The story of the First Thanksgiving...

Pilgrim woman wearing a fur abita.

Once upon a time...

It all began when Protestant religious fanatics were kicked out of England by the English Protestant 'Catholics'.  (Anglicans!)  The fanatics were much too strict for the gayer English who liked to be fashionably dressed, and so they kicked the frumpy bigots out of the country.  Today referred to as Puritans because of their tight, crisp white collars, they were put on ships and set sail for America.  Before embarking, they decided to call themselves "Pilgrims" since they were in search of a holy land.  It worked out well for them as they were able to ask for donations, claiming religious custom and tradition.

Blown off course, the "Pilgrims" landed at Iceland - which they mistook for Canada - they fled the cold icy island in horror.  Finally, they shipwrecked themselves at Plymouth Rock and were met by a delegation of Indians who told them to go back home.  The Americans - as they immediately claimed themselves to be - no longer immigrants or pilgrims, mind you,  killed the Indians and took their land and destroyed all of their colorful feathers and beads, although they took to marketing their tobacco.

One winter it got really cold and snowy and their cabins were washed out to sea in a freak hurricaine, but the Governor was helpless to do anything for the people.  The remaining Indians who ran the casino in the woods, felt sorry for them and brought them food and helped them rebuild their colonnial style houses, laying new sod with charming cobble stone sidewalks and picket fences.  After all the work was finished, the colonists killed the rest of the Indians who stuck around for dinner.

The colonists cooked and ate the turkeys the Indians had delivered, and made cigarettes from the  tobacco they left behind.  To cover up their crimes, the colonists decided they should probably set aside the last Thursday of November every year and give thanks to God, that way history could claim God gave them the land, and no one would ever know that they really stole the land from the pagan Indians - Native Americans, that is. 

There you have it.  BTW, since then, the new Americans would be identified by their W.A.S.P. ID -  Bank of America card and become known as White Anglo Saxon Protestants.  Oh!  Oh!  And last but not least:  Ever since that day, the Protestant holiday we call Thanksgiving has been manipulated to enrich WASPs and Freemasons alike.

This also may explain why so many secularized Americans flock to the Indian-run casinos on Thanksgiving.

Capes are back... abito piano

"Oh, what a lovely cape.  Is it mink?"

Did they ever go out?

For some priests, yes.  I have a friend who while still a parish priest complained that the new rector of a minor seminary near him had all the men dress in cassocks.  "I wouldn't be caught dead in one."  Now he's a bishop and has little choice in the matter.  It isn't just my 'age group' of men who are priests who prefer suit to cassock, yet those who do seem to be out of favor these days.  (I have friends who are priests who despise the biretta as well.  Not a few devout Catholics are waiting for them to die.)

That said, as many Catholics in the blogisterium already know, the Vatican (Bertone) issued a memo reinforcing the dress code for Vatican employees.  It makes sense.  Evidently it is a signal for the rest of the world as well:

Tornielli said the letter was aimed at refreshing the minds of those who work at the Vatican but also to say that this extends beyond the walls of the Holy See. He added, “it is very rare for priests in the Apostolic Palace not to dress like priests.”

“The call for priests to be more law-abiding and look impeccable is meant to be a subtle example for those who come to the Vatican from outside and are just passing through Rome,” Tornielli said.

Cardinal Bertone's letter, written at Pope Benedict's bidding, recalls a 1982 letter of Pope John Paul II to his vicar general encouraging him to “study opportune initiatives destined to foster the use of ecclesiastical and religious dress.”  

Cardinal Bertone said that bishops should faithfully wear the cassock every day during office hours at the Vatican as an example to the clerics who visit the Holy See.

He reminded clerics that at official and papal events, they are to wear the more formal “abito piano.” For bishops and cardinals, this is a cassock with an embroidered cape; for monsignors, a black cassock with piping of Roman purple; and for priests, a cassock with cape. - CNA
 

Men in cassocks - very picturesque, and even more fun to paint.

Just stay away from fur Father.

