"You don't believe any of this....?"

Himself started watching something last night that looked interesting to me, but as I've more or less given up tv, (though yeah, I check the weather, and whether or not our country had gone to war....,) for Lent, I left the room.
He turned it off shortly afterwards, I asked what gives? and he said, "Oh, you know, the kind of programming they put on this time of year, we're being utterly objective and scientific and historical about all this Jesus stuff, and they make a big deal about anything that contradicts the Bible or common understanding, but if any hard facts support Christian tradition they downplay them...."
"Oh,"... he added, "and you know how they get jackasses or crazies for all the talking-head parts."
Yep, yep, I do know...
But, Department of Silver Linings, we don't have an Established Church in the US.

Few things in life are more reliable than that the BBC will celebrate Holy Week by running a story which causes controversy about Christianity; the only thing more reliable is that it won’t do the same about Islam during Ramadan. The latest, to be found here reveals that nearly a quarter of ‘Christians’ do not believe in the Resurrection. However, 1 in to people with no religion said they sort of believed in some way int e Resurrection, prompting this: ‘The Church of England said it showed many people held religious beliefs.’ I fear what it really shows is the failure of the Established Church in this country to do much in the way of religious education. One of the more remarkable bit of the piece was a vicar saying that: ‘”I think [people answering the survey] are being asked to believe in the way they might have been asked to believe when they were at Sunday school.’ Quite apart from the fact that it is doubtful that many people even go to Sunday School, one wonders quite what she thought was being taught at Anglican Sunday Schools? Then, with all the confidence of a modernist who doesn’t know better, she pronounced: ‘”So to ask an adult to believe in the resurrection the way they did when they were at Sunday school simply won’t do and that’s true of much of the key elements of the Christian faith.” She tells us that” And an adult faith requires that it be constantly questioned, constantly re-interpreted, which incidentally is very much what modern church is actually about.’ Indeed, and in that apercu lies much of what has gone wrong with the Church of England.

One wonder, then - if asked in a survey, does the quoted vicar think the Anglicans of the UK would deny that they loved their Mums? Because, of course, they wouldn't love them in the same way they had when they were children....

Reblog: "I'm not a Trad, but..."

I am in a very different place, (literally and figuratively,) from when I wrote this, and I'm coming to understand, and sympathize with, people on both extremes of this issue, the True Believers in the Liturgy Wars.
An Extraordinary Form Mass, a regular celebration of the Mass of the Ages has just become available to me, not too far away, and on a weekday so it doesn't usually interfere with either my parish duties, (voluntary) or my familial duties, (voluntary and yet on compulsion.)
But at the same time I am experiencing a reprieve from the sadly perfunctory and weird liturgies that are my usual lot with beautiful and careful Masses said by someone who is at about the furthest one can go in the other direction  from the EF while still being obedient and rubrically correct.
And thrown into the mix, a one-off Are-you-kidding-me Eucharistic celebration complete with off-the-leash pets, and a little labyrinth-induced game of Find the EMHC.
(Someone, PLEASE! what is with modern church architecture that encompasses aisles that dead end????!?@??)
But I think most of this, other than that dealing my employment, still holds true:

If I ...were free to participate where and when and how I would, the Extraordinary Form would not be my first choice.But now, praise Benedict and the motu proprio, I am at least entitled to ask for that, whereas I am not entitled to ask for the Ordinary Form with the Ordinary sung in Latin.Or the Ordinary Form with the priest facing ad orientem. Or the Ordinary Form with no jokes. Or the Ordinary Form without being asked to squawk Lord of the Dance. Or the Ordinary Form without a glad-handing rotary convention inserted where the Pax Christi is offered. Or the Ordinary Form where no adolescent in a football jersey will address me from the sanctuary. Or the Ordinary Form with no mention of Jambalaya or sports enthusiasms.So I am asking for the Extraordinary Form.And my aspirations are rightful.

"Catholics, Look East, Look East, Look East..."

"...people, servers, deacons and priest!"
Deacon Greg Kandra had one of those moments so many of us have had regarding the liturgy, when, whether by accident or design we found ourselves engaged in a rarity that used to be routine. "Oh, THAT'S why it was done this way!"

And suddenly it all makes sense.

Save the Liturgy, and We Save the World.

The Man Who DOES Kneel Before God (edited)

As I said in another context, it's easy enough to google evidence.... ENOUGH with the calumny and detraction. (Unless you think all these are photoshopped...)

     

I don't know his life, I don't know his knees - and neither, I dare say, do you.

"Harvey, Pray For Us"???!?@??#?$???%?^???!?????

