"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...

How Could That Be an Act of God? It's Not the Way That I Would Have Done It, If I Were God

The oddest blog, from December, from an outlet that bills itself as an "international Catholic weekly newspaper."
The author, a "religious journalist," according to a note in Wiki, is apparently a convert to the Faith, but seemingly not one who buys into all that religious claptrap, that Catholic mumbo-jumbo, that Papist palaver. Not "Catholic" but "Catholish"?

Intercessory prayer?
Whatever for?

One might think it would be better to cut out the middle man or woman

Miracles? But it would be,

a very small God who can be manipulated and used to send signals to the Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Saints, about who is and who is not in heaven.

The Lord still working wonders to increase someones faith, you know, the way He did in the Gospels? Like Mary McCarthy and the election of Nixon, he has his doubts-

Has this miracle helped to persuade a single person who previously doubted it? 

Apparently not anyone he knows, so that's that.
But, not very originally, what it finally gets down to is that whole, existential, why would God do something nice for one measly little person, when He, you know, permits evil?

One only has to think of the millions of desperate prayers for deliverance offered up by the terrified victims of the Nazis, not just by six million murdered Jews but by as many as two million Polish Catholics and others who shared the same ghastly fate. A God who does miracles in answer to prayers just to let us know that Mother Teresa is in heaven, but who leaves all those other prayers unanswered with so much suffering unrelieved, is a very strange God indeed.

So it's not Catholic practice he has a problem with, or Christianity, or even Monotheism - it's belief in a God who intervenes in human existence, period.

It's God.

I can't help him there.

But he seems just about right for the Tablet.

Breaking News: The Church and Her New Sacrament

We're "doing" sacraments in Sunday school, and last week we looked at the concepts of form, matter and intention.
And we also spoke a bit of how these "delivery systems" for Grace are given us by the Lord, administered by His Bride, many in very specific actins taken by and words spoken by Christ.

Now it seems that there is to be a new one, that She somehow missed for nearly two millenia. The form and the matter aren't settled on yet, and they are having trouble with the name, but it will be replacing Reconciliaiotn/Penance/Confession for the most part, (people seemed to hate the traditional names of that one anyway.)
I'm suggesting, "OhYouDid?Really?WellNeverMindGodDoesn'tCareWhatYouDoAsLongAsYouFeelOkayWithIt."

I know, I know, a little long, a little unwieldy, it needs work, but it's a starting point at least.

You remember the parable, right?

Then Jesus said, A man had two sons, and the younger son said to his father, "Father, you're taking a way long time dying, give me my share of your estate now."
So the father divided the property between them. After a few days, the younger son collected all his belongings and set off to a distant country where he squandered his inheritance on a life of dissipation. When he had freely spent everything, a severe famine struck that country, and he found himself in dire need.
Coming to his senses he thought, "How many of my father’s hired workers have more than enough food to eat, but here am I, dying from hunger."
I know! I shall shoot an email to my father and I shall say to him, “Father, I was having a great time until I ran out of cash.
"I still don't want to act like your son and do as I'm told; could ya just treat me as a guest who comes and goes as he pleases. So for now, could you just send one of those reloadable debit cards?"
Since he was still a long way off, his father was filled with compassion and ran to his son in the distant land, embraced him and kissed him.
His son said to him, "Thanks, gotta run, a renewed life of dissapation awaits, I mean, I have to see a guy about something, sorry I don't have time to catch up with what's going on with you guys... Oh, but let me know next time you're having fatted calf, 'kay? I'll see if I can make it."
So the Father walked home, just fine with any crumbs of attention the kid gave him, and glad that he hadn't turned his younger sons room into a media a room like the older son wanted, "because this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again; he was lost, and has been found. So hopefully he'll drop in from time to time."