 

That's what I said: Retailers have basically ruined every holiday.

It all started way back when stores opened for Sunday shopping.

They have commercialized every single holiday by creating a reason to promote something and drive traffic.

This year will see an unprecedented move by the big boys of retail to open their stores earlier than ever on Thanksgiving Day, putting pressure on the traditions — from indulging in an oversize dinner to loafing around watching football — that many families hold sacred. - WSJ
 

I blame the Protestants ...and Muslim immigrants. 

What?

Oh! Benghazi?

All this time I thought they were talking about Ben Gazzara.  He's dead.

 

Not ready for Confirmation.

The kid and the priest.

By now, most Catholic bloggers know "the high school kid denied confirmation because he is pro-gay marriage" story by now.  It started on Facebook, and soo the story made headlines on Catholic sites.  Shoulder shrug.

How many teens support gay marriage?  Fr. Hollowell knows the answer to that one.

My first thought was that the kid probably didn't care about being confirmed in the first place - and I think I was right.  The truth came out a few days after the press brouhaha. 

The priest told LifeSiteNews.com that he only discovered Lennon’s gay marriage post by accident on October 25, the day after having a two-hour meeting with the family. During that meeting the priest had brought up the fact that the Cihaks were not coming to church, as well as “other matters” that the priest said, “I can’t get into here.” No mention was made of Lennon’s views on marriage during that meeting.

The following day Fr. LaMoine’s secretary, who is Facebook friends with Lennon, chanced upon the controversial post and alerted the priest to it.

The priest says that he then telephoned Lennon, and in the course of that conversation the boy said he had chosen not to go forward with Confirmation. - Source
 

Chances are, support for same sex marriage is only one of the errors the kid embraces:

The mother of the boy, Shana Cihak, told the Forum that she was shocked by what she says was the priest’s decision to bar her son, Lennon, from the sacrament.

“You kind of know the Catholic beliefs, but I never thought they would deny somebody confirmation because you weren’t 100 percent,” she said. “I guess that’s what shocks me.” - Source

 Catechesis.

I'm convinced what is lacking is good catechesis and faithfulness.  I'm not saying the priest didn't prepare the students well, all in all I think he handled it beautifully and compassionately.  Nevertheless, by the time kids are teens, if they haven't received solid instruction all through their childhood, it might be too late.  Likewise, if the parents don't go to church, it's pretty clear they don't follow the Creed - which includes the act of faith: 'I believe and profess all that the holy Catholic Church believes, teaches, and proclaims to be revealed by God'.  Looks to me as if the sacrament is simply something to git 'er done - a sort of self-acting salvation mechanism.  It's just stuff you have to do to be Catholic - later, it will be a church wedding with all the trimmings.

If anything, this latest situation may be a good argument for why Confirmation should be administered at Baptism, as the Orthodox do - or at least to younger kids.   

My brother was confirmed in high school - he went to a Catholic high school too - he imagined the ceremony was a rite of passage in becoming a man and a chance to pick a cool name.  He understood that it was a sort of Catholic Bar Mitzvah, with a party and gifts.  On the other hand, I was confirmed in 5th grade, and we were catechized and religiously prepared to receive a sacrament - not a celebration of maturity and manhood.  We were also slapped to remind us we need to be willing to suffer, and die if need be, for the faith. 

I think that is lost on many teens today - and their parents.

'Supposing the Pope looked up and saw a cloud and said 'It's going to rain', would that be bound to happen?'

The Pope speaks.,.

Never before in history have people heard in detail everything the Pope says publicly - and almost immediately - live, as he speaks it.  And now he is going to be on Twitter.  Soon the Pope's third book will be released.  He makes speeches to everyone who visits him; heads of state, sports figures, actors; he speaks every Wednesday and every Sunday at the Angelus - he's talking or writing something all of the time - and it is documented, published - disseminated as if God has spoken.  I doubt the Romans in the heyday of the Papal States ever knew as much of what the Pope said, much less cared.

Do we really need to know the Pope's every thought and word on everything?  Really? 

