In the midst of the darkness

You don't have to celebrate Paul VI's feast day next year or any year.

Paul VI removed 200 saints and feast days from the calendar. If he could ignore St. Philomena, then it's no trouble at all to just  ignore St. Paul VI. 

Vigano speaks

Archbishop Vigano is not giving up.

Oh Mary Conceived Without Sin

pray for us, who have recourse to thee.

random thoughts on a Saturday afternoon

Sacred Heart of Jesus! Have mercy on us.

• Rocky, my mother and I went on vacation in Pennsylvania and it was wonderful as usual. At the end of the week we wen to Mass at St. Jospeh's in Lancaster. It's a beautiful old church. One thing I've noticed is that whenever a parish uses the Penitential rite B instead of the Confeitor , it's going to be a wonky Mass. It wasn't horrible but the cantor and lady Eucharistic ministers were clearly the dominant force.  When we got back from vacation I got sick with a nasty respiratory infection and was wiped out for two weeks.
  
• Let's say that you decide to live out the Benedict Option and buy a nice chunk of property. A couple of like-minded families join you and eventually you have a community. Your group decides to be sensible so there's no commune type ownership or living. Everybody is responsible for their own income, families and property. The only shared things are the home school co-op  and the building of the chapel and rectory that you all contributed to, either in labor or money. So far so good. You get a wonderful priest or even a few monks.  Because this is an explicitly stated Benedict Option community every adult has agreed either verbally or in writing to stay out of public life to the point of refusing to discuss politics at work (a wise thing in general), or tweeting or blogging about anything to do with politics. Nobody protests at abortion clinics, nobody runs for public office.
  
  You think everything is great but you have a problem. It's your neighbors. When Hasidic  Jews started moving to New Jersey and setting up large communities people went crazy. There have been lawsuits and open hostility.  In Jackson, New Jersey people even counted the number of cars at a Jewish man's house on Fridays and accused him of having prayer services at home.
  
  When Catholics started moving to Florida to live near Ave Maria University the neighbors weren't thrilled. Way back in the 80s when Christendom's leaders were considering a move to a property in Boyce, Virginia the locals rallied in opposition.
  
  Don't be surprised in the locals aren't happy to see your Benedict Option community and it only takes one person to call the police and make some allegation. If a really clever person calls the police and claims that the children in your community are being abused the FBI and a swat team could be at your door.
  
  
  
• Just when I thought nothing Pope Francis does could move me anymore he comes out in public carrying a witch's stang. He's not a fool. The clergy around him are not fools. Nobody grabbed that thing and took it away.  I'd be shocked but  delighted if it comes out that one Cardinal or bishop said, "Holy Father, that's a stang. I'll burn it for you but you can't possibly carry that." As bad as Pope Paul VI was he never did anything as revolting and in-your-face,  in public as this.
  
  
  
• As for Paul VI, I think it's going to be a disaster when he's canonized. There are many people still living who have said that he was a homosexual. Once he has been raised to the altars he will become the gay saint. If a man who was rumored to have his lover, the Italian actor Paolo Carlini visit him at the Vatican at night is made a saint that is ammunition against any rector who dares to keep homosexuals out of his seminary. 

• I like Monsignor Pope. He was good to my family when my uncle was in the nursing home and in and out of the hospital but I was a bit disappointed in his kind words about Cardinal Wuerl.

• I have a feeling that Cardinal Wuerl's resignation is only a technicality. He seems to still have the pope's favor.

• I attracted the attention of a mentally disturbed individual earlier this year but he seems to have gotten bored and has moved on so comments will no longer be moderated. 

Man of Sorrows

A nun

The Agony

When Our Lord was sweating blood in the garden He was thinking of His Church. His   indescribable pain was due to my sins and yours.

Don't forget

He's old. He's left his country and is in hiding. Why? Because he stated that Cardinal McCarrick is exactly what people have been whispering he was and that yeah, both Pope Benedict and Francis knew about it. Benedict tried,weakly to do something about it and Francis ignored it and promoted Uncle Ted. Don't forget--- V for Vigano.

