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I love St. Thomas. He is my companion at Holy Hour each week. I say his words as I fall on my face: My Lord and my God. Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament puts us all very close to St. Thomas, I think, when we affirm our belief in the Real Presence of Christ gazing at him in the monstrance. It looks like foolishness to the world, but for me, it’s everything. Adoration, like St. Thomas, is the fruit of the Passion and Death of Christ.

What will be interesting (read: infuriating, though I pray not), is to see how the British Catholic hierarchy reacts. Let’s pray they don’t stonewall and impede.

You seem to display a dismissive attitude toward prayer. I hope I am not misreading you when you say that we must pray but also seek Truth. Are you saying that prayer and Truth are exclusive? How so when at its heart, prayer is participation in the interior life of the Author of Truth.

Yes, the Mass is perfect prayer because of its self-sacrificial nature in the Body and Blood of Christ, but can only be so if people are predisposed to its sanctifying nature.

I'm not lecturing you about prayer, only reminding you that that is our true weapon. Invoking the saints to pray with us is more efficacious than going about in bitterness. Only in humility and sanctity will this Church be reformed from within. The condition upon which the Holy Spirit can work with amazing results is for the faithful to have humble hearts, not bitter hearts.

There are a few weeks left in this Year for Priests and so the exhortation to pray for our priests is most needful. They are our alter Christus. They need prayers for their sanctification. My spiritual director tells me all the time that when the faithful are mired in anger and bitterness toward a priest or bishop and refuse to pray for them the enemy rejoices. There is nothing that he likes more than a weak priest.

You can focus on the betrayal, or you can unite your suffering with that of Christ's for the sanctification of his holy priests. Which do you think has more salvific power?

Until Catholic pew-sitters recognize that the American Church has been high-jacked by socialists(and worse), the corruption will just grow and grow.

All the more are we called to pray, no? If the faithful aren't praying, then, yes, corruption grows. With prayer, room for the Holy Spirit to act grows. Without prayer and acquiescence to despair or cynicism, then the enemy wins.

Archbishop Chaput lost all credibility when he defended CCHD last fall.

Does it follow then that we should not pray for priests?

Furthermore, does it follow that just because he has lost credibility in your eyes that he should no longer attempt to fulfill the duties of his office to strengthen the brethren?

Last time I checked, he is still an Apostle of the Church, imperfect as he is, yet conformed to Our Lord Jesus Christ by virtue of his ordination and consecration.

i didn’t see a Deputy Director of Style and Outfit Coordinator? or a Deputy Director of Shoe Selection and Dazzle Control?

She needs an Undersecretary to the Deputy Director for Belt Coordination

Here is your nonsense from the Bishop himself in one of the exchanges:

Participation in the celebration of the Eucharistic sacrifice is a source and means of grace even apart from the actual reception of Holy Communion. It has also been long understood that when circumstances prevent one from receiving Holy communion during mass, it is possible to make a spiritual communion that is also a source of grace. Spiritual communion means uniting oneself in prayer with Christ’s sacrifice and worshiping him present in his Body and Blood.

Nevertheless, the current pandemic circumstances do not warrant the non-reception of the Body and Blood of the Lord in favour of a spiritual communion.

Wishing you all the best, I remain,

Sincerely yours in Christ,

+ F. B. Henry Bishop of Calgary.

One thing you need to understand about this story is that many of the TLM faithful were making a "spiritual communion", meaning, attending Mass but not partaking of the physical communion.

The Bishop said that's not good enough. He stated that the severity of this epidemic was not serious enough to eschew physical communion; that the faithful were required to TAKE communion in the hand.

So, in spite of the congregation having come up with a peaceful solution to the non-distribution by tongue, the Bishop said it's not good enough and is forcing people to communion in the hand.

There's more to this story than just non-compliance, or disobedience. There is also the matter of the Bishop thumbing his nose at the CDW which the voice of the Pope in the matters of liturgy. The Pope is the highest legislator in the Church. The Congregation is his right arm. Church liability ranks below this blatant and scandalous action against the office of the Pope.

Because the Vatican has already said that it is not licit to deny communion on the tongue over swine flu fears.

Fly the bankrupt skies of ClunkerAir.

Both the Apostolic Constitution and the norms for implementing it are dated November 4, the feast of St. Charles Borromeo, and are signed by Cardinal William Joseph Levada and Archbishop Luis F. Ladaria S.J., respectively prefect and secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Pope Benedict XVI is the one that signed the Apostolic Consitution.

At the bottom of the A.C.:

"Given in Rome, at St. Peter’s, on November 4, 2009, the Memorial of St. Charles Borromeo.

BENEDICTUS PP XVI"

The accompanying Complementary Norms is the one signed by Card. Levada and Abp. Ladaria.