Snarky, I know. But I say this as an acknowledged and repentant older son - I know the graver sin, the point of the story, (notice that in the real one, it doesn't end with the younger's penitance,) is how much worse is one son's failure to welcome the other home.
But we must see that the younger son, although the Father watches for him faithfully, has to make the move to come home, he has to be willing to change before the Father sees him, "a long way off...."
Where are we as a Church going, what am I to do if  taught, (and I in turn teach,) that amendment of life is not necessary? That there is no need for contrition, because sin is not sin? all actions are equally good, there is no moral weight to them for good or for ill.
Maybe that's the problem, we don't need a new sacrament, we need a new set of commandments.

Is sin sin? is there such a thing as sin? is anyone guilty of it?

You know, because not just since Moses, but since Jesus, the morality of some behaviors has just changed.

So some things that used to be sins aren't any more. And some things that used to be okay are now sins, I would imagine.

Saul was a sucker. He didn't need to become Paul, whihc was a pretty rough life. He didn't even need to stop what he was doing, because he no doubt came to a decision to stone Stephen in good conscience, and the Apostles should have helped him move forward and to respect that. Heck, if Stephen hadn't been, um... dead, he probably should have accompanied him!

Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord. A person should examine himself, and so eat the bread and drink the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself.

Was St Paul blowin' smoke?

"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes."

(Or, as Himself and I like to quote, in our shared shtick, "I am large. I contain pie.")

I well recognize the paradox inherent in my admiration of both the Noble Richard II and the Saintly Thomas More, one of the chief fabricators of the myth of Tudor Benevolence and Yorkist Villainy.

                    

"Jackal Hall"

I admit that I was not disposed to like Wolf Hall.

Seriously, making Cromwell the hero and More a villain?

(Though I suppose if you want to paint St Thomas More as an evil, humorless zealot, Anton Lesser's casting is a stroke of genius - the tight-rope he walked on Endeavour, between prissy, hateful bureaucrat and prissy sympathetic colleague was masterfully done.)

I have read only a little of Mantel's wok, and while I can admire her prose, I despise her for her undisguised and uninformed contempt for me.
(Yes, for me, for me personally and for you too, if you call yourself Catholic.)
And I am disposed, (I, as much as she, am the product of my prejudices,) to agree with most of what Simon Schama has to say:

It grates a bit to accept that millions now think of Thomas Cromwell as a much-maligned, misunderstood pragmatist from the school of hard knocks who got precious little thanks for doing Henry VIII’s dirty work. When I was doing research for A History of Britain, the documents shouted to high heaven that Thomas Cromwell was, in fact, a detestably self-serving, bullying monster who perfected state terror in England, cooked the evidence, and extracted confessions by torture. He also unleashed small-minded bureaucratic “visitors” to humiliate, evict and dispossess thousands of monks and nuns.

An aside, I recently read something, (which I will not bother to find and link because it is wrong, and I don't want to give them another click,) discussing the economics of Henry's reign which described the "windfall," of the proceeds from the dissolution sacking of the monasteries.
Windfalls are the fruit that providence allows you without the work of picking.
If you hack down the tree and strip it bear, the booty is not windfall. Words, people! they MEAN things!
And a further aside, I was also doing some reading on "poor laws," not of that era, but in the process came across quite a bit of scholarship concerning the increased suffering of the poor as a direct result of Henry's and Cromwell's destruction of the greatest charitable network their nation would ever have.
Those "fat, prosperous" monks were not swanning about bedecked in jewels and staging cupcake wars, they were creating and running the hospitals, soup kitchens, homeless shelters and schools of their time.
Anyway, back to Wolf Hall.

But Himself is addicted in equal measure to television and history, so he was looking forward to it very much, and I realized that I should at least give it a look, and try to be objective.

