New banner for the Cafeteria is Closed

I laughed out loud when I saw the new banner that Gerald Augustinus has for his brilliant blog The Cafeteria is Closed.

Check his blog daily if you don't already.

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On the Attempted Cancellation of Father Zuhlsdorf

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Since the US election, Fr Zuhlsdorf has been subjected to a concerted attack from some liberal catholic publications. This would not be noteworthy except for the fact that as a result, he has been asked to move from the diocese where he currently works and has now to find accommodation. It is therefore reasonable to speak of an attempt to “cancel” him as the saying is nowadays. The Character of Fr Z’s Blog As an outspoken blogger, Fr Z is accustomed to opposition from Catholics who object to his promotion of the traditional Latin Mass, gays who object to his unequivocal defence of Catholic moral teaching, and modernist priests and theologians whose theology he criticises for being contrary to the magisterial teaching of the Church. In the online “wild west” of the blogosphere, he is happy to give as good as he gets. This makes his blog enjoyable for his followers and probably annoying for his opponents. At the same time, of
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Recommended Basic Spiritual Reading for Lent

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Someone asked if I would recommend some reading for Lent. Here goes! On such matters I generally try not to be original and instead to introduce good Catholics to classic spiritual works in case they have not come across them. If you have read all the below, you are probably in a good position to find other worthwhile reading yourself. But if these are books that you haven’t read, then any one of them would be a potential life changer. And if you have read them all, you will probably know that they are all worth reading again. Most of these books are readily available as books with paper and glue, books that go on your e-reader, web pages, and pdf versions. I don’t have so much experience of audio books but my guess would be that they are now all around in that format too. Over the past couple of years I have gravitated more and more to the Internet Archive  which I now use in lieu of a library, with the help of a Kindle Fire 10 which makes pdfs readable. And do not forget the excel
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How to make an act of perfect contrition

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How can you go from imperfect to perfect contrition? Gabriella D from Australia asked me this on Twitter today and I want to give an answer because I think that many people misunderstand what we mean when we talk about “perfect contrition.” Perfect contrition is sorrow and detestation of sin arising out of the love of God. One way of exciting this contrition in our hearts is by considering the passion of Jesus Christ and making acts of love for Him. We can also think of the infinite love which God has for us, and express sorrow in our heart in the presence of this great love which we have offended. Imperfect contrition is sorrow and detestation for sin arising from a consideration of the ugliness of sin or out of the fear of hell. Disgust at the ugliness of sin is more common today than fear of hell. That is because we do not preach enough, or with sufficient conviction about the four last things. If a person commits an act of impurity, for example, perhaps by deliberately
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St Matthias, the Cursing Psalms, and the Universal Mission of the Church

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When chanting the epistle at Mass for the feast of St Matthias, I must confess to being amused at the part where Saint Peter says, “Let their habitation become desolate, and let there be none to dwell therein. And his bishopric let another take.” (Acts 1:20) The prince of the Apostles first quotes verse 26 of Psalm 69 which is one of the many verses of various psalms that were omitted in the modern Liturgy of the Hours , and secondly verse 8 of Psalm 108, which is one of the three psalms that were omitted in their entirety. The General Instruction on the Liturgy of the Hour s explains that “Such omissions are made because of certain psychological difficulties” (n.131) I hope that you did not become depressed or neurotic during the epistle. St Peter applies these verses to Judas because He betrayed Our Lord. He then explains to the 120 or so men and women, including the apostles and Our Lady, that they must choose someone to tak
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Absurd anti-Catholic claim in China merits Tertullian's satirical response

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The website of the Society of St Pius X has a useful news service which often picks up stories that do not feature elsewhere. Today this story caught my eye: " China: Catholics Accused of Spreading the Coronavirus ". The WeChat and Weibo messaging services have a novel conspiracy theory, that the new wave of Covid-19 is the fault of the Catholic faithful being gathered together by "foreign priests" in the Hebei province. The SSPX article quotes AsiaNews, a widely respected source from The Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions, originally in Italian, which has had an English and Chinese edition since 2003. Their article " Hebei, Christians labelled ‘spreaders’. The return of Nero " has more detail. The reference to Nero recalls how he set fire to Rome and then blamed the Christians. Perhaps even more relevant is the exasperated satire of Tertullian in his Apologeticum (c.40). It fits quite well. For those who read Latin, it would be wrong to negle
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