Here's to the ladies

Maureen Mallarkey is on fire.

Miss Hillary Margaret Jane White is back in her lady-like but devastating form.

The always wise Mary Ann Kreitzer has a powerful warning for any parents who think their kids couldn't possibly be brainwashed in school.

Tears, idle tears.

When I was a child my mother always scolded me for crying when I was punished because I had been told repeatedly what would happen if I did  X and chose to do it anyway. I don’t think anybody who has been paying attention is really surprised by the Supreme Court decision today. It’s been in the works for a long time. Back in 2009, when I wrote about our national bacchanal and vomitorium I guessed that homosexual marriage would be the law of the land in five years. I was off by one. I figure that legalized polygamy and adult incest will be the next devils to jump up.  There's no point in crying now. Penance, penance, penance.

     Repost from 2009: Welcome to the Vomitorium

At first glance the whole subject seems too ridiculous to entertain. I don't think any of the gay men I know really want to be married. They want a gaudy spectacle of a wedding. They want attention but I doubt that they have any concept of what marriage is supposed to be. I say supposed to be because normal people have damaged the institution of marriage and damaged it severely. It's like taking a piece of fine linen and tearing it to shreds and then objecting when your kid puts his dirty hands on it.

Marriage was mocked and shredded long ago. And you know who did it? Your parents and their parents. When Elizabeth Taylor was going from man to man people still flocked to her movies. When Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner humiliated his wife in public, people idolized Frank and couldn't get enough of Ava. And don't forget your part: you love reading People and US magazine to see what Brad and Angie are up to, don't you?

We will never know for sure if Cardinal Cushing knew the extent of JFKsadultery but we do know years later when Jackie was about to marry the divorced Aristotle Onassis when people asked Cushing what he thought he stated that people should practice charity and leave Jackie alone. Later when Jackie died she was given a Catholic funeral, anyone who mentioned that at the time of her death she had been living with a married man was branded a gauche hater. 
Decades earlier, Archbishop Sheen told Joe DiMaggio to his face that his "marriage" to Marilyn Monroe was wrong, but he was only the only churchman who did. It may not seem like much now but millions of Catholics and non Catholics were watching and listening and making conclusions.

Once, a divorce or open adultery was the end of a Protestant minister's career. No more. In the 1950s, the Reverend Adam Clayton Powell dumped his wife to marry his lover. Most people in the church were shocked but didn't stop attending Abyssinian Baptist Church. Joel Osteen's father was a divorced man but that didn't faze his congregants. He married again and built up a powerful ministry that spawned the career of Joel. Richard Roberts, son of Oral, divorced his wife and most people in the church didn't even flinch, at least not in public where it counted. Some people excuse the ministers by saying that it's hard being a preacher's wife (it is) or that the wife wasn't fit to be a preacher's wife and that the divorce was her fault. Other's use the King David excuse. 

In the American Catholic church annulments are handed out like cookies at a girl scout meeting. People who've been married for decades with teen aged or adult children have gotten annulments. Are you telling me that ALL of these annulled marriages REALLY were invalid? Now, yes, of course, there are pitiful cases where an annulment is the only right thing to do : A woman who finds that she's married to a secretly gay man was lied to from the beginning. Her marriage was not valid. She did not have all the facts before the wedding. A man who finds that his wife has no intention of having children and didn't tell him was duped into a false marriage. I know of one woman who married a man who suffered from severe depression. His family was relieved when he married. Did anyone tell the wife about his condition? I don't know but if no-one did she has a right to an annulment one day. Those are sad cases but they aren't common. They aren't enough to fuel the annulment machine we seem to have today. And let's not forget the divorced and remarried Catholics who haven't gone the annulment route have been known to present themselves for Communion.

To a gay man, who is the victim of parents who probably didn't have the marriage they should've had or who fell prey to a horrible situation early in his development it must seem like rank hypocrisy that we who have played marriage so fast and loose should turn our noses up at him for trying to play house. I could argue with him pointing out that he's not right in the head (and he is not) but he could argue back that the society that produced him is sicker. I expect gay marriage to be the law of the land within five years. Of course, if it's true that as some economists are predicting, that the entire US economy is going to collapse, gay marriage will collapse with it. A rich fat man can afford to be decadent. He can afford to ignore gay marriage.As long as his wife's gay friends don't insinuate themselves into his children's lives, he'll shrug his shoulders about the whole thing. A man who's rioting in the streets for food or who hasn't worked in over a year will not look kindly on thefrivolous or the ridiculous. After the binge comes the hangover. After thebacchanal somebody is left cleaning up the vomitorium.

The tears of St. Peter.

Mass Without Pews....wartime edition

Random thoughts about that encyclical and other stuff now the headache has finally let up

• It must have been awful for Catholics when Pope Libirious  went bad. It must have been even worse for people under Popes Virgilius, Honorius and John XXII (22). It must have been sickening for a decent person watching Pope Alexander flaunt his mistress and children.  We were chosen out of all eternity to live at this time and life is not always peaches and pretzels. Take up your cross and follow Christ on the Via Dolorosa.
  
  
  

• Now, about the new encyclical. My inclination is pretty close to Chris Jackson,  but the trouble is too many people will try to rub their heads and stomachs counterclockwise at the same time while jumping on one foot if they think that's what a pope wants them to do. I see most of the Environmentalist movement as a cruel Sovietesque system that wants me to live like a 6th century peasant while the elite live happily ever after. This makes me nervous, irritated and in a mood to fight.  I'd rather see the whole secular system fall to pieces than live the way the enviros want.Beyond the subject of the latest encyclical,  we need to remember that not every single word that comes from the Holy Father's lips or from his computer is infallible.  If the pope is speaking about the deposit of Faith and says something like, "I, Pope Jones, successor of Peter, say to you.....that the Eucharist is Christ," then I'm his Huckleberry but if he says, "All good Catholics have to eat cilantro,"  then I'm free to ignore it. When the Holy Father writes that the world increasingly looks like a pile a filth and he is not talking about parts of India  and Nigeria where people squat in the streets to defecate  or parts of the Philippines  but means the West with it's sanitation plants and indoor plumbing I'm raising an eyebrow.
  
  
  
  
  
• In your charity please pray for the parishioners of the Church of the Loaves and Fishes in Tabgha, Israel. Their church which honors one of Our Lord's most spectacular miracles was attacked with arson and vandalism. Many people in the US who call themselves Christian are greeting their story and the stories of Christians all over the Middle East with embarrassed silence.
  
   

• On the home front, things are better and worse. My uncle's health has improved enough to leave the critical care floor and return to a regular room in the nursing home. Life at work, stinks. It just plain stinks. When my uncles's health settles down and gets off the wild roller coaster it's been on and when my migraines settle down (it's always bad the season's change and especially when it's thunderstorm season in Virginia) I'm going to start a new job campaign. 

Happy Father's Day

The Crucifxion by Vasnetsov

St. Charles Borromeo

Want to ruin your marriage?

• Disrespect  your husband in public. He may love you so much that you can get away with it for a long time, but it will come back to bite you.   I once watched a serious Catholic woman discuss her sex life. She was talking about NFP. Her husband sat next to her with this frozen look on his face like someone has just shot off a gun next to his ear. That woman may know about NFP but she knows nothing about honoring her husband and keeping private things private. I'll give you a completely secular example. A singer appeared at a ball in a sheer dress and no underwear this year. Her husband was with her. He didn't look happy. In fact, he had the same thousand yard stare on his face that the NFP husband did.  Both men were made to look like fools in public. Don't be like that. 

• Make your husband the family disciplinarian with you as the cool parent who always take the kid's side . A family sat in front of me at Mass and I saw that the daughter was wearing sheer, gray leggings with sequins. Her bikini  underwear showed though. She wore a small tee shirt that reached her waist. The last time I saw a female dressed like that was when I noticed one of the strippers headed to work at the strip joint across the street from where I work last Thursday. The father looked uncomfortable. . The daughter's body language was apologetic. Finally the father reached over and hugged her and the drama was over. The mother looked happy but she's going to pay that later, and it will come either from the husband or the daughter who now knows what she can get away with.
  
  
  
• Read Pinterest and woman tubmlrs everyday and take it as your rule of life. Except for a few Catholic and oddly enough, most of the Mormon ones those sources are man-hating, envy and depression inducing, and worldly in the extreme. Get that stuff in your head and you'll become a real pill.
  
