I'm sorry, Fr. Z

Cheeky Pink Girl is right, his blog isn't much fun anymore.

Bluegrass Mass

The priest composer performer who came up with this Bluegrass Mass was inspired by being in Bristol, Virginia, the birthplace of Country Music. He means well but as I listened to the music I found myself chuckling.

Bless his heart.

St. John Vianney, pray for us.
St. Pio, pray for us.
Fr. Vincent Cappadono, pray for us.

sick

Gastro instestinal flu has laid me low.

Larry David is your fault if ...

1. you watch his show.
   
2. you heard that he urinated on a picture of Christ and just shrugged your shoulders and said, "Well, it's satire and at worst, a lapse in taste."
3. you plan to tune into his show next Sunday, just like always.
   
4. you cringed with sophisticated embarrassment when your Evangelical co-worker blasted Mr. David.

In reparation let us pray:

MAY THE MOST HOLY, MOST SACRED, MOST ADORABLE, MOST INCOMPREHENSIBLE AND UNUTTERABLE NAME OF GOD BE ALWAYS PRAISED, BLESSED, LOVED, ADORED AND GLORIFIED, IN HEAVEN, ON EARTH AND UNDER THE EARTH, BY ALL THE CREATURES OF GOD, AND BY THE SACRED HEART OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST, IN THE MOST HOLY SACRAMENT OF THE ALTAR. AMEN.

Folks, for the most part, Hollywood people are like prostitutes. They do it for the money, honey. What convictions, they have are shallower than a raindrop. When Mr. David see's a drop in his income he'll change his tune. Protests won't do it. Editorials won't do it. Lack of viewership will do it.

when nuns go bad

A large part of the crisis in the Church has been caused by women. When nuns go bad it leads to terrible things. Mostly it's angry nuns in butch haircuts and ill fitting pant suits talking about the Earth goddess. Sometimes it's nuns teaching heresy in CCD. And sometimes it's nuns walking women to an abortion clinic. I don't think Harry Potter is all that great but there is only word for this woman: Deatheater.

You know what I'm sick of? Kennedys meddling with the Church

A long, long time ago a young Bobby Kennedy went to hear Fr. Feeney give a talk. Fr. Feeney made his famous declaration that there's no salvation outside the church. Bobby had non Catholic friends and was worried about them. He went home and told his dad who said he'd speak to Richard about it. Who was Richard? Cardinal Cushing. "Richard" sent someone to investigate. Eventually Fr. Feeney was silenced, anyone who went to his center was refused the sacramant of marriage and he was temporarily execommunicated. I don't have any sympathy for Fr. Fenney. He seemed to have serious issues with obedience and certain classes of people, but something about this story bothered me. "Richard" was supposed to be the cardinal, not the personal errand boy for one powerful family.

Fast forward to today. Patrick Kennedy, Teddy's son made an attack statement about the Catholic Church. His bishop, thank God is not a lap dog and here is his response.

Patrick, your family may own the Boston diocese but you and your cousin, Kathleen do NOT own the Church and you DO NOT speak for Catholics.

the anglicans are coming...........

Once again, I am struck by how truly courageous and yes, awesome, Pope Benedict is. For a shy, quiet professor he really gets things done. Fr. Z, the American Papist and the Anchoress have the details of the Anglican arrangement and they discuss it better than I could.

Now, as to practical matters. How many Anglicans will really convert? If you're genuinely serious about becoming Catholic you do it. You do it even though your father is opposed, you do it even though the people at work will laugh, you do it even though your Aunt Mary will cut you out of her will. Converting is not always easy. My in-laws weren't happy when Rocky converted and occasionally my F-I-L, Big Daddy cracks a nasty joke.

I get the impression that the Anglo Catholics/Anglicans are very much attached to their beautiful old buildings--- this is not a criticism, Catholics have had sit ins to try to stall closing their parishes---and I don't see the Anglicans who are left behind willingly giving up their property. As for the married priests, they could be a problem. If a man can have one woman, he can have another. Preachers messing up sexually is common in Protestant denominations. And I'm concerned about the financial burden that will be placed on parishes in the event of priestly divorces. I don't want my weekly donations going to pay for the priest's child support. Sorry, I just don't.

