We met each other in 3rd grade in St. Catherine of Siena school in Oak Park IL in 1939, stayed in touch over the years, more recently via telephone, Chicago to his house in California.

His son called the other day, suggested I might talk to him. Not that he was talking any more but he was listening, which I verified with the help of the son’s  wife, who had put her phone next to his ear and later told me he was reacting to my voice.

Hearing is the last thing to go, she said, and I can testify three other death beds over the years, when mourners-to-be addressed the soon-to-die, one of whom, another from our youth, bed-ridden on a coma, pressed my hand, showing he’d heard.

As I told our #1 daughter, I talked to Bill a lot over the last several years, hearing what he had to say about lots of thinks, toward the end doing a lot of listening, let me tell you, but from now on doing all the talking, to him in the next life.

I love that part. Already have my sister Mary Clare Penney, who much appreciated Bill by the way, from conversations at our house and told her children about him. Bill told me he appreciated seeing siblings relate to each other, having had none himself.

Bill and I in days gone by played baseball on Sam’s Lot, as we called a vacant stretch on a corner near us. He considered himself a pitcher and made an art creation of it. Very serious about it.

On another of our locations, Columbus Park, on the Chicago side of Austin from the el and metro tracks station on the south to tennis courts on the north.  We played on the southern-end open space with diamonds on either end. Commuters would stop to watch on their way home from work.

One of our games had a score in the twenties, leading a religious-order priest assigned to St. Catherine’s, who played touch ball with us on after-school hours, observed it had been a pitcher’s duel.

Let’s leave it for now. Praying that Bill rests in peace, of course . . .

Brothers and sisters,

This evening, we gather in prayer with Mary, the Mother of Jesus, just as the early Church in Jerusalem did (cf. Acts 1:14).

Let us all together, persevere tirelessly in praying for peace, a God-given gift that we must strive to receive and to which we must make a strong commitment.

Indeed!

And while we’re at it, a good word for Donald Trump, who has done so much for world peace?

Even if you are a Democrat, Your Holiness. Go ahead. You’ll be glad you did.

Meanwhile,

Younger American priests more conservative, traditional, survey shows

An extensive new survey of American Catholic priests has found major differences between older and young priests, strong confidence in Pope Leo, but less confidence in the American Catholic hierarchy.

Well!

A report from the National Study of Catholic Priests, reflecting the results of a survey of over 1,000 priests, was released on October 14 (2025).

The study—conducted by the Gallup Poll and commissioned by Catholic University—found that younger priests were markedly more likely than their older counterparts to describe themselves as theologically and politically conservative, to favor broader access to the Traditional Latin Mass, and to have reservations about the concept of synodality.

The latter being in laymen’s language, a process of group discussions about church matters that brings bishops and lay people into decision-making]

Specifically, the study found that:

• Among priests ordained before 1975, 70% described themselves as “progressive.” Among those ordained since 2000, only 8% accept that description. In the younger group, 70% describe themselves as conservative/orthodox.
• Similarly, while 61% of the older priests say they are “somewhat” or “very” liberal in their political beliefs, only 10% of the younger priests do, and 51% of the younger cohort is “somewhat” or “very” conservative.
• When asked to list pastoral priorities, younger priests emphasize Eucharistic devotion. Older priests were more likely to cite climate change, immigration, and social-justice issues in general.
• Among those ordained before 1980, 77% said listed “synodality” as a priority, as against 29% of the younger priests.
• 86% of all priests expressed “a great deal” (43%) or “quite a lot” (43%) of confidence in Pope Leo XIV, while only 1% reported “very little” confidence.
• Only a bare majority (52%) of priests said they trust their own bishop—down from 63% in 2001, before the explosion of the sex-abuse crisis. The best predictor of whether a priest trusted his bishop was that priest’s answer to a question about whether he felt the bishop “cares about me.”
• Priests’ confidence in the US hierarchy as a whole was even lower, with only 27% reporting a feeling of trust.
• Younger priests were more likely to report feeling lonely, and to say that they were “expected to do many things that go beyond my calling as a priest.”
• An overwhelming majority (79%) expected substantial improvement in the relationship between the Catholic Church in the US and the Vatican, with only 3% thinking that relationship would deteriorate.

