The Earth is Not A Person

The earth is an unique planet. God designed it as the one place where Man, the only creature made in His image was to live. The Earth is estimated to be over 10,000 °F at the core. Rising from the core the earth forms plates.  As you go higher from layer to layer it gets cooler and life becomes possible. Planet Earth is not your mother.  That title belongs to Eve by nature and Mary by grace. If you insist on anthropomorphism concerning our planet then you might do better to consider Mother Earth as a lovely but unstable step mother. Sometimes she's in a good mood and can be so sweet and sometimes she kills you.   You cannot sin against the Earth. It has no soul and and is not sentient. The fact that something is natural and of the Earth does not make it good or bad in itself. Arsenic and strychnine are both  perfectly natural. Both will in high enough doses kill you in particularly horrible ways. 

Once again, I need to remind myself that not every single utterance  from the The Holy Father's lips is infallible. When he is not  speaking ex cathedra  he is a man giving his welcome or unwelcome opinion just  like my  Uncle Clyde who insists that the secret to thinness and happiness is regular vinegar drinking and a big dose of mineral oil after dinner. Bless his heart, he usually does this when he thinks somebody in the family needs to lose weight  but we're used to it and love him so we let it pass. 

Reparation

May the Most Holy, Most Sacred, Most Adorable, Most Mysterious and Unutterable Name of God be praised, blessed, loved, adored and glorified, in Heaven, on earth, and in the hells, by all God’s creatures, and by the Sacred Heart of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar. 

Amen

First Friday for the Sacred Heart

Sacred Heart of Jesus, make our hearts like unto Thine.

Stuff happens...go to Confession now while you can

There are millions of people in Hell today who thought they had one more day to repent. 

Reparation

May the Most Holy, Most Sacred, Most Adorable, Most Mysterious and Unutterable Name of God be praised, blessed, loved, adored and glorified, in Heaven, on earth, and in the hells, by all God’s creatures, and by the Sacred Heart of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar.

 Amen. 

When Did Appearances at World Youth Day and International Travel Become Essential Papal Functions?

The ruins of Walsingham Abbey

Last night I dreamed that I was wailing in front of Walsingham Abbey. I woke up abruptly and spent about an hour reading before I went back to sleep and put the whole  thing out of my mind.  It came back to me this afternoon I read  excerpts from an  interview Pope Benedict XVI gave to an Italian newspaper .  Apparently, he abdicated because he just couldn't handle the traveling anymore and knew he couldn't do  another trip to World Youth Day in particular. I don't blame him for not being able to stomach World Youth Day, the whole thing is certainly not his quiet, cerebral style but this brings up the question of why popes have to attend them. Where is the Vatican document that says the Pope must do mega Masses all over the world? Why on earth would a man as intelligent as Joseph Ratzinger think he was bound to the rock star front man of the Vatican Band?

Maybe 50 years from now this will all make sense but right now it seems like we've all fallen down the rabbit hole and landed in Wonderland with crazy queens, sleeping Doormice and sneering Cheshire cats mocking us at every turn. Lord have mercy.

National Catholic Register Makes Its Move

So Mark Shea and Simcha Fisher got fired from National Catholic Register. When you are a contractor/employee and you bring discomfort to  your boss which in this case is EWTN, the corporate owner of National Catholic Register, you lose your job. Here in Virginia a cook refused to prepare food for a police officer last month. News of this denial of service spread and the restaurant chain made a public apology and fired him. A few years ago a CFO (a very big position) of a company videotaped himself screaming at a young woman clerk. His employers announced that he'd been fired before the week was out.  Last year a woman traveling to an African country on company business posted a joke on Twitter about AIDS that implied that everyone in this particular country was infected. She was fired before her plane landed at the airport. You don't foul your own nest.

Fisher and Shea will both be fine and will probably have new jobs by the end of the month. I'm not interested in what finally did them in but it is a real puzzlement to me as to how these two people became important in Catholic circles in the first place. Fellow lay people, we need to be more discerning about whom we turn to for spiritual guidance and daily advice.

Brother Monks

Being a miserable wretch is not a good evangelization tactic.

Where did all these miserable-and-loving-it people come from? I had that thought while reading the comments on a Catholic site yesterday. The moderator said how wonderful it was that Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles didn't end up like a typical foster child but was adopted, and is Catholic. Nice. A guy who who must be a lot of fun at parties wrote in to say that she's not a real Catholic because she goes to the Novus Ordo Mass. Really? How does he know? Look, Novus Ordo  is the only option for most American Catholics. Most don't even know the traditional Mass of all ages still exists. If, like me you have access to multiple Tridentine Masses you are blessed but don't get cocky because you could lose it all at any moment depending on the whims of your bishop.

