Now this is a proper Lenten Cruise...

Carnival Cruise Ship Triumph.

Passengers with makeshift tents on the deck of the Carnival cruise ship.  

 

 

Passengers insist a Lenten cruise can indeed be a penitential and rewarding experience.  Story here. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All those cruise detractors

can just shut up now!

 

 

 

 

We prepare ourselves spectacularly for a short trip, but how are we organizing our timeless final voyage? - St. Augustine: H/T to Fr. Z

Here's a good one for Bella Dodd* conspiracy theorists.

Four priests... what do they have in common?

All are Bishops: 2 are Cardinals, 1 is an Archbishop, and 1 is a Bishop.  All went to the same seminary!  All live in California!  All Novus Ordo!  I know!  A couple have been accused of being, let's just say, not so great...  A couple are retiring together, and moving in together!  (Can 2 men do that?)  Oh!  My!  Gosh!

Story here:

(RNS) Whether by accident, serendipity or divine design, four future heavyweights of American Catholicism found themselves in the Class of 1962 at St. John’s Seminary.
Momentous societal changes were surfacing all around the young men, but seminary life for George Niederauer, Roger Mahony, William Levada and Tod Brown continued much the same as it had for centuries. The four friends — a pair of cardinals-to-be, a future archbishop and bishop — were assigned alphabetically to desks and dorms. They arose at 5:30 a.m. and, within a half hour headed to the chapel for prayers and Mass. Silence was required during meals and after 7:30 p.m. Moral theology and philosophy classes were taught in Latin.

Released from their Catholic cocoon in 1962, the young priests faced a church on the brink of volcanic reform with the opening of the Second Vatican Council, pushing the ancient institution into a new age. No more Latin Mass. Priests now faced the people, not the altar. Other Christians were embraced, and social work became gospel.

After being schooled in a Vatican I church, the foursome would step down, five decades later, as quintessential Vatican II men.  “There was no instruction manual with a chapter (to cover) every conceivable crisis for the next 50 years,” says Mahony, now the retired archbishop of Los Angeles. - Read the rest here.
 

*Disclaimer:  My reference to Bella Dodd is based on the conspiracy theories Dr. Alice von Hildebrand frequently references: "It is a matter of public record, for instance, that Bella Dodd, the ex-Communist who reconverted to the Church, openly spoke of the Communist Party’s deliberate infiltration of agents into the seminaries. [...]  The two books I mentioned were published in 1998 and 2000 by an Italian priest, Don Luigi Villa of the diocese of Brescia, who at the request of Padre Pio has devoted many years of his life to the investigation of the possible infiltration of both Freemasons and Communists into the Church. My husband and I met Don Villa in the sixties." - Source

Please note:  I don't believe in conspiracy theories.  I am not even suggesting these four bishops were involved in any such conspiracies - but over the years, not a few Catholics have claimed otherwise, and implied worse.  Hence the satircal inclusion to my editorial comments. 

Because it's Los Angeles and environs, I wrote this in my TMZ voice.

 

Waddya mean Mother Angelica

is unavailable for comment?

Patheos... Leah Libresco... Patheos... Leah Libresco... Patheos...

Leah Libresco

Washington (CNN) – She went from atheist to Catholic in just over 1,000 words.
Leah Libresco, who’d been a prominent atheist blogger for the religion website Patheos, announced on her blog this week that after years of debating many “smart Christians,” she has decided to become one herself, and that she has begun the process of converting to Catholicism. According to Dan Welch, director of marketing for Patheos, Libresco’s post has received around 150,000 page views so far. - Read the rest.

How cool is that?

This is big.  Really, really big.  Susan Boyle big.  Justin Bieber big. 

You just know the Catholic Church is the true Church when the Libresco story goes viral.  There's gotta be a script here someplace Barbara Nicolosi!

That so coulda been me!  Congratulations Elizabeth Scalia Leah Libresco!

I dreamed a dream in time gone by
When hope was high
And life worth living
I dreamed that love would never die
I dreamed that God would be forgiving
Then I was young and unafraid
And dreams were made and used and wasted
There was no ransom to be paid
No song unsung, no wine untasted
But there are dreams that cannot be
And there are storms we cannot weather

I had a dream my life would be
So different from this hell I'm living
So different now from what it seemed
Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.

Seriously - prayers and best wishes for Leah Libresco.  You ain't seen nothin' yet.  You can become a saint now too.  God bless you!

NB: You know what's really nice about this?  She seems like a nice young woman too.  Not like some of those former filthy, slutty, alcoholic converts.  What?  I'm just kidding.