It's kind of nuts.

Mass Chat: This is more important than anything I usually write about.

The Peace and Justice Committee.

The Committee has a weekly entry in the bulletin that I usually skim through; global warming - I know.  Loaves and Fishes - I know.  Respect life = no more war - I know.

Today:  Human trafficking near you.  I didn't know.

I hardly think of it - I pray for kids who are abused and who suffer all of the time - in fact every month in my novena to the Infant Jesus - but my prayer is not limited to those nine days.  It can be such an abstract thought however, strangely limited to far away events such as the Islamic child bride stories, or International kidnap stories.  Having been abused - more at sexually-used myself, I have real, heart aching concern for kids whose lives are corrupted and destroyed in this manner.  I just never think of Minnesota as a resource for human trafficking.

MINNESOTA

• The FBI has identified the Twin Cities as one of the nation’s 13 largest centers for child prostitution. ⁶
• By very conservative measures, a November 2010 study found that each month in Minnesota at least 213 girls are sold for sex an average of five times per day through the Internet and escort services. This number does not include hotel, street or gang activity. ⁷
• A November 2010 study found that on any given weekend night in Minnesota, 45 girls under age 18 are sold for sex through the internet classified websites and escort services. ⁷
• In 2010, investigators from three states determined that Minneapolis was the home base of a large domestic prostitution (sex trafficking) ring comprised of three generations of one Minnesota family that was prostituting (trafficking) mostly young girls across the United States. ⁸
• About 50% of adult women interviewed as part of a 2010 study focused on North Minneapolis stated that they first traded sex when they were under the age of 18, with the average age at 13. ^{9 - http://www.mngirlsnotforsale.org/educate/get-the-facts/}

It is very difficult to come to terms with statistics like these.  It is very, very hard even to think about - to even try and imagine the filthy, disgusting, soul-destroying activities perpetrated upon young children.  I read stories of the modern day - though culturally medieval Muslims in Yemen, Pakistan and Afghanistan and elsewhere, who not only marry young girl children, but also screw around with boys for sexual pleasure, yet if one of their natural children falls into dishonor - off with their heads.  The perversion inflicted upon children isn't limited to Islam - obviously - and such abuse must have been with us throughout every epoch in every culture.  Yet why do we continue to let it happen today?  How is it we continue to ignore it?

How is it that we only respond to such crimes when it affects our middle to upper classes and our sacred institutions?  To be sure, the sex-trafficking discussed here goes on below our radar.  It's underworld, street life stuff - yet it might be going on in a neighborhood or suburb not far from our nice part of town.  How is that?  Amongst the poor - inner city poor - it's always been a problem.  People knew about it when I was little.  Just like people in the upper class knew about Sandusky, and churchmen knew about clerics and educators.  Why don't we do anything?

Imagine:

In 2010, investigators from three states determined that Minneapolis was the home base of a large domestic prostitution (sex trafficking) ring comprised of three generations of one Minnesota family that was prostituting (trafficking) mostly young girls across the United States. ⁸
 

What can be done to stop it?  Healing from sexual abuse is one thing - but preventing it seems to me to be even more critical.  Breaking the chain of secrets and lies, and exposing the perpetrators - and punishing them - even the Islamic offenders, might be a good start.

Parents and single people alike:  Protect the children.

When I was a kid - I wasn't enslaved by a pimp, nor was I sold or looking to make money - I was just used sexually.  I also got to a point where I found acceptance and approval from the men who picked me up.  I had a nice place to sleep sometimes.  Kids want to be loved and protected - poor kids just as much as rich kids.

My parents knew people in the bar who actually offered their daughters for cash.  Nothing was said - no one was reported to the police.

Much later, when I moved in with my boss, my mother went downtown and met him and said to him, "Take care of my son."  Do any of you recall the scene in Doubt, when the mother of the boy, Mrs. Miller told the Sister Aloysius to leave well enough alone?  It was like that.

Parents - be better parents.  You are responsible for your children.

