Pray for Frank Walker!

 Please pray for Frank Walker, of Canon 212 and The Stumbling Block.  He has had a stroke.   He's a fine man and has always been very gracious to me. 

and the hits just keep on coming -- random thoughts for a chilly Sunday morning

•  I went for my annual physical and the results weren't all sunshine and giggles. I've been anemic all my life but apparently this time the doctor was concerned that my hemoglobin is too low even for me so I'm off for more tests. I was advised to do this as soon as possible.  I became weirdly angry and answered the doctor with one one word sentences and was pretty curt when I couldn't do that. Sorry about that. I stayed angry for two days and kept Ennio Morricone's music on repeat and now I'm so tired I'm just flat.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Francis may be a legitimate pope or not but for practical purposes his bottom is firmly planted on Peter's throne and he is wielding power with glee.  Just as Our Lady said repeatedly in different apparitions good priests, monks, whole convents, the occasional bishop and cardinal are being persecuted. We hear shocking heresy coming out of Rome daily.  Men who pledged allegiance to Sodom  are riding high. People who worship  at a Latin Mass  are  being pushed out of their parishes.  Even people who go to a reverent as possible Novus Ordo where the priest does not face the people while serving Mass are under attack. We have a pope who is mean.  We've had bad popes in the past 2000, years but when was the last time in living memory did we have a pope who was so stunningly nasty and who spewed insults on a daily basis?  Yet and still, we have to cling to the Bark of Peter. If the changes coming out the Synod are as bad as people are saying they will be many of us are going to have to make decisions. Find a decent priest. Go to a true Mass. Go in a basement, a field,  a hotel room or cemetery chapel if you have to.  Our grandparents did this and more when Vatican II landed on them and that is why you and I had the chance to go to a TLM. 
  
  
  
  
  
• 3 Reasons to Not Believe in Aliens....

• This is truly weird. Colm Flynn of EWTN shows Chinese Catholics who traveled to visit Francis in Mongolia. Since the Chinese government forbade this, Flynn is exposing these people to danger for what? A few clicks? A pat on the back in the comments?  It reminds me of the Night Stalker case where then San Francisco mayor, Diane Feinstein blabbed details not known the public which led to the serial killer disposing of his shoes and continuing his reign of terror. Flynn should not have shown these people on camera. 
  
  
  
  
  
• Theodore McCarrick successfully ran down the clock. He's either faking dementia, or he and his protectors kept him going until he genuinely slid into the terrible mental fog of senility.  We do not put people on trial who are too feeble minded to understand what is going on and speak for themselves so the charge of molesting a 16 year old at a wedding reception in 1974 ,was dismissed. This may make some readers angry but I don't think that if the case was tried fairly, there was much chance of conviction. Was there any forensic evidence? Were there any living witnesses to back up the victim's story? But this is besides the point. McCarrick should have been laicized, excommunicated, and tried in civil court DECADES ago. The festering sore of a scandal remains. Bishops and Cardinals knew what Uncle Ted was doing. Seminarians knew what he was doing and whispered about  the New Jersey beach house.
  
  Father Issac Relyea is, to my knowledge the only person who has said with his characteristic bluntness what he thinks about the seminarians who complied with McCarrick's  sexual demands. McCarrick's "nephews" are in high places today. For a long time nobody was appointed to a bishopric  in the United States unless McCarrick vouched for them. Watching Cardinal Kevin Farrell telling an interviewer that he had no idea-- never saw or heard anything that made him raise an eyebrow about what McCarrick was doing in the whole five years he was a  DC diocese bishop and living in the same four bedroom apartment as the cardinal was the icing on a stomach twisting cake for many people.  St. Peter Damian, pray for us!

• Stay Catholic.
  
  
  
• Maureen Mullarkey has some thoughts on the appalling Fr. Rupnik. 
  
  
  
  
• Thank you Canon 212 and Harvey Millican.