Oh goodie! Jesuits host a new age "Winter Solstice Gathering"!!

[Hat tip to Guy Blanc, Private Eye]

Hilarious: Greenpeace Santa warns Christmas cancelled due to global ... warming!

For all of those in Rio Linda who are still worried about global warming, and perhaps like Al Gore, also believe that our oversized carbon footprint of auto emissions is responsible for the shrinking polar ice caps on Mars -- this is for you:


In the meantime, our lows are supposed to reach 9 degrees day-after-tomorrow. Don't know about where you live, but St. Nick is reporting right on schedule here.

"Earliest Subzero Temps Since ’95; More Bitter Cold And Snow Coming" (CBS Chicago, December 10, 2013)

The Grinch fails to whack Father Christmas

No matter how often the Grinch tries to whack Father Christmas in our post-Christian culture, it's just like playing Whac-a-Mole: He keeps popping up ... even at a flash mob event involving the US Air Force Band on December 3, 2013 -- even in a day when saying "Merry Christmas" can bring down the wrath of the regime's Thought Police upon you, even in a time when explicitly Christmas decorations are often forbidden in public places. Joy to the world!

[Hat tip to T.K.]

Paranormal Witness - The Exorcist

Paranormal Witness S03E19 The Exorcist from ghostvid on Vimeo.

My friend, Christine Le Niles writes: "This is why I call exorcists the four-star generals in the spiritual army of God. Re-posting in case you haven't watched it--a powerful and inspiring episode that highlights the power & mercy of God working through his humble & faithful priests to heal the afflicted. Atheists confident that the preternatural doesn't exist might change their minds if given the chance to sit in on an exorcism session."

More on "Dare we hope?"

In our November 23rd post, "CWR's long-promised symposium on Salvation & Eternal Destiny" (Musings), we called attention to this flap over Mr. Deavel's review -- once pulled and now published by CWR along with a number of responses.

Dominicus, however, over at Rorate Caeli, in an article entitled "Dare we Hope?" (December 8, 2013), goes in for some serious chop busing, starting with this:

Last week, the results of this symposium were published on the blog at Catholic World Report. Deavel’s original review is posted, as well as a number of other essays on the subject of Vatican II and salvation. However, the president of Ignatius Press, Mark Brumley, in his own essay cleverly sidesteps one of the central accusations that Martin makes against Balthasar, namely that Balthasar makes specious use of his sources, often quoting them out of context or even to make the opposite point of what the author intended.

Instead, Brumley concludes the selection of essays by offering an alternative interpretation of Balthasar that would more easily harmonize with Tradition and Scripture regarding the “hope” of universal salvation.

But what does Scripture and Tradition tell us about hope and salvation? If God created everyone out of love, then surely he would will them all to reach their end - eternal happiness in heaven. And if he wills the end, then surely he wills the means, right? Therefore, all will be saved?

Read more >>

"The Blessed Virgin compared to the Air we Breathe"

This is a poem by the inimitably wonderful Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J. -- a poem that I didn't know about till Fr. Z shared it today. Since today is the feast of the Immaculate Conception on the 1962 calendar still in effect for many of us committed to the usus antiquior, I thought I'd pass it along in honor of our Fair Mother:

Wild air, world-mothering air,
Nestling me everywhere,
That each eyelash or hair
Girdles; goes home betwixt
The fleeciest, frailest-flixed
Snowflake; that ’s fairly mixed
With, riddles, and is rife
In every least thing’s life;
This needful, never spent,
And nursing element;
My more than meat and drink,
My meal at every wink;
This air, which, by life’s law,
My lung must draw and draw
Now but to breathe its praise,
Minds me in many ways
Of her who not only
Gave God’s infinity
Dwindled to infancy
Welcome in womb and breast,
Birth, milk, and all the rest
But mothers each new grace
That does now reach our race—
Mary Immaculate,
Merely a woman, yet
Whose presence, power is
Great as no goddess’s
Was deemèd, dreamèd; who
This one work has to do—
Let all God’s glory through,
God’s glory which would go
Through her and from her flow
Off, and no way but so.

