"The action was taken because he did not agree with the Vatican's request for his resignation"...

I happened to see this news report earlier this evening and actually read it because I also had noticed that the Bollettino the other day didn't name a canon to explain Mons Makaya's removal from office (I know nothing about him or his diocese, alas)--and that is precisely what the Bollettino's text said, too, 'removed'--his deposition, in other words; while not wanting to take the time to figure out quite who or what the "French media" is that the CNA article refers to, I think that this bodes well for the future: if there was any doubt about it, we now have concrete (and not simply theological/theoretical or historical) evidence that the Most Holy Father the Roman Pontiff can depose bishops without having recourse to either section of canon 401 (which, after all, provide for the bishop to request relief from his office) or to any other canon.  Spes contra spem.

So it is reported to be the case that the long expected...

Instruction implementing/revising Summorum Pontificum has already been sent to the reverendissimi domini. Their excellencies have gotten an e.mail, to which doubtless they will attend promptly....

So many occasions for prayer and acts of piety...

During the first week of Lent, but spare an Ave or two for the people of Wisconsin, if you can. The mental disorder on display in the video is not restricted to mad Madison, alas.

As Lent begins, I've decided to repeat...

My last Advent's discipline and stay away from this silly blog (and from Twitter, too), among other things, although an exceptional item of news or other nonsense may merit a comment or two; am jettisoning the reading of large swathes of the usual 'content', too, not because it is in itself peculiarly inimical to spiritual health but simply as an exercise in self-discipline, the hope being that prayer and proper spiritual reading will be the replacement.  We shall see. Am not even trying to pretend to myself, however, that I will do without tobacco, this time around....

Was reminded of a bus commute home last week...

When I glanced through this post at Badger Catholic; the university students observed therein are upset that they may have to fund their own contraceptives and testing for sexually transmitted diseases. I think it must have been Thursday or Friday last that I overheard a group of five... well, my approximation is that they were probably thirteen or fourteen, perhaps; first year of high school, maybe. Three boys, two girls.  In any event, they were chattering about how often each of them has been 'gay', as in, 'I was gay for a couple of months back when...' and 'I am gay but we're going to Florida for the summer...' (the clear implication being that in Florida something may happen that will alter her 'lifestyle choice')--although it is true I heard only three voices (two male, one female), so forty percent of the group were keeping their judgments to themselves, I guess.  So far as I could tell by the minimal number of cultural tells I was able to glimpse they were 'middle class' kids; but, specially here in Eugene, who knows. How impoverished our society has become, how terribly parents are failing in their duties, how... et cetera, et cetera. Spes contra spem.

Vae illi per quem tradar ego....

The British High Court has ruled that...

Christians may not be foster care providers because of their "view that homosexuality is wrong". I suspect that the situation there and here will only get worse, from the Catholic point of view.  Spes contra spem.

Update on Monday, February 28, 2011 at 18:54 by Marc

Since I have to struggle to keep up with the details of the casuistry that elucidates decisions of the US Supreme Court, I'm not also going to try to do that for the British courts; but I'll add links here as I see them. Father Finigan's post on this awful nonsense.

Update on Saturday, March 5, 2011 at 10:01 by Marc

The attorney for the Johns, Paul Diamond, has made several comments worth hearing; the Pentecostal couple will not appeal the High Court decision. "They think it won't happen in America, that your judges won't do that. What they fail to understand is that it's a hard-nosed political agenda."

"The grand old Roman see"...

Sure, swift, flashing: that is the voice of the Rome that many yearn to hear these days:

... The heretic leader rears his head,
And the lie from his poisoned lips
Goes out like a thousand shadows of death,
Black as the black eclipse;
But sure and swift in the destined hour,
The Anathema from on high
Flashes, and down the doomed one falls,
As Lucifer fell from the sky....

And I think an anathema now and then is entirely appropriate; Our Lord didn't indulge the tax collectors in an unending dialogue: of course, the pastor's life is not all anathemas and no one would argue that it is. But certain occasions require 'yes' or 'no'.  The verse is from Father P. Murray's Song for the Pope, here posted at the always interesting Lux Occulta.

Deo Patri sit gloria...

