Happy birthday Rocky

He's 47 today. Seems impossible. He still looks like the 23 year old I married back in '88.


Thank you, St. Martha for your prayers.

the kindest of men goes on vacation with his animal crazy wife

Yesterday I got to feed chickens, share a soulful gaze with a brave lamb, and pet donkeys and a muddy pig. My country girl mother would shake her head but I love animals and Rocky is the kindest, most patient man.... He just looked at me and said " Ah, Dymie, you got to pet a pig."

Later we went bird watching and he spotted three snowy egrets for me and we saw ospreys, cormorants, terns and osprey chicks. Tommorow, we'll do a battlfefield or go to Newport News and look at the grandmother of the modern battleship.

A quote to stop you in your tracks

You're curious and inquisitive, prying and nosey. Aren't you ashamed that even in your defects you are not much of a man. Be a man, and instead of poking into other people's lives, get to know what you really are yourself....

St.Josemaria Escriva

It's funny. I'm not particularly attracted to St. Josemaria. He's like iodine on a cut--- but every now and then I come across some of the things he said and they amaze me. I wonder how I would've felt if I'd gotten one of his letters. Would I have howled in indgignation or cried in the corner or would I have been docile and listened?

Weep no more, my lady

I'll never forget the first time I heard Amy Winehouse sing.  Rocky and I loved road trips with Back to Black blasting from the radio. May God have mercy on her soul.

I believe in the communion of saints...

Pray for us, sweet St. Cecilia. May we count nothing, even our mortal lives more important than the love of Jesus.

Amen

Random thoughts

• Some amateur bloggers, mommy bloggers in particular but I've seen dad's do it too, tell too much about their teen aged or adult children. One Catholic blogger I occasionally read isn't shy about discussing her child's former drug problem. The constant harping on this sad time in their lives leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It comes off as passive aggression. If the kid gave permission to tell this story to the world it's not a betrayal of trust but it since the blogger uses her and the kid's real names and photos this is not helpful to the kid's future. I'm a law librarian. When I'm not looking up laws and government regulations I am sometimes called upon to search for witnesses or to find out what I can on a potential client. I always start with the free publicly available search engines, news and blogs. One day someone like me is going to do a search on this blogger's child and will read about the drug problem. The kid's resume will go straight to the trash.  Thanks a lot mom.

• How long does a person have to be dead before we can speak the truth about them? When Betty Ford died Jill Stanek wrote frankly about Mrs. Ford's abortion activities and did not wish her well. The Anchoress chided Miss Stanek on her blog and I  wonder why she thought Miss Stanek was so wrong. Betty Ford was a big time abortion supporter. How big? Well she was publicly for abortion back in the early 70s and she created a politcal action comittee to funnel money to pro-abortion Republican candidates. Betty may have been a lot of fun at parties and the epitome of charm and refinement  but slaughtering prenatal babies meant a lot to her. I see no reason to be nice about that.

• A Knights of Columbus chapter recently opened up at my parish. The head knight is a good guy and the knights do good work but Rocky won't be joining. Primarily, because he's just too busy and second, because the national leadership of the Knights just aren't what they used to be. Michael Voris has decided to leave the KoC and talks about his reasons here.

•  A friend of mine had to have a colonoscopy and she was very frightened about it. My husband dedicated his weekly  holy hour to praying for her. If you ever get gloomy about the state of the Church or if it ever seems like the people in your diocese are the biggest Candyland Catholics you've ever seen, go to Adoration. Tell you fears, worries and troubles to Jesus and He will restore you. While doing our holy hour we prayed with whites, Hispanic, Asian, old and young people. Seeing those quiet, loving, pious people always gives me such a lift.
  
  I know some bloggers are quite frank about their distaste for pious, devotional people. I can't agree. I'd rather be like the decidely unhip little woman at church who always kneels to the floor when passing the Blessed Sacrament than the cool kid, oh so sophisticated Catholics who mock her and people like her.
  
  
• This is a magnificent painting of St. Claire by Ardith Starostka.
  

*Little Way is absolutely correct. Nobody , except perhaps a humble saint somewhere who was given divine knowledge, knows where Betty Ford ended up. In her last moments she may have repented. However calling foul behavior heroic as some of her hagiographers did is going too far.

Infant of Prague

When I was a little girl at St. Augustine School the sisters had a statue on the Infant in the stairwell. The sight of that two foot tall glass encased statue always cheered me up on bad days and was my confidant on good days.

