Responsa

Today it was my unhappy duty to edit a breaking news report on the CDW "Responsa" to a set of Dubia. (Not those Dubia.) Shortly before I published, the traditional part of the Catholic blogosphere was beginning to go nuts. 

My own Responsa to the Responsa are as follows:

I will say my evening prayers as usual.

I will say my morning prayers as usual. 

I will go to a Catholic baptism according to the traditional books tomorrow morning.   

I will go to the traditional Latin Mass afterwards. 

I will then rush out of the church to make tea and set out cookies for the TLM community, particularly the many children. 

I will chat with homeschoolers about their writing lessons and their homework.  

I will wish everyone a "Merry Christmas when it comes" and feel vastly pleased that for once I remembered to bring my own tea towel for the washing up. 

I will go home and giggle again at the modified Grinch cartoon that is now my screensaver, and then I will see if I can find The Grinch Who Stole Christmas on Youtube.

He hadn't stopped Christmas from coming! It came!

Somehow or other, it came just the same! 

UPDATE: I forgot to bring my tea towel AGAIN! But the christening was beautiful, and tea was very satisfactory. There was a cheerful, Christmassy atmosphere.

Oddly, though, a woman I half-recognised turned up--just as I was about to make the tea--to stand in the middle of the tiny galley kitchen and apparently take possession of a cardboard cake plate. It was over an hour after the 1970 Mass had finished, and I was in a great bustle to get the tea and biscuits out before the ravenous hordes my fellow traddies poured in, so I did wonder why this lady was there. Before she left, she asked if there was anything I needed, which (like, "Can I help you?") is British for "This is MY place."

"We have everything down to a fine art," I replied cheerfully, which is British for "I've drunk tea in this hall most Sundays for almost 13 years." 

I have been reading Evelyn Waugh's St Edmund Campion, so I am aware that there were Catholics during the reign of Elizabeth I who made a living spying on other Catholics and turning them in to the authorities to be tortured, imprisoned and executed,. The spies would pretend to repent and go to confession, etc.  One apologised to St. Edmund Campion himself for his part in his capture, apparently terrified of being killed by the real Catholics. St. Edmund forgave him, and the man went off to continue his career as a tattletale-spy. The jailer, however, was so edified, that he became a Catholic himself.  

Thus, I have spies on the brain.  

UPDATE 2: What we all hope for: