If people only knew what goes on at Mass

Random thoughts on a stormy afternoon

• Being called "nice" is not a complement really. Nice originally meant to be agreeable with all because you are simple minded and ignorant. The nice person stands for nothing and will not speak up when faced with sinful behavior. Ann Barnhardt says it far better than I could.
  
  
  
  
  
• Guys, never marry a woman who :
  
  
  1. Takes frequent photos of herself with her phone.
  2. Has an Instagram account and followers who admire her semi nude self "exercising" or playing with makeup.
  3. Had an abortion and is not sorry.
  4. Has made it her mission in life to fix you.
  
  
   
• Something strange is in the air.  A few months ago I sat in church and realized slowly that the woman next to me was growling. I don't mean this figuratively. I don't mean she was comically imitating a dog. I mean she was growling like some dis tempered beast. I glanced at her. Tears were pouring from her eyes and she looked to be in pain. I started to lean towards her but something stopped me.  Father said the words of consecration and raised the Host. The growling stopped. She looked up, still crying and exhausted. After Mass I looked away for a moment and she was gone. I haven't seen her since.
  
  Another odd thing that is  happening is that a middle aged layman dressed in black has taken to coming to church during Adoration or after Mass and speaking loudly in Spanish to the priest or to the Consecrated Virgin. Both calmly shushed him and backed him out of the church into the hallway. I've seen him do this three times so far never been able to make out what he is saying. Is he disturbed or an aggressive Evangelical? Why is this happening now?
  
  
• Once in the South it was not exactly a folk custom but a tolerated behavior among the lowliest of the sharecroppers to get pregnant before the wedding to show that you were fertile and your intended was not going to be stuck trying to farm alone in his old age if he married you. This was frowned on by decent people and it seems from the pope's recent comments about marriage that a variation of it exists in the provinces of Argentina. The Protestant preachers and social workers of a past era fought against this and wiped it out.
  
  
• Medically assisted suicide is now legal in Canada. So neither the dog nor the sick is safe in the land of the Maple Leaf.
  
  
  
• Why on earth should a Catholic fast for Ramadan  when you make up excuses to do nothing for Lent? Every blessed Lent I see posts on various blogs and op/eds on Catholic sites stating that no, the writer is not fasting for Lent but is going to read the entire Simarillion or will "fast" from gossiping or losing their temper with annoying people. I read this and think, "Really? I'm supposed to be impressed by this?
  
  
• I keep breaking my work bag rosary so I'm trying out a replica of the World War I combat rosary. 

St. Leonard has something to tell you.

There was a synod being held in Paris, and a great number of prelates and pastors who had the charge of souls were in attendance; the king and princes also came to add luster to that assembly by their presence. A famous preacher was invited to preach. While he was preparing his sermon, a horrible demon appeared to him and said, "Lay your books aside. If you want to give a sermon that will be useful to these princes and prelates, content yourself with telling them on our part, 'We the princes of darkness thank you, princes, prelates, and pastors of souls, that due to your negligence, the greater number of the faithful are damned; also, we are saving a reward for you for this favor, when you shall be with us in Hell.'"

From St. Leonard of Port Maurice's homily on the number of those going to Hell. 

You CAN hit the road, Jack.... the Pope Says Your marriage is probably invalid

The Pope says most sacramental  marriages are invalid. If this is so then our spouses are free to leave without guilt or condemnation. Paradoxically, the Holy Fathers says that he has ...."seen a lot of fidelity in these cohabitations, and I am sure that this is a real marriage, they have the grace of a real marriage because of their fidelity  .., etc.”  What does this mean in real life? Is a marriage only real if the lovers are faithful and happy? Was Servant of God, Elizabeth Leseur's marriage invalid? Were the marriages of St. Rita and St. Monica invalid? None of these ladies had good husbands and all of them suffered. 

One popular blogging priest says not worry because His Holiness is not speaking ex cathedra and this is just an offhand opinion.  I sighed when I heard that. Most people aren't theologians or cannon lawyers. Most people assume that if Papa says something it must be official and that's that. On one positive note, to my surprise, most of the blogging priest's fans wrote comments expressing disagreement. 

In my mother's family's denomination couples have a built-in out for marriage. A man can say that his wife secretly had the spirit of Jezebel or a woman can say that her husband was "not a godly man," and they can get divorced and remarried and keep their standing in the church with nary a murmur of criticism from anybody. Catholics do you want to imitate this?  Dear Lord, surely not.

The Crucifixion

Infidelity to the Faith Leads to the Scourge

This homily gave me chills. 

