CAPG's Blog 

Far from the world, far from delight,
Distinguishing not day from night ;
Vowed to one sacrifice of all
The happy things, that men befall ;
Pleading one sacrifice, before
Whom sun and sea and wind adore;
Far from earth's comfort, far away,
We cry to God, we cry and pray
For men, who have the common day.

Dance, merry world! and sing: but we.
Hearing, remember Calvary:
Get gold, and thrive you ! but the sun
Once paled ; and the centurion
Said : This dead man was Gods own Son,
Think you, we shrink from common toil,
Works of the mart, works of the soil ;
That, prisoners of strong despair,
We breathe this melancholy air;
Forgetting the dear calls of race,
And bonds of house, and ties of place;
That, cowards, from the field we turn.
And heavenward, in our weakness, yearn?
Unjust! unkind! while you despise
Our lonely years, our mournful cries:
You are the happier for our prayer;

The guerdon of our souls, you share.
Not in such feebleness of heart,
We play our solitary part;
Not fugitives of battle, we
Hide from the world, and let things be:
But rather, looking over earth,
Between the bounds of death and birth ;
And sad at heart, for sorrow and sin.

We wondered, where might help begin.
And on our wonder came God's choice,
A sudden light, a clarion voice,
Clearing the dark, and sounding clear :
And we obeyed: behold us, here!
In prison bound, but with your chains:
Sufferers, but of alien pains.

Merry the world, and thrives apace.
Each in his customary place:
Sailors upon the carrying sea.
Shepherds upon the pasture lea,
And merchants of the town ; and they,
Who march to death, the fighting way;
And there are lovers in the spring.
With those, who dance, and those, who sing:
The commonwealth of every day.
Eastward and westward, far away.
Once the sun paled; once cried aloud
The Roman, from beneath the cloud:
This day the Son of God is dead!
Yet heed men, what the Roman said?
They heed not : we then heed for them,

The mindless of Jerusalem ;
Careless, they live and die : but we
Care, in their stead, for Calvary.
O joyous men and women! strong,
To urge the wheel of life along.
With strenuous arm, and cheerful strain,
And wisdom of laborious brain:
We give our life, our heart, our breath,
That you may live to conquer death;
That, past your tomb, with souls in health,
Joy may be yours, and blessed wealth;
Through vigils of the painful night.
Our spirits with your tempters fight:
For you, for you, we live alone.
Where no joy comes, where cold winds moan:
Nor friends have we, nor have we foes ;
Our Queen is of the lonely Snows.
Ah! and sometimes, our prayers between.
Come sudden thoughts of what hath been :
Dreams! And from dreams, once more we fall
To prayer : God save, Christ keep, them all.
And thou, who knowest not these things,
Hearken, what news our message brings!
Our toils, thy joy of life forgot:
Our lives of prayer forget thee not.

Source: Dreams and Images: An Anthology of Catholic Poets by Joyce Kilmer (Boni and Liveright, 1917) p109

O Maid conceive without a stain,
O Mother bright and fair,
Come thou within our hearts to reign,
And grace shall triumph there.
Hail, Mary, ever undefiled!
Hail, Queen of purity!
O make thy children chaste and mild,
and turn their hearts to thee.

Thou art far purer than the snow,
Far brighter than the day;
Thy beauty none on earth can know,
No tongue of men can say.
O Mother of all mothers blest,
Who soothest every grief,
In thee the weary find their rest,
And anguished hearts relief.

O then for us, thy children, plead;
Thy pity we implore,
That we, from sin and sorrow freed,
May love thee more and more.
Hail, Mary, ever undefiled!
Hail, Queen of purity!
O make thy children chaste and mild,
and turn their hearts to thee.

Source: Manual of the Sodality of the Blessed Virgin Mary 1893

"Mary is the model of all Christian womanhood. Women are endowed by the Creator with fine sensibilities and a most noble love. They are meant to be the inspiration of men. If the ideal of womankind is high, if she is exalted in men's estimation, if she is loved for her virtue, then the opportunity for good that is afforded mankind is tremendously great.

Paganism degraded womanhood and robbed her of her native dignity with which the Creator had endowed her. Mary's advent into the world, bringing the Savior of mankind, changed all that. She is "our tainted nature's solitary boast." But alas, the new days of paganism are with us. This time again, the sad opportunity is afforded women to step down. A changing world in the guise of emancipation offers womankind an opportunity to lower her standards, to degrade her dignity, to debase her prerogatives for childbearing and motherhood.

