Sunday, May 22, 2022

(NEW) THE WAY

 

                                                                                           CARDINAL ROBERT SARAH


Quoted approvingly in his book "PRISON JOURNAL VOL.3 " by His Eminence George Cardinal Pell, is this extract from  "the Day Is Now Far Spent" by His Eminence Robert Cardinal  Sarah, is this compelling passage"



"The evil of efficient activism has infiltrated everywhere.We seek to imitate the organization of big business.We forget that prayer alone is the blood that can course through the heart of the Church ......Someone who no longer prays has already betrayed.Already he is willing to make all sorts of compromises with the world.He is walking on the path of Judas."   ( Page 11 "The Day Is Now Far Spent." Ignatius Press.



His Eminence George Cardinal Pell

These are words to arrest every Catholic, and especially Clergy and Seminarians or intending Seminarians.

Monday, March 21, 2022

( PAST ) 1912 HEROIC CATHOLIC PRIESTS TITANIC ..."BERGS, GROWLERS AND FIELD ICE"

They did not know the day or the hour :: our three Heroic Catholic Priests did not know that on Sunday the
14th April, 1912 they had celebrated their last Holy Masses.


"Every Mass as if it is your first....
 Every Mass as if it is your last.."


WARNINGS
At 9.00 a.m. the CARONIA, headed in the opposite direction, informed TITANIC of "bergs, growlers and field ice"ahead. And at 20 minutes to 12.00 the NOORDAM advises "much ice"in the same position. At 18 Minutes to 2.00 pm the BALTIC signals icebergs and field ice 250 miles ahead. Three minutes later the German AMERIKA reports passing 2 large icebergs.At 7.30pm the CALIFORNIAN reports 3 large icebergs sighted - this message is NOT posted in TITANIC or passed to Captain Smith.At 9.30 pm MESABA reports heavy pack ice and large icebergs encountered.
 

ON WATCH
At 10.00pm the Watches are relieved. First Officer Mr. Murdoch relieves Second Officer Mr, Lightoller on the Bridge. And  Frederick Fleet and Reginald Lee take up their duty as Forward Lookouts instructed to watch for small ice and growlers.They will be witnesses to History.

1 Hour and 39 minutes later they see the Iceberg.  Three times they ring the Bridge warning bell and telephone "Iceberg , right ahead!
 

REACTION
"The response is electrifying for the crew : First Officer Murdoch orders down the voice pipe to the Engineroom "All engines Stop"as the bells of the Engineroom Telegraph are repeating the message, this is quickly followed by "Full Astern", but the great piston engines and the centre shaft turbine cannot just switch on and off. It takes time for the great pistons to stop turning the crankshafts, before the engines can be reversed, and the turbine driving the centre propeller cannot be reversed - turbines being what they are. 

At the same time Mr . Murdoch has roared at the Helmsman : "Hard a'Starboard!"because he wants the ship to turn to Port away from the Iceberg now seen on the Starboard side of the bow. Now this may sound very odd, but in TITANIC'S day ( but not for long afterwards) this had always been the case since the days of sail. For in those sailing days the rudder worked in just that way as it had when earlier ships were steered by long oar- like rudders- to go to Port you leant on or pushed it right and vice versa.. Sailors being great Traditionalists did not change the traditional orders even when the steering mechanisms changed.

37 Seconds after the warning to the Bridge, the 60feet tall Iceberg struck TITANIC abaft the Starboard bow and, it was later discovered, slit her open below the water line across several water tight compartments. Ice sprays across the deck. The great ship gives a slight tremble but continues ahead. Not for long. Captain Smith has been stirred from his sea cabin and orders all engines stopped. He orders an immediate assessment of the damage, if any. Mr.Andrews the Designer is on hand to judge the results - to everyone's surprise he announces that the ship cannot be saved. This is surprising because at this stage her situation does not seem alarming at all. She is a little down by the bows, but surely the pumps... He is polite but brutal in describing the rate at which she is taking water and how the watertight compartment are transverse only(there are none running fore and aft) and they do not rise vertically through all decks, allowing water , once it fills one compartment to flow over to fill the next and so on steadily pushing TITANIC under the surface. In essence she had been designed to deal with a head on collision but the slitting of her side had not been envisioned at all.

At 12.05 am on Monday Morning the Captain orders the Lifeboats uncovered.The White Star Line had reduced the number of Lifeboats Mr.Andrews had provided for, to avoid cluttering the deck. As result , there were not nearly enough Lifeboats for all on board. At 12.10 am Monday TITANIC sends out her first distress call by Morse Code : "CQD MGY SOS". CQD Was the old international distress signal.  MGY was TITANIC 's identifying code and SOS was the recently introduced international distress signal.

At 12.25pm "Women and Children "were ordered into the Lifeboats. Whilst some deluded themselves into thinking this was a drill, for the majority the terrible reality took hold.
 

   BLESS ME FATHER..