I imagine everybody could use a laugh right about now, even if it's a mirthless one.
The choice of some putters of notes and words on paper in a manner that those putters (and presumably their editors, [though it should be said that they themselves often are on the editorial boards which deem their putting of notes and words worthy,] and publishers,) believe to be suitable for use in Liturgy as recipients of an award was met with some amusement, some ridicule and some outrage on the Book of Faces.
One of those outraged linked to his blog
He linked to a post I would have thought Eye of the Tiber material, the gist of which was this award recipient's veneration (in the religious sense,) of a tragically, and senselessly murdered gay man, who seems to have been a generally nice guy all of whose stances were politically correct.

And IT links to... well, it turns out their is a dealer in "religious" goods who actually sells this "icon."
The artist, allegedly a Franciscan brother, gives halos to a remarkable range of... persons, and also includes many actual saints and blesseds. (Also, some truly lovely and holy depictions of our Blessed Mother, and of Christ Himself with characteristics and coloring of ethnic minorities.) Einstein with a halo. Ss Pepertua and Felicity posed for a Benettons ad. Merlin, (yes, THAT merlin.)
And the Aboriginal American cross-dresser, We'wha, (I believe that is also the spelling for the way they young folks nowadays pronounce, pitch and inflect, "Wait... whaaat?"

Well, SOMEBODY pray for us...

Deplorable and Deplorabler

Poor Fr. Fox.
For saying that a Catholic can, in good conscience, vote for either the lesser of two evils or abstain from voting, he is ripped by a crazy woman, (who makes her choice quite clear.)

evShe uses a tactic I am seeing more and more, not just from crazy commenters, and careless on-the-fly bloggers and conversationalists at parties, but from actual "journalists," and that is to repeat over and over the accusation that ones target has said something "amounting" to something deplorable, but steadfastly refusing to supply actual quotes, even out of context.
The tactic is used by both sides, of course, the Trumpite right winger against Fr Fox, the liberal Twitter over-lord against a Breitbart gadfly.
Too much reading of Jane Austen, and her free indirect speech!
All I need to do is vaguely describe what I want people to think you said, and damn you for my words, I needn't actually quote you and be honest about it.

You'd think Catholics especially would balk at such dishonesty deception, lies, this method having been used against the Church for.... well, forever.
(Soon to be saint,) Fulton Sheen, anyone?

“There are not one hundred people in the United States who hate The Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be.”

The devil's having a grand old time this election.

The Catholic Fringe Unraveling On Both Selvages, and Overplaying One's Hand

A bit of hubbub of late over some ordained persons' calling out of some unordained persons, in some cases by name, (one of said ordained persons being in the habit of threatening unordained persons with civil lawsuits,) following the unordained persons having called out other ordained persons by name, some consecrated persons by name, and even, in several cases, an installed person whose name is... well, known to virtually the entire world.
Some of all of this is deserved, other instances are unfair, some of it is bullying and clericalist, some of it is barking mad.
Hardly is anyone in these wars ever 100% wrong, there are often good reasons, up to a point, and very often, perhaps usually, good intentions. (We must assume that last, until the assumption is proved wrong.)
Even the ill-intentioned will begin with the reasonable and kind and inarguable.
Sometimes people give themselves away, of course, frequently by overplaying a hand,
Ah ha, the observer says to himself, I was with you up till now, you first point was undeniable and laudable but I see now that that was merely a set-up to this balderdash, an attempt to lull us into amiability so you could sneak in some poppycock.
Man cannot keep himself from Going Too Far.
Been discussing the failed 1998 translation a great deal with a friend lately,
While I admit there are some clunky moments in the one in use today, I overall drastically prefer it to the rejected one.
But there are other words and phrases spurned by TPTB that I would have endorsed, and more, endorsed the agenda behind them - but the reformers, as so often, went too far.
They knew, they had to know, that eventually, when push came to shove the Catholic Church was not going to allow the Anglophone Catholic Church, no matter how many of us like to think of ourselves as an autonomous sect, NOT to say, "I believe," and "and with your spirit," and "for you and for... many," (I actually think they could have sneaked that one in with "THE many.") Perhaps not on this go 'round, but eventually, and couldn't we finally have a few decades of liturgical calm now?
(Oh, and for the record, sometimes clunky is waaaaaaay better than curt.)
I digress.
Anyway, the Rad-Trad fringe has a lot of right on its side, and honest, it is possible to decry the feminization of ministry, and see it as a wedge issue for the impossibility that looms so large in the spiralist agenda*, the ordination of women, without despising women. (I promise you, I am not a self-hating gyno-American.)
But likewise, it would be easier to believe die-hard traditionalists oppose women in Holy Orders on loving theological grounds is so many of them did not openly display such contempt for women. Protestations that no, of course not, women are not held in less regard by the Church would be so much more credible if Aquinas hadn't said we were “deficiens et occasionatus”, if so many functions besides the confection of the Eucharist were not reserved to priests, and oh, yeah, the priesthood is reserved to men.

A contributing factor in the social recognition of the role of women is a greater appreciation of their responsibilities in the Church: their involvement in decision-making, their participation in the administration of some institutions and their involvement in the formation of ordained ministers.

Well, yeah.... it could be.
And it could have been.
For centuries.
And the longer it took the Church, it still takes Her, to come 'round, the harder it is to believe that Her denial of the presbyterate to women isn't just part and parcel of Her denigrations and ignoring of other charisms woman might have to offer Her and all of mankind.
Anyway, among the much criticized bloggers, there's a fellow who in a newish thread is arguing against "sacramental trans-genderism,"
Good for him, good turn of phrase, and he's right, mostly.
But he can't let a side comment go without answering it with this stupidity:

universal suffrage was one of the worst ideas in human history. Personally, I'm all for head of household landowners being the only ones allowed to vote. They have the most skin in the game.

That's right.
Not everyone who is entitled to vote knows what he's dong, so let's limit it.
Oooh. Interesting.
How?
I.Q. test?
Determining the potential voter's logical acuity or moral fiber?
No.
By wealth and ownership of material goods.
And he caps it off with the inanity about "skin in the game."
Um, no. LITERALLY wrong.
His ideal voter may have capital staked, he may have money on the game, but we each of us, literally, have one, our own, skin in the game.
His idea is as contemptible as the idiot's in the UK who think young people's votes should count more than that of their elders in the BREXIT referendum, since they'll probably live longer with the consequences.
-------
(*Those who hold it might prefer the phrase "progressive agenda," but it aint' progress when you're going around in circles.

What Kind of "Brand Reputation" Ought the Mystical Body of Christ to Have?

"Pope Francis has succeeded in rebranding the public profile of the Church, according to a Vatican PR aide" 

Isn't that a lovely way for a priest to have put it, for him to describe his own efforts on behalf of the Church...

"His positive tone isn’t always reflected...."

Reflected, huh? Vampires have some trouble of the same sort, although I always thought that might be because they don't exist.
Thee are statements that need to be taken with a grain of salt. Or salt and light.

Have We?

From an Evangelical blogger:

Of course, we in the church have been given the responsibility to judge one another, and the privilege of stirring each other in community to act in love and do good works. 

Hmmm.
Not disagreeing, just wondering.

"A Problem With the Truth"

While futzing around with tea and coffee and the morning news and getting ready for Mass this a.m., Himself asked if I had head the name, X, a "journalist,"  for a "major" "news" organization, (Oh dear! I'm going to run out of scare quotes!) forced to return a Pulitzer because she had fabricated her entire winning story.
He brought it up because he had just come across the Gabriel García Márquez bon mot, "it was unfair that she won the Pulitzer prize, but also unfair that she didn't win the Nobel Prize in Literature."
I refreshed his memory that it was only yesterday that we were discussing a Times piece about the growing problem of the dubious veracity of "documentary" movies which ought better to have been released with the "Inspired by true events" tagline.
There is a whole new style of documentary, challenged, no doubt but how compelling Ken Burns' (honest, excellent,) work is, to sex up their under-researched offerings with "re-enactments" of events that are imagined rather than attested to; completely bogus "facts" are presented, and the film-makers absolve themselves from their lies by saying, "not everyone agrees" and devoting a tenth of the time spent on the fiction to some sober, boring truth. (The Hitler History Channel, NGC, Discovery provide an outlet for much of this stuff.)
Then as we tangentalized the conversation into the recent spate of Advocacy Fiction Masquerading as Journalism, (e.g., Sabrina Eredely's campus rape hoax, the New York Times with the Duke lacrosse story, or its ugly and insensitive "embarrassment to Ireland" exploitation of the death of students at the hands of a criminally crooked construction company); deliberately spun yarns, (Blair, Glass,) reporters and editors too lazy or harried or eager, to fact check when scams are fed to them as news by PR hacks or comedians, (wolves in the Olympic hotel?); outright shills.... he realized that he hadn't noticed the sheer volume, how very ordinary, almost expected dishonesty has become in institutions in which one once had some trust.

