Trads, it's time to face facts

 I think it's long past time for traditional minded Catholics to face three facts. First, no matter how much you grovel and plead, if you go to a diocesan traditional Latin Mass you are living on borrowed time.

 Second, while you still have that Mass it is an act of utter folly to spend money on restoration projects. Yes, fix the roof if there's danger, and get  the boiler tended to but don't go beyond maintenance. Two times now I've seen good people  take a run down church and lovingly restore it only to have a Cardinal, in one case, and a bishop in the other decide that they aren't allowed to have the TLM anymore. Essentially, these dear folks spent their time and treasure fattening frogs for snakes. 

The third fact, may hurt the most. Your Novus Ordo attending acquaintances and family, be they wild liberals or do nothing conservatives will mock you in your grief at losing the Mass and the community you found at the TLM. They will also tell you to be silent.

Even if you have a benign bishop, and you can go to the TLM daily, he will retire or die one day and the next man up could gut you. Don't despair and don't become bitter. Talk to your spouse and friends about the worst case scenario now. If you were planning on moving across multiple states to be near a particular parish you might want to hold off and watch how the winds are blowing. You should take a road trip and see how far you can reasonably travel to get to Mass. You may have to content yourself to traveling to the TLM once or twice a year and going to the best Novus Ordo you can find for the rest of the time. This is what Rocky and I are doing and no, I'm not satisfied with it but it is the best we can do right now.

 Admittedly this is going to be hard or impossible for people with small children at home  or  for those who can't drive anymore. While none of this is a fun mental exercise, it will keep you from being blindsided when one day your priest announces that the bishop is forbidding the TLM to be celebrated anymore.  Like Our Lord set your face like flint and go forward. 

Random thoughts on a humid Sunday afternoon

• Some very bad storms swept though my area this weekend and we lost power from Friday evening to Sunday morning. When the power did come back Rocky and I both woke up and I sang a verse from "Witchita Lineman". The freezer thermometer read 40 degrees and the fridge thermometer showed it was in  the danger zone. I had throw everything out. Modern life is very fragile. 
  
  
  
•  I am very cautious about Leo XIV. He's not Francis, I mean he's polite, dresses like the pope and I'm sure he won't be smacking women in public but c'mon, you know the pope is more than optics. Time will tell if he's going to be okay. What will he actually teach? Will he get laicize Rupnik? Will he make an effort to get the bishops in Germany to act remotely Catholic?  I don't blame anybody who's wary and I don't take the hosanas from the Trad Inc. folks seriously either. 

• The Vatican is reportedly in bad financial shape. I read one report that claimed donations were down by 50%. Since most of the money comes from American Catholics, this means that even the Catholic who just comes to Mass on Sunday and not much else, even these folks were sick of the Francis show and ignored the usher when the Peter's Pence collection was being taken up. Possibly, Leo XIV, a middle of the road company man technically from America will be just the ticket for getting the coffers filled again.
  
  
  
  
• Speaking of money, after Sunday Mass, a member of the Finance Committee made a speech. She came to the point quickly, thank goodness. Unless offerings increase cuts are going to have to be made. A lot of people did not come back to the parish after Covid. You can insult them by calling them  lazy and weak but they were coming to Mass before and after being told that their spiritual lives would be just fine without Mass, I guess they believed it. Those live streamed Masses just didn't cut it. I remember feeling abandoned when my plea for a written religious exemption from the vaccine was ignored. How do all the people who had to watch their loved ones die with no priest to offer to  Last Rites feel? Every time I hear a member of the clergy or a parish official chide, however gently the people who didn't come back I feel myself becoming furious. 
  
  
  
  
• I try to buy from small Catholic businesses but some business owners don't make it easy. A while ago I bought a veil that, when I received it, did not look like what I ordered. The customer service was so bad it was insulting. I won't buy from that woman ever again. Two weeks ago, I bought a rosary and what I got was a disappointment. Whoever made it strung all the beads closely together with nothing to distinguish the Pater Noster beads from the Ave beads so if you pray in bed with the lights off you can't tell where the decade ends unless you were keeping count. Instead of metal the crucifix is very cheap and plastic. When I answered their survey and said that no, I'm not thrilled with their product and sent photos, they offered me no refund but did say I'd get 20% off my next purchase. No thanks. I think I would have done better if I'd purchased from a secular company that gets rosaries from China. 

Habemus Papam

 Okay, white smoke just came out of the chimney. I remember sitting at work when Benedict was elected and letting out a cheer. Now I actually feel my stomach clinch. I don't have any great expectations. I just pray, Dear God let this man be actually Catholic. 

................And it's Cardinal Prevost, Leo XIV. If it's true that Fr. James Martin was rooting for him then we are cooked.

