30 a.m. when we will celebrate the Presentation of Christ in the Temple with the procession with blest candles. 

On a sad note: In two weeks, on Sunday February 15^th we will bid farewell to the Order of the Holy Cross with a little reception in the gym following the 9:30 and noon Masses. Please come to express your gratitude to the priests and nuns for their presence and work in our parish over these twenty-some years.

On a brighter note: DVDs of the Grotto original musical play McGivney! have just come in for sale at our gift shop. Performers are our own Grotto parishioners. Cost is $12.95 plus tax. Proceeds help recover costs in presenting this play.

Fr. Perrone

Extraordinary Community News - call for EF confirmation candidates, New Auxiliary Bishop of Diocese of London, Ont., Mass schedules, another EF Mass announced for Detroit Cathedral, lecture series

"I will go in unto the Altar of God
To God, Who giveth joy to my youth"
Tridentine Community News (February 1, 2015):

Call for Confirmation Candidates

The Archdiocese of Detroit has offered to provide the Sacrament of Confirmation in the Extraordinary Form for the Oakland County Latin Mass Association at the Academy of the Sacred Heart. Recognizing that this is a relatively rare event, the Archdiocese has asked that others who are not regular attendees of the OCLMA be invited and welcomed to receive the Sacrament at this ceremony. Candidates need not be members of a Latin Mass Community. Readers of this column are well-connected and are asked to spread the word.

Interested parties should speak with OCLMA Chaplain Msgr. Ronald Browne after Sunday Mass at the Academy of the Sacred Heart. You may also e-mail the address at the bottom of this page, and your questions will be forwarded to Msgr. Browne.

New Auxiliary Bishop for Diocese of London


Pope Francis has named Fr. Joseph Dabrowski as Auxiliary Bishop of the Diocese of London, Ontario. Born in Poland in 1964, Fr. Dabrowski is the North American Superior of the Michaelite Fathers, an order of Polish priests who serve on this continent. He currently serves as the pastor of St. Mary Parish in London. The Michaelite Fathers have long had an apostolate in the Diocese of London; in 2012 they were also assigned a parish in the Archdiocese of Detroit, St. Clare of Montefalco in Grosse Pointe Park. Fr. Dabrowski is a linguist and counts Latin among the languages he has studied. Interestingly, a YouTube video of a Mass he celebrated at St. Mary Parish features Gregorian Mass VIII being sung.

Feast of the Purification at Our Lady of the Scapular

A High Mass for the Feast of the Purification will be held at Wyandotte, Michigan’s Our Lady of the Scapular Parish this Monday, February 2 at 7:00 PM. Unlike the other Masses in the region that evening, this one will not include the Blessing of Candles before Mass, as the parish will have done that on Sunday.

February 15 St. Albertus Mass Postponed

A water main broke and flooded parts of St. Albertus Church. The boiler was made inoperable, and the church is without heat. As a result, the Tridentine Mass originally scheduled for Sunday, February 15 must be postponed until repairs can be completed. The fundraising breakfast that was scheduled after Mass that day will now be held after the Tridentine Mass on Sunday, May 17.

Blessed Sacrament Cathedral Mass on July 31, 2015

Certain events deserve publicity far in advance of their taking place. In a repeat of the groundbreaking event held on August 30, 2013, Juventútem Michigan has arranged a second Holy Mass in the Extraordinary Form at Detroit’s Blessed Sacrament Cathedral on Friday, July 31. The celebrant will once again be Auxiliary Bishop Donald Hanchon. This time, His Excellency Archbishop Allen Vigneron will be in attendance and will sit in choir. Mark your calendars; more details will be provided as the date approaches. [Photo of the 2013 Mass at Blessed Sacrament Cathedral by Aaron Harburg]


Reminder: Next OCLMA Talk on February 22

Over 100 of the faithful attended the first 2015 Oakland County Latin Mass Association talk on January 18, “An Introduction to the Tridentine Mass.” The next talk will be held on Sunday, February 22 during the reception after the 9:45 AM Mass at the Academy. Paul Schultz will speak on “Juventútem: Young Adults that Love the Latin Mass.” Paul will explain the activities of Juventútem locally and globally.

Tridentine Masses This Coming Week

• Mon. 02/02 7:00 PM: High Mass at Our Lady of the Scapular, Wyandotte (Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary)
• Mon. 02/02 7:00 PM: High Mass at St. Thomas the Apostle, Ann Arbor (Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary)
• Mon. 02/02 7:00 PM: High Mass at St. Josaphat (Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary)
• Tue. 02/03 7:00 PM: Low Mass at Holy Name of Mary (Daily Mass for the Dead) [Low Requiem Mass with Absolution at the Catafalque]
• Fri. 02/06 7:00 PM: Low Mass at St. Josaphat (Sacred Heart of Jesus) [First Friday]
• Sun. 02/08: No Mass at the Academy of the Sacred Heart. Car pools are available to the 2:00 PM Tridentine Mass at St. Alphonsus in Windsor; e-mail the below address or call (248) 250-2740 if you would like a ride.

[Comments? Please e-mail tridnews@detroitlatinmass.org. Previous columns are available at http://www.detroitlatinmass.org. This edition of Tridentine Community News, with minor editions, is from the St. Albertus (Detroit), Academy of the Sacred Heart (Bloomfield Hills), and St. Alphonsus and Holy Name of Mary Churches (Windsor) bulletin inserts for February 1, 2015. Hat tip to A.B., author of the column.]

Tridentine Masses coming to the metro Detroit and East Michigan areas this week

Tridentine Masses This Coming Week

Sunday


• Sun. 02/01 9:30 AM: High Mass at St. Josaphat, Detroit (Septuagesima Sunday)
• Sun. 02/01 9:30 AM: High Mass at Assumption Grotto, Detroit (Septuagesima Sunday)
• Sun. 02/01 9:45 AM: High Mass at Chapel of the Academy of the Sacred Heart, Bloomfield Hills (Septuagesima Sunday)
• Sun. 02/01 2:00 PM: High Mass at St. Benedict/St. Alphonsus Church, Windsor, Canada (Septuagesima Sunday)
  
• Sun. 02/01 4:00 PM High (or Low) Mass All Saints Catholic Church, Flint (Septuagesima Sunday)
  
  Monday
  
  
• Mon. 02/02 7:30 AM: High or Low Mass (varies) at Assumption Grotto, Detroit (Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary,
• Mon. 02/02 7:00 PM: High Mass at St. Josaphat, Detroit (Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary)
• Mon. 02/02 7:00 PM: High Mass (usually) at Assumption Grotto, Detroit (Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary)
• Mon. 02/02 7:00 PM: High Mass at Our Lady of the Scapular, Wyandotte (Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary)
• Mon. 02/02 7:00 PM: High Mass at St. Thomas the Apostle, Ann Arbor (Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary)
  
  Tuesday
  
  
• Tue. 02/03 7:30 AM High or Low Mass (varies) at Assumption Grotto, Detroit (St. Blaise, Bishop & Martyr)
• Tue. 02/03 7:00 PM: Low Mass at St. Benedict/Holy Name of Mary, Canada (Daily Mass for the Dead) [Low Requiem Mass with Absolution at the Catafalque]
• Tue. 02/03 7:00 PM: Low Mass (usually) at Assumption Grotto, Detroit (St. Blaise, Bishop & Martyr)
  
  Wednesday
  
  
• Wed. 02/04 7:30 AM: High or Low Mass (varies) at Assumption Grotto, Detroit (St. Andrew Corsini, Bishop & Confessor)
• Wed. 02/04 4:00 PM: High Mass at Assumption Grotto, Detroit (St. Andrew Corsini, Bishop & Confessor)
  
  Thursday
  
  
• Thu. 02/05 7:30 AM: High or Low Mass (varies) at Assumption Grotto, Detroit (St. Agatha, Virgin & Martyr)
• Thu. 02/05 7:00 PM: Low Mass (usually) at Assumption Grotto, Detroit (St. Agatha, Virgin & Martyr)
  
  Friday
  
  
• Fri. 02/06 7:30 AM: High or Low Mass (varies) at Assumption Grotto, Detroit (Sacred Heart of Jesus) [First Friday]
• Fri. 02/06 7:00 PM: Low Mass at St. Josaphat, Detroit (Sacred Heart of Jesus) [First Friday]
• Fri. 02/06 7:00 PM: Low Mass (usually) at Assumption Grotto, Detroit (Sacred Heart of Jesus) [First Friday]
  
  Saturday
  
  
• Sat. 02/07 7:30 AM: High or Low Mass (varies) at Assumption Grotto, Detroit (St. Romuald, Abbot)
  
  Sunday
  
  
• Sun. 02/08 9:30 AM: High Mass at St. Josaphat, Detroit (Sexagesima Sunday)
• Sun. 02/08 9:30 AM: High Mass at Assumption Grotto, Detroit (Sexagesima Sunday)
• Sun. 02/08 9:45 AM: No Mass at the Chapel of the Academy of the Sacred Heart, Bloomfield Hills. Car pools are available to the 2:00 PM Tridentine Mass at St. Alphonsus in Windsor; e-mail the below address or call (248) 250-2740 if you would like a ride. (Sexagesima Sunday)
• Sun. 02/08 2:00 PM: High Mass at St. Benedict/St. Alphonsus Church, Windsor, Canada (Sexagesima Sunday)
  
• Sun. 02/08 4:00 PM High (or Low) Mass All Saints Catholic Church, Flint (Sexagesima Sunday)