Saint Peter Martyr, pray for us

Some priests have said that they would speak up on a particular subject but they fear that their bishop will punish them by sending them to a crappy assignment. If only they could spend time staring at this painting of St. Peter Martyr. He got a crappy assignment. He also persevered and preached and taught and bore all for the love of God. Is being sent to a parish in a lousy neighborhood or being a chaplain at the mental institution as bad and being hacked to death? Nope.

Pope St. Pius X, pray for us

Christ the King

Random thoughts on a Sunday evening

• Rocky's hip pain level has gone from two Tylenols and a good dinner to Tramadol and a cane so he's having surgery next month. St. Alphonsus Ligouri, patron of arthritis sufferers please pray for him.
• Bishop Morlino died of a heart attack last night. He seems to have run a decent diocese which is far more than many bishops in the US can say. May he rest in peace. Let's pray for his diocese because Cardinals Wuerl and Cupich will almost certainly have a say in who becomes his successor. 

• I was reading the Complicity Clergy site and paused to study the faces and body language in this photo. Even if I didn't know who this is I could see that something is clearly wrong. Men don't embrace each other around the waist. The  kid looks defeated and now as a 60 year old man he still appears to be haunted. Once again, I'm stunned that anybody who worked with Uncle Ted can say with a straight face that they had no idea what he was.
  
  
    

• Monsignor Nicola Bux is the theologian consultor of the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints in Rome but if you want to make him some stationery with his title on it I suggest you hurry because he probably won't be there much longer. Msgr. Bux is questioning the validity of Pope Benedict's abdication. He's not the only one but instead of just moaning about it in private he's made his query in public. 
  A number of public Catholics (Ann Barnhardt uses the term "thought leaders") have reacted poorly to Monsignor's  doubts.  Some of them say there's no point in talking about  Benedict anymore because the reality is that the St. Gallen mafia won and the Church lost. These people say that the only thing we can do is wait for Francis to die and try to keep our Faith. They may have point but they go too far when they  the hurl the epithets, "rad trad", "stupid", "schizophrenic", "weird" "unhelpful"  and "sedevacantist"  at people for not believing  or daring to doubt that  Benedict's abdication was valid. When I think of all the heretical garbage  I've heard seen freely spewed about in these last few years alone I don't see why this subject is taboo. Monsignor. Bux may be wrong but I've had enough of people telling us what we can't even discuss in public.
  
  
•  To the impure all purity in others must be destroyed.  They will not leave the innocent in peace. Sometimes they are violent. Usually they are sly and degrade the general culture. Earlier this year someone posted a video of her little granddaughter's dance recital. One little in the girl in the group abandoned the choreography and began gyrating and thrusting her chest and pelvis. The other three girls froze but the audience filled with parents and relatives cheered.  People in the comments section thought she was cute but one person said a six year old performing like a stripper wasn't cute at all. It was like a damn bursting. Some people wrote things like,  "it's harmless" and "lighten up," but they were overwhelmed by other people saying that they agreed that the dance number was distasteful and wondered where this child, not even a good three years out of diapers had learned to bump and grind like this? Where indeed?
  
   Several years ago a pervert  carrying items usually found on serial rapists walked into an Amish school in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, and  murdered multiple young girls before ending his own wicked life. On November 19th, an armed man in his 50s walked into the Catholic Supply Store in St. Louis. He forced himself on the all female staff and murdered a customer who refused his lust.  Who knows what story he's telling the police now but I think he chose the Catholic Supply store because it would be a soft target and he probably got a thrill out of defiling what he perceived to be good churchgoing women. 

Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, pray for us

St. Vincent Ferrer, pray for us

St. Vincent was one of the wonder worker saints. He healed lepers, raised the dead and preached to multitudes.

Saint Gertrude, the Great

This holy nun is the only female saint known as "the great". She did not sell herself into a kind of prostitution in order to be a star in music or the screen. She did not crave power. She did not rush hither and yon demanding that other people turn their countries and homes into freak shows or she'd screech at them. She did none of the stuff that pop culture tells women that we have to do.

Does your bishop support an investigation of Cardinal McCarrick or not?

