Dads are so important ...

Dad's home!

A boy needs a dad.

Girls do too.

So do poodles.

Dad's need to come home ...

and be there ...

to love their wife and kids.

Don't ever go away ...

stay home.


Song for this post here.

St. Monica

St. Augustine and St. Monica

The virtue of temperance.

Celebrated as patron of alcoholics, St. Monica seems to have had an inordinate attachment to wine as an adolescent, yet she wasn't a drunk.  She's just the patron of alcoholics. Her maid scolded her for sneaking wine - which she enjoyed. She just stopped drinking because her maid called her on it.  Pretty much.

That said, St. Monica would surely be a great intercessor to help one obtain the virtue of temperance.  Temperance can be broader than simply abstaining from, or tempering one's use of alcohol.  One can be intemperate in many things, food, watching TV, reading romance novels, surfing online ... then there is the problem of intemperate speech.  

There's a poem for that.

I RANTED to the knave and fool,
But outgrew that school,
Would transform the part,
Fit audience found, but cannot rule
My fanatic heart.
I sought my betters: though in each
Fine manners, liberal speech,
Turn hatred into sport,
Nothing said or done can reach
My fanatic heart,
Out of Ireland have we come.
Great hatred, little room,
Maimed us at the start.
I carry from my mother's womb
A fanatic heart.

William Butler Yeats

 What?

The word temperance is derived from the Latin temperantia, which was used by Cicero to translate Plato's sophrosune, which meant restraint of the appetites and passions in accordance with right reason. As seen before, temperance is one of the four cardinal virtues, that moralists consider the most fundamental because it is the one on which the other three depend.  In the New Testament, the Greek noun sophrosune, is variously translated as "soberness" or "sobriety" when it occurs in the Acts of the Apostles and St. Paul. (1) The adjective sophron, translated indiscriminately as "sober... temperate...discreet," is listed among the attributes proper to people of mature age and to leaders in society. - Fr. Hardon

Crazy Catholic stuff online ...

"Don't you dare try to tell me..."

I've been fascinated with devout Catholic crackpots all of my life.

I really have.  Like the Fatima group organizer from Boston in the early 1970's - a big redhead woman named Barbara - she practically did a background check on anyone who was asked to lead the rosary during the monthly all-night vigil.  She was a big mouth who sounded a lot like some of the whistle-blower types currently harassing the Boston Archdiocese today.  Not that anything is wrong with that.

 
To be fair, she was right about a lot of things that were wrong, but she was just so arrogant and self-righteous - even fanatic in the way she exploded in the listener's face - especially about Fatima:   "Don't you dare try to tell me...".  It was rather off-putting to ordinary Catholics and parish priests especially, and the behavior carried over into all of her relationships.  Mention her name and parish priests rolled their eyes.

“Portuguese, a very complicated language, darling. Four thousand irregular verbs.”

Barnhardt thinks one of the Soros boys could be the Antichrist.

George Soros is the largest single landowner in Argentina, 

owning over 1.2 million acres, and over 150,000 head of cattle. 

 Yore also reports that Soros has massive financial holdings in Argentina as well. 

 Given this, it would be naive to think that Soros and Bergoglio’s 

relationship began in March of ARSH 2013.

These days the very, very pious fishwives are online. Every parish has always had such devout meddlers - not always women either. They read a lot and know all the rubrics and instruct the pastor and new assistants how to do stuff.  Like the mayor in the film Chocolat did.

Mayor of Lansquenet instructing the parish priest on his homily.

As one commenter noted in another post of mine:

"Maybe these lay bloggers missed their vocation to the priesthood?Maybe there should be a synod on married priest so that all these lay bloggers can be the priests that they always wanted to be. After all these lay bloggers are more catholic than Pope Benedict."