After I got over seeing the Pope playing Wolsey, I was most struck by the seeming contradiction between Cromwell's contempt for Catholicism and the hierarchical Church and his dogged loyalty in the face of some danger to that most political of prelates.
Is it principle? or misjudged, and rather fawning careerism and gratitude toward the mighty who looked upon his lowliness...
And the touching domestic scenes highlighting Cromwell's love for and very progressive attitude toward even his female children really resonated with me.
In fact, they seemed instantly familiar.
Well, there's a reason,

Curiously enough, the man who had really good relations with his children in a totally modern fashion, including giving his daughters the same elaborate education as men; Greek, Latin, mathematics and so on, is the villain as he is presented on Wolf Hall. Thomas More really did have these affectionate relations with his children. In other words, as I understand it, [the Mantel book] is based on a deliberate perversion of fact.

As a loyal supporter of Good King Richard, (III,) I am wary of clever fiction that deceives centuries of people that villains are heroic and good men villainous - hopefully, Mantel's fables will not prove so powerful nor so lasting.
But the tv show?
When all is said and done?
Well, it's gorgeously somber, lots of clever dialogue, remarkably effective score, good casting so far, and Mark Rylance, of whom I have been able to see far too little, is never, and has never been anything short of brilliant, (I couldn't afford Twelfth Night when I was near it, or it me, but some day I'll find a complete recording.) I marvel at his minimalism on screen, wonder how everything he does can be so perfectly calibrated for the camera and how it can work on stage.)

But when all is said and done?
Well, for an entertainment, it commits an even greater sin than lying -

It's a bore!!!!!

What Is At Stake?

Is our credibility what really matters? Isn't the salvation of souls what matters? the hell with what anyone else thinks, the hell with credibility, with popularity.

If God is for us, who can be against us?
He who did not spare his own Son
but handed him over for us all,
how will he not also give us everything else along with him?

I came upon ... well, I'm just forever stumbling onto things i should have read weeks, months, sometimes years ago. How did I miss these matters at the height of their currency?
I am easily distracted.

Anyway, Zenit reporting on Fr Lombardi castigating Sandro Magister led me this,
about Jean Cardinal Daniélou.
It is some weeks old.
And the good cardinal? Long gone.
He died before I was aware that the Church consisted of much more than my family and my town and my parish - and people who thought and believed and acted, and were,  pretty much as we did and were.
Oh, there were some with bad taste, but....

Anyway, talk about having no credibility! He died, wink wink nudge nudge, at the house of a woman, wink wink nudge nudge, where he had gone to dispense charity, wink wink nudge nudge,because her husband, wink wink nudge nudge,was in need of  money for bail, wink wink nudge nudge.
Oh, and did we mention she was a hooker?

Well, his brother, (gay but pretty un-marginalized, except, apparently, by some of the family,) had this to say:

“Jean was always perfectly kind toward me. All throughout his life he held remorse over the way in which the family had treated me and left me without support. He said this often to friends we had in common. When my friend Raymond died, he confided to Pierre Gaxotte, in the hallways of the French Academy, that he was very sad, thinking that I would be deeply wounded by this.

“Being appointed to the rank of cardinal was a liberation for Jean. He was finally free of the Jesuitical constraint under which he had certainly suffered. The last years of his life were the happiest.

“His death and the scandal provoked by it, when he had become one of the leading figures of the Church, was a sort of posthumous vendetta, one of those favors that the gods bestow on those whom they love. If he had died just a little while sooner or later, or if he had been visiting a lady of the sixteenth arrondissement under the pretext of works of charity, instead of bringing the revenue of his theological writings to a poor and needy woman, there would have been no scandal.

“Jean had always dedicated himself to disregarded people. For a certain period he had celebrated a Mass for the sake of homosexuals. He tried to help prisoners, criminals, troubled young people, prostitutes. I deeply admired this ending of life similar to that of the martyrs, whose fragrance rises to heaven amid the opprobrium and sarcasm of the crowd.

