The Last Judgement

not a gentleman

I stopped reading 1P5 partly because there just haven't been very many interesting essays for some time  and partly because I've been mystified by Steve Skojec's Jekyll and Hyde behavior. 1P5 Steve writes beautifully and is very impressive. Have you ever heard one of his podcasts? He has an excellent voice and some of the early ones were profound.  Facebook and Twitter Steve, on the other hand, can be so mean that  it really is like two different guys and when I first noticed it, the behavior was shocking. Now it's become a pattern and I'm tired of his act. 

Trash talking  about Ann Bernhardt's looks is definitely not the act of a gentleman. First off, Ann is not his woman. What she looks like is none of his business and he should restrict his attentions to his own wife. He has said that he couldn't help but notice that she looks different over the years but who doesn't, including him?  I don't want to read anymore excuses about his years with the Legionnaires making him prone to moodiness. A bad time in one's youth does not bestow a life time pass that requires other people to just accept rude behavior without comment. I don't see myself ever clicking  on the 1P5 site page again.

Then Jesus said to the twelve: Will you also go away?

I'm not so concerned about schism after the Amazon synod. I am concerned with how people will react. How many of our priests will stay faithful? More to the point, what will your and my pastor do?  Are Rocky and I going to have to find a new place to go to Mass? Will it come to finding a priest and going to Mass in a rented room or a basement? I am seeing more and more people in discussion forums and on Twitter who can't take it anymore and are heading towards the Eastern Orthodox.  Others say that they can't do that...yet and have decided to go to an Eastern Catholic parish for as long as they can. Who will stay and who will go away?

random thoughts at the end of vacation

• You can play the enfant terrible for only so long. After a while even patient gentle people start wondering if it's an act or if you really are emotionally defective. 

• I was reading about a cheerleader who managed to fool her incredibly unobservant parents, delivered a baby, killed him and buried him in her parents' yard.  She got off. A jury found her not guilty. The first thing that popped into my mind is that parents really shouldn't let their daughters be cheerleaders or join the dance squad at school. You sit there and  clap and grin like a fool while she does a routine that a stripper would approve of and then are shocked when she acts out sexually..... And you parents who send your daughter to swimming and gymnastics ought to consider the huge amount of sexual interference that goes on from coaches, team trainers and doctors in both sports.
  
  
• Rocky and I went to Pennsylvania on vacation last week and went to Mass at a Redemptorist parish. It wasn't bad. Father gave a sound homily and while he was surprised that I received on the tongue he didn't refuse or frown,  but it was almost comical because everything I expected from a Redemptorist parish happened.
  
  Eucharistic ministers in albs? Check
  Altar girl? Check
  Music from the 1970s? Check
  Jokes from the priest? Check
  The shortest version of the Confietor allowed? Check
  Lay person giving a talk after Mass and before the dismissal? Check

To be fair, the parishioners were very pleasant and Father was happy to greet us after Mass and ask us to come back for Mass on our next vacation.

• Monsignor Rossi is "on retreat." 

random thoughts on a Sunday afternoon

St. Giles, pray for us

• The College of Cardinals has has 13 new members. God help us.
  
  
• I don't like doing housework on Sunday but my mother is spending the night with us tomorrow and I think I saw a mouse in the living room last night. If we were in South Carolina I'd ask one of my relative if their Feist dog could spend the day with me. They great little vermin hunters.  Instead I'm putting out traps and hope that if they don't get him the rodent will at least stay quiet and out of sight while Mama is here.  (Update: the mouse did not make an appearance while my mother was here!)
  
  
• C.L. at  Vincit Qui Se Vincit  has some very good thoughts after reading my thoughts on the call to unite the clans.
  
• Back in the 80s and early 90s corporate America sold us out by taking all the factories to China and other countries where they could pay a child a pittance an hour and work him all day. Working class Americans lost their jobs they were told that it was progress and to deal with it. There is a lot of talk today about the opioid "epidemic," as if it just happened but despair has been growing for at least three decades. The alcoholism, drug use and family destruction went through the roof in whole swaths of the country and it was either ignored, mocked or dismissed.  Kids were told that if you had a college degree in anything you'd never have to walk home in shock after finding out that the entire plant had closed. Well, a little bit legislation called  the Immigration Act of 1990 created the H1-B visa and made things....interesting for Americans with Bachelor's degrees. By the mid to late 90s people who thought they were bullet proof were stunned to find out that they weren't.
  
  The experts on TV, and in magazines and newspapers  told us that if you wanted to be safe you had to go beyond the Bachelors. A Master degree was the answer until it wasn't. For the past five years or so Americans have been told that STEM is the way to save themselves. Umm, no. STEM OPT gives foreign students a 24 month Visa extension if they pursue a science, technology, engineering or math program. If you think a STEM degree makes you safe you may be in for the same horrible surprise that one of my uncle's  faced when Bethlehem Steel closed or you may get to feel the same crushing fear some of my cousins faced when the textile mills closed in South Carolina. Nobody is safe.
  
  
  
  
  
  
•   I tell my relatives and best friends, ‘If you want your children to fight for their faith, send them to public school. If you want them to lose their faith, send them to Catholic school.’ ~Archbishop Fulton Sheen
  
  I'm sure the archbishop was talking about the Catholic-lite schools but there are still people in Rochester, NY who remember that one of the first things he did was to order the closure of a Catholic school. The families of the students fought back ferociously and the decision was dropped. The incident that ended the archbishop's time in Rochester was his decision to give St. Bridget's Church and school to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The reaction from the parishioners was intense and the idea was dropped and Archbishop Sheen put in for retirement.
  
  
  
• Eternal rest grant Oh Lord unto Thy servant.....

Fr. David Tanko was murdered in Nigeria. He is the 11th priest to be murdered in an African country this year. 

• I've read comments from Australians on multiple sites who are pretty much content with Cardinal Pell's conviction because all though he could not have done what he was convicted of but because of all the things he's been suspected of over the decades. Has Australian law always been like that or is this something new?

A PRAYER FOR THE REDEMPTION OF BAD PRIESTS

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.