Here's a radical thought. So what if the language is not understandable? What will happen? We are talking about sacred things. This is Jesus speaking with the Father through the priest.

Why must it be in street language? Maybe, just maybe, if the language were to employ toughie words, we might encounter mystery again. Our minds might be awakened to what is truly happening at Mass.

And that isn't so that so-and-so can now get up into the ambo and do his or her thing. Or to be the first EMHC up to the sanctuary and get to hold the ciborium.

We're talking about our Salvation...our eternal destiny. And perhaps in recovering mysterious words, we'll get our eyes off our navels and allow heaven's momentary lifting of the veil to pierce our eyes and hearts so that we may fall on our faces and worship God as he truly deserves to be loved and adored.

We have had 40 long years of wretched vernacular. Has it made us more reverent? Has it made us day-by-day fall on our faces in adoration of the ineffable gift that is Christ in the Blessed Sacrament? Instead, our belief in the Real Presence has eroded and we have lost what is most important in worship, and that is humility. It is in humility that God fills our souls because we know who we are and Who He is.

So use the hard language. Let God's transcendence push your borders, let him grow you in your understanding of the depth of His Otherness. Then you'll know who you truly are.

Lex orandi, lex credendi.

Here's something radical. Why not actually chant the Propers of the Mass? You know, the Introit, the Gradual and Alleluia, the Offertory Verse and the Communion Verse.

For example, instead of a "gathering song" (gag) have the choir chant the Introit. For this coming Sunday (unfortunate minimalist translation): Listen, Lord, and answer me. Save your servant who trusts in you. I call to you all day long, have mercy on me, O Lord.

The Anglican Use Gradual (which we use in our Novus Ordo Masses): Bow down, O Lord, thine ear to me and hear me: O my God, save Thy servant that trusteth in Thee; have mercy upon me. O Lord, for I have called daily upon Thee.

How many parishes' music directors ever consider the Propers? They're mostly ignored and yet they should be primary in the music of the Mass. They're integral to the structure of each Sunday's Mass. Yet hardly any parish uses this most proper option.

Instead we have the four-hymn sandwich. A hymn, however dignified and stately and beautiful is no match for the actual Proper that belongs to those parts we've been accustomed to hearing and singing a liturgical song.

The structure of the Mass is compromised when all we rely on are the hymns. To recover what is truly Catholic, recover the Propers. Plain and simple. Then you get away from this debate on stylistic choices.

Fr. Columba Kelly has been writing them for years in a hermeneutic of continuity with tradition. They're simply breathtaking and in the vernacular. The Arbogast Complete English Propers has them. And Richard Rice has just complete the Simple Choral Gradual for the whole church year that is accessible for choirs and parishes that are not yet able to do Gregorian chant.

These are free! No longer does your parish have to be slaves to the OCP/GIA monopoly on church music. These people are offering this to the church for free. And the music is gorgeous.

And no, I do not work for the CMAA. Just an ordinary and obscure musician working in the hermeneutic of continuity and for the reform of the reform.

Sancta Cecilia, ora pro nobis.

How many Catholics see things this way?

Not very many as evidenced by almost all Catholics present at Mass going up for Communion every Sunday and hardly anyone at Confession lines.

Announcement via Hartford Courant.

Tabled so that Attorney General could examine the bill's constitutionality. The interesting thing is that the withdrawal was requested by proponents of the bill.

This is also one of the most serious punishments, short of excommunication, that can be imposed on a priest.

IIRC, the lay board was excommunicated by Abp. Burke. Since then, a couple of the members have reconciled with the Church.

Fr. Z made this very important observation:

Catholic theologians and pastors are looking at ways of keeping our voice in the public square. This is a major component of Pope Benedict’s vision for his pontificate. He is trying to revitalize Catholic identity so that within the Church we know who we are and what we believe so that to the outside we have something worth while to say and contribute in the public square.

Kmiec’s article is set against this vision: Catholic teaching matters for Catholics, but it shouldn’t bind Catholics in public discourse.

What Kmiec is really saying (as he proceeds from a false reading of the Holy See’s statement) is that if the Pope said what he said, then once your Catholic faith impedes you from reaching compromises with people who don’t share your religious views, you can no longer meaningfully participate in public life....

Kmiec fogs this distinction and tried to make the Pope look like an extremist. Savvy Catholics, like Kmiec and Pelosi and Kerry and Kennedy and Cuomo and Sebelius and Granholm and Dodd and Biden, etc., must set aside the urgings of extremists and filter out the interpretations of hard-liners in order to save their version of the Church’s message in the public square.

That is his true agenda.

Someone needs to contact the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei.

CNA had a report a couple of weeks ago that a Kmiec ambassadorship would not fly whatsoever.