 

Now our Heroic Catholic Priests could see what was happening they each gathered to them their separate language groups and anyone who cared to join them. They led them in prayer , a group one of the priests lead in saying the Rosary was surrounded for a time by jeering anti-Catholic passengers. They heard Confessions and as the numbers grew and the situation became more desperate as the great vessel sank by the bows and her stern commenced to rise, they gave general absolutions to all penitents.They are each recorded in the numerous testimonies of witnesses at Inquiries in England and in the United States as continuing their ministry to the last and each refusing to accept a place in the Lifeboats when it was pressed upon them. Each of the bodies of the three Priests was never recovered, or if one or more was, it was unidentifiable.There are hundreds of victims of the great ship's loss in Heaven to-day, the 99th Anniversary of that terrible and truly tragic event, because of the Holy and Heroic sacrifice of the three '" other Christs ."

At 2.20 am the icy sea closed over the last of the stern of the sunken TITANIC.

Fathers Byles , Peruschitz and Montvila Pray for us to the Lord Our God to deliver His peopleall from  harm.


( PAST ) 1912 HEROIC CATHOLIC PRIESTS TITANIC EVENTS MOVE SWIFTLY

 



At 6 .30pm that same day, Wednesday, after an uneventful crossing of the Channel, TITANIC lay off  CHERBOURG, FRANCE. Two tenders bring out her  passengers, and, at. 8.10 p.m. she is underway again and headed for Queenstown (now Cobh) in Ireland.


On Thursday 11th April, at 11.30 am just before Lunch TITANIC arrives in all her splendour off Queenstown, once again she cannot dock because of her draught, but anchors in the roadstead about 2 miles from the shore and the tenders Ireland and America bring out her passengers , luggage and mail. One tender takes away at least one passenger, our Jesuit Seminarian, Mr Francis Browne. He must have been devastated, for he had been offered by a wealthy American couple, a free passage to the United States . But a telegraphic request to his Provincial gained the following terse reply "GET OFF THAT SHIP". God was at work, saving the future Father Francis Browne Military Cross winner for his heroic work among the dying on the battlefields of World War I, all that was required was Mr.Browne's adherence to Religious Obedience. And he had freely given it.

By 1.40 pm TITANIC had all loaded and she set off for New York City the fabled destination in the New World



The last photograph of R.M.S. TITANIC afloat. 

 

On Friday April 12th, the Marconi Wireless operators were busy sending and receiving Morse code messages. The incomings were often congratulations on her maiden voyage from other vessels. Some of them mentioned ice in the sea lanes.

 

 

 

 

 

 


Wednesday, February 16, 2022

" PAST " HEROIC CATHOLIC PRIESTS R.M.S. TITANIC "WELCOME ABOARD"

Ninety -nine years ago to-day, R.M.S. TITANIC commenced taking on her full crew in Southampton.All officers ( except Captain Smith) had spent the night aboard. From 5.18 a.m. a continuing stream of crew members came aboard. At 6.00 a.m. Thomas Andrews the Ship's Designer came aboard and Captain  Smith boarded at 7.00 a.m.

 

 Passengers then commenced boarding including our three Heroic Catholic Priests and our holidaying Seminarian ( see our Post 15 th March,2011 "Saved for War"). The process of receiving all passengers had to be accomplished in a few short hours, for TITANIC was due to sail for Cherbourg , France to collect more passengers.She would leave at 12.00 Noon. All of the passengers had to be checked in, shown their cabin allocation and any hold luggage struck below."There was not a moment to lose"as an earlier sailor used to say.

Father Thomas Byles

 Father Thomas Byles (Second Class Ticket 244310 cost 13 Pounds) was an Englishman and a convert received into the Church in 1894.His Father was an Evangelical Minister. Thomas Byles entered the Seminary in 1899 at the Baeda College in Rome and was ordained Priest 0n 15th June, 1902. He was reputed as a fine Preacher, and an accomplished Teacher and Boxing Instructor for the boys in his Parish School at Ongar. It was agreed that he could celebrate Holy Mass in the Second Class Lounge - God, being a Catholic was apparently not welcome in First Class



Father Juozas Montevila was a Lithuanian by birth, but his country was then part of Czarist Russia. Juozas studied for the Priesthood at the Seminary at Seinai which is now part of Poland.On 22nd March, 1908 he was ordained Priest. The exercise of his Priestly ministry was complicated by the persecution of the Czarist police. For Father Montvila was attempting to secretly minister to the Ukrainian Catholics whom the Czarist authorities were trying to suppress on account of their communion with the Holy See. The authorities made the situation impossible, so that Father Montvila was effectively forced to emigrate if he was to exercise his Priestly ministry at all .

Father Joseph Benedikt Peruschitz O.S.B.
 
Father Joseph Benedikt Peruschitz ( holder of Second Class Ticket 237393) had paid his 13 Pounds fare in order to take up an appointment in the United States. He was a German, a Bavarian to be precise, and was born on 21st March, 1871. He entered the Seminary in 1890 and , in 1894, he entered the Benedictine Order at the monastery of Scheyern He was ordained Priest on 28th April, 1895 - the Feast of Saint Paul of the Cross.