Irish eyes aren't smiling

It's a cheesy title but it's the first thing that came to mind when I read about a proposed new law in Ireland that would require priests to break the seal of the confessional if a pedophile comes in to confess. Now how on earth do the Irish authorities plan to implement this? I suspect they'll use entrapment. They'll send in people to give false confessions and then arrest the priest if he doesn't call the police. This nightmare could've been avoided by exposing and kicking out bad priests instead of shuffling them around. Was it indifference, blackmail or silent consent that caused so many bishops to fail in their duty?  Now we're stuck with a nightmare that will never go away. Twenty years from now, provided pedophilia hasn't been legalized by then, people will still be making accusations and whether they have a shred of evidence to back them up or not, they'll be believed.

St. John Nepomucene, martyr of the confessional, who laid down your life rather than betray a penitent, pray for your brother priests. They do not face being thrown into the Moldau river but they do face the horror of prison.

Virgin of Sorrows

When I was a little girl my godmother took me to St. Mary's in DC. They have a lovely pieta and at it's base were the words, "Is your sorrrow like unto my sorrow?" Of course at three or four I didn't understand but I was deeply moved all the same.

a fine artist

Noah Buchanan did two paintngs for the Our Lady of Guadalupe Shrine in Wisconsin. One is a beautiful depiction of St. Maria Goretti and the other is the best Divine Mercy image I've ever seen.  You can see them on  his site.

random thoughts on a hot afternoon

• You don't make yourself seem bigger by cutting someone else down.  
  

• In 1994, Humberto Leal raped, tortured and finally killed 16 year old Adria Sauceda. He was executed for that crime. One of his biggest supporters was Sr. Germaine Corbin. I don't mind Sr. Germaine visiting prisoners but I do wonder if she ever thought to go sit and grin with Adria's parents. Probably not.
  
  
• My father-in-law mentioned that during the Vietnam war a lot of college boys hid out in divinity school. They were Protestants. Did any Catholics go to the seminary with the same thing in mind and how many of them got ordained? We'll never know.

• Last month I read somewhere that women should marry less attractive men if they want adultery proof marriages. That's ridiculous and must have written by someone who knows nothing about men and women. Your husband may have nose like a baked potato and be skinny as a twig but if he's a good man, exudes confidence and masculinity and can provide a secure home some other woman will be attracted to him.  If he's happy in the marriage the attention won't matter to him. If he's not happy--- well  then you may have a problem, but it won't have anything to do with his looks.
• I  read a post on a British writer's blog about NFP. He admitted that because his wife's body just doesn't follow the standards he's been forced into celibacy for the better part of this year. I'll probably make  NFP fans angry but that doesn't seem like a healthy way to live to me.

• Please pray for Hilary White. She's walking in the lonesome valley now. St. Peregrine, dear saint whom no-one really wants to have to pray to, please remember Hilary.

• On the next season of the science fiction series Torchwood, a main character is a sympathetic pedophile. Pay attention to this. We (ordinary American society) are being softened up. 

A tragedy

If this is true then a very great tragedy has taken place and is continuing to take place. Father denies it but things don't look good at all. The thing that really bothers me is the unbridled glee that some bloggers are showing.  I've been thinking of Psalm 51 all afternoon.

Virgen Blanca

I love this 12th century alabaster statue of Our Lady and Our Lord. They both look so contented with each other.

Handmaids of the Precious Blood

This order of nuns  is dedicated to praying for priests. Through their external apostalates they invite priests, nuns and lay people to join them in their prayer and sacrifice.

Nasty Nellie

I don't like Rod Dreher. He reminds me of Nellie Olsen from Little House on the Prarie. But I feel a little (just a very little) sorry for him. He left the Catholic Church in a fury and went to the Orthodox. Instead of enjoying Orthodoxy he's like the vengeful man who finds a hole in his enemy's  tent and urinates into it occassionally.  I'm not entirely an Archbishop Dolan fan but His Excellency is not to blame for New York State's homosexual marriage fall. The seeds of disaster were already sown long ago, as I've said before.

Living with infertility. This thing that can not live yet never dies

This was a bad day. The next person who tells me that I'm lucky not to have children is getting a punch in the gut.

