one man returns to the sacraments, hopefully, tomorrow …

A woman from our parish Caritas takes food parcels to a housebound elderly man once a month. Last month he asked for a rosary and prayer book, which she brought him. “I’m getting old, I need to ask God to forgive me my sins.”  Last week she told him that on the 23rd the priests of the parish were bringing the sacraments to the sick and housebound who wanted them, and asked if he’d like a priest to come round. “Well, maybe.” Well, maybe, yes?” “Well, he could come.”

Please pray for him, his name is Eugene (Eugeniusz).

 

Reforms suppressed by reactionaries

Unwilling to contradict Berenike, I nevertheless must ask whether Neocats might not also be filed under “trads” by nearly all save possibly “trids”. At any rate, my own prayer group, in spite of guitars and charismatic songs, would be thus filed, for example, by the priest responsible for the chapel we are allowed to use for our meetings. One has to say in favour of this priest that, to make us feel “welcome” rather than just tolerated, he says Mass once every Advent at one of our meetings, and tries to do it as correctly as he can (certain slips from the text and rubrics must probably be attributed to lack of practice), though one sees he is quite as ill at ease with the whole thing as I am.  This year, he started by saying a few words about St. John of the Cross. St. John of the Cross, he said, together with Teresa of Avila, had reformed the Carmelite order, and, “as so often with reforms, was violently opposed by people who wanted to keep things just as they were”. At which point, I had to control myself very much not to laugh out loud.

Reform for St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross meant, obviously, to go back to things just as they  used to be. It meant getting rid of the slackness and abuses that had crept in with time. It did not mean inventing new things. Which, of course, is the meaning reform always has had (as any common or garden etymology will tell one about the word “re-form”) up to the misnamed “Reformation”, which decisively was no reformation at all, but, without any intent to insult, must rather be called a revolution. (And even the reformers of the Protestant Reformation at first and for quite some time were eager to prove they were just going back to things as they used to be).

So one might have told this priest that he was quite wrong to harness St. John of the Cross as a champion of the persecuted, down-trodden “reformers” forbidden by evil Rome to go ahead with their schemes of intercommunion, female ordination and whatnot. Rather, the parallel would be that of adherents of the Extraordinary Form of the liturgy being opposed by bishops and priests who do not want to part with the slackness and abuses that had crept into the liturgy during the last decades. Though he might not have been happy about this re-application of his example.

 

For a friend

A letter from Elisabeth Leseur to a friend.

Dear Friend,

I learn from my sister that your husband has been troubled with bad health this summer, which has perhaps been an even greater trial for you than for him, for the sufferings of those we love are harder to endure than our own. I want to send you all my sympathy and my most affectionate wishes for his complete and quick recovery.

I know what illness is and can guess what sacrifice it must entail for an active man accustomed to spend his energy freely; but I know also all that sufferring means, the fine and mysterious power it possesses, what it obtains and what it accomplishes. After all, our activity (a duty we owe to God and to others) is of little importance, and is exercised only when Providence wishes to make use of it.

And so when Providence prefers to work by means of suffering I think we should not complain too much, for we can then be sure that the work will be well done and not mixed up with all the misery of egotism and pride that sometimes spoils so much of our outward activity.

I know by experiencethat in hours of trial certain graces are obtained for others, which all our efforts had not hitherto obtained. Ihave thus come to the conclusion that sufferrng is the higher form of action, the highest expression of the wonderful Communion of Saints, and that in suffering one is sure not to make mistakes (as in action sometimes)  – sure, too, to be useful to others and to the great causes that one longs to serve.

All this does not mean that I would not be very happy to see your husband resume his active career; it only means that I am persuaded of the good he now performs in the active and truly fruitful passivity of illness. You will permit and he will pardon this friendly “sermon” from one who has experienced what she speaks of, who has seen Providence gradually withdraw from her every form of activity, leaving her nothing but apparent inertia, and who feels that she never did more for God than on the day when to ignorant eyes she did nothing.

If someday I can get about again, I will do so; but tell your dear husband again and again that neither of us are now wasting our time.

This winter I shall still be condemned to all kinds of precautions. After my grave operation in April, I had in September serious trouble with an arm, which has much shaken me. You will therefore excuse my illegible writing. Since writing is a form of activity, God has wishes it to be a little difficult for me. I am, you see, destined to be a spiritual idler,

Once more, dear friend, forgive me for this letter, on account of our friendship. Our best remembrances to you and your husband, and my heartfelt embrace for you.