Well again. Fairly old news, but nice to hear nonetheless.

The last of writer’s introduction to his coming book . . .

We left off with this about the book as work in progress:

Part 5 of his coming book. . .

. . . traces the aftermath from Paul VI through the present pontificate, asking how the conciliar vocabulary ripened into the theology and pastoral practice of our own time.

It’s been at work, he says, in Council documents and encyclicals and explanations inspired by them, and official catechisms and codes that attempted to “domesticate” their language.

Getting us used to them, the better to have us take them for granted.

The book’s goal [will be] not to build a psychological portrait of “the spirit of the Council,” but to show, line by line, how certain sentences and choices of vocabulary made the present collapse possible and, in many cases, almost inevitable.

One long fait accompli.

He sees a grim picture, of “disoriented faithful — empty seminaries, closed parishes, profaned liturgies, catechisms that no longer catechize — the lived outcome of decisions made in aula and ratified in ink. In theology, words are deeds.”

Oh?

An adjective can shift the burden of a sentence. An adverb can hollow out a command. A cautious footnote can sabotage a dogmatic paragraph.

Catholics who kneel in half deserted churches, or who have had to seek refuge in marginal chapels and improvised altars, are living in the echo of those [phrases].

We don’t have to assume that “the true Church has perished or Christ has abandoned His promises.”

We do have to “face the possibility that . . . the official continuation of that Church has . . . become a counter witness to her own past, a counter church that survives by parasitism on the language and structures it inherited.”

Confusion.

And “recent claimants to the papal throne”? They either “lack authority” or “have abused it to the point of moral unusability.”

Yes, Virginia, there is such a word. Point being, morality be damned, full speed ahead to a new world out there, my friends, where the livin’ is easy . . .

“We must look honestly at what they have done with the Council they celebrate as their charter.”

Namely?

Calling a council in the first place “in an age that no longer believed in councils or in truth itself.”

The age itself being nothing to match up with., or accommodate. Lost cause, Newman would have said.

Look to the last years of Pius XII leading up to the John XXIII election, and “the strange confidence with which the Church opened her windows to a storm she could not control.”

“Only by returning to that moment,” says our man, “can we see the scale of what followed.”

Nothing beats hindsight, of course. It’s why people write books.

In his book our man raises the curtain “on the last years of a world that still believed the Church could not change because God did not change.

“Pius XII reigned over a hierarchy that seemed unshakable.” he says. But “the soil beneath it was already loosening.”

As a Jesuit trainee in the mid-’50s in a three-year stint as a philosophy student, there were distinctions between new and old thinkers.

Our man about these days:

Theologians who once whispered their theories in seminaries had begun to speak them aloud. Bishops who had sworn to defend tradition learned to speak of adaptation.

Surrender was in the air.

John XXIII called for a council which was greeted by most “as a curiosity.”

Nothing to get excited about, a “tidying” of things Catholic, “not a revolution,” begun quietly, ‘in offices and corridors.”

It’s what this book is about.

— That’s all for now. Next comes the book . . .

Take First Timothy 6, 6.2c-12 for a start, Paul at his best getting down to brass tacks about day-to-day issues.

On this day, 9/19/25, Friday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time, we have advice from him understandable by all and rich with sermonic possibilities.

“Beloved,” he says, “Teach and urge these things.”

He who “teaches something different” from what our Lord Jesus Christ taught “is conceited, understands nothing, and has a morbid disposition for arguments and verbal disputes.”

Paul minces no words.

He calls them conceited know-it-alls with a yen for arguing, says from them come “envy, rivalry, insults, evil suspicions,” who cause “friction among people” whose minds have been “corrupted.”

Heretics there were even then, “deprived of the truth, supposing religion to be a means of gain,” a this-world kind of thing.

He allows that with “contentment,” religion provides “a great gain,” in the realizing that we “brought nothing into the world . . . just as we shall not be able to take anything out of it.”

