Sickening breakdown of law and order among FBI deep-staters

Sending this as is because in a hurry. But when Glenn Reynolds makes such a judgment, people listen, or should:

WELL, WELL: Even before Mueller was appointed, FBI opened investigation to “rein in” Trump. Note that they were planning an obstruction probe even before Comey was fired. Leaked to CNN because it’s friendly media, meaning they thought it was about to come out somewhere less friendly. This is huge, and people should go to jail.

Put this together with the collusion between the press and federal prosecutors and the “Deep State” narrative looks pretty solid.

36Posted at 12:23 pm by Glenn Reynolds permalink.gif

19th Century Rediscoveries: The Mass as Experience Not a lecture, not even a prayer meeting. Being moved by the Spirit

When the spirit moves you . . .

Dominus Vobiscum: Notes from a massgoer's underground

In 1840 the Benedicine monk Dom Prosper Gueranger published his Les Institutions liturgiques [“liturgical institutions”] , “a closely argued attack on the neo-Gallican liturgies and a wonderful demonstration of the antiquity and the beauties of the Roman liturgy,” says Bonnetere his 1980 book (Angelus Press, 2002), The Liturgical Movement: Gueranger to Beauduin to Bugnini, Roots, Radicals Results.

 Neo-Gallican refers to newly revived separatist liturgies in northern Europe, especially in France. Neo because Pius VI had struck a mighty blow to the separatist movement Gallicanism (French-ism) with his condemnation of the Synod of Pistoia in 1794 at a time when “the whole of Europe . . . was floundering in an “anti-liturgical heresy.” (Bonneterre)

 Gueranger was on the side of traditionalist angels, standing up for the wisdom of the ages, opposing changes meant to keep up with the times, etc.

 Primarily, he wanted to bring the clergy…

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Note to author of soon to be published Dominus Vobiscum . . .

Onward with the arts . . .

Dominus Vobiscum: Notes from a massgoer's underground

Dear Jim:

In your soon to be published book, do the anti-Novus Ordo (New Mass) part, interspersing it with with the pro. Can you do that, Jim? Keep it dry and detached? If you try, yes. But will you try?

Jim: Good question.

Note, continued:

Make your posts a foreshadowing of arguments to be fleshed out along the way.

And remember: keep it flat and noncommittal. It’s only right but it’s less you might have to apologize for.

Be not overly concerned with order and sequence, but be willing to test your readers for their ability to connect things. Does that mean not concerned at all? Hardly. That would be a slatternly procedure, to be sure.

Go rather for the lasting image or hit-home phrase, the (dare I?) poetic. Absolutely. Do not shrink from the poetic. Do you dare?

Don’t overdo the explanatory or saying where you got such and…

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The bishop who lost his way: Tuscany in the 1780s

More of book in progress . . .

Dominus Vobiscum: Notes from a massgoer's underground

Pius X (1903-1914) is best known for promoting frequent communion, seen by some at the time as making a sacred thing unduly common and therefore less highly regarded. 

This problem seems not to have risen until after Vatican 2, when communion became not only frequent but standard for mass-goers and everyone went — as I noted in a National Catholic Reporter essay in the 1970s, calling attention to an unsung achievement of the council, namely that it had abolished mortal sin.


In any case, this change of his and another, to teach catechism in the vernacular (!), are pretty tame stuff by today’s standards.


Let us, however, put a hold once more on this tenth Pius and his works, looking back a mere hundred or so years before him to the synod of Pistoia, a diocese in Tuscany, in 1786.


Liturgy was dying on the vine. Jansenists had made worship…

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Mueller report. Consider the source while reading it.

Advice from Lawyer Dershowitz:

Special counsel Robert Mueller is likely to wrap up his investigation soon and issue a confidential report to the attorney general. It is important to understand the legal status of such a report and how it should be released and evaluated under the Justice Department regulations governing special counsels.

First and foremost, because it is the report of a prosecutor, it will inevitably be one-sided. [Emphasis added]

Read the rest. I will.

Tale of several popes. Unfolding drama unfolds further . . .

Before Pius X was Pius V and the Tridentine (Trent) mass . . .

Dominus Vobiscum: Notes from a massgoer's underground

Continuing book in progress, working title “Dominus Vobiscum” . . .

The first modern-day papal liturgical reformer, Pius X, 1903 to 1914, is claimed by later reformers as one of their own. But it’s truly an afterthought for them because his ideas and theirs were worlds apart. Or drifted that way, as we shall see.

Indeed, this Pius was more in the mold of Pius V (1566-1572), who wound down a council, of Trent, or Tridentum, 1545-1563, and followed through on its edicts and findings with the mass called Tridentine.

This 5th Pius curiously has this in common with his successor-reformer of four centuries later, Paul VI, who followed through on a council he also had not convened with a new mass, “Novus Ordo,” with radically new script and stage directions.

The two masses endure, the first as barely tolerated (by never-Tridentiners among higher clergy and arguably the pope) or…

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Once-Chicago bishop a star

Second only to the top Catholic star, Pope Francis.

He might not look it, but Bishop Robert Barron is a social-media superstar. Sporting thick-framed glasses and a folksy Midwestern demeanor, the Catholic auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles resembles the comedian Drew Carey, only trimmer. But the aw-shucks routine isn’t fooling anyone. Beneath it lies a penetrating intellect and clear talent for using popular culture to draw people into—or back to—Catholicism.

With his popular online film reviews, political commentary and plain-English homilies, the 59-year old bishop has struck a nerve. He has 1.6 million Facebook fans and 130,000 Twitter followers. His YouTube videos have been viewed 34 million times, while his channel has some 165,000 subscribers. If there’s a growth stock in the bishop’s portfolio, it’s Instagram, where he’s gained a mere 91,000 fans. Only Pope Francis is more popular with English-speaking Catholics.

I bet Archbishop Cupich wishes he had him back. Kidding.

The bishop who knew too much

Celebrated in National Catholic Register:

The death of Bishop Robert Morlino will be noted far beyond the Diocese of Madison, Wisconsin. The late prelate’s outspoken orthodoxy and support for traditional liturgy will ensure that. Yet his life is of interest beyond his diocese and his admirers. It tracked in an unusual way the ecclesial shifts of his time.

Robert Morlino was born on New Year’s Eve 1946 into the solidly Catholic culture of Scranton, Pennsylvania. He would attend the Jesuits’ Scranton Preparatory high school, belonging to the last generation where it was wholly unremarkable that some of the graduates would enter the Society of Jesus. Morlino did, studying at Fordham and Notre Dame and in Weston, Massachusetts — a typical formation for thousands of Jesuits in the United States.

He was ordained in 1974 and experienced as a young priest the upheaval in the Society of Jesus, as theological confusion, disciplinary breakdown, widespread homosexuality and a culture of dissent sent Jesuits heading for the exits in droves. [Emphasis added]

Most left to embrace a liberalizing world outside the order; fewer sought refuge in the diocesan priesthood, where they could live their priesthood unmolested by the deep dysfunction of Jesuit leadership in the 1970s. Father Morlino was one of the latter, incardinating in the Diocese of Kalamazoo, Michigan, in 1981. [Ditto]

After seven years with the wrong organization, apparently.