"I know Archbishop Vigano.... We need to review Archbishop Vigano's letter carefully, comprehensively, thoroughly. Evidence needs to be given. But the bottom line is we need to know the truth. What is the truth? It demands a comprehensive review. All the faithful need to hear the answer to those questions. Who knew what and when?"

                                                                                           Bishop Michael F. Burbidge

I'm very pleased to say that my bishop said he was for an investigation of Cardinal McCarrick's filthy activities and how he got away with it for so long. Cardinal Wuerl is against an investigation as one would expect. If you want to see where your bishop stands you can look it up at the Church Transparency site. God bless the anonymous Texan who took the time to put this together.

RICO time?

George Robert Blakey

The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, 84 Stat. 941, commonly known by its  acronym,  RICO, is the Federal law  that attacks organized crime with extended criminal penalties and a civil cause of action for acts performed as part of an ongoing criminal organization.  It was originally drafted by George Robert Blakey, an Irish Catholic government attorney who graduated from Notre Dame and began his career under then Attorney General Bobby Kennedy. 

Originally, people thought RICO was only a means for going after the mafia, particularly the Five Families and some Italian Americans feared that it would be used against any Italian businessman who had more than two nickles to rub together. Blakey stoutly argued that this was not the case and anyone, whether his ancestors came over from England in the colonial era or he was fresh off the boat last week was subject to RICO if they were running or part of a organized criminal venture. 

Today, many people are saying that the only thing that is going to get men like Cardinal McCarrick out of our seminaries and rectories is an application of RICO to the Church. I've read comments from a few nervous people who say that the enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend. They fret that the state attorney generals just want to attack the Church any way they can and there will unforeseen consequences for all of us. After the pathetic performance of US bishops at the annual Baltimore meeting I think it's going to have to come to down to RICO. God help us!  Our bishops will not and since many are probably being blackmailed, they can not police themselves.  It's incredibly ironic that a law drafted by a Catholic man just might be one of the tools (along with this one)for cleaning up this sewer.

St. Athanatius, St. John Eudes and St. Peter Damian, pray for us. 

A neuralgic kind of Cute Catholicism

“As Leviathan’s lions begin to roar, the nominal Catholics will skip out of the arena. Roman Catholicism has become for baptized pagans a neuralgic kind of Cute Catholicism, with leprechauns, mariachi bands and Santa Claus instead of confession, prayer and fidelity to doctrine. But behind each leprechaun St. Patrick stares, and behind every mariachi band Our Lady of Guadalupe weeps, and behind every Santa Claus Christ himself judges.”

                                                      Fr. George Rutler

The mask slips

On November 6th I was walking down the hall at work. A small group of people were watching the TV. One man, an individual of some importance at this job said that he wished that people who vote against his party could be put into "re-education" camps and that the US could be China for just one day. This man is not ignorant. He's a world traveler and highly credentialed from Ivy League schools. He knows damned well what China does to inconvenient people.  Except for one man, everyone either smiled or laughed. The one man who remained silent glanced away but I saw that he had a grimace on his face. Was it because he was shocked or was it because he was concerned that Ole Mr. Nasty was being careless in saying this out loud in front of the staff? At any rate I'm glad I heard that and glad I saw who laughed. It helps to know who is a decent person and who most definitely is not.

Pray for the Holy Souls in Purgatory

Eternal Father, I offer Thee the most precious blood of Thy Divine Son, Jesus, in union with the Masses said throughout the world today, for all the Holy Souls in Purgatory, for sinners everywhere, for sinners in the universal church, for those in my own home and in my family. Amen.

I agree with Julie

Julie at Connecticut Catholic  is a sweet, gentle lady so if you get her riled up you must be a real piece of work. She sums up quite well my feelings about Father Longenecker. I used to read him years ago and came to the conclusion that he is an example of why priests should not blog about anything but apologetics or parish doings.  I don't think the man ever should have been ordained and he probably would be a lot happier if he was still in England. If the Church is going to allow married Protestant ministers to become priests then the  rigor of the vetting process needs to be vastly improved.

