Our Lady of the Forsaken

I love how Our Lady is leaning forward to listen to what Her Divine Son is saying.

One of my favorite Holy Family paintings

Jesus is the Door---Stay in the sheepfold

A sheepfold

John 10:1-10.
At that time, Jesus said to the Pharisees, Amen, amen, I say to you, he who enters not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbs up another way, is a thief and a robber. But he who enters by the door is shepherd of the sheep. To this man the gatekeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them forth. And when he has let out his own sheep, he goes before them; and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. But a stranger they will not follow, but will flee from him, because they do not know the voice of strangers. This parable Jesus spike to them, but they did not understand what He was saying to them. Again, therefore, Jesus said to them, Amen, amen, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All whoever have come are thieves and robbers; but the sheep have not heard them. I am the door. If anyone enter by Me he shall be safe, and shall go in and out, and shall find pastures. The thief comes only to steal, and slay, and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it more abundantly.

Pentecost Sequence from Mass today

Sequentia 

Holy Spirit! Lord of light!

From Thy clear celestial height,

Thy pure, beaming radiance give:

Come, Thou, Father of the poor!

Come, with treasures which endure!

Come, Thou light of all that live!

Thou of all consolers best,

Visiting the troubled breast,

Dost refreshing peace bestow:

Thou in toil art comfort sweet;

Pleasant coolness in the heat;

Solace in the midst of woe.

Light immortal! Light divine!

Visit Thou these hearts of Thine,

And our inmost being fill.

If Thou take Thy grace away,

Nothing pure in man will stay;

All his good is turn’d to ill.

Heal our wounds - our strength renew;

On our dryness pour Thy dew;

Wash the stains of guilt away:

Bend the stubborn heart and will;

Melt the frozen, warm the chill;

Guide the steps that go astray.

Thou, on those who evermore

Thee confess and Thee adore,

In Thy sevenfold gifts descend.

Give them comfort when they die;

Give them life with Thee on high;

Give them joys which never end.

Amen. Alleluia.

a hospital for souls

In this painting by Vincente Gonzalez a mother as brought her daughter to the physician/pharmacist monk. As the sly title tells us, the daughter's melancholy isn't physical but has do with missing her boyfriend.  The wise monk probably realizes this but is gentle and patient.

Is your entertainment your god?

A Protestant (?) blogger asked the question of whether it's time for Christians to stop watching Game of Thrones. On his blog the responses have been mild or attempted to change the subject. The comments on sites where his post has been discussed  have been spicier, along the lines of "It's just fiction. It's great writing. What's the matter with you, are you some kind of art hating Philistine?"   

I'm reminded of a good priest last year who gave a lecture on The Lord of the Rings and said there are some problems with it. Grown people had fits and let's not forget the whole Harry Potter thing. If a Catholic layperson, priest or even, then Cardinal Ratzinger said anything against the J. K. Rowling books people got insulting and switched parishes, or stated that the critic just didn't know what they were talking about.  The editors of Lifesite News wrote back in 2007, that the most vicious and angry e-mail they receive comes from homosexual activists, abortion people and Harry Potter fans. Wow, that's pathetic. Mess with their entertainment and even self identified devout Catholics get huffy. I can't understand how people can get so worked up over a mere amusement. Obviously, a lot of us have turned our favorite TV show, or books into our gods.

Sleepers awake

People are getting upset over a new program that is going to be on ABC. I won't name it but Adrienne's Catholic Corner sums it up nicely. The show sounds miserable but I bet it will be a hit. ABC is owned by Disney. Disney is not your friend, parents. And Conservatives, Fox is not  your friend either. They've green lighted a series called Lucifer. It's about....you guessed it.....the Prince of this World who is bored in Hell and decides to earth to solve crimes. Yep. A show where Satan is the hero. We have come to this. Folks it's time to wake up and pay attention. The people who run the media are not only not on our side, they're actively evil. I'm not saying get rid of your TV but what are you watching and who are you enriching?

St. Michael the Archangel, 

defend us in battle. 
Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the Devil. 
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, 
and do thou, 
O Prince of the heavenly hosts, 
by the power of God, 
thrust into hell Satan, 
and all the evil spirits, 
who prowl about the world 
seeking the ruin of souls. Amen..