 I am a traditional minded Catholic because I read a lot and realized that what I was reading had nothing to do with the crap I was seeing at my local parish. I decided to go to the Mass that made the saints and so I got up early one Sunday took a train and a bus and walked through a rough neighborhood and found St. Mary Mother of God Church in Chinatown, DC. That Mass was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. There was no kindergarten music, there was no hugging and kissing and back rubs and there were no jokes.  The priest in his homily talked about the gospel he'd just read and said things like "sin" and "Hell". It was astonishing. The more I went, the more I read, the more I discovered that Catholicism is deeper than what I'd been taught in high school. I wanted and hungered for that Faith. I was also in my early 30s. I was completely unaware of Traditionalism when I was 19. I went through quite a bit before I walked into St. Mary's and I probably never would've gotten there if I hadn't first walked into the Catholic Information Center in DC with it's marvelous pre Vatican II library.

 Simone Biles  takes her rosary with her everyday and does not miss Sunday Mass. That's better than what I was doing at 19. I felt like registering with the site and telling Mr. Miserable to go soak his head but to my delight several other people wrote in and  told him about himself instead. Being miserable and a downright nasty is not an evangelization technique.
I once worked with a positively evil tempered devout Baptist. One day it dawned on me that if I were a savage pagan and this awful woman was the only person professing to be a Christian that I had ever met I would have gone back to my savage lands and continued being a pagan. Mr. Miserable and my evil former co-worker probably drive more people from finding God than they've ever attracted.

Random thoughts for a sickly weekend

• I spent the weekend being sick with a sinus infection that turned into laryngitis. I went to Mass with Rocky but I felt weak and unsteady. When we got home I went straight to bed. On the bright side I did catch up on reading stuff from around Catholic blog land.
  
  
• Louie Verrichio was singularly unimpressed by the Stations of the Cross performance at World Youth Day in Poland. So far every video I've seen from the event  has been somewhat embarrassing. Seeing priests and nuns trying to be cute and hip just makes me cringe. How does goofball stuff like this convert anybody?

• Here is another Mass without pews  painting. It looks like  people were able to be closer for adoration then than we are now.Warning: if you decide to do an image search for more works by this artist you should be aware that although he produced beautiful public art work for pay, in private he was obsessed with pornography  and you will come across some pretty foul stuff.

• Rocky and I went to Saint Michael's, Maryland for his birthday last weekend. It was lovely. We visited the Blackwater Wildlife Refuge and were amazed at how many birds we saw including  Great Blue Herons and a Coopers Hawk who just sat and looked at us. We went to the St. Michael's Mission for Mass and since they are so used to visitors no-one seemed the least bit surprised to see us. I even got to go to confession.  The priest is very old and has mobility problems so while I was not thrilled to see the army of Eucharistic ministers it was obvious that he needed help.
  
  
  
• I was reading an essay from a man who teaches preparedness in case of local and national emergencies  and something in me snapped. He expects that if the economy really turns bad in this country then  city people will be preyed on by the looting, killing hordes and his attitude was one of good riddance. That he would be cheerful about terror and death befalling  my city dwelling family members and me because I work in DC made me angry and I have news for him. In a societal collapse he won't be safe in the country.  You have to sleep sometime and you wont be able to defend your vegetables  and  chickens 24 hours a day. Those who long for a total collapse because people they hate will surely be wiped out may themselves be among first ones to fall victim to it.
  
  
  
• I don't understand why anyone is surprised by this.  Men have been saying for decades that Maynooth Seminary was no good.
  
  
  
• Until we find out more about Fr Jaques Hamel's murder we cannot call him a martyr. If witnesses state that the killers offered to spare his life if he denied Christ and he refused with even a shake of his head then yes, he is a martyr.  Being murdered by a Muslim doesn't make you a martyr. Everyone talking about sainthood needs to step back and wait for evidence. Bless his heart and God give him peace, but Fr. Hamel does not appear at this time to be a latter day St. Ignatius or St. Thomas Moore. 

• The lines for Confession at my parish are getting longer. It's a thrilling sight.
  
  

• Bishop Frank Caggiano of Bridgeport, Connecticut spoke in poetic terms about getting so close to the homeless that your heart touches theirs. Unfortunately, he was speaking to kids at World Youth Day and if even one of them actually goes out on the streets hugging homeless people and gets hurt the bishop should be blamed for his lack of care in speaking.  Many of the homeless on our streets are insane to some degree. Others are criminals who are not welcome back into their own families. A few are regular people who are genuinely down on their luck and too bewildered to get themselves together at the moment. Many, many women have been raped, people have been robbed and killed by men who had no fixed address. Seeming to encourage 15 year olds to follow a schizophrenic down an alley in order to embrace them or to crawl into a tent to minister to a man who has a rap sheet as long as his arm is imprudent and could lead to tragedy.
  
  

• Since I seem to be on a World Youth Day theme  I'm remember reading a story about a young woman who went to the last World Youth Day and was so disgusted that she left the Church for the Eastern Orthodox. She's mistaken but she's not the only one who's looking at the Orthodox as an escape. I'm reading more and more comments on even traditional Catholic discussion boards about going East because it beats losing their faith altogether or sitting at home alone praying the Rosary on Sunday. A few people have found peace by turning to the Byzantine rite but that is not an option for most folks because Byzantine parishes are not thick on the ground in the US. The people who are heading out the door to the Orthodox are not making a big public splash. They aren't saying anything to their priests and nobody is  blogging about it. They are just burning out and leaving. This is a tragedy.  

