Let’s hear it for weekday mass . . .

. . . where the worship is peaceful, quiet, and fruitful:

My mother, a musician, struggled to endure the off-key singers who led hymns, unfortunately for us all, at Sunday Mass in my hometown parish.

So sometimes she’d sneak out of Mass early Sunday and during the week, take me to daily Mass instead. No off-key singing there. No singing at all, actually. There was quiet, peacefulness, intimacy among the 20 or 30 communicants.

The lights were dim, the sermons short and to the point. “The apostle picked up his cross and followed Him,” the priest began one sermon I remember, then paused, then ended it: “Would that we would do the same.”

I know people who swear by this. Read the rest of this excellent commentary.

Tradition-oriented African cardinal to head Vatican Office of Divine Worship

Being African means never or almost never starting mass with “good morning”:

The Church in Africa has a clear and sharp understanding of the division between immanent and transcendent, sacred and profane.

Having been to many liturgies in Africa, I have never had the experience I have had in some European countries of attending a Mass that seemed more like a school assembly.

This sense of the transcendent and sacred, which permeates the whole of life in Africa, is also seen in an attention to ceremonial that never seems out of place. [italics added]

It’s good to be friendly, but public signs of being so are not always what you want, eh?

Later: But if you scroll down to comments, you find a different kettle of fish, much of which is inside Vatican baseball which is fascinating to some, including me:

paulpriest • 2 hours ago
Unfortunately this is a stunt.
Cardinal Sarah is indeed an orthodox behemoth – one of the best Cardinals the Church possesses.
BUT – As Head of [the pontifical council] Cor Unum he was getting under the skin of the uber-progressive Caritas International – they loathed his interventionism and his having the Dicastery authority to thwart them.
[remember the top-level firings in CI?]
But Cardinal Sarah cannot be accused of anything but performing his job masterfully and devotedly
…and given the Kasper comments against African Bishops?
Moving out one of the Only Two Africans in the Curia would have been impossible…even for His Holiness….
Cardinal Sarah had to be removed from Cor Unum to keep those who have the papal ear happy
So he had to be transferred – not fired.
The CDW [after the purge from 3 wks ago] is now filled with Bugninites and [abp] Marinites….whatever His Eminence might intend to do at the CDW – he can guarantee that his underlings in middle-management will do everything in their power to counter and thwart it [with backing from those who are close to His Holiness].
Just as Cardinal Pell was moved to finance to ensure he was kept away from everything else Curial.
Cardinal Sarah is being moved away from where he was most crucially effective – in ensuring the Church’s missions, initiatives, proposals and teachings on social justice – remained Catholic.
This is NOT a good day for Holy Mother Church.
But Thank God His Eminence is still a sprightly 69 and will still be able to run rings round his enemies – and still get a few things past the wolves…
AND it means he will still be present at #Synod 15 – where ++Burke won’t be and ++Pell may not be…
Steve paulpriest • 2 hours ago
“Cardinal Sarah is being moved away from where he was most crucially effective – in ensuring the Church’s missions, initiatives, proposals and teachings on social justice – remained Catholic….This is NOT a good day for Holy Mother Church…”
Ok but the Church’s liturgy is central to the mission to the Church and he seems throughly Catholic in his comments on things, so I for one am rejoicing, especially when the doom mongers predicted that we would have an anti-Catholic appointed. Jesus Christ be praised.

paulpriest Steve • an hour ago
Do you SERIOUSLY think that Abp Marini will not hold massive influence regarding the future of all things liturgical if those all-too-close to His Holiness have their way?
Remember there was an almighty purge of the CDW less than a month ago…as well as the Congregation of the Clergy..anyone who even had a nodding acquaintance with Pope Benedict was given the ceremonial order of the boot…
Look out for who will be getting a compensatory red hat sooner than later!
Abp Marini will be a Bri-Nylon Bugninite thorn in our side for ages to come…
And Cardinal Sarah most certainly couldn’t [under this Pontiff] have been transferred to the Congregation of the Clergy – that would have been too earth-shatteringly wonderful for the orthodox and those of a traditionalist ilk…His Eminence would be countering every ‘move of the wolves’ at every turn…
Cardinal Sarah anywhere is wonderful for Holy Mother Church – he is God’s man – but he was more effectively an adversary of the wolves – and governments and big business and secularising culture-of-death promoting leviathans at the UN etc while he was head of Cor Unum…and that’s why he was ousted.

Married priests are also on Francis’ agenda

He’s given a go-ahead in some priest-short areas and has lifted the ban on ordination of the married among Eastern Riters.

There’s been a lot of speculation the past several months that Pope Francis is willing to expand possibilities for ordaining married men to the Catholic priesthood. Austrian-born Bishop Erwin Kräutler, head of a diocese in the Brazilian rainforest, said last April that Francis told him he’d be open to married priests for particular regions or nations if there were consensus among the bishops of the area. [italics added]

Bishops’ consensus, good.

