A Carmelite novice

When I was little I wanted to be a Carmelite like St. Therese. 

St. Marguerite

While we weren't looking

Delaware just outlawed spanking. Don't say, "Well, I don't do corporal punishment anyway." Tommorow some state could outlaw time outs because they are humiliating or making a kid do chores becuase it's child labor. Bit by bit, the State is taking over private life but most of us are too busy being stupafied by things like Kate Middleton's bosom or what some celebrity is saying.

Sacred Heart Nuns

Agnus Dei!

 

 

 

 

The most beautiful bride I've ever seen

 

Sr. Christiana of the Byzantine Carmelites. 

Vocaton poster fail

Uh Sirs, I'm just a librarian but I'm pretty sure this poster put out by Irish Jesuits won't attract guys to the priesthood.

These might be a little better.

St. Joseph Cupertino

Viva Cristo Rey!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Give your priest a break

I saw this prayer on Rorate Caeli and it reminded me of something I've been mulling over for years. I've watched Father Eagle and Father Gandalf and Father Aragon before him be gracious and patient and perfectly attentive to hundreds of people. Years ago a woman wrote on her blog that she was upset because her parish  priest didn't come greet her group. It didn't seem to occur to her that Father might have been doing something else that day like paying the water bill or talking to a bride and groom or spraying sealant on that darn leaky pipe in the kitchen. It also didn't seem to occur to her that lots of groups meet at the parish every week. Surely Father shouldn't be expected to vist every single group  at every meeting? We all have one pastor with one set of quirks to put up with but he has hundreds or thousands of demanding  people to deal with. On a human level it's too much to handle. On the supernatural level it can only be achieved by a total union with the Eternal High Priest, Jesus Christ.

random thoughts

*Several years ago I was sitting in a hair salon while one of the stylists told a story about her brother who was talking to his friend, a Rastafarian. The brother implored his friend to see that the Emperor Haile was not the Messiah. The Rasta friend gave the brother an affectionate pat on the back and told him that becuase he was his friend he would let the comment pass. If he were anyone else the Rasta would have to kill him. Some of the ladies in the salon giggled and the stylist shook her head in wonderment and said, "They really do mean what they preach and they'll defend it to the end."
Americans and most Westerners have gotten soft and sloppy about core beliefs. We innocently believe that since we are squishy about religion that everybody else is too.  Nope. I wish more Americans would wake up and realize that we are dealing with people who are not like us.  As Belloc once said:

We sit by and watch the Barbarian, we tolerate him; in the long stretches of peace we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence, his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creeds refreshes us; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond: and on these faces there is no smile.

 

 

*Fr. Bear helped in the celebration of a beautiful Tridentine wedding in Old St. Mary's in DC. Back in the 90s I would get up take a bus and then a train to Chinatown in DC to go to the TLM at St. Mary's. The neighborhood was rough back in those days and I moved quickly from the train station to the church. Chinatown is fashionable again so things are much better now.


*I've been sick all week and the weekend isn't looking too good either. I'm really looking forward to going to Mass today for the consolation.


*Pray for the Pope. I wish he weren't in Lebanon but he's braver than I am.

*When George Washington was sixteen he wrote out the Rules of Civility and Decent Behavor in one of his notebooks and decided to live by them. Too bad the Duchess of Cambridge never read them. Rule number seven could've saved her and her husband Prince William some embarassment.

*  Have you ever noticed that when there's a conversation about possible societal collaspe that certain guys seem excited by the possibility? My mother is a diabetic and she has no thyroid. I can stockpile food, toilet paper and a little something for personal secuirity. I can raise chickens and grow some vegtables but I can't make insulin or synthetic hormone. My husband takes two medicines everyday and I can't make those either. If access to a pharmacy is cut off for more than an month millions of people are going to die or in my case, be miserable and sickly. Nobody seems to talk about that.


*Katrina Fernandez has decided to stop blogging for awhile. I wish her the best and I hope she comes back as an independent blogger.

God have mercy

Ambassador Stevens, State Department information management officer Sean Smith and security personnel Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty. died horrible deaths. May God have mercy on their souls and may God's wisdom sink into the thick skulls of the people who run our country.  I think of the families of Steven, Smith, Woods and Doherty and I can't imagine how they must feel now. God give them strength and comfort.

This aint glamorous

These two news stories from Hollywood and New York City are an unpleasant reminder that the sophisticated people we're all supposed to look up to really aren't very pretty at all.

