The Fate of Fr. Escalante and other random thoughts on a Sunday afternoon

• Father Escalante of the St. Francis de Sales parish in Purcelville,Virginia  has been forced to resign from his parish. According to my bishop,  "Father Escalante freely admitted to conduct unbecoming and foreign to the clerical state involving two adults."
  What exactly does that mean? Did he make fun of a pious parish family? Did he curse during a homily? Did he mock the Blessed Mother? Did he tell a lie in front an audience and while being recorded? Did he promote sins against chastity? I can think of priests who did those things in the presence of multiple adults and despite complaints in some cases, they are still in good standing.
   If Fr. Escalante is guilty and might one day end up in my parish, I don't want this vague letter. Tell us exactly what he is supposed to have done. His main adversaries, were the director of religious education who has left the parish and the associate pastor, both of whom could land anywhere in the diocese so I'd like to hear what they have to say for themselves.  If Father Escalante is innocent then what is the real reason he's been ruined?
  
  
  
  
  
• The Devil is a liar and the uber mean joker too. So many wicked and stupid people thought that adding dancing girls to  the Mass would look like Vestal virgins or Rita Hayworth in Salome. 

Instead they got this:

Churches all over the US and Europe have been foisting liturgical dance on the Faithful for decades but it was easy to roll one's eyes in disgust and mock it ...  

There were people who were revolted but most Catholics who were even paying attention just said, "Well, it's the Germans. What do you expect?", or "It's just that one weird parish in Washington state," or "It's an unfortunate abuse but Rome has not approved it and my diocese would never allow it..."

But now someone at the Vatican served up this: 

 So I guess dancing girls who can't even dance, are official now. Click on this link  to see the whole thing. I don't care to post it on my blog.

• By the time the Pope Francis show finally has it's last act he will have to go down in history as the man who convinced more American Catholics to convert to Eastern Orthodoxy than anybody else. This ceremony in the Vatican gardens probably sent a lot of people screaming over the wall. 

St. Boniface, pray for us and may your spiritual sons get ready to swing their gospel axes.