A tale of two "devout" men

King Robert the Pious, ( I suspect that sobriquet was a little joke by his people) was excommunicated because he divorced his wife and marred Bertha, his cousin.  After a long time in the wilderness, Pope Sylvester allowed him back and the marriage to Bertha was annulled. Some time  later King Robert married Constance but still was consorting with Bertha. He even traveled to Rome to ask Pope Sergius IV to let him divorce Constance and take Bertha back.  The pope told him something along the lines of "Look Bob. I am not going to agree to you marrying your own cousin. Get the heck out of here." King Robert went back to Queen Constance and had several children.  He may have continued fornicating with Bertha but their sins produced only produced one still born son.
In the present day Vice President Joe Biden, who calls himself devout, officiated the union between two men. It's no rumor. He was pleased as punch to tell it and there are photos. Cardinal Wuerl will probably smile his cool reptilian smile and shake the Vice President's hand the next time they see each other.*







* I have a question? Can any Catholic, whether he is a judge, a clerk of the court, a notary or the chief or vice chief  executive officers of the United States officiate at any kind of civil marriage?

Pray for us, Mother.

Our Lady of Mt. Carmel

First Friday for the Sacred Heart

Holy martyrs of Norogrodek, pray for us.

Young St. Anthony

Of all the paintings I've seen of Saint Anthony this is the first one that shows him as a young novice. 

France has fallen and other random thoughts...

• Fr. Jacques Hamel, aged 86 was slaughtered while saying Mass in  Normandy. Some reports use the word, "beheaded". There are not a whole lot of practicing Catholics in France anymore except for Traditionalists so I'm guessing there were few people at the morning Mass. The French can't comfort themselves with platitudes or tell themselves to simply avoid crowds or sinful venues and everything will  be okay. Fr. Hamel's murderer was making a statement, a territorial claim. His people are at war. They are not leaving anybody alone.  So here we are. Fr, Hamel is not going to be the last victim. The monster is out of the bag and even taking his funding away and cutting his Internet access isn't going to put him back. What was done to our fellow Catholics  in the Middle East is going to be done in the West.  God have mercy.
  Eternal rest grant until Fr. Jacques O Lord, let perpetual light shine upon him. May he rest in peace. Pray for us, St. Perfectus.
  
  
• An elderly woman lost her Faith back in the early Novus Ordo years. She never goes to Church now. Her greatest love in life was her dog and now the dog is dead. In her grief she wrote that dear Fluffy has gone over the Rainbow Bridge and her "fur baby" is waiting for her on the other side. I was tempted to say, "Ma'am your dog did not cross the rainbow bridge to Asgard. Fluffy is not running around in Valhalla chasing squirrels all day and feasting all night at the side of Thor and Odin. Your dog doesn't have an immortal soul and is not waiting for you."    Others gently tried to say that animals don't have immortal souls but were ignored. I just had to marvel at the destruction that has been wrought in our church for most of my life.
  
  
  
• When did World Youth Day become a standard part of the Church's year? Do we really need dancing nuns, rapping monks and pop music to minister to the young?
  
  
  
• Don't be scared to put on a veil in the presence of Our Lord if you are moved to do so. When I first started wearing my mantilla to Mass there was a woman who used to glare at me and whisper to her mean girl posse. I was stung at first then I just looked away and kept on praying. They all left for different Mass times, or different parishes. I'm still here and I'm not the only one at my Mass time who veils.
  
  
  
• 
  

The Resurrection, the First Glorious Mystery

Holy Trintity

Random thoughts

• The Bishop of Wurzbug, Germany is essentially saying that it is wrong to be suspicious of the sudden flood of mostly young male "refugees," until one of them swings an ax at you.  Even then, as you are running for your life or bleeding out on the floor, remember not all refugees are bad. The young man butchering you is probably traumatized and it's partially your fault for not offering him therapeutic services.  I'm guessing he never read the story of the camel's nose under the tent. 

• If saying "Lord, I am not worthy...," offends you then you are probably on your way to Satanism.

• Saint Maria Goretti has always been special to me because of her age and because she was a little country girl who had to work to help her family. My mother had her first paying job when she was nine. She was a companion for the wealthy old woman who feared the dark and whose son owned the land my grandfather farmed on. My mother would go over in the evenings, sit with the woman, entertain her with her chatter, make sure the stove was turned off, turn on the radio and see the old woman to bed. Then she'd lock up and walk a  few feet home.
  
  Although my mother was spared this, she knew of many young women who faced sexual pressure from their employers or the son of the employer. It took a brave girl to say no and to leave town for work if necessary.  Saint Maria refused her attacker but more importantly while she was dying and in indescribable agony she repeatedly said she forgave her him and wanted him to repent so that he could go to Heaven and not Hell. That's a saint. If the people on Patheos want to attack her that shows something low down and nasty about them.  Vox and Les Femmes both point out that Patheos and Alethia bloggers get paid by the click and will say foul, outrageous stuff in order to get you to click on their posts. I'm staying far away from the click baiters.
  