A small stream of married clergymen from other Christian churches have been allowed to be ordained Catholic priests over the past few decades, especially with the establishment of the Anglican Ordinariate.

The nearest such Anglican-Roman Catholic parish, or community, is in Indianapolis, by the way:

St. Joseph of Arimathea [St. Joseph of Arimathea Anglican Use Society]

Phone: (765) 475-4970
E-mail: stjosephofa
Website: http://stjoearimatheasociety.org/
Location:

520 Stevens Street
Indianapolis, IN 46203

Mass Times
Sunday
8:00 AM
Holy Rosary Parish, Indianapolis

Here you find a traditionalist’s delight. The style seems more Roman than the usual Roman Catholic church in the U.S. or at least in the Midwest.

This [Anglican dispensation, as it were] has always angered Byzantine Catholics in places like the United States, Canada, and in other places considered the “diaspora” (outside their original Eastern Rite territories), because the Vatican has forbidden them from following their unbroken tradition of ordaining married men. It was thought be a scandal in places where celibate, Latin Rite priests were the majority.

Envy, scandal-taking, shock . . .

Not anymore. Pope Francis has lifted the ban. The only provision is that the ordaining Eastern bishop must consult with his Latin Rite counterpart. [Again, good] Why did the Holy See impose it in the first place? The U.S. archbishops asked for it back in 1893. “It is the solemn judgment of the Archbishops of the United States” – says the minutes of their Fourth Annual Conference – “that the presence of married priests of the Greek rite in our midst is a constant menace to the chastity of our unmarried clergy, a source of scandal to the laity and therefore the sooner this point of discipline is abolished before these evils obtain large proportions, the better for religion, because the possible loss of a few souls for the Greek rite, bears no proportion to the blessings from uniformity of discipline.” The conference vote for uniformity, under the leadership of Cardinal James Gibbons of Baltimore, was unanimous. [Again, italics added]

“Plus ça change?” asks Robert Mickens in Commonweal.

This married-priest issue has lain dormant for decades, as women priests have taken the forefront.

One major difference, of course, is that the first has been done, is done, and can be expanded.

Wouldn’t you pew-sitters like to hear God and heaven etc. discussed by husbands and fathers now and then from the pulpit?

About Bill Cosby

He’s a budding social conservative, accused of the “horrific act” that is rape. But keep in mind:

Politically speaking, the Bill Cosby scandal may be more than what it seems. If he is guilty, Bill Cosby represents only what we will be permitted to see by the people who manufacture image.

He will be tossed out of a circle of protection that exists in Hollywood and ultimately lends sanctuary to rapists and pedophiles and fornicators and polluters and tax evaders and drug users and pornographers and on and on and on throughout the entertainment industry.

That circle of protection exists to obscure the sludge and debauchery that is the epitome of modern celebrity from the disapproving eyes of what progressives deem socially conservative hypocrites who preach morality.

From Irene F. Starkehaus at Illinois Review.

Is President Tired-of-Waiting supposed to enforce or make laws?

Depends on what you mean by “make,” says Barack the Magnificent.

The defenders of the president hold that he has a wide discretion in how to enforce the law. They are correct, but that does not settle the question. There must be a point at which the president exercises too much discretion. Otherwise we make nonsense out of the president’s constitutional obligation to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” This expression must mean that the president is to try to be faithful to what the law intends, not to whatever he happens to think is for the best.

From Catholic Vote, which further observes:

Liberals ought to be as concerned about this as conservatives are. They should consider the precedent that it sets, and how it might be used by a future president whose policy preferences are very different from President Obama’s. If the president’s immigration order is to stand, then what will stop, say, a Republican president from issuing an executive order deferring enforcement of whatever provisions of the health care law he or she thinks are too burdensome? It would be the exact same thing.

Food for thought here, a sort of Kaopectate of the mind.

The dimensions of the Rauner victory: historic and convincing

From Matt Custardo, his North Shore campaign field manager:

Historic: It was “the first time the president’s governor lost a re-election since 1892.”

Rauner “won by 5% in a state President Obama won by 25% — a 30 point swing.”

Quinn “outspent Rauner on advertising in the final 3 months of the campaign.”

A day and two days before the polls opened, “[Expert forecaster] Nate Silver predicted a Rauner loss. Public Policy Polling . . . said Rauner would lose by 2%,” toppling conventional wisdom that a Republican had to be ahead at that point.

Convincing: Rauner bested Bill Brady and Mark Kirk, winning “moderates outright (52-45%) . . . independents by more than two to one (64% to 29%) . . . a larger share of Democrats . . . class voters by a larger margin (55-44%) . . . ”

He bested Brady, winning “both Republicans (93%) and conservatives (81%) by larger margins.”

He “closed the gap with 18-29 year old voters to single digits.”

So much for (simply) buying the election, as Mark Brown and other commentators said beforehand.