A Treasure To Be Shared

  Dear Friend, Each and every one of us, from the moment of conception, is given life so that we may become the person God calls us to be. God sustains our very being, granting to us endless opportunities to draw near to Him in an intimate communion of faith, hope and love. And yet, He does not force us into relationship with Him. He welcomes us. Difficulties beckon us to accept easy and cheap forms of relief from the labours and trials of this life. Our resolve can be weakened to the point of despair should we forget to engage in daily spiritual practices which dispose us to God's grace. Through those moments, we give our consent to God. If one is not a believer, one can all too easily descend into a world of chaos and habitual disorientation. It's one thing to engage risk in a calculated manner to improve one's character and knowledge. However, we shouldn't go looking for morally hazardous opportunities to further complicate our lives. As it is, there are plenty of si...

Romanglicans: members of the Anglicanorum Coetibus Ordinariates in full communion with Rome. Visceral Auntie: the vigilante of the family; she talks your ear off with impassioned stories of family and foes (often one and the same); see parish gossip. Paying things backward: the opposite of paying things forward; see dine and dash . Wishdom: often mistaken for wisdom; fantasy masquerading as facts; ill-conceived concepts. Prayers at the Foot: words muttered after having stubbed one's toe. Chrewth: [sounds like truth ]; ideology that sticks between one's teeth. TLM-etry: the automatic measurement and wireless transmission of liturgical data from remote sources. Alb: long-sleeved white linen tunic secured at the waist by a cincture, often worn for months on end without laundering; see biohazard . Patener: liturgical panhandler. Pew: scently sitting place; communion of the scents, a.k.a. the Church Fragrant. Cullchurr: cult-like society; see  wokeism ; see  secular relig...

noblesse oblige nobility obliges St Matthew 25:34-36 Then the King will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ 2 Corinthians 9:6 The point is this: he who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Iliad , Book XII Homer: translation by Alexander Pope Sarpedon exhorts Glaucus, his comrade. 'Tis ours, the dignity they give to grace The first in valour, as the first in place; That when with wondering eyes our confidential bands Behold our deeds transcending our commands, Such, they may cry, deserve the sovereign state, Whom those that envy dare not imitate! The Grand Old Name of Gentleman by the Rev. John R. Vernon, in Contempo...

The Council Fathers had voted for greater use of sacred Scripture, homilies rather than sermons, removal of liturgical duplications, the prayers of the faithful, training the faithful to say and sign all the Mass parts in Latin, and, under certain circumstances, openness to concelebration and Communion under both species.  They did not call for changing the direction of the altar, removing tabernacles from sanctuaries, Communion in the hands, the iconoclastic “wreckovation” of churches, jackhammering high altars and Communion rails, whitewashing of sanctuaries, the substitution of sacred music with saccharine and occasionally heretical hymns, hideous banners, “clown” Masses and liturgical free-for-alls, all seemingly justified by the undefined spirit of the Council. - Father Roger Landry, appointed by the U.S. bishops a National Eucharistic Preacher - - - Sanctifying the world — “Christifying” the world, if you will — was thus John XXIII’s original intention for Vatican II. Th...

Shakespeare's  The Phoenix and the Turtle  was written soon after Anne Line's death. In her 1935 novel,  My Shakespeare, Rise! , Clara Longworth de Chambrun proposed that the poem is a eulogy commemorating Anne Line. Clara Longworth first suggested that St. Anne Line is Shakespeare's phoenix and Mark Barkworth, a Catholic priest who reportedly embraced her body as it hung on the scaffold before he was also executed, is the turtle. John Finnis and Patrick Martin argued more recently that St. Anne Line is the phoenix and her husband Roger is the turtle. (Clare Asquith has proposed)  that the "bird of loudest lay" represents the composer William Byrd, who was a Roman Catholic convert, and that the crow is the Catholic priest Rev. Henry Garnet, SJ. Martin Dodwell argued further that Shakespeare used St. Anne and Roger Line to symbolise the Catholic Church itself, as disinherited and rejected by England. Colin Wilson and Gerard Kilroy have proposed allusions to ...

There are two types of Catholics, two ways of being Catholic. Either we: measure our lives against the standard of the Gospel and, with God's grace, cooperate with God to change our lives to continually and habitually conform to His will; or... we subject the Gospel to the standard of our (disordered) lives, dispense with those divinely revealed teachings that we find offensive, and then persist in ignorance and sin. In the case of the former, a lifegiving relationship with Jesus Christ and His Church, and growth in holiness, is possible. In the case of the latter, we invent a god and church that is comfortable to us, and we never have to concern ourselves with conforming to any objective standard of holiness - or way of being human that accords with the Gospel - nor do we worry that we have sinned and fall short of God's design for man. Trapped in that isolating circus of egoism, there is no need to repent nor is there any need for God's mercy. Sadly - very sadly - we see ...

https://journals.openedition.org/rfcb/1236?lang=en In Search of a Liturgical Patrimony: Anglicanism, Gallicanism & Tridentinism A la recherche d’un patrimoine liturgique: anglicanisme, gallicanisme et tridentinisme Peter M. Doll Published in Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique, XXII-1 | 2017 French Journal of British Studies ABSTRACT In common with other churches of the Protestant and Catholic Reformations, the Church of England identified its own worship with that of the ancient Jewish Temple in Jerusalem and of the early Church. In the aftermath of Queen Mary’s restoration of Catholicism, the Church of England’s liturgical identity was also dominated by a severe Puritan reaction against all Catholic forms. In the last decade of Elizabeth’s reign, however, an ‘avant-garde’ of clergy emerged committed to greater ceremonialism in worship according to the Book of Common Prayer . The Laudian high churchmanship that emerged from this beginning was a movement in tension, looking...