  
• The phrase "cruelty free" is a  big advertising draw in the world of cosmetics but I am suspicious. Why? Because the cosmetics company needs to be sure that you won't be scarred for life or go blind by using their product. If they are not testing on bunnies or guinea pigs or rats then what are they using? I've read that the companies use cultured skin cells. Where did the skin cells come from? I fear much of it comes from the poor mangled bodies of aborted babies. After all what is more delicate and tender than a baby's skin? Cruelty free? Nope. I'll stick with Loreal and Revlon, thank you. Oh and by the way, so far research with aborted babies has not produced a single cure for any disease. 
  
  
  
  

St. John Chystostom, pray for us

Saint John Chystostom 

Most Precious Blood of Christ

Oh Precious Blood of Christ, rain down on me, cleanse me of my sins, save me. 

Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel

There is a Baptist woman at work who keeps staring at and asking about my scapular. She's even asked another Catholic about it. Just seeing the brown cord really seems to agitate her. I thought she was just being a jerk but maybe that is Our Lady moving on this woman's heart.

Oh Mother of the Word Incarnate

pray for us, who have recourse to thee.

The Church suffers

“People, they destroyed the Mass! They eradicated the liturgy! They looted the sanctuaries of every church in Christendom! They, quite literally, raped the children. They’ve been lying to and abusing the faithful for 50 years! And the pirates who have inherited this whimpering and broken prisoner of a Church are ready now to administer the coup de grace.”  Hilary White Whats UpWith Francis Church?  

I read this and my ears began to burn and I felt tears trying to well up in my eyes. I think Miss White is correct and I see why people have reacted by to what's been going on in the Church by pretending that things are really getting better and that bad stuff only happens occasionally. I also get why people indulge in the belief that we don't have a pope at all. 

For the Police Officers and Their Mothers.....

Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that any one who fled to thy protection, implored thy help, or sought thy intercession, was left unaided. Inspired with this confidence, I fly unto thee, O Virgin of virgins, my Mother, to thee do I come, before thee I stand sinful and sorrowful. O Mother of the Word Incarnate! Despise not my petitions, but, in thy mercy, hear and answer me.
Amen

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord and let perpetual light shine upon them. May their souls and all of the souls of the faithful departed, through the Mercy of God, rest in peace.
Amen

Eternal Father, I offer You the most precious Blood of Thy Divine Son, Jesus, in union with the Masses said throughout the world today, for all the holy souls in Purgatory for sinners everywhere, for sinners in the Universal Church, those in my own home and within my family

St. Vincent Ferrer, has something to tell you

The following narrative from Saint Vincent Ferrer will show you what you may think about it. He relates that an archdeacon in Lyons gave up his charge and retreated into a desert place to do penance, and that he died the same day and hour as Saint Bernard. After his death, he appeared to his bishop and said to him, "Know, Monsignor, that at the very hour I passed away, thirty-three thousand people also died. Out of this number, Bernard and myself went up to heaven without delay, three went to purgatory, and all the others fell into Hell."

From St. Leonard of Port Maurice's homily on the fewness of those who are saved. 

Sunday in Baltimore

Rocky took Sunday off this week so we were able to have brunch. That's such a rarity that it's always feels like we were on vacation. Afterwards we took the back way to Baltimore and visited churches. We saw St. Joseph's Monastery  and it is stunning. However, it's in a horrible neighborhood. You need to have your wits about you. Don't leave your purse in the car seat or leave the doors unlocked. You also shouldn't be gawking at the locals. Park on the church lot, go in and leave when you're done.  Next we went to St. Peter Claver but were not able to go in because most of the city church's have to be locked up. Finally we went to St. Casimir. It is a Polish parish and has the most truly awesome altar I have ever seen in a regular parish church. The paintings on the ceiling are restored and while the painter(s?) did a fine job with bodies and backgrounds they couldn't capture the faces very well and the colors seemed too bright for the age of the church. Still the place is beautiful.  As for Mass, well, liturgy in Baltimore outside of St. Alphonsus can be anything from okay to awful. After all that we went to Iron Rooster in Canton for dinner. I had the Dixie Pot Roast and Rocky chowed down on the chicken and waffles.

Let's help Maureen become a Carmelite

In your charity could you consider donating to a lovely young lady who used to go to my parish? She wants to join the Carmelites but must get rid of all debts before entering.


https://www.youcaring.com/maureen-dalley-382467/update/494085

Pretty good company to be in 

First Friday for the Sacred Heart

Oh Heart of Jesus, have mercy on me, a sinner. 

If people only knew what goes on at Mass

Random thoughts on a stormy afternoon

• Being called "nice" is not a complement really. Nice originally meant to be agreeable with all because you are simple minded and ignorant. The nice person stands for nothing and will not speak up when faced with sinful behavior. Ann Barnhardt says it far better than I could.
  
