Go to Joseph.

   Remember, O most chaste spouse of the Virgin Mary, 

that never was it known 

that anyone who implored your help 

and sought your intercession were left unassisted.
 Full of confidence in your power 

I fly unto you and beg your protection.
 Despise not O Guardian of the Redeemer

 my humble supplication, but in your bounty, 

hear and answer me. Amen.

    O dearest St. Joseph, 

I consecrate myself to your honor and give myself to you, 

that you may always be my father, 

my protector and my guide in the way of salvation.

Take all my concerns 

into your most pure heart.

Be with me living,

be with me dying,

obtain for me a favorable

judgment from Jesus,

my merciful savior.

Amen.

Thank you.

S. Salvador de Horta

San Salvador, pray for us.

In a week ...

God knows all about you ...

“Do not be surprised if you fall every day and do not surrender. Stand your ground bravely and you may be sure that your guardian angel will respect your endurance. A fresh, warm wound is easier to heal than those that are old, neglected, and festering, and that need extensive treatment, surgery, bandaging and cauterization. Long neglect can render many of them incurable. However, all things are possible with God (cf. Mt. 19:26).” St. John Climacus

Was Kellyanne Conway's toaster bugged?

Kellyanne Conway's housekeeper demonstrates how a toaster can be bugged.

In this exclusive video, Mrs. Piedad Figueroa, Kellyanne Conway’s housekeeper, demonstrates why this toaster will not work properly, due to the hidden bugging device inside. A device which self destructs upon discovery to escape detection and/or to destroy forensic evidence of surveillance.

The name of the rose and other religious dubia ... curiositas.

It's a fun past time, maybe a cool hobby, it could even be the beginning of a great career in writing and film making - if your're good at it, but it's just intrigue and conspiracy theories, leading to speculation and even gossip, while the pursuit of such knowledge may even involve the vice of curiositas ... Although I may be wrong.

Rather than some outdated holdover from the Middle Ages, the vice of curiositas is alive and well. Indeed, one might go so far as to say the Internet made it again a defining vice of our time.

For the medieval schoolmen, curiositas (let us stick to the Latin to avoid contemporary connotations) did not concern knowledge in and of itself, but rather the pursuit of knowledge. Thomas Aquinas thought that knowledge is in and of itself always good, since any act of knowing “feeds” truth to the intellect, which brings the intellect, and hence the soul, ever closer to perfection. Yet Aquinas thought the pursuit of knowledge could sometimes be wrongful, much in the same way as bread retains its nourishing value even if wrongfully pursued by a gluttonous eater on a full stomach. The analogy is apt—Aquinas believed in such a thing as an intellectual appetite—but a limited one. After all, the glutton sins because he eats beyond satiety. But we do not usually acknowledge the existence of a point of intellectual satiety beyond which we must not go. How can knowledge be pursued wrongfully, indeed sinfully?

In his Summa Theologiae, Aquinas points to several ways. Gossiping, or endeavoring to know about another’s private affairs. The man who seeks knowledge just so he can take pride in what he knows also engages in curiositas. Then Aquinas borrows Jerome’s harsh words against those who pursue frivolous knowledge, thereby neglecting their duties: “We see priests forsaking the gospels and the prophets, reading stage-plays, and singing the love songs of pastoral idylls.” There is also the man who pursues what far exceeds his understanding, falling into systematic error and hence no knowledge at all. Finally, there is the man who loses sight of the ultimate end of pursuing knowledge, indeed of any pursuit, God.

The virtue Aquinas opposes to curiositas is not humility, but studiousness, that is, knowledge pursued well. Neither does Aquinas condemn empirical observation or even the pursuit of difficult subjects, so long as one possesses genuine ability. - Luis Pinto de Sa

Q. Where's the basement?

A. Downstairs.

H/T to DB for the inspiration of this post. 

3/13/13

Fatima Pope

Where are all the Fatimist soothsayers?  Sacred numerologists, where art thou?

Pope Francis is still Pope.  He became Pope on March 13, 2013.  3/13/13: and he dedicated his papacy to Our Lady of Fatima, and, and, and, and?

So anyway, happy anniversary Holy Father Pope Francis!