Fr Ra Blake has a blog on Amoris Laetitia, but I'm going to leave that for now. I haven't really digested the, (yes, Father, very long,) document, or his opinion on it.
This is what I want to be read, I want people to notice -

I think the crisis in the Church is one of integrity. Benedict interpreted it as a crisis of the disintegration of the liturgy, following the idea that we believe what we say and do in the liturgy, lex credendi lex orandi. It stems of course from the 2nd Commandment,  that if we keep Holy the name of God, nothing we do in the name of God should be trivial or false, that our "yes means yes and no means no". The ending of our  prayers, "Through Our Lord Jesus Christ ..." turns them into a sacred oath. Lies and obfuscation have no place in the Christian life. There must be something very different in way Christians speak, most especially bishops and priests, Christ after all spoke with authority, unlike the religious and political leaders of his day. His words were witnessed to by God himself, the Father and the Spirit witness to Him as the Truth. It is as the Truth that Pilate is incapable of recognising Him, and therefore as the Truth that He is condemned and crucified. Those who are on the side of Truth listen to His voice, because He is the Word of God, the Son of the Father, full of Grace and Truth.
The child abuse crisis and consequent episcopal cover-ups revealed the Church or rather ["SOME of", please, Father!] its leaders as being without integrity, as being far from the truth, in fact many were shown to be downright liars. If we are to witness to the truth of Christ we need to be men and women of total integrity, the knotty wood of the Cross is the great sign of integrity, it is through our trustworthiness as witnesses to the resurrection that others are called to believe, if the Church cannot be trusted we cannot be faithful witnesses.
Perhaps it is not just in the Church but in society in general that there is a problem with the truth, manipulation by politicians, journalists, spin-doctors, political correctness, language manipulation all in one way or another create an environment of mistrust in which communion/communication between human beings breaks down. Its the tower of Babel situation there are so many voices crying out but no-one can hear what is being said. The Church is supposed to be different, making out of many nations one people, with one certain truth, down the centuries the Church has sought truth, the One Truth, now it seems to me that the Church is following the world, that bishops are emulating politicians, that we are not so much concerned with truth as its application or spin, that we no longer see truth as person but a commodity.

Another Day, Another "Wait, WHAAAT? ....That's Not What He Said"

One of my husband's siblings has a calling, in life: to take the joy and fun out of any pleasant reminiscences by droning, "That's not the way it happened...."
Now, I don't mean this person corrects libels, our postman, growin' up, killed his best friend so that he could marry the widow, I always heard) or contradicts life-threatening advice, (yup, gramps drank a quart of motor oil every day, and that's why he lived to be 103.)

No, this is more like interrupting to deliver unnecessary information such as that the rooster that attacked the five of them that day at the swimming pond was red, not white, and belonged to to Old Man Otto, not the Pederesons, and anyway, we shouldn't have skipped school -- thereby sucking the life out of the presentations of some very, very gifted Blarney-mongers.

But I am here to apologize for the ill-will this has provoked in me over the 15 years I've known the family, as I now see such people are absolutely vital.
Several of them should travel with the Pope at all times, and others should be dispatched to  keep an eye on every journalist who thinks to report on what Francis is purported to have said.

What can be done about bloggers, I don't know....

Francis stopped reading the written text and said... Communion is a vital form of the Church and the unity of Her Pastors is evidence of Her veracity… There is no need for “principles” but for a community of witnesses to the Lord.

Huh?
We need not have PRINCIPLES??!??!??
Well, no.
"Princes."
He said the Church don't need no stinkin' "princes".
An honest mistake by Rorate, or Google translate, or whoever, the two words are the same in Italian.
So I think we need not to get worked up about what was said to have been said, as I said.

But here's the other problem - official translations coming out of the Vatican seem, often, to be very slow in coming, (not this case.)

Whose fault is this?

Doesn't at least a little of it devolve on the person who insists on going off script, not giving those who serve him any kind of heads up, ignoring the fact that the Prince of Lies is having a field day with those of us who think what the Pope has to say might be important and so WANT to pay attention, and tossing handfuls of ammo to those whose agenda is to destroy this "communion", this "unity"?

Just a thought, Holy Father.

And Interwebs, how about a little compassion for the Mexican episcopacy, who need to try to hear and understand him even more urgently than we laity do - isn't it possible some of their reaction is to what it was said that the Holy Father said rather than what he actually said? For that matter, my Spanish is lacking, but some of the reaction to their statement may be based on faulty understanding of what they said and what they meant.
Charity.

Are Your Little Ones Not Behaving?

Maybe it's cyclical, a time-of-year thing when some Churchy Folk start writing those Why Can't Your Kids Behave?/Why Do You Have To Object To My Kids Misbehaving? columns and blogs and posts, but they seem to be popping up quite a bit.

