Random thoughts on a rainy night

•  To all the Catholic e-girl "influencers"...Could you stop with the "Mass fit" posts? I'm 58, and have been dressing myself for some considerable time and am unimpressed with your poor imitation of model poses. Even if you have a veil on your head nobody needs to see you doing the lip pout, hip thrust  and the cleavage boost lean. It looks silly, cheap and attention seeking and doesn't appear to have anything to do with worshiping God. You aren't helping anyone and you make young Catholic women seem vapid.
  
  
  
  
• Rocky and I went to Deep Creek, Maryland for the Labor Day weekend. It was beautiful. The mountain scenery was just stunning. We went to the only Catholic church in the area for Sunday Mass. Obviously, the parishioners are used to visitors and were very friendly. The homily and music was....well, straight out of 1973, but these people were so sincere and gentle Rocky and I just had to shrug and pray. Would we go back? Absolutely. We intend to visit Deep Creek again  and since we won't miss Mass we'll be at St. Peters on the Lake. 
  
  
  
  
• I'll say it again. Some man needs to talk to Timothy Gordon. He's not going to listen to any woman. What he's talking about never existed in the West.  Peasant women, whether they were working in the fields or as domestic servants were not hidden at home, never venturing into the village or stepping outside unless they were escorted by a husband or male relative. Gordon is talking like he wants us to live in Saudi Arabia. Good grief.
  
  
  
  
  
• Know this:  From kindergarten to college, your children are probably being taught by a person who is going to try to teach them values totally opposite to yours. 

Dreadful days

•  Yesterday was a dreadful day. I saw the photos of that poor, poor girl, Iryna Zarutska after she was attacked and  was sickened. My throat felt as if something snapped inside and crumbled to dust. I grew up in DC and I know public transportation can be dangerous. From my childhood I was trained to scan for possible threats and to get off the bus or train if I realize that a potential threat is too close to me. Seeing that tiny young woman with no chance at all be cut down reminded me of every wise thing my parents and neighbors ever told me about my personal safety.
  
   Some hours later I saw that Charlie Kirk was murdered. I was never a fan of his. I'm too old for his audience group but I knew who he was, and you don't have to be a fan to be disgusted at cold blooded murder. 
  
  We live in a country where crazy people and evil people are allowed to be on the streets and our elected officials just shrug when someone is slaughtered. We live in a country where a media personality  who wrote and talked for a living was killed for his point of view. If we've gotten to the point where we can't even express our political and/or cultural ideas without bloodshed then the next step is brutish violence on a grand scale.  God help us. 
  
  
  
  
  
• Today is 9/11. I remember waking up on September 12, and thinking that I'd had the most horrible dream and then the announcer on my favorite radio station spoke. He simply said that  the day before was not a nightmare, and then he played this:

Okay, so the benefit of the doubt stage is officially over....

 Pope Leo has been on St. Peter's throne for more than 100 days and nobody has been fired.  Instead we got this:

and then we got this:

Our Lady of LaSalette, pray for us.

St. Paul, pray for us.

St. Peter Damian, pray for us.

St. Charles Lwanga, pray for us.

Venerable Emil Kapaun, pray for us.

Fr. Vincent Capodanno, pray for us.

Thanks Frank

 Thank you, Frank Walker, a true Catholic gentleman.

The Rise of Lila Rose is not a good sign

 Lila Rose shamed herself and her husband and behaved very badly by rhapsodizing about Fr. Mike Schmidt's physical attributes on her August 8, podcast. First off, I will acknowledge that yes, after decades of watching  incredibly feminine acting Fr. Skippys prancing around far too many parishes, it is a blessed relief to meet a priest who comes off as a normal man. Full Stop. Say no more. Ogling a priest and speaking boldly about his good looks and body is in my mind, the same as picking up the chalice that holds the Precious Blood and filling it up with Coca Cola for a quick drink and a sick thrill. I believe looking lustfully at a priest is a sin. For a married woman to publicly admire the handsome priest and tell the world about her husband's " amazing (sexual) self control,"  is shameful and shows a shallow, worldly mindset. I'll bet you that even some of her husband's friends blanched at that and snickered privately. We will never know it but he's probably been mocked to his face by now by at least one buddy. Ladies, for the love of God let's remember what Proverbs 11:22 says, "Like a gold ring in a pig’s snout is a beautiful woman who shows no discretion". 

That's all I have to say. Chris Jackson on his substack says it much  better than I ever could.  

vacation and other random thoughts

•  Rocky, my mother and I went on vacation last week and it was great. For Mass we went to a pleasant parish. The priest and deacon were lovely. The people were friendly. I was struck by one thing  while sitting in the pew. The Novus Ordo is a different experience at every parish or even Mass time. At this parish they did some  that I've never seen before. They weren't particularly offensive, certainly nothing as bad as I've seen in my own diocese but the bizarreness of objecting to the TLM seemed even weirder to me. If every parish does it's own thing why not let traditional Catholics have the traditional Mass? If we have the Mariachi Mass, the 1970s Mass, the Autistic friendly Mass or the Gospel music Mass why not a TLM? If the priest can do a joke monologue or warble a depressing Leonard Cohen song they why can't we have a sequence in Latin? It just seems like obvious mindless malice on the part of the bishops. 
   