You can’t take it with you, as the movie title had it ages ago.

With true religion, he says, “If we have food and clothing, we shall be content with that.”

On the other hand, “Those who want to be rich . . . are falling into temptation.”

The greedy find themselves dealing with “harmful desires, which plunge them into ruin and destruction.”

“For the love of money,” he says, in what became a go-ahead line, “is the root of all evils,” leading some to stray from the faith and suffer “many pains.”

The perils of greed.

“But you, man of God,” he tells Timothy, are to “avoid all this,” instead pursuing “righteousness, devotion, faith, love, patience, and gentleness.

“Lay hold of eternal life, to which you were called when you made your commitment in the presence of many witnesses.”

And the day’s gospel, Luke 8:1-3, I must say, added little to all this . . .

Jesus journeyed from one town and village to another,
preaching and proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom of God.
Accompanying him were the Twelve
and some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities,
Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out,
Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza,
Susanna, and many others
who provided for them out of their resources.

Contrast that with the Old Mass gospel:

 GOSPEL Matt. 24:3-13
At that time, as Jesus was sitting on mount Olivet, the disciples came to him privately, saying: “Tell us when shall these things be? And what shall be the sign of thy coming and of the consummation of the world?” And Jesus answering, said to them: “Take heed that no man seduce you. For many will come in my name saying, I am Christ. And they will seduce many. And you shall hear of wars and rumours of wars. See that ye be not troubled. For these things must come to pass: but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: And there shall be pestilences and famines and earthquakes in places. Now all these are the beginnings of sorrows. Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted and shall put you to death: and you shall be hated by all nations for my name’s sake. And then shall many be scandalized and shall betray one another and shall hate one another. And many false prophets shall rise and shall seduce many. And because iniquity hath abounded, the charity of many shall grow cold. But he that shall persevere to the end, he shall be saved.”

So be it in the ongoing parade of differences between our two Masses . . .

Brother Joe Hoover, S.J., America Magazine poetry editor, has been doing more than showing up at mass.

“O priests, who improv prayers at Mass!” he writes. “Who give opening monologues to start the show!

“Who deliver closing arguments before the dismissal!

“Who make meaningful statements in between the ‘Lord have mercy’s’! (Lord, when we are not our best selves, when others do not receive the totality of all that we could be…. Lord have mercy.”)

Or “deliver closing arguments before the dismissal! . . . make meaningful statements in between the ‘Lord have mercy’s’! (Lord, when we are not our best selves, when others do not receive the totality of all that we could be…. Lord have mercy.)”

You know who are. . .

You “feel the need to make Mass personal or interesting or more spiritual than it appears on the surface to be . . . suddenly put the sign of peace at a different part of the Mass or change up in some fashion the standing and kneeling and sitting.”

You “do not want to appear . . . cold, officious church functionaries just rattling off words handed to them by a hyper-literal worship committee in some cold cellar of the Vatican.”

Are you listening?

O priests, trust yourselves! Trust that you are interesting and personal and spiritual as you are. [But what if you’re not?]

Trust that the energy you exude, your presence, your physicality, your posture, your voice is spiritual enough. [You’ve got it, show it.]

Trust that, and just say the words! Do the gestures! They are enough! It is like the old actor’s maxim: “Don’t just do something, stand there!”

It’s you he’s talking to.

Joe accuses, but he also advises:

Even if parts of the liturgical script have been changed (some of it quite tragically—when you lose good poetry you lose good theology), even if it is not as lovely anymore, even then: Adding more words will not make Mass “better.”

No sir!

What you do is this:

“. . . cleanly speak the words as they are . . . let them flow through you, [and] the people in the pews may hear the Mass as they have never heard it before. “

Can you do that?

Yes you can!

“The Mass will . . . become interesting and personal and new. You do not need to do more. It’s not about you,” Brother Joe says.

Well maybe Joe would like to adjust that last sentence, in that the whole business seems to be about these priests . . .

Forget that. He means the congregation. As for himself, he can say all this because he’s a brother, not a priest, no “student of . . . the negotiables and non-negotiables of Mass-saying.” He has “no canonical agenda.”