Too bad we can't all agree, yes, some annoying behavior of other people's children is age- and disability appropriate and to be expected so get over it; as well as yes, some parents are too oblivious/lazy/self-centered to curb annoying behavior with discipline that is age- and disability-appropriate to their children.

But we can't.  So, here's the solution.

Farm it out to a big corporation!

Why can't we have Disney franchise Cry Rooms?

Touting the new property’s wide variety of unique and imaginative attractions, representatives from the Walt Disney World Resort announced Monday the opening of Ordeal Kingdom, a new theme park specifically designed for full-scale family meltdowns.

(Yes, it's the Onion, I know it isn't real.)

"Culture of Death"? Of Authentic Liberality and Conscienscious Objection

The promoters of the Culture of Life are often mocked for over-reaching when they expound on its opposite number, a purported "culture of death."
Don't be silly, there's no such thing, no right-minded person is pro-death, we just differ on our approach to....
You know the drill.
You've heard the drill.
You've been drilled.
So how is it that "respectable" people are insisting, not just on a right to die, on "euthanasia," and yes, occasionally, hard though some try to disguise the activity, on a right to seek the death and actually compass the death of ones child or parent or patient with or without the victim's consent or even knowledge...
How is it that these fine folks support not just the right to die but the right to force others to be complicit in these murders in violation of consciences?
Oh, those annoying Catholics!
A Belgian death advocate Dr Wim Distelmans bemoans the sad truth that
 “a majority of hospitals and nursing homes in Flanders are still Catholic today. If the right to euthanasia is refused there, that will be a problem.”
Strange, is it not, that conscientious objection has long been a hallmark of what pleases to call itself, "liberal" thinking?
Let's look at a hard case:

Following the fall of France in 1940 Britain remained the only European power at war with the Axis of Germany and Italy. Given that its foes had formidable military might and effective control of almost all of Western Europe the UK faced an existential crisis. Only a narrow channel and a few aeroplanes stood between Britain and invasion.  Faced with this situation the country was militarised and organised to an hitherto unprecedented level. Yet in the midst of all this it remained possible for individual British citizens to register as conscientious objectors and opt out of involvement in the defence of the nation. Thousands indeed did so, most notably perhaps Quakers and Jehovah’s Witnesses.
No tyranny, of course, would tolerate such a category under any circumstances let alone in time of war. In that era however making such provisions was considered to be a key defining category for a liberal democracy. It was one of the things that made them morally superior to dictatorships. Majority rule on its own was insufficient, fascist and communist countries after all claimed that mandate for themselves. Freedom of speech, of the press and of assembly on their own were not enough either. It was necessary also to guarantee that no person would be compelled to act against their own deeply held and well formed conscientious principles except in circumstances more urgent and extreme than an attack by Nazi Germany.
In the light of subsequent events it is noteworthy that it was the Left that spoke out most strongly in support of the rights of CO’s. Dealing with questions about CO’s in broadcasting the Prime Minister Winston Churchill said “the rights which have been granted in this war and the last to conscientious objectors are well-known, and are a definite part of British policy. Anything in the nature of persecution, victimisation, or man-hunting is odious to the British people.”...
Nor was this liberal [note!] opinion confined to the United Kingdom. In 1944 another world leader enunciated the same principle “State absolutism….consists in fact in the false principle that the authority of the state is unlimited and that in face of it… to appeal to a higher law obliging in conscience is not admitted.”...
These liberal principles articulated by Pope Pius XII were applauded by the New York Times “Pope Pius expresses as passionately as any leader on our side the war aims of the struggle for freedom when he says that those who aim at building a new world must fight for free choice of government and religious order. They must refuse that the state should make of individuals a herd of whom the state disposes as if they were a lifeless thing.”
 In the West today, some 70 years later, however liberal voices often demand ‘one law for all.’...The contemporary idea that religion is a purely private matter appears to lead on to the further notion that religious or conscientious beliefs are exactly the same in type or intensity as any other belief about, say, the right colour of socks or whether the Oxford comma should be used.
To me, though, it seems that the opposition to providing opt-outs on the grounds of conscience is based more on a desire to hammer opponents over the head than on any thought through philosophical basis. ... They might argue that expressing sexuality or having an abortion [or committing suicide?] are necessities but having a conscience is a luxury. 

So...
Is it?
Is having a conscience a luxury, Belgium? (Brave Little Belgium, I always say in my head. Should I amend that to Brutal Little Belgium?)

Poor Sad Little Atheists.....

