Saturday, January 19, 2013

Beauty and Muscular Christianity.



Two year degree (in 3 months - online!) in Catechetical Cosmetology, offered by The Minneapolis New Evangelization School of Business - Downtown campus, in partnership with The Catechetical Institute of Fort Berthilde, North Dakota.

Beautician/Barber College graduates only.  Cosmetology Licence required.



 
I have no idea
where he gets this stuff!

What's the difference between sprinkling and spraying holy water?



Arrest.

The pro-life activist who was arrested for sprinkling holy water on the sidewalk was really spraying pro-abortion activists with holy water from a spray bottle.  That's why she was arrested.  She was spraying a person using a spray bottle, that person had no idea what it was, they didn't ask to be sprayed, they aren't friends or acquaintances of the woman doing the spraying, they aren't members of her family, and she spritzes them.  They probably do not even believe in the efficacy of holy water... 

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama -- A short video released Thursday appears to show pro-life demonstrator Joyce Fecteau spraying several pro-choice supporters with liquid from a squirt bottle.

The incident took place Dec. 22 outside Alabama Women's Center for Reproductive Alternatives on Madison Street. Fecteau was charged with misdemeanor harassment after one of the people sprayed, Lisa Cox, swore out a warrant against her.

In a Monday interview, Fecteau told al.com the squirt bottle contained holy water blessed by a priest. She said she sprayed it because a member of the pro-choice group was burning a "noxious material" that she'd been warned by doctors not to inhale.

Pro-choice organizer Pamela Watters said the five members of her group who were sprayed on or near the face had no idea what was in the bottle. It could have been ammonia or bleach, she said. - Finish reading here.
 
Or acid.

Fine, if the woman wants to be arrested to make a point - but it isn't much different than what so-called dissident nuns do when they trespass at the US Army School of Americas protests.  Really, it's not.  Oddly enough - they are both pro-life acts of protest too.

 

 

Friday, January 18, 2013

Mais oui! French homosexuals joined pro-family leaders and activists in the campaign for traditional marriage..




It shouldn't surprise anyone.

Although when I told my neighbor I was against gay marriage/gay adoption, she was surprised.  Talk about prejudiced.  Nevertheless, in this country as well as France, there are many who have no interest in same sex marriage and see traditional marriage specifically as a place to raise and nurture children.  Perhaps it is just the 'ssa' baby boomers who value such old fashioned notions - that horrid generation everyone wants to die off may not be so bad after all.  Printed here is evidence from the French - which echo my own opinion and statements on the matter - something I've not been shy about saying either:  Gay marriage - I'm against it.
“The rights of children trump the right to children,” was the catchphrase of protesters like Jean Marc, a French mayor who is also homosexual.
NEW YORK, January 18 (C-FAM) Perhaps as many as a million people marched in Paris last Sunday and at French embassies around the world against proposed legislation that would legalize same-sex marriage in France. One of the surprises in the French campaign for traditional marriage is that homosexuals have joined pro-family leaders and activists in the effort.
Xavier Bongibault, an atheist homosexual, is a prominent spokesman against the bill. “In France, marriage is not designed to protect the love between two people. French marriage is specifically designed to provide children with families,” he said in an interview. “[T]he most serious study done so far . . . demonstrates quite clearly that a child has trouble being raised by gay parents.”

Jean Marc, who has lived with a man for 20 years, insists, “The LGBT movement that speaks out in the media . . . They don’t speak for me. As a society we should not be encouraging this. It’s not biologically natural.”

Outraged by the bill, 66-year old Jean-Dominique Bunel, a specialist in humanitarian law who has done relief work in war-torn areas, told Le Figaro he “was raised by two women” and that he “suffered from the lack of a father, a daily presence, a character and a properly masculine example, some counterweight to the relationship of my mother to her lover. I was aware of it at a very early age. I lived that absence of a father, experienced it, as an amputation."

