On the weekend of Septuagesima Sunday, Fr Hernan Ducci of the Fraternity of Saint Joseph the Guardian will preach a retreat for men based on the Ignatian Exercises, at the Church of Saint John the Baptist, located at 1282 Yardville-Allentown Road, in Allentown, New Jersey. The Spiritual Exercises comprise an ordered series of meditations and contemplations born from the profound spiritual experience St Ignatius, gained from his conversion and his time as the first Superior General of the Society of Jesus. The purpose of these exercises is to help the retreatant discern God’s will for his own life.

The retreat will begin on the early afternoon of Friday, February 7, and finish with lunch on the afternoon of Sunday, February 9. In order to cover the expenses (Fr. Hernan’s travel from France, food, donation to the parish, etc.) we suggest a donation of $60. Also, please bring a sleeping bag. In addition to the meditations, the traditional Mass will be sung each day, as well as parts of the Divine Office; there will also be plenty of opportunities for spiritual direction and Confession. To confirm your attendance please read the following Google doc and fill in the registration form. If you have any questions, please contact hernan.ducci@gmail.com. Feel free to forward this invitation to anyone else you think would be interested.

Beautiful patronal Solemn Mass at Holy Innocents in Neptune for the Feast of the Holy Innocents on December 28.

On the Anniversary of Roe v. Wade

by Father Richard Gennaro Cipolla

Today I offered, as did many other priests, a Votive Mass for Peace, with a commemoration, of course, of SS. Vincent and Anastasius. I did so on the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion in the United States.  The Collect and the readings make it quite clear that the Peace of which we are speaking and for which we are asking has little to do with peace as understood by the world.  The Collect says it best: “O God, from Whom are holy desires, right counsels, and just works, give to Thy servants that peace which the world cannot give; that our hearts being devoted to the keeping of Thy commandments, and the fear of enemies removed, our times, by Thy protection, may be peaceful.” The peace we are asking for in this Mass is not freedom from anxiety and the tempests of this world, nor from the obligations of the Catholic in this world, a world that denies and opposes the moral law of Christ founded on love of God. We are not asking for “peace in the world”, per se.  We are asking for that peace that only God can give, that peace that is an inner glimpse of the peace of heaven.

The epistle from 2 Maccabees asks that God will “ give you all a heart to worship Him, and to do His will with a great heart and a willing mind. May He open your heart in His law, and in His commandments, and send you peace. “  This reading makes it clear that this peace is firmly linked to the worship of God and to doing his Will, that Will enshrined in the Law of God. The primacy of the worship of God for the Catholic has certainly been eroded in the past forty years, and this erosion is surely at the heart of the weakened and broken state of the Church today.

But it is the Gospel for the Mass above all that reminds us what we often forget in an age of sentimental worship where the understanding of peace has degenerated into handshakes and waves. This Gospel is familiar to us, for it is read on Low Sunday every year. The resurrected Christ comes through the locked doors of the Upper Room and says to his disciples: “Peace be to you.” Then Luke adds:  “And when He had said this, He showed them His hands and His side.” The Peace of Christ cannot be separated from, and in fact is founded upon, the suffering and death of the Lord on the Cross.  The Peace of Christ has little to do with the peace of the world. It is not an absence of conflict and strife, but rather the gift of the knowledge from faith that Christ has overcome the world of sin and death.  The encounter with St. Thomas and the invitation to touch Christ’s wounds further emphasize the radical difference between what the world calls peace and what the Peace that passes all understanding is.

What does this have to do with the March on Washington which includes so many Catholics, who are right now witnessing to the Right to Life based on their faith in the God who is the source of all life?  It must be said clearly that the law of the land, which in this case is truly unjust, nevertheless can never solve or eliminate transgressions of the moral law of God.  The ambiguity of the situation must be made clear, an ambiguity that is part of being a Christian in a non-believing world.  The goal of an end to all abortions is not achievable in this world.  While it is true that it is a scandal that in this country abortion is seen as a “right” included in “life, liberty and happiness”, it is also true that this grievous sin is part of the sinful and obstinate state of the world, the “World” that St. John sees so clearly in his Gospel, the World that  is always in opposition to the Truth of God in Jesus Christ and will be so until the end of time at the Second Coming.

To march publicly in protest is the point of the Washington March for Life.   This is an act of witness.  But to use this act of witness in the hope that the Supreme Court will overturn Roe v. Wade to “end the scourge of abortion” is to misunderstand the use of law, for the law cannot prevent crime, the law is never the final answer in a fallen world, and the law of the world can never be the Law of God, again, in a fallen world.  The individual Catholic must witness to the Law of Love not only once a year in the March for Life.  His or her whole life must witness to the Law of Love, and this, and only this, will change hearts and minds, and this is what we must do and hope for.