He has a point.  A little bit of knowledge/experience can be as dangerous as a lot of knowledge without pastoral practice - you can begin to believe you know more than the Church.  This happens with people who tried their vocations in religious or priestly formation, and or studied theology and maybe even got a degree or two.  I will appropriate a few thoughts from Pope Francis to help explain what I think happens:

“When a person feels a a bit more experienced in the spiritual life or religious 'practice', he begins to appropriate faculties which are not his own, but which are the Lord’s. The original awe seems to fade, and this is the basis for a sort of lay-clericalism - in thought and action for those convinced of their righteousness.  What then prevails is a formal adherence to rules and to mental schemes, which seem to them to impart a certain authority - as if they were arbiter of what is right or wrong.  When we see what appears unorthodox or too permissive or lax in religious observance or catechetical instruction, we think we can set things right, that we are the protagonists. And if that person is faithful and devout, he ends up believing that he is separate from ordinary Catholics, that he owns the doctrine, that he not only owns power - but is obliged to wield it." (My edit)

"What new deviltry" is this?

Vox, please say this is not true. Please.

   I speak from experience.  

Today is the anniversary of the election of Albino Luciani, the first John Paul ...

I remember it well.

In hindsight, perhaps there was something propitious about his election on this date, the feast of Our Lady of Czestochowa, Queen and Protectress of Poland, considering his successor, St. John Paul II would come from Poland.

I think Pope John Paul I would have been very much like our current Pope Francis - his spiritually very much focused upon the mercy of God.  Even back then, I expect he would have been strongly opposed by the remnant Jansenist element in the Church.

Another historical photo

marking Papal devotion to

Our Lady of Czestochowa. 

Pius XII, Castel Gondolfo chapel of

Our Lady of Czestochowa.

I'm happy the Franciscan-papal critics are connecting the spirituality of JPI and Francis, albeit some sites reference the articles rather disparagingly; despite the snipes, they bring to our attention the wonderful humility of Papa Luciani.  I'll share a bit below.

“I once read a homily by then cardinal Albino Luciani, later Pope John Paul I, about Father Leopold Mandic´, who had just been beatified by Pope Paul VI,” Bergoglio says. “He described something that was very similar to what I just told you. “You know, we are all sinners,” Luciani said on that occasion. “Father Leopold knew that very well. We must take this sad reality of ours into account: no one can avoid sin, small or great, for very long. But,’ as Saint Francis de Sales said, ‘if you have a little donkey and along the road it falls onto the cobblestones, what should you do?’ You certainly don’t go there with a stick to beat it, poor little thing; it’s already unfortunate enough. You must take it by the halter and say: ‘Up, let’s take to the road again . . . Now we will get back on the road, and we will pay more attention next time.’ This is the system, and Father Leopold applied this system in full. A priest, a friend of mine, who went to confess to him, said: ‘Father, you are too generous. I am glad to have gone to confession to you, but it seems to me that you are too generous.’ And Father Leopold said: ‘But who has been generous, my son? It was the Lord who was generous; I wasn’t the one who died for our sins, it was the Lord who died for our sins. How could he have been more generous with the thief, with others, than this!’” This was the homily of then Cardinal Luciani on Leopold Mandic´, who was later proclaimed a saint by John Paul II.”

[...]No human sin —however serious—can prevail over or limit mercy. After serving for several years as the Bishop of Vittorio Veneto, Albino Luciani held some training exercises for parish priests, and when commenting on the parable of the Prodigal Son once said this about the Father: “He waits. Always. And it is never too late. That’s what he’s like, that’s how he is . . . he’s a father. A father waiting at the doorway, who sees us when we are still far off, who is moved, and who comes running toward us, embraces us, and kisses us tenderly . . . Our sin is like a jewel that we present to him to obtain the consolation of forgiveness . . . Giving a gift of jewels is a noble thing to do, and it is not a defeat but a joyous victory to let God win!”” - John Paul I and Francis

How can anyone condemn the popes as they do today, rejecting, resisting, condemning their fidelity to Christ and the Gospel in the proclamation of mercy?  Luciani's successor John Paul II also noted this lack of confidence in modern man:

The present-day mentality, more perhaps than that of people in the past, seems opposed to a God of mercy, and in fact tends to exclude from life and to remove from the human heart the very idea of mercy. The word and the concept of "mercy" seem to cause uneasiness in man ... Bl. John Paul II

St. Leopold Mandic, pray for us.