“He died as true saints die, in ignominy, in mockery, in the disdain of a spiteful and vile society. During the last years of my brother’s life I was living near Rome and was, in the opinion of the clergy, an apostate* [see below] of a certain stature. There were some who mistook us for each other and some critics had even attributed to my brother my book ‘L'Érotisme divinisé,’ saying: ‘It smacks of the spirit of the Jesuits, however.…’ My brother saw to demonstrating that scandal is not given by our beliefs or actions but by the irony of the gods, who laugh at this jumble of rules for living and so-called ‘truths that must be believed,’ the paternity of which men attribute to them.”

*Well, yeah, he was. Not because of his sexual attractions, but because he was convert to an "eroticized" form of Hinduism.

The Martyrs of Libya, and Prayers for the Dead

I prayed the Rosary the morning at church, with a group with whom my Mother used to pray, (I feel especially close to her sometimes at weekday Mass, "inherited" her seat, you know - and her place in line to lead a decade from time to time.)
I had been thinking about indulgences and prayers for the dead and how I would explain them and the treasury of merit, (and how that works into the economy of salvation, kind of the way you dad let's you think you're helping him when you're four years old and want to shoulder some of the load when he's doing yardwork,)  to the kids in CCD, (as they call it here.)
I flashed back to my parents talking, when I was very little, about someone very, very dear to us, and quite unknown to the larger world, who had just died, at the same time as someone very famous; and my Mother talking about how sad it was that so many people would pray for, and say Masses for this famous person, and very few would give a thought to, or even knew of "poor J." (In retrospect, the famous dead Catholic was probably in FAR greater need of prayer and reparation than dear, sweet "poor J., but that's not the point.)
How often when someone dies we Catholics are uncertain of his fate --- okay, ya pretty much know if someone's a complete scoundrel, but your average trying-but-occasionally-stumbling Joe --- who's to know if he died in a state of grace, or instead needs a little bit of washing and buffing in purgatory, or what?
You don't want to fail to offer prayers for someone you love, but you don't want to insult them either, right? (Imagine someone, for instance, some early Christian who knew that the Blessed Mother was a very sweet old lady, but not , of course, that she had been immaculately conceived ; now imagine that someone praying for her soul after she had left this life!)
Well, of course, nothing goes to waste in the economy of salvation, so that's not really the issue, but how about this?
Can I put my prayers, any indulgences such as I may gain, any merit I might accrue from, (for once uncomplainingly?) suffering -- can I put them at the disposal, so to speak, of the beloved departed? tell him or her that if he or she has no need, to just... spread them around where they'll do the most good?
So I have decided to make someone I knew and loved the executor, the Trustee of my assets.
Is that acceptable? (I know when I get schemes they are often hare-brained, and often, if not heretical heresy-adjacent.)
Do those 21 Coptic Christians who died confessing the Lord Jesus need my prayers? Very likely not.
But I can pray for them nonetheless, and if they're just coals to Newcastle, the Trustee will apportion my... heavenly holdings.
Orate pro nobis,

Milad Makeen Zaky
Abanub Ayad Atiya
 Maged Solaiman Shehata
Yusuf Shukry Yunan
Kirollos Shokry Fawzy
Bishoy Astafanus Kamel
Somaily Astafanus Kamel 
Malak Ibrahim Sinweet
Tawadros Yusuf Tawadros
Girgis Milad Sinweet
Mina Fayez Aziz
Hany Abdelmesih Salib
Bishoy Adel Khalaf
Samuel Alham Wilson
Ezat Bishri Naseef
Loqa Nagaty
Gaber Munir Adly
Esam Badir Samir
Malak Farag Abram
Sameh Salah Faruq
Another worker from Awr village whose name is not yet known.