Don Bachardy and Christopher Isherwood.

 

They called it a May-December romance...

FYI:

Beware of efforts to lower the age of consent.

It's all connected you know.

 

The importunate widow and the dishonest judge.

 

The purifying fire of prayer.

This isn't a sermonette - but I want to mention something about today's Gospel and chastity.

For years I prayed for chastity - without always avoiding the occasions of sin.  I know - how dumb.  Truth be told, the milieu I worked in, the people I worked with, was a sort of occasion of sin.  Over the years I changed friends, moved from this job to that job, did countless things to remedy the situation - to no avail.  I was my own occasion of sin.  My life was disordered.  It got worse the more I tried to isolate myself.  It was me - the things that came out of my heart defiled me, as another Gospel passage would have it.  I realized that even more keenly when I changed jobs and worked for a religious community - thinking I'd be safe there.  (I've always worked at another job to support myself and my art work.)

What I learned however, is that even though we can't always change our outward situation and live in an occasion-free environment, or as I said, we imagine that by changing our outward circumstances we flee the occasions, frequently some of us find we keep going back to the trough for more.  It is then we understand we are the problem.  We can't dissociate from ourselves, can we?   No.  But we can - we must - pray for the graces we need to be faithful in difficult circumstances.  Today's Gospel taught me that way back when... prayer is the trap door out of sin, as St. Teresa said... 'fornicator though I was.' (A Gorcum martyr said that.)

Saved in situ.

Modern life is an occasion of sin - and most of us are disordered in one way or another.  I'm not saying people do not need to avoid the near occasion of sin, nor a deliberate occasion of sin or anything like that.  You do what you can, yet we live in an adulterous generation and, like I said, we're all disordered to some degree.

Yet what today's Gospel taught me, way back when, is to "pray always and never lose heart."  Ask for the grace in prayer.  Be that widow and keep asking.  The more often you fall, the more often you ask.  A Carmelite once told me, 'go to confession several times a day if you must - but keep praying."  She exaggerated a bit I think, since very few priests would tolerate such things - but I understood her.  Confession and the sacraments and prayer.  You can walk through the fiery furnace with the boys of Babylon* if you remain faithful to these - because the angel of God is with you when you pray. 

One has to understand that carefully however, because I'm not encouraging the sin of presumption, or suggesting that prayer and the sacraments act as charms or something magical.  People who suffer from grave temptations will know what I mean.  We need to come to a point where we long for healing with all of our heart - then it is we can come to the point where we pray without ceasing for that grace.  Today's Gospel is testimony that it is possible and that God will free us from our enslavement to sin.  (I prefer that term to 'addiction'.)  When it happened to me, it seemed very sudden and unexpected - totally new.  One day at adoration I heard a voice say, 'you are free'.  That after nearly 30 years of struggle.  I didn't earn it however - it was sheer grace, which is why the experience was new and alive - living as for the first time, as it were.

There's a reason for that I think.  Sometimes God doesn't grant us what we ask right away because the asking is itself a form of purification - the asking, the falling and rising, make us humble after we rise, and God is thereby glorified in showing mercy and restoring our "rights".

This may not be very good moral theology, but just remember, nothing is impossible for God.  So pray always and don't lose heart - no matter what your situation.  Remember the disciples tried to keep people away from Christ - like the blind Bartimaeus, the Canaanite woman, and other 'unclean' people - but they got through to Him, and He healed them.


 *The Babylonian furnace offered in this instance as a metaphor for the occasion of sin.

The Church and homosexuality.

Tackling the problem of teaching convincingly what the Church offers about homosexuality...

Yesterday I read Fr. Z's post with that title about Fr. Hollowell's new endeavor, to produce a documentary on what the Catholic Church teaches as regards homosexuality.  Fr. H seeks to do this work in the spirit of  the new evangelization as a means to reach young people, who have been more or less 'indoctrinated' that gay is good, Church teaching bad.  My words, not his - but that is pretty much the point.  I like Fr. H's idea and wish him well - click here to find out more about the project and to donate - he needs a lot of money to accomplish the work.