At Prayer

random thoughts on a Saturday

• I'm terribly fond of and have great respect for Ann Barnhardt but she's wrong about one thing. Plagiarism does matter.  The person who steals the intellectual property of another and passes it off as his or her own is not to be trusted about anything else they write and the johnny come lately who was hostile to you for years and suddenly shows up claiming to be on your side  will surely stab you in the back somewhere down the road. 

• A while back I wondered if the Church's penchant for bringing illegal aliens from Latin America and Islamic countries to the West (and getting paid for it) wasn't going going to cause anger and resentment and possibly more than that. Ordinary people are watching and they see the Pope and their local priest carrying on about Muslims and Hispanics and they are drawing certain conclusions.
  
  When I was 15, a  tall, elegant looking Mexican man who worked at the embassy introduced himself to me and asked for a date. He told me that every day he looked out of his office and saw me walking home from school and thought I was pretty. He said he was 35 and I told him I was too young for anything like that. He told me that in his country 15 was a grown woman old enough to be married and have a child. I calmly told him that we could go out on a date but he'd have to come to my house and ask my parents for permission and thank God, he reacted the way I had hoped he would.  He cleverly moved back from me, apologized and let me go on my way.
  
  Last year a former co-worker of mine was jogging when she realized that two Latino men were following her in their truck. She went right and the truck followed. She cut left and the truck followed. Finally, she got to the park and ran onto the path. It had steel barriers to keep vehicles off the walking/running trail and the truck could not follow without causing damage. My co-worker ran for her life, then got off the trail and ran through the woods until she found a trail that led to another entrance and she ran home.
  
   These two incidents happen to women and girls all the time and they don't always end well. The man or woman who has either comforted a frightened daughter who survived unharmed or shed tears of grief and rage over a daughter who wasn't lucky has got to be righteously pissed by now. People are leaving the Church over this. Protestants and unchurched people are looking at the Church and are getting the idea that Catholics not only don't care about their neighbors but are actively part of the network that brings in more and more hostile people who don't seem to be able to assimilate.  It's going to boomerang on the Church and I think it's going to be ugly.

• Fr. Enrique Rueda, Fr. John O'Connor, pray for us and God bless, this priest, who it has been reported, got into a whole lot of trouble after giving this homily.

• 

There's talk that Cardinal Farrell is about to get a bit of comeuppance. We'll see. Thanks to Hilary White for making this gif.

 

random thoughts

• Look at the lady in the pink and black sweater and then look at the lady on the right. Neither woman appeared to like what she saw from her archbishop. 

• I'm recuperating from a kidney infection and I looked at the McCain funeral for a bit. His was the longest death scene outside of an opera and this tax payer funded spectacle has actually been longer than what would have been due to an actual head of state.
  
  
  
• Cardinal Wuel surfaced at a Mass at Annunciation Church.  Only one man objected and left. Everyone else sat there and even clapped when the cardinal finished talking. I was a bit sad by that but then I remembered that Annunciation was a safe venue for the cardinal. He might have had a much different reaction elsewhere.
  
  
  
• Some jackwagon stole the flowers off my father's grave. It turns out that there were a group of women who went to rural cemeteries, stole flowers and rearranged them in order to sell at the county flea market. What disgusting people. If you buy silk flowers from a road side market that suddenly popped up one weekend ask questions about their supply.

It's time for a rude question

Cupich, Tobin, McElroy and Farrell all got to be where they are because of the kingmaker, Cardinal McCarrick.  Big time Catholic media, you may lose your invitation to the better cocktail parties and this may be the end of your private Vatican tours  and yeah, you may lose that cushy job
but you have to ask them to their faces why McCarrick liked them so much.

Excerpts from the Vigano letter....