Oh.  And Pope Benedict really resigned willingly, he made up his own mind all on his own.

I told you stop calling here

and don't ask me again - and

quit making things up about

Fatima as well.

The man that got away ...

Pier Vittorio Tondelli called chastity 

“a mystic virtue for those who have chosen it 

and perhaps the most superhuman use of sexuality."

A man can do it. 

God was graciously was putting Christians in my life who weren’t mean-spirited. They were very loving, but there was still a question that tortured Carneal: could he really be a Christian and a practicing homosexual? 

“What really kept me in turmoil is I would listen to the conservative Christian side and the liberal Christian side and both spoke with such authority. So many times I would sit in my car and beat on the steering wheel and cry, and sob, and beg God for answers,” said Carneal. 

“It was really taking a toll on my mental and emotional state. I finally just walked away from that life. I walked out of the bars. I stopped hanging around a lot of my gay friends. I stopped hanging around liberal Christians. I just started immersing myself in God’s word. That’s really where I started to get answers and peace about where God really stands on this issue,” said Carneal. 

Carneal then embraced celibacy and says he has been at peace ever since.
“I didn’t know that celibacy was an option. When I found out there were a lot of LGBT individuals who were walking away from that life and were giving their lives to Christ and choosing the path of celibacy because they wanted to please God, that really gave me hope,” said Carneal. - Source

A time comes, and a man can do it.  He might fall, but he gets up and keeps going.  He can get back up.

-source-

Time after time.

If you fall I will catch you - I'll be waiting 

Time after time.

“If a Christian wants to move forward on the road of Christian life he must fall, just as Jesus fell. It is the way of humility, yes, it also means he must take humiliation upon himself just as Jesus did”. - Pope Francis

Cicero uses the word “virility” to express character and vigor of soul... some thoughts about virility.

How can a man combat effeminacy in a genderless culture?  

"St Augustine, with extraordinary perceptiveness, described the nature of sin as follows: 'self-love to the point of contempt for God'. It was self love which drove our first parents toward the initial rebellion and then gave rise to the spread of sin throughout human history. The book of Genesis speaks of this: 'You will be like God, knowing good and evil', in other words, you yourselves will decide what is good and evil.

The only way to overcome this dimension of original sin is through a corresponding 'love for God to the point of contempt for self'. This brings us face to face with the mystery of man's redemption, and here the Holy Spirit is our guide. It is he who allows us to penetrate deeply into the 'mystery of the Cross' and at the same time to plumb the depths of evil perpetrated by man and suffered from the very beginning of history. That is what the expression 'convince the world about sin' means, and the purpose of this 'convincing' is not to condemn the world. 

If the Church, through the power of the Holy Spirit, can call evil by its name, it does so only in order to demonstrate that evil can be overcome if we open ourselves to 'love for God to the point of contempt for self. This is the fruit of Divine Mercy..." - John Paul II, Memory and Identity

And so this makes you sad, you say?

Sadness, or self-pity, is the twin sister of acedia. They are similar in some respects, but not identical. The sad person finds relief more easily, whereas the one besieged by acedia is trapped. Sadness is a temporary, part-time experience, but acedia is global and permanent. In this sense it is opposed to human nature. 

The chief symptoms of this devilish “scourge that lays waste at noon” are inner instability and the need for change (with wandering fantasies of a better place), excessive care of one’s own health (with special emphasis on one’s food), escape from manual work (with laziness and inactivity), uncontrolled activism (under the appearance of charity), neglect of the monastic practices (reducing observance to a minimum), indiscreet zeal in a few ascetic exercises (with extreme criticism of one’s neighbor), generalized discouragement (with the beginnings of a depression). - Dom Bernardo Olivera, OCSO

Effeminacy

St. Thomas includes effeminacy under the vices opposed to perseverance. It is from the Latin mollities*, which literally means “softness.” Mollities is the verb used in 1 Corinthians 6:9 which deals with the sexual sin of sodomy. It involves being inordinately passive or receptive. What St. Thomas means by persevering is when “a man does not forsake a good on account of long endurance or difficulties and toils.” An “effeminate man is one who withdraws from good on account of sorrows caused by lack of pleasures, yielding as it were to a weak motion.” Thomas states that this effeminacy is caused in two ways. First, by custom, where a man is accustomed to enjoy pleasures and it is, therefore, more difficult for him to endure the lack of them. Second, by natural disposition, less persevering through frailty of temperament, and this is where Thomas compares men with women, and also mentions the homosexual act of sodomy, and the receiver in this act as being effeminate or like a woman. 