All in all, an amazing thing has happened. The door is opened for Anglicans to come back to the Church. All they have to do is walk in.

Obama on your bible

I saw this on the Cheeky Pink Girl Blog. She's appalled and so am I.
This is a an Obama bible cover. Our country is riding the crazy train and I fear that we can't get off in time. This is all going to end in tears.

My God, have mercy

Mass with Fr. Marchado

Fr. Clement Marchado, SOLT celebrated a healing Mass last night at St. Anthony's in DC. The church is between the Basilica and the Franciscan monastery. It has plenty of parking, lovely, happy priests and the Blessed Sacrament is right in the middle of the santuary. Because of Rocky's arthritis we decided to go. Fr. Marchado belongs to the same order as Fr. Corapi so we knew he could preach and preach he did. Before Mass he blessed everyone's rosaries, medals, crucifixes, statutes, oil and salt. I got to confession and after Mass everyone who wanted it, got an individual blessing. The Knights of Columbia and the ushers provided crowd control and were there to catch anyone who was overcome during the blessing. Father must have read my soul and thought that I really needed a blessing because he annointed me with so much oil that I looked like a small greased pig when we left the church.

Mass of the Ages

Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. When Rocky told me I thought he was on a joke website but no..... this farce is not worthy of comment so instead I'll concentrate on the beautiful and the true....






See more at this lovely site.

A Padre Pio evening

Yesterday we went to St. Mary's in Alexandria, Virginia to hear Fr. Ermelindo DeCapua give a talk on Padre Pio. Fr. DiCapua lived with Padre Pio for the last three years of the saint's life. He brought a precious relic, one of the gloves that covered Padre Pio's stigmata and blessed us all with it. Rocky estimated that there must've been about 600 people in attendence. Fr. DiCapua is touring America and raising funds for a home for sick old priests to retire to.

Jezu ufam Tobie!

That's Polish for Jesus, I trust in You! Rocky and I went to the Divine Mercy Shrine in Baltimore. It's stunning and a very special place becuase the former pastor Fr. Pytel was blessed with the miracle needed for St. Faustina's cannonization. We also stopped by the Seton House and St. Alphonsus.

the kindest of men--Rocky

Yesterday Rocky took my mother to Target and to Bed Bath & Beyond. She hasn't been shopping in four months so it was a major buying trip and yes, he spent hours pushing the cart around and making trips to the car. And then he took us all to dinner. Later he restocked her supply of bottled water and hooked up her HDTV cables. Rocky loves my mother and anytime she need something he's there.

Christopher West, the Catholic sexologist probably wouldn't be too impressed but I'm so grateful to have such a good, kind man for my husband.

Earlier this week a woman I know mentioned that she showed her husband a job posting that would, if he got it, take him to Iraq or Afghanistan for a year. She said she'd miss him but all the bills and a good chunk of the mortgage could be paid off. My reaction was to think that she was kidding, then it was to wonder WTH was wrong with her. I just looked at her while she excitedly talked about the job.

Now granted, Rocky and I have a very different relationship than she and her husband do and we have only been apart for about two weeks in the last 21 years (I had to go to South Carolina to take care of some family business and he couldn't get off from work) but I can't imagine --not on my worst most bitchy day actually wanting him to go to a war zone (bombs, fire, dead buddies, possibly getting your head sawed off) to fix our finances. I feel sorry for that woman's husband, who already has a job that he apparently likes by the way, and I hope his feelings weren't hurt. A loving husband is more than just a paycheck.

St. Therese, send me a rose.........

Don't go to Medjugorje

The local bishop has made his views as clear as day. So much money has been made and so many people have hung their faith on this, (false, I think) apparition that I suspect the show will go on in disobedience to the bishop.

Don't go to Medjugorje. Go to Lourdes, go to Fatima, go to Akita or Knock. Go somewhere that has been judged worthy of belief.

This made me laugh

I saw this on the Athanatius Contra Mundum blog. Most of the posters were horrified but I had to laugh. Why? Because this is exactly what Mass was like when I was a little kid. In fact, if you go to a hippie parish that's full of 60somethings, the Mass is probably still like this. The first time I heard Latin in church and later, chant I thought it sounded like Heaven. To this day I prefer a silent Mass over anything that involves a band and a guitar.