There's dragons, and then there's DRAGONS

But where is the "there" that the dragons be?
Himself had to go to the library yesterday in search of an older, longish PBS serial that is being re-broadcast at too slow a pace for those of us becoming accustomed to entertainment on demand, and while there we borrowed another movie.
It had the intriguing title of There Be Dragons.
Historical dramas appeal to Himself, and I was slightly curious about St Josemaria Escriva, of whom I had never heard until his canonization.
Several times recently I have come across a devotional reflection or a quote that spoke to me and absent-mindedly noted, Oh, St Josemaria Escriva, hmmm... now what's for lunch?
(Yeah, that's pretty much how my mind works.)
My only thoughts of Opus Dei had been, Oh, there was a spy or two, I think... is there any cheese in the refrigerator?  until that ludicrous Done Brown book and its even more foolish movie adaptation.
When a rite or a person or an organization is the target of irrational hatred and blatant lies, I am always inclined to think better of it, so I certainly didn't  have a bad opinion of either the man or his movement, but I hadn't thought enough about him or it to have a good one, either.

Anyway, found the movie engaging, even more so after watching the 'deleted scenes' --  after almost every dvd I watch, I'm finding myself shaking my head at the stupidity of the studio/editor/director, WHY was thus-and-such left out, it would have explained.... I wonder where those cashews are...and of course, sometimes a few extra seconds make, or would have made, the movie SHORTER.
I think as gorgeous and sweeping as it was, as compelling as most of the acting was, and as profound as the questions it asked were even if taken as fiction, it would have played better if it had been unapologetically epic.
Was it fiction? I didn't know, I don't know.
Got pretty bad reviews, but as Himself said, can a film about religious faith that treats its subject without irony possibly please the average citric?
Maybe, but I see his point.
But just doing a little surfing, background, etc., came across this, a thing in a Jesuit magazine that borders on a hit piece:

According to [other priests on campus], an Opus Dei priest...presented himself to the campus ministry group, which welcomed his offer to assist with chaplaincy duties. Soon after beginning his work, [the Opus Dei priest] presented to the other chaplains a list of the number of communions he had distributed and the number of confessions he had heard—as an objective way of measuring whether a priest was doing his job. Said one of the ex-chaplains, “He came to the rest of us and said, ‘I don’t think the chaplaincy program is doing this work. You should be doing what I’m doing’.”
Later, [he] began interviewing all entering Catholic freshmen, over the objections of some of the staff. It was at this time that the problems began. According to[the other priests, he] asked questions about students’ sexual practices, among other things, and about their parents’ religious activities. In addition: “Some of the students claimed he coerced them into having the sacrament of reconciliation, or confession, as he called it. He would say, ‘You really need to go to confession. The chapel’s right around the corner and I’m available now.’

 Oh no! Confession!!!!!!!!!! ("as he called it"... too funny coming from another priest!) Encouragement of reception of the Sacraments!!!!! Questions to initiate an examination of conscience!!!!!!!

As I said, I am often drawn to ideas or people that elicit criticism of a certain type...
I believe I have 999 things to read.

Don't say: 'That's the way I'm made... it's my character'. It's your lack of character: Be a man.

"Dracula" and Islam

"Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued." The Qur'an

Kind of in the "but at least he made the trains run on time" vein of compliment paid to a villain, it seems Vlad the Impaler took a stand against the jizya:

Atacul de noapte de la Târgovişte was a battle fought between forces of Vlad III the Impaler of Wallachia and Mehmed II of the Ottoman Empire on Thursday, June 17, 1462.

The conflict initially started with Vlad's refusal to pay the ax on non-Muslims to the Sultan and intensified when Vlad Ţepeş invaded Bulgaria and impaled over 23,000 Turks.

Mehmed then raised a great army with the objective to conquer Wallachia and annex it to his empire.
The two leaders fought a series of skirmishes, the most notable one being the Night Attack where Vlad Ţepeş attacked the Turkish camp in the night in an attempt to kill Mehmed.

The assassination attempt failed and Mehmed marched to the Wallachian capital of Târgovişte, where he discovered another 20,000 impaled Turks. Horrified, the Sultan and his troops retreated.

I was trying to explain to the CCD kids last week how the Church makes claims of no knowledge of anyone in particular being consigned to Hell, not even, say Judas, who might have repented even as he died, and who is, I believe, venerated in some places.

