And miracles of miracles! Blogspot seems to have fixed how photos are posted! They now appear in the proper order in which I inputted them! In the past, I would input fotos in the order I wanted them and then when I went to publish the post, the photos were all out of order. Praise be Jesus Christ for this fix!
This photo was taken after Sunday’s Traditional Latin Mass at Sacred Heart Church in Savannah for the 9th Sunday after Pentecost. On the left is Fr. Kevin O’Keefe, pastor of Sacred Heart and on the right, is Abbe Michael Dirksen, a seminarian in his last year of studies for the priesthood. He is a member of Institute of Christ the King, Sovereign Priest which specializes in the traditional Latin Liturgies of the Church. The youngest of the three, who is in the center, is Fr. Allan J. McDonald.
So call me the Catholic “n” word. I am a pre-Vatican II Catholic as I was born into the pre-Vatican II Church in January of 1954 when I was baptized in Naples, Italy. I made my First Confession and Holy Communion in the pre-Vatican II Church in Augusta, Georgia in 1961 and I was Confirmed there when I was in the 4th grade in 1962.
Yes, you read that correctly! I was completely initiated into the Pre-Vatican II Church through Baptism, Confirmation and Holy Eucharist.
BUT HERE IS THE POINT OF MY PRE-VATICAN II IDENTITY
The other night I spoke on the phone to a young Catholic in his early 20’s. He drives to Jacksonville, Florida from the Savannah area to attend the SSPX Sunday Mass there because he can’t stand any Novus Ordo Mass.
He asked me what I thought about that and I told him my mind as a pre-Vatican II Catholic.
I said I would never step foot into that Church when there are Catholic Masses within my parish boundaries that I can attend, Masses that are valid, regardless of how well or how poorly these are celebrated. If it is valid, I will attend only those Masses that are under the jurisdiction of the local bishop in union with the pope.
I would only attend an SSPX Mass if there were no choices under the jurisdiction of the local bishop in union with the pope.
Being Catholic means being in full communion with the Supreme Pontiff and the local bishop of the area in where I am geographically.
When I was a child in my pre-Vatican II Church, I told my dad that I had looked into the Episcopal Church down the road from our Catholic parish and where we lived. I told him it looked like our parish church, with the six tall candlesticks on the altar and a crucifix over the altar.
He was livid. He said to me that I should not even have looked inside that church through its glass doors, similar to the doors of my parish church.
And thus you see where I am coming from as a pre-Vatican II Catholic. I would never go to a “valid” but “illicit” Mass that is not under the full communion of the Catholic Church and her pope and bishops.
Enough said!
With a population around 300 million people, many are asking can't we don't better and with a better slate of candidates?
But who wants to run? Only those extroverted enough to cater to the big bucks donors they need to run a campaign. Money speaks, not mom and pop from bread and butter America, but special interest groups that have mega bucks. These monied groups have enough clout to overrule a primary process not to mention a fair and free election!
Wouldn't it better to allot certain bucks from the government for legitimate candidates to run for office during the primary and then the lead up to the actual election so that there isn't reliance on special interest groups and their ability to buy political candidates?
Let me speak of President Biden first. He is the Democrat presidential candidate as determined by the primary season and more than likely, if he doesn't give into those trying to pressure him to get out of the race, he will be confirmed as the Democrat presidential candidate at the Democrat's National Convention in August.
But therein lies the corruption. Leading Democrats and they money-backed supporters are trying to pressure the sitting President to get out of the race. Why? Because polls say he can't win. It isn't because he has dementia and maybe other health issues related to age, it is because the big money backers are pulling their money and polls show he can't win, this late in the game.
It's as though we are experiencing a coup in real time in order to thwart the electors, meaning the country and the electoral college from determining who will be the next president. It is clearly election interference calling into question our election process.
And now former President Trump. Say what you want about him, he is where he is because of the primary process, and if President Biden prevents a "coup" against him, Trump may well win the presidential election fair and square.
But look at how impeachment was weaponized against Trump during his first term to get him out of an office he won fair and square, a political coup with the cover of the constitution. It didn't work.
Or look at the weaponization of the legal system to convict Trump and put him into prison or manipulate voters to vote for someone else. That is a legal coup!
Big money and political elitists don't trust our election process, neither the actual voters or the electoral process.
Whether you are a Biden supporter or Trump supporter, all of this must be of concern for us as Americans.
