Thank you, Holy Father

Thank you, Holy Father. The media and the so-called insiders all said you would be a mere place holder pope, and give us a quiet four or five years. They were wrong. You freed the Tridentine form of the Mass and now people can go to a regular parish at normal people hours to attend one. Thanks to you, young priests had the confidence to say the TLM and to insist on dignified, prayerful Novus Ordo Masses. Your reforms have borne fruit and may they continue to bloom.

Stay calm

The idea that the Holy Father is abdicating because he's just now discovered that there is a powerful group of perverts in the Vatican is laughable. People have been saying such a group existed for decades. There were rumors floating around when I was a child. Some of the people who said it out loud weren't the most credible folks but others were. Books have been written on the distressing topic. There really is nothing new here. Think about it. Benedict is a smart man, obviously. He's lived in Vatican City for a long time going back before he was pope. He already knows who the wolves are. It's possible that he was shocked to the core about the size of this group but that's about it. One day we will understand why the pope abdicated. Maybe it was a tactical move against this group.

What is really disturbing to me is the well meaning, very nice people who are saying that we should ignore all the news reports and treat them like calumny and gossip. I'd like to do that but living in Candyland just isn't an option anymore. Silence and looking the other way while hoping for the best is what got us the pedophilia scandals. Stay calm, keep praying and look at everything with a cool, calculating eye. Remember, the gates of Hell will not prevail. Let the truth come out and thank God when it does.


St. Peter Damian, pray for us.
St. Catherine of Sienna, pray for us.

Mother of Sorrows

 

 

Aunt Mavis.

    My Aunt Mavis has left the hospital. She's going be in a rehabilitation center indefinitely but this is progress. She's out of critical care and things are slowly getting better.
Thank you, everyone who prayed for her.

For God so loved the world.........

The Holy Shroud of Turin, the Sudarium of Oviedo  and the efforts of artists to show realistic images of crucifixion all show that Our Lord endured horrible torture for love of us. That's one of the reasons why it is appalling when a priest, one Jesus' own turn the Mass into a something ridiculous.  Vatican II did not say it was okay to turn the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass into a nursery school play. Too many Catholics--- laypeople, clergy and religious are acting like kids and a childish adult is not an attractive thing.  Can we grow up, please?  It's time to embrace the mature faith Pope Benedict was talking about.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lady most pitiful Mother most mild

 

 

 

Lady most pitiful, Mother most mild!
Stoop to my frailty; nourish thy child.

Mother most beautiful, Lady most wise!
Solace my heavy heart; comfort mine eyes.

Lady of verity, Mother most kind!
Breathe on my weary soul; brighten my mind.

Mother most merciful, Lady of love!
Bless my desires and draw them above.

Lady of Sorrows and Mother of Men!
Turn thou my weakness. Oh, heal me again.

Elizabeth S. Royce Catholic World - Page 762.
Volume 123. September 1926



a word from St. Bernadette

"I only fear bad Catholics."     St Bernadette Soubirous

One bad Catholic can cause a world of misery. Henry VIII, destroyed himself spiritually and casused the suffering and deaths of  inncoent people. He took a Catholic country and warped into something that would not prick his concience. Bad Catholics give rise to heresy and schism. They do harm in great places and in the lowly. They destroy parishes, make the lives of good priests miserbable, ruin the catechism of both children and converts, and give terrible examples to non Catholic observers.

something to think about

“There will come a great wonder, which will fill the world with astonishment. This wonder will be preceded by the triumph of revolution. The church will suffer exceedingly. Her servants and her chieftain will be mocked, scourged, and martyred.”









Pope Pius IX (1846-78)

road trip

Rocky had a rare Saturday off and decided to take me to Leesburg for a day trip. We went to Banshee Reeks Wildlife area and it's really amazing. Next we visited St. John the Evangelist. If you are in Leesburg you should go. It's the most glorious church in the Arlington diocese. The priest and lay people in charge of decor did a fine job. They went to Newark, New Jersey and rescued statues, stations of the cross and a reredos, altar and tabernacle from Sacred Heart Church which was closed.  We decided to go to Mass at Our Lady of Hope  in Sterling becuase it was closer to where we were headed later in the evening. Mass was okay. They have an excellent priest.

sad, very sad right now

The commentary on numerous professional and private individual blogs about the pope’s abdication is either insipid or it depresses me  because of  the subtle attacks on the sick and the elderly.   Damian Thompson, who strikes me as a squirmy little wormtounge, says that JPII stayed too long and was “mentally enfeebled” and multiple people seem to think it’s good that Benedict will be doing his suffering and dying in private. So the sick and the old should just die already and not offend us by their distressing presence? What the hell?