We all write and say things - sometimes crudely - when we are stressed or sometimes just tired of being nice after some very trying engagement in the culture war.  We post, and then we go back and edit or remove the post entirely.  I just did that today.  I think Fr. Z did so as well.  Unless I imagined otherwise, or mixed it up with another post, his post on Fr. Hollowell is missing a few comments and text.  Too bad, because I wanted to write about them.  I thought about what was said, and I wanted to comment in a post of my own.

Update:  Doh!  I did get the post mixed up with another one!  Oh well.  That other one here.

My first thought in response to a couple of statements about same sex marriage was: "Since the Church is against it, maybe there would be a bit more credibility to that prohibition if they enforced the rule against ordaining homosexuals to the priesthood?"  But the statement I was responding to is gone.

I had other remarks for a couple of the people who made comments on Fr. Z's post - but it appears their comments were removed - and I can't respond accurately to what is not there.  However, one guy pointed out that the arts have traditionally been a 'haven' for homosexuals.  I'm sure he won't let his son take an art class but will have him play sports instead - no homos there.  Oddly enough, priesthood and religious life has been somewhat of a haven as well - which brings me back to the first point.  Church teaching might be made more acceptable if they practiced what they preach.

That said, a former Dominican priest, who reads Fr. Z and is quite the conservative critic of all things liberal had this to say in response to Fr. Z's post:

One of the traditional RC blogs I check has a posting on "tackling-the-problem-of-teaching-convincingly-what-the-church-offers-about-homosexuality."

Well, the problem is that the church has nothing to offer.

As I have said I understand the inner logic of Catholic sexual morality and do not fault it for being true to itself. I do get the whole male/female marriage thing. To say "OK, cool" to homosexuality would unravel the whole thread of a bi-millennial organism. So it can't say that. For reasons similar to why it cannot say the same even about masturbation or contraception or shacking up outside marriage. At the end of that series of OK cools lies dissolution into liberal Protestantism. Which offers you nothing you can't get elsewhere.

But in terms of "having something to offer" besides "Don't Do It"? Nada.

Or worse, the thrill of sitting around in some Courage meeting acting as if your deepest desire for human connection is an addiction to a really bad drug.

My advice to Catholic homos is that you either have to ignore this and say to yourself that it does not really apply to you because the Church cannot really see you as the existing being you are, or get out. - USMale
 

The man is right.  The Church has nothing to offer - except salvation.  I'm wondering if he meant to say, 'the Church has nothing new to offer' - because it does come down to don't do it.  More than that, it is perennial teaching based on Scripture and tradition, and that horrid natural law. 

Fr. Hollowell says in his video that he had to search and search for what the Church really teaches.  Most of what the Church teaches and has taught is already online, so I'm not sure why it was so hard to find.  In his proposed documentary he plans to interview Church leaders and spokespersons on the issue - presumably Catholics who are SSA.  Will it be the usual line up?  I don't know.  But there can't be anything new.  Church teaching cannot change. 

The former Dominican priest also knows that.  He suggests:  "My advice to Catholic homos is that you either have to ignore this and say to yourself that it does not really apply to you because the Church cannot really see you as the existing being you are, or get out."  That works if you see religion or being a Christian as belonging to the right country club - but the Catholic Church is not that.  Despite the divisions and classifications and groups within Catholicism- religious orders, groups, organizations, trad and progressive, and so on - the Church isn't a corporation or conglomerate - it is the Ark - it is the Ark of salvation.  Sure there are mean spirited people in the Church who hate you, but they are everywhere in the world - hole up in a ghetto such as the Castro and live your life as you see fit if that brings you any peace.

So yes - if you want your cake and to eat it too - if you don't believe the Creed - become an Anglican or an Old Catholic - join the country club.  If you want acceptance and affirmation and approval from men - religious men or non religious men - join a fellowship church.  But if you really want Christ, the salvation of your soul, remain a faithful Roman Catholic.