As Stuart says, when Sheldon complains that "more wrong" is an absurd phrase, as wrong is an absolute and therefore has no gradations.

No, it’s a little wrong to say a tomato is a vegetable, it’s very wrong to say it’s a suspension bridge

I heard someone say something like this: The believer may be like a child who thinks Saint Nicholas delivered presents, when they were really secretly placed under the tree by his parents - a little wrong; the atheist, like the child who thinks the gifts spontaneously generated, - is very wrong.
Our inability to comprehend, fully the nature of our Creator, is no refutation of His existence.

As almost always, Eccles is wittier than I could ever hope, in his kindly pity for the second sort of child and his irrationality.

1. And lo! Christmas was approaching once more, the season of peace on Earth to people of good will (and maybe some others, too)
2. But Richard was still in those days an unsaved person, and he spake forth, saying "Bah! Humbug!" Or sometimes (for a change) "Bah! Jellybaby!"  .....
3. And behold, he went on the attack with a brilliantly-crafted tweet, saying "There are people who believe Jesus turned water into wine. How do they hold down a job in the 21st century?"
4. For he reasoned that the butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker, and the professor of biology could not do their jobs adequately if they believed in an omnipotent creator.
5. For would they not inevitably produce bad sausages, or bad bread, or bad candles, or bad lectures, if they were men of faith?

I will never understand the child who doesn't want to play with his comrades, no he does not! 

No I do not and don't ask me again, leave me alone, that's a stupid game anyway, I'm going to stand right here and keep telling you how stupid it is, oh, you're going over there, okay, I will too so I can keep telling you how much I don't want to play wi -- HEY, WAIT FOR ME, I CAN'T KEEP UP! okay, this is stupid, I don't want to play with -- hey, can you hear me? why aren't you paying attention to me?

Communion, Unworthiness, Trendy Sins, Zizzania and the Sorrows of Post-lapsarian Humanity

Fr Ray Blake has a deeply thoughtful essay that should be read by everyone.

EVERYONE.

No perfunctory condemnations, no glib solutions - just thoughtfulness.(And fascinating anecdotes and erudition. Who knew? Cockles.)

What have we come to? I had a letter recently from a parishioner telling me he had fallen in love with another man and therefore wasn't going to be coming to Mass anymore!

The Gospel yesterday in the Old Rite was the wheat harvest sown with zizzania (translated as cockle), the owner tells the servants that rather than weeding out the weeds, to leave them until harvest time, 'lest the wheat also is lost'. The Second Vatican Council spoke about a 'universal call to holiness', what we seem to have difficulty with is coping with the fact that not everyone wants 'holiness', or at least wants to delay it until the last moment, or simply feels they are incapable of it

In the past we dealt with this by accepting people were at different places in their spiritual pilgrimage. Now I wonder if we have lost that flexibility. Chesterton's remark about the possibility of leaving an umbrella safely in any church, of any denomination, except a Catholic church, because in a Catholic church it was bound to be stolen, because Catholic churches are full of sinners, once contained a lot of truth. I remember certain London churches and certain continental churches that seemed to be full of ladies of certain character and men of  certain 'exotic' tendencies, all at the back or behind pillars or in side chapels praying with intensity, and slightly more reflectively 'pray for us sinners, now and the hour of death'.

One of our parishioners remembers as a young boy being told by the Parish Priest not to accept sweets from the then rather elderly Lord Alfred Douglas and another, now dead, told me that his mother didn't think it "safe", presumably in the modern sense of 'safeguarding', for children to come here on their own "because of the strange people who go to 'Mad Mary Mags'". If their parents didn't come with them they were sent to the posher and safer Sacred Heart Church next door in more select Hove. Graham Greene used to come here when he stayed in Brighton, he was friends, along with Belloc and Chesterton. with Mgr Wallis, who was Rector here until his death in 1950. I can well imagine that on a Sunday not only Rose but most of the characters from Brighton Rock turning up here at Mass. Maybe even Pinky came here at Christmas and Easter.

We have always taken it that the God 'tolerates' sin in the Church, and sin in its members. It hates sin but loves sinners and yet is formed of men and women who are sinners. In the inter and post-war Catholic novels of the great age of Catholic literary converts, who often had an ambiguous relationship with God themselves, there is a deep sense of the divided self, Sebastian Flyte deeply in love with his German lover and yet ultimately finding a relationship with God, that is quite saintly but which occasionally falls disastrously apart but he he always returns again and again, to care for the sick and to live alongside the brothers in the monastery that have taken him in. It seems typical of the light and dark motifs of Catholic literature and spirituality of those years, and tells the true story of Catholic pastoral care of those years.....