  
  
  
  
• Guys, never marry a woman who :
  
  
  1. Takes frequent photos of herself with her phone.
  2. Has an Instagram account and followers who admire her semi nude self "exercising" or playing with makeup.
  3. Had an abortion and is not sorry.
  4. Has made it her mission in life to fix you.
  
  
   
• Something strange is in the air.  A few months ago I sat in church and realized slowly that the woman next to me was growling. I don't mean this figuratively. I don't mean she was comically imitating a dog. I mean she was growling like some dis tempered beast. I glanced at her. Tears were pouring from her eyes and she looked to be in pain. I started to lean towards her but something stopped me.  Father said the words of consecration and raised the Host. The growling stopped. She looked up, still crying and exhausted. After Mass I looked away for a moment and she was gone. I haven't seen her since.
  
  Another odd thing that is  happening is that a middle aged layman dressed in black has taken to coming to church during Adoration or after Mass and speaking loudly in Spanish to the priest or to the Consecrated Virgin. Both calmly shushed him and backed him out of the church into the hallway. I've seen him do this three times so far never been able to make out what he is saying. Is he disturbed or an aggressive Evangelical? Why is this happening now?
  
  
• Once in the South it was not exactly a folk custom but a tolerated behavior among the lowliest of the sharecroppers to get pregnant before the wedding to show that you were fertile and your intended was not going to be stuck trying to farm alone in his old age if he married you. This was frowned on by decent people and it seems from the pope's recent comments about marriage that a variation of it exists in the provinces of Argentina. The Protestant preachers and social workers of a past era fought against this and wiped it out.
  
  
• Medically assisted suicide is now legal in Canada. So neither the dog nor the sick is safe in the land of the Maple Leaf.
  
  
  
• Why on earth should a Catholic fast for Ramadan  when you make up excuses to do nothing for Lent? Every blessed Lent I see posts on various blogs and op/eds on Catholic sites stating that no, the writer is not fasting for Lent but is going to read the entire Simarillion or will "fast" from gossiping or losing their temper with annoying people. I read this and think, "Really? I'm supposed to be impressed by this?
  
  
• I keep breaking my work bag rosary so I'm trying out a replica of the World War I combat rosary. 

St. Leonard has something to tell you.

There was a synod being held in Paris, and a great number of prelates and pastors who had the charge of souls were in attendance; the king and princes also came to add luster to that assembly by their presence. A famous preacher was invited to preach. While he was preparing his sermon, a horrible demon appeared to him and said, "Lay your books aside. If you want to give a sermon that will be useful to these princes and prelates, content yourself with telling them on our part, 'We the princes of darkness thank you, princes, prelates, and pastors of souls, that due to your negligence, the greater number of the faithful are damned; also, we are saving a reward for you for this favor, when you shall be with us in Hell.'"

From St. Leonard of Port Maurice's homily on the number of those going to Hell. 

You CAN hit the road, Jack.... the Pope Says Your marriage is probably invalid

The Pope says most sacramental  marriages are invalid. If this is so then our spouses are free to leave without guilt or condemnation. Paradoxically, the Holy Fathers says that he has ...."seen a lot of fidelity in these cohabitations, and I am sure that this is a real marriage, they have the grace of a real marriage because of their fidelity  .., etc.”  What does this mean in real life? Is a marriage only real if the lovers are faithful and happy? Was Servant of God, Elizabeth Leseur's marriage invalid? Were the marriages of St. Rita and St. Monica invalid? None of these ladies had good husbands and all of them suffered. 

One popular blogging priest says not worry because His Holiness is not speaking ex cathedra and this is just an offhand opinion.  I sighed when I heard that. Most people aren't theologians or cannon lawyers. Most people assume that if Papa says something it must be official and that's that. On one positive note, to my surprise, most of the blogging priest's fans wrote comments expressing disagreement. 

In my mother's family's denomination couples have a built-in out for marriage. A man can say that his wife secretly had the spirit of Jezebel or a woman can say that her husband was "not a godly man," and they can get divorced and remarried and keep their standing in the church with nary a murmur of criticism from anybody. Catholics do you want to imitate this?  Dear Lord, surely not.

The Crucifixion

Infidelity to the Faith Leads to the Scourge

This homily gave me chills. 

This Is the Way We Live Now and Other Random Thoughts

• So, I decided to go back to college. I'm taking all the classes online so at least I won't be sitting in a classroom heckling the professor for teaching garbage. Fortunately, I was awarded enough credits from previous coursework and experience to skip three classes and I'll be able to get to the core material sooner.
  
• Okay....so I will not be going to Canada on vacation now and if I were a pet animal breeder I definitely would not sell to anyone with a Canadian address. There are some tiresome people who only think that America has a problem with depravity. Oh please! The entire West is sick.
  