The former Dominican priest knows that the Church cannot and will not change - it is why he left. 

I long ago concluded that the RC Church was not going to have female priests, married priests, or say it was OK to be gay or be on the pill. I adjusted my life accordingly. Nothing in the intervening years –evanescent blips notwithstanding—has made me change my mind. These things seem as unlikely to me as corporate reunion with the more-than-ever-fragmented Anglican “Communion”. Which has become a kind of cautionary tale of what can happen when you do embrace the above items.

The populist egalitarian obsessions of the post-Marxist liberal West will not, IMHO, be welcomed into the bi-millennial Catholic/Orthodox Churches. For that you have to go to cobwebbed and dotty Canterbury or the other restless and groovy progeny of the Reformation. So I am both fascinated and incredulous to observe people who keep hoping that the Camelot interpretation of Vatican II is waiting just around the corner. Or for the next pope. Etc. Hence, my kinship with King Herod.   - USMale
 

What I like about him is that he is honest - and really smart.

A couple of conclusions:

• Living a chaste life doesn't kill you.
• You're damned if you do and damned if you don't - in the eyes of religious people - but not in the eyes of God.
• Go to confession and be faithful to prayer and the sacraments, seek the approval of God, not men.
• Teach the truth to kids - the reason they don't believe is because they've been indoctrinated not to.  It will take more than a documentary to convince them.
• To the bishops - you can't change anything if you don't change yourselves.  Be consistent in your teaching.
• To gay Catholics.  Be faithful to Church teaching, live chastely.  Pray very much.  Stay away from involvement in Church groups, councils, committees, and so on - if you want to avoid the busybodies and bigots that is.  Be faithful and do good works, remaining hidden - like a Carmelite - not out of fear, but out of love for God.  Remember Lot's wife - in all the tumult and drama, she looked back - her passions stirred - and she turned to stone. 
• If people ask you for advice, tell them to repent.

 

Medjugorje visionary Ivan Dragicevic in Lebanon.

Maronite Cardinal Beshara Boutros El-Rahi, Patriarch of Antioch and all the East in attendance for the apparition.

Say what you will about Medjugorje, I think it is rather significant that the Maronite Cardinal was in attendance with thousands of Lebanese followers.

“It is the first time that the Patriach of the East is present for a Medjugorje apparition. It is new for the Middle East churches. It is very important for Christians here” Charbel Maroun, the president of the Marian Movement for Lay People in Galilee tells Medjugorje Today. - Medjugorje Today

I need to be much more discreet and respectful in what I say and how I say things...

The Canonization of Dorothy Day: I'm against it.

Really?  Who is that going to help or inspire?  Marxist-Socialists?

Look at how the woman dressed!  Get out!  What's with the peasant look?  Would a little blush have killed her?  C'mon!  It's NYC - the fashion capital of... well, maybe not much.

And would it have been such a sacrifice for her to crack a smile?  Ever?  She makes Catherine of Genoa look like a stand up comedienne.

I'm dismissing her.

What?


Leave her alone.

Justice Sotomayer and gender politics.

Justice Sonia Sotomayer stopped by Sesame Street this week and told little girls to drop the princess silliness.  Story here.  "Look what happened to me!"  Sotomayor said.

Yeah, whatever.  That kind of advice only works if she says the same thing to the boys in Glee.

I'm going to lunch

Arts and crafts: Statues without clothes...

I love everything Spanish Colonial.  Especially statues which need to be clothed.

There is a cool site which sells bultos - religious figures to be dressed.  If you are crafty - you could make your own Madonna dressed in elegant 17th century royal splendor.  The site is called Santos Cage Doll - you can get crowns, ex-votos, replacement hands and angel wings too.

T'is the season to make things.

Arts and crafts: If I were a rich man...

I would buy this statue of S. Diego de Alcala.

Isn't he handsome?  Polychromed wood, 25" tall.  Excellent condition, masterfully carved.  The little lay brother saint is shown with his garment lifted where he was carrying food for the poor, which miraculously changed into roses as another friar, annoyed with Diego checked to see what he was carrying.  The flowers are gone from the image, but the cord of St. Francis remains attached to the figure.