While we weren't looking...

I remember flipping channels and for few seconds listening to an Evangelical  (I can't remember his name) on TV years ago, who said that the pedophiles and their psychiatric enablers would use the same tactics as gays to win sympathy and legalization of their activities.  The reaction the next day was pretty fierce. Most commentators scoffed and at least one public homosexual gave the Evangelical a furious rebuttal. Other people just laughed at such a ridiculous notion and used the man's remarks as an example of how dumb the Evangelicals were.

Well, while we weren't looking because we were too busy paying attention to celebrity gossip to deal with hard news or unpleasant facts, the pedophiles were busy working and society is on a conveyor belt being moved further down towards a foul goal. A sympathetic article on child molesters appeared last week in a popular  online publication. It uses the "born this way" argument and claims that putting a child molester in jail doesn't do any good. Of course, incarceration doesn't change pedophiles. They enjoy what they do. Incarceration keeps them safely away from children. Incarceration doesn't cure rapists or con artists either. They enjoy what they do. It punishes and prevents them from harming the innocent for a number of years.

That "silly, hateful, hysterical,"Evangelical with his bad hair cut, cheap suit and poor public speaking voice was right. The age of sexual consent is going to be lowered. Legalized pedophilia will creep up on us. It may take twenty years but unless we have a religious revival or a societal collapse I think it's going to happen and most of us won't even notice until our 15 year old granddaughter's 40 year old "date" shows up and there won't be a single legal thing we  will be able to do to stop her from going out the door with him.

Maria Bambina

Most Maria Bambina statues show Our Lady as a tiny infant that St. Anne has just swaddled. This one shows a chubby cheeked tot.

Sr. Simone have you read Mt 25:1-13?

Sr. Simone says abortion is above her paygrade. What good do the LCWR nuns do? Do they teach like the Nashville Dominicans? Do they serve the poor --- and let's be honest, real poor people don't live in pleasant or safe places--- like the Missionaries of Charity? Do they take care of the aged like the Little Sisters of the Poor? 

Do they dedicate themselves to Marylike behavior and charity like the Sister Servants of the Virgin? Do they take care of cancer patients like the Hawthorne Dominicans? Do they teach and nurse and look after refugees like the wonderful Handmaids of the Holy Child Jesus?  Do they take care of the homeless like the Little Sisters of Jesus and Mary? Do they dedicate themselves to prayer and reparation like the Handmaids of the Precious Blood?

Do the LCWR nuns do anything beyond riding around in luxury buses making nuisances of themselves?

A Prayer for priests

Lord Jesus, by Thy Precious Blood shed on the way to Calvary, take pity on priests who are victims of injustice, and who, like their adorable Model, receive in return for their devotedness, but crosses, trials and persecutions.


Amen

A prayer for priests from St. Therese

 

What a beautiful vocation we have!

We must keep the salt of the earth!

We offer our prayers and sacrifices

for the apostles of our Lord;

we ourselves must be their apostles,

while they evangelize our brothers

by word and example.

To live for love, O Lord divine,

It's asking Thee to fill with fire

The hearts of all our priests and Thine.

Seraphic purity may they acquire.

Protect Thy Church. I am her child.

My life I offer Thee. Is it enough?

I pray to Thee so kind and mild.

I live for love.

The souls of priests I wish to be

Clear and bright alike a star.

Each one of them, for angels to see,

Before he goes up to the altar.

To grant us such a miracle,

O God, a rosary we say.

We pray before the tabernacle

On our knees, all nigiht and day.

As pure as the white Host may be

Thy priests, these sacred chosen few.

For all the world their lives to see.

Thy friends who teach us in the pew.

May they fulfill their ministry sublime

At Eucharist and frequent preaching.

Accept me in Thy plan divine

As victim for Thy harvesting.

random thoughts

 

• Romanitas Press has a few serious points about processions of the Blessed Sacrament. Pity the poor priest who has to explain to the outraged mamas why their little Honey Pie can't  be a flower girl though.
• I was walking to work and stopped to look at the newspaper boxes for Washington Post, Washington Examiner and the New York Times. All of them  had stories about Hurricaine Isaac on the front covers. If one didn't know better one would think the hurricaine was threatening DC and New York rather than being a fairly frequent weather phenomenon on the Gulf Coast.  I think a lot of news celebrities were privately dissapointed that Isaac wasn't another Katrina.
  
