Ubi Petrus

For anyone who has problems, shall we say, keeping their eyes where they belong (a problem exacerbated no small amount by current “fashion” trends) a word of advice given to me recently may just help.

We all know we’re supposed to see Christ in the people around us. Sometimes though, no matter how hard we try it’s just hard to put Christ’s face on that woman dressed in a getup originally designed for a street corner. We men, we’re human, and sometimes we fail in our highest aspirations – that’s when it’s good to have a backup plan.

With that, let me say simply this: in the face of every woman see the face of Mary. As bad and as screwed up as this world is, we all still have a commonly accepted rule that you don’t mess with another man’s mama. As crude a statement as that may be, the rule is simply effective. If Mary always points us to Christ, her status as the exemplar of chastity reminds us just what it is hiding waiting to be seen. If you can’t see Christ, look for Mary – she’ll lead you the rest of the way.

The latest Catholic Carnival is up, number 183 at Organ-ic Chemist. She’s done a wonderful job organizing all these posts, I’m most impressed. I’ve been meaning to start following the Carnivals closer for a long, long time but just never quite managed to do so. Yet another of my many failings.

Be sure to check it out! And maybe you’ll even notice this insufficiently humble blog is in there for its very first time. May it not be the last.

“Saying you’re Catholic and being pro-abortion is like saying you’re a member of GreenPeace after eating a dinner of Baby Harp Seal stuffed with Whooping Crane eggs.“

Calm down, class, back to work. *chuckle*

From CWN:

In an unprecedented concession, the Vatican has agreed to laicize the incoming president of Paraguay, a former Catholic bishop.

I’m very curious to see if there is any explanation as to how this decision was squared with the Vatican’s previous statement that “ordination to the priesthood of episcopacy is irreversible“. Someone is going to need to explain how that “irreversible” or “impossible” is different than the “impossible” for the ordination of women. Sure, I understand the difference, but I’m not the one that’s going to try to make hay out of it. I really, really hope someone makes that explanation. Soon.

LifeSite has found and published a letter sent from the Vatican to all Bishops with a pre-release copy of Humanae Vitae. Even from a distance of these many years it is a hard letter to read knowing the vast distance between what was asked in this letter and the response it was given in return. If this paragraph doesn’t absolutely eviscerate you:

The Holy Father knows full well the bitterness that this reply may cause many married persons who were expecting a different solution for their difficulties. It is precisely the solicitude for those souls in anguish, and the ardent desire to bring them light and solace, which caused the great delay in giving this reply. Mindful of the grave consequences entailed by a decision of this nature, the Common Father wished to study the entire question for Himself and in detail. For a long time He reflected, with respectful consideration, upon the results of the studies and discussions of the Commission charged with examining the various aspects of the problem; for a long time, He prayed. He consulted numerous wise and learned members of the Episcopate, of the clergy, of the laity; and all of this took months and even years.

this one will:

And now He turns to His Brothers, the Bishops of the Catholic world, asking them to stand beside Him more firmly than ever in this circumstance, and to help Him present this delicate point of the Church’s teaching to the Christian people, to explain and justify its profound reasons. The Pope counts upon the attachment of His Brothers in the Episcopate to the Chair of Peter, upon their love for the Church, upon their concern for the true good of souls.

One can almost feel the pain in Pope Paul VI’s heart as he likely knew that even this cover letter would be ignored. We tend to forget that the word “Pope” comes from the same etymological base as the term “Papa”; in reading words like this just how much of a Papa was Papa Montini, and indeed is every Pope, truly comes to light. We have much to do.

Work in me, O Lord
that I may work for thee.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to assist at only my second Extraordinary Form Mass, again at St. Patrick’s in Nashua, NH. (You can read about my first time here.) This time I took my son with me so it was just the two of us. As compared to the first Mass this one was sparsely populated, with probably around fifty or so people in the pews. This should not come as any great surprise as that first Mass was, from what I can tell, the first EF Mass in the Diocese since the Silly Season started. I did, however, have my first-ever biretta sighting, with Fr. Richard Dion attending in choro.

With it being far less full and thereby offering fewer distractions than my first EF experience, I actually found myself able to follow along in my hand Missal fairly well. I should say, of course, that much thanks is due as well to the older lady who sat near the front and provided spot-on posture cues for those of us who felt a little lost; she probably has no idea how many people were keeping her in their visual range.

I distinctly remembered last time being drawn into the silence and finding myself truly praying as best I could since I simply had only the barest idea of what was going on from moment to moment. This time, however, I was affected in a much different way because I was able to follow those prayers which the priest was quietly reciting. I was simply astonished at how the power and density of each of the prayers and particularly struck at how different the offertory prayers are from the modern variant – in comparison the modern prayers seem positively pallid. I’d read many times traditionalists crowing about the superiority of the ancient prayers but until this point I had never concerned myself much with those thoughts; now it is something that runs through my head even a day later. I have a great respect for the historical ties of the modern offertory prayers to their roots in Jewish practice, I only wish there had been a way to make that tie without cutting out the depth of meaning in the 1962 prayers.

I’ve assisted at an Extraordinary Form Mass now twice, and the difference in each experience could not have been more different. It does indeed leave me wondering what I shall find the next time I am so graced as to assist again. May the wait only not be so long this time as it was the last. Deo gratias!

To think, this tiny document, this little firecracker, could hold so much power. And yet perhaps the comparison to a firecracker is more than apt. If the world had held itself open to the teachings of Pope Paul VI it would have witnessed a brilliant explosion of light. Instead it chose to tighten the fist of its heart around that firecracker and hope that if it just would squeeze tight enough nobody would notice the firecracker go off.

We know what happens when you close your fist around a firecracker. Broken bones. Savaged flesh. Blood, gore and carnage, pain and embarassment. Does this yet sound familiar? It is proven by history that ignoring those small teachings re-stated in Humanae Vitae has led to all the things Paul VI predicted and even worse.

Do yourself, and the whole world, a favor and read Humanae Vitae again. I first read it after an argument over its teachings and I was shocked at both its brevity and its simplicity. It is, without a doubt, a document you can read in one sitting but well worthy of many more.

This is my one and hopefully only post on the P.Z. Myers issue. To start, let me second what Jimmy Akin wrote: Myers must be fired, not purely because of what he did but because he has compromised his ability to act as an educator and particularly one at a public institution. Perhaps I’m just being credulous, but I find it highly interesting that just as I clicked on this story on the TV Mother Angelica’s nuns started to pray the Rosary.

Next, let me also second what Jeff at the recently-mentioned St. Peter Canisius Apostolate had to say. In fact, let me quote him:

So beginning next Friday, August 1, let us all join in prayer for the conversion of PZ Myers every day, until Sunday, August 31. Let us pray Rosaries for his conversion, offer up the Mass for his conversion, engage in abstinence and fasting for his conversion, and spend time in Adoration for his conversion.

Let us remember, in this Year of St. Paul, to ask the special intercession of St. Paul who started toward his great conversion by attacking the Church.

Finally, while contemplating this whole issue, let us do it with this image from The Crescat firmly in our minds. Nothing more need be said.

NLM tells us there is a new journal on the usus antiquior just starting to get off the ground. Named, conveniently, Usus Antiquior, it is “[a] journal dedicated to the Sacred Liturgy edited by Laurence Paul Hemming & Alcuin Reid under the auspices of the Society of St. Catherine of Siena.” If you’re interested, hit their subscriptions page to indicate, and if you can spare they could use donations to help get going. A journal like this can’t possibly begin circulation soon enough.