I’ve read several pieces that indicate that the Church was kept on hold by John Paul II’s dying process from 2001-2005. Really? So nobody went to Mass or got baptized, married, confirmed in those years because we were all waiting impatiently for JPII to die? I don’t recall that.

Aunt Mavis

My Aunt Mavis, one my father's younger sisters went to have a colonoscopy and something went horribly wrong. She's had emergency surgery to repair the damage that happened doing the colonoscopy and now she's on a ventilator.



Update
Aunt Mavis was put into an induced sleep presumably to help her heal. She's still on the ventilator.  The docgtor punctured my aunt when he removed the polyp and didn't notice until too late.  She will have to wear a colostomy bag for a while and she's going to have to go to breathing therapy. My uncle Francis is furious as is all the family.


Further update
My aunt was able to speak to my mother on the phone for a few seconds. Thank you all for your prayers.

The Missal

This painting is called "The Missal." It's beautiful but it also reminds me of a claim made by an "expert" that nobody used missals at all until the 1920s. I knew I was reading tommyrot but others believed him.

Farewell, Holy Father

The Holy Father is stepping down. His reasons will become apparent in time. The professional Vatican watchers are all having their say and I don't trust any of them. So what happens now? We'll be sad for awhile and then we will have a new Holy Father.

 Let's  stay calm brothers and sisters.  Don't let the St. Malachy "prophesies" freak you out. We are not Jehovah's Witnesses and this is not 1975. Nobody knows the day or the hour of when the world ends. 

Pray, pray, pray  for the Holy Father both present and soon to come.

PS
Would someone please burp Rod Dreher and give him some gripe water?

Man of Sorrows

This is beautiful

Poor Clares of the Immaculte praying the Stations of the Cross. The sight of them is so humbling and  inspiring. I will never whimper about sore knees and thighs during Lent on Fridays ever again.

Serenity

A palate cleanser

Lord of Miracles painting in Peru

 

 

Years ago, Rocky and I were visiting the St. Jude shrine in Baltimore and we stopped in the gift shop. They had this small crucifix and I bought it. The Latin American volunteer gave me a quizzical look and asked, "You know about this crucifix?" I said I thought it was a Senor de los Milagros crucifix and the original had been painted by an African slave in Peru. He beamed at me and was happy to sell it to us. This and my San Damiano are the two favorite crucifixes that I own.

 

random thoughts

The existence of the Sandy Hook children's chorus seems perverse to me. The adults involved are sending the kids a false message. When I was in second grade a classmate of mine was murdered along with her entire family because her big brother stole drug money from his boss. Her death did not lead to fun stuff. My class was not treated to trips to the Superbowl or the Grammys. We were told what happened. Some of us read about it in the newspaper. We and Sister prayed for our classmate and then we went on with life.  Nobody was allowed to use that poor girl's death for their own purposes. If any teacher had said, "Hey let's take the second graders to a high profile public event  to remind them and everyone else that their classmate was slaughtered and that drugs are bad," the principal would've fired them and sprinkled holy water and blessed salt after they left the building.


Last week I read this on the Catholic Sista's blog:

Our neighbors think that Christians are out of touch with reality and don’t understand the daily struggles and sorrows that they face. This is where we employ the missionary tool of fashion namely, through dressing with an eye to style and following the latest trends in a reasonable manner, we communicate to those who see us that we speak their language. A prairie dress or long plaid jumper sends the following message, “I reject this culture, and I don’t speak your existential language".

Something in me was disturbed and I'm not sure why exactly. I could not get these words out of my head for days.  Sure I like certain kinds of clothes but the "missionary tool of fashion" is not and never shall be for me.

Don't get too excited

Cardinal Mahony is still a priest in good standing. He can still vote in a papal election and he's not going down without a fight.