Rest In Peace My Friend

 

A couple of weeks ago we were shooting together in a shotgun skeet throw down, what a lot of fun, all was well under the clear blue sky of Texas. But then today, just before Noonday Mass, I was forwarded an email, "Fr. Cantrell was found dead at his desk early this morning." Natural causes.

Fr. C was only 64, didn't smoke, unlike me, drank very little and kept fit, he loved the Camino and trained for it. More than that, he was a good man and a stalwart defender of the Catholic Cause in our part of God's Holy Church.

He was Master of SSC in its non-rainbow aspect in the US, no small feat, and a dam fine man and a good shot. I counted him as a friend. May he rest in peace and rise in glory.

Never Desert Never Surrender.

In Hoc Signo,

LSP

++++

This seems well appropriate, played by Mark Dwyer who coined the phrase Vatican II Empty The Pew:

Well played, Mark. Fr. C, may the angels guide you to paradise.

Ghostly Counsel

I find this helpful, you might too:

WHO has not sometimes thought: If I could see Jesus Christ as he was on this earth; if I could talk with him, if I could have certainty from those divine lips, and read assurance in those steady eyes, then I should lay hold of God.  So we think, but not so he teaches.  He is in the Supper Room, desiring in that last opportunity to enlighten his disciples' minds and to assure their faith.  But beyond a point he cannot.  He cannot teach them as fully, he says, as the Holy Ghost will teach them hereafter.  It is not so much the word of Jesus knocking at the mind's door that secures his admittance; it is the God within drawing the bolts with invisible fingers.  When your pride, he says, when your self-sufficiency has been shattered by the experience of my death, the Spirit will secure the admittance of all the truth you need to know.  And so it is: after half an hour's repentance before the cross of Christ, the Spirit shows us what years of study cannot discover, and what Christ present in the flesh might not avail to make us see. (Austin Farrer, Crown of the Year)

 

I can't and won't add to that.

God bless,

LSP

Myrtle Beach Adventure

There it  was, touchdown in Myrtle Beach, which is a resort town in South Carolina. But why? Because an old friend was being consecrated in the Orthodox Anglican Church and I flew out to support him. He's a good man and's had an interesting life.

art

Naval enlisted, went back in with a commission, did mysterious, arcane things, left to become a DC lawyer, left that to be a priest in the Anglican Continuing Church and's now a bishop. Well done, perhaps a movement from dark to light?

South Carolina bought the London Eye

Regardless, we set up at the Hampton Broadway, which is a hotel in a kind of ersatz boardwalk tourist development a mile or so from the actual beach, complete with artificial lake and everything else. I'd imagine the Broadway's an intolerable, heaving nightmare in season but it was pretty much empty this week, which was fine. 

Typical light house street scene

Stroll around around the little thematic shopping zones and wonder at the glory of it all as you ask, "Why is there a Japanese steakhouse in 'New England Village'?" Puzzled, swing by the Key West "Hangout," ask yourself why it's empty and how can they afford to keep this place running.

what a beautiful bridge

Baffled, take rum meets rum meets fruit juice solace at Margarataville before falling back to an RV at the hotel, life is good. The next day, go to your pal's consecration at a small mission church a few blocks away and feel genuinely blessed by the experience.

Morning after

No kidding, what a good exeat and our party was curiously military, one of the recently retired padres had had the honor of celebrating the Mass in Saddam's former palace. I'd say that was braggable.

consecration

And now? Back in the great state of Texas, which is a country in itself, and a good one. Off topic though it seems relevant, somehow. Never, ever, ever, ever give up. I say that most seriously.

Your Old Friend,

LSP

SSC

 

What a busy couple of days, driving from the safe haven of the North Central Exclusion Zone into the brawling streetfight that is the DFW Metrosprawl connurb, a Mega City larger than Connecticut itself, wherever that is. Why?

To go to the SSC provincial Synod, which is an assembly of priests dedicated to asserting Catholic Faith for our part of God's holy Church. We met in Southlake for worship, teaching and fellowship and it's been a great thing to meet up with brothers in the Faith.

Originally, the SSC began in England as a priestly society bound together by a common rule of life, to promote the Faith in its fullness, what did this look like? Glorious liturgy, yes, but with that the founders of the society were renowned, seriously, for their work amongst the poor of East London. Not least in the cholera epidemic of 1865.

That spirit's alive today. What does it mean to be an Anglican? we ask, and the answer's, "A Catholic Christian." With that goes the admonition, "I was hungry and you fed me," and, "Ye cannot serve God and Mammon."

So there you have it. Ma LSP returned from Wales today and was pleased to find her house burnished, clean and water on. We must take our victories, gentlemen and women, as we find them.

Your Old Pal,

LSP

Exaltation of The Holy Cross

 

Today's the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross and our province of the SSC (Society of the Holy Cross) met for the start of its annual Synod. Things started off with Evening Prayer followed by a Solemn High Mass and I tell you, there wasn't a single guitar playing nun or liturgical dancer in sight. Or a priestess, for that matter. They're not allowed.

Then it was time for dinner and a chance to get together with fellow clergy, what a good group of men. And let's be clear, they're priests and bishops who've stood and continue to stand firm for the Faith in the face of the rainbow apostates who appear to have taken over the Church. But appearances can be deceiving. Christ is King over the Church, his Body, and the Cross is his throne.

We should glory

in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,

for he is our salvation,

our life and our resurrection,

through him we are saved and made free.

God bless,

LSP

Hold The Fort

The sun was rising, Blue Perimeter was on the front porch, I was finishing off some coffee in the kitchen, and there was a voice, "Hey, Padre, where you at?" 

I looked 'round to see a rodeo buckle strolling in, "Dog didn't bite you?" Apparently not. "No, I just walked 'round him," said the cowboy, "Let's go to Fort Worth." 

And that's what we did, drove down I35W to the metrosprawl to elect a new bishop for the Diocese of Fort Worth. I know, you think "so what?" So a lot. 

Fort Worth  is the last Anglo-Catholic diocese of stature to remain standing against the libtransgay revolution that's doing its best to turn us into genderless satanic drones of the NWO.

We stood against that and elected Fr. Ryan Reed to be our next bishop. He's a good man, pray for him and his wife, Kathy.

This diocese will continue to stand firm and resolute for catholic truth.

Hold The Fort,

LSP

Our Lady of Guadalupe

Today's the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Patroness of the Americas, and we celebrate her appearance to Juan Diego and the miraculous Tilma. Many attribute the remarkable conversion of Mexico to this; I have a personal interest.

There I was, years ago, saying the evening Office in a church on the suburban ghetto side of the DC/Maryland border. It was my first US parish and I prayed fervently that God would grant us real Marian devotion. No, not the typical Anglican small-icon-in-a-corner, fine as that is, but the whole nine yards.

Note Shrine at Back of Church

Perhaps you know the kind of prayer, heartfelt and white knuckled as you like, and there it was. The next day I went over to church to say Morning Prayer and knelt down in the usual place, but out of the corner of my eye something seemed different. It was.

Over against the back wall of the church sat a statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe on a table, and not a small one either. This statue was a good four foot high and came complete with eyelashes. No kidding, the real deal.

A Typical Street Scene

It turns out some Mexicans had brought her over as an offering after I'd finished Evening Prayer. And there she was, La Guadalupana. Those of you who know what that means in an Anglican church without Marian devotion can imagine my reaction. But I'd prayed for it and found myself caught out!

In my last year in that parish, the infamous heretic bishop figure, John Chane, came to administer the Sacrament of Confirmation. He came with a couple of seminarians in tow from Virginia Theological Seminary, famous then for its lesbian ethics professor. 

All Rigged up For Easter And Solemn High Mass

I showed one of the seminarians around the sanctuary before Mass, and he asked in his bow-tied way if we had any "programs." I answered, "No, not especially," and he sat down in the benches, looking skeptical and annoyingly brainy. 

Thirty minutes later they began to arrive, at least 300 people and 35 confirmands; for goodness sake, it was standing room only and people spilled out onto the grounds.

Remember, Roman Catholics and big church Evangelicals, this is a lot for an Anglican church in Maryland. My bow-tied friend sat there, next to the banditos, and they were, meditating on the nature of the program. Well, you can't beat that old time religion.

A Statue

At the end of Mass, I directed heretic Chane to the Guadalupe shrine, where the people were 6 deep and in the spirit. He knelt down and lit a candle while I intoned the Regina Coeli. Moral of the story?

Don't underestimate the power of prayer and the intercession of Our Lady.

Ave,

LSP

Counter Revolution

Via Forward in Christ magazine:

Who will save Christian civilization with all its values and freedoms from the revolutionaries who want to destroy it?

The answer, of course, is the Church. As Belloc famously wrote, Europe is the Faith. The Faith, catholic Christianity, is at the foundation and heart of Western culture, it defines us and provides the necessary value to fight back against the anti-value of the destroyers.