Now for the Catholic prospective on the two main candidates we have for the presidency: both are loved by God and both are showered with God's love. For Trump, who has no real religious affiliation or communal worship, Catholics believe that Our Lady of Fatima could have guided the bullet or the head of President Trump to avoid a gunshot leading to his death. Why would God do this or allow our Blessed Mother to do it? Because God is Missionary and an Evangelist. His grace His freely given to the deserving and undeserving, to all people, regardless of their religion or lack thereof.
The same is for President Biden. Maybe God can bring good out of what he is experiencing by God's grace and our Blessed Mother's assistance. Maybe President Biden will repent of his rabid pro-choice politics that has enabled the murder of so many more babies than perhaps would have not take place if Biden were a witness to his Catholic Faith, which he practices by going to Mass each weekend.
And of course, we know as Catholics, that when much is given to us, in terms of the Catholic Faith we say we practice, much is expected and culpability for failing in the practice of our faith is greater than for those who are not Catholic. Just saying.
I was thrilled to see that at the Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis, that the TLM was allowed to be celebrated in a large church that was too small to accommodate all the young Catholic who wanted to attend. There was an overflow outside the Church with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass live-streamed to those outside.
The key words are that the Mass was overflowing with young people. For the pope and the Vatican disasteries to suppress something that is attracting a certain kind of young person looking to the Church and Jesus for direction and security in their lives within the context of their generation of Catholics leaving the Church for something else or nothing, it is breath taking and so opposed to the missionary and evangelizing nature of the Church.
The pope and the Vatican must stop it and stop it now!
My recommendation is to return to Summorum Pontificum but emphasize the local bishop’s role in protecting the full communion of the Church within his diocese although there will be liturgical diversity. But make sure bishops in the Church are as zealous at supervising errant celebrations of the Novus Ordo that verges on schism as they are at micro managing the TLM. Is that too much to ask?
Scheduled to be released November 1, the movie follows the fictional Cardinal Lawrence (played by Ralph Fiennes) as he arranges the election of a new pope after the mysterious death of the pervious one, who kept a dark secret. In theaters only…
What kind of spirituality and devotion would you call it?
We all know that there are major problems with the Novus Ordo Mass, so much so, it needs a thorough reform by going back to what Sacrosanctum Concilium promulgated concerning the “renewal” of the Tridentine Mass, a conservative renewal, that was meant to enhance actual/active participation and to make the highest forms of the Tridentine Mass a bit more simple, nobly simple and to enhance the Liturgy of the Word.
Yet the reform the Tridentine Mass received completely changed its ethos from experiencing the Risen Lord through Word and Sacrament in a communal, mystical way to focusing in on how people participate in the Mass through the use of their voice, to who does what to make the laity’s role as important as the priest’s role. Thus the focus changed to people things not divine things, changing reverence and devotion to banal reactions and mechanical ways in which the Word is proclaimed, how the Eucharistic Prayer is proclaimed, how Catholics are to receive Holy Communion changed from kneeling and receiving on the tongue to standing and processing and receiving on the hand.
And receiving from a priest was not important but rather from anyone who is chosen regardless of faith and morals as it concerns Catholic teaching.
The same is true of the synod as communicated by its leaders. The focus is on sociology and human inclusion in ministerial roles and administration and not God. It is focused on inclusivity without demands or conversion. It focuses in on women and expanding their roles. God is a sideshow!
99% of Catholics who practice their faith by going to Mass each Sunday don’t care about those things. They want to experience Christ and his grace to convert them to Him especially at Mass and through the leadership of the Magisterium of the Church and their local bishops and priests and deacons.
The Tridentine Mass helped to accomplish this better as did the pre-Vatican II Church. That did not need to be changed to what we are now experience. the horizontal, sociological vision of the Church as a human institution that can be manipulated by a few progressive elitists.
My now deceased bishop, who ordained me in 1980, use to say to me that we are getting Vatican II wrong. We are churchyfying” the laity and laicizing the clergy. The laity who once focused their lives on their family, work and recreation and being seen as a good Catholic in the secular sphere, now think they were not good Catholics because they weren’t lectors, Communion Ministers, choir members and ushers. They feel they aren’t good Catholics if they aren’t on Church committees, organizing programs and working in a soup kitchen and politically involved in promoting peace and justice. Bishop Lessard lamented all of that and wanted Vatican II implemented properly and in continuity with what preceded it. He wanted true spiritual renewal and lamented that the spirit of Vatican II had veered off course highjacked by progressive theologians and liturgists including bishops, priests and religious.
God help us!
Conspiracy theories continue to abound about that assassination. Who knows where the truth is.