The older idea, still prevalent in Orthodoxy and certain declining branches of Protestantism, and amongst more ultra Traditionalists, that people should receive Communion only rarely, and then only after confession and a period of intensified fasting and penance, was the norm up until Pius X. In pre-Reformation England the norm was for Communion once a year, following Lateran IV's precept of reception at 'Easter or there abouts'. The confession, penance, prayer and rigorous fasting of Lent was the period of preparation....

if everyone is to receive the Eucharist, does it means that there is no room for the prostitute or the gay man or adulterer unable to control his sexual desires or the alcoholic or the wife beater or the paedophile or the murderous God hating gangster, or the simply confused, or just plain ordinary sinner with a divided soul who loves the idea of God but is too damaged to fully embrace him.

We are indeed all called to holiness but yet whilst virtue might indeed be growing in us like a rich crop of wheat, the zizzania flourishes too and maybe, until harvest time, it dominates. The problem is we see the weeds and God sees virtue. We are not the best judges in our own cause....[emphasis supplied]

we have never been a 'holiness cult' but a Church of sinners....

Is there a place in today's Church for the man who washes the wounds of the diseased and lights copious candles, faithfully tells his beads, yet has a penchant for a particular vice and then goes on a bender, throws his beads in the dustbin and a few weeks later, horrified is found kneeling outside the confessional or weeping before the statue of Our Lady? Is there place for the priest addicted to drink, or maybe nowadays porn, who claims he has lost his faith, yet is actually heroic in his fidelity? Is there a place for Saint Mark Ji Tianxiang, the opium addict, forbidden the sacraments for thirty years, yet had the courage to die for Christ.

Not certain what I think of any of this - do I receive the Blessed Sacrament too casually?
I had forgotten until just now, when I was younger there was a parish at which my Mother sang, my younger brother and I sometimes joined her with the choir.
She pointed out to me once a young couple, 2 very lovely men, boys, really. She told me they were there every week, arrived early, (like the musicians,) very devout, knelt in prayer for a long time, participated devoutly in Mass and never presented for Communion.
And then she smiled sadly.
That was all she said about them, I was never quite sure why - thought perhaps at the time she was trying to tell me something about many of my friends, (as if i didn't know....)

Did You Know That You Missed "National Suicide Promotion Week"?

Well, not exactly.
Reflections of a Paralytic has some wonderful, and frankly, damning to us as a society, thoughts.

 Our Suicidal Split Personality
The sickening irony of the passage of the [assisted suicide] bill in the California State Assembly this September is that it came during Suicide Prevention Week — specifically on Worldwide Suicide Prevention Day!
Which, again, makes me wonder: Why suicide prevention for some and not all? Why does our tune change for the physically sick and disabled? Why then, instead of calling for suicide prevention, do we cheer them on to their deaths — and call on our medical professionals to help them die?
We can’t have it both ways, folks.
No, really. We can’t. It turns out assisted suicide actually increases other suicides.

A study published the Southern Medical Journal recently found a statistically significant suicide increase in states that have legalized physician assisted suicide (PAS). From the article:

Controlling for state-and year-?xed effects, PAS is associated with an 8.9% increase in total suicide rates (including assisted suicides),an effect that is strongly statistically significant (95%) confidence interval [CI] 6.6%Y11.2%).
Once we control for a range of demographic and socioeconomic factors, PAS is estimated to increase rates by 11.79% (95% CI 9.3%Y14.1%). When we include state-[specific] time trends, the estimated increase is 6.3% (95% CI 2.7%Y9.9%).

Assisted Suicide is Never a Personal, Private Matter

What is perhaps most disturbing about Gov. Brown’s decision to allow the bill to become law was that it was, ultimately, based purely on selfish emotion. “In the end, I was left to reflect on what I would want in the face of my own death,” the Governor said.
Never mind the millions of sick and disabled who will be marginalized once death becomes an acceptable “treatment” for pain and suffering. Never mind the documented abuse and neglect of so-called “safeguards”. Never mind the “slippery slope” into anything goes euthanasia that is real and well documented.
And of course he ignored the fact that the majority of physicians — the people who would actually be responsible for ending the lives of those who want assisted suicide — consistently oppose assisted suicide. In fact, the president of the American College of Physicians wrote a strongly worded letter to Brown asking him to veto the CA legislation.

"I am unworthy because I filthily adhere to the mire of dung and all my good deeds are like a rag used by a ...."

Wow.
That metaphor of self-abasement, in a prayer, no less!
Just wow.
Fr Hunwicke has a interesting post about so-called "Celtic Christian spirituality.