I can't afford him, but I inquired about the price nonetheless - I'll update when i find out.  If I could afford him, I'd like to run away to hermitage with him, and live the rest of my life - the hermitage would have to be attached to a chapel with the Blessed Sacrament of course, and another statue of Our Lady would have to accompany us.  See!  Too many necessities, conditions required.  It's not meant to be.

S. Diego, or Didicus is indeed the patron of San Diego in California, as well as the patron of a little friend of mine far, far away, whom I pray for all the time.

The saint's feast day moves about depending on which calendar one is using.  The OFM's have theirs, the Ordinary Form has it another day, and of course the old calendar has it another day.  I kept his feast yesterday, and late last night, when I couldn't sleep, S. Diego visited me with this image online.

Diego is one of those Franciscan lay brother saints who became very, very holy by living in fidelity to his state in life - ordinary life.

Source

 
So sad - I just found out the retail is $15,000.00.

So it is a business...

Catholic blogs.

Patheos is the best organization I have ever worked for — they’re great people who, much like Rome, really do want to do their best for everyone — but they are very much like Rome, too, in that everything takes longer than the world thinks it should. - The problem with Patheos


 

This is stunning. Archbishop Vigano at Notre Dame.

Not that Vigano was at Notre Dame, but what he said there.

I came across it at WDTPRS:

(CNA/EWTN News).- Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò has told the University of Notre Dame that there is a concrete “menace” to religious liberty in the U.S. that is advancing in part because some influential Catholic public figures and university professors are allied with those opposed to Church teaching.

“Evidence is emerging which demonstrates that the threat to religious freedom is not solely a concern for non-democratic and totalitarian regimes,” he said. “Unfortunately it is surfacing with greater regularity in what many consider the great democracies of the world.”

He discussed martyrdom, persecution, and religious freedom, with a particular focus on the United States.

“There is a divisive strategy at work here, an intentional dividing of the Church; through this strategy, the body of the Church is weakened, and thus the Church can be more easily persecuted,” the nuncio said. - WDTPRS
 

I say it is stunning not because I fear persecution and martyrdom so much - if God grants me the grace! - but because the hierarchy is acknowledging the threat publicly.  Most of my life I've been dismissed when I would talk about persecution and martyrdom coming to the United States.  As a kid, the nuns said it would never happen here - and over the years religious people have pretty much dismissed the 'likelihood' in our lifetime. 

Art:  Martyrs of Gorcum.  Imagine - they were killed simply for their faith in the Blessed Sacrament and their fidelity to the Pope.  Not all of them were all that holy either...

One of the secular priests killed was notorious for his unchastity. When accused of this by his captors, he offered his famous reply, “Fornicator I always was, but heretic I never was.” - Source

 

Dental hygiene

And latex-plastic gloves.

I think dentists and other health care workers began using gloves when the AIDS scare began.  Food service workers also use them to avoid cross contamination of food and utensils.

I was at a bagel shop ordering a sandwich a few years ago and watched the gloved worker make sandwiches, wiping the sandwich board with a damp rag - the same rag he used to wipe his gloves after ringing up customers and coming back to make the next person's sandwich - never washing his gloves nor bothering to change them between each activity.  Needless to say, he never sanitized the tools he was using either.

Likewise at the dentist's office.  Both the hygienist and the dentist wore gloves.  Both worked in my mouth - the dentist coming into the room from working on another patient had his hands in my moth to inject anesthesia.  The hygienist did paper work, dropped an instrument on the floor, picked it up, then went to retrieve an ex ray, came back in, worked on  cleaning my teeth....  never cleaned, changed, or removed her gloves at any point.  In fact, as I was paying at the desk, she wrote in my chart, invited the next patient in, and never washed her 'gloves'.

Yeah.  So I wonder where I picked up my infection?