  
  
• What happened in Orlando is going to keep on happening. This is the way we live now.  It may be one man sawing off one woman's head or it may be many people slaughtered at a time but it will be. Our leaders will lower flags, give speeches and attend memorials but that is all they are going to do and we the people are just going to light some votive candles, buy teddy bears and flowers, sing sappy songs and privately hope that the next time the wolf comes we won't be on the edge of the herd.
  
  
  
• Once upon a time in America there was a Jewish kid whose father abandoned the family. His mother made a mistake that many women in her position still make today. She leaned on her son and made her boy the man of the house. A teen aged boy can make a lot of money via crime and so he did. The rent was paid and the younger kids were fed. Later he moved up the ranks and became a big time gangster. At the height of his criminal career and infamy he was shot. On his death bed he asked for a priest. He was Baptized, confessed his sins and best he could and died. If Dutch Schultz could repent in the last seconds of his earthly life and be saved then surely some of the dead in Orlando had time to make an act of Contrition. 

• In a way, Pope Francis might be the best thing that happened to the Church in many decades.  He's actually caused people from my generation to realize that not single every word from the pope's lips is  infallible and that his every action is not necessarily holy. If you are uneasy or even frantic about the pope go and buy yourself a Baltimore or Pius X catechism, a copy of the Catholic encyclopedia and a few old books such as the Imitation of Christ, anything written by the great saints and  the collected writings of the early Church Fathers and start studying. A lot of us never progressed spiritually beyond where we were at Confirmation. It's time to grow up and face the storm. 

St. Catherine pray for us

“We’ve had enough of exhortations to be silent! Cry out with a hundred thousand tongues. I see that the world is rotten because of silence.”
– St. Catherine of Siena

Why does becoming Catholic take a year or more?

I've always said that most RCIA programs are wretched. The teachers often don't know the Faith, the sessions are more like AA meetings than instruction and it's not uncommon to never see a priest. When Rocky went through RCIA, he saw the parochial vicar once and even then, Father was just dropping by and not giving instruction. The young man who taught RCIA was actually married to an Episcopalian minister. Compare this joke process to St. Phillip and the Ethiopian.
I was reminded of how dreadful RCIA can be when I read this essay at the Eye Witness blog by a woman who was nearly driven away from the Church by her experience.

Random thoughts on a humid night

Oh Mary, help of Christians, pray for us.

• Muhammad Ali died. He was a glorious figure during my childhood  may be the greatest heavyweight boxer of all time but he rejected Christ and was married four times. His only son says he was a neglectful father. Whether a king or the lowest prostitute in the gutter,  one day we will all be stripped of our earthly circumstance. One day we all will stand before the Judgement seat. May God have mercy on his soul.
  
  
• A number of people are upset about a new movie that is coming out that supports suicide. Other people are worried about the new Finding Dory, Disney movie. Folks, Hollywood is not our friend. They've been manipulating us for decades. In the 1929, movie, The Letter, the unrepentant, defiant heroine got away with adultery and murder.  Dodsworth back in the 1930s showed remarriage after divorce in a sympathetic light.   Now Voyager and Back Street had people weeping over the adulterers in the 40s and 50s. The mistress in Back Street was shown in a noble light and the movie hints that she'll be a better mother to her lover's children than their drunken wreck of a natural mother. Drugs were glamorized from the 60s onward and a new AIDS movie came out every week on TV and the theaters back in the late 80s and early 90s. There is nothing new under the sun.
  
  
  
  
• I was reading the Connecticut Catholic blog and saw her list of interesting bloggers that she likes. One of them, Diary of an Accidental Hermit is really, really  good.
  
  
• I prefer to use an e-book missal but I'm always happy to see a new print missal and  this one from St. Augustine Academy Press looks terrific. 

First Friday for the Sacred Heart of Jesus

Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us!

Pray for priests- Something in Miami smells

I just read the dossier on Fr. Pedro Corce of the Miami diocese that parishioners presented to the archbishop and it is both distasteful and incredible. The alleged behavior in the dossier is so over the the top it's almost too much to believe Obviously the lessons of the scandals have not been learned in Miami. Archbishop Wenski did ask Father to step down from being the pastor but also criticized the parents who complained about him.  

St, Rose of Lima, pray for us.

Pray for us, St. Joan

Whenever I had to really fight the staff at my uncle's nursing home or when I had to get aggressive to get his doctor to move along paperwork I would remember her words, " I was born to do this," and it gave me the strength to get on with and get my mission done.

Cesspool?

A cesspool is an underground container that holds sewage. What is sewage? Urine and fecal matter and the fouled water used to move it along. When a priest/blogger recently wrote for Crux news that the traditionalist blogosphere is a cesspool he was saying that the devout Catholics who write those blogs are tanks of excrement. Think about that and what it means and then say a prayer for the man.

Our Lady of the Clergy, pray for your sons.

St. John Vianney, pray for your brothers.

This is for you

  

Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us!

Archbishop Gänswein just said something but what does it really mean?

