A new Priest of the Most Holy Sacrifice

The latest pictures of the priestly ordination of Padre Silvano Salvatte Zanon, in the Apostolic Administration St. John Mary Vianney, in Campos, Brazil.

The ordination took place in the Principal Church of the Apostolic Administration (its "Cathedral", which is not called thus since the name is reserved to the Diocesan Cathedral of the Most Holy Savior), the Personal Parish Church of the Immaculate Heart of Our Lady of the Rosary of Fatima, which is still under construction.

The imposition of hands, sacramental matter of the Holy Orders, as defined by Pope Pius XII, of glorious memory, in his Apostolic Constitution Sacramentum Ordinis.

More pictures of the Ordination here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11.

St. Pius V defended by the Holy See...

... and the right of a culture to defend itself. Brave words from Mgr. Walter Brandmüller, president of the Pontifical Commitee for Historical Sciences, in a lecture published by Sandro Magister's Chiesa website:

Today in many intellectual circles there is a lot of talk about the religious tolerance shown over many centuries by the Islamic authorities, because – while in terms of the pagan populations the saying “embrace Islam and your life will be spared” held true, and the pagans who did not convert were killed – the “people of the book,” the Jews and Christians, were able to continue practicing their religion.

In reality, the situation was much less idyllic: the Christians and Jews could survive only if they accepted Muslim political dominion and a situation of humiliation, which was aggravated by the obligation to pay increasingly burdensome taxes. So it’s no wonder that most of the Christians, even though they were not constrained by force, converted to Islam on account of the constant economic and social pressure. This led to the total disappearance of a form of Christianity that had flourished for more than half a millennium, as in the part of Africa ruled by the Roman empire, the land of Tertullian, saint Cyprian, Tyconius, and above all saint Augustine.

...

on account of this all-embracing conception of religion and political authority, the Muslim will have great difficulty in adapting to the civil laws in non-Islamic countries, seeing them as something foreign to his upbringing and to the dictates of his religion. Perhaps one should ask oneself if the well-attested difficulties persons coming from the Islamic world have with integrating into the social and cultural life of the West are not explained in part by this problematic situation.

We must also recognize the natural right of every society to defend its own cultural, religious, and political identity. It seems to me that this is precisely what Pius V did.

Nuestra Señora de la O - Nossa Senhora do Ó - Our Lady of O

December 18th is the second day of the great antiphons and has been in old Hispania (the Iberian Peninsula, Spain and Portugal) and in the old Spanish and Portuguese colonies around the world the day of the Expectation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, more commonly known as Nuestra Señora de la O (Our Lady of O) or as Nuestra Señora de la Expectación del Parto (Our Lady of the Expectation of Birth).

The O, of course, refers to the long interjection particle which begins each of the Greater Antiphons for the Magnificat of Vespers of each day between December 17th and December 23rd. The Virgin of the O has her own antiphon, O Virgo Virginum:

O Virgo virginum,quomodo fiet istud? Quia nec primam similem visa est nec habere sequentem. Filiae Ierusalem, quid me admiramini? Divinum est mysterium hoc quod cernitis. (O Virgin of virgins,how shall this be?For neither before was any like thee,nor shall there be after.Daughters of Jerusalem,why marvel ye at me?That which ye behold is a divine mystery.)

Vatican II at 40 – Continuity - I

Several people have expressed far better than I ever could my own opinion on this Council.

There can be no doubt in the mind of anyone seriously committed to reality that the Council ushered in the current era of crisis – and “ushered in” must be understood here in the most literal sense: I will not affirm if the Council did or did not “cause” the crisis, but it certainly opened the doors for this critical moment in the history of the Church.

Now, Traditional Catholics have often argued that they accept the Council “interpreted according to Tradition”; those were the words coined by the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and were mentioned, for instance, in the deal which led to the establishment of the Apostolic Administration of St. John Mary Vianney, in Campos, Brazil (2001-2002). Most importantly, these words, which used to be abhorred by some “mainstream conservative Catholics” (because they imply that the words of the Council may, even if interpreted literally, go against Tradition and that, therefore, Tradition MUST be the guide in the interpretation of the conciliar documents), were literally repeated by the Holy Father in his accession speech, pronounced in the Sistine Chapel on April 20, 2005.

It is my own opinion that the ambiguity of large amounts of the Conciliar documents is so great that, when the Council is “interpreted according to Tradition”, little of it is left, except for what the Council itself repeats of the pre-Conciliar Magisterium. There is nothing wrong with that, naturally – one can write a lengthy History of the interpretation of the famous “subsistit in” clause in Lumen Gentium, arriving in the end in the article published less than a couple of weeks ago in L’Osservatore Romano by Fr. Karl Becker, SJ, which argued that "subsistit in” must be simply read as “est”. Every single ambiguity of the Council can be interpreted thus.

Which is why I have always considered that the right strategy regarding the Council is what I call “overcoming”. It is absolutely unrealistic to expect a pope – any pope – to appear in the central window of the loggia of St. Peter’s and declare to the world that “the experiment of the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican is over”. This will never happen. But it is possible to implement the "Continuity strategy": to consider that nobody really knows exactly why it was assembled, to agree that the Conciliar Fathers had (at least most of them) the best of intentions, but that, for several reasons (the documents themselves, the general feeling of deconstruction generated by the Council among ordinary Catholics, the bad luck of the timing of the Council), it failed. Let’s get over it (now, nobody will say that, either, but all serious-minded people may ACT accordingly).

This is what Benedict XVI seems to be doing. His very interesting and profound homily in the feast of the Immaculate Conception was a great example of this new, truly POST-Conciliar spirit: the spirit which considers the Council a permanent fixture of the past of the Church, uses some of the Council’s own imagery, but overcomes it: it was not the first Ecumenical Council, it was probably not the last one, but it must not be seen as a watershed in the History of the Church. It was an event, it failed, may bygones be bygones and let the Church walk on its historical path, in which Vatican II was just an event, as so many others.

Negativity?

Now, I really like the "Friends of La Nef" blog, and I could well say I'm a friend of La Nef myself -- if with this they mean the French Catholic news outlet.

However, I'm quite puzzled by Kevin Tierney's new article in "The Case for Catholic Principles" series: he criticizes some groups of Catholics for "negativity". And, of course, Traditionalists had to come first in the list of criticisms:

"For the Traditionalist, all too often they are not putting forth a positive case for the traditions of Catholicism, but rather an attack upon how what we have today contradicts that tradition." (Notice the "traditions" and "tradition" with lower t.)

Anyway, the irony is that, in an article in which the writer advocates "Positive Thinking", he takes the time to be "negative" towards other groups of Catholics. Naturally, people like Mr. Tierney (and several others) consider themselves "mainstream Catholics". They are "above these fringe classes" of Catholics. Which is why, I suppose, THEY can be "negative"...

A List of Essentials

Based on the Pontificator's list of "Essential Theological Books", here are my choices, in approximate chronological order:

1. The Didache

2. St. Ignatius (of Antioch), Letters

3. St. Athanasius, De Incarnatione

4. St. Augustine, De Civitate Dei

5. St. Gregory the Great, OSB, Sermons

6. St. Anselm, OSB, Cur Deus Homo

7. St. Thomas Aquinas, OP, Summa contra Gentiles

8. St. Thomas Aquinas, OP, Catena Aurea

9. St. Thomas Aquinas, OP, Comments on Aristotle (Metaphysics and Nicomachean Ethics)

10. St. Thomas Aquinas, OP, Summa Theologiæ

11. The Imitation of Christ

12. The Roman Catechism

13. St. Robert Bellarmine, SI, Exposition of Christian Doctrine

14. Francisco Suárez, SI, Disputationes Metaphysicæ

15. St. Teresa of Avila, OCD, Interior Castle

16. Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, Discourse on Universal History

17. St. Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort, Treaty of the True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary

18. Henri-Dominique Lacordaire, OP, Conférences de Notre-Dame de Paris

19. Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, OP, The Three Ages of Interior Life

20. Jacques Maritain, Théonas

One other very essential work should be added, in two editions: Heinrich Denzinger's "Enchiridion Symbolorum", in pre-Vatican II and in its current (Denzinger-Schönmetzer) versions.

What is this?

Instead of simply bothering other people in their website, I've decided to create my own weblog.

It is named after the first words of the Mass (Introit) of the day in which it was established, the Fourth Sunday of Advent. It truly is one of the most beautiful of all Introits in the Liturgical Year.

oráte, cæli, désuper, et nubes pluant justum: aperiátur terra, et gérminet Salvatórem. (Drop down dew, ye heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain the Just: let the earth be opened and bud forth a Savior.) Ps. 18, 2 Cæli enárrant glóriam Dei: et ópera mánuum ejus annúntiat firmaméntum. (The heavens show forth the glory of God: and the firmament declareth the work of His hands.) Glória Patri...

The imagery of celestial dew, a favorite of the Latin Church (it is mentioned, for instance, in the Traditional formula for the Consecration of Bishops), is often repeated in these words adapted from Isaias. The same words are repeated throughout Advent in responsories of the Divine Office, partly in the Introit of the Mass of the Blessed Virgin Mary (S. Maria in Sabbato) in Advent, as well as in several other traditional liturgical texts of the West.

The audio and image files of the Introit are available here and an actual audio recording of it is available here (mp3 file; the quality is poor, but one can clearly hear the metalic sounds of the chains of thuribles...).