Bishop James Conley of Lincoln, like me, was able to contemplate the First Sunday in Lent, 1,000 year tradition of the 15 minute Gregorian Chanted Tractus. (Poor Pope Leo XIV, though, didn’t get to contemplate it at his Bugnini Folk Mass, with kitschy Italian guitar plucking so-called liturgical music.)
Bishops galore, are once again regaining their manhood and celebrating public TLMs. God is Good!
The first photo is of some John Paul II High School students from Saint Gregory Church in Bluffton, SC, who attended the TLM for the very first time. They were absolutely blown away.
And the second photo is of a young man who had grown up in a large non-denominational church in Savannah, who, by experiencing the TLM, is now preparing to become a Roman Catholic.
Truly the TLM is a powerful tool in the Church’s really new evangelization! Other pictures of Sunday’s TLM with yours truly follow:
However, poor old Pope Leo was not as fortunate as I was as I was able to celebrate the TLM with a grand, magnificent schola who chanted the Mass in a most marvelous way to include the Ancient Tract that has been heard and chanted for over 1,000 years!
But poor old Pope Leo had to put up with kitschy Italian folk music with guitar in a magnificent church edifice built not for that musical crap but for Gregorian Chant.
And poor old Pope Leo did not get to hear the long Tract from the Roman Gradual that is even present in the revised, modern Roman Gradual but 99.9% of practicing Catholics who attend the Bugnini Mass have never, ever, heard! What a scandal!
To add insult to injury to our poor old Pope Leo, or salt to the wound, the Pope’s Lenten retreat Master reminded the pope later in the evening, on the very same day, the following:
A picture is worth a thousand words:
Saint Katherine Drexel Church, Buffalo, New York
Pope Leo’s homily at Mass from the Parish of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (Castro Pretorio)
Dear brothers and sisters,
A few days ago, with the rite of Ash Wednesday, we began our Lenten journey. Lent is an intense liturgical season, offering us the opportunity to rediscover the richness of our Baptism, to live as fully renewed creatures thanks to the Incarnation, death, and Resurrection of Jesus.
The First Reading and the Gospel we have just heard, in dialogue, help us rediscover the gift of Baptism as a grace that embraces our freedom. The Genesis narrative brings us back to our condition as creatures, tested not so much by a prohibition, as is often believed, as by a possibility: the possibility of a relationship. Human beings are thus free to recognize and embrace the otherness of the Creator, who recognizes and embraces the otherness of creatures. To prevent this possibility, the serpent insinuates the presumption that he can erase all differences between creatures and the Creator, seducing man and woman with the illusion of becoming like God. Satan pushes them to possess something that—so he says—God wishes to deny them, thus perpetually keeping them in a state of inferiority. This fresco from Genesis is an unsurpassed masterpiece that represents the drama of freedom.
The Gospel seems to answer the age-old dilemma: can I realize my life fully by saying "yes" to God? Or, to be free and happy, must I free myself from Him?
The scene of Christ's temptations ultimately addresses this dramatic question. It leads us to discover the true humanity of Jesus who, as the conciliar Constitution Gaudium et Spes teaches, reveals man to himself: "In the mystery of the Incarnate Word, the mystery of man truly becomes clear" (GS, 22). Indeed, we see the Son of God who, opposing the wiles of the ancient Adversary, shows us the new man, the free man, the epiphany of freedom that comes to fruition by saying "yes" to God.
This new humanity is born from the baptismal font. And so—especially in this Lenten season—we are called to rediscover the grace of Baptism, as the source of life that dwells within us and dynamically accompanies us with the utmost respect for our freedom.
First of all, the Sacrament itself is dynamic, because what it offers is not limited to the space and time of the rite, but is a grace that constantly accompanies our entire life, sustaining our following of Christ. But Baptism is also dynamic because it constantly sets us on a new journey, since grace is an interior voice that urges us to conform to Jesus, liberating our freedom so that it may find fulfillment in the love of God and neighbor.
We thus understand the relational nature of Baptism, which calls us to live in friendship with Jesus and, thus, to enter into his communion with the Father. This grace-filled relationship also enables us to experience authentic closeness with others, a freedom that—unlike what the devil proposes to Jesus—is not a pursuit of one's own power, but a self-giving love that makes us all brothers and sisters. Indeed, Saint Paul states: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal 3:28).
Brothers and sisters, Pope Leo XIII asked Saint John Bosco to build the church where we stand today. He had understood the centrality of this place, next to Termini Station and at a unique crossroads of the city, destined to become even more important over time.
For this reason, dear friends, in meeting you today I see in you a special expression of proximity, of closeness to the challenges of this area. Indeed, there are many young university students, commuters who come and go for work, immigrants seeking employment, young refugees who have found in the building next door, thanks to the Salesians' initiative, the opportunity to meet Italian peers and carry out integration projects; and then there are our brothers and sisters who are homeless and find welcome in the Caritas spaces on Via Marsala. In just a few meters, one can touch the contradictions of this time: the carefree attitude of those who leave and arrive with all the comforts and those who have no roof over their heads; the many potentials for good and the rampant violence; the desire to work honestly and the illicit trade in drugs and prostitution.
Your parish is called to address these realities, to be a leaven of the Gospel in the local community, to be a sign of closeness and charity. I thank the Salesians for the tireless work they carry out every day, and I encourage everyone to continue to be a small flame of light and hope right here.