Francis is no longer in control

 I woke up this morning planning to write about the Easter Vigil Mass at some point today. That plan went out the proverbial window as soon as  I picked up my phone and saw a RIP Pope Francis notice on Instagram. I didn't believe it  because it was  from an up and coming Catholic "influencer," whom I consider to be sweet and enthusiastic but gullible. My first thought was, "Not this crap again. Cool it with the fake reports." Then I saw a post from EWTN  and realized the story was true. To my surprise,  I felt...nothing. Not sorrow, like when Pope John Paul II, died, not pity as I did when poor Benedict died and certainly not satisfaction.  There was simply nothing. Later I checked Twitter and was revolted by some of the gooey, sniveling posts, including a horrible AI rendering of Francis being held in the arms of Our Lady. I decided that in the the coming days since I have nothing nice to say I'd restrict my remarks to vague platitudes and that's what I'll do with the folks at work. 

 Jorge Bergoglio is dead. Many are sad. Many are relieved but none that isn't what matters now. What matters is eternity. We all die and have to face God and give account of ourselves. There's no weasel room. There's not arguing your case. They'll be no  appeals to a higher court. On the day of our particular judgment we get exactly what's coming to us.  That is a truly terrifying and awesome thought. 

One more thing,  Cardinal Kevin Joseph Farrell is the camerlego. Theodore McCarrick's roommate of five years is running the Church until there's a new pope. As I've said before, the death of one man is not the end for those left behind. Whoever is elected at the conclave just might be one of McCarrick's "nephews" or at least will be someone who was a friend of a close friend. 

Uncle Ted is dead

 Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, of infamous memory, is dead at 94. The horror is not over. His buddies who protected him and lied for him are still running the church in America. 

His victims remain mostly unacknowledged and didn't even get a half hearted heavily legalese apology.  I do not mean  the grown men who played along with his perversion for "career" advancement, but rather the young men who said no to him and were driven from the seminary. I also mean his minor aged victim(s). 

Having done research for multiple child sexual abuse cases I don't think people realize how much the victims suffer for the rest of their lives. Many live with depression, explosive anger, and the feeling that they are polluted and no matter how many drugs they take or alcoholic drinks they chug down, they'll never be clean again. None of this is going to disappear because McCarrick is finally dead. 

Think about the men sitting in various chanceries across the United States who owe everything to Uncle Ted. One of them may be your bishop, the rector of your cathedral or the head of your college.  

St. Peter Damian, pray for us.

May God have mercy on everyone who fell prey to McCarrick's unclean and unnatural appetite.

Do you shrink from hearing about the suffering of Our Lord? Blessed Anna has a few words for you and me

 

We ought, indeed, to be ashamed of that weakness and susceptibility which renders us unable to listen composedly to the descriptions, or speak without repugnance, of those sufferings which our Lord endured so calmly and patiently for our salvation. The horror we feel is as great as that of a murderer who is forced to place his hands upon the wounds he himself has inflicted on his victim. Jesus endured all without opening his mouth; and it was man, sinful man, who perpetrated all these outrages against one who was at once their Brother, their Redeemer, and their God. I, too, am a great sinner, and my sins caused these sufferings. 

                                                            ------From The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord, Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of blessed Anna Catherine Emmerich

Two Lent Ideas

 How's your Lent going? If you feel like you're not making progress here's two fantastic helps for your

 spiritual journey in these precious days. The Great Fast program from St. Michael's Abbey and Fr.

 Edward Looney's daily readings from The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord, Jesus Christ. 

A few truths that surprised me when I was younger

 

• Canadians aren't all that nicer than anybody else. In fact, after years of reading Canadian news articles and the comments responding to them  I was shocked many, many times. Americans are raised to revere and sympathize with Indians. Average guy and gal Canadians expressed criticism, annoyance and downright disgust about their tribal people. A whole lot Canadians aren't fond of Indians from India and have some downright aggressive things to say about Jamaicans as well. 
  
  
  
  
  
• The biggest racists I've ever come across were not Southerners.  Most of the time it's New Yorkers, Bostonians or folks from Chicago. The ones in my age range tend to be people who survived the bussing era and are still pissed about being forced to be social experiment victims. 
  
  
  
  
  
• Never mind what the travel gurus tell you, stay in the tourist areas when in foreign countries and seriously rethink that Third World trip.   

• One of the easiest ways to irritate the boss ladies at your parish is to volunteer for whatever group the ladies run and make a suggestion. At my old parish it took death, retirement and relocation and a strong pastor to  tame the hostiles and make them to be civil towards new people joining. 

• Accepting and obeying your doctor's every word could get you killed or at least affect your health. I've met  doctors who disliked and evaded questions about treatment. It is common that I assume medical students are given a class on gaslighting before graduating.  Once I asked  a former primary care physician   whether it was worth taking a low dose aspirin each day, something that the medical profession has been pushing for decades. The doctor looked uncomfortable and told me no, and that doctors never recommended this. It was just a thing popular culture came up with. That was the problem of Googling and doing your own research, she said condescendingly. Well research is my business.  Being a librarian, I checked Mayo, Johns Hopkins, JAMA and the American Medical Association who all spoke of daily aspirin therapy and the pros and cons, confirming what I'd seen and heard for as long I could remember.  I never went back to that doctor's office.