At Idle Speculations, a most excellent post on the Martyrs of Compiègne and the several dialogues des Carmelites; a long time ago, it-- the Poulenc -- was, maybe, where I first encountered the aesthetic power of Revelation. Don't think I had ever known that there is a film version (it isn't at Netflix, although two versions of Dialogues are).

A response to four years of Summorum Pontificum...

From an ecclesiastic who, I suppose, more or less accurately reflects the opinions of the majority of members of the US Conference of Bishops, in an interview with Mr John Allen at... that newspaper he insists on continuing to work for.  It is full of truths and half-truths, pft, hung on a web spun out of the 'spirit of Vatican II'; let no one, in any event, imagine that Mr Allen is an 'objective reporter'. Worth a read, though.

Have had a bit of time to catch up a bit on the Wisconsin business...

And so found this post at Vox Nova interesting; the brethren will now, I suppose, be arguing that the details of union contracts are as substantially important as securing the right to life. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.... To the specific question raised in comments on the Minion's post as to whether or not the popes or bishops have directly addressed what are the special conditions (if any) of sovereigns in their relations with public employees, I don't have an answer and am not going to spend the afternoon reading ecclesiastical nonsense; I suspect that the magisterial intuition would be to embolden the sentences of existing texts which refer to the common good and add a couple of footnotes recalling the attention of the faithful to the fact that no private rights are absolute.

Saw that Father Zuhlsdorf has already commented on the exchange...

Between Mons Hubbard and Dr Edward Peters in the matter of Governor Cuomo's public sinful life and his repeated sacrilege in approaching the altar to receive Holy Communion. When is the Bishop of Albany retiring, again? another couple of years to go, alas.

Update on Friday, February 25, 2011 at 22:07 by Marc

Dr Peters responds to the Winters fellow on this question, here.

Mr Thompson has done the 'Holy Smoke' blog for four years...

Or so, if I've been reading correctly on Twitter, and congratulations to him for what is, apart from the comments (and it didn't used to be this way, according to those who know), a most excellent insightul well-informed commentary on the Church in the UK; ad multos annos.  But my interest in that particular post is aroused because I've just gotten done with the first two series of Torchwood, which is spun off from Dr Who, of which I've seen precisely one episode. Perhaps two or three; but the point is I know only one Doctor and one of the Doctor's companions and have resisted knowing anything about the cultus of the franchise.  I find depictions of imaginary worlds that explicitly exclude the sovereignty of the divine Majesty and grace and the Church thought provoking, and wonder if their creators don't ever reflect on the fact that the same contests of virtue and honor that Religion perfects play out in their scenarios; they create putatively godless men and women but they are the same mankind redeemed by Our Lord. Am glad to know what UNIT is, ha.

A great post about Septuagesima's stational churches...

Recalled by Mr Tribe from last year, written by Gregory DiPippo at New Liturgical Movement. San Lorenzo fuori le mure...

A good catch of an essay in the Washington Post...

Wherein the infamous author Frances Kissling admits the poverty of the pro-abortion regime in this country, by Matthew Warner. The only observation I'd add is that the poor woman is, after all, nominally and socially, culturally (in some ways, at least) Catholic, so in spite of her pro-abortion poison she is probably in some ways less distant from the truth than e.g. Gloria Steinem is.

"My soul is foolish. I’m cheap and jangly"...

"... I’m in poor taste, inadequate, irreverent, wanting and paltry in every way. My heart is made of little beige bricks and burlap. And for some reason, God keeps showing up anyway." Mrs Simcha Fisher has a certain moral and spiritual point, indeed, with respect to our attitude toward the sacred rites; she points out in a comment, "I was thinking more of what our attitude should be when we really have no choice in the liturgy or decor." One can set one's jaw and engage in brief but Pirellian exchanges with the pastor every Sunday, and write the appropriate letters when the occasion occurs (but it does only very infrequently because most of the "burlap" is arguably woven by the ecclesiastical authorities themselves), or else really have no practical choice for Masses of obligation but to simply accede to the existence of the "little beige bricks and burlap" and pray. What a mess they have made of catechesis these last forty years, alas... et cetera-- I have other things to do so won't conjugate myself to lamentation mode. @vaticanspy g a.

