Random thoughts on a Saturday morning.

St. Dominic, pray for us!

• José Galat Noumer is 88 years old and apparently he's been excommunicated. How can it be that criticizing the pope gets someone excommunicated? Fr. James Martin is a Catholic in good standing. Cardinal Marx is a Catholic in good standing. Cardinal Vincenzo Paglia is a Catholic in good standing. The founder of the Legionnaires of Christ was officially a Catholic in good standing for most of his life.  Although the truth about his wicked life became too hard to hide by the time he took to his deathbed I don't think he was ever publicly excommunicated. Fr. Hans Kung is a Catholic in good standing.
  
  You can be an open sinner and be petted and praised at the Vatican with no fear of any remote possibility  of excommunication. You can be a politician and vote for abortion and be a Catholic in good standing. Ted Kennedy got the funeral of a saint and when Joe Biden rings his life's curtain down his bishop will give the family the cathedral for his funeral if they should so desire.  So how is it that out of all the famous sinners in the world  this particular very old man who is obviously closer to the end of his life than the start of it and who founded one of the biggest Catholic TV channels in the world get excommunicated? This doesn't seem like a sad judgment on an obstinate sinner. It seems like malice. It seems like vengeance. It seems like a mafioso warning to the rest of the "neighborhood" to shut up or else.      (Thank you Frank Walker!)
  
  
• Rocky is a Third degree Knight of Columbus. When he saw the new Fourth Degree  ceremonial outfit he was not thrilled. All the Knights that we've heard from think this idea is a stinker. Some men are calling for Carl Anderson to resign. Apparently the decision came without warning and the Knights were told to like it or lump it.
  
  
• Why does Pre Cana take so long? Why can't people get their baby baptized when the child is still a newborn? Although the author sounds like a snob himself with his middle class crack he has a point.
• I once heard a priest in a lecture say that one of the saddest things he's seen is how lay people have to almost be theologians in order to defend their Faith. I would add that on top of this many of us do it very badly and have set up our own little magisteriums.
  
• Truth comes out eventually. It may take decades. It may not be in our lifetimes. It may only be on Judgement Day but truth will out and sometimes in the oddest places. 
  
• There was an .... interesting discovery after Mass discover today for the ushers.  Somebody either couldn't find the restroom or didn't want to go to it to change their infant's diaper which resulted in an strong odor in the narthex.
  
• Poor Benedict is really fragile these days. 

• I hate to link to Crux but they are the only ones so far who have written about the aftermath of Bishop Balla's horrible death.