On Saturday, July 13, the anniversary of the Third Secret of Fatima revealed on July 13, 1917, I witnessed on live TV the assassination attempt on the Former President Donald Trump. As soon as I saw and heard what was happening, I knew Trump had been shot, and his reaction with his face and hand coming up to his ear as though stung by a bee, and that he dropped on his own to protect himself that he had been shot. And it was clear from the first sounds that it was gunshots and not firecrackers.
The cover-up of President Biden’s mental and physical issues due to age which can no longer be covered up has led many democrats to want the change their presidential candidate, President Biden, to someone else because they see an already close election with President Trump becoming more in favor of the former President Trump. All of this is against the will of President Biden.
These Democrats, like Trump as done toward them, have ratcheted up the rhetoric about Trump as a threat to democracy because of his so-called authoritarian personality, that he will be a dictator and that he will take democracy out of America. All of these things are political talking points.
We also know that the other false narratives put forward by many about the Russian collusion and how the judicial system has been weaponized against a former president, so much so the Supreme Court recently ruled in the former President’s favor calling into question the New York verdict that made him a convicted felon.
Apart from the democratic process of free-elections and the political version of the Catholic term Sensus Fidelium, there seems to be a move by some to thwart free-elections in one way or another, to include assassination by a weaponized radical who may or may not be mentally imbalanced.
I think we can also say that a similar movement to remove President Biden as the Democrats’ candidate for the presidential election and take it away from the people to decide in November.
Is there a deep state at work and since President Trump’s election in 2016? I think that’s a fair question to ask, no matter the political affiliation anyone has.
God bless America!
Listen, we are all programmed to die no matter how healthy we are or how healthy we live. The same is true of our planet. I hate to inform you, but it will eventually go up in a blaze of fire at its conclusion. We might be able to stall it for a while, but eventually, like all created things that are living, it will die.
Thus the Church, rather than buying in to differing political and scientific positions about climate change, should just acknowledge that we should be good stewards of the earth and our bodies but ultimately it is all coming to a conclusion and our only salvation, here and in the afterlife, is in Jesus Christ and the Church He founded. What is so difficult about that?
And now sand dust from the Saharas is interfering with man made Hurricanes that we are suppose to have because of man made climate change. Thus, we have to do something about Saharan sand dust that has to be man made. Maybe we can make a huge dust filter before it comes to us to interfere with our man made hurricanes?
Press this title for the full article in the Island Packet this morning:
On top of that, Sacred Heart Church in Augusta, now closed and a cultural center, was a neo-gothic building, big and scary to me. It gave me the creeps as a child, because it looked like, to me, something out of a horror movie. I don’t feel that today, except for lingering impressions from childhood, pdst?
This is just a bit too ornate, too busy and too red for me. If I were assigned there, I wouldn’t do anything to redo it except move the altar railing lower to the first step of the nave leading to the altar. That would make it easier for us elderly to use it and not break out necks coming down from it, and make the sanctuary look bigger.
Your can read the full article:
I hate that the 1960’s and ‘70’s iconoclasm of great altars and art took place in our Catholic Churches and what replaced it was kitsch or stuff out of liturgical catalogues and mass marketed.
One or two parishes in my diocese have removed stained glass windows, created by artists and paid for by patrons, as well as modern liturgical furnishings, again considered actual art, commissioned by the parish and paid for by patrons, in order to use something else that wasn’t considered modern. I think that is unfortunate and there should be restrictions placed upon pastors or parishes when it comes to the removal of art. Is it art? Does it have historical merit? Is offense given to patrons who sponsored and paid for the art?
The Knights of Columbus in Washington, DC are going to place curtains over Fr. Rupnik’s art and may well plaster over the art eventually. While I don’t like how Fr. Rupnik depicts people (saints or the Lord) in his art, it isn’t horrible. These are mosaics and while Fr. Rupnik designed the look, I presume, others put the mosaics together into the art these are. The colors are brilliant. The main thing I don’t like is the shape of faces, the darkened eyes; the darkened eyes more unbecoming than the long faces. But, it’s art.
So I am going out on a limb and will now go on record as saying Fr. Rupnik’s art should not be removed from Catholics churches and shrines, but certainly, no one should commission new artwork from him in the Catholic Church.
We know clergy, bishops, priests and deacons, have sexually abused minors and vulnerable adults. Do we put curtains over all clergy because victims of some priests are offended by seeing even innocent priests? Art is innocent even though the artist might be guilty.
As it concerns Catholic clergy, perhaps to appease victims of certain priests, all clergy should face ad orientem during liturgies. That might be a good compromise.