This Is the Way We Live Now and Other Random Thoughts

• So, I decided to go back to college. I'm taking all the classes online so at least I won't be sitting in a classroom heckling the professor for teaching garbage. Fortunately, I was awarded enough credits from previous coursework and experience to skip three classes and I'll be able to get to the core material sooner.
  
• Okay....so I will not be going to Canada on vacation now and if I were a pet animal breeder I definitely would not sell to anyone with a Canadian address. There are some tiresome people who only think that America has a problem with depravity. Oh please! The entire West is sick.
  
  
  
• What happened in Orlando is going to keep on happening. This is the way we live now.  It may be one man sawing off one woman's head or it may be many people slaughtered at a time but it will be. Our leaders will lower flags, give speeches and attend memorials but that is all they are going to do and we the people are just going to light some votive candles, buy teddy bears and flowers, sing sappy songs and privately hope that the next time the wolf comes we won't be on the edge of the herd.
  
  
  
• Once upon a time in America there was a Jewish kid whose father abandoned the family. His mother made a mistake that many women in her position still make today. She leaned on her son and made her boy the man of the house. A teen aged boy can make a lot of money via crime and so he did. The rent was paid and the younger kids were fed. Later he moved up the ranks and became a big time gangster. At the height of his criminal career and infamy he was shot. On his death bed he asked for a priest. He was Baptized, confessed his sins and best he could and died. If Dutch Schultz could repent in the last seconds of his earthly life and be saved then surely some of the dead in Orlando had time to make an act of Contrition. 

• In a way, Pope Francis might be the best thing that happened to the Church in many decades.  He's actually caused people from my generation to realize that not single every word from the pope's lips is  infallible and that his every action is not necessarily holy. If you are uneasy or even frantic about the pope go and buy yourself a Baltimore or Pius X catechism, a copy of the Catholic encyclopedia and a few old books such as the Imitation of Christ, anything written by the great saints and  the collected writings of the early Church Fathers and start studying. A lot of us never progressed spiritually beyond where we were at Confirmation. It's time to grow up and face the storm. 

St. Catherine pray for us

“We’ve had enough of exhortations to be silent! Cry out with a hundred thousand tongues. I see that the world is rotten because of silence.”
– St. Catherine of Siena

Why does becoming Catholic take a year or more?

I've always said that most RCIA programs are wretched. The teachers often don't know the Faith, the sessions are more like AA meetings than instruction and it's not uncommon to never see a priest. When Rocky went through RCIA, he saw the parochial vicar once and even then, Father was just dropping by and not giving instruction. The young man who taught RCIA was actually married to an Episcopalian minister. Compare this joke process to St. Phillip and the Ethiopian.
I was reminded of how dreadful RCIA can be when I read this essay at the Eye Witness blog by a woman who was nearly driven away from the Church by her experience.

Random thoughts on a humid night

Oh Mary, help of Christians, pray for us.

• Muhammad Ali died. He was a glorious figure during my childhood  may be the greatest heavyweight boxer of all time but he rejected Christ and was married four times. His only son says he was a neglectful father. Whether a king or the lowest prostitute in the gutter,  one day we will all be stripped of our earthly circumstance. One day we all will stand before the Judgement seat. May God have mercy on his soul.
  
  
• A number of people are upset about a new movie that is coming out that supports suicide. Other people are worried about the new Finding Dory, Disney movie. Folks, Hollywood is not our friend. They've been manipulating us for decades. In the 1929, movie, The Letter, the unrepentant, defiant heroine got away with adultery and murder.  Dodsworth back in the 1930s showed remarriage after divorce in a sympathetic light.   Now Voyager and Back Street had people weeping over the adulterers in the 40s and 50s. The mistress in Back Street was shown in a noble light and the movie hints that she'll be a better mother to her lover's children than their drunken wreck of a natural mother. Drugs were glamorized from the 60s onward and a new AIDS movie came out every week on TV and the theaters back in the late 80s and early 90s. There is nothing new under the sun.
  
  
  
  
• I was reading the Connecticut Catholic blog and saw her list of interesting bloggers that she likes. One of them, Diary of an Accidental Hermit is really, really  good.
  
  
• I prefer to use an e-book missal but I'm always happy to see a new print missal and  this one from St. Augustine Academy Press looks terrific. 

First Friday for the Sacred Heart of Jesus

Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us!

Pray for priests- Something in Miami smells

I just read the dossier on Fr. Pedro Corce of the Miami diocese that parishioners presented to the archbishop and it is both distasteful and incredible. The alleged behavior in the dossier is so over the the top it's almost too much to believe Obviously the lessons of the scandals have not been learned in Miami. Archbishop Wenski did ask Father to step down from being the pastor but also criticized the parents who complained about him.  

St, Rose of Lima, pray for us.