So no, it wouldn't surprise me, somehow, to learn that a particular Church or two might consider Dracula a saint.

Cardinal Muller Invites Bishop Fellay

After a week of bad news, disappointment, horror, and even tragedy, some on a personal, some on a universal level -- isn't this a piece of glorious news?

Having been invited by Rome, Bishop Bernard Fellay will meet with Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, during the second half of September 2014.
This interview was presented to the Superior General of the Society of Saint Pius X as an informal meeting to review the relations between the SSPX and Rome, which were discontinued at the departure of Cardinal William Levada, Cardinal Müller’s predecessor, and the resignation of Benedict XVI. This will in fact be the first meeting between Cardinal Müller and Bishop Fellay.

On September 3, 2014, on his website the Vatican Insider, the Italian journalist Andrea Tornielli announces this meeting and noted that the new District Superior of France, Father Christian Bouchacourt had the opportunity when he was superior of the District of South America, to meet Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, then Archbishop of Buenos Aires. Since then they have had contact on purely administrative matters concerning the District of South America.

The Superior General of the Society of Saint Pius X will go to Rome, following the example of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who always accepted invitations of the Roman authorities.

I hereby offer to make the cookies and brew the tea.

Although I have, over the past  16 years or so, developed a deep and abiding love for and admiration of the Extraordinary Form, I still, when push comes to shove, lean toward the Ordinary, or rather WOULD, (doncha love the subjunctive?) lean towards it if it could be celebrated in a manner befitting the awesome grandeur of what happens during it, (and happens regardless of careless and misleading ars celebrandi,) and for want of a better word, tweaked.

And I do not think either of those conditions will be met as well as they could be without the work of the SSPX.

This past week I have attended two of the canonizations which have de facto replaced the Requiem Mass in my lifetime, a concert which a Mass interrupted, and a meeting at which a large faction wanted to "make our own Mass."
(This was just careless phraseology on their part, they really only wish to pick their own random songs and install their own actors in the performance, but it reveals their impoverished liturgical theology that fails to recognize the Source and Summit of our Faith as something we receive, not fabricate.)

Anyway, I needed that bit of cheer, that bit of hope this gave me.

Speaking of Miracles, II

How is a miracle ever credited to an uncanonized person, clearing the way to official sainthood?
How can the Vatican congregation that does such investigations ever state definitively to whose intercession a miracle was due?

In the entire history of the Church, has there ever been anyone suffering in a life-threatening situation, who a member of the faithful himself, or whose case was known to  some other believer, on whose behalf prayers for succor were offered ONLY to some departed and uncanonized, perhaps even un-beatified Servant of God?

No, no! no Hail Marys, no, please don't ask St Padre Pio to step in, please, we don't want any requests aimed St Jude's way, we're putting all this in the hands of the late founder of our order, we don't want any interference muddying up the chain of command, so if little Jackie recovers it can be guaranteed to be due to Abbot So-and-so's intercession, certifying HIS sanctity, got it?

Would you ever put all your eggs in one basket that way?

I know I wouldn't.
I pray to every saint and possible saint i can think of.

More on Pope Paul's Beatification Rumor

The Italian news agency ANSA says the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints has recognized a supposed miracle attributed to the late Italian pontiff’s intercession. The miracle identified was the sudden healing of an unborn baby from an otherwise incurable illness.

Um.... why would a Catholic news organization use the phrase "supposed miracle"?

"Supposed", to me, anyway, has the implication of "dubious". Suspect. Questionable.

Wouldn't you have said "apparent"?

It's a Great Day to Be Irish

Somehow, links regarding the English slave trade and their abuse of the Irish kept popping up as I followed links on quite other matters.
My pastor said the Our Father in Irish this morning at Mass, and at least three people seated near me spoke it along with him.