The Means to Attain Salvation

"I will go in unto the Altar of God
To God, Who giveth joy to my youth"
Tridentine Community News (December 8, 2013):

Holy Mother Church teaches that good works alone are not an assurance of salvation. While God certainly can admit anyone He pleases to the Kingdom of Heaven, the Church gives clear guidance as to the ordinary means of getting there. A virtuous life consist of not only living charitably and avoiding sin, but also in earning graces from the treasury which Christ granted His Church.

The November, 2013 edition of the monthly newsletter of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter contains an interesting column from the North American District Superior, Fr. Eric Flood. In it Fr. Flood addresses the three necessary spiritual components for the salvation of one’s soul: 1) Resource to the Sacraments, 2) Using Sacramentals, and 3) Availing ourselves of Indulgences.

The Sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, the Eucharist, Confession, and Extreme Unction are the principal methods by which our Lord dispenses graces to the faithful through the Church. Sacramentals are items such as Holy Water, Rosaries, medals, and scapulars, which are instruments which help nurture one’s sanctity and spiritual life. Indulgences are the means by which the Church applies the merits of Christ’s Passion to the faithful. Indulgences remit the temporal punishment due for sin and may be applied to oneself or to the Souls in Purgatory.

Manual of Indulgences Now Available in E-Book Form

Along with a hand missal and a bible, arguably one of the most important books a Catholic can possess is the current edition of the Manual of Indulgences, the collection of prayers and works enriched by Holy Mother Church with Plenary and Partial Indulgences.

The publisher of the English edition of this book, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, has made an E-Book edition available on Amazon.com. This means you can purchase the book for convenient reading on your smartphone, tablet, Kindle reader, or PC. Rather than pass away idle moments playing games or catching up on social media, why not devote a few minutes each day to gaining graces for yourself and for the Poor Souls in Purgatory?

Catholic Android and iOS Apps of Interest

To serve users of smartphones, tablets, and car audio systems with Bluetooth or Auxiliary inputs, a broad spectrum of spiritually enlightening Catholic content is now available:

The EWTN app (free) [at right] gives you access to streaming audio and video from EWTN’s television and radio networks, as well as on-demand access to a wide selection of archived shows.

The Salt + Light television network has an iOS app (free) offering streaming video, but not one for Android yet.

Laudáte (free) [at left] has a collection of prayers, including the Holy Rosary, in both Latin and English. The Ordinary Form Breviary and Readings are provided.

iBreviary (free) [at right] offers the Ordinary (unchanging parts) of the Tridentine Mass (the “Vetus Ordo”), along with blessings from the Extraordinary Form Roman Ritual. It also offers the Ordinary Form in Latin, English, French, and other languages; the modern Ambrosian Rite, and the Readings for the Ordinary Form and the Ordinary Form Breviary. Missing at this point in time are the Readings and Breviary for the Extraordinary Form.


iMass ($1.99) is a front end to the livemass.net site run by the FSSP’s Christ the King Church in Sarasota, Florida. It allows you to watch in streaming video, or download and watch later, the weekday and Sunday Masses at the parish. This is the same Mass televised on the Archdiocese of Detroit’s CTND cable channel. The iMass app also provides a front end to the Extraordinary Form Missal and Breviary found on the web site, www.divinumofficium.com.

Watch EWTN and Boston Catholic TV on Roku

You no longer need to subscribe to cable to be able to watch EWTN or Boston Catholic TV on your television: Both channels are now available at no charge on the Roku box. Roku is a family of devices starting at $50 which connect to your television and get streaming content from the Internet via a WiFi connection. Roku boxes are available at major electronics and appliance stores. Even better, as with the Android and iOS apps, on Roku you can watch archived programming on demand from both networks.

Christmas Masses Scheduled

Tridentine Masses for Christmas Day, Wednesday, December 25, have been scheduled:

• 12:00 Midnight: High Mass at St. Joseph Church, Detroit
• 12:00 Midnight: Solemn High Mass at Assumption Grotto, Detroit (orchestral Mass; details here) 
• 9:30 AM: High Mass at St. Joseph Church, Detroit
• 9:30 AM: High Mass at Assumption Grotto, Detroit
• 2:00 PM: Solemn High Mass at St. Benedict/Assumption-Windsor

- Choir will sing Michael Praetorius’ Missa a 8 and motets including Hieronymus Praetorius’ In Dulci Júbilo
- Deacon will be Deacon Joe Tuskiewicz; Subdeacon will be seminarian Jacob VanAssche from Detroit’s Sacred Heart Seminary

Please note that there will be no Masses at Assumption Church on Tuesday, December 24 or Tuesday, December 31.

Tridentine Masses This Coming Week

• Tue. 12/10 7:00 PM: Low Mass at St. Benedict/Assumption-Windsor (Feria of Advent)
• Sun. 12/15 12:00 Noon: High Mass at Our Lady of the Scapular, Wyandotte, Michigan (Third Sunday of Advent)
• Monday-Saturday 7:30AM: High or Low Mass (varies) at Assumption Grotto
• Monday-Wednesday-Friday 7:00PM: High or Low Mass (varies) Assumption Grotto
• Holy Days and Sundays 9:30AM: High Mass at Assumption Grotto

[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) and Assumption (Windsor) bulletin inserts for December 8, 2013. Hat tip to A.B., author of the column.]

Inspiring story: "Father Joseph Kentenich – Dilexit Ecclesiam"

"Father Joseph Kentenich – Dilexit Ecclesiam" (Catholic Truths, April 17, 2013):

October 1912. A storm was shaking the seminarians’ residence hall in Schoenstatt, Vallendar, not far from Kolblenz, Germany. The older students were protesting a school rule they believed to be too strict. Antiestablishment graffiti were all over the walls. The two priests in charge of spiritual direction resigned. A young priest, Joseph Kentenich, was hurriedly appointed to replace them in order to reestablish trust. During his first talk with the students, he introduced himself with these words: “I place myself entirely at your disposal with everything that I am and have, with my knowledge and my ignorance, with my strength and my powerlessness, but above all, my heart … we are going to learn to educate ourselves on our own, under the protection of Mary, so we become men of firm character, men who are free and priestly.” Right away, the new spiritual father and the seminarians who were rebelling a short time ago got along well. From this meeting was born the Schoenstatt movement. Who is this priest whose memory is venerated by millions of Catholics? Read more >>

[Hat tip to Sir Anthony S.]

Good sense on Mandela, from a Baptist

Albert Mohler, "Nelson Mandela and the Ironies of History" December 7, 2013).

[Hat tip to JM]

"Antinomianism in high places" Canonist Ed Peters on divorce, remarriage, Communion

For the record: Ed Peters, "Antinomianism in high places is still antinomianism" (In the Light of the Law, December 4, 2013), responding to recent the recent ill-advised remarks by Archbishop Lorenzo Baldisseri, the new Secretary General of the Synod of Bishops, regarding possible changes in the canonical discipline of witholding holy Communon from Catholics divorced-and-remarried outside the Church. (Via Fr. Z. HERE)

EF Immaculate Conception: Sunday, not Monday

According to the liturgical calendar of the 1962 Missal still in force, this Sunday, December 8, is the feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The Novus Ordo has transfered its feast to Monday while declaring there is no obligation to hear Mass on the transfered holy day.

"The traditional Latin Mass, however, follows the calendar and rubrics in place for 1962, as specified in #28 of Universae Ecclesiae. To that end, when the first class feast of the Immaculate Conception falls on the same day as the first class Second Sunday of Advent, the feast of the Immaculate Conception is observed, and the Second Sunday of Advent is commemorated."

[Hat tip to Kenneth J. Wolfe at Rorate Caeli, 12/6/2013]

"Is Your Liturgy Like What Vatican II Intended?"

On the fiftieth anniversary of the promulgation of Vatican II's Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, Peter Kwasniewski, in "Is Your Liturgy Like What Vatican II Intended?" (New Liturgical Movement, December 4, 2013), presents a list of 12 positive principles from that document and asks:

Is this what you experience, week in, week out?

Is not the monumental failure to implement much of Sacrosanctum Concilium a scandal?

What became of the great promise of the original liturgical movement? It is hard to escape the impression that Sacrosanctum Concilium was largely a dead letter within a year or two of its promulgation. Should we be happy or sad about that? Indifference seems to be far the greatest reaction. And surely that is unworthy of Catholics.

And he concludes:

I have been quite surprised throughout my adult life that the places where these points from Vatican II are most being lived, week in and week out, are the chapels of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter and similar communities, where the traditional Roman Rite is exclusively celebrated. This is not to say that the usus antiquior itself embodies every recommendation made (for better or for worse) by the Council Fathers, but rather, that the grand theological vision of Sacrosanctum Concilium—the centrality, dignity, and solemnity of the sacred liturgy, with the devout chanting of its prayers by priest, schola, and people—is being lived out in these communities, and in very few others. That should give us considerable food for thought.

While proponents of the new liturgical movement have reservations about many of the formulations in Sacrosanctum Concilium, it is nevertheless obvious that both those who adhere to the usus antiquior and those who promote a “reform of the reform” model are far more faithful to the explicit teaching of the Council than any of the progressives have been. In the past fifty years, we have seen the rigorous implementation of the suppositious “spirit” of the Council and of its weaker and woolier passages. Now that the Year of Faith has ended—a year full of many surprises—let us continue to pray for and work towards the implementation of the best and clearest of the Council’s teaching.

Read more >>

"Recovering the Greatness of the Roman Rite"

Peter Kwasniewski, "Recovering the Greatness of the Roman Rite" (Views from the Choir Loft, December 5, 2013):

Just yesterday we recalled the 50th anniversary of the promulgation of Vatican II’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium. That anniversary brought back to mind a little conversation that occurred 8 years ago.

One day, after attending Divine Liturgy, my son said to me (it was only a couple of months after his sixth birthday): “The Greeks are the ones who started the divine liturgy, right? I mean, they were the first to do it so beautifully, with all that singing and stuff?”

His question pierced me to the heart, because it showed that he experienced the Byzantine liturgy as primordially beautiful and the Latin rite as a second-best. In the forms he had seen most often, either the Novus Ordo or the Tridentine Low Mass, it had a minimum of beauty of chant and ritual. Ex ore infantium: surely we could take a cue from a child, and reinstate some of the beauty and solemnity that was once also ours? ...

... “No, son, our Roman Mass is actually, at its heart, the most ancient of all the liturgical rites in the world, more ancient even than the Byzantine liturgy we just attended. But the East kept their tradition alive while we, for a time, have put ours away in a closet. We are trying to bring it out into the light again, and I’m sure the East won’t mind if we take some inspiration from them.”

Read more >>

"The Lie of Integralism"

A very good, thought-provoking post by Boniface, "The Lie of Integralism" (Unam Sanctam, December 5, 2013):

Those orthodox Catholics who continue to insist that Vatican II ushered in a new springtime of rich fruits for the Church have a difficult time when it comes to dealing with the pre-Vatican II Church of the early twentieth century. On the one hand, these orthodox Catholics who insist on uniformity and continuity cannot simply reject out of hand everything that came before Vatican II as the liberal-dissenting-progressives do; on the other hand, in order to maintain the proposition that Vatican II was necessary and has borne good fruit, they must find some sort of flaw or fault or deficiency with the pre-Conciliar Church that would justify the Council and its subsequent reforms. Thus, in an attempt to establish this via media, these Catholics have invented the dichotomy between a liberal modernism and a reactionary "integralism" on the other, positing that the Church of Christ must steer a "middle course" between these two extremes.

The Weigelian Dichotomy

A prime example of this tendency is Mr. George Weigel, who has consistently been trumpeting the rise of what he calls "evangelical Catholicism", which he places as a middle road between liberal progressivism and "restorationist" integralism. Never mind that all authentic Catholicism has always been evangelical! Weigel, taking the distinction between binding and customary traditions much too far, proposes that "What can be changed in the Church must be changed" and sees only a small core of fundamental teachings, aspects which he considers part of the Church's "constitution", which should not be changed. The rest is up for grabs. [1] He mocks the pre-Vatican II doctrinal conservatism of such prelates as Cardinal Ottaviani, whom he uncharitably compares to Obama HHS Director Kathleen Sebelius [2]. He scoffs at the idea that traditional Catholicism could have anything to offer the modern world, saying that "The challenge also won’t be met by Catholic traditionalists retreating into auto-constructed catacombs." [3]

Central to Weigel's thought is the presumption that Catholicism consists of two fundamental parts: a central core of eternal, non-changeable elements, which Weigel calls the Church's "constitution", and an outer core of practices, theories and cultural trappings which are time-bound and subject to change. Weigel creates a dichotomy between a liberal progressivism that seeks to change the Church's fundamental 'constitution' and a "neo-triumphalist restorationism", which insists on strictly maintaining the outer core of the Church's cultural trappings. Progessivism thus denies authority where it exists, while "restorationism" creates authority where it does not exist. The true Catholic, the "evangelical Catholic", must walk the via media between these two extremes.

We, of course, do not deny that the Church is a composite of binding and non-binding traditions and teachings; there is a hierarchy of truth, and not all teachings and practices are of the same authority. But what we do deny is that the central and the ephemeral, the necessary and the disposable, can be sorted out so neatly and with such ease. In fact, the whole tragedy of the post-Conciliar period was a vast underestimation of the degrees to which these 'secondary' or ephemeral aspects of Catholicism (music, architecture, etc.) were actually deeply bound up with substance of the faith itself. Weigel, who states boldly that "What can be changed in the Church must be changed", believes that what is central and what is secondary are so easily distinguished that one can partition them up with a fair degree of confidence. The difference between "Big T" and "Small T" tradition is not just a distinction but a chasm, and the "Small T" tradition can be discarded at will.

What Weigel and the others of his kind have forgotten is that the Church is fundamentally understood as a Body, and in a Body, there is nothing extrinsic. Sure, there are members of more or less centrality. A man can still live with no fingers, but he cannot live with no head. Yet, if we were to propose chopping all a man's fingers off on the premise that they were "not necessary" for his survival, would we not be foolish to expect the fingerless man to do the same things he could before? And when we found, to our consternation, that the fingerless man could not write, play music, or do many of the things he could before we chopped his members off, would we not be even more foolish to suggest the remedy was to further dismember him by chopping off his feet, ears, nose, and anything else not strictly "necessary" on the premise that what can be discarded in the Body ought to be? Yet this is precisely the folly Weigel and those who fail to understand the Church as a Body find themselves in.

Read more >>

[Hat tip to L.S.]

Chesterton's poem on St. Francis Xavier

Yesterday, of course, was the feast day of St. Francis Xavier, who was the greatest missionary produced by the Church since St. Paul. In fact, he has been called the second St. Paul.

Like my correspondent I keep on retainer, I did not know about G. K. Chesterton's poem, "St. Francis Xavier," or the details surrounding it; but thought you might enjoy this:

I did not know that GK Chesterton's early school days poem on the Saint won a prize and sort of shoved him over the line into a lifetime of wordsmithing.

Sort of Pascalian, and not bad as far a school boys and poetry go.

... This then we say: let all things further rest
And this brave life, with many thousands more,
Be gathered up in the Eternal's breast
In that dim past his Love is bending o'er:
Healing all shattered hopes and failure sore:
Since he had bravely looked on death and pain
For what he chose to worship and adore,
Cast boldly down his life for loss or gain
In the eternal lottery: not to be in vain.

[Hat tip to JM]