"As soon as I learned that the government was going to officialize marriage between two people of the same sex, I was thrown into disarray,” he explained. It would be “institutionalizing a situation that had scarred me considerably. In that there is an injustice that I can in no way allow." If the women who raised him had been married, “I would have jumped into the fray and would have brought a complaint before the French state and before the European Court of Human Rights, for the violation of my right to a mom and a dad." - Source

 
Remember to love your enemies good Christian folk.  :) 

Monsignor Kevin Wallin...



AKA: "Msgr. Meth"

The Catholic priest busted for allegedly dealing crystal meth was suspended after church officials discovered he was a cross-dresser who was having sex in the rectory at Bridgeport's St. Augustine Cathedral. - Read more here.

Saturnos are spinning!  Cappas twirling!

 
"What's wrong with
a little blush?"

Thursday, January 17, 2013

Crescat: The New Vortex... Catholic League... Crusader.




Wonder Woman Takes on 'Abolish Human Abortion' anti-Catholics.  Read it here.


Bill Donohue and Michael Voris only dream about such battles!

This promises to be a bigger story than anything Patheos ever experienced.

But really.  Talk about Batshit Crazy.

Is this sweeps week for blogs, or what?

Zuhlsdorf posts flashy photos from the shooting range.

At least 3 other bloggers are resurrecting Christopher West in blog posts disparaging CNA's Matt McGuiness' series on porn.

Maybe rioting will break out at the March for Life.  Oh!  Oh!  Fighting at the Mass for Life!  You know, if people don't kneel for communion and receive it in the hand.  Or women are wearing... pants!    Yes!  Put on your best show for all the anti-Catholics and pro-abortion people to see!


 
No one reads this jerk anyway!
 
 
 
Here is a very big BTW:
 
If I were a lapsed Catholic considering returning to the Church I would NEVER be attracted to do so by most Catholic bloggers/sites. 

He's A Monsignor too.



Meth kills.

I wonder if Monsignor Wallin ever participated in the March for Life? 
A Connecticut priest was part of a cross-country drug ring that smuggled crystal meth from California into the well-heeled hamlets of Fairfield County, federal prosecutors said.
Monsignor Kevin Wallin, a former pastor of St. Augustine Parish in Bridgeport, sold meth to undercover narcs six times since September 2012, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said Wednesday.

The 61-year-old former church leader and four others were indicted by a grand jury on six counts of possession with intent to distribute. - Read more here.
 
An Egan man...
Wallin, who was ordained to the priesthood in 1984, previously served as pastor of St. Peter Parish in Danbury from 1996 to 2002. He also worked as secretary to Bishops Walter Curtis and Edward Egan in Bridgeport and Diocesan Director of the Ministry for Liturgy. He was a trustee at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield and served on the board of directors for the Bridgeport Catholic Elementary School system. - Source
 
What if he was a 2nd generation Bella Dodd implant?   I wonder if he knew Fr. Michael Jude Fay RIP, another Connecticut priest?  I bet they had guns?  Meth kills.

No bishopric for you.

"We are going towards it little by little with great strides..."

 
 
 
"It is people themselves who are preparing their own punishment."
 
"We  are going towards it little by little with great strides..."  I thought of those words of Sr. Lucia this morning as I woke up.  Wondering what it meant, I considered some of the major events that have happened over the last few months, the great fight for gun rights in the face of increasing violence throughout the country, the run on gun stores and ammunition, the international threats to peace, and so on.   
 
Later, when I checked the news, I learned Governor Cuomo is pushing through legislation to expand  abortion 'rights'.  I'm not interested in condemning Cuomo or rating his Catholicism, or even calling for his excommunication.  Lately the positions of some of these folks move me more to a deeper repentance and desire to make reparation than to waste time condemning them.  Of course, Catholic bishops are rightly concerned about religious freedom and how such legislation will impact Catholic services, as well as fearing persecution.  I'm not so worried about that as I am that we are consciously expanding the 'right' to kill - to kill babies, children!  Soon, the disabled, the mentally ill, and the elderly will follow.  Little by little we are going towards it.  The Netherlands does it... Belgium does it... 
 