• The truth is the truth even when we don't want to hear it.
  
• Someone at work (hardcore Democrat),was carrying on about the Republican convention. I was polite but I couldn't wait to get away from him.  He's a normaly a nice man but this whole election cycle has brought out a nasty streak that I hadn't realized existed before.
  
  
• I was reading something defending gay priests as long as they are celibate and I sighed. A gay priest who is not sleeping with anyone can still be a problem. If he's noticeably effeminate he's probably repulsing the men and boys in the parish and if the priesthood is percieved to be a soft, warm, wet, sluglike thing then most boys are not going to want to answer the call.
  
  
• I've come across a number of articles written by women sternly telling men to man up. All I can say to that is it's too late. After 40 some odd years of feminism attacking men for being men we can't demand that they suddenly stop behaving like geldings and cads. Having allowed the feminists to make our bed it's too late to whine now. The smart girls are going to find their manly man and marry him. The not so smart girls.... are going to sit around in the club on Saturday night and complain about men.
  
  
• 
  
• Last night I stood and looked up at the blue moon, thought of Neil Armstrong and hummed the song.

Argh!

I won't sugar coat this. When I heard about Archbishop Cordeleone I was exasperated.  Frankly, the first thing that came to my mind was that scene in Godfather where Michael says to his brother, "You broke my heart, Fredo."

Oh well. Genesis says that the serpent was the most subtle of all the creatures and the devil works all the time at undermining the Lord's shepherds. Stupid, disappointing stuff like this is going to happen. So we go on. We pray for our bishops.  

highs and lows

Rocky and I spent a few days in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. It's so beautiful and so relaxing just driving along the country roads. We got to visit an Amish farm and I bought crafts from the farmers children. We brought back bags of fruit and corn for my mother. We fed goats, chickens and pettied a few dairy cows and calves. We shopped at Goods general store. We ate bought cheese from September farm, whoopie pies , shoo fly pie and the best chicken pot pie I've ever tasted. The food in Lancaster is so good that when I come back nothing local seems very good for days. The Amish are such industrious, vital people.

We went to the nursing home today and my uncle's mood was not great. His body clock is so off that he stays up all night and doesn't sleep until 4 or 5 in the morning. He was cranky and swore at us. He then went back to sleep and we let him be. This was pretty much of a housekeeping visit. We got his dirty clothes, made an appointment with the nursing home barber and checked his closet and dresser becuase he's been putting dirty clothes back with the clean lately. He'll be his usual sweet as pie next week, I'm sure. These mood fits are just part of this horrible, cruel disease.

Have mercy on the children

Single motherhood by choice is not a good thing. This is one of the unpleasant truths that we know but don't dare say out loud at work or in social situations. Our society lionizes single mothers and heaps sympathy on these "strong" women. Essentially we are celebrating child abuse. Now before anybody goes berserk let me point out that I am the child of a widow. My father died when I was 13. It was not easy for my mother and she had to work two jobs for a period of time before she got a promotion at her main job. As for me, for years I would have debilitating anxiety attacks on the rare occasions when I didn't know exactly where she was. My father's death was unexpected and sudden and I was terrified that something would also happen to her. A woman who was divorced through no fault of her own is very much like a widow and the children of divorcees and widows account for very little violent social pathologies.  I am not talking about widows or divorced women.


I am talking about women who decided that they either didn't need a man or who kept getting involved with men who had no intention of ever being tied down. In 1996, 70% of all prison inmates were the sons of single mothers. Criminologists warned that we would be facing super predators in the next decade.  Do you think the recent flash mobs and home invasions by teenagers is a some kind of accident? Today according to the Index of Leading Cultural Indicators, children from single-parent (fatherless) households make up 63% of all youth suicides, and 80% of all prison inmates.  Sixty percent of rapists come from fatherless homes.


Have you ever wondered why so many young white men are misogynistic? I've noticed this when I occasionally read manophere blogs and any time younger guys comment on Internet forums. Have you ever wondered why Hip Hop culture is such  an intensely woman hating one? The generation raised by women doesn't seem to like us very much. Why is that? 


The bible says that a father does not hand his son a snake when the boy asks for fish. A mother shouldn't either. It's already too late for millions of people. We need to stop acting like single motherhood is a great thing. It aint. Marry before having children, and stay married unless your husband is wicked or a domestic brute. If you are pregnant out of wedlock choose a brave, loving, selfless choice: choose adoption.