Anyway, from Wikipedia, so believe it or don't:

Goodwife Ann "Goody" Glover (died November 16, 1688) was the last person to be hanged in Boston as a witch.... Ann Glover was born in Ireland as a Roman Catholic. During Cromwell's invasion of Ireland, Ann Glover and fifty thousand other indigenous Irish people were forcibly removed from Ireland and sold to plantations in Barbados as indentured laborers. By 1680 Ann and her daughter were living in Boston, Massachusetts where they worked as housekeepers for John Goodwin. In the summer of 1688 four or five of the Goodwin children became ill after an argument with Glover's daughter and the doctor that was called suggested it was caused by witchcraft.... At trial it was demanded of her to say the Lord's Prayer, she recited it in Gaelic and broken Latin, but since she had never learned it in English, she could not say it in English. On November 16, 1688, Glover was hanged in Boston amid mocking shouts from the crowd.[7] A Boston merchant who knew her, Robert Calef, said that "Goody Glover was a despised, crazy, poor old woman, an Irish Catholic who was tried for afflicting the Goodwin children. Her behavior at her trial was like that of one distracted. They did her cruel. The proof against her was wholly deficient. The jury brought her guilty. She was hung. She died a Catholic."... A contemporary writer recorded that, "Before her executioners she was bold and impudent, making to forgive her accusers and those who put her off."

I feel I may be making this suggestion too often lately, but doesn't that bid fair for a cause for sainthood?

“The Bridegroom is coming!”

Prayers are asked for the soul of the beloved Sister "Ginger"

I could not imagine a more merry saint.

Chant and Becoming a Community

I heard a smidge of an NPR piece on a movie (new? old?), that I would very much like to see, Of Gods and Men.

The actor being interviewed was unfamiliar to me, (apparently famous as part of some big-budget, 'splosion franchise,) but he talked about how the actors "became" the seven (heroic,) French Trappists they were called upon to play.

Hmm... monks work, they read, they eat, but we all do that, what do they do that makes them different?

And what they came up with was, "Monks chant."

And so, they chanted.

And by singing the chant, by singing together, (which, whether the actors knew it or not, whether they intended it or not, as long as they did not deliberately intend not to do so, was praying together,) they became a community.

What a shame such a powerful tool is wasted in parishes across the country, no, around the world...

Anyone seen this?

Prayers Requested

Please pray for a dear, dear woman, a long time friend of my family, Sr Virginia Mary, a cloistered Dominican.
I have heard that she is gravely ill.

One of the jolliest saintly people I have ever known.

“The Devil Made Me a Catholic”

The anniversary of GK Chesterton's death.
A little tribute on Universalis (the first, I think, I've ever seen on that for an individual who is not even beatified, though he is sometimes called the "apostle of common sense." Universalis is careful to say "pray FOR him.")

In youth, he went through a crisis of nihilistic pessimism and it was his recovery from this that led him to God and ultimately to conversion. “The Devil made me a Catholic,” he said – meaning that it was the experience of evil and nothingness that convinced him of the goodness and sanity of the world and his creator. His poem “The Ballade of a Suicide” celebrates the salvific value of ordinary things

...He took part in all the major controversies of his age, and was a lifelong adversary and friend of socialists and atheists such as George Bernard Shaw. These controversies were conducted with passion but with unfailing charity: he never sought to defeat his opponents, only to defeat their ideas. He would never cheat to score a point: and his love for the people he fought against is something that all controversialists should imitate, however hard it may be

[Emphasis supplied throughout.]
Wise, wise stance, and wise, wise words, no?
Lord, help me to grow in love in imitation of GKC.

How Does Anyone Know Whose Ticket to Punch?

Serious question, sincerely asked (prompted by various bits of Newman brouhaha)-- when a miracle is attributed to someone whose cause for sainthood is being investigated, how do they know the dead person in question is the one who ought to be credited?

Certainly, never did anyone in dire straits, in all of Christendom, in the history of of the world, say, "Please, whatever you do, don't' pray for the the intercession of ANYONE on my behalf, except this one person who is not yet a tried and true inhabitant of heaven."