The Catholic Church today finds herself in the unenviable position of organizing marches for life when her own life is threatened by those within her fold who support moral corruption and corruption of the Faith of Catholic Tradition that founded on the Apostolic Tradition, and manifested in the Traditional worship of the Church.  It is the secular law that forced the bishops of the Church to confront the crimes of her priests.  As destructive and disgusting as the moral crimes of her priests in the sex scandals are,  the greater scandal is that the bishops did nothing about this moral rot in the Church until the secular law came after them.  But the secular law cannot force the bishops to address the deeper disease of the rot of Faith itself that so deeply enfeebles the Church of Jesus Christ today.

There is no way to make peace with the World.  We must stop looking there, we must stop wanting to be accepted by the World.  We must minister to the World, absolutely. We must never turn our backs on the World. We must do what we can wherever we can to see that Love conquers the deep selfishness of the World.  But in the end, we must realize that our longing for the Peace that passes all understanding can never be realized in its fulness in this world of sin and death.  And that should not make us sad at all, for at every Mass we encounter in a real way, a way that transcends this space and time, the One who has overcome the World, He alone who can give us that Peace we so long for, the One who alone is our hope for the salvation of the World of sin and death, who alone is our hope for the Peace of Everlasting Life.

Above and below:  photos from the Solemn Pontifical Mass of last year’s Lepanto Conference, held at St. Vincent Ferrer Church.

The third annual Lepanto Conference will be held in New York City on Saturday February 15. We are most honored to have as our celebrant and  speaker at our conference His Eminence Joseph Cardinal Zen, Bishop Emeritus of Hong Kong.

The event will open with a Solemn Pontifical Mass from the Throne, at St. Vincent Ferrer, 869 Lexington Avenue (at 66th Street), New York, NY at 11 am. There will be about a one hour break for lunch, at which point attendees can disperse, recharge, and reconvene for the talks.  The talks will be held at the school building owned by the Parish of St John Nepomucene, a few blocks from St. Vincents,  from 3-5 PM. The address is 406 East 67th Street.   The speakers will be His Eminence Cardinal Zen,  Fr. George Rutler, and Professor Michael Foley.

A  donation of $10 per person  at the entrance to the talks is suggested.  There is no advance registration.  (n.b. Unlike last year’s conference, food will not be provided.)

His Eminence Cardinal Zen

There will be a solemn high Mass for the feast of the Conversion of St Paul at 12 Noon Jan 25 at St Paul the Apostle Church, 602 McLean Ave., Yonkers, NY. The music will be Gregorian chant Missa de Angelis and Credo III. It is the patronal feast day of the parish.  Father Leonard Villa will be the celebrant.  The parking lot is behind the church and school on Lee Avenue.

Celebrate the end of the greater Christmas season with this once-in-a-lifetime event: solemn choral Vespers according to the medieval Use of Sarum–the regional form of the Latin Rite used in England before the Reformation. A choir of master singers from all around the region, under the direction of Peter Carter, will be assembling to render the sacred music of the psalms in Sarum chant, a collection of polyphonic works set by Thomas Tallis for Candlemas Eve, and a Magnificat written by Robert White during the brief restoration of the Sarum Use under Queen Mary I’s reign.

The liturgy will take place at St Patrick’s Church, served by the Dominican Friars, in center city Philadelphia (242 S 20th St) on the Eve of Candlemas: Saturday, February 1 at 7pm. Event co-sponsored by the Collegium Institute for Catholic Thought & Culture. Please direct all inquiries to James T.M. Griffin at chantphiladelphia@gmail.com.

Sermon for the Feast of the Epiphany

given by Father Richard Gennaro Cipolla

Church of the Most Holy Redeemer, New York City

6 January 2020

From the Gospel of St. Matthew:  “We have observed his star at its rising and have come to pay him homage.”

There in that verse is the credo of science, or better still, the credo of the scientist, what makes science go, what makes it relevant, what makes it real.  And these words come from the scientists of Jesus’ time, the Magi, the Wise Men.  Of course, they have little to do with that experimental science that has become since the Enlightenment what science now is, that dispassionate observation of a phenomenon followed by analysis and formation of a theory.  Most scientists today would be offended by being put into the same category as the Magi, but that is their problem, for they have lost the focus of science.

The root of the word science comes from the Latin verb, scio, which means to know, and thus knowledge is at the heart of science, the scientist wants to know.  But modern science has forgotten, with some important exceptions like Einstein, that knowledge is not an end in itself. Nor is knowledge limited to the physical world.  Nor is the quest for knowledge a dispassionate enterprise, as if objectivity defines science.  There can be no doubt that the modern scientific method has resulted in a great increase in knowledge about the universe the physical world, both on a macro and an atomic scale.  There can be no doubt that modern science has contributed greatly to a higher quality of life for so many people.  There can be no doubt that modern science has been successful in fighting disease and finding cures and in increasing the ordinary life span of men and women.

But scientists have forgotten with increasingly disastrous results, the relationship between knowledge and wisdom, and the ultimate goal that is truth.  A science that believes its own myth of total objectivity, which narrowly and prejudicially limits reality to a narrow band on the whole spectrum and that confuses facts with truth, produces baleful results.  This results in a world in which morality is relativized and banished to the arcane sphere of religious systems, a world in which the fragility and wonder of being human is bludgeoned by doctors dreaming of the brave new world of designer embryos.

