Non Tasarmi, Fratello!

“Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine, There’s always laughter and good red wine. At least I’ve always found it so. Benedicamus Domino!” Hillaire Belloc

Thursday, December 19, 2013

31 Things you Thought About During Mass Last Sunday

OK, I didn't think about any of these things, but two of them  made me laugh....I changed the Mass times as appropriate.

22.  I can’t wait for the donuts outside after Mass.  I hope the holier-than-thou eight o’clock crowd left some for the rest of us.





 23.  I’m hungry enough for two donuts…too bad there won’t be any left for the noon crowd, but maybe they should stop being so lazy and go to an earlier Mass.



And this one is for the Junior Organist:

 25.  And the recessional hymn is…no!…”Lord of the Dance”?…Can I leave now before my ears throw up?


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Shut Up, I Explained



That paragon of Catholicism Senator Dick Durbin is in the news, speaking for Pope Francis. From the Washington Times:

Saying they’ve been inspired by Pope Francis' teaching, Senate Democrats vowed Thursday to force votes on raising the minimum wage, expanding unemployment benefits and giving more taxpayer help to college students.
 

Senator Richard Durnin, Illinois Democrat, said the recent papal pronouncement warning of the dangers of income inequality should force Congress to act.

“It challenges all of us, and it particularly challenges those of us who have been blessed to serve in public life,” Mr. Durbin said.


Dick supports Obamacare (which has caused the Catholic Church to sue Health and Human Services -headed by another "Catholic", Kathy Sebilius) which forces religious organizations to provide abortifacients and contraceptives to its workers.  .  Dick also has 100% approval rating form NARAL - the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League.



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Friday, November 22, 2013

Magnavox Feast of St. Cecilia, November 22

The Patron Saint of Musicians!


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Amparo in Sitio!

The Archbishop Alberto Suárez Inda of Morelia, Mexico borrowed the "Boston Strong" strategy of "Sheltering in place"!



From Catholic World News:


As citizen vigilantes in Morelia take up arms to defend themselves against drug cartels, the archbishop urged the people of the central Mexican city of 730,000 to “to take shelter and be careful about the situation of insecurity that prevails in urban areas,” the Fides news agency reported.
“I believe that little by little the authorities will truly seek a solution,” said Archbishop Alberto Suárez Inda. “If we are able to build trust in families, we can, therefore, reverse this movement of violence that is sadly present in almost all the cities of Michoacán.” 

At least they have a really cool cathedral - The Cathedral of the Divine Savior of Morelia (dedicated to the Transfiguration).







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And Now, A Gentle Reminder From Bishop Paprocki...

....to purported "Catholics" in the State of Illinois Legislature and elsewhere:









"Politicians responsible for enacting civil same-sex marriage legislation are morally complicit as co-operators in facilitating this grave sin."

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Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Islamic Outreach, XXVIII

From an earlier post on this blog:

Pope Francis spoke to the diplomatic corps and amongst other things, said, "Hence it is important to intensify dialogue among the various religions, and I am thinking particularly of dialogue with Islam.
Meanwhile...





From Catholic World News:
 


The Nigerian Islamist terrorist organization Boko Haram is kidnapping Christian women, enslaving them as “brides,” and forcing them to convert to Islam, the Reuters news agency reported.
“The Islamists have changed tack in the face of Nigerian military pressure,” Reuters reported. “Islamists have pulled back after army assaults since May on their bases on the semi-desert plain and are now sheltering in the Mandara mountains, along the Cameroon border around the city of Gwoza. From the hills they have been launching increasingly deadly attacks.”
“If I cried, they beat me,” recounted one woman who escaped. “If I spoke, they beat me. They told me I must become a Muslim but I refused again and again.”
“They were about to slaughter me and one of them begged me not to resist and just before I had my throat slit I relented,” she added. “They put a veil on me and made me read from the Koran.”

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Monday, November 18, 2013

The Orans Position

You know what I'm talking about...it's the position some take during the Our Father during Mass. It looks like the statue in "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil".





So why do they do it? And should they? 

The answers are: I don't know and no.


Canon law expert Dr. Edward Peters writes: “While the orans position as such has a rich tradition in Jewish and even ancient Christian prayer life, there’s no precedent for Catholic laity assuming the orans position in Western liturgy for at least a millennium and a half; that point alone cautions against its introduction without careful thought.
“Moreover – and notwithstanding the fact that few liturgical gestures are univocal (meaning unambiguous) per se – lay use of the orans gesture in Mass today, besides injecting general disunity in liturgy, could further blur the differences between lay liturgical roles and those of priests at just a time when distinctions between the baptismal priesthood and the ordained priesthood are struggling for healthy articulation.”


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Catholic Prayers Drive Away a Tornado!


Thursday, November 14, 2013

Norbetine Canonesses



There is still time to order your wreath hand-made by the Norbertine Canonesses of the Bethlehem Priory of St. Joseph! Click on the link on the left (under the HAWKERS heading). The wreathes are beautiful and what an EXCELLENT cause!


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Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Shut Up, I Explained




I came across this fantastic article and have really taken it to heart. It's called "The Devil's War on Silence in Mass" by Dan Burke. I am as guilty as the next guy, but what struck me was this part:

" First, the devil wants to make you mad, irritated or frustrated at those who don’t understand or share your convictions about these realities. This alone will suffice to get your mind off of the Lord during Mass and to begin to see people (bishops, priests, and the laity), rather than the devil, as the problem. Second, he wants you to be a ranting, snarky, self-centered passive aggressive coward in how you respond. He wants create a division between you and “them” so that you are focused on them instead of correctly identifying the work of the enemy and then properly enaging the battle there. Third, he wants your anger to lead you to the delusion that this is all the result of the Second Vatican Council and use you to obstruct the work of the Holy Spirit in the Church through the distortion of the proper place and exercise of magisterial authority (thus you become a high Church prostestant). Fourth, he wants you to become angry enough to shift your worship from God to tradition such that it is all you are concerned with. And fifth, he wants you to join groups that spend all their time complaining about these things so that he can take you all on the same fiery journey to the place where all unrepentant idolaters end up.

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Handicapping the Race

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is meeting today and tomorrow, when they will elect a new ...wait a second. They finished voting already???

From the USCCB website:
 
BALTIMORE—Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz of Louisville, Kentucky, was elected president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) during the bishops' annual fall General Assembly, November 12, in Baltimore. Archbishop Kurtz has served as vice president of USCCB since 2010. Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo of Galveston-Houston was elected USCCB vice president.
Archbishop Kurtz and Cardinal DiNardo are elected to three-year terms and succeed Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York and Archbishop Kurtz, respectively. The new president and vice president's terms begin at the conclusion of the General Assembly, November 14.

Archbishop Kurtz




You can read his blog HERE!






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Friday, November 08, 2013

Islamic Outreach XXVII

From an earlier post on this blog:

Pope Francis spoke to the diplomatic corps and amongst other things, said, "Hence it is important to intensify dialogue among the various religions, and I am thinking particularly of dialogue with Islam.
Meanwhile...

Archbishop Mario Zenari



"A mortar round hit the Vatican embassy in Damascus, Syria, this morning causing limited damage to the building.
No casualties were reported, but Archbishop Mario Zenari, the Vatican nuncio, told Vatican Radio that if the rocket had been launched half an hour later, he would have been saying morning prayers on the terrace near where the mortar struck. “You can imagine what I would have encountered,” he said."

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Bayer Asperin Feast of St. Castorius, November 8

St. Castorius is the patron saint of stonemasons and sculptors and is one of the "Four Crowned Martyrs" who were put in lead-lined coffins and tossed in the sea by orders of the evil Emperor Diocletian around 287 A.D.

What set Diocletian off? well, Castorius refused to carve a statue in honor of Aesculapius.or Asclepius. Old Aesculapius was a twofer - he was both the a Greek AND the Roman god of medicine. 


 According to the Greeks,he was the son of Apollo and Coronis.He is the Greco-Roman god of medicine. Zeus was afraid he would make men immortal so whacked him with a thunderbolt, sorta like Saul. 

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Monday, October 28, 2013

I'm Going Dressed as St. Burgundofara


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Mandalay Bay Feast of St. Faro, October 28





St. Faro was a Frenchman who died around 615A.D., but that's not the interesting thing about him. The only reason I mention in him is that his sister is Saint Burgundofara. BURGUNDOFARA!

Didn't there used to be a card game named faro? Why yes, there was (from  Wikipedia):

 With its name shortened to faro, it soon spread to the United States in the 19th century to become the most widespread and popularly favored gambling game. Also called "Bucking the Tiger", which comes from early card backs that featured a drawing of a Bengal Tiger, it was played in almost every gambling hall in the Old West from 1825 to 1915.

 Faro's detractors regarded it as a dangerous scam that destroyed families and reduced men to poverty because of rampant rigging of the dealing box. Crooked faro equipment was so popular that many sporting-house companies began to supply gaffed dealing boxes specially designed so that the bankers could cheat their players. Cheating was prevalent enough that editions of Hoyle’s Rules of Games began their faro section warning readers that not a single honest faro bank could be found in the United States. While the game became scarce after World War II it continued to be played at a few Las Vegas and Reno casinos through 1985.


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Thursday, October 17, 2013

Pope Tweets

Pope Francis has already tweeted 176 times in his first seven months as Pope. Twitter is considering changing its logo from:

To something like this:



Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Whate Happened to the Dinosaurs

DUH? It's right there in the Old Testament!


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The Trouble With Jesuits, Part 14



Michael Ruse, Professor of History in the Science Department (?) at Florida Sate University, will be speaking at the JESUITS' Le Moyne College on October 24th.  



Sayeth Dr. Ruse:

"I stress that although I cannot share the beliefs of Christians, I respect them and applaud the good that is done in the name of their founder. But I do now think that as presently constituted, the Catholic Church is corrupt and should be eradicated.



You might argue that this is to go too far. But what is the alternative? Vatican Three, perhaps? The Church could open its doors to married priests, give women a proper role (if we can appoint a woman to the Supreme Court, why cannot a woman become a member of the College of Cardinals?), make a place within for gays and other minorities.  It could recognize birth control for the blessing that it is and stop insisting that the moment the sperm gets to the ovum, nothing else matters but to preserve this entity, even though such a stand causes unnumbered cases of pain and sadness (and certainly does little to reduce the abortion rate) and leads the Catholic bishops to oppose universal health care, quite apart from the fact that it all flies in the face of the official philosophy of the Church, Thomism. And I could continue."

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Goody's Feast of St. Therese of Avila, October 15



A Doctor of the Church, St. Therese was the founder of the discalced wing of the Carmelites. She had visions; in one of them a seraph drove a fiery lance into her heart repeatedly. Her writing about the vision moved the great sculptor/architect/dramatist Gian Lorenzo Bernini to carve The Ecstasy of Saint Theresa between 1647-52. You can view it at the Cathedral of Santa Maria della  Vittoria in Rome.


From the Khan Academy:
By the way, St. Therese is the patron saint of headache sufferers.





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Wednesday, October 09, 2013

Well, He IS a Muslim....

From the Brody File:

Obama Administration Denies Mass to Catholics

Apparently, a priest was denied access to a military chapel this weekend. Father Ray Leonard serves at Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay in Georgia but because of the government shutdown, he wasn’t allowed to go to celebrate Mass this past weekend.

He is contracted by the Defense Department to meet the spiritual needs of Catholics, but not now. The chapel doors were locked and the sign said, “Shutdown: No Catholic service till further notice.”

Father Leonard said the following:
“This is our church, Catholics have an expectation and obligation to attend Mass and we were told, ‘No you can’t go to church this week…“ My parishioners were upset. They were angry and dismayed. They couldn’t believe that in America they’d be denied access to Mass by the government.”

Rep. Tim Huelskamp had this reaction:
“Time and time again this Administration demonstrates it is waging a war against the very religious freedoms upon which America was founded. This is exactly why we worked to pass legislation (House Concurrent Resolution 58) this past weekend – to protect the religious liberties of all those who bravely serve in our Armed Forces.”

50% of American Catholics voted for Obama. 75% of Hispanic Catholics voted for Obama.


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Thursday, October 03, 2013

Fish Banned, Knights of Columbus Suffer


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Stratford Inn Feast of St. Ewald and St. Ewald, October 3

They were brothers from England who became Benedictine priests and were martyred by pagans in Germany.

St. Ewald
St. Ewald

"I'm Larry. This is my brother, Daryl and this is my other brother, Daryl."




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Wednesday, October 02, 2013

Things About Your Yard That Say You're a Catholic

From Catholic Vote :
The statue of Mary.  Required by canon law.


 The St. Francis bird bath – a classic.  Do they use Dove shampoo?  Just asking.





 The Saint Lawrence decal on your grill.  Because, well, you know.



The Pope Innocent III action figure in the sandbox.  Defending the Church against heretics, barbarians, and Skeletor.
Two dogs named Sixtus and Cornelius.

idewalk chalk written on the driveway: “Jimmy is consubstantial with a fat head jerk face.” 
 

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Monday, September 30, 2013

Islamic Outreach XXVI

From an earlier post on this blog:

Pope Francis spoke to the diplomatic corps and amongst other things, said, "Hence it is important to intensify dialogue among the various religions, and I am thinking particularly of dialogue with Islam."

I followed a link to a list the most horrific terrorist attacks (in terms of casualties)  in history, and here are the top 25:



1      TERRORIST ATTACK                                        POLITICAL MOTIVATION

1.       September 11 attacks                                                Islamism             
2.       2007 Yazidi communities bombings                            Islamism             
3.       1990 massacre of Sri Lankan Police officers             Tamil Separatism             
4.       May 2013 Iraq attacks                                             Islamism               
5.       Cinema Rex fire                                                        Islamism               
6.       Beslan school hostage crisis                                      Islamism             
7.       Air India Flight 182                                                  Sikh Separatism
8.       1983 Beirut barracks bombing                                  Islamism             
9.       1999 Russian apartment bombings                            Islamism               
10.   Pan Am Flight 103                                                   Islamism             
11.   1993 Bombay bombings                                           Islamism             
12.   2001 Angola train attack                                          Angolan nationalism      
13.   1961 MV Dara                                                        Unknown           
14.   1998 United States embassy bombings                     Islamism             
15.   2012 Nigeria attacks                                                Islamism             
16.   2006 Sadr City bombings                                         Islamism             
17.   006 Mumbai train bombings                                      Islamism             
18.   2002 Bali bombings                                                   Islamism             
19.   2007 Baghdad bombings                                           Islamism             
20.   3004 Madrid train bombings                                      Islamism             
21.   2004 Ashura bombings in Iraq                                   Islamism                             
22.   2008 Mumbai attacks                                                Islamism             
23.   UTA Flight 772                                                         Islamism             
24.   Moscow theater hostage crisis                                   Islamism
25.   Kizlyar-Pervomayskoye hostage crisis                       Islamism

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