Random thoughts

Chinese Catholics at Mass.

• If you think about all the people Raul Castro has killed it's astonishing to see him standing next to the pope.
  
• Maureen Mullarkey has a wonderful essay on the work of a Chinese photographer  following China's Catholics. When the day comes I hope American Catholics will be as brave and as faithful.
  
  
  
• One thing I've noticed after years of reading Catholic blogs is that parent bloggers have toned down giving out embarrassing personal details about their teen-aged and young adult children. This is very good. Nobody, but especially HR departments and co-workers need to know about your daughter's reproductive cycle or the drug problem your son used to have.
  
  
• Pornography is a means of controlling masses of people. If you're besotted with smut whether it's print photos, on the Internet or in badly written "romance" books, you're too stupefied to pay attention to what's really going on around you. Popular culture is part of this. The people who are obsessed with celebrities are useless when it comes time to actually think.

• "You cannot take any people, of any color, and exempt them from the requirements of civilization — including work, behavioral standards, personal responsibility, and all the other basic things that the clever intelligentsia disdain — without ruinous consequences to them and to society at large."      
  Thomas Sowell (author, economist and one of my heroes since I was a girl in high school)
  
  
  
•  Hilary White wrote this back in 2007 and I still think about it occasionally even after all this time.
  
  
• My uncle is back on the ventilator. He's awake, interested in people in his room and is trying to talk but my mother and I have come to the conclusion that he's never going to fully recover. 

Gaurdian angel

The Bishop Finn affair is sad but he is not the real victim, okay?

Over at One Peter Five they  came out strongly in defense of Bishop Finn. They feel and they’re hanging onto that feeling like a dog with a bone, that the bishop had to step down not because he failed to call the police but because the forces of evil were after him anyway. Several readers objected to that idea and the comment box turned into a battlefield. Since the argument can’t be won and the whole situation is depressing,  1P5 doesn’t want to talk about it anymore .

Well now. I like Steve Skojec  and I like reading most of the writers on 1P5 but I can’t follow the reasoning here.  I don’t doubt that some bad people went after Bishop Finn because they prefer  the diocese to be something like an Episcopalian/Unitarian/New Age mix but  in trying to quietly fix Fr. Ratigan, the bishop handed his enemies an golden opportunity. My late father in law, Big Daddy used to say, “Everybody pees in the pool some time but that boy did it from the diving board.” This isn’t about “our guy” and “their guys”. This isn't about liberals, conservatives or traditionalists. This is about the bishop's legal and spiritual duty to his flock.

The excuse that the bishop was trying to save Fr. Ratigan’s priesthood because he was under the impression that the problem was “only” pornography is not acceptable especially for a man who wrote "Blessed Are the Pure in Heart - A Pastoral Letter on the Dignity of the Human Person and the Dangers of Pornography."  Can you see St. Jean Vianney saying, “It’s only pornography?” Can you see St. Anthony Mary Claret or St. Padre Pio  tolerating a fellow priest who had pornographic interests? Can you in your wildest imagination see St. Thomas Becket, the man who excommunicated his king and friend saying  “only pornography”? I cannot.

Pray for Bishop Finn, pray for Fr. Ratigan and if you have tears to shed, let them fall for the little girls who were violated by Fr. Ratigan. 

Christ is victorious! Christ reigns! Christ commands!

Really, really bad Catholic art

 Ah the '70s, like toe nail fungus, syphilis in certain populations, a movie serial killer, and crab grass it just won't die. This hideous style of art was everywhere when I was a child and a teenager and someone in the Vatican seems to really like it.  The official logo of the vaunted Year of Mercy brought back memories of the ugliest missals ever published. I now wonder if this stuff was so popular because it made kids feel confident that they could draw something better and I have this vague memory of sitting in class and thinking that everybody in these drawings looked like a science experiment gone bad.

Michael Coren flies the coop

Never, never, never trust a big, splashy convert who is has a book to sell and speaking engagements to hawk.

So you think moving to a little town and growing your own tomatoes is the Benedict option?

Oh please! As my grandmother would say, "Lawd, ha'mercy!" I'm certain that the people babbling about "the Benedictine option" have no idea of what they speak.

To comfort the afflicted

Take what happened to Bishop Finn as a learning experience.