(You know, 'cause I want to see if this guy's got the goods, and my curiosity on this point supersedes any piddling transitory desire to, oh, I dunno.... LIVE?!?#?$?!??)

Self-discovery

Seeing my mother and her personality... quirks? through new eyes, and more, hearing her and them through ears sharpened by a longish separation, and also a bit from Himself's POV... well, let's just say I hope i have a better understanding of what he hears day in and day out, and what he puts up with.

Yeah, I married a saint...

What Makes a Saint?

The Vatican news service tells us that Holy See Press Office Director Fr. Federico Lombardi S.J. today issued a note concerning the signing of the recent decree on the heroic virtues of Servant of God Pope Pius XII.
Is there any reason to think that the points he makes about the process with an eye toward canonization, and about what the Church's magisterial judgement in these matters do not apply as much to any other soul for whom a cause has been advanced?
A reminder that the prudence of any given action taken by a person may be open to discussion and may yet be irrelevant to that person's sanctity?

"When the Pope signs a decree 'on the heroic virtues' of a Servant of God - i.e., of a person for whom a cause for beatification has been introduced - he confirms the positive evaluation already voted by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. ... Naturally, such evaluation takes account of the circumstances in which the person lived, and hence it is necessary to examine the question from a historical standpoint, but the evaluation essentially concerns the witness of Christian life that the person showed (his intense relationship with God and continuous search for evangelical perfection) ... and not the historical impact of all his operative decisions".[emphasis added]

"At the beatification of Pope John XXIII and of Pope Pius IX, John Paul II said: 'holiness lives in history and no saint has escaped the limits and conditioning which are part of our human nature. In beatifying one of her sons, the Church does not celebrate the specific historical decisions he may have made, but rather points to him as someone to be imitated and venerated because of his virtues, in praise of the divine grace which shines resplendently in them'.

"There is, then, no intention in any way to limit discussion concerning the concrete choices made by [X] in the situation in which he lived. For her part, the Church affirms that these choices were made with the pure intention of carrying out the Pontiff's service of exalted and dramatic responsibility to the best of his abilities. In any case, [X's] attention to and concern for the fate of [a particular group of people] - something which is certainly relevant in the evaluation of his virtues - are widely testified and recognised, also by many [if, sadly, not all of these people].

"The field for research and evaluation by historians, working in their specific area, thus remains open, also for the future. In this specific case it is comprehensible that there should be a request to have open access to all possibilities of research on the documents.
...

"It is, then, clear that the recent signing of the decree is in no way to be read as a hostile act towards [anyone], and it is to be hoped that it will not be considered as an obstacle on the path of dialogue".

I think, for instance, of the animus felt towards Pope John XXIII by some traditionalists for having called for the Ecumenical Councial, toward Pope John Paul II by any number of people for any number of reasons.

It is hard, sometimes, to remember that It Is Not All About Me.
Or about my concerns.
The Jewish people, per se, are not the subject at hand in this instance, (this cause for sainthood -- they are the subject at hand, a bit, in this press release, PR being PR.)

But surely the same points were intended to apply to the bigger picture, to all such causes.

John Paul's cause will not be about people who think condoms are the best defense against AIDS, or that praying with those of another faith is not the best way to go about bringing them into the Faith; nor John's about people who felt bereft of the old Mass.

Having not done what I would have done, or having done something that in hindsight was not the most efficacious course of action, does not in any way, shape or form negate a person's heroic virtue.

And not acting toward me, or some newspaper columnist, or those of another faith, or an over-caffeinated blogger; in the way I, or some newspaper columnist, or those of another faith, or an over-caffeinated blogger wish he had, has nothing whatever to do with the love he felt for me or some newspaper columnist, or those of another faith, or an over-caffeinated blogger.

The nearness to perfection of any person's imitation of God, Who is Love --- that is the only true criterion for sainthood.