The Church has through the centuries watched over and guided the noble prerogatives of womankind, not because the Church bestowed these sacred rights, but because she preserves what has been restored through our Lady and the Redemption. When woman is an ideal, man is, strictly speaking, a builder of the spirit. He builds within himself the great edifice of a spiritual character where the Holy Spirit dwells as in a temple. When woman is an ideal, men build homes, and children are received as the hope of a better world. The boy is looked up to so that he will carry on and build again as did his father, and the girl is cherished as the sweet daughter and mirror of the wife whose inward beauty grows more graceful with the passing years.

But the new paganism is threatening again! It is, of course, always in the name of emancipation women are to be freed from the very duties that make them beautiful with a lasting beauty - motherhood and sharing in creation!

Women are meant to be builders, too, in the strictest sense of the term. They are the heart of the home. It is through then that men learn to live and to love great ideals and to build character. It is through the mother, definitely closer to the child than any other living human, that young habits and fine characters are formed. Women are the cornerstone of civilization in this respect. They are the hope of the world! "The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world."

Anyone who calls himself a Christian and a follower of Christ must think often of the Mother of Our Blessed Savior who was closest to Him all through the years that led up to Calvary. Anyone who respects women must know that it was Mary's role in Christian history to place women on the high pedestal they now enjoy. Anyone who has forebodings regarding the changes in our modern world will go to Mary and fervently pray that the rights, spiritual rights, of women be preserved, that they become modern Bethlehem's in which Christ comes to dwell and not worldly inns that refuse children's birth.

None of us can live through a social revolution and come out of it unchanged ourselves. The world changing simply means that men and women of our day are changing. We must hold fast to Christian ideals, particularly the ideal of womankind as it come to us from our Savior and from His Blessed Mother. If we loose this ideal, if women degrade themselves, they are not meeting, as we would have them meet the challenge of a pagan world. They are succumbing! They are delivering themselves to the enemies of Christian civilization. They are undoing the work of Redemption. They are despising our Lady. That is unthinkable! Women are the builders of a more secure world, where men may live as brothers because they have a common Father and a Blessed Mother.

Prayer: Our Lady of the hills and the valleys, look down from your throne in heaven an intercede with God in our behalf. As we live in a vale of tears preparing for the day when we may ascend the hill of heaven, pray for us, O Mary, that we may be worthy of the promises of Christ.

Intercede with God, that we may in imitation of you, follow Jesus along the way, though it be sorrowful - via dolorosa - out to the clear blue of the day, all the way up the hill, like you, to Calvary. We are sinners, like Magdalene. Accept us into your company. Few of us are like John, the beloved disciple. None of us is like you. Teach us to love Calvary and to see the sweet wood of the cross upon which hangs the Redeemer and our hope for eternal life."

Source: Spiritual Steps to Christmas by Very Rev. Msgr. Aloysius Coogan 1953

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Prayer for the Bishops

O Jesus, Prince of Pastors, Shepherd and Bishop of our souls, give our bishops  all those virtues, which they need for their sanctification! May they watch over themselves and the entire flock, with which the Holy Spirit has entrusted them! Fill their hearts with Thine own Spirit! Give them faith, charity, wisdom and strength! Send them faithful co-laborers in the great work of saving and guiding souls! Make them shepherds after Thine own heart, living only for their holy office, fearing nobody but Thee, and hoping for nothing but Thee, in order that when Thou shalt come, to judge shepherds and flocks, they may obtain the unfading reward of eternal life! Amen Imprimatur: Most Rev. Vincent S. Waters, D.D. Raleigh, N.C. March 25, 1956

Enough the blood of victims flowed of old,
The shadows pass, and legal offerings;
Now higher Ministries, Thou, Lord, dost mold,
On which a holier shade Thy Priesthood flings.

Elias from the Heavens called down the flame;
One Greater than Elias, hid from sight,
Is here, obedient to His awful Name;
Of Him we make the dread memorial Rite.

Great Office, the mysterious Cup to bear,
In which the guilty world’s Salvation lies,
And with our trembling hands, full of deep fear,
To offer up the Bloodless Sacrifice.

Oh, more than all to ancient Prophets given,
More than to Angels, if but understood,
That in our trembling hands the God of Heaven
Doth give Himself to be our Spirits’ Food.

Grant, Christ, that we, fulfilling Thy Commands,
Of Thy blest Presence may approach the Seat,
With hearts by Thee made pure, and holy hands;
May love for Thy dread Altars make us meet.

Son of th’Eternal Father, God above,
May all the world beneath Thy Feet adore,
Who sendest down the Spirit, with Thy Love
Thy Priesthood to anoint for evermore.