“They build and we destroy,” says the Satanist Manasseh in Williams’ War in Heaven. Manasseh, in the grip of his hatred wasn’t wrong; the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, militant on earth, builds up with all the creative power of God Himself.

You can read the whole thing here if you like and while you're at it...

Out, Demons, Out,

LSP 

Anglo-Catholic As The Day Is Long

Keen-eyed readers of this popular mind blog might recall the oddity that is Anglo-Catholicism.

That's right, a movement that asserts catholicity for the Church of England and its various branches around the world. It started a while ago, with Pusey, Keble and Newman in Oxford, and spread.

Then in the '70s it went bust with the ordination of women. How could Anglicanism claim sacramental authenticity with the innovation? Not easy and its supporters didn't even try, it was all a matter of equal rights for a disenfranchised, oppressed "minority," women. 

Women are oppressed, runs the logic, because they can't have all the jobs men have. So hurry up, Nazis, and make them priests. The Anglican Church  in the West fell beneath the irresistible force of this powerful algorithm. And who can blame it. 

A creature of the state since Henry VIII, why should Anglicanism suddenly mutiny when its overlords start riding the rainbow?

For the most part it didn't, it embraced the rainbow, lovingly. But Anglo-Catholics held the line, protesting against all the odds that their denomination isn't a denomination at all but part of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church founded by Christ to be the Ark of Salvation.

We're at it today and you have to ask, is it a wasted effort? No, it's not. It's one small strike, to be sure, in the fight against evil and that's never a waste. On the contrary, it's a Gospel imperative.

 So, give up or hold the line? Ask Charles Martel.

STAND STEADY,

LSP

Drive To The Cathedral

Typical Fort Worth Street Scene

The experts tell us that you can gauge the ethos and spirit of a culture by its civic architecture. What does that tell us about Fort Worth? That we're a massive, inhuman, concrete and asphalt tangle of roads.

Take that as deeply or not as you like, but I won't pretend to like it. Apparently the City Fathers didn't get the memo, spaghetti junctions went out with the '70s.

St. Vincent's Campanile

I thought all this as I drove into the metrosprawl from the country for a meeting at St. Vincent's Cathedral and it made me miss England, not that that's perfect either. 

Someone once said that the English had destroyed more historical buildings after the War (#2) every year, than the Germans did throughout the entire Blitz. Good thing the National Socialists didn't have Lancasters and B17s.

Shoot It

Somber reflections on iconoclasm aside, it was good to be at the cathedral and meet with catholic-minded orthodox Anglicans. Good people working for a good cause, to assert catholicity for our part of the Church.

And that's a bold call, not least because the Anglo-Catholic movement's been pretty much defeated. Priestesses, liturgical dancers, tutu-endorsing Etonian Primates; throw a dart at the wall and hit a unicorn. You name it, they've captured the mainstream aspect of our church. But not at St. Vincent's. 

A clergyman

No dancers, no unicorns, no tutus, no fireman's helmets, just the catholic faith seen through the eyes of Anglicanism. Some might argue that's myopic, others might say that Rome wasn't built in a day.

Your Friend,

LSP

The Pyx And The Knife

I drove to Waco this morning. No, not to visit the truly awesome Silos but to take the Sacrament to a man in hospital. Two of his family were there and I brought Communion for them too.

It's a simple enough rite and I use elements from an old book called the English Ritual, a relic from the days when the Church of England hadn't been taken over by Mantis People and the Anglo-Catholic movement was just that, a movement.

Regardless, when it was time to administer the sacrament, the strangely outsize Hosts stuck in the pyx; they wouldn't exit the small made-in-China faux brass container. Solution? Whip out your folder, mine's a Cold Steel Recon 1, and pry the Hosts loose. Then the rite can continue.

Ecce Agnus Dei... "Behold the Lamb of God, behold him which taketh away the sins of the world," the small congregation replying, "Lord I am not worthy that thou should come under my roof but speak the word only and my soul shall be healed." 

Communion administered and final benediction given, I remarked that I'd never done such a thing before and I haven't. Using a knife to administer Communion to the Sick isn't in the manuals, not even the Knott variety, and I felt a little sacrilegious. "Don't worry," said C, "We're all country people here."

That reassured me, as does the knowledge that Christ's Body was given to his Mystical Body, there in that hospital room.

Make of this what you will.