He better not, of course, even if he were a priest — or a bishop for that matter. Trouble could become his middle name.

No, he’s “an actor, a playwright and someone who sits in the pews watching priests who feel that to follow the script is to essentially slice their brains out of their body and hand it over to Holy Mother Church.”

Can’t stand it, have to improvise, apparently.

Whatever. Joe is not all that opposed to improvising. Depends how it’s done.

Seeing the priest as an actor, he urges him “not simply to speak the text,” but also to give his audience “an experience,” as one “on stage” portraying his “spontaneous reactions,” keeping in mind that the point of it all is to help people “to pray.”

In pursuit of which he can do the opposite of what Joe’s been saying, “make comments during Mass.”

“Something falls and you acknowledge it; an altar server yawns dramatically, a baby cries with some kind of perfect timing, respond! Be human!” Joe urges.

Yes and no, Joe. He’s more than a functionary but he’s also more than — what? — an entertainer. And he owes it to pew-sitters to reflect his divine office, referring here not to the once-required daily prayers of the priest but to his unique role in re-enacting Calvary.

Joe has something else in mind. It’s the performance that counts.

He knows a priest who “during a chapel Mass, after holding his hands over the bread and wine and reciting ‘Make holy these gifts,’ then gestured to [his] small congregation,” adding “and these gifts.” Joe found it a “stunning” moment.

This man “could bring it off,” he says.

“Liturgy is not a science,” he explains. “If prayer were to become math, God help us all.”

“So yes,” he says, “if in some inspired moment at Mass you let go with something beautiful or funny or timely—unforced, not cloying, not ingratiating—fine. Pay attention. Live within the context. Don’t be rote and unaware.”

Let the spirit (of the moment) move you, but do it tastefully. And with your audience in mind.

I’ve been there for that sort of thing gone wild, and been appalled, amazed at the sacrilege involved, flip commentary and the like. And feel certain that’s not what Joe has in mind.

Petitions, petitions, we got petitions. About many things, while one thing is important, namely acquiescence in whatever God sends.

Put another way: Pray for good (earthly) things for people you pray for but above all, good or bad, for people’s acceptance of what’s sent.

Meanwhile . . .

Fr. X said what? Couldn’t follow him, remained with my Kindle prayer book/missal, which I had loaded up with the day’s readings, new and old style. Even up to Communion time I remained on it. Way to go sometimes, re-reading Gospel, etc., savoring presence of the Savior.

Later, first thing on getting home, finding Bead counter 1 & 2, Crisis Mag 4-8-21, in which a Catholic man tells of hearing fellow Catholics mocking his “pious” behavior:

“In an earlier Crisis essay,” he “recalled the dismay at a social gathering when the host, a graduate of a Jesuit university, learned that his guest was a ‘bead counter.’

He had found that “liberal Christians approve . . . the social gospel” but “suspect a conflict” between works of mercy and “spiritual devotions” such as praying for the dead in the Hail Mary — ”Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.”

He noted that “pious” is said “with tongue in cheek or as a modifier before fool, fraud, and hypocrite.

“Pray for the dead if you like,” he wrote, telling what he says some social gospel adherents say, but “it would do real good for the living if you put in an hour at the food pantry.” Mother Theresa might have managed both, “but the rank and file really must choose.”

At another mass, Fr. Y is late, so there’s time for prayer before mass.

Another day, at sixes and sevens in various matters, the worshiper reminds himself of God. A solidifying practice. Puts things in perspective. The worshiper is not in complete charge, he already decided. But he can make of the day something good or bad.

“Peace” seems sometime a mantra for popes. “Love” is another. Very big in liturgy dictionary, but not for me. I often prefer respect. God is awesome, no one to cuddle up with. No?

It seems so. I aim to make the best of it. And gladly. I’m supposed to like it, and I do, trying to show respect all the way to the One in Charge. I’m a wicked person for not responding to the love business?

Thing is, I’m most comfortable with this approach. Caught up in things of this world am I? Face it.