Historians have decisively abandoned the concept of the 'Celtic', and especially of a supposedly distinctive 'Celtic Church'. In the most recent major scholarly work on this subject, Professor Charles-Edwards' Early Christian Ireland (Cambridge, 2000), the distinguished author writes dismissively of 'that entity - beloved of modern sectarians and romantics but unknown to the early Middle Ages - "the Celtic Church"', and surveys in a footnote the scholarly work of the last thirty years which has established this.

It interests me because I have a sister who has an affinity for such folderol and the lack of sense in some of the stuff she comes out with boggles the mind.
A flat, declarative statement often contradicts the immediately preceding flat, declarative sentence, but she is blessedly free from anxieties about logic.
My family, in general is given to riffing on matters about which we know very little, creating "facts" out of thin air just to see the reaction we provoke. It's simply good fun if it's just us, but others are often disturbed by what seems like mêlées, but is really jousting with blunt weapons.
Not that combatants don't sometimes sustain injuries even so - the problem being, someone who suddenly decides to go for blood, (this is rare,) or someone who is eager to dish it out but who feigns a genuine wound when she receives the same blow from a weapon recently wielded by her, that everyone else laughed off. (The feminine pronoun is deliberate, and is not a reference to the Irish Lass mentioned above.)
This occurs, or used, with unfortunate frequency, but the problem has been solved by not letting anyone as delicate as she join in any reindeer games.

Really, isn't this an absurd family dynamic for a woman in late middle-age such as myself to own?

Anyway, back to the nonsense-spouting, Celtishness-claiming sister above - what is delightful about her malarkey is that she doesn't mind being called on it, not a bit, she doesn't even defend or backtrack or deny - she just ignores it and smilingly moves on to the next fantasy or hogwash.
But this, of Fr Hunwicke's, so nails her -

my only quarrel is with people who simply manufacture stuff themselves, sometimes of an in-tune-with-nature or down-with-Roman-dogma-and-legalism type, and slyly claim that it is 'in the Celtic Spirit'.

In point of fact, I don't think she does manufacture any of it, I think she parrots and synthesizes from books given her by, and conversations held in front of her by, her pub and fiddle and knotwork buddies.
With many of them, who remember people who remembered people who remembered Easter and the Post Office, though they'd like to engage in the traditional hobby, the existence of the Republic has put a damper on that,  so "I think I'll go and join me comrades and talk a little treason" has been replaced by "I think I'll go and join me comrades and talk a little heresy."

I'm looking forward to our next visit, and tales of oaks and Druids and the Dagda and Ossian and Crones syncretized into Saints and Magick and beehives.
No, really!

Why I Love Eccles...

... and hope someday to be as saved as he is.

So he writes a very amusing post, that convinces me I must embroider a sampler that says "Sona Si Latine Loqueris" (though I'm thinking "honk if you LOVE..." might be better.)

Then a commenter has a little snatch of a lyric or poem that I had to hunt down.
And now I know that Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote this delightful little almost-limerick.

God's plan made a hopeful beginning. 
But man spoiled his chances by sinning. 
We trust that the story 
Will end in God's glory. 
But, at present, the other side's winning.

I suppose I should have entitled this, "Why the Internet is Such a Time Suck."

A Child Saved From Death

I don't know this blog, but the priest who writes it is apparently ill and in need of prayers.
Is there any better office for an insomniac?
But I wanted to share a story he tells:

Yesterday I got together with a girl....whom I saved from an abortion.  I had lost touch with her since I moved from my parish.  Her grandmother called me yesterday and we got together.  She is 7 years old.  If all the other things I have done in my life have been in vain, it is all worth while saving children from abortion. She said she wants to be a nun.  Thank you all of you for your love and prayers.

Who Said "A Turnip May Know No Greek But I Do"? and "Synod"

I'm probably remembering it wrong, and I haven't got a copy either of the book or the tv series, but I think Augustus in "I, Clavdivs,"  used that expression - a turnip may know no Greek....
(I, Claudius, with production values that rival Dr Who for tacky cheapness is still one of the two or three greatest television series EVER.)

Well, a turnip knows just about as much Greek as I, which is why I have to depend on the kindness of (erudite,) strangers.)

Can anyone tell me what the (minor,) hubbub is over the word, "synod," and the insistence by some bloggers that it means "meeting," (which I believe is true,) but that it does NOT mean "a path taken together," or "walking toward each other or with each other," as well, (which also seem feasible,)?

Why not both?

 

Is there anyone in Rome who 

has NOT slept with my daughter 

claimed to have an inside track 

on the Synod??!??!?#??$???