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

Monday, January 28, 2013

Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas, January 28



St. Thomas Aquinas is way too smart for me to understand, except at the most superficial level. His nickname was "The Dumb Ox". Think about that next time you run into someone who seems dumb as a box of rocks.

St. Thomas has a lot of patronages:

Academics; against storms; against lightning; apologists; Aquino, Italy; Belcastro, Italy; book sellers; Catholic academies, schools, and universities; chastity; Falerna, Italy; learning; pencil makers; philosophers; publishers; scholars; students; theologians

Pencil makers?

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Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Stan Musial, R.I.P.



 In his biography by Joseph Stanton, we read,

“Stan, by all accounts, adored his wife Lil and pointedly refused any and all offered opportunities to be disloyal to her. Many have noted his dedication to church attendance. He was (ed. is!) a Catholic who did not think it acceptable to miss Mass. One of Stan’s children reported to Giglio that among the few things their father could be stern about were instances when family members wanted to allow sleepiness to get in the way of getting up for church. Musial’s disciplined concentration was, no doubt, undergirded by his faith. Not overtly religious outside of church, Stan was, nonetheless, spiritually disciplined at the bat and in his life. Concentration was always key."



And how about this?

The slugger met Blessed John Paul II, including twice before Blessed John Paul ascended to the papacy. Musial said they first met when he was archbishop of Krakow, Poland. In 1971, he dropped in on then-Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, who received him even though he was ill with a bad cold.

"I tried to tell him that I was a baseball player, and that my father was born in Poland," Musial recalled in 1988, after his first meeting with Blessed John Paul at the Vatican. The two had some trouble communicating, but when Musial returned to Poland two years later, the Blessed John Paul was already speaking fluent English, he said. "He probably doesn't remember it, but I do," Musial said.

Musial was co-chair of Blessed John Paul's 1999 pastoral visit to St. Louis.

Thursday, January 17, 2013

A Look at Clericus Cup

A Look at Clericus Cup: Football is a global sport which are played not only by professional players but also people from different line of work, including priests. In fact, there's an annual competition named Clericus Cup which involved seminarians along with priests from Catholic Church. One of the player, participating in the competition, Scott Gratton, said that Clericus Cup…

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Tuesday, January 15, 2013

FYI

There is no Feast Day of Herman the Hermit.


Feast of St. Paul the Hermit, January 15




I never heard of him until today. Let's review:

1) He lived in a cave in the desert for 43 years eating nothing but coconuts until

2) a raven started showing up with a half loaf of bread every day, which it did for

3) the next 50 years or so when

4) St. Anthony showed up (Paul was 113 years old) and gave Paul a cloak that was given to Anthony by

5) St. Athanasius. When Paul died, St Anthony buried him in a hole he dug with the help of

6) two lions. We would know nothing of Paul, except he was written about by

7) St Jerome.

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Wednesday, January 09, 2013

Is God Happy?



That's the title of an article by Leszek Kolakowski you can find here. It sent me to the internet to find out what it's called when you assign a human characteristic to an animal. The term is ANTHROPOMORPHISM. For example, this dog is sad...







Is there a term for assigning human characteristics to God?


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Monday, January 07, 2013

That's Not Funny!

I was driving to work this morning and heard a story on NPR about the Notre Dame vs. Alabama game tonight. It talked about the match-ups, and the history of both schools, and the cultural subtext, etc. But then the commentator mentioned that Alabama fans were upset about a t-shirt - saying it was stereotypical and hurtful and all that.


It was the first laugh of my day. Then later in the day, I saw this cartoon (xkcd.com):



Should I be offended? Because I'm not. I actually thought it was funny. I am going to assume it was meant as humor. But the people who are made over the t-shirt seemed to think it was a hand-wringing offense to their humanity. Am I wrong here?

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Friday, January 04, 2013

His Excellency Most Reverend Thomas John Paprocki, Bishop of Springfield

Bishop Paprocki makes a stick save (and it's a beauty) on the Democrats of Illinois. WHY Catholics keep voting for these guys is beyond me...why ANYONE would vote for them is beyond me.

I wish Bishop Braxton would do things like this once in a while.




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Thursday, January 03, 2013

Feast of St. Genevieve, January 3

She's the Patron of Paris. I wonder why?


Oh yeah....

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Wednesday, January 02, 2013

I Hope This Isn't a Sacrilege...

But the banner of the website for the Diocese of Fairbanks has this in it:



Which made me think of this:





Sacred Heart Cathedral, Raleigh NC



Sacred Heart Cathedral in Raleigh, North Carolina is (according to Wikipedia)  the smallest cathedral in the "continental United States". So, is the one in Hawaii smaller? Our Lady of Peace is the OLDEST cathedral in America, having been built in 1840. It looks tall, butt not very big.


 Alaska's got three dioceses - Fairbanks (Immaculate Conception), Juneau (Nativity of the Blessed Virgin) , and Anchorage (Holy Family. They all look larger, but barely.

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Feast of St. Basil, January 2


St. Basil is the patron saint of hospital administrators. His father was St. Basil the Elder, his mother was St. Emmelia of Caesarea, his brothers were Sts. Naucratius, Peter of Sebaste and Gregory of Nyssa, and his sister was St. Macrina the Younger.

 No pressure there. 

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