 

Consolamini, consolamini, popule meus:
cito veniet salus tua:
quare moerore consumeris,
quia innovavit te dolor?
Salvabo te, noli timere,
ego enim sum Dominus Deus tuus:
Sanctus Israel, Redemptor tuus. 

 

Missal of John XXIII taught in Polish diocesan seminary :)

A post on a Bitter Lunatic Trad blog (I was googling for something, okay? And don’t pretend you don’t sneak a peek at Catholic Truth Scotland a couple of times  a year. And I’ve just attended an entire course of Neocat catecheses, and only ran away once. So don’t call me a trad.) publishes a Letter to the Editor from a seminarian of the Warszawa-Praga diocese (the right bank of the Vistula):

As a student of the Warsaw-Praga seminary I should like to inform [you] that in the seminary where I study there is, as of this year, a class  (two hours a week) “The Extraordinary Rite of the Liturgy of the Roman Church”, in which we learn to celebrate according to this rite. From what I have heard it appears that we are the first diocesan seminary in Poland to introduce this.

My best wishes.

Ut in omnibus Deus glorificetur!

[name and address supplied]

[edited to add: WOOOOOOOOOOOP! WOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOO!]

 

Dublin abuse report

It is online here. I’ve not read it yet, but the Ryan report (online here) was certainly worth giving the time that one would otherwise have spent reading newspaper articles on the subject, and more.

[update: a quote from the Dublin report:

The Commission has been impressed by the extraordinary charity shown by complainants and their families towards offenders. It is very clear to the Commission that complainants and their families frequently behaved in a much more Christian and charitable way than the Church authorities did. Many indeed expressed concern for the welfare of the priest concerned.]

I post these links because I read, to my surprise, that Madame Evangelista had no idea about the Dublin report coming out – I’d thought it common knowledge.

On a different note, don’t neglect “climategate” : Bishop Hill is your friend in wading through the stuff.

 

Resentment strikes

Today I got across a really good, witty, realistic scientific article on didactics of higher education. The best, in fact, I have read so far during my involvement with that topic. And where was one of the two authors lecturing: at Oxford, where else. E.S., after all.

 

A meadow for Notburga

 

Actually, it’s our fault.

There was that newspaper thing inviting people to write in on the subject of “What’s Wrong with the World”, to which  Chesterton the Great wrote saying “Dear Sir, I am.”

For the Lord says “my name is blasphemed among all the peoples” and again “woe to him by reason of whom my name is blasphemed”.  Why is it blasphemed? Because we do not do what we say. Hearing from us the word of God, so good and so great, people are full of admiration. Then, seeing that our actions are not worthy of the words we speak, they turn to blasphemy saying that this word is some fable and an error.

For when they hear from us that God says “You have no gratia, [credit, says RSV; DR has thanks]  if you love those who love you; butyou have gratia, if you love your enemies and those who hate you”, they admire [its/the] sublime goodness. When however they see that we don’t only not love those who hate us, but not even those who love us, they laugh at us and blaspheme the Name.

A sermon of a second-century author, trans. bat Ionah b/c St Josaphat trumped Friday of the 32nd week of Ordinary Time this year, and so the English is not on Universalis.

 

Marrying for England

Today* is the feast of St Margaret, who wanted to be a nun but the rest of her refugee family, washed up with her in Edinburgh, explained to her that really it would significantly improve their security and future prospects and so on and so forth if she didn’t turn down the love-struck Malcolm III, seeing as he was the king. So Margaret married Malcolm, had eight children, and did many other things, as recounted by among others her fishy confessor.

Random Fact! Malcolm laid the foundation stone of Durham Cathedral (since he had some raiding and looting to do in the vicinity anyway).

The picture is from St Margaret’s Church in Dunfermline, a print by Polo-Scot Jurek Putter.** The same image is used in one of six small panels making up a small part of another, epic, print of St Margaret by the same artist, a copy of which Aelianus obtained through a quite amazing chain of providential events and gave to me some years ago. Unfortunately I don’t have a picture of it, but it is seated on the sofa across from me.

*Yes, o sad mad trads! Today! On account of my tie with a Scottish diocese, and the Scottish dioceses have always, afaik, had St Margaret today. She was in the summer only in the universal calendar. (I could be wrong, I am going by my crumbling 1950s missal.)

** More weird coincidences. Here is a documentary (in verrrrry Scots accent) about Putter’s work – apparently his dad was from Lwów/L’viv/Lvov. Now, that does not make him Ukrainian, and indeed he was not. Still, Lvov is Where the Ukrainians Are, and last year I came across someone claiming that St Margaret had Ukrainian ancestry. So there you go.