  
  
  
  
  
• We killed a bunch of Spotted Lantern flies on vacation. They're so interesting looking it's a pity they are a such a pest. Their legs are ridiculously long and thick by insect standards and their heads are so tiny you can't see them if you're looking at them from the side. Their flight is not graceful, they are almost as unconcerned about their personal safety as cicadas and the gravid females are easy to step on. They do have very pretty wings. Sometimes they appear gray and red and sometimes more of a salmon pink and gray. 
  
  
  
  
  
• In the 1920s Sr. Lucia of Fatima was quoted as saying with sadness that another world war was coming, millions of people would die and that most of them were going to Hell. While it's true the 20s were a very wicked time, can you imagine how much worse common people are now? It's an incredibly sobering thought. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
• While we were on vacation I avoided the news and stayed off of Twitter. I did check Instagram when we got back to the cottage each night. My cousin's granddaughter (!) is on Instagram. I won't say her name of course but you're going to see her at the Olympics one day. She's in the running for Youth Athlete of the Year. After looking at her photos and video I sometimes read comments and it's pretty clear to me that the future is not bright for the world. So many people seem to be disintegrating  into idiocy. They can't read, they can't think and they can't express themselves in any way  beyond that of a dull witted, feral child. 
  
  
  
  
• This is going to piss off a lot of people but I'm saying it anyway. I don't think most Americans have any idea of Japan's geography. It's a country of  14,125 islands of which 260 are inhabited full time. If Hiroshima and Nagasaki hadn't happened US soldiers would have had to go to each and every Japanese island and kill men, women and children, not just soldiers. It would have been a blood bath and would not have been over quickly. The bombs allowed Japan to surrender with their honor intact. They could say to themselves that they didn't lack fight or courage. They were simply up against something inhuman and listening to their emperor when he said stand down was the only option. The bombs also got Japan off the eternal hook. Hollywood churns out a WWII movie every year and the evil German is a classic trope. When was the last time you saw a movie about what the Japanese did to their POWs?  Have you ever even heard of  Unit 731? Out of all the victims who were tortured there, not a single person is known to have survived.  Outside of Korea, nobody even talks about Japanese WWII atrocities. I'll bet you on Pearl Harbor day Japanese social media isn't full of comments like, "Y'know what was a really bad idea? Pearl Harbor!  That turned out to be a disaster!"
  
   I wish that there could have been another way to end the Pacific War other than employing Fat Man and Little Boy but it happened. Does the obsessive display of apologizing for winning the war  really do anything constructive?
  
  Eternal rest to all the lost in Nagasaki and Hiroshima and may all the Catholic martyrs pray for us. 
  
  
  
  
  
• A lot of people are shocked that the Cynthia Erivo was hired to play Our Lord in the blasphemous musical, Jesus Christ Superstar. Her casting was intended to shock and offend but the musical itself is something Christians should flee in disgust from, no matter who is in the cast. 
  
  
  
  
• Years ago I thought that canonizing Cardinal Newman was a bad idea.   I have a feeling that it was a weapon and a trap and would lead to some messy stuff. 
  
  
  
  
  
• Sorry Santa Fe. Your bishop knows that you know and doesn't care, and Pope Leo probably isn't going to do anything about it. 

On hazing and other random thoughts

•  I read about the weird hazing (at best), incident at St. John Vianney Seminary in Denver, Colorado and it's very disturbing. I've seen reactions to it that say, it's no big deal and men need stuff like this. Really? Hazing is a humiliation ritual that typically involves emotional or physical pain.  I know of one man who is in his 60s now but still becomes upset when he talks about the hazing he received at the hands of his hockey teammates, which ended with him going to the hospital.  Every now and then, year after year a victim dies and it makes the news.  There is almost always an element of occult, sadism, and frequently has at least a hint of homo-eroticism.
  
  I know I'm not a man, thank God and I can't fully understand male bonding but do you really think playing with knives, blood, covering the mouths of seminarians, and taking them into a room with a dude dressed in a Yeti costume is the way to make boys into men? Fr. Nepil, who organized this whole thing  was the Vice Rector of the seminary and says the "prank," was ill conceived and a mistake but not hazing, which is illegal in Colorado..  Out of the 15 young men who were "pranked", only one refused to play along. He contacted the police and he was the one  told to take a year off from the seminary. Why?
  
  If St. John Vianney were to walk into this seminary he'd give everyone involved a good smack. As for the seminarians, it's frightening that only one young man said no. I would not want any of the 14 who apparently were "good sports" and went along with Fr. Nepil's little "joke," to be my priest. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Some man, somebody devout, erudite, happily married with many children please talk to Tim Gordon. He's gone from being interesting but incredibly callow to nuts. The boy is half a step from advocating Catholic purdah.   
  
  
  
• I don't think the average Catholic has any idea how much Evangelicals hate us.