Katherine of Aragon, pray for me. St. Joan of Valois, pray for me. St. Anne, St. Gianna, Blessed Elizabeth Leseur  pray for me. Sweetest Heart of Mary give me strength.

a palate cleanser

A sister of the Religieuses Victimes du Sacré-Coeur de Jésus, France, takes her final vows of chastity, obedience, poverty and enclosure..

When a civilization falls

A lot of nice, well meaning people in the blogosphere are aghast because gay "marriage" has been legalized in New York state. To be honest, I feel like asking these people where the hell they've been for the last twenty or thirty years. Have they been so self absorbed that they havne't seen what's been going around them?

Marriage was already befouled a long time ago and heterosexuals did it.

Women divorce their inoffensive husbands for not being exciting enough and the rest of the world cheers them on, "You go, girl!"  Men dump their wives for a younger, prettier replacement and the the rest of us murmur "Well, he has a right to be happy." Generations of children grew up in broken homes and most Americans not only ignored their emotional and physical suffering but also had the gall to insist that the kids were alright.

Adulterers have been portrayed sympatheticly in films as early as the 1930s. From the 50s onward movie stars  had marital adventures that were nothing more than  a sick joke and the majority of our parents  and grandparents ate it up. "Sophisticated," married men subscibed to Playboy magazine and it wasn't too terribly uncommon to find it in their homes. Married women shamelessly read Cosmopolitan and took it's editor's vile advice to heart. Our generation is no better. Pick up any celebrity magazine and what do you see? Stories on who's cheating with whom and the American public can't get enough. Listen to the radio and what do you hear? Filth mostly. Every other song is about graphic fornication or adultery. Our civilization has fallen so low that it's like we're lying in the gutter looking up through a thick layer of toxic mud. All the poisons lurking in the mud are hatching out. Militant homosexuality is one of those poisons.

It's like Frankenstein's monster. Baron Victor Frankenstein had the gifts of freedom, wealth and brilliance but misused them and produced an ugly, homicidal "baby" who horrified him and destroyed everything that Victor loved. Militant homosexuality is the vicious monster baby of heterosexual decadence.

So what's gonna happen? I see two possibilities. Civil marriage is not the end game. Come on, you know that. The leaders of this movement have a plan and it's not about mere tolerance. Eventually two men or two women  will show up in a parish and demand a wedding and the government will back them up. That sounds farfetched but if you went back in time to 1911, and told people that aboriton would be legalized they would've called you insane. If you went back to 1957, and told people that a half black man was one day going to be president they would've assumed you'd been drinking. Impossible things are made possible.

The other possibility is that nationwide financial collaspe will interrupt the game altogether. If ordinary Americans are faced with worries about food and how to avoid a massive crime wave nobody is going to give a rip about a lot of things that matter now. Either way interesting times are coming.

Pre-Cana follies

I've said before that I have a low opinion of the usefulness of pre-Cana classes. Considering that Catholics get divorced at the same rate as unchurched people and Protestants the programs don't seem to do much but make money.
 I just read about a 78 year old Lutheran man who wanted to marry an 60 plus year old Catholic woman. They were told that they had to take the pre-Cana class or there could be no wedding and they balked. The wedding took place in the man's Lutheran church. 

On one hand, I suspect that the Lutheran  really didn't want a Catholic wedding anyway and the pre-Cana requirement was a perfect excuse to get out of it, or the couple didn't want to shell out two hundred bucks from their fixed retiree incomes. On the other hand, insisting that an elderly man and a woman long past menopause have to sit through weeks of lectures on natural family planning, budgeting, and the importance of working together is stupid. At their ages this couple surely knows more about the art of living and loving than the instructors and I think I'd much rather sit with them and ask their advice than pay for anything the instructors would have to say.

I used to think the pre-Cana classes in America were the worst but after reading this English blogger's witty comments I guess things are rough all over.

St. John the Baptist

John the Baptist must have been amazing. He told the pharisees and King Herod exactly what they were. He didn't give a rip about what people thought and hated sin. I've  heard people try use the Baptist as an excuse for coming to Mass looking like they've been planting stink weeds and as a symbol of homelessness and it always makes me want to laugh. The Baptist wasn't a lazy slob and he wasn't a drunkard, drug addict or insane. He was, Our Lord, said, "the greatest man born of woman." What a tribute! He lived a tough life, an extreme life, yes but one that many holy known and unknown hermits would've understood completely.

Mighty St. John, the son of Elizabeth and Zarchariah, cousin and forerunner to Our Lord, pray for us.