Just remember, "A vain hope for safety is the gun."
“The third part of the secret refers to Our Lady's words: ‘If not [Russia] will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred; the Holy Father will have much to suffer; various nations will be annihilated' (13-VII-1917).
The third part of the secret is a symbolic revelation, referring to this part of the Message, conditioned by whether we accept or not what the Message itself asks of us: ‘If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, etc.'.
Since we did not heed this appeal of the Message, we see that it has been fulfilled, Russia has invaded the world with her errors. And if we have not yet seen the complete fulfilment of the final part of this prophecy, we are going towards it little by little with great strides. If we do not reject the path of sin, hatred, revenge, injustice, violations of the rights of the human person, immorality and violence, etc.
 

And let us not say that it is God who is punishing us in this way; on the contrary it is people themselves who are preparing their own punishment. In his kindness God warns us and calls us to the right path, while respecting the freedom he has given us; hence people are responsible” - Sr. Lucia of Fatima
 
Put no trust in princes,
In mortal men in whom there is no help. - Psalm 146

 


A king is not saved by his army,
nor a warrior preserved by his strength.
A vain hope for safety is the horse;
despite its power it cannot save.

The Lord looks on those who revere him,
on those who hope in his love,
to rescue their souls from death,
to keep them alive in famine. - Psalm 33


 

The Feast of St. Antony of Egypt



Many of us think St. Antony's life is part of the ancient past, that his style of monasticism no longer exists.  That may be true to some extent; modern people are more or less unable to observe the rule of the original monastics, yet the example and counsel of the fathers is not isolated in antiquity, nor is it irrelevant to contemporary men and women.  Human nature is the same today as it was then.  The saints live today as they have throughout the centuries and for eternity.  They remain present to us, not as mummies in a museum, but they are alive in the Communion of Saints... their words are alive and can be understood and interpreted for our lives today.  (I may not have expressed that very well, but I needed an introduction for the following...)
Some brothers came to find Abba Anthony to tell him about the visions they were having, and to find out from him if they were true or if they came from the demons. They had a donkey, which died on the way. When they reached the place where the old man was, he said to them before they could ask him anything, 'How was it that the little donkey died on the way here?' They said, 'How do you know about that, Father?' And he told them, 'The demons showed me what happened.' So they said, 'That was what we came to question you about, for fear we were being deceived, for we have visions which often turn out to be true.' Thus the old man convinced them, by the example of the donkey, that their visions came from the demons.

Abba Anthony said, 'I saw the snares that the enemy spreads out over the world and I said groaning, "What can get through from such snares?" Then I heard a voice saying to me, "Humility."'

The brothers praised a monk before Abba Anthony. When the monk came to see him, Anthony wanted to know how he would bear insults; and seeing that he could not bear them at all, he said to him, 'You are like a village magnificently decorated on the outside, but destroyed from within by robbers.'
"The monks praised a brother to Antony. Antony went to him and tested him to see if he could endure being insulted. When he saw that he could not bear it, he said to him, 'You are like a house with a highly decorated outside, but burglars have stolen all the furniture by the back door.'" - The Desert Fathers

Ne'er do wells...



"Who would not have judged that poor Lazarus was supremely miserable and the rich man quite happy and content? Yet such was not the case, for that rich man with all his wealth suffered more than poor Lazarus tormented by his leprosy. For the rich man's selfish will was alive, and this is the source of all suffering. But in Lazarus this will was dead and his will was so alive in me that he found refreshment and consolation in his pain. He had been thrown out by others, especially by the rich man, and was neither cleansed nor cared for by them, but I provided that the senseless animals should lick his sores. And you see how at the end of their lives Lazarus has eternal life and the rich man is in hell." - The Dialogue, Catherine of Siena

The French War in Mali. The Hostages in Algiers. Security Tightened in Paris.


While we are preoccupied with our gun rights.

The headlines I've used for this post might be missed by many of us in the U.S. these days.  I pulled the following from Paris Daily Photo:
I don' t know if you've been following the French news (which happen to be international news too!) recently you know that we have been "invited" by Mali to fight Jihadists in the North of the country. The "war", as the news channels now call it, has started and consequently we fear retaliation in France. That's why as of Monday, if you walk down the streets of Paris, you will see soldiers everywhere, and especially in busy areas or Paris landmarks (like on the Champs Elysées, where I took this photo yesterday - Wednesday). Your bag will also be searched in most stores. - Eric Tenin
 
Prayers for France and our friends in Europe. 

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

The power of a smile...



The smile of this unborn baby disarmed the mother, and she could no longer consider aborting her child.  This story speaks to the power of an ultrasound image and 3D imaging to turn the hearts of all mothers back to their children.  Likewise, it speaks to us of the cries of all the disabled - unborn and born.
A mother was unable to abort her severely disabled son despite doctors' warnings after seeing her baby's smile in a 3D scan picture.

Katyia Rowe was told her baby's brain had not formed properly and that he would never walk or talk and would need 24-hour care.

But after seeing real-time moving scans of him smiling, blowing bubbles, kicking and waving his arms she made the heartbreaking decision to go through with the birth.

Tragically Lucian, as she named him, died nine hours after he was born. -finish reading here.
 
Thinking of this story last night, I couldn't help but wonder what happens to the remains of aborted babies?  Are they discarded like kitchen waste?  I shuddered to think that.  I prayed, and I also begged forgiveness for my sins - especially my sin of looking the other way, of not thinking about "stuff like that".

Many of us worry so much about our self defense, yet we neglect to defend the most defenseless amongst us, the unborn child, the disabled and mentally ill, and the "ne’er-do-wells"...

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Vocation crisis spreading...



There seems to be a shortage of Imams.

What if the American dream corrupts Islam too?  What if materialism eats away at Mohammedanism?  Imagine, no religion too.  Fallen away Muslims.  Dissident Muslims.

Perhaps communists secretly infiltrated the Imam-seminaries?  Or the gays?  What if?  If not, why not?  If the shortage continues, maybe they should permit women Imams... Memaws?  Where are the feminists?

Whatever, Mosques are hiring:
The Spokane Islamic Center wants something mosques all across the country are seeking and can't seem to find: an educated, bilingual, experienced imam who understands American culture.

According to the report "The American Mosque 2011" by University of Kentucky professor Ihsan Bagby, half of all mosques in the U.S. have no full-time staff, and only 44 percent of imams work as paid, full-time leaders.

"What we're looking for is hard to find; it's a hot commodity," El-Aarag said. "One option is maybe downgrading our requirements and finding someone with not as much experience, someone we can help and work with." - Read more here.
 
A note of caution:  On "downgrading our requirements" - not the best idea, the Jesuits tried that and it didn't work so well.

 
I don't know!
I think it could be a veiled
citicism of something 
traditionally Catholic,
but I'm just not sure.

This is good: Monsignor Pope on the painful divisions in the Church:

"There is, to me, a certain sad division in the Church that has set up in recent decades that is rooted in what I think is ultimately a false dichotomy. It makes me particularly sad because I respect and esteem people in both camps. And though I hold them both in my heart, they barely speak to one another and hold one another in deep suspicion and sometimes outright contempt.
I’ll tell you what, perhaps the most discouraging thing about being a blogger and being out there is not the scorn of the secular. It is the death by a thousand cuts executed by some (thank God not most) fellow believers who nit-pick, and object that something I say is not said just they way they want it said. This is very painful and part of the cost of being out there. But think about it now, how many give way under such scorn, and fear to be “out there.” - Death By a Thousand Cuts

I love this priest - I don't say that about many.  Oh God, please don't let him become a celebrity priest!

Deaf and dumb... a very sad story.



The story is unbelievable.