May Mary Help of Christians always support us on our journey, making us strong in times of temptation and trial, to fully experience the freedom and brotherhood of God's children.
Cardinal Camillo Ruini thinks Benedict XVI’s resignation was a mistake. Ruini also found himself flummoxed by the Francis pontificate and unsure whether the reign of the late Argentinian pontiff will prove to have done more harm or good.
“I found myself in difficulty with Pope Francis,” Ruini said in response to a question asking whether the late pontiff had disappointed him. “The change was too great and sudden,” Ruini said.
“More than disappointed,” Ruini said he was “surprised.”
Asked for his measure of the Francis pontificate, whether it did “more good or more harm to the Church,” Ruini said his would be “a complex assessment, with very positive aspects and others much less so.”
“It’s too early to judge which of them prevail,” he said.
He acknowledged things red hats and curial officers – along with the rank and file in the Church’s central governing apparatus and bishops around the world have whispered privately for years: that Benedict’s resignation was a mistake and Francis’s reign was not easy for the Church.
MY COMMENTS: I am glad that Cardinal Ruini confirms my own feelings about Benedict and Francis. I too felt that Pope Benedict XVI made a mistake in resigning and should have persevered in his papacy. Would he have lasted ten more years? I doubt it but things would have worked out differently for the Church.
But, the Holy Spirit always repairs mistakes in the Church but not on our timeline.
I feel the same way as Cardinal Ruini feels about Pope Francis’ papacy. I think it was a disaster and now I know I am not alone and that many felt it was a disaster, including Cardinal Pell.
But of course there were good things but the bad seem to overwhelm me because some of the bad things were so mean-spirited:
1. How he berated those who desired the way the Church was going under Pope Benedict—renewal in continuity, respect for Tradition and traditions. Those who like liturgical and clerical refinery. The worst thing he did was to call into question their mental health and sincerity—a horrible judgment for someone who others touted as non-judgmental. In reality Pope Francis was the most judgmental pope ever and mean in his judgements.
2. Canceling, for the most part, the papacies of St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI especially the liturgical magisterium of Pope Benedict XVI and doing so while His Holiness was the Emeritus Pope, still living and not even giving Pope Benedict a courtesy call concerning Traditionis Custodis.
3. Beginning processes that might have led to heterodox and heretical changes in Doctrine, Morals and the Faith of the Church. Francis’ synodal way was laying the foundation for this and Fiducia Supplicans is a virus, too, to regularize as virtue sexual sins of whatever degree and type. Both Francis’ synodal way and FS were processes to lead to the collapse of the doctrines of the Sacraments along with their anthropology and substitute an inversion of these.
4. Chipping away at the foundation of the Church as being the True Church and necessary for salvation and that Christ and His Church are the exclusive ways of salvation. It seem to me , in my most humble opinion, that Pope Francis was more interested in a Church that makes this world a utopian experience where all are embraced and nothing is sinful but exclusion. Heaven and hell as a just reward were relegated to obscurity.
What is good about Pope Francis papacy? He showed two or more new generations of Catholics, who have no living memory of Vatican II and its aftermath in the 1960’s well into the 80’s, what that period was like, with its confusion, experiments, ambiguity and that everything about traditional Catholic identities was up for grabs and open to change, even doctrines and morals. These new generations got to see how ugly it was because it was still ugly under Pope Francis’ direction.
Here it is:
Perhaps he meant it as the Book of Jonah meant that cows and other livestock should also repent and put on sackcloth. Of course, this was to add humor to the serious need to repent:
This is what Pope Leo said:
When my then-bishop, also the chair of the USCCB’s Doctrine Committee at the time, Bishop Raymond Lessard, heard me say such an absurd statement, he corrected me and said, people sin and repent, but not institutions and businesses or so-called “structures of sin!”
And you know what, Bishop Lessard was/is right. The KKK can’t repent, but people who belong to it can and then they must repent of having been a part of an organization, organized by people, who promote hatred and discrimination. The organizations of hate groups or groups that promote death and laws opposed to the true God, can’t repent. Can the KKK repent and keep that name? Can the Nazi Political Party, in the Germany of Hitler and now in neo-forms, repent and been seen as good? Can you be a good Nazi if the organization of Nazis repents and changes it name? Repentant people must distance themselves from the affiliations they had that promote hate, death and evil ideologies. They must work at eradicating organizations, businesses and structures that people join in order to promote those institutions.
Can the American Democrat party repent of its pro-death, anti-God ideologies? Its rabid pro-abortion advocacy and promotion of laws that lead to the genocide of innocent children? Laws that promote active euthanasia and assisted suicide? Advocates for the sexual mutilation of children and teenagers and promotes sinister LGBTQ++ ideologies?
Can a Catholic belong to the Democrat Party and be a Catholic in good standing? If they can be excommunicated for belonging to a schismatic religious sect, let’s say, like, the FSSPX, shouldn’t they also be excommunicated for belonging to the Democrat Party, that promotes the anti-God culture of death, sexual mutilation of children and teenagers and contempt for natural law and all the laws of God and true religion?
There are certain things, too, that we can complain about the Republican Party, but I don’t think there is anything there on parr with what the Democrats promote.
Of course even the Nazis, fascists, KKK and Democrats do/did some good things. But can institutions repent of the evil they do that cannot be masked by the cotton-candy facade of good they think they promote? Only people can repent and in terms of evil, corrupt institutions, those repentant people must distance themselves from the organizations that formed their evil intents. Those institutions must be disbanded by repentant people.
