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

Friday, September 12, 2014

How to Make Karl's Head Explode

Let's but Father Uriel one of these chasuble beauties!


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Shut Up, I Explained

Cardinal McCarrick retired in 2006 and for that, I am grateful.


From the Daily Caller:

 Catholic Cardinal Theodore McCarrick offered Islamic religious phrases and insisted that Islam shares foundational rules with Christianity, during a Sept. 10 press conference in D.C.
“In the name of God, the Merciful and Compassionate,” McCarrick said as he introduced himself to the audience at a meeting arranged by the Muslim Public Affairs Council. That praise of the Islamic deity is an important phrase in Islam, is found more than 100 times in the Koran, and is akin to the Catholic prayer, ”In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
McCarrick next claimed that “Catholic social teaching is based on the dignity of the human person… [and] as you study the holy Koran, as you study Islam, basically, this is what Muhammad the prophet, peace be upon him, has been teaching.”

Mohammed the prophet? Since when?  Does saying "Allah Akbar" before you blow up innocent people mean you are praying - like making the sign of the Cross?




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Thursday, September 11, 2014

Chickens Are Dumb

From Savage Chickens, via Fr. Z:
Father Z writes:

New Hell!  How jolly.

While we, as a preaching teaching Church, shouldn’t be incessantly pushing the Four Last Things in a dire and threatening way, we should be pushing the Four Last Things clearly and often.

Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell.  These are not options.   Everyone of us will face three out of the four.

We have a say about which three.

But let’s be clear about something: Hell is not nice.  It isn’t nice for those in Hell now and it won’t be nice for anyone in Hell in the future.

There won’t be ice cream.

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The Ruins of New York


 Oh how quiet it is after the black night
When flames out of the clouds burned down your cariated teeth,
And when those lightnings,
Lancing the black boils of Harlem and the Bronx,
Spilled the remaining prisoners,
(The tens and twenties of the living)
Into the trees of Jersey,
To the green farms, to find their liberty.

 
How are they down, how have they fallen down
Those great strong towers of ice and steel,
And melted by what terror and what miracle?
What fires and lights tore down,
With the white anger of their sudden accusation,
Those towers of silver and of steel?

From Figures For An Apocalypse, VI - In the Ruins of New York (1947) by Thomas Merton

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Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Two And A Half Men...and a Bishop

I don't understand this article. Is the quest for sainthood for Bishop Sheen derailed because Cardinal Dolan won't send back the remains?



WASHINGTON (CNS) -- The canonization cause of Archbishop Fulton Sheen has been suspended indefinitely, according to a statement issued Sept. 3 by the Diocese of Peoria, Illinois, where the archbishop was born. 


The diocesan statement said the Archdiocese of New York denied a request from Bishop Daniel R. Jenky of Peoria, president of the Archbishop Sheen Foundation, to move the archbishop's body to Peoria.

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Friday, September 05, 2014

I'm So Old, I Remember When Notre Dame Was a Catholic School

NOTRE DAME, INNotre Dame is complying with the contraceptive mandate in renewing its student health insurance program for 2014-15. Aetna, the insurer, will now provide students with free abortifacients and contraceptives. Moreover, the university will itself enroll all otherwise uninsured graduate and foreign students in the plan. 


Notre Dame has declared in court that that to do what it is doing now would be scandalous. And it is doing this voluntarily. It could have dropped the program or switched to a self-insured program free of the mandate.

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The Day Cardinal Dolan Jumped the Shark, and Monsignor Pope Became a Favorite

To begin with:

A gay group will march under its own banner for the first time in the world's largest St. Patrick's Day Parade, organizers said Wednesday.
The prohibition on identified gay groups in the centuries-old New York parade had made participation a political issue. Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio refused to march this year, and Guinness beer dropped its sponsorship.

The parade committee, in a statement made available to The Associated Press, said Wednesday that OUT@NBCUniversal, a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender resource group at the company that broadcasts the parade, would be marching up Manhattan's Fifth Avenue on March 17 under an identifying banner.

Archbishop Dolan of New York weighs in:
 
NEW YORK (AP) - There is no more natural spot for Roman Catholic Cardinal Timothy Dolan - a proud, ebullient Irish-American - than grand marshal of the city's historic St. Patrick's Day Parade. But the honor now has an added significance: Parade organizers said Wednesday they will allow the first gay group to march under its own banner.

Dolan was quick to issue a statement of support for the parade organizers, accepting their decision. While supporters of gay and lesbian Catholics are cheering, some conservatives want the archbishop to withdraw from the event.

But Monsignor Pope says ENOUGH!. I intend to buy a purple shirt for St. Patrick's Day.


It’s time to cancel the St. Patrick’s Day Parade and the Al Smith Dinner and all the other “Catholic” traditions that have been hijacked by the world. Better for Catholics to enter their churches and get down on their knees on St. Patrick’s Day to pray in reparation for the foolishness, and to pray for this confused world to return to its senses. Let’s do adoration and pray the rosary and the Divine Mercy Chaplet unceasingly for this poor old world.


But don’t go to the parade; stay away from the Al Smith Dinner and all that “old school” stuff that hangs on in a darkened world. And as for St Patrick’s Day, it’s time to stop wearin’ the green and instead take up the purple of Lent and mean it. Enough of the celebration of stupidity, frivolity, and drunkenness that St Paddy’s day has become. We need penance now, not foolishness. We don’t need parades and dinner with people who scoff at our teachings, insist we compromise, use us for publicity, and make money off of us. We’re being played for (and are?) fools.
End the St Patrick’s parade. End the Al Smith Dinner and all other such compromised events. Enough now, back to Church! Wear the purple of Lent and if there is going to be a procession, let it be Eucharistic and penitential for the sins of this age.

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Tuesday, September 02, 2014

Mark Your Calendar!



The Catholic Gentleman has proclaimed September 9th as "International Buy Your Priest a Beer Day"!




Believe it or not, priests are real people, and they enjoy socializing over good food and drink as much as anyone. They also have a thankless and difficult job, a job that we couldn’t get to heaven without. Priests are the lifeblood of the Church, and they deserve some appreciation.
So with that in mind, I would challenge you to do something concrete to show appreciation to your priest in the month ahead. Yes, it could be taking him out for a beer, or it could be inviting him over to share dinner with your family. Be creative if you want, but give back to your priest somehow, and let him know that his ministry is making a difference.
Of course, your priest may be insanely busy and unable to schedule a time for a lengthier visit. That’s okay. You could offer a rosary or a holy hour for him and his intentions (or better yet, more than one), and let him know that you are regularly praying for him. At the very least, express to him your gratitude, in person or via a note, for his faithful ministry and his answering God’s call to the priesthood.
Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula, Brussels

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Monday, September 01, 2014

I First Noticed It At the Confirmation Mass

From The Curt Jester:

 The World Health Organization (WHO) has been tracking a disturbing trend in chronic inflammation of knee joints. Currently it is not known if this is a vector-borne disease or is spread in another manner. While currently not an epidemic world-wide, it has surprisingly confined itself to only Catholics and its effects can be easily observed. In a long-awaited report that will be debated by member states at a meeting in October in Moscow, the United Nations health agency also voiced concern about chronic inflammation of knee joints in various Catholic communities.


Dr. Peter Capaldi (WHO), has been voicing concerns about Genuflectitis since he first started noticing the effects in Catholic parishes as he traveled worldwide. “I started noticing the number of people not genuflecting when entering the vestibule. First I thought this was simple irreverence, then I noticed that many people instead of kneeling during the Consecration were leaning forward instead of kneeling. I felt the most charitable explanation was a serious knee inflammation preventing proper kneeling. This might also be connected to spinal cord injuries since I also noticed people unable to make a profound bow, but just a head-nod instead.” It has also been noted by many other orthopedic surgeons that this inflammation comes and goes. For example during Mass knee-bending is painful, but this usually does not effect motion when sprinting to their car as soon as the concluding rite is finished.





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Sin Duda, Las Autoridades de Supervisión Deben Tener Poder.

  I copied the heading from here.

No, nothing strange about this. Nope. Move along....





A Jesus statue that has lived an unassuming life in a small town in Mexico for the last 300 years has been hiding a strange secret: real human teeth.
Exactly how the statue of Jesus awaiting punishment prior to his crucifixion got its set of choppers is a mystery.
But the statue may be an example of a tradition in which human body parts were donated to churches for religious purposes, said Fanny Unikel Santoncini, a restorer at the Escuela Nacional de Restauración, Conservación y Museografía at the Instituto Nacional de Antropología E Historia (INAH) in Mexico, who first discovered the statue's teeth. 

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Let Nothing Disturb You

 This is from Elizabeth Scalia, who writes atPortico.com:

This impressive both technologically and musically. With a few exceptions among apostolic communities — and of course, the Third Order laity — when you think Carmelite, you think enclosure; you think grilles; you think of interior castles and humble cells.
And yet, thanks to the wonders of digital recording and the internet, we can listen to a virtual choir of Carmelite women, singing — and wonderously — a new piece of music set to the most famous prayer of the great Carmelite foundress and reformer, Saint Teresa of Avila:




The prayer — which is more of a sort of contemplative pulse — is this:

Let nothing disturb you,
Let nothing frighten you,
All things are passing away:
God never changes.
Patience obtains all things
Whoever has God lacks nothing;
God alone suffices.
We certainly need to remember that.

Stunning work. Still, it reminded me a little of...


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Islamic Outreach, Part LII

 For a change, I will quote someone other than Pope Francis...

Remember: Christians in the West are not to speak of such things. To do so would harm the “dialogue”: “Talk about extreme, militant Islamists and the atrocities that they have perpetrated globally might undercut the positive achievements that we Catholics have attained in our inter-religious dialogue with devout Muslims.” — Robert McManus, Roman Catholic Bishop of Worcester, Massachusetts, February 8, 2013.

Meanwhile....




(Vatican Radio) Fr. Gideon Obasogie, the Director of Social Communications in Maiduguri Diocese, Nigeria, says the Islamist terrorist group, Boko Haram has taken over the town of Madagali LGA in Adamawa state, Northeast of Nigeria forcing Fr. Aiden Ibrahim of St. Denis to flee from his parish. Several Christian residents of Madagali are said to have fled from the town many months ago in fear of rampaging Boko Haram sects. In Madagali, Boko Haram are said to have looted parish property, vandalized and then set alight buildings belonging to the church. Fr. Obasogie was not sure of the number of people killed or of other causalities in the Madagali attack but he says there are many.

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Catholic Prozac

Science Daily reports:

Source:

Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology

Summary:


Burning frankincense (resin from the Boswellia plant) activates poorly understood ion channels in the brain to alleviate anxiety or depression. This suggests that an entirely new class of depression and anxiety drugs might be right under our noses.
 Religious leaders have contended for millennia that burning incense is good for the soul. Now, biologists have learned that it is good for our brains too. An international team of scientists, including researchers from Johns Hopkins University and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, describe how burning frankincense (resin from the Boswellia plant) activates poorly understood ion channels in the brain to alleviate anxiety or depression. This suggests that an entirely new class of depression and anxiety drugs might be right under our noses.

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