• Become the parish busy body. Remember Mrs. Jellyby? Don't be her. 

Our Lady of the Chains

Whenever Rocky and I go to Baltimore (no, we won't be going back this Summer) we try to stop at either St. Alphonsus or the St. Jude Shrine.  The shrine has a staute of Our Lady and the Child Jesus holding a long length of chains. This devotion was brought to Baltimore by Sicilian immigrants.

Novena to Our Lady of the Chains

O Blessed Lady of the Chain, sweet hope, eternal comfort of those who with confidence call upon you; prostrate at your feet, I profess my misery and nothingness. You who are the Queen of Heaven and earth, the Mother of Our Divine Savior, O you who are so powerful before the throne of God, please obtain for me this favor which I need so much.

May the many favors and graces which you obtain daily from Jesus for those who invoke you under the title of Mother of the Chain, encourage me to have recourse to you and present to your maternal heart all my afflictions. O powerful Virgin, break the chains of sin which hold me fast. Destroy the snares of my spiritual and temporal enemies, chain me close to you and to Jesus with a lively faith, a firm hope, and a burning charity.

Encircle me with your chains and thus unite me to your heart. United in such a way to you and to Jesus, I will fear nothing. There will be no doubt of my eternal salvation, no fear of not being granted all the temporal and spiritual blessings I need to lead a devout life.

Since I am in need of help in this present affliction, O loving Mother, I have recourse to you with childlike faith, and thus I hope to obtain the favor I am now asking.

[Here make your petition]

I am sure that you will grant me my request with that same love with which you did grant the request of the three prisoners. I am confident you will grant this favor through your merits and the merits of your Divine Son and allow me to return soon to render to you the homage of my praises and grateful thanksgivings.

Amen

(Hail Holy Queen ...)

Random thoughts and how we got here

When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is…in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control.
----Theodore Dalrymple





When my mother was girl, you had to go find the freak show. Sometimes that meant going into the tent that said "adults only"  at the carnival or  getting in to your truck and going in secret three counties over to a shack in the woods . When I was a girl it meant going to red light district downtown. By the time I was in college you could comfortably go to the back room of the video store and find the freak show. Now, it's on our computers and in the check out line at the grocery store. Not only can you not avoid it but since the freaks are feted, petted and adored you will lose your job, your business or your "friends" if you say in the mildest terms that you don't want to stand and cheer. 




I have two problems with the Benedict Option and "podding". First, is a practical consideration. If you are all in one place it makes it easy for the bad guys. Second, the whole thing seems like it could turn cultish in a second. 



I was listening to a good, solid, bread and butter priest who mentioned in passing that he sees a lot of disrespect these days. He wasn't talking about heretics, or C&E Catholics, He meant people who consider themselves good Catholics. Are you the parish busybody? Are you an inadvertent stalker? You may mean well but following your priest around the Internet is a bit much....  Are you on the liturgy committee (get off now!) and have no problem instructing the priest how you want him to celebrate Mass?  Have you started acting like your "ministry" is the most important thing in the parish?  Do you corner the priest after Mass and spend 20 minutes lecturing him while everybody stands around waiting for you to leave? Have you ever tried to start a parish group without the priest's permission or even though he said "no"? A lot of people were burned by bad priests. That does not give you the right to make every priest miserable. 

Prayer

In this painting an Italian girl is using a chair like a kneeler. I used to do that when I was a kid. One of these days I'd like to own a prie dieu. 

The mills of God grind slowly on personal and a national level.

I was reading a rant by a man who I'm guessing is in his 60s, who has lived a sinful life and won't go to church. He's disgusted by the situation we find our ourselves in politically and morally in this country. Suddenly it came to me, and I didn't write a comment because it would've caused a com-box fight and I don't get into those; that this guy is part of the problem. The nice, regular folks who have been married two or three times without shame or the slightest societal rebuke, the people who lived with their lovers without the pretense of a civil marriage, the ones who left their kids behind in order to find themselves, the millions who had Playboy on the coffee table  and spent most of their weekends in the  70s and 80s in various bars opened the door to what we have today. Yeah, the kids are ugly but when you look at what produced them you suddenly see why.

Though the mills of God grind slowly;

Yet they grind exceeding small;

Though with patience He stands waiting,

With exactness grinds He all.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow