Appropriate Miracle Aids Paul VI's Cause for Sainthood

We all know the Lord has a sense of humor, and maybe a sense of drama? - this bit of news is so apt it is almost funny. But wonderful!
The author of the prophetic Humanae Vitae will be beatified following the miraculous cure of an unborn child.

"Conscious Uncoupling"

I read an interview with the woman who gives seminars, or wrote a book, or something with that title, moaning that a celebrity hadn't given her credit for the phrase when said celebrity announced her coming divorce. And yet a little ways down in the whining she let slip that she hadn't come up with it anyway, a friend had. Did she share proceeds or royalties with him, one wonders?

Anyway, anyone with a lick of sense would have to agree that consciously is the right way to divorce, it's not the kind of thing you ought to do while asleep.
Or in a drunken stupor.
Or after sustaining a cranial injury while trying to achieve Youtube immortality by riding something and jumping off something into something whilst simultaneously somethinging a something and wearing a something.
You know....

Anyway, wide awake and fully sentient, Gene Robinson is getting another "divorce".

As someone who has benefited greatly from the annulment process in the Catholic Church, I understand that what seems like an actual marriage might not be.

And forget not believing matrimony is sacramental,  if you don't take the process seriously your odds of having a successful marriage, or even a successful "marriage" must go down exponentially.

But I can't help but think the no longer happy couple of husband and husband would have benefited from pre-Cana.

Does the Episcopal Church have anything like that?

And I REALLY think they could have benefited from....well, from what the Catholic Church teaches. Quoted in the post article from a piece Mr.  Robinson wrote about an evangelical pastor and his approach to sin:

While Jesus never says a word about homosexuality, Jesus is quite clear and specific that remarriage after divorce is adultery. Following [the pastor's] advice to homosexuals, these remarried and ‘practicing’ adulterers should repent of their sin and seek to amend their sinful lifestyles – by divorcing their second spouses (ending their sinful ways) and thereafter living a celibate and chaste sexual life, according to the precepts of Scripture.

Ummm.... yeah. And in fact, Mr Robinson, the Church teaches that.
Yes, THE Church.
Which, Facebook posts purporting to have the goods on papal phonecalls to the contrary, She does still teach.
Logical consistency.... it's a good thing.

Let me get this straight, banking industry...

YOU played fast and loose with all these processes and the regulations concerning them for years leading to a near collapse of the economy, but  I ask for a fully collateralized loan in which YOU are the institution that holds the collateral funds, and three months into the process you suddenly not only want me to account for a check identical in source and size to a check automatically deposited into the same account (ALSO with your institution,) every month on the same day of the month for the last 32 months --  

you want a signed letter explaining a Christmas 
Gift Check for One Hundred Dollars?

Do you wear a mantilla?

Or, "man-TILL-ah" as it was pronounced by some reporter at St Peter's Square a week ago.

Funny story story from Fr Ray Blake's blog.

Some, not many of the women in our congregation wear mantillas and very elegant they look too.
Well to cut a long story short, Annie who is 5 often stays with a friend of her mum's who had some rather elegant Victorian lace curtains. Annie found some scissors, now Annie has a mantilla and so do her three of her dolls and her favourite pink dinosaur, and whilst mum's friend still has lace curtains but one is now quite considerably shorter than its pair, they are less elegant nowadays.
And Annie was bareheaded at Mass on Sunday and so was the pink dinosaur.

Our Lady of Those Who, Even Though Might Not Attend Mass Regularly, At Least, You Know, Have Good Hearts And Try To Be Good Because God Is In Your Heart, Anyway, So Don’t Judge Me, Because God Said Not To Judge

Reading about Our Lady of Good Intentions at Eye of the Tiber is just what you need, sometimes.....;oD
And if you've read all of that and still feel in need of a laugh, google Convos With Coco, you will not be dissappointed. "Leaves" is my favorite, but "I Want a Cookie" is pretty good too.

The Supremes narrowly declared sectarian prayer at public governmental meetings to be constitutional.

Well....

The Beauty of a "Silent" Mass

The great Colin Mawby's newsletter, Vivace, contains this, this morning:

In the Catholic Church there is an assumption that there should always be music at Mass. This is based upon the liturgical teaching of Vatican 2 and is a reaction against the silent Latin Low Mass of pre-Conciliar days.

Many people need music at Mass; they enjoy singing hymns and listening to the choir: they are uplifted by the sound of sacred music and find it essential to worship. However, some react differently and find music very distracting. I am convinced that these people should be equally  catered for and that regular silent celebrations should be available wherever possible.

I have the happiest memories of the old silent Latin Low Mass: I was educated to love it and feel that a lot has been lost through noisy congregational participation, both spoken and sung. Silent, internal participation should be an essential part of worship. Noisy declamation can be very offputting for some people.

I suggest that the occasional Mass without music and the barest minimum of external participation should be an essential part of the Parish Worship programme. Many worshippers would welcome this and find such Masses extremely spiritual and helpful.

I will say,when I first encountered one, musicless Masses seemed nothing but a flight from bad music. But having experienced one in the EF my attitude changed utterly, and they offer their own, positive riches.

Libel and the Seal of the Confessional

I have been wondering about this the past week or so.

My First Reconciliation, my First Communion are far in the past.
But in those days, ( imagine Grandpa Simpson's voice,) the example given when children wondered, as we inevitably did, about just how tight a seal that seal of the confessional was, we were taught, what I have since learned was basically the plot of an old movie with Montgomery Clift, don't worry, the priest can't tell anyone about it, even if he has to DIE to preserve the sancity of the confessional!

But we never thought of the confessor possibly risking something of far greater value than his life, that is - the souls of the Faithful.
Suppose a priest, or even, say a bishop, oh, what the heck, let's say a pope - suppose a pope has a confidential conversation, one that is not just pastoral, but sacramental, about the irregular situation a married woman is in, (this is all hypothetical, look you,) and he tells her something.

Now, a penitent is not bound by the seal, and let's say she tells someone who broadcasts what she has PURPORTEDLY told him on Facebook.
And his version of what was said by the confessor is a challenge to the Faith, contradicts both (immutable) doctrine and (authoritatively promulgated,) discipline; an a challenge to the Faithful, who are misled, scandalized, whatever...

Is there any way he can address this, tell the truth of what he said?

I don't think so...

Barbarian Nation...

Such brutality, state sanctioned torture-execution:

BEIRUT: The jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant announced it had executed seven prisoners in its bastion in northeastern Syria on Tuesday, two of them by crucifixion.
ISIL, which has been disavowed even by Al-Qaeda, said it held the seven responsible for a grenade attack on one of its fighters earlier this month in the Euphrates Valley city of Raqa, which it rules with an iron fist.
"Ten days ago, attackers on a motorbike threw a grenade at an ISIL fighter at the Naim roundabout. A Muslim civilian had his leg blown off and a child was killed," the group said on Twitter.
"Our fighters immediately set up a roadblock and succeeded in capturing them. They were then able to detain other members of the cell."
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights posted a photograph of the two prisoners being crucified at the roundabout with passer-by walking past apparently unfazed.
One of them, blindfolded and with his head spattered with blood, had a banner wrapped round his body proclaiming: "This man fought against Muslims and threw a grenade in this place."
The monitoring group said they were not the first crucifixions by ISIL. On April 16, its fighters executed a man for theft from a Muslim in the same way

Oh, wait, not that one, this:

An Oklahoma inmate whose execution was halted Tuesday because the delivery of a new drug combination was botched died of a heart attack, the state Department of Corrections said. Director Robert Patton said inmate Clayton Lockett died Tuesday after all three drugs were administered. Patton halted Lockett’s execution about 20 minutes after the first drug was administered. He said there was a vein failure.
Lockett was writhing on the gurney and shaking uncontrollably.
The planned execution later Tuesday of a second inmate was postponed.
The executions of Lockett and Charles Warner previously had been delayed after they challenged the secrecy behind the state’s lethal injection protocol. Lockett received a new lethal injection formula that included the sedative midazolam as the first in a three-drug combination.
A four-time felon, Lockett, 38, was convicted of shooting 19-year-old Stephanie Neiman with a sawed-off shotgun and watching as two accomplices buried her alive in rural Kay County in 1999 after Neiman and a friend arrived at a home the men were robbing.

O glorious St. Dismas, you who among all the Saints, were the only one directly canonized by Christ Himself. You who were assured that on hat "very day" you would be granted a place in Heaven near to Him, because of the sincere confession of your sins in the Tribunal of Calvary and because and because of your true sorrow for them in open confession as you hung on the cross. You who with absolute love and repentance did move the Heart of Jesus to mercy and forgiveness, even in the fearful presence of the centurion. You whose face was that closest to Jesus in His Agony, to offer Him a word of consolation, even closer than His most beloved Mother, Mary. You who knew well how to pray. Teach me the words which I ought to say to Him in order to gain pardon and the grace of perseverance. You who are so close to Him in Heaven, as close as you were to Him during His last moments on earth, pray to Him so that I may never abandon Him again, and that at the end of my life I may also hear the words which He addressed to you: "This day you shall be with Me in Paradise," Amen.

There is nothing sweeter on the tongue than a banana one has picked from ones own tree.

Perfect slacker food....

A Slacker's Devotion to St Joseph the Worker

It seems hinkey, but I do have such a devotion.

I know I watch too much TV, but I am going to be very sorry when The Neighbors is cancelled.


I pretend it's the meta fiction that enthralls me, the self-referential fourth-wall breaking,  but it's not. It's the sheer, snarky silliness.

The Bollywood number had me smiling so hard I thought my face would crack, and am often doubled over in pain from laughing et Dick Butkus, my favorite person of color, (pink...), et al.

Can nothing be done, ABC? Reggie Jackson suggested ABC Family?

Kidneys? Be Honest, Ya Got One You're Not Using

I don't care how much Miller you're gettin' your swerve on with, if you're healthy you have an extra kidney.
And there are a lot of people out there who need it.
And some of them have very little time to live and if only cadaver donations are available they will die before someone else's bad fortune makes an organ available.

You can save someone just like this little princess:
: Think about it.

"Impossibly" Difficult?

I don' thin' that word means what you thin' it means...

Since it clearly wasn't an impossibly difficult choice. Painful, perhaps, but not impossible.

Because you made your choice.

Something was more important to you than another human life.

"You told me not to hit him, you didn't say I couldn't kick him"

I, who have always been a bit of a sneak and given to casuistry even before I knew the word, have always realized that for the most part, laws and regulations and precepts, like parental rules, are not usually articulated until someone realizes that alas! there are among ones citizens, employees, adherents or small children, those for whom NOTHING "goes without saying."

So, yeah, I probably said those exact words to my Mother or Father more than once growing up.
"Well, you didn't say...."

The Winking Catholics over at the register, or rather, the poor, put-upon Catholic school teachers of Cincinnati they are trying to support, kinda remind me of me. "Well, when I said I was a practicing Catholic and signed a contract, the contract didn't actually say I couldn't..."

What? What??!?#?$%???
The most important aspect of a Catholic school is to pass on the faith???!?!??
We have a ministerial and catechetical function?
When I function as a representative of the Church's teachings I'm supposed to act that way, too, as if I actually believe what the Church teaches?

A silly spokesman for the archdiocese said "the contract doesn’t require anything the archdiocese didn’t already expect of teachers."
Oh, the archdiocese assumed people knew.

"Hey, it only says tie and jacket required."

What You Oughta Know, according to the Pope Emeritus

I am probably the last one who would be interested in this to learn of it, but John Allen wrote a gem of a... well, it is hardly a book, more of a pamphlet,  back in 2007, that is well worth any Catholic's time, 10 Things Pope Benedict Wants You To Know

The ten things are, or perhaps should be, obvious to any inquiring Catholic, but they are profound, nonetheless, (Well done, as almost always, Mr Allen!) and a good synthesis, as far as I can tell with my limited knowledge, of the enormous outpouring of works of theological (and pedagogical!)  genius produced by this future Doctor of the Church.

They are that God is Love, that Jesus is Lord, that Truth and Freedom as well as Faith and Reason are complementary, that the Eucharist is the heart of the of our Christian lives, that Christianity is a positive message, (No! You mean that contrary to everything we've heard from the secular media that idea wasn't just  invented in the past year???? next you're going to try to convince me that Benedict has occasionally kissed a baby, or even smiled!!!!)that the Church should stay out of politics but MUST inform consciences, including those of politicians, that so-called "Catholic identity" does matter whatever the Winking Catholics might say,that Christ and His Church cannot be looked at as anything but inseparable, and that we must be patient. As the Father has always been. Anyway, good, good stuff.

One of the most striking aspects of Benedict XVI's papacy has been how determined he is to phrase his message in a positive key. To take one example, when the Holy Father visited Spain in July 2006, many expected a dramatic showdown with the Socialist government of Prime Minister Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, whose left-wing government has done battle with the Church on a variety of fronts: gay marriage, abortion, divorce, euthanasia, and public funding for Catholic schools. Many Catholics expected fire and brimstone from the pope. Instead, he was doggedly positive, concentrating on the Christian fundamentals, never directly engaging any of the issues that have divided Church and state.

Later, some German TV reporters asked Benedict what had happened. It's worth listening to his reply in full:

Christianity, Catholicism, isn't a collection of prohibitions: it's a positive option. It's very important that we look at it again because this idea has almost completely disappeared today. We've heard so much about what is not allowed that now it's time to say: we have a positive idea to offer, [emphasis added] that man and woman are made for each other, that the scale of sexuality, eros, agape, indicates the level of love and it's in this way that marriage develops, first of all, as a joyful and blessing-filled counter between a man and a woman, and then the family, that guarantees continuity among generations and through which generations are reconciled to each other and even cultures can meet. So, firstly it's important to stress what we want. Secondly, we can also see why we don't want something. I believe we need to see and reflect on the fact that it's not a Catholic invention that man and woman are made for each other, so that humanity can go on living: all cultures know this.

I have been trying to explain to my CCD kids that hurdles and sections of guard rail look pretty much the same...

Each According to His Abilities

Sometimes over at the CMAA board there is a little bit of tension regarding skill-level, education-level, wit-level taste-level, commitment-level, talent-level, erudition-level, sanctity-level, snarkiness-level ... you name it.
And I know some people are scared off from attending the Seven Days of Musical Heaven, that it might be over their heads?

Well, le'me tell ya, most of life is over my head, and certainly I am unable to either absorb or utilize everything I have been able to experience at a number of Colloquia, but IT DOESN'T MATTER!!!!!!!!

It is ALL a grace.

I came across this from Sojourner Truth, which seemed apt:

They talk about this thing in the head; what's this they call it? [member of audience whispers, "intellect"] That's it, honey. ... If my cup won't hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn't you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full?

p.s. Christian, not Marxist reference

Obedience, Personal Responsibility, and Saintliness

The human tragedy of the Korean ferry disaster and the picture that I cannot get out of my mind, of doomed children huddled obediently awaiting their deaths, reminded me of the Lady of the Angels tragedy.
I happened upon a tv documentary on that fire, about which I knew nothing, but Himself is older and grew up in Chicagoland, and he said that news story haunted him and every child he knew, even in their suburban public schools. Some blame seemed to attach, even if it was not expressly articulated, to the teaching sisters who kept children praying in the burning building waiting for rescue that never came and to a Catholicism-the-way-it-used-to-be culture of obedience to authority.
When I learned about Our Lady of the Angels I wondered what I would have done had I been a pupil in such a situation.  I was an ornery kid, but I don't know that I was confrontational enough to flout authority in the moment - I was more of a sneak who would argue my, er... principled position brazenly afterwards.
No print report or talking head had made this connection, until, (or so I thought,) this Op-ed piece in the NYTimes.
But no, that wasn't where Roger Cohen was going. While he mentioned the attitudes toward authority that may or may not be specific to the Korean culture, what he really wanted to address was the world-wide, the societal or racial, (and that would be the human race,) erosion of duty and personal responsibility as a value.
I think of that often. As an irresponsible slacker myself, I am acutely aware of other peoples' failure to live up to responsibilities.

I always laugh at polemicists insisting that a vocations' shortage can be chalked up to the fact that the Mean Ol' Catholic Church won't let Her priests have sex.

Do away with celibacy! our sex obsessed society clamors, as if that'll take care of the problem. (Not that most really want the problem taken care of -- the fewer priests, the fewer practicing Catholics - the happier that portion of society'll be. I digress.)

The anti-celibacy advocates are silent on why the other major vocation is also becoming rarer, since, uh.... married people are not only forbidden, they are urged to have sex by the Church.
But again, I digress.

This was the postion of the Cohen piece that caught my eye:

When I was based in Berlin, Germany renamed a military base after Anton Schmid, a soldier in Hitler’s army who disobeyed orders, saved hundreds of Jews and was executed by the Nazis in 1942 for his acts. Schmid, a sergeant, was moved by the suffering of Jewish children in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius who had been condemned to mass slaughter. He wrote of the children to his wife: “I could not think and had to help them.”

I've spent a lot of time talking about saints, and the Church's theology and procedures concerning sainthood the past few days, (haven't we all,) explaining what little I do know to children, to non-Catholics, to marginally practicing and essentially un-educated Catholics.

The universal call to sanctity, and the fact that heaven teems with people whose names we will never know until we, (hopefully,) join them, and the Church's prescriptions differentiating public and private veneration -- all of this seems hard for some people to grasp, and no doubt my inadequate exegesis is to blame.
But I believe I have known many saints in my life.

And just as I am happy to pray for the intecession of Himself's mother, I pray,

Anton Schmid, ora pro nobis

First World Problems

I have a houseguest who keeps a running commentary on, and critique of the spelling of, the close-captioning on TV.

I like hockey