If it is true, then it is very sad, and very scary.  These poor men must not have understood that they have a soul, and that God exists, and that he loves them:  That what is invisible is important... eye has not seen, ear has not heard... 
Identical twins have been killed by Belgian doctors in a unique case under the country's euthanasia laws.

The 45-year-old brothers from the Antwerp region were born deaf and sought euthanasia after finding that they would also soon go blind. They told doctors they were unable to bear the thought of not being able to see each other again.
 
The twins, who have not been named but have been pictured on Belgian TV, had spent their entire lives together, sharing a flat and working as cobblers.

Belgium's 'Het Laatste Nieuws' newspaper reported at the weekend that doctors at Brussels University Hospital in Jette "euthanised" the two men by lethal injection last month.
 
Under Belgian law, euthanasia is allowed if those wishing to end their lives are able to make their wishes clear and a doctor judges that they are suffering unbearable pain.
David Dufour, the doctor who presided over the euthanasia, said the twins had died together and had taken the decision in "full conscience".

"They were very happy. It was a relief to see the end of their suffering... - Source
 
Blood and water flowing from the side of Christ as a font of mercy for us, forgive them for they know not what they are doing.
 

Ordinary Time...



I love Ordinary Time.

I love the time in between festivals and feast days and holy days - outside of holiday time, if you will.   It could perhaps even be called regular time for me.  Just coming out of Christmastide, I can see how disintegrated my thoughts van become, my posts demonstrate that.  Too much levity, humor that gets just a little too cutting, sarcastic, or just too critical.  Today's Gospel opens Ordinary Time with, "Repent, and believe in the Gospel!"  What a wonderful invitation!  "If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts!"

The liturgical meaning of Ordinary Time.
The Latin Tempus Per Annum ("time throughout the year") is rendered into English as "Ordinary Time." Many sources, online and in print, suggest that Ordinary Time gets its name from the word ordinal, meaning "numbered," since the Sundays of Ordinary Time, as in other seasons, are expressed numerically. However, others suggest the etymology of "Ordinary Time" is related to our word "ordinary" (which itself has a connotation of time and order, derived from the Latin word ordo). Ordinary Time occurs outside of other liturgical time periods, periods in which specific aspects of the mystery of Christ are celebrated. According to The General Norms for the Liturgical Year and the Calendar, the days of Ordinary Time, especially the Sundays, "are devoted to the mystery of Christ in all its aspects."  Ordinary Time encompasses that part of the Christian year that does not fall within the seasons of Advent, Christmas, Lent, or Easter.
 
The greatness of Ordinary Time.
It seems to me many traditional liturgists hate the term Ordinary Time used to designate the liturgical season outside Advent, Christmas, Lent, and Paschaltide. Other Catholics, including some priests think of it as a sort of boring season. In fact my pastor once described it as a time to prepare for Lent. As we know, Lent is a time to prepare for Easter. With that type of thinking, one lives one's life in perpetual anticipation of another more colorful and fulfilling period of time, thus missing the present moment. Others may disagree, but I think Ordinary Time is a wonderful time to appreciate what St. Jose-Maria Escriva calls "the greatness of ordinary life"
.
Let me stress this point: it is in the simplicity of your ordinary work, in the monotonous details of each day, that you have to find the secret, which is hidden from so many, of something great and new: Love. - Furrow, 489
 Some people have lamented the term as if it somehow denigrates the liturgical season outside of Advent, Christmas, Lent, and Easter season. Interestingly many people who dislike the term also seem to object to the Ordinary Form of Mass - preferring the traditional Latin Mass, or Extraordinary Form instead.

The ordinary, or little way.

Ordinary, normal life is the basis for sanctity - Christ lived most of his ordinary life in normal circumstances - so unremarkable there wasn't even anything to write about. The Roman Catholic Church does NOT place heavy demands upon the faithful. We are simply expected to keep the commandments, including the precepts of the Church: Go to Mass on Sunday, fulfill what used to be called our Easter duty - communion (confession recommended) at least once a year, say our morning and evening prayers, observe the rules of fast and abstinence - there aren't many, support the Church and her mission, love one another, give alms, and so on. You don't have to know or follow every utterance the Pope makes at a Wednesday audience, or put into practice every ideal he recommends in an interview. You don't have to believe in or follow what mystics and apparitions tell you to do. You don't have to wear chapel veils or walk around town staring at the street lest you see some bag of flesh wiggling itself in your face. You don't have to know or even like Latin. 