 ...December 6, 2006, I wrote to my superiors, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone and the Substitute Leonardo Sandri, that the facts attributed to McCarrick by Littleton were of such gravity and vileness as to provoke bewilderment, a sense of disgust, deep sorrow and bitterness in the reader, and that they constituted the crimes of seducing, requesting depraved acts of seminarians and priests, repeatedly and simultaneously with several people, derision of a young seminarian who tried to resist the Archbishop’s seductions in the presence of two other priests, absolution of the accomplices in these depraved acts, sacrilegious celebration of the Eucharist with the same priests after committing such acts. In my memo, which I delivered on that same December 6, 2006 to my direct superior, the Substitute Leonardo Sandri, I proposed the following considerations and course of action to my superiors:

• Given that it seemed a new scandal of particular gravity, as it regarded a cardinal, was going to be added to the many scandals for the Church in the United States,

 • and that, since this matter had to do with a cardinal, and according to can. 1405 § 1, No. 2˚, “ipsius Romani Pontificis dumtaxat ius est iudicandi”;

 • I proposed that an exemplary measure be taken against the Cardinal that could have a medicinal function, to prevent future abuses against innocent victims and alleviate the very serious scandal for the faithful, who despite everything continued to love and believe in the Church.

Vigano saddles up

Immediately after, the Pope asked me in a deceitful way: “What is Cardinal McCarrick like?” I answered him with complete frankness and, if you want, with great naiveté: “Holy Father, I don’t know if you know Cardinal McCarrick, but if you ask the Congregation for Bishops there is a dossier this thick about him. He corrupted generations of seminarians and priests and Pope Benedict ordered him to withdraw to a life of prayer and penance.” The Pope did not make the slightest comment about those very grave words of mine and did not show any expression of surprise on his face, as if he had already known the matter for some time, and he immediately changed the subject......

from the testimony of former Apostolic Nuncio to the United States (2011-2016), Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò.                                                                                  

A lot of people are freaking out after reading the Archbishop Vigano letter  , others are thanking God that the truth is finally coming out. I am grateful that Archbishop Vigano got mad enough to give his testimony. I've noticed that the so-called Vatican insiders are silent this morning and I'm surprised that anyone is claiming surprise.  Those of you who are men think about how you behave around the homosexuals at your job. You're polite, get the work done and move on. You  do not have an after hours social relationship with them and  assume that those co-workers who do are fully aware and approve of the situation. So, when you see Pope Francis surrounding himself with cardinals and other clergy who are rumored to be homosexual and when you see men like McCarrick as kingmakers you should assume that yes, the pope knows what these men are and he doesn't care.

Pope Benedict told McCarrick to get out of that DC seminary he was living in, forbade him to say Mass in public or make appearances. Francis undid all that.  In October of 2013, then Cardinal McCarrick told a "cute" story during a speech at Villanova University.  He talked about his recovery from a heart attack in Rome and how he met with the pope after his release from the hospital. When he "piously"  attributed the recovery to the Lord still wanting him to do more work on earth the pope  jokingly replied, "Maybe the Devil did not have your accommodations ready."

 I'm sure people in the audience chuckled at what they thought was the  pope's teasing  and the cardinal's marvelous self deprecating humor.  One blogger seized on this comment and was hopeful that the pope was telling McCarrick that he was on to him and McCarrick was too arrogant to realize it. Others simply criticized the pope for joking about Hell. Now we know that it was much worse that what any of us thought.  Archbishop Vigano says he told the pope on June 23, 2013 that Cardinal MCarrick was an evil man but by October, 2013, McCarrick was still riding high. I think in that "cute" speech he was actually mocking Vigano and everyone else who had complained about him.

Rorate Caeli's writers have the weird knack at times of  being able to write like both teen aged girls with a delicious secret and a frosty old grande dame but let's give credit where it is due. Within a day or two of the habemus papam announcement Rorate was reporting that Cardinal Bergoglio was bad news. They were mocked, minimized (remember when Fr. Z. was telling us to stay calm and read Francis through Benedict?* ), or given the same silent treatment that Randy Engel got when she wrote Rite of Sodomy.  I hope some people have apologized even privately for that.