A Tale of Two Nuns

When I was a young girl we had a nun who struck me as odd. Sr. X wore her skirt shorter than the other sisters and her veil was smaller. She also preferred the boys to the girls, particularly shy, lady-like girls which I was. Thankfully, some wise person kept her in the office so she had little to do with the kids. Years later she got a job at one of the boy's high schools and the last time I saw her she'd stopped wearing her even modified habit and was sporting the suit, almost buzz cut short hair and sour expression of most modern nuns.

From second grade to eighth grade I never saw anything  about Sr. X that struck me as holy, pious or admirable.  I didn't want to be like her.

My school had another nun who was remarkable. Sr. Jane Mariae was a serious nun. She wore her full habit with her skirt hem to her ankle and her rosary on her belt and nobody, not Paul VI, not Mother Superior or any mocking fellow liberal nun at the convent fazed her one bit. She never tried to be my big goofy adult friend. We all adored and admired Sr. Jane Mariae and we were sure that she loved us. I wanted to be like her. Her pious example and the examples of my other good nuns are among the reasons why I'm still Catholic.

A ghost tale ---Say a prayer for mad Fr. Lesches

Years ago when I was still in high school I read a collection of ghost stories called "Haunted Heartland." Most of them weren't a bit scary and were presented in  the dry  businesslike fashion of a folklorist who is merely collecting materials for a dissertation, but one tale stuck with me. It was the story of Fr. Louis Lesches, a priest assigned to St. Mary's College in Minnesota, who tried to kill his superior, Bishop Patrick Hefron. The bishop was saying Mass in the chapel one morning when he turned around and saw Fr. Lesches standing behind him. To the bishop's surprise, the priest was wearing a Prince Albert suit instead of his cassock or clericals. To add to this surprise the bishop quickly realized that  the priest was packing heat. Fr. Lesches fired a gun three times, hitting the bishop twice.

At that time Fr. Lesches was already the number one problem child of the diocese. Although he was said to be brilliant and had done well in the academic part of his seminary studies,  he was also overly emotional, insubordinate, and felt that the bishop was persecuting him. He'd failed at parish assignments and now the annoyed and apparently unsympathetic bishop was keeping a close eye on him by removing him from parish life and bringing him back to the chancery to live.  

 Bishop Hefron's vestments, orneriness, and his great physical shape probably saved his life.  Instead of dropping dead or swooning he yelled at his now panicked attacker and chased him out of the chapel. Fr. Lesches was captured and spent the rest of his life in a mental hospital.

 Students have been claiming to see the anguished ghost of Fr. Lesches on campus for many decades. It's a spooky tale but I hope everyone who hears or reads it will stop and say a prayer for this poor, strange, unstable man who never should've been ordained but is a priest forever and one who probably really needs our help now.

A Prayer for the redemption of bad priests

Divine Savior Jesus Christ, Thou are the Good Shepherd who gives His life for His sheep. Oh, be in a very special way the Good Shepherd of those poor lost priests who are also appointed by Thee to be leaders of Thy people, but who have broken the oath of their holy ordination and have become unfaithful to their exalted calling. Bestow upon these poorest of the poor the very fullness of that pastoral solicitude with which Thou dost so faithfully seek the sheep that are lost! Touch their hearts with the irresistible ray of grace which emanates from Thine all-merciful love! Enlighten their minds and strengthen their wills, that they may turn away from all sin and error and come back to Thy holy altar and to Thy people. O most compassionate Savior! Remember that Thou didst once redeem the souls of Thine erring priests with Thy Precious Blood and in infinite preferential love didst impress upon them the indelible character of the priesthood. Put wholly to shame those miserable helpers of Satan who lay snares for the virtue of priests and endanger the holy ideal of the priesthood. Most graciously accept our prayers and sacrifices for poor priests who have gone astray and hear our earnest petition.

 Amen 

Imprimatur - Bishop John F. Noll (April 18, 1948)

St. Anthony of Padua, defender of the Holy Eucharist, obtain for us holy priests

St. John-Mary Vianney, model of sacerdotal holiness, obtain for us holy priests

St. Francis Xavier, patron of missionary priests, obtain for us holy priests

St. Therese of the Child-Jesus and of the Holy Face, victim offered for the sanctification of priests, obtain for us holy priests

Saints and Servants of God, obtain for us holy priests.