HERE IS THE PILLAR’S ARTICLE ON THE KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS PLAN TO REMOVE RUPNICK’S ART:
There are not clear, specific rubrics about how candles should be placed on altars in the Novus Ordo. Compare that to the 1962 Roman Missal which is very specific about the basics and the position of the candles.
We went from magnificent candlesticks, works of art really, to two “rinky-dink” candles placed on the free-standing altar, or the older altar candles placed on the floor around the altar in a variety of ways.
Usually, the tall candlesticks of pre-Vatican II times are placed and either side of the altar hemming it in, as though the altar is a coffin.
But this takes the cake for “do as you please” depending on who is responsible for the “atmosphere” of the altar and placement of candles, flowers and other things. Yes, someone thinks hiding the altar with flowers and now candlesticks is a good idea. Who comes up with these ideas and why? Well the why is that there are no specific is about the placement of the candles in the modern missal and thus you get this:
Even with this extreme use of candles, the altar is framed and highlighted but not hidden with candles directly in front of its facade:
This is the built-in clericalism of the Modern Mass, too many options and the priest is the one making the choice without informing anyone why he has chosen this, that or the other.
The only remedy is to reduce the options and make some things mandatory. As it concerns blessings, the reformed Roman Missal of 2003 includes a “Prayer over the People, for every Mass, Sunday or weekday, during the Season of Lent. It is borrowed from the TLM Missal. Unfortunately, it is optional. Guess who makes the choice to use or not use it?
One of the reasons so many priests choose the shortest Eucharistic Prayer, number 2, is that they like brevity. However, the General Intercessions, which are in fact, specific and tell God what He must do and babel on like pagans do in prayer, often with a political or ideological twists and turns, makes the intercessions of the Roman Canon redundant.
If the Roman Canon is prayed, there is no reason for the useless General Intercessions, with all its political and ideological babbling on like pagans praying.
But then, you have the three fold blessing option which are petitions too. We don’t need more petitions, but I would say a prayer over the people during Lent, Easter, Advent and the Christmas Seasons would be a good idea and not optional.
Get rid of the three fold blessings.
Yes the reform of the reform in continuity with the TLM is desperately needed. Will it happen? Only God knows.
You can read the Praytell article here:
NEIL XAVIER O’DONOGHUE — In light of the controversy provoked by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith’s Declaration Fiducia Supplicans On the Pastoral Meaning of Blessings, I don’t think anyone can deny that the theology of blessings needs more elaboration. In this sense I would like to point out a particular aspect of…
On Tuesday, July 9, 2024, the text of the Instrumentum Laboris was published for the Second Session of the XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops. Pope Francis, in his book-interview on Benedict XVI, had defined the Synod as its greatest priority at the moment. It must be highlighted how this synodal process is proving to be a real failure. In parishes, the only place where faith is truly lived with simplicity and without the ambitions of the lay professors, the synod is not spoken at all. Simple people have other concerns. The clergy are largely disinterested at this event because they are very clear about the purpose of all this circus which, moreover, makes the Vatican City State lose tens of thousands of euros. The aim is to give a voice to people who have a poisoned tooth against the Church.
Money-byte: I am concerned that a skewed impression of lovers of the Latin Mass has taken hold due to a few extremists on the internet. As this petition, and previous petitions, demonstrate, the Latin Mass has a curiously inclusive appeal. Most who attend the Latin Mass also attend the Novus Ordo (known colloquially as the Mass of Vatican II). They know that to be Catholic means we must remain inside the barque of Peter, however stormy the seas. They plead not against the new Mass but for the form they love, that feeds and inspires them — indeed, to the point that they constitute a visible proportion of those who go on to become creators of new art and beauty in which the world shares and celebrates. This is why the Latin Mass has attracted the support of nonbelievers who understand its crucial role in the creation of Western civilization.
Holy Family Church, parish to gators who are greeters, caters primarily to the tourist population on the Island, as we residents call it. There is a strong parish community too but the tourists out number the parishioners quite significantly during the summer.
Novus Ordo parishes throughout the country have done a great job with tourists that come to the Island and not only make sure they attend Sunday Mass, but many also attend Holy Family’s daily Mass.
There are a significant number of young tourists at Sunday and daily Mass, especially college age young people.
What I have noticed is that a great number of the late teen and early 20’s Catholic tourists normally kneel to receive Holy Communion. That tells me that they are doing so in their Novus Ordo parishes. They also take advantage of going to Confession during the weekdays as well, when they are here.
Renewal of the Novus Ordo Mass in continuity with the TLM is happening still and after TC. This is great news and the Catholics, especially the young ones, formed by the so-called “reform of the reform” parishes are producing wonderful, zealous and strong Catholics.