I pray to St. Leopold and John Paul I for the grace of an ever deeper repentance, heartfelt contrition and to find a good confessor.

"They" have now finally turned against Pope Benedict XVI ...

Talk about trolls.

I'm not really surprised.  Catholics against Pope Francis have now condemned Pope Benedict for resigning, based upon excerpts from a new interview and book to be released at the end of August.  In part, Benedict said his retirement was because he was exhausted and couldn't face another grueling trip.  Some sources say that was his sole reason.  Fact is, Pope Benedict felt a need to clarify his reason(s) for retirement to dispel rumors he was forced to do so in the first place.  Read an honest report of what Benedict said he did and why he did it here.  His critics are commenting on pull quotes - even before the book is released.

It's amazing.  One know-it-all asks 'is this the Joseph Ratzinger we know'?  An understanding person with the most minute degree of compassion and insight may have anticipated such a move by Pope Benedict.  Several times he wished to retire as Cardinal Prefect of the CDF, yet stayed on because of Pope John Paul II's example and the Holy Father's desire that he keep working.  Benedict is an old man who has worked extremely hard all of his life, and his frailty became more and more evident as Pope.

Who are these people to condemn him or mock him in retirement?  Calling his interview 'vacuous' and suggesting it is full of lies inspired by the Franciscan pontificate.  Suggesting  'a donkey is wearing a lion's coat.'  While calling the interview and book 'deviltry'.  Benedict's critics now say he is no longer worthy of respect, that he is a disgrace.  They have pompously declared: Benedict XVI betrayed us. He was a coward who fled.

How do these people get that far out?

The Waiting Room and Online Trolls.

I've been spending a lot of time in waiting rooms...

I take a friend in to the doctor's office for stuff, now that he is old, and I sit and wait because he of course needs a ride home.  Some days the appointments take hours, so I'm able to pray, including saying a rosary and a chaplet - which aids recollection when it's a bit noisy.  It's a very contemplative experience to practice the presence of God everywhere.  Yesterday I was surrounded by Muslims who speak very fast, so I prayed my rosary and hid the crucifix while doing so - but some of them noted the beads, partially exposed, as they slipped through my hands.  No one yelled Allahu Akbar to interrupt my prayer, so I closed my eyes and kept praying.  After I was finished, it seemed most everyone was gone except for one or two others waiting for their relative or friend.

After a couple of hours I decided to read the Joel Stein article in this week's Time on How Trolls Are Ruining the Internet.  I felt 'convicted' and kind of sad afterwards.  I've been a troll - sort of.  I remember when I first started blogging I criticized other bloggers and authors I did not know because other people did it and I thought I'd add my critique.  I had read some of their stuff and didn't really like it.  It seemed to me their writing was an easy way for them to make money from conversion stories, as well as making a living by exploiting pop-Catholicism catering to the youth ministry market, why I thought that was a 'bad' thing I'm no longer sure.  I also got attention by using their name in my posts.  I liked the attention.  When confronted by these writers, I quickly realized they were real people, real writers with purpose, and I was being totally unfair and unkind and a huge A-hole.  I apologized and tried to avoid that type of blogging.

It's good to be always repenting.

Since then I've done my best to avoid that style of writing and posting.  Not always successfully.  When I trip up, I try to make amends, apologize, and or remove the post.  I think I'm only a little better, because I still make fun of some crackpot bloggers or those who seem especially mercenary - but not so much now days - I hope.  That said, I really do continue to screw up.  Sorry Ann Barnhardt and Toronto Catholic Choristers.  My apologies to the Priestly Fraternity of CafePress as well.  I promise to try even harder to do better.

That said, I couldn't help but think of The Shea-Fisher terminations at the NCRegister.  I never thought of them as trolls - they struck me as pretty much the opposite, actually.  Their posts often took those I considered to be trolls themselves, to the woodshed, as it were.  Their response, though at times a bit 'cruel' seemed to me to fit the crimes of others.  (Someone once said "The 'offended' frequently regard honesty as cruelty.")* Their discourse sometimes seemed an appropriate response to the oftentimes coarse condemnations hurled their way.  Know what I mean?  In other words, it was often a fair fight, but I digress.