God bless,

LSP

Mass and Aftermass

At the St. Michael's Conference Southwest you have the Mass.

And the Aftermass.

Blessed, praised, and adored be our Lord Jesus Christ upon His throne of glory in heaven, in the most holy Sacrament of the Altar, and in the hearts of His faithful people. Amen.

Unleash the power of the Western Rite.

LSP

Hope And Change

Hide That Paten

No clowns, no gender fluid priestesses, no goofy liturgical dancers, no progleft comsymp tomfoolery masquerading as Christianity, just the Gospel, the Faith once delivered and the our best shot at unleashing the power of the Western Rite.

Don't be a Hippy or a Witch, Kids

That's the St. Michael's Conference Southwest, and the kids love it, a lot. It's a privilege to staff it for a week.

God bless,

LSP

Anglo-Catholics, This One's For You. A Confession

I know it's terribly confusing, but there's a movement, or a shadow of a movement, within Anglicanism that asserts catholicity for our part of the church. Scripture, creeds, sacraments, apostolic tradition, piety, liturgy, salvation, the nature of the church herself, all these and more are viewed and believed in through a catholic lens.

Now, as a part of this movement, such as it is today, I have a confession to make -- and yes, make yours before Christmas, if you can -- there was a time, not so long ago in the greater scheme of things, when I felt that if I didn't have this:

St. Nicholas du Chardonnet

I wasn't somehow cutting it. But I got this:

Rural missions in Texas. Not shrines in Boston, New York, Philly, Chicago, or even Texas, for that matter. And you know what, I don't feel shortchanged for a moment.

Don't get me wrong, I love a Solemn High Mass as much as I loathe, scorn and despise liturgical dance, or the monstrous regiment of priestesses, women bishop figures and associated clowns. But here's the thing -- don't let yourself become that most ridiculous and pathetic of creatures, a church snob. God will surprise you. In my case, that's been for the good.

Don't Teacup, Fool

In related news, I've reminded the bishop that it'd make a lot of sense to put a new rule in place regarding postulants for ordination. Viz. If you can't ride and you don't shoot, you can't get in.

That is all.

Your Old Pal,

LSP

Emergency!!

I'd no sooner driven to Fort Worth with my old pal Colonel N, and registered for a conference, when he became violently sick and had to be carted off to the Emergency Room at Harris Methodist.

Five hours or so later he was feeling better, unlike the eastbound traffic on I30, which is like an out of control fast train to Tartarus.

Let's pray this isn't a metaphor for the Anglo-Catholic Movement in North America.

Cheers,

LSP

St. Michael's Conference 2015

I'm teaching at the St. Michael's Conference, Southwest, and get to be MC at the event's liturgy. We have a lot of that, daily Morning Prayer, Solemn High Mass, Solemn Evensong and Compline. Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament too, on Wednesday; so there's no shortage of worship.

We have 84 kids this year, and 26 counselors and clergy. It's a bit of an Anglo-Catholic "Basic", or boot camp, and very powerful.

But there's no trans naming ceremonies, no  Gaia goddess worship, no clown liturgies, no goofy nuns getting Wiccan around peace poles, no liturgical dance, or whatever.

There is the Faith, and I'll post more as I get the time.

God bless,

LSP

Another Good Sunday

A crazed peacock was sounding off in the neighbor's backyard, roosters were crowing, goats were making the noise they do and it wasn't easy to collect my thoughts over the racket. But it was a good racket. "This place is turning into some kind of petting zoo," I thought, reflecting on the day's Gospel in which the risen Christ reveals Himself along the road to Emmaus and its terminus. He did so in Word and Sacrament; He does so today and therein lies the solution to Peter's cry, "Save yourselves from this crooked generation."

What a Disaster

Speaking of crooked, Gene Robinson, the most famous gay bishop in the world, ever, has divorced his not-so-life-partner, Mark. Hunh.

More seriously, LL is writing a series of "shorts", mostly fictional. But this one isn't; he calls it Hungry, I call it Let Them Eat Snake (sorry LL) and it starts like this:

It's impossible to communicate the nature of physical exhaustion to those who have not experienced it. There were three of us...

Do yourself a favor and read the whole thing here (it's short) and stay tuned for Solstice in Austin.

I Want This Building

That aside, the Missions were on good form, marked by fervency and reverence, not just for guns and horses, but also for Christ in the revealed Word and the Sacrament of the Altar. I always leave the Mass uplifted, here in the Missions; I tell you, I did so especially today.

God bless,

LSP