Which Canon Jean-Marie Moreau, ICKSP, has been building up in Sulphur, Louisiana. From Hurricane Laura.

Polyphony has returned to St. Mary Church’s in Norwalk. Bishop Caggiano has granted permsion for a 4-voice schola. This Sunday, August 23, the Schola will sing William Byrd’s Mass for Four Voices at the 9:30 a.m. Solemn Mass.

Since the 9:30 a.m. Mass at St. Mary’s now regularly reaches its mandated capacity of 100 people, a Missa cantata (Extraordinary Form sung mass) will be added to the Sunday schedule at 11:30 a.m. Charles and Elizabeth Weaver will provide music at the 11:30 Mass this Sunday, August 23, including Ludovico Viadana’s Missa Dominicalis for solo voice with lute accompaniment.

Please call the church office at 203-866-5546 x 101 to make a reservation (as with all our weekend Masses).

From the Rorate Caeli Twitter:

Re-read many years later, Fritz Fischer’s “Germany’s Aims in the First World War” (Griff nach der Weltmacht) seems even more convincing: it reads like a thriller, a very well-documented thriller. Highly recommended.

Griff nach der Weltmacht (The Bid for( or “Grasp after”) World Power) is one of the foundational works that sought to provide a theoretical/historical basis for the international order that emerged after World War II. It restated the thesis that the European calamities of the last century were exclusively attributable to a conspiracy of the evil Germans – a problem presumably solved by the establishment of American domination over Western Europe after 1945. To say that this analysis, as history, is questionable is the understatement of the century. What is interesting, however, is when (1961) and where (West Germany) The Bid for World Power appeared – at the start of Europe’s (and America’s) dramatic swing to the left. The historical vision of a clash between good (implicitly, the current establishment) and evil ( in this book, an earlier, no longer existing Germany) has endured until the present day – sometimes with shifting villains. So, on occasion the Poles and the Serbs have since found themselves also in the dock – much to their dismay.

The irony is, of course, that whatever its relevance may be to the origins and conduct of the First World War, just the title alone of The Bid for World Power exactly describes the course of United States policy, above all between 1939 and 1945. For it was in this period, after the abortive crusade of Wilson, that the United States definitively abandoned the status of a relatively “isolationist” power with limited foreign commitments in areas with real or imagined American economic interests (China; Latin America; the Panama Canal; the Philippines) to seek a condominium over the entire world shared with the Soviet Union. And even when that dream collapsed in the Cold War, the United States still found itself in possession of a vast world empire in all but name.

Against this backdrop, why a site that has so constantly and admirably championed Christian Europe – even the Habsburg Empire – would find The Bid for World Power “convincing,” without any reservations, escapes me. What will Rorate Caeli provide a blurb for next, Theodor W. Adorno’s Authoritarian Personality?

Good news: The Cathedral Parish in Bridgeport, CT now has the Latin Mass on the schedule 7 days a week, including 3 sung Masses a week:

Monday through Friday at 7 am at St. Patrick Church: Low Mass – Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday; Sung Mass – Thursday

Saturday, 9 am at St. Augustine Cathedral, Sung Mass

Sunday, 12:30 pm at  St. Patrick Church, Sung Mass.

It is reported that, without publicity, the K of C have severed (or downsized?) their “partnership” with Crux – the voice of Bergoglio in the United States. As we recall:.

The Knights of Columbus and Crux are pleased to announce that they plan to enter into a partnership in which Crux will remain an independent news outlet headed by John L. Allen Jr. and Inés San Martín. (3/15/2016)

We look forward to hearing more about this most interesting development.

“Thirteen years after naming a new residence hall at Loyola University Maryland in honor of the Catholic author Flannery O’Connor, Jesuit Fr. Brian Linnane, the university’s president, removed the writer’s name from the building.

Concerns about her use of racist language in private correspondence prompted more than 1,000 people to sign an online petition asking Loyola to rename the residence hall.

“We were looking to name the building for someone who reflects the values of Loyola and its students at the present time and whose commitment to the fight for racial equality — from an intellectual point of view and from a faith perspective — would be more appropriate for the residence hall.“

In my view the Roman Catholic Church of the United States – and in particular the Jesuit order – deserve anything unpleasant that likely may be coming their way.

Source: National Catholic Reporter 7/29/2020

(Title of this post courtesy of Triumph magazine, 1969)

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York, has announced the appointment of Bishop James Massa as the rector of St. Joseph’s Seminary, Dunwoodie, effective July 16. Bishop Massa is an auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of Brooklyn and a former member of the faculty of the seminary, 2012-2015. SOURCE

We know Bishop Massa well – for example, as the celebrant of the February 2019 Lepanto conference Mass. We wish him luck and great success in his new misssion!

“I think of Hagia Sophia”, said Pope Francis, “and I am very saddened.”

(Remark at the Angelus today)

And Jerusalem is next, according to Erdogan, thr supreme leader of Turkey! It’s a forceful message repudiating the post-Ottoman Western, secular course adopted by Turkey, a traumatic reopening of ancient wounds not just for the Greek Orthodox, but also for Eastern Catholics – and indeed all Catholics everywhere. In addition to the (obviously) outspoken Greek Orthodox, a wide spectrum of opinion in the West has criticized the move – but so far normally garroulous Pope Francis has remained silent. For that matter, he has also said nothing on the current takeover in Hong Kong. And the Pope has been conspicuous by his absence during the coronavirus epidemic as well.

Now, viewed legalistically, we may argue the Turks have the right to do what they want with a monument that has been theirs for many centuries. Yet seemingly unconnected events like Erdogan’s decision, the burning of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris or the toppling of images of Catholic saints and exploreres in the United States all symbolize one thing: the receding of Western, originally Christian, civilization.

UPDATE: As does this: Mission founded by St. Junípero Serra burns in overnight fire.

Survey: 30% of German Catholics could see themselves leaving the Church “soon.”

Die Tagespost and Katholisch.de

This is the church the hierarchy of which – under Francis – has such a disproportionate influence on the Church worldwide.

Update of the Update:

Only 57 diocesan priests to be ordained this year in Germany – the second lowest number in history. The record low was 2019 with 55 ordinations. For a country with some 27 million Catholics (on paper at least) that is disastrous. For every newly ordained priest this year there are likely eleven losses for one reason or another. Not surprisingly, the first big drop in ordinations occurred between 1962 (557) and 1970 (303).

Obviously this trend is not sustainable. The first reaction of the Central Committee of the Catholic Laity is to renew the call for married priests and women priests. In other words, business as usual in Catholic Germany.

Footnote: the average number of priests ordained each year in the New York Archdiocese in relation to the Catholic population is roughly the same as in the admittedly catastrophic situation of Germany.

Katholisch.de