Monsignor, Archbishop Georg Ganswein is Pope Benedict's man so when he talks about his boss he isn't just pulling something out of his biretta and spouting off because he likes the cameras. We can assume that this little idea really did come from Benedict.  Beware, beware, beware when someone no matter how high thinks  he can improve on what Jesus left us. That always leads to confusion, unhappiness and on many occasions in history, death. If you could speak to the dead you could ask anybody who ran afoul of Jim Jones, the Albigensians, the Arians, and of course anyone of the saints martyred by the Protestants.

So you say you need to be a deaconess to be empowered?

Go to her and tell the Handmaid of the Lord that following her example isn't enough for you because it doesn't give you enough power in the parish.

So it's come to this and other random thoughts

• When your daughter goes to the restroom at school next year there might be a boy in there and you can't do a thing about it. Ann Barnhardt has had enough of the culture that is allowing this. Non Veni Pacem thinks there is still a chance.  I think a few thousand or so people will pull their kids out of public school but most will shamefacedly buckle down and simply tell their daughters to be careful when they go to the rest room and to just leave if they see a male. Some people are saying hopefully that the next president will undo this. Um, no.  Other than Prohibition, I can't think of a single national law or agency or program that was discarded after being set in place. 

• Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.

• A mariachi band stopped by to pray at our parish today. It was neat seeing them.
  
  
  
• This has got to be one of the most depressing things I've read all month.
  
  
  
  
• A young man from another diocese was at Mass today. He made a point of letting Fr. Hawk know  that he'd rarely seen such a beautiful, reverent Mass. Rocky wishes that he'd asked where the poor kid was from. 

Deaconesses? No thanks.

The pope is going to create a commission to study the possibility of women deacons If we get deaconesses I will ignore them and get in the priest's line for Holy Communion, just like I try to do now when presented with Eucharistic ministers. To be honest, I"m not in love with the permanent deacon idea. The ones I've seen didn't seem to be much of a day to day help to the their parish priest. I've seen deaconesses in action too. Rocky's grandmother was one. In Baptist churches the deacons have enormous power. They run the church. They pick  and can depose the pastor. Depending on the church's constitution they can control the purse strings.  A war between the deacons can split a church in two. At my grandparent's church , deacons drove the young pastor away. The deaconesses can make the First Lady of the church's life hell if they don't like her. The deaconess in charge of a ministry such as the Missionary Aid Society is a small queen with the freedom to run her fiefdom the way she sees fit until she dies or retires unless she does it so badly that there is an accounting problem or a  rebellion and the full power of the other deacons and pastor are brought against her.

Deaconesses are not necessary to the Catholic Faith. You can do what my husband's grandmother did right now. She was in charge of visiting the sick. You can go to nursing homes and to the homes of your fellow parishioners. Rocky's grandmother didn't just visit either. She cooked meals, she cleaned the house of the sick person if need be, she comforted frightened children and told them that mamma or daddy was going to be alright.  She sat and listened to men and women who were facing widowhood. She was a major force in both the senior and adult choirs. If you have a voice and are willing to work you can join the choir.  She and her team took care of the pastor's transportation.  The reverend never had worry about rides to the airport or driving home tired from a middle of the night hospital run.   Rocky's grandmother's cooking was legendary and she fed the hungry. On Sundays after services, she and the hospitality ministry served up a feast to everyone and at no cost for the poor. If you can't do that you can provide coffee and store bought doughnuts for Church functions or join the meatball, pirogi and pancake makers at the annual Church festivals.

You don't need to be a deaconess to pray. You can join or with the pastor's permission start a prayer group in your parish. Rocky's grandmother was in charge of the senior bible study. She, like my grandmother was also in charge in the missionary group.

And here is something else that I fear that Catholic deaconesses won't get. Rocky's grandmother had power but she was not power hungry. I'm confident she never once in her life whined about not being empowered. She did what she did and considered herself a servant to God and her church. Judging from what I've seen of the pantsuit nuns and the aggressive and easily angered (avoid them in the Communion line and see the sour look you get) Eucharistic minister ladies, Catholic deaconesses won't be half as humble as my husband's Baptist deaconess grandmother was.

Stepping aside from the practical aspect, theologically we don't need deaconesses. God's Holy Church has been whacked with experiments and outright efforts to make us Protestant-esque for 55 or so years. Enough! Let's try a new experiment. Let's be Catholics.

Mary, Mother of God, Queen of Heaven, pray for us.
St. Gertrude the Great, pray for us.
St. Teresa of Avila, pray for us.
St. Clare, pray for us
St. Louise de Marillac, pray for us.
St. Frances Cabrini, pray for us.
St. Katherine Drexel, pray for us.
St. Walburga, pray for us.
St. Clotilda, pray for us.
St. Margaret of Scotland, pray for us.
St. Catherine of Siena, pray for us.
St. Joan of Arc, pray for us.
Mother Angelica, pray for us.

