Prayer Intentions

Please say a prayer for my friend Diane's father who was just diagnosed with stage 3 throat cancer. The doctors are saying it's treatable.

Thank you.

What is Faith?

Father V, while talking about "art", makes several points about following the Catholic Faith and ALL its beliefs...

This is the problem many get into when finding something they disagree with, I find it interesting when someone vehemently disagrees with Church teaching and when asked why they disagree with a particular teaching the response is, “It’s not fair,” or “I don’t like it,” or “God wouldn’t say that.” When pressed for further details such as how do they know or if they know why it is that the Church teaches as she does, the conversation is blown away with the swipe of the arm as if going after an annoying fly thereby brushing off any chance that a meaningful exchange of ideas could even occur.

No teaching of the Church stands on its own. It is like a carefully constructed ball of yarn and to yank at one thread is most likely to effect many other teachings. Each teaching is not a referendum item that can be voted in or out without effecting the greater understanding of the whole.

Instead, perhaps they should try what Father V suggests,

1 My definition of art Faith is too narrow.

2 It is so far ahead of me that I just don’t get it. For example, it took me a long time to appreciate icon.

3 It speaks to something that I just happen to have no interest in but need to appreciate because to someone else it is extremely relevant.

4 The key to understanding it has not been revealed to me.

5 There is nothing to get, I am just reading too much into it.

6 It isn’t art.

These are good points (except for the last one, if it's in the Magisterium of the Church, it's Faith), in which case, see #4 and pray for understanding.

Quote of the Day

(H/T to Gates of Vienna)

From the Brussels Journal:

“Perhaps the Belgian US politicians and judiciary assume that if the people are no longer allowed to state the truth, the truth will cease to be the truth and become the lie. But it does not work that way. From now on people will simply keep their opinions to themselves, but they will become more strongly convinced of the things they know to be a fact and they will regard their politicians and their judges as the guardians of lies.”

Father O's caption contest

responding not with a caption but another picture...

Father's picture

The Traditional Latin Mass Appears in NH!

Deo Gratias.

If you believed this article in SeacoastOnline, the folks in Portsmouth New Hampshire wouldn't be seeing the TLM any time soon.

Yet the same priest quoted in the article decided to offer it at 11:00 am September 23rd at Immaculate Conception in Portsmouth. Maybe he heard about the 1,000+ who showed up for the Mass when it was offered in Vermont on August 15th.

Amazingly, it doesn't look like the church (pictured above) has been wreckovated for Vatican II.

Let me know if you'd like details.

I don't why the priest changed his mind but I'm glad he did.

Thank you, Pope Benedict XVI.

Coffee Cups

A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor. Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life.

Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups - porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite - telling them to help
themselves to the coffee.

When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor
said: "If you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups were
taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones.
While it is normal for you to want only the best for yourselves,
that is the source of your problems and stress. Be assured that the
cup itself adds no quality to the coffee. In most cases it
is just more expensive and in some cases even hides what we drink.

What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup,
but you consciously went for the best cups... And then you
began eyeing each other's cups.

Now consider this:

Life is the coffee; the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain Life, and the type of cup we have does not define, nor change the quality of Life we live.

Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee God has provided us."

God brews the coffee, not the cups... Enjoy your coffee!

"The happiest people don't have the best of everything.
They just make the best of everything."

Live simply. Love generously. Care deeply. Speak kindly.
Leave the rest to God.

I Guess I Need to Read the Book...

You're Fahrenheit 451!

by Ray Bradbury

Having wanted to be a firefighter much of your life, you've recently
discovered the job wasn't exactly what you were looking for. While ignorance seems like
the result of oppression, it all began with people just wanting to be ignorant. As you
realize more about the sordid world around you, you decide to watch less TV and work on
your memorization skills. Though your memory will save you in the end, don't forget to
practice running from dogs as well.


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Political Correctness — The Revenge of Marxism

From way back in 2006 (it seems so long ago), is an in-depth discussion of Political Correctness. Read it and be depressed...

It begins with a quote from Theodore Dalrymple:

Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.

The simple fact is that we never won the Cold War as decisively as we should have.

We've done no better for our children than our parents did for us. In other words, we've allowed Political Correctness to take hold. Now we have Human Rights Tribunals in towns across America and the ADL's "No Place for Hate".

JK Rowling is (or was) a member of the Chesterton Society

The proof

I just bought that new book, The Mystery of Harry Potter: A Catholic Family Guide, for the parish library too.

A Slideshow of the Mass in Burlington VT

Chris Gillibrand, of Catholic Church Conservation, found a slideshow of the TLM said in Burlington VT on August 15th (attended by over 1,000 people!).

Slideshow

Simply beautiful!

As I Predicted, EWTN and TLM!

As I predicted on June 28th, EWTN will be televising the Live Tridentine Mass Celebrated by the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (reported today by Father Z) on September 14th. Thank you Bishop Baker (newly appointed to the Diocese of Birmingham)!

I wonder if Cardinal O'Malley still thinks interest in the TLM is low here in the US?

Organ Donation in Massachusetts

My daughter applied for a learner's permit the other day, in Massachusetts. We thought it was interesting that among the yes-or-no questions was one on organ donation...it only had the Yes check box. ???

She asked for my opinion and having just read this, a blog entry by Saint Louis Catholic on the subject, I said, no way.

The Spoiler Tee

Saint Louis Catholic posted this neat tee-shirt on his blog.

Warning!

It is all about spoilers so don't look if you don't want to know.

Insanity Reigns!

Just 11 more hours and this Day of Sweet 16 Party-ness will be over!!! Maybe I'll post a picture or two later (or tomorrow).

Our Parish Library

One of the projects I've been working on this summer is to catalog all the books in our parish library. This was made relatively easy through the help of a website called LibraryThing. LibraryThing is a website which will automatically create a catalog of any list of books you give it. Most of the time I was able to input the books via their ISBNs but some books were so old that they didn't have an ISBN so I was able to look them up just by their titles and authors. It's quite an interesting little library. There are definitely a few gems in there (which I'll be able to borrow and read).

Here's our catalog. It's about 90% complete.

Please take a look and let me know if there are anymore which should be removed. Many have a tag called "remove" which I shall do shortly.
I tried to weed out as many dissidents and heretics that I could but some may have snuck past me...

We're back!

I know, you didn't know we were gone. We left last Sunday for the wilds of New Hampshire (North Conway/Glen/Jackson area). We got back today and I will be posting various thoughts tomorrow. This is Penny, our corgi, enjoying the view at Diana's Bath, a series of waterfalls in North Conway.