Why do trolls be trolls?

Why do they do that stuff?  The Time article kind of explains what's behind it all.  I have long thought that some people are just nuts, misfits in life without a voice until social media came along.  I also think there is a lot of drinking and posting that goes on.  The anonymity stuff is especially hypocritical and dishonest - which pretty much demonstrates a genuine lack of self-knowledge, humility, and someone living in denial.  In a way which reminds me the line from Fine Young Cannibals song Johnny Come Home:

"What is wrong in my life
That I must get drunk every night?"

At least Johnny knew something was wrong - I'm not sure a lot of troll types could admit something is actually wrong with them.  The 'hell is other people' thing, I suppose.


“Finally we have a platform that’s democratizing and we can make ourselves heard, and then you’re harassed for advocating for yourself, and that shuts you down again.” - Lindy West


So anyway - here are a couple of excerpts from the Time article I thought were especially insightful ...

A 2014 study published in the psychology journal Personality and Individual Differences found that the approximately 5% of Internet users who self-identified as trolls scored extremely high in the dark tetrad of personality traits: narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavellianism and, especially, sadism.

But maybe that’s just people who call themselves trolls. And maybe they do only a small percentage of the actual trolling. “Trolls are portrayed as aberrational and antithetical to how normal people converse with each other. And that could not be further from the truth,” says Whitney Phillips, a literature professor at Mercer University and the author of This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship Between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture. “These are mostly normal people who do things that seem fun at the time that have huge implications. You want to say this is the bad guys, but it’s a problem of us.”

A 40-year-old dad and lawyer who lives outside Tampa, he says he has become addicted to the attention. “I was totally ruined when I started this. My ex-wife and I had just separated. She decided to start a new, more exciting life without me,” he says. Then his best friend, who he used to do pranks with as a kid, killed himself. Now he’s got an illness that’s keeping him home.

Marty says his trolling has been empowering. - Time

Think about that.  Makes you wonder about some of those bloggers who are really part-time trolls, some even brandish guns to display their 'power' and toughness.  I'm thinking many are pretty much normal people who let themselves go online, venting and ranting and raging.

“The Internet is the realm of the coward. These are people who are all sound and no fury.” - Megan Koester

Actually, I think they have the fury, and though they feel empowered - they experience their powerlessness as soon as they go offline.


Read the article - if nothing else it may be helpful as an examination of conscience.

George Tooker

*Actually Cary Grant said women think a man's honesty is cruelty - or something like that.

Song for this post here.

Pope Francis leads the Rosary for Italian earthquake victims ...

Much to pray for.

The victims of earthquakes in Italy and Myanmar, as well as those suffering from the floods in Louisiana, those suffering loss to the wild fires in the west.

So many to pray for.

Madonna delle Grazie, Amatrice

"The town is no more." - Sergio Pirozzi, Mayor of Amatrice

Pray the rosary every day.

Isabel Flores de Oliva ... Santa Rosa de Lima

The saint who fascinated me from my youth.

I wanted to do penance like St. Rose.  But I couldn't.  Saints like Rose and Martin de Porres did horrible penance.  I sometimes wonder if they did so in union with the slaves and indigenous people who suffered so much brutality in colonial times?  St. Martin used to have a servant scourge him bloody in the cellar of the convent bell tower before the friars awakened.  Today the devil mis-characterizes these 'excesses', which in some strange sense of inversion, may excite an erotic fascination with pain.  Sometimes I wonder if it could account for the tendency towards S&M, B&D sex some gay priests and religious seem to be more tempted to when they fall from grace these days?  (I wrote about that once before here.)

But I digress.  Sorry for tainting a post on the lovely Santa Rosa.

Originally it was St. Rose depicted receiving

the rosary from Our Lady.

The Italians designated Catherine of Siena 

for the Pompeii image instead.

Shea and Fisher taking it on the road ...

BREAKING:

Two National Catholic Register staff writers have been fired 

and are now facing possible public flogging shaming

 after they allegedly had opinions and were outspoken about them.

I bet they go to the Remnant now.

What?

Just kidding.

NCR maybe?