The vice of delicacy for Thomas considers those who cannot endure toils, or anything that diminishes pleasure, and thus delicacy is a kind of effeminacy. Thomas quotes from Deuteronomy 28:56, “The tender and delicate woman, that could not go upon the ground, nor set down her foot for softness.” It may be true that some cultural prejudices are being revealed here with this comparison because a vice is a vice, whether it is found in a man or a woman, but it is also true that some vices are more perverse or disordered when found specifically in men or women. Effeminacy is more pronounced in a man than a woman because women are more susceptible to this vice. Just as the vice of drunkenness is more pronounced or perverse when found in a woman than a man. - Homiletic and Pastoral Review 

*A bit of trivia on mollities ...

18th-19th century male brothels were known as 'Molly-houses' - molly derives from mollities. Curiously, Miss Molly referred to an effeminate or homosexual male.  Which begs the question, what did Little Richard know and when did he know it?  What?

Molly-houses were often considered 

as brothels in legal proceedings.

 A male brothel, illustration by Léon Choubrac,

 included in Léo Taxil's book 

La prostitution contemporaine, 

1884, pg. 384, Plate VII.

(Friends of St. Therese

will remember Leo Taxil 

as the fraud who deceived

the Carmel of Lisieux.)

Reassessing recent posts and thinking out loud ... 

So anyway.  Recently I received a link to an article on Camille Paglia's assertion that androgyny signals the demise, and/or collapse of Western civilization - or at least that was the impression I received from the Rod Dreher article.  Interestingly enough, I came across a comment on the post which reminded readers of a sort of history of effeminacy throughout European culture, citing tights and powdered wigs, and so on.  I'm making a gloss on the whole conversation to save time, but it certainly is not a new vice - the problem in our day is convincing the amoral that it is indeed a vice - even for the 'genderless' if you will.  

The game changer in our day is that gender theory-ideology has become pervasive and widespread, and the 'prophets of doom' are correct in recognizing the threat to culture.  As the Polish Bishop Pieronek noted a few years ago, “The ideology of gender presents a threat worse than Nazism and Communism combined.”  Even Camille Paglia is right when she asserts that "androgyny becomes prevalent 'as a civilization is starting to unravel. You find it again and again and again in history.'”  It's not the apocalypse however.  We do not need to panic or run for the hills, as it were.

It seems these reports, lectures, blog posts, and so on, excite fear and dread in many people, creating a sort of 'the sky is falling' mentality - leading to despair, or at least discouragement - and a whole lot of mistrust and confusion.  People freak out.

What is lacking is faith, conversion, repentance, prayer, and confidence.  The world revolves and the cross remains the same.  The Church stands and has lived through tremendous persecutions, cultural changes, era changes, societal revolutions and evolutions, and so on. God is in charge.  Today in the Gospel, after the Transfiguration, Jesus tell the disciples, "Rise and do not be afraid."  What lay before them after that miraculous event was the Passion of Christ.  His disciples will not be cheated out of their participation in it.  That must be our attitude I think.  We need to cultivate virility and virtue in ourselves.  We need to believe God, to trust Him, to listen to Him, to follow Him.

I came across something this morning from Jeremiah.  It seemed to me a warning against fear and cowardice in the face of change, in times of upheaval, and in that fear of alienation and annihilation:   "... but of you I will not make an end.  I will chastise you as you deserve, I will not let you go unpunished.  [...]  I will restore you to health; of your wounds I will heal you, says the Lord." - Jeremiah 30: 11-17  For me at least, that passage is helpful in these days of misunderstanding and discouragement, when so many clamor and protest the evils they perceive without recognizing that even in chastisement, the Lord is full of mercy and love.   

I may not have expressed that very well, so pay no attention to me and my personal meditations and thinking out loud.

The Mystery of Light ...

Chaste, purifying light.

Silent awe.