The Most Holy Name of Mary
✠ The Bishop’s Corner ✠
These blessed cool crisp early Autumn days renew our energy, and just in time for a busy September. We had a record attendance for our Maria Bambina (beautiful shrine) Mass and party on Wednesday. Fittingly enough we had lots and lots of babies. But fortunately pizza is beyond them. I was afraid we would run out, but the pizza was multiplied, and all ate their fill. What a nice start to the season, and our school year. We’ve welcomed quite a few new students, especially little ones.
Yesterday was Fr. Cekada’s Anniversary Mass, and today the church picnic. I hope you all will come. Bring the babies and the little ones. Plenty of room to run, hamburgers to eat, and that piñata awaits your efforts as well. Introduce yourself to someone and make some new friends. It is the unchanging Faith, uncompromised, which unites us all. Let’s give a special welcome to those who have joined us lately, or are visiting.
Speaking of “newcomers” there was an interesting article in Crisis Magazine the other day about “the other St. Gertrude,” in Madeira. They’ve always had a conservative Novus Ordo reputation, but began a traditional Dominican Rite Mass in ’19. It’s gone now, to enable them to follow the Idol Worshipper, and “feel with the Church,” one young Dominican wrote. Will Pachamama be next? The Latin Mass crowd has decamped to Old St. Mary’s downtown, but perhaps some have given us a look. The author has an interesting observation: “Younger Catholics have no interest in liturgy wars or reliving the intra-Church battles of the 1970s. It’s not their fight, and in their minds that’s what old people do. They are proud of their liturgical heritage; and in a world full of profane distractions, they crave an encounter with mystery that comes from a sacred ritual.” One man commented to me that this applies to all traditional Catholics. Interesting.
This evening after the last Mass our seminarians begin their canonical retreat in preparation for their reception of the first Major Order, the Subdiaconate, on Saturday. The ceremony is scheduled for 9 AM, September 18. Join us if you can as these candidates for the priesthood take their decisive step to the altar, and do keep them in your prayers.
Prayers, too are requested—you are as well— tomorrow evening for the September Fatima RosaryProcession for Peace. Let us pray together as long as we may, in great numbers, and powerfully call on Mary’s sweet, strong name.
Fr. Rodrigo da Silva is praying quietly in a hotel near the Mexico City airport, passing his two week quarantine to enter our country for his consecration on September 29. Pray for him, too? He’s making a long retreat with St. Alphonsus.
Father’s first night in Mexico City was a disturbing one. The capital was shaken by a 7.0 earthquake, accompanied by an eerie electrical storm of a bluish hue. That day the Mexican Supreme Court rendered a landmark decision favoring legalization of abortion. The old Feathered Serpent gods of the Aztecs have awakened, and are hungry for human life.
It is so up north as well. Demons grow bolder yet. One local doctor (pray for him), singled out for persecution, estimates that 300,000 have died from the vax worldwide. Locally, more sick come to the hospital for vax reactions than for this Plandemic. Nurses have quit or been fired for refusing the jab. Probably time to really pray, in a sacrificial way, lest more lives be offered up to the bloodthirsty government god. They are quite serious. So should we be. No one can confiscate from us our “secret weapon,” if only we’d use it. The Rosary prayer. See you tomorrow, too?
God bless you. Mary’s name be the blessing you wish for all.
– Bishop Dolan