* I know of one priest in my diocese who is being muttered about because the poor man doesn't run the parish just like the old priest and the ladies are mad at him. He keeps unused rooms of the parish hall locked and instead of coming and going as they pleased the ladies now have to go to the rectory to get a key. Americans ran to the suburbs for various reasons, one of which was to avoid crime. Well, crime happens in the burbs just like it does in the city and there is a possibility that someone could get hurt by a stranger coming in off the street and lurking in one of those isolated basement rooms. It's also not uncommon for parishioners to steal. About two or three years ago Rocky and I were on vacation and went to Mass at a church which had just been spectacularly ripped off by a longtime trusted and loved by many people, layperson volunteer. It happens. For whatever reason, this priest is being more security conscious it would do the group of mad ladies in his parish well, to calm down.
*I've heard the word "pelagian" thrown around lately and I think most of the people who use it don't know what it really means. It's like the people who scream Nazi or fascist at people they don't like without stopping to think what those words really mean. A dude named Giacomo Casolo started a lay organization called a confraternity to stress the importance of piety and mental prayer. He named the confraternity after one of my favorite saints, St. Pelagia. This was all well and good and was approved of by the bishop and local Jesuits but it got nutty. By 1655, the Pelagians were divorcing spouses who didn't follow their brand of Catholicism and stopped going to Mass, receiving the sacraments or listening to sermons by non-Pelagians. They believed that all you had to do to be saved was mental prayer. Well, there were complaints and an investigation and the whole thing was rooted up and condemned.
There is another, much older heresy also called Pelagianism that was fought by St. Augustine and St. Jerome. This garbage was started by a monk who thought that his fellow Romans were too lax, (when the clergy goes bad, it is disastrous), named Pelagius who may have been from what we now call Great Britain. According to the the not so merry monk thought that humans could get to Heaven by being stoic, exercising free will alone and:
- Adam died because, death is just part being human. Even if he'd hadn't sinned he still would've died.
- Adam and Eve hurt themselves but not the human race. We sin because Adam gave us a bad example and Christ redeemed us, sort of, by giving a good example.
- Newborns are just like Adam before his Fall. Which means it's no big deal if you don't get around to Baptizing the baby before he reaches the age of reason.
- We don't die because of Adam and we don't rise again through the resurrection of the new Adam, Christ.
- The law of Moses is just as good a guide to get to Heaven as the Gospel.
- Even before Christ came there were sinless men.
*One day Rocky and I were walking along and we ran into a Dominican nun. She was the first sister shown in this video.
*I was having a discussion with a man who doesn't allow his children to listen to any music from the 20th century. It's his business but I'm glad my parents didn't follow that example. I would've never had the pleasure of sitting in my father's lap listening to this:
Oh and he also told me that the song was based on Bach's notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach which we listened to as well on many occasions.
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