So,the great drama opened , at 12.00 TITANIC was set in motion after her lines had been cast off. Her departure was not without incident, as the tremendous cavitation of her three giant propellers sucked the adjoining S.S. New York toward her , but the situation was quickly taken in hand and she was on her way. She carried with her a secret from the public at large, and from her passengers - a fire was burning in one of her coal bunkers - such things were not uncommon - but efforts to extinguish it were not successful yet.
 
Events would be allowed to take their course, but the good God had his "other Christs" in place to take care of those who could not remotely guess what was about to overtake them.
 

Tuesday, February 15, 2022

" PAST " EN KINDLED

A knock at the door on Friday, the UPS Man hands me a light weight box , and I am catapulted into the outer regions of the electronic "envelope"!!


Thanks to the amazing generosity of my daughter Justine, and her husband Paul, I am now the proud and enthusiastic owner of a KINDLE 3G E-Reader. Stunning ! Imagine carrying around an item the size of a small format Paperback, capable of containing 3,500 books and able to facilitate search within any one or all of them, that remembers what page you are up to in the one's you are reading etc., etc.

Needless to say I am immeasurably grateful, and impatient to extend the library to facilitate my reading and reference work for my Blogs and FOUNDATION.One of my early coups has been to load Whiston's Complete Works of Flavius Josephus for about $5-00 - the paperback of one of his works costs $ 34 !
Let me know if I get boring about Kindle - but the possibilities! Already I am re-reading in the Kindle Edition "The Passion and Death of Our Lord Jesus Christ"by Archbishop Alban Goodier S.J. and reading for the first time the Autobiography of Ulysses S. Grant- just as terrific a read as my Brother-in -Law Tony Hannon said it is!

" PAST " ANOTHER ECUMENICAL PROBLEM SOLVED

 

 

OUTGOING - Bishop William Malone of Maitland - Newcastle Diocese.

 

The Holy Father has announced the resignation of Bishop William Malone of Maitland-Newcastle Diocese and the appointment of Father William Wright Parish Priest of Liverpool in his stead.

Bishop Malone 's ecumenical adventures with the local Anglican Bishop verged on the truly weird and at the outer edge were suppressed by the Holy See as soon as announced and before they could come into effect. Bishop Malone's actions were an embarrassment to any well-informed Catholic, yet he had his "isn't he nice "supporters too, not to mention salaried nuns pushing the same un Catholic line as the Bishop.

Father William Wright has had his share of tough assignments including Parish Priest of Moree with all its Aboriginal problems for several years and Parish Priest of Sutherland South of Sydney which had its own particular problems in the past.

It will no doubt take some time to get the Diocese back on track after cleaning out the stables.

" PAST " SUNDAY MASS A VERY AUSTRALIAN CONGREGATION

 

St.Stephen's Cathedral, Brisbane, Australia

 

 

The 10.00 a.m. Mass at St.Stephen's Cathedral Brisbane is always a solemn occasion, supported by the singing of the Cathedral Choir. Yesterday, Laetare Sunday or Rose Sunday was no exception.

The Mass was celebrated by Rev. Father Paul Chandler O.Carm. who is the Spiritual Director of Holy Spirit Seminary.and Lecturer in Church History. His celebration of Holy Mass was exemplary in devotion, love of the Liturgy and comportment. It was his misfortune to supply on Rose Sunday which caused him to wear the vestments acquired last year - they are not a success. The colour is a light salmony pink, and not the proper liturgical Rose and the cut (in the Gothic style)is ludicrously full. When the Dean first wore them last year, people found difficulty in suppressing mirth and sought to avoid eye contact. Small wonder the Dean was not about this time.Father Chandler's homily was excellent dealing with the miracle of the blind man cured by Jesus,  carefully and thoroughly going beyond the required reading to the full account in the Gospels to develop the lesson . He made the point that the continuing blind people were those who would not see God made man before their very eyes, something the cured blind man was well able and willing to do.

Here we had a near ideal celebration of Holy Mass, save for the standard Cathedral offence of consecrating the wine in a silver jug from which the Precious Blood is later poured into mini Chalices ( about the size and shape of a birdbath champagne glass - but these are Silver) - this pouring is FORBIDDEN in "Redemptionis Sacramentum".

But the other interesting aspect of the 10.00 a.m. Mass is always the composition of the congregation .It is a very Australian congregation representing most nations on Earth it seems, at the least every Continent is well -represented. There are a few sprinkled grey haired Anglo-Celts like us, a Mexican, Italians, Slavs, Ukrainians, Indonesians, Malays, Singaporeans, Japanese, South Koreans, Chinese of several regions, North Americans, Chileans, Africans of several regions, Scots, Irish, English,Indians and on and on. It is a pleasure to make one's thanksgiving after Holy Communion at anytime, but it is doubled when one can make it with our brethren and fellow citizens from around the world. We are indeed the lucky country.And Thank God, we know it and cherish the reality.