I used to be a hypochondriac when I had health insurance, I went to the doctor all the time, mostly to get attention and pity.  Kidding - or am I?  Now however, since I've been uninsured for six years, I do not like to go at all.  I'm not and never have been a mysophobe, nor do I go to extremes to protect my health.  Of course I do things like get a flu shot and wash my hands frequently and do not use other people's chapstick - but that's about it.  I'm fine with getting sick - it is something to offer up.

But listen up health care workers, food service people, barbers and hairdressers* - remember your training.  Wash your hands, sanitize your instruments and workplace.  You can protect yourself - but it is your duty to protect your clients in the process.  That's why you wear the gloves.

*I go to a neighborhood guy to get my haircut - he has a shop - he never cleans his instruments, even after he drops them on the floor.  He used a towel to dry my hair before cutting it and was offended when I told his it smelled like mildew.  I know!  I sound like an old lady, but how hard is it to sanitize your tools and launder your towels?

Getting crafty...

S. Pascal Shrine

Painted by the blind.

I've been sick and cranky lately - I bet some readers may have noticed.  Add to that, my eyes are getting worse, so the surgery I keep putting off has to be done fairly soon.  I had to get my yearly physical and some dental work done first.  In the meantime, I've taken a break from serious painting to make my retablo stuff.  I've updated the art blog with a couple pieces that are somewhat presentable.  The one shown here is a wood panel I outlined with brass and added a tea-light votive holder to work as a kitchen shrine.

Religious Broadcaster News: Al Gore to launch 24 hour show.

Al

Signs... The Warning.

Al Gore, Climate Change* prophet on the "disturbing signs of things to come."

OTTAWA – Former U.S. vice-president Al Gore will try to make the case next week that "dirty energy" is contributing to what he calls "dirty weather" events around the world.

"Hurricane Sandy is a disturbing sign of things to come," Gore wrote in a recent opinion piece in the Huffington Post. "We must heed this warning and act quickly to solve the climate crisis. Dirty energy makes dirty weather."

Gore will deliver his message on Nov. 15 through a new presentation in New York as part of his Climate Reality Project, to be broadcast on the Internet. The initiative was launched last year as a 24-hour event with slide-show presentations from around the world, highlighting the latest news about human influence on global warming.

In his victory speech Tuesday, President Barack Obama said that Americans want their children to live in a country that "isn't threatened by the destructive power of a warming planet." - Source
 

Sins... "vexatious litigant"

Greed and avarice and, and, luxury and deception?  There's money in religion - any religion.  Take your pick.

Amid the latest drama surrounding the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), should mainstream ministries seek reform or pull their programming?

Brittany Koper, the granddaughter of TBN founders Paul and Jan Crouch and its chief financial officer until September 2011, has accused network directors of illegally distributing "charitable assets" worth more than $50 million for their personal use. In response, TBN has filed half a dozen lawsuits nationwide accusing Koper and her husband of engaging in a smear campaign to divert attention from their own financial sins.

The filings recently prompted a California federal judge to threaten to brand the network a "vexatious litigant" because its lawsuits seemed designed to "overwhelm the courts … so as to avoid a rational decision on the merits."

 

The Trinity Foundation, a group long critical of TBN, publicly called for ministries associated with evangelical icons such as Billy and Franklin Graham, Charles Stanley, Ron Luce, Jack Graham, and the late Adrian Rogers to withdraw from the network's airwaves.

 

"It's a spiritual and moral snake pit," said Trinity founder Ole Anthony. "TBN uses these legitimate preachers to justify [its] existence." - Source

 

""TBN uses these legitimate preachers to justify [its] existence."  Gee.  I wonder if bloggers ever thought about doing that in order to boost donations and ad revenue?

"We were just trying to make a living!

A minister has a family to feed, house, clothe,

and vacations to take ..."

Disclaimer:  BTW - I accept global warming theory - but I'm just not convinced man is entirely responsible for it.  It just might be part of Mother Earth's cycle - PMS maybe.

H/T Meryl Streep for the Jan Crouch photo/story.