If you're married - stay married. If you're single - stay chaste. If your right hand causes you to sin, then stop using it for that. If you like to drink and get drunk - either don't drink so much or don't drink at all. In other words, use common sense.

If you aren't attracted to Eucharistic adoration, then visit the Blessed Sacrament in a church or chapel which doesn't have adoration.  Stay longer after communion and adore him in your soul.  Pray at home with the scriptures or something. If you don't go to daily Mass, it's not a sin. If you have a hard time praying the Rosary, then pray the Angelus or pray the Little Office or some Marian prayer you do find you are able to pray.

Anything done out of love is important, however small it might appear. God has come to us, even though we are miserable creatures, and he has told us that he loves us: “My delight is to be among the sons of men.” Our Lord tells us that everything is valuable — those actions which from a human point of view we regard as extraordinary and those which seem unimportant. Nothing is wasted. No man is worthless to God. All of us are called to share the kingdom of heaven — each with his own vocation: in his home, his work, his civic duties and the exercise of his rights. - Christ Is Passing By, JoseMaria Escriva

 

Christ came to call and save sinners... ordinary people.


Art: Annunciation, Collier

My apologies!



I really fell in with the scandal mongers this past weekend - I'm so sorry.

I'm a pig. 

So are the other sites I linked to.

Why'd I fall for that crap?  Again?

Vain rejoicing in moral goods... vain rejoicing in stats.

Mea culpa.

Sites to watch out for... I'm working on the list.

Be assured, this blog is at the top ...

 

Sunday, January 13, 2013

I know - I'm a libtard - I watched the Golden Globes -

So funny!


Instead of Downton...

I wish Jodie Foster would have just kept it to herself - but that's just fine.  I still love her.

I'm so glad Julianne Moore won.  So glad.


Anyway.  Downtown is rerun on another local PBS channel Wednesday night.  Besides, I already know Carson has a thing for you know who.  Bates was framed.  Matthew saves.  Poor Edith! 

That's all.

G'nite.

Stop Sunday Shopping


Action Alert!


We will be assembling each Sunday at noon at the Mall of America main entrance beginning the first Sunday of Lent - placards will be provided.  Look for more instruction in the days ahead.  America used to prohibit Sunday shopping - the time has come to do it again!


 
 
 
 
Singers and music ministry groups especially needed for non-stop singing of religious-inspired patriotic songs.

Nun's habits on sale



I saw this in the Sunday Newspaper ad-bundle.  Tops sold separately, but $7 fits the vow of poverty bill perfectly.

On the reverse was an ad for a Pastel Pearl Rosary from the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, a suggested donation of $12 is indicated.  A good reminder to pray the rosary every day, if nothing else - I'm serious about this one.

 
 
In the same packet I noticed this Songbird Christmas Tree.
I thought, "What a lovely idea for that special birdwatcher!"
 
 
Remember:  Don't shop on Sundays.

It's an evangelization breakthrough!

Every damn Tuesday
I get these obsequious Tweets -
can I block him?


 
 
 
I tellya!  It's an eee-vangelization breakthrough!

-What is, Poodle?

The pope on Twitter - it's an eee-vangelization breakthrough, I tellya.

-Is that the new eee-vangelization Poodle, er the old one?

I think it's the new one, hon.

-What's the difference?  Did they rewrite something?  Is there an indulgence per Tweet?
 


Editor's note:  Seriously, I think it is wonderful - it validates so many... so many tweet people online.  Call me old fashioned, but I still think prayers for the Holy Father are better.

 

 
Nah!  He doesn't tweet
excathedra.