Source: Lyra Eucharistica : hymns and verses on the Holy Communion, ancient and modern ; with other poems by Shipley, Orby, 1832-1916

Breathe not his honored name,

Silently keep it.

Hushed be the saddening theme,

In secrecy weep it.

Call not a warmer flow

To eyes that are aching:

Wake not a deeper throe

In hearts that are breaking.

Oh! “tis a placid rest;

Who could deplore it?

Trance of the pure and blest,

Angels watch o’er it!

Sleep of his mortal night,

Sorrow can’t break it;

Heaven’s own morning light

Alone shall awake it.

Noble thy course is run;

Splendour is round it.

Bravely thy fight is won,

Freedom hath crowned it

In the high warfare

Of heaven grown hoary,

Thou art gone like the summer sun,

Shrouded in glory.

Twine, twine the victor’s wreath,

Spirits that meet him!

Sweet songs of triumph breather,

Seraphs that greet him!

From his high resting-place

Who shall him sever?

With his God, face to face,

Leave him forever.

Source: Messenger of the Sacred Heart, 1891.

Athwart the sky dun clouds came drearily:
I saw friends gently lower into earth,
The blessed one who dowered me with birth;
With Christ I seemed in lone Gethsemane,
Who said: This cross of grief, I give to thee.
Of earthly joys, today, how great the dearth!
My faith transforms all sorrows, into mirth,
'Twas hers; she gave Me, thee; give her to Me.

Dear Lord, when I, in Holy Sacrifice,
Thy Precious Blood will shed with mystic knife,
Extinguish with it Purgatory's fire;
Thus aidance give, my mother's soul to rise
From out her prison to eternal life,
To gaze fore'er on Thee, her heart's desire.

Source: Sonnets an other verses, Rev. Fr. Francis A. Gaffney, O.P. 1916

conferred with the formula
«We baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit»

QUESTIONS

First question: Whether the Baptism conferred with the formula «We baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit» is valid?

Second question: Whether those persons for whom baptism was celebrated with this formula must be baptized in forma absoluta?

RESPONSES

To the first question: Negative.

To the second question: Affirmative.

The Supreme Pontiff Francis, at the Audience granted to the undersigned Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, On June 8, 2020, approved these Responses and ordered their publication.

Rome, from the Offices of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, June 24, 2020, on the Solemnity of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist.

Luis F. Card. Ladaria, S.I.
Prefect

Source: Vatican Press

There are honors high and worthy,
That the world may prize to see,
There are kings before whose scepter,
Proudlings bend their will and knee;
There is power to chain the captives,
or to bid them go released,
But there's one with higher honor,
and with power divine - the priest.

There are hands whose deeds of valor,
or whose works of skill so grand,
Have the world's applaudits challenged,
Meed of praise they could command,
But the works of God's anointed
Higher stand - yes, e'en the least;
He can free sin's helpless captives,
Satan's chains breaks he - the priest.

There are voices at whose summons
Men arise and men obey,
There are voices to whose power,
To Whose charms men homage pay.
But there is a voice whose power
Brings the King from Heaven's feast
To repose upon our altars,
'Tis the voice of him - the priest.

There are years with merit laden,
Years that sweetest joys afford -
They are years of faithful service
In the vineyard of the Lord
Honor highest, power greatest,
Souls absolved, from sin released,
Hands that hold the God of heaven,
Yes, all these can claim - the priest.

Source: Our Young People 1916

Ye would not sit at ease while meek men kneel
Did ye but see His face shine though the veil,
And the unearthly forms that round you steal,
Hidden in beauteous light, splendent or pale
As the rich Service leads. And prostrate faith
Shroudeth her timorous eye, while through the air
Hovers and hands the Spirit's cleansing Breath
In Whitsun shapes o'er each true worshiper.
Deep wreaths of Angels, burning from the East,
Around the consecrated Shrine are braced,
The awful Stone where by fit hands are placed
The Flesh and Blood of the tremendous Feast.
But kneel - the priest upon the Altar-stair
Will bring a blessing out of Sion there.

Source: Poems by Fr. Frederick W. Faber

That such a Power should live and breather, doth seem
A thought from which men fain would be relieved,
A grandeur not to be endured, a dream
Darkening the souls, though it be unbelieved.
August conception! far above king, law,
Or popular right; how calmly doth thou draw
Under thine awful shadow mortal pain,
And joy not mortal! Witness of a need
Deep laid in man, and therefore pierced in vain,
As though thou wert no form that thou shouldst bleed!
While such a power there lives in old man's shape,
Such and so dread, should not his mighty will
And supernatural presence, godlike fill
The air we breathe, and leave us no escape?

Source: Poems by Fr. Frederick W. Faber