A Catholic mystery: Archbishop Sheen and Bella Dodd

Bella Dodd was converted from communism by Archbishop Fulton Sheen. She became famous because she announced to the world that Moscow had spent many decades sending men to the seminary to damage the Church from within. Some of these men rose very high.  In 1966, or '67 she told theologian Dietrich von Hildebrand and his wife, Alice that at least four were cardinals working in the Vatican. Archbishop Sheen forbade Bella to name them in public or in private so she couldn't tell the von Hildebrand's who they were.. It's a great mystery why. I guess he feared scandal or perhaps he thought he was protecting Miss Dodd's life.

The Immaculate Conception

May is Mary's month

St. Katherine Drexel, pray for us.

The order St. Katherine founded has gone the way of many orders and now they are selling her shrine and next year her remains will be moved to Philadelphia.  I don't want to hear about the new Springtime in the Church anymore.

Hail Holy Queen!

An unusual Ascension

Most images of Our Lord's Ascension show Him lifting up in view of the apostles and His mother or they show His feet and the apostles straining to see Him for as long they can. This painting by Gustave Dore shows the Lord well above the earth with the angels as His witnesses.

First Friday for the Sacred Heart of Jesus

From the depth of my nothingness, I prostrate myself before Thee, O Most Sacred, Divine and Adorable Heart of Jesus, to pay Thee all the homage of love, praise and adoration in my power.
Amen. - -St. Margaret Mary Alacoque

Ascension Thursday

We had a misa cantata for Ascension Thursday at my parish and there must have been close to 200 people there tonight. It was beautiful; just glorious.

Three great saints

This unusual painting shows St. Teresa of Avila, St. Clare of Assisi and St. Catherine of Sienna. They represent three glorious monastic orders, the Carmelites, the Franciscans and the Dominicans.

The whole society is compromised and other random thoughts

St. Dominic, pray for us.

• Feminists destroy everything they touch. First they came to kill the babies now by pushing women into combat they mean to get the young and fertile women killed.
  
  
• One aspect of city living is that I've seen transvestites in the ladies room. I only noticed because the well dressed tall woman with the huge feet in the next stall was doing whatever it was that she was doing standing up and with her back to the door. Later I'd realize that it must have really been a man. A lot of people are upset with Target because the store is now allowing men in the ladies room. I know people who shop at Target and love it but it always seemed to me to be overpriced and for people who were too snooty to go to Walmart or Kmart.  Whenever I went there to shop for pajamas or t-shirts for my uncle in the nursing home I usually left empty handed because the quality didn't impress me.
  
  The American people have been thoroughly manipulated in the last thirty years to accept homosexuality. The battle was lost a long time ago and just as women have always suffered when their soldiers lost wars many of us will suffer now. The occasional transvestite whose disguise was almost perfect was not the danger really. The rapist or the peeping Tom who used to sneak into the ladies room is the problem. Now all he has to do is walk into Target and just wait until one lone woman or girl comes in. No-one at the store will order him out or call the cops. He's free to hang out as long as he wants and if he leaves his victim dead or incapacitated he'll be able to stroll out of the ladies's room without anyone in store security asking him "Hey buddy, whatcha doing in there?" Target has corporate counsel so   the company knows that they could face lawsuits but someone at the top is so attached to this cause that he's willing to risk it.
  
  
• I read that Russian Orthodox and Russian Catholics have pitched in to help Syrian Christians rebuild their churches. That's wonderful but notice who is not helping. I expected nothing from the Protestants of course but where are the Western Catholics?
  
  
• Our whole society has been compromised and perverted. I knew that sort of but it really hit me this week. I was reading a conservative blog that covers politics and society. I'm not interested in politics anymore so the social issues are  what I focus on. Most of the people are over 60 and reading it on a daily basis has been  really shocking. It's clear that they deplore the president and the Democrats but it's unclear what they love. Since we fight for what we love that is important. Most seem to be more delighted by their pets than they are by their grandchildren and seem to loathe their step-children in general.  Only a few lonely voices had a problem with divorce or eugenics. Most seem to be fine with homosexuality as long as it's amusing like Truman Capote and doesn't make any demands. Most seem to belong to no church at all and are just "spiritual".  Only one or two mentioned Easter  when it arrived. Most have no problem with abortion as long as it's in the first trimester. They find the singer, Beyonce offensive but love watching the Lucifer TV show. As I read, I thought, 'If these are the conservatives then what the heck are the liberals like? No wonder this country so screwed up!'
  
   Alice vonHildebrandt once  mentioned in a lecture that she never saw pornographic images when she was a child but today  children are exposed to  many such images. Even if you don't own a TV, and rarely leave your property every time you go outside you are witness to smut that would have gotten someone arrested just 40 years ago.  Get on the bus and you'll see obscene ads. Drive on the highway and you  see obscene billboards. Go to the mall and you can see half dressed teenagers and even older women. Go to the grocery store and there are magazines with lewd headlines and sometimes fully naked women on the cover right there in the check out line. Seeing cleavage, naked thighs and midriffs at Mass is not uncommon. God bless Catholic parents who fight the good fight everyday. Even so-called respectable mainstream society is against us.  No president can fix this sick society.  We need the help of Heaven.