I put Dr Lugaresi's essay in Osservatore Romano...

Of a few days ago infra ('put'; one does not copy copyrighted material of course) but am pleased that Dr Magister has provided an excellent translation (Mr Matthew Sherry g a) and context today. I continue to maintain that I will sooner or later translate the texts co... pasted here, ahem. I changed supra to infra because I fussed with the mechanics of the pages and 'Texts from Osservatore Romano' is now down in the nether regions....

The conversation about Miss Rose and lying continues...

And while I decreed, ahem, the definitive judgment yesterday ("conspirators intent on murder or manslaughter have no right to know the secrets of their just prosecutors"), this post is useful; but the more apposite posts, I believe, are Father Zuhlsdorf's of the other day, in which he laments the vanishing of the manuals, and Father Finigan's wherein he specifically praises the Sacrae Theologiae Summa, which ages ago I studied myself, in my poor fashion, and which ought to be reprinted if not republished in a contemporary edition.  BAC lists the volumes of STS but without prices; presumably this means that there is no currently available edition.

Let me see if I understand the currently running melodrama of Rumor correctly...

Without having read all of the articles and blog posts, of course: a rumor goes around that the rumored transfer of competence for certain marriage cases from the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments to the Sacred Roman Rota involves somehow the engrafting of a certain greater zeal for authentic liturgical reform into the former. That is quashed by the Press Office but Pater Lombardi's statement is in certain quarters read to not really, really mean 'restrictive' in any but a Pickwickian sense--and there was never any suggestion really that the motu proprio to do with this business was the 'clarifying', 'implenting' motu proprio promised to follow Summorum Pontificum that we've all been waiting for. Then another rumor circulates that there is a 'clarifying', 'implementing' motu proprio coming, really, this month (or next, or in any event before Easter), and that this motu proprio is going to do all sorts of anti-Summorum Pontificum sorts of nonsense because (not to put too fine a point on it) the poor Holy Father can't resist the machinations of the troglodytes in the Secretariat of State and elsewhere in the Curia. Then the entire orthodox Catholic Internet civilisation, or that part of it that is at all concerned with the sacred rites (some orthodox people just don't understand, alas), is plunged into despair. Pft.

I don't in any way want to minimise the good work of the Messainlatino.it folks but, contrary to certain published testimonials to their Roman connectedness, I have a very definite memory that they have at least once predicted something on the basis of their sources and... it didn't happen. Seriously, while I do have a vague, shadowy recollection to that effect, my real point is that the feasting at the spectacle of Rumor is, even outside Lent, not a very pretty sight; but certainly one writes a letter or two and signs the petition.

Update on Saturday, February 19, 2011 at 6:59 by Marc

So perhaps the point of the exercise is to sabotage reconciliation with the Lefebvrists?

"Daily in our cities and our countries"...

The Roman Pontiff's address to the people before this morning's recitation of the Angelus, reflecting on the lessons at Holy Mass, including the following lamentation over our mutual inaction in the face of the suffering of our brothers and sisters:

... The newness, the novelty, the 'newsrworthiness' of Jesus is essentially in the fact that He 'fills up' the commandments with the love of God, with the power of the Holy Spirit who dwells in Him. And we, drawn up in and through faith in Christ, we open ourselves, by the action of the Holy Spirit, which makes us capable of living the divine love. Therefore, every precept of the law  comes to be experienced as true, as necessities of love, and all are rearticulated in a single commandment: love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself. "The fulllness of the law is love," writes St. Paul (Rom 13:10). In the face of this exigency, the pitiful case, for example, of the four Roma children who died last week on the outskirts of this city, burned in their little shack, requires asking whether a more fraternal society, united in solidarity, more agreeable to the demands of love, that is, more Christian, could not have avoided such tragedy. And this question applies to many other sorrowful events, more or less well known, that occur daily in our cities and our countries....

I don't have the courage to search for the news of the tragedy his Holiness alluded to; it is a beautiful day, I'm warm and secure in my little room, enjoy what commonly passes for 'good health', and face the prospect of many more days of the same conditions.