• I have read several commentaries on the resignation of Bishop Finn and see that a lot of people are very sore.  Look, let's not sugar coat this.  Bishop Finn waited six months to call the cops on a suspected pedophile. A doctor, a nurse or a teacher (which is ironic because of all the perverted teachers) can lose their job for not reporting suspected abuse. In order for me to volunteer to set up tables and inflate balloons for the parish kid's Summer camp I would have to go to the police station and get finger printed and take VIRTUS training. The bottom line is this: due to the unchecked sins of certain priests and the resulting media frenzy, no churchman can afford to hesitate if he thinks or has been told that there is a problem in a parish. Discreet inquiries and private investigations  don't cut it anymore, especially because in the past they usually led to a priest being reassigned to... another parish. The civil authorities have to be called immediately. Anything else is nothing more than a gift shovel to the Church's enemies which they will cheerfully use to bash us with.
  The great tragedy of Bishop Finn is that he is by many local accounts, a good man who showed one lapse of judgement. The new bishop will probably be a liberal and all the good that Bishop Finn did in cleaning up a bad diocese will go for naught. Some people are worried about what will happen to the Benedictine Sisters. Will a new bishop treat them decently or will they have to move again? Rorate Caeli says that something isn't right when Bishop Robert Finn has to go but Bishop Juan Barros is apparently the Pope's favored man. Well yes, something IS NOT right in the universal Church but we can't ignore the fact that Bishop Finn blundered. If you would fight the forces of darkness you must be like the apostles after Pentecost. You must be above reproach in your personal life and you must demonstrate wisdom, as well as all the other virtues.
• I had planned to go to Baltimore next week to visit the shrines and cathedral but in light of the recent rent a riot we'll pass.
• A good  man was railing against cell phones a few days ago. He said they are an avenue for pornography viewing.  I like him and didn't have to the heart to write back what I really thought, especially since I was reading his comments on my phone. Bless his heart, but it's not the phone, it's the person. In the old days you had to subscribe to smut via the mail or go to the dirty book store. Today you can read erotica on your desktop, phone, tablet or Kindle and sigh after some fake dream man while looking at your poor husband. The sin is still yours no matter the medium of delivery.

Leave her to Heaven....

The Leadership Conference of Women Religious will die out. What devout young woman in her right mind would give her life to this? 

Mass Without Pews... wartime

Give thanks for the good

A lot of bad things are happening in the Church today.  There are people in the highest level of our Church who want to destroy the Faith. I don't know if they are honest enough to say this to themselves and I don't really care. By their actions they are destroyers and they can't be content until the rest of us bow our heads and silently go along with them. So, let us be thankful and supportive of every priest and religious that we meet who manages to continue doing what the Church has always told them to do.

Christ among the ruins

This drawing shows a scene in Italy during WWII but looking at it I was reminded of the situation in our Church and our country. Pat Archbold at Creative Minority is one of the very few who plainly says America is doomed. I happen to think he's right. If you look at things clearly it's obvious that our country is like a fresh zombie. It looks okay until you get too close and get a good look and it hasn't started to stink too badly yet. I think we've reached the mokita stage in America. A lot of us feel that something is wrong but we say nothing for fear of social ostracism. Laugh at the preppers if you want, (until a hurricane hits and you find yourself stuck in your apartment with no food, no elevator, 20 flights of stairs and  having to relieve  yourself in the hallways because the plumbing and electricity is out like New Yorkers did after Super-storm Sandy) but although they mostly seem to be expecting the wrong outcome, they know something is up. My local and state government has advertising on buses urging people to take note of where the local emergency shelters are and get first aid training-- sensible things but do you recall ever seeing something like this when you were a kid?

The financial house of cards is looking pretty shaky and I doubt that the results of the presidential election will change a thing. If you owe a hundred dollars and only have thirty, you have a problem. That's the situation for our country on a mind boggling scale. And have you noticed that every week the media gives us some new shiny object for us to be mesmerized by? Too many people are distracted by Bruce Jenner or ogling some strumpet's nakedness on Instagram or babbling about the latest fake rape story at a  prominent college and are missing the important stuff. But look, Christ is there. In the midst of the ruins, Christ is there. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio won't save us and Hilary is no prize pony either. Only Christ, and only a massive wave of reparation to Him is the answer.