To hunt off Rome's waters...

Growing up as a kid in Minnesota we heard campfire stories about the native Dakota and Ojibway Indians that lived in our area. They admired, hunted, ate and saw the same animals that we did...

Then I moved to Italy! Here the old guys taught me how to be a seafaring hunter of polipi (octopus)! One doesn't even need a seagoing vessel - just jump in the shallow waters on a clear day without wind and get 'em!

Port of Rome: Civitavecchia...

All of the tourists that pass through the Port of Rome go by this old fortress known as the "Michelangelo Fortress." It was built by Pope Julius II della Rovere, known as the "warrior pope," to protect the town and the coast from Mohammedans. Construction was started in 1508.

Port of Rome: Civitavecchia...

This is the tomb of the last commander of the papal fleet. I sometimes pray before his tomb in the Church of the Virgin when I'm at the porto di Roma. He was born here and leanred to sail in these waters off the beaches. May this mariner (as well as Blessed Pius IX) pray for us!

Glorious Rome wine...

Rome wine is grrrreat! The cheap stuff comes from the Castelli Romani in the Colli Albani just southeast of the city - in the hills.

This particular bottle comes from a cantina where the Pope has his summer villa. You can see on the label Lake Albano and the Papal Villa and the dome of the town church by Bernini...

Russia: one-sixth of the world...

Please support these elderly Catholic women in Russia who have made these baptismal gowns for American babies so as to help support their own parish. If you are a grandparent, gift your adult children with these for their kids. See: http://www.baptismalgowns.blogspot.com/ . Heirloom quality...

La Liturgia Domenicana: Dominican Rite in Rome...

Okay, everybody has been asking and yes, the story is current but not yet authenticated ( = a rumor), that again this academic year there will be scheduled a public Dominican rite Mass each week at Rome's Dominican University as there was previously for a time.

The gossip is that there's a friar from the Provincia di S. Pietro Martire in Turin that will be the regular celebrant. In fact, somebody even told me that somebody has written the Maestro Generale (Magister Generalis) to invite him to sing the Mass once or twice with the student body...as the world turns, friends!

Messale Domenicano: Dominican Rite in Rome...

It's exciting to get to know the herbaceous new crop of Dominican friars. The younger generation has such an interest in their own Dominican patrimony: liturgical and otherwise.

We pray for our mendicant preaching friars and raise our voices at the altar: laudare...benedicere...praedicare...!

Quindi, volete il tempo ritrovato a Roma...venite!

The hallowed colors in Rome: Bayern...

Everybody has their favorite flag. It might be that of the State of Maryland or that of London, etc. But my most favorite is this one, that of Bavaria, a Catholic pocket of the world. So nice to see so many of these now in Rome that we have a Pope from Bavaria!

Italian rock: the new sanctuary floor...

Anybody who knows anything about church music and how sound travels knows that carpet is to never, ever be laid in a church (as it eats up the sound).

I took this photo last summer at the Church of Saint Augustine in South Saint Paul, Minnesota. The old carpet was just taken out and this is how easy it is to install a nice, new, (Italian!) marble floor in to last the ages!

From the New World: a mighty temple...

Was this photo taken in Catholic Europe? Actually, this is North America's first basilica, the Basilica of Saint Mary, located in the city of Minneapolis in the state of Minnesota. In Latin, you ask? It's the Basilicae Sanctae Mariae Minneapolitanae!

Sept. 14: Happy Summorum Pontificum...

Ciao tutti from Rome! Let the festivities begin in earnest! Dinner party, champagne toast, Te Deum and bonfire on the beach at my flat in celebration tomorrow afternoon!

Vienna: AP photo of me...

Monday morning this photo was in all the papers across Austria.

By divine providence I found myself in Vienna during the new German Pope's triumphal entry into Austria!

Wearing my scapular as a professed Third Order Carmelite, I found myself praying in front of the Cathedral of St. Stephen (next to the press box) during the Solemn Papal High Mass!

The big news, though, is that the Mass was orchestral! And that I, the American, knew it better than the Austrians as I had grown up with Hayden Masses at the Church of St. Agnes in St. Paul where we have orchestral Masses in the Vienesse tradition!

Vienna: AP photo of me...

I was so moved to find myself at a Papal Mass in Austria that was orchestral and by Hayden, an Austrian himself, after having just visited the most hallowed shrine in all of Austria at Mariazell, that on my knees I almost wept!

Franz Joseph Haydn wrote this glorious "Mariazeller Messe" in 1782 and I grew up with it at the Church of St. Agnes in the New World in the 1990s and so I knew it!

I just want to add one piece of information, too. Once while in Rome in early 2004 I attended a lecture that Cardinal Ratzinger gave at the Oriental Institute. Toward the end of his lecture, with emotion, he took off his reading glasses, looked up, and explained in so many words: "When I was a boy we grew up with orchestral Masses in the Vienesse tradition in the part of the world that I lived in, in Southern Germany. After the Council such things were lost and quickly disappeared. I always felt sad about this and thought they should stay."

Off Rome's green waters...

Not exactly the yacht "Honey Fitz" off Hyannisport, but even better...

The Creator has so blessed Rome as all is within Her reach...even the seas! This makes Rome, the capital, accessible to the world as well as everything accessible once you're in it.

P.S. I hope you like the military haircut!

My grandmother: the dead live...

Please pray for my grandmother, Gloria Laraine. She was a lovely woman who had 12 children!

Take courage from generations past, as the dead speak, and know that it can be done!