My prayer is that bishops will be as zealous at implementing Pope Francis’ document on the liturgy which came out after TC as they are in rigorously implementing TC! This is one thing that the pope wrote in his liturgy document DESIDERIO DESIDERAVI which you can read HERE:
23. Let us be clear here: every aspect of the celebration must be carefully tended to (space, time, gestures, words, objects, vestments, song, music…) and every rubric must be observed. Such attention would be enough to prevent robbing from the assembly what is owed to it; namely, the paschal mystery celebrated according to the ritual that the Church sets down. But even if the quality and the proper action of the celebration were guaranteed, that would not be enough to make our participation full.
54. If it is true that the ars celebrandi is required of the entire assembly that celebrates, it is likewise true that ordained ministers must have a very particular concern for it. In visiting Christian communities, I have noticed that their way of living the liturgical celebration is conditioned — for better or, unfortunately, for worse — by the way in which their pastor presides in the assembly. We could say that there are different “models” of presiding. Here is a possible list of approaches, which even though opposed to each other, characterize a way of presiding that is certainly inadequate: rigid austerity or an exasperating creativity, a spiritualizing mysticism or a practical functionalism, a rushed briskness or an overemphasized slowness, a sloppy carelessness or an excessive finickiness, a superabundant friendliness or priestly impassibility. Granted the wide range of these examples, I think that the inadequacy of these models of presiding have a common root: a heightened personalism of the celebrating style which at times expresses a poorly concealed mania to be the centre of attention. Often this becomes more evident when our celebrations are transmitted over the air or online, something not always opportune and that needs further reflection. Be sure you understand me: these are not the most widespread behaviours, but still, not infrequently assemblies suffer from being thus abused.
The liturgical progressives went ballistic when Pope Benedict issued his now defunct Summorum Pontificum, the logical progression of Pope Benedict's papal magisterium of renewal within continuity of the past.
I never thought, during the papacy of Pope Benedict, that orthodox Catholics, either those completely satisfied with the modern Mass or those who prefer the TLM, would ever act as despicably against a pope as the modernists did to Pope Benedict.
And therein lies the animus Pope Francis has toward those who desire orthodoxy, especially those who want the TLM exclusively. We have unhinged prelates, priests and laity not only disrespecting the current pope but the papacy itself. They are, of course, Neo-Protestants. And one of the most unhinged is Archbishop Vigano, now justly excommunicated, but as a medicine to lead him to repentance and full communion with the Church once again.
Let me give some advice to the orthodox, especially those who will not attend a Novus Ordo Mass, but drive hours to a TLM, even one where the priest is only partially in full communion with the Church:
Back in the day when I was a pastor, I experimented regularly with celebrating the Novus Ordo Mass in Latin, with a schola chanting the propers and other parts of the Mass. The entire Mass was ad orientem, except for the Liturgy of the Word, which, apart from using the Gradual, was the Liturgy of the Word for the day offered as it is in all Novus Ordo Masses.
This Novus Ordo Mass was choreographed as the TLM is.
Holy Communion was distributed at an altar railing with kneeling for those who desire it but one could stand as well.
I also celebrated the Novus Ordo in this "traditional" way but entirely in the vernacular, English in our case.
When Saint Anne's in Richmond Hill, Georgia was no longer allowed to celebrate the TLM each Tuesday at 5 PM, I celebrated the NO in the traditional way and in Latin.
I was shocked, shocked I say, but not really, that the more hard-shelled TLM lovers refused to attend the Tuesday Mass celebrated as closely as possible as a TLM but being faithful to the Latin Novus Ordo Roman Missal.
These hard-shell TLM lovers, a minority in my view, but too very vocal, have shot all TLM lovers in the foot as well as themselves. It shows a grotesque lack of spiritual and moral and Roman Catholic maturity.
Maybe we can recover what Pope Benedict XVI tried to accomplish and the trajectory for Church renewal he established during his papacy with the next pope. I don't know; I'm not clairvoyant. But Pope Benedict's vision for Renewal in Continuity is the only way to go and liturgically the way to go is a new Roman Missal that is a combination of both the NO and the TLM, similar to the hybrid Missal briefly used around 1964 to about 1967.
This holy alligator wanted to go to Mass this July 5th at the 8 am Mass. He, or she, or whatever pronoun it, they, use, wanted to use the same entrance I use to get into Holy Family Church on Hilton Head Island. We Catholic islanders are quite inclusive of those who wish to feel included at Mass. We say, come as you are.