So respect our neighbor? Act toward him or her with this approach. . . .

And 3, from Old Mass files, stuff to back us up, yes.

FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST:

God does not ask anyone to embrace suffering for its own sake. He asks only that we embrace His will, a divine will that can be shown through suffering as well as through good fortune. [Something to keep in mind. It’s consolation with a capital C]

God wills that all men and all the rest of creation be brought to share in the blessings of redemption, both now and in eternity.

He wills that atonement for sin should be made through sacrifice offered by Christ and His members.

He wills that mankind be converted and transformed through the realistic courage of apostolic charity.

Upon the ruins of selfish dreams, God must triumph. His infallible truth and invincible power guarantee the final and true glory of a redeemed world.

Meanwhile, Japanese men at McD’s, fast-talking. Cool cats.

Spain in 16th century, translations of the Bible were on the list of forbidden books! Women knew not Latin, so could not read the Bible. Teresa of Avila quizzed about meanings of Song of Songs passages, which nuns prayed.

At a “Liturgy Summit” at a Menlo Park, Cal,, seminary, Cardinal Robert Sarah recently observed that the priest is “not the master of the liturgy, but its servant,” liturgy being “not a place of self-expression, but of adoration” which the priest must celebrate “with devotion, obedience, gratitude, and according to the norms of the Church.”

Inspiring extended commentary by reader Irishpol:

Bishop Sarah [sic] should know however, that the Novus Ordo Mass was created to mirror Thomas Cranmer’s celebration of the Last Supper Mass—not the re-creation of Christ’s sacrifice on Calvary.

So priests’ improvisation is in synchronization with the New Order of things liturgical adopted by Holy Mother the Church in 1969 and vigorously supported by Holy Father Francis and apparently more recently by Holy Father Leo.

Priest-celebrants naturally “tend to mimic the Protestant preachers [a la Cranmer the architect of Protestant liturgy in 16th century] by promoting the clapping and joyful greeting of their neighbors throughout the Mass.”

That is actually what a Protestant service and the protestantized New Mass is all about.

Why then does Bishop Sarah not expect the “presider” to behave much like any Master of Ceremony should behave by joining in with the congregation as the “leader of the band” to encourage the joyful, celebratory atmosphere?

Unless Bishop S. is asking Novus O. priests to kick against the goad on a daily basis, hoping to (a) stay calm all the while and (b) avoid being disciplined by a mean old bishop he maybe labors under.

For Bishop Sarah or any of the other bishops to somehow or another pretend that the Novus Ordo Mass is actually the Traditional Latin Mass said in the vernacular is spectacularly disingenuous.

To be fair, he is urging priests to make the best out of a bad situation. He is unlikely unaware. But Irishpol makes his point, if somewhat hard on the veteran objector to imposition of Novus Ordo who as an “ultra conservative” at odds with the pope on a range of issues has had his knuckles rapped in the process.

Trouble is . . .

The Novus Ordo Mass is a celebration of Protestantism. Nevertheless, it appears those prelates want their flocks and their priests to celebrate a Novus Ordo Mass as if they were celebrating a TLM.

Oh my. Gotta think about that. “I suppose they could continue to do that,” continues Irishpol, “but if they did it would be like putting lipstick on a pig. At the end of the day you still have a pig”!

Well. He’s a great arguer. Goes overboard to make his points? Maybe. I

As for what the priest, or “compere”, does as supposed or presumed master of ceremonies for the joyful gathering he addresses, well, says Irishpol, he has to express himself somehow.

If it’s a “happy meal,” as a thorogh-going traddie friend puts it, then happy must he be, prefering not to be, the snake at a garden party.

Trouble is, Irishpol argues, in such a mass the priest becomes more and Christ becomes less.

“With the rise of vernacular liturgy, priestly ‘self-expression’ is EXACTLY what became inevitable.”

I get that. There he is, up front for all to see, and acting like a funeral director?

Not likely.

. . . more to come on priest at mass and related matters, including what a Jesuit is doing about the “self-expression” problem. Stay tuned . . .