You go high enough on the academic ladder, you are properly “robed” at commencement ceremonies, observes Fr. Hunwicke, explaining:

Doctoral garb distinguishes the achievement of, er, achievers.

He contrasts it with what the priest wears at mass:

‘VESTMENTS’, on the other hand, negate the individuality and achievements of the wearer. He wears them to indicate that he is nothing; that he is acting solely in the name of Another.

He did not walk proudly up to a stage to the tune of pomp and circumstance, Rather:

He is a man who was not honoured but humiliated, when, at his Ordination, he lay prostrate on the ground. He now acts clothed in the Priesthood of our Lord Jesus Christ. Far from gaining or achieving anything, he has lost individuality. ‘Initiative’ is, quite simply, not his job. Nor is ‘personality’.

He is a man whose hands and voice are not his own because his sacramental words and deeds are those of the Redeemer.

When you see him emerging, chasubled, [wearing the chasuble] from the Sacristy, you should say to yourself “Ah … jolly good … another of these Nobodies …” [Emphases added throughout]

Jolly good, eh? I get it, but wouldn’t have said it that way, I’m sure.

via Fr Hunwicke’s Mutual Enrichment: Pedantries

The big guy has clay feet.

Many of the millions of people who shop on Amazon.com see it as if it were an American big-box store, a retailer with goods deemed safe enough for customers.

In practice, Amazon has increasingly evolved like a flea market. It exercises limited oversight over items listed by millions of third-party sellers, many of them anonymous, many in [well-known cheater] China, some offering scant information.

One of our newspapers doing what newspapers are ‘sposed to do.

A Wall Street Journal investigation found 4,152 items for sale on Amazon.com Inc. ’s site that have been declared unsafe by federal agencies, are deceptively labeled or are banned by federal regulators—items that big-box retailers’ policies would bar from their shelves.

Among those items, at least 2,000 listings for toys and medications lacked warnings about health risks to children.

Great. Ebay digging into Jeff B’s margins? Coming up: auctions?

Buyer, beware — as usual.

via WSJ

No “local cult,” said the bishop. But it used to be the opposite argument that held sway, says the learned Fr. Hunwicke — if there were a local cult, the cause would be suspect. He finds this objection puzzling.

“Nor do I find it easy to take seriously his second reason,” he continues, citing same:

“I have not been able to tease out a pattern of personal spirituality”.

GKC no paragon, unworthy of imitation?

Fr. H.:

The liturgical Calendar is already, arguably, overloaded with Bishops and Founders.

Each of whom had prominent, powerful lobbies to boost them.

To the nub of it:

The addition of a simple and married layperson who sought sanctity simply through the plain everyday means of grace offered by the Redeemer in His Church would seem to me a valuable affirmation of plain ‘mere’ Christian ‘spirituality’.

How true.

via Fr Hunwicke’s Mutual Enrichment.

Author is very gentle in his criticism — and straightforward and almost biting about the Bishop’s podcast , agreeing with main points, then roaring into his declamation of what’s actually the obvious if apparently invisible in plain sight.

Yes, catechesis is important, but more important still is our liturgical worship, for decades hardly “sacred” liturgical worship. [here as throughout, emphasis added]

Lack of belief in the Eucharist is mostly a massive failure in the way we celebrate the Eucharist!  I mean, of course, Holy Mass.

Everything flows from worship and then back to worship.

More:

Not a word from Bp. Barron in the video about liturgy, about decades of the prevailing liturgical style (or the rite itself – the Novus Ordo).  This is so typical of bishops.

Not a word – in that video – about liturgy as either a cause of the problems we face or as a solution. I listened to it twice and didn’t hear it.  He talks about the danger of placing social justice, etc., before doctrine.  But, he doesn’t talk about liturgy.

The bishop speaks with fervor of “the Eucharist.”

However . . .  “Eucharist” is not just the Blessed Sacrament. It is also the way the Eucharist is celebrated.

There’s the Eucharist that is the Host and Precious Blood and there’s the Eucharist that is the very way by which we have the Host and Precious Blood, the ultimate “thanksgiving” which is Holy Mass.

Our sacred liturgical worship is our most important action in the fulfillment of Religion, that orders all other activities and gives them meaning.

The way that Holy Mass is celebrated IS DOCTRINE… it IS CATECHESIS.

More more more here, at: Fr. Z’s Blog.

An eye for the absurd. (But some are not.)

It has been a serious week.

Let’s have something a little less heavy.

First, some memes that amused me.

Just a few of many that this connoisseur has gathered for this Friday, for which thank God:

More here, including the non-absurd, at Fr. Z’s Blog

Do not be afraid of “me,” says this scrupulously correct speaker of and writer in the English language.

I have capriciously decided not to enable two additional categories of comment:
1. Comments including the grammatical error “We must respect he who is the King of Tonga”.

We do not, in English, say “we must respect he [nominative]”; we say “We must respect him [accusative]”.

A curious idea seems to be growing up that whenever the relative pronoun “who” is used, it has to be preceded by a nominative. It most certainly doesn’t.

This is the same sort of error as using the nominative for the second of two linked names: “He spoke to Theodore and I”. We do not in English say “He spoke to I”; we say “He spoke to me”. So: “He spoke to Theodore and me”.

Take that, you failing speaker and writer in English.

More more more at Fr Hunwicke’s Mutual Enrichment

Yes, yes, and double-yes:

RUSH: The Drive-Bys, they’re incorrigible. Now they are literally trying to once again talk the people of this country into a recession. Now they’re doing it with the inverted yield curve. And the whole problem here is the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve is anti-Trump, is making a mess of the interest rate circumstance.

So many people in that town want rid of Trump that they’re going to stop at nothing. It doesn’t matter what damage they do to the economy or the country. And it’s not unprecedented, folks. This has been done before. What was it, back in 2006, the midterms, the Drive-Bys were doing everything they could to talk down the economy.

We had the so-called financial crisis of 2008. And, of course, they were doing everything they could in the second Bush term to talk down the economy while sabotaging the Iraq war and war on terror efforts.

When the elite meet to greet, it’s a problem.

via The Rush Limbaugh Show