Well, I'm not going back there again.

There are three churches in my diocese that I will never set foot in again hopefully.
St. Charles Boromeo in Arlington, Good Shepherd and Queen of Peace. St. Charles has a really strange vibe and after reading this I see why.

The race thing

I am the descendant of West African slaves and Irish immigrants with a few rogue Scots thrown in for extra spice. There are great tragedies and triumphs in my family tree. My ancestors paid a hell of a price for me to be here today and it irks me when people try to put me in a category box. I am not an African-American. I don't do hyphens. I've traced my mother's family tree back to the 1800s. That's several generations removed from Africa. My folks have been here a long time and have a mighty stake in this country though schemers like Jesse Jackson try to claim otherwise. I am an American, thank you.

Perhaps if Thomas Jefferson had supported his son-in-law's efforts to ban slavery, perhaps if Abraham Lincoln hadn't gone to the Ford theater, perhaps if more people had only listened to Booker T. Washington my kin would've had a different fate in this country but that's not how things went down and it can't be changed.

A lot of nice, well meaning white people voted for Obama thinking that it would somehow heal the race issues of this country. I knew that it wouldn't and in fact, I think the race thing has gotten worse. Say one word against Obama's policies and you get the racist card flung in your face. That's not right.


I don't know how to say this but here goes. A lot of black people hate you. Sorry. They hate you because their parents taught them to do it and the parents learned it from their parents. It was a survival mechanism back in the Jim Crow days. So today we have people who never went to a lynching, never knocked a black child down the stairs for kicks, never practiced placage with their black maid or committed outright rape, and wouldn't even dream of or approve of such things being loathed by blacks who never experienced any of that but believe today's whites are still capable of this.

What's the answer? Prayer, honesty and love for our country, I guess. In the mean times things are going to nastier. A lot nastier.

we are in trouble

I never thought I'd see this in America, never.








Our Lady, Queen of the Americas, pray for us. Mother, I know we don't deserve it but please pray for us.

St. Stephen, Martyr in Middleburg

Rocky had a rare Saturday off so we made the most of it. We visited the incredibly beautiful Long Branch in Millwood and trooped around the Virginia State Arboretum. I'm a bird watcher and was delighted to see one of the these little guys: a White breasted Nuthatch.

We checked Masstimes.org for the closest church and decided to go to St. Stephen's. I expected it to be a bit of an adventure. Middleburg is a special place. It's quiet old money and horses and skinny women who stay that way because they ride hard after the hounds. It's a place where you better not fake it because everyone knows if you belong or not. It's a place where flashy bad taste is not tolerated and new money means nothing. Sean Combs and Paris Hilton would be miserable.

The old woman in faded jeans and an ancient barn coat walking by is heiress to one of the biggest fortunes in America, the red faced "farmer" in the car full of dogs gave the money for most of the art exhibits you went to last year. The fresh faced little cherub on a pony is the son of a business titan. The daintly little cupcake of a girl at the ice cream stand spends her days training powerful, nervous thoroughbreds. It's that kind of place.

So when we rolled into St. Stephens I was delighted to find that nobody gave us the stinkeye. In fact, people were nice. No-one appeared to be disturbed or even surprised by our presence. Father had a gentle but clever sense of humor and gave an impressive homily.

The church decor is interesting. It's so carefully inoffensive that I think it must have built with the desire that it blend in with the rest of town. The paint is colonial white and blue gray. The statues are small and pale. The painting of St. Stephen is frankly, bad but the altar is large and tall and the Blessed Sacrament is right in front. You will not have to wander around this small church trying to figure out where Our Lord is. Mass was gentle and blessedly free of any weirdness. The music was okay. The cantor's voice was lovely. The lector did not show off. The decently dressed parishioners were prayerful before Mass and there was not a mad rush to leave after Communion. I was impressed by the very well behaved children. Since the Aboretum is open 365 days a year and is free, Rocky and I plan to get back there so we'll probably be praying at St. Stephen's again sometime.