So.  They are writers.  Writers usually don't stay in one place forever - especially if they 'rock the boat'.  As Martha Stewart would say, "It's a good thing!"

Congratulations and best wishes to both Simcha Fisher and Mark Shea ... Amy Welborn is living proof there is life outside the EWTN universe.  (LarryD too - look how his career took off after leaving Patheos.)  Not to worry ...

Who can turn the world on with their smile? 

Who can take a nothing day, and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile? 

Well it's you guys, and you should know it 

With each glance and every little movement you show it 

Love is all around, no need to waste it 

You can have your own sites, why don't you take it 

You're gonna make it after all 

You're gonna make it on your own!

What?

I only read Fisher once or twice, maybe even, thrice, but I'm not all that interested in mommy-blogs or women's issues (not that there is anything wrong with that) - which is one reason why I don't often read Aleteia Keys, except to harass Fernandez occasionally.  That said, Fisher will do fine - it's a woman's world these days.

Mark Shea will do well also - I think he's a good writer, I like his calling a spade a spade and his honesty.  Someone has to call those people out when they fasten their phylacteries a bit too tight and swing their tassels around the blogosphere threatening excommunication and hell fire.


Song for this post here.

All Catholics who owned books by the accused 

are asked to burn them “effective immediately.”

-source-

H/T Badger Catholic

Ave Regina Caelorum

Ave, Regina Caelorum,

Ave, Domina Angelorum:

Salve, radix, salve, porta

Ex qua mundo lux est orta:

Gaude, Virgo gloriosa,

Super omnes speciosa,

Vale, o valde decora,

Et pro nobis Christum exora.

A voice crying out, a light shinning in the darkness ...

Monsignor Pope**

Msgr. Pope is beginning to sound like Dietrich Bonhoeffer* and Alfred Delp*.

A friend sent me a link to an article Pope wrote for the NCRegister, Comfort Catholicism Has To Go; It's Time to Prepare for Persecution.  What a wake up call!  Seriously.

Be sober.

Darn.  I love the alternative to that - but it's the wrong approach to things, as Monsignor points out so convincingly that I think I have to go back to confession.  (I wish he was my confessor.)

Monsignor writes:

We are at war for our own souls and the souls of people we love. We are at war for the soul of this culture and nation. And like any soldier, we must train to fight well.

I knew that.  But I've gotten a bit bored with the idea ... call it acedia, apathy, sloth ... I've succumbed - or come very close to it.  I've been so tempted to give up.  Monsignor's article helps me to see that.

There is a growing consternation among some Catholics that the Church, at least in her leadership, is living in the past. It seems there is no awareness that we are at war and that Catholics need to be summoned to sobriety, increasing separation from the wider culture, courageous witness and increasing martyrdom. 

It is long past dark in our culture, but in most parishes and dioceses it is business as usual and there is anything but the sober alarm that is really necessary in times like these.

Scripture says, Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war, and my fingers for battle (Psalm 144:1). Preparing people for war — a moral and spiritual war, not a shooting war — should include a clear setting forth of the errors of our time, and a clear and loving application of the truth to error and light to darkness. 

But there is little such training evident in Catholic circles today where, in the average parish, there exists a sort of shy and quiet atmosphere — a fear of addressing “controversial” issues lest someone be offended, or the parish be perceived as “unwelcoming.” 

But, if there ever was a time to wear soft garments, it is not now. [...] It is zero-dark-thirty in our post-Christian culture. And while we may wish to blame any number of factors for the collapse, we cannot exclude ourselves. We who are supposed to be the light of the world, with Christ shining in us, have preferred to hide our light under a basket and lay low. The ruins of our families and culture are testimony to the triumph of error and the suppression of the truth. - Finish reading here.

*Alfred Delp, S.J.

Executed for speaking in open opposition 

to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime.

*Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Evangelical minister and theologian executed 

because of his opposition to Hitler.

**Pray for Monsignor Pope.

Acedia

Donald Trump's new campaign manager Kellyanne Conway ...

Trump has "expressed his regret publicly and said,

 'If I have caused you personal pain 

-- that can include me, that can include you'

 -- that he regrets that," Conway said. - CNN