“We have observed his star at its rising and have come to pay him homage”.  There is the statement of a true scientist.  Unlike the nervous machinations of Herod, who resents the intrusion of the supernatural into his petty life, the Magi take a more cosmic, a more all-encompassing view of things. They do not limit reality, these magoi from the East, these strange men that come from “pagan” lands. They show a docility, an openness and readiness to obey the truth that we saw twelve days ago in our Christmas celebration in the persons of Mary and Joseph.  We saw and we came.  There it is.  There is a wonderful directness, a linear speed leading without hesitation from insight to action: they saw the King’s star and immediately came to adore him.  In these “pagans” we see a perfect unity between patient science and moral justice that is an example for all Christians, and especially for those of us who call ourselves scientists.  The scientist who really seeks truth is a wise man who when he finds the truth does not hesitate to subject himself to that truth.  When one encounters truth, when God gives us the grace to encounter truth, the only possible response is to give oneself to that truth.  And this act of giving oneself to truth, this encounter with truth, this demands worship and adoration.

This for me is why I know that Catholic faith to be true and why the Catholic Church is the Church founded by Jesus Christ.  This is because at the heart of the practice of the Catholic faith is not figuring out what biblical passages mean by pseudo-scientific rationalism.  It is not fiery sermons.  It is in fact never words.  It is worship, it is adoration.  What goes on here in the Mass, what goes on in the chanting of the daily Office in monasteries, what goes on when the Holy Eucharist is adored:  this is the goal of science.  For this is the response to that encounter with the infinite truth of God in the living person of Jesus Christ, this person who is not outside of the subject of scientific inquiry in the physical world but rather is the very center of the physical world.  That is what we forget, we Christians who are so in awe of the scientist who performs his brand of magic by forcing us to live in a petty and narrow band of reality.  We forget the shocking claim that God became flesh, and therefore that all science, all seeking after knowledge must and does lead to the Word through whom all was created and who took flesh and was born of a Virgin.

We can hear the outcry to all of this from those who would bind us all by the shackles of the self-named Enlightenment. They say:  You are mixing up science and religion. And by this what they mean is that we are mixing up reality with wishful thinking.  So many Christians cower under this attack from the so called scientific, rational world, a world that includes not only many scientists but also the world typified by the “liberal” media that pride themselves on being beacons of sense and sensibility and tolerance and having a sure sense of what the future should look like.  How many Catholics are embarrassed by their religion and try so hard to fit in better to what everyone else seems to think and act?  How many Catholics, when faced with the American steamroller of secularism, willingly lie down in its path and come up again as two dimensional caricatures of the Catholic faith, the dimensions of which are infinite?  How many Christian clergy spend time in their Epiphany sermon explaining the star as a myth of which the Magi are the lead actors, as just a good story that has a moral lesson, and in so doing close for the people the meaning and wonder of the Epiphany?  The Child born in a stable in humility and weakness is already present in the constellation of the stars by his splendor and glory.  “The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth his handiwork”. Either that is true or it is not.  Christ is always a cause of rejoicing for the wise and a cause of consternation and fear for the obstinately foolish.  Listen to the answer of the Wise Men to Herod that the liturgy sings in the antiphon on the Magnificat in Epiphanytide:  “Interrogabat Magos Herodes:  Herod questioned the Magi:  What sign did you see about the king who has been born?  We saw a dazzling star, whose splendor illumines the world.”  Whose splendor illumines the world.  This light cannot be holed up in a box, even in a religious box.  It cannot be extinguished by the lies and darkness of the world of anxious Herods.  For it is the light of God.

So we come here, we come together in a world that is defined by the advances and limitations of modern science.  But we come here, you and I, as true scientists, scientists as defined the Magi, the Wise Men.  Graham Greene said once: “I do not believe in God. I touch God, I eat God.” We by the grace of God know the Truth, and we come here to embrace that Truth, to subject ourselves to that Truth, by this act of worship and adoration.  Oh how important to this world are places like this church where true science flourishes, where worship and adoration are the constant responses to truth! Just as the monasteries were vital to keeping the light alive in the dark days of the barbarian invasions after the fall of the Roman empire, so in our time when the barbarians of secularism threaten to plunge us once again into darkness, places like this where the Traditional Roman Mass is celebrated in all of its solemn beauty, the supreme act of worship and adoration, places like this church are precisely where the light of the star of Bethlehem will be seen and where the glory of the Lord will illumine the darkness of the night.

Angels and archangels may have gathered there,

Cherubim and Seraphim thronged the air.

But only his Mother in her maiden bliss

Worshipped the beloved with a kiss.

What can I give him, poor as I am?

If I were a shepherd I would bring a lamb.

If I were a wise man, I would do my part;

Yet what I can I give Him, give Him my heart.

(Christina Rossetti)