Now as for the Church, some people are saying that they are leaving that this scandal proves that the gates of Hell have prevailed. Well now, Jesus Christ said that the gates of Hell would not prevail against His Church. Some people think the gates of Hell are pressing against the Church walls but that's not it at all. The Church is supposed to be attacking the gates of Hell. Some times we are blessed with popes like Gregory the Great, Peter, Pius V, and Pius X who went after Hell with battering rams and trebuchets and sometimes we get popes who timidly tap on the infernal gates and  run back several steps and sometimes we get a pope who tries to slap a coat of paint on the gates and pretends they aren't there. Pope Francis is a bad pope. People from Argentina and around the world have been telling us this from day one. It's time to face it. We are in a great war. It is heartbreaking to realize that many of our generals, if not most of them have gone over to the other side and seeing so many of our officers fail in their duty throws us into confusion and despair but we only need one brave general to act with aggression and the pragmatic ones who have decided to keep their heads down and just wait for Francis to die may rouse themselves and follow. In the mean time pray for Archbishop Vigano.  At 77, he's saddled up and  he rode out. A cannonball of malice is coming his way.

*What in Sam Hill does that mean? I never got it.

Pray for us, Mother

I

The scourge

In this interesting homily the priest talks about the rise of Islam in Europe. He noted that Christians used to pray the Angelus three times a day. Now almost no-one does and in it's place the Muslims pray five times a day. The Church has withdrawn in many ways and made friends with the world instead of converting it. Islam rejects that flatly and in place of the sweet yoke of Christ the world is facing a yoke of iron and a scourge.

And David wept...

Remember back in the 80s when we were told that the bad old days were over because we had John Paul II? Remember when people who mentioned Good Bye Good Men  in conversation were told sometimes angrily, that it was never that bad or that the so-called lavender mafia was never that strong or that the "irregular" behavior in the seminaries was all over and done with? Has everybody forgotten when we were told in 2002, that the bishops were on it and the fake priests who used the church to practice their predation on young males were all dead or kicked out?

 I never quite believed that. Great evil is like disease. You may survive the polio but do so with a paralyzed leg for the rest of your life.  Vampires are a terrific metaphor for monstrous sin. You may get lucky and stake the master vampire but the contagion may have already spread throughout the village and has to be dealt with.

When King David sinned there were people who knew what really happened to Uriah and they said nothing. Others noted the speed in which the king married Uriah's widow and the timing of her pregnancy. David got away with it before men but God was having none of it. The fearless prophet Nathan called David out in public. David did hard penance and was forgiven but the consequences of his sin did not vanish into thin air.  His first son with Bathsheba died. His daughter Tamar fell victim to her half brother's lust. His son Amnon was killed. His son Absalom rebelled and was killed.The sword never departed from David's house.

Even  if Archbishop McCarrick  repents, confesses, and does hard penance  this malignant thing will never be over. The Church has been damaged. There are those who are delighted by this and hope that it will cause people to realize that Jesus did not found a new church in the 60s.  I think a few people will discover the wondrous beauty of the Church's traditions that have been waiting for them but I'm pretty sure that most of the broken-hearted will drift into Protestantism, Mormonism, and atheism. 

At prayer

Several years ago I saw a photo of the James Tissot painting, "The Holy Women" depicting the women who followed Our Lord when they could and who offered food and lodging  to Him and the Apostles when He came to their towns. I was deeply moved and decided to dedicate myself to taking every opportunity to show kindness and helpfulness to priests, whether they are obviously holy or just good bread and butter priests.  The priesthood is under attack. It's always been under attack.  Judas has many sons and this didn't just happen with Vatican II, although that was the tip of the spear. Let's pray for the good priests out there.

At prayer

I smiled when I saw this painting. Many times from my childhood on I've sat in a pew with my head against the cool stone column and either prayed or just sat in the presence of the Lord.