Rev. Msgr. Richard J. Schuler, Ph.D.

This is the tomb of my pastor, Mons. Schuler. He is buried in Minneapolis with his parents. Please pray for his soul as he passed on this year. For us, he will always be der "boss."

Summorum Pontificum: Sept. 14th in Rome...

"For today the Lord has wrought deliverance in Israel..."

The Rome apostolate of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter (Fraternitas Sacerdotalis Sancti Petri) will celebrate the Holy Father's latest Motu Proprio with a Sung Mass this coming Friday, September 14 at 6:30 p.m. at their Rome chapel of San Gregorio dei Muratori (http://www.fssp-roma.org/). All are welcome.

For Catholics who feel attached to the so-called Tridentine Rite this coming Friday will be an answer to, for many of us, decades of prayer. It has indeed been one rocky crag after another since the turbulent cultural demolition of 1968 and the Father of Mercies hears all prayers and so answers them. Gentlemen, and ladies: al futuro!

The eagle has landed...

Well, it sure is good to be back in "Rome sweet home!" Good times in the Urbs! Let's just hope it stays Christian, eh?

On the front page of the newspaper here today I read all about how tomorrow all the Ramadan celebrations will start in Rome. 120,000 muslims now live in and around Rome and they're all over for the big celebration.

Many don't know this but the largest mosque in all of Europe was just built here in Rome in the 1990s and was financed by Arab governments (wow, why their interest in populating the capital of Christendom?).

The Pope is in Castel Gandolfo now and I'll see you there this Sunday!

Pio XII: defend the Church...

One big torpedo they try to use against the Church is they'll say that the Pope was "silent" during World War II. This screed is full of factual errors and historical misrepresentations.

Last year in Rome at the Lateran University I met Rabbi David G. Dalin, author of The Myth of Hitler's Pope. I ask anybody who has an interest to buy this book and see how we can best defend the Church against this attack.

The Myth of Hitler's Pope
How Pope Pius XII Rescued Jews from the Nazis
Rabbi David G. Dalin
Regnery Publishing, Inc.
Washington, D.C.
2005

The Christian nest: the doting uncle...

While in the Roma Urbs Mundi I most miss the kids who have made me a rich man. The little squirrel calls me "Paul!" The first called me "Uncle Donny!"

Savoyard ruling house: to know modern Italy...

The effect that Freemasonry has had on the Italy of today is titanic and any historian of the Risorgimento can tell you all about it. If you have an interest in this topic, read Pope Leo XIII on Freemasonry. He wrote a half dozen encyclical letters on the subject and they are explosive!

This summer I read a great book entitled, Mazzini and the Secret Societies, The Making of a Myth, by E.E.Y. Hales (P.J. Kennedy and Sons, New York). Freemasonry, as the favoured nursery for revolutionaries, with its chimerical plots and furies againts Christendom, is still huge in Italy.

Makes me kind of miss the old Austrian Empire, with the ancient Hapsburg, Holy Roman, and classical tradition, which stood above language and race....and the German Pope will be there this week in Vienna!

Old papal videos for sale...

Somebody just asked me where to get more old papal videos from back in the day to put on YouTube. The answer is simple: go to the Porta Santa Anna of the Vatican City and then make a quick visit to the Centro Televisivo Vaticano (CTV). This is where you can order any video of even modern papal events.

L'arte racconta...

My most favorite painting is La Prima Messa (The First Mass), done in 1887 by the Spanish artist José Alcázar Tejedor. Does anybody know where I can order this image? Many thanks!

Pont. Inst. of liturgy: study there in Rome...

We need more American clerics who know and love the rites to go to Rome to study sacred liturgy at the Pontifical Athenaeum of Sant'Anselmo. It's a really small Benedictine university (with a great well-stocked library!) in Rome where one can graduate with a licence in sacred liturgy.

The Pontifical Institute of Liturgy there has a great licence programme organized around four main themes: history and sources, fundamental liturgy, sacraments and sacramentals, and time, space and art.

St. Anselm himself, a monk, bishop and founder of mediaeval scholasticism, defined his theological enterprise as fides quaerens intellectum (faith in search of understanding).

http://www.santanselmo.org/

Islam: two great books...

In former years men like Fulton Sheen and Karol Wojtyla read everything they could on communism so as to reply to that voice.

This summer I read two great books on Islam and if you're interested, try to buy them online as they are packed with info.

The Saracen Steed -for youth
By Arthur Anthony Gladd
Dodd, Mead and Company
New York 1960

The Siege of Vienna - for older persons
By John Stoye
Holt, Rinehart and Winston
New York 1964

The youth of today and our ministry to them...

"Young people who are well trained in faith and prayer must become more and more the apostles of youth."

-Pope Paul VI

Twins: my mother and her father...

During the last great war, in 1944, these two found themselves in Florida - he was a pilot and she was his new baby. Last February they returned to the beach there and enjoyed this nap.

"Even if the wounds of this shattered world enmesh you, and the sea in turmoil bears you along in but one surviving ship, it would still befit you to maintain your enthusiasm for studies unimpaired. Why should lasting values tremble if transient things fall?"

-Prosper of Aquitaine

Huge Tridentine Rite Mass to be sung in Rome...

If you will be in Rome on Saturday, September 15, then get to the Liberian Basilica at 3:30 p.m. for a Mass of thanksgiving in gratitude to the Holy Father for the gift of his latest motu proprio, Summorum Pontificum.

If you can read Italian, then click here for the information: http://www.cattoliciromani.com/forum/showthread.php?t=10688 .