What I heard (and sang) at Mass last week

at St. Joseph's in Columbia, SC

Tuesday is Quote Day

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. No, that's not the quote of the day but just my way of flattering Happy Catholic. I really don't know how she gets it all done every day. She blogs frequently, she reviews (and reads!) lots of books, she does podcasts, she has a full-time job... I'm getting tired just listing all the stuff.

Anyways, here is today's quote...

The whole trouble is that -- literally -- we do not know what is good for us; and what makes the trouble still worse is that we think we do. We have our own plans for our happiness, and too often we merely regard God as somebody who will help us to accomplish them. The true state of affairs is just the opposite. God has His plans for our happiness, and He is waiting for us to help Him to accomplish them. And let us be quite clear about it: We cannot improve on God's plans.

This Tremendous Lover, M. Eugene Boylan, O.C.R.

A Catholic Exam

This was developed by Matthew the Seminarian, the blogger formerly
known as Moneybags, (I'd love to know the story behind that name) of A
Catholic Life.

http://acatholiclife.blogspot.com/2006/01/catholic-exam.html

It's tough! Post your score below... And good luck!

Some housekeeping...

Blogspot/Blogger has added several new features/doo-dads/templates for blogs so I'll be taking a look at how I can jazz up this blog. Check back soon!

My favorite blogs (no longer publishing)

These are some of the blogs I used to follow regularly. I wish they still posted entries but maybe their creative juices ran dry...

So Many Devotions...So Little Time

Dust of the Time

Holy Cards for your Inspiration

Hello again...

I just discovered, via another blog, how to determine how many Google reader subscribers a blog has and I have 14. That's so sweet! I have the time to blog again and it's been quite exciting around here as I'll describe in my next post.

Stay tuned (and thanks for sticking around)!

More Advent Stuff!

I always forget how many important dates there are in December... Luckily, G. Thomas Fitzpatrick doesn't! Here's a list of the dates from his post...

Important feasts celebrated during December include:

1st St. Edmund Campion
3rd St. Francis Xavier
4th St. Barbara
6th St. Nicholas
7th St. Ambrose
8th The Immaculate Conception
9th Ven Fulton Sheen
12th Our Lady of Guadalupe
13th St. Lucy
16th St. Adelaide
21st St. Thomas the Apostle and St. Peter Canisius
22nd St. Frances Xavier Cabrini
23rd St. John Cantius
24th Christmas Eve and Adam & Eve
25th Christmas
26th St. Stephen
27th St. John the Apostle
28th Holy Innocents
29th St. Thomas a Becket

And as previously mentioned, this year's Advent's Embertide is the 16th, 18th and 19th of December.

Advent starts this Sunday!

Buy your Advent candles this week!

Also, the Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday after the Third Sunday of Advent (Gaudete Sunday) are the days of Advent Embertide.

Room Blessings!

I just stumbled across this blog by the Chaplin of the Newman Center at George Washington University. GWU is blessed to have this priest. I hope he's there for a long time. I'm going to start follwing his blog (swell, add another to the list of 100+ blogs I already follow) because my daughter will be heading off to college next year and I'd like to get good ideas for bringing her back to the Faith.

Anyways, here's Father Greg's idea, room blessings...

One of the things that that means is that no matter what happened in your room before you began living there, grace now dwells there as a result of a room blessing. It's certainly scary to think of what might have happened in your room in the past several years before you got there - blasphemy against God or the Church, things of the occult (witchcraft, wicca, ouija boards, tarot cards, etc.), alcohol or drug abuse, impure sexual activity, pornography, contraception, self-injury (cutting), inappropriate language or jokes, pirating of materials (videos, music, software), gossip, etc. These sins aren't exclusive to college dorm rooms, of course; Catholics everywhere should have their homes and apartments blessed. But, everyone here knows that sin is all around us...and, serious sin at that. So, the prudent and practical GW Catholic student approaches his or her room as being a place where serious sin might have happened, and so he or she wants to eradicate all of that with a blessing by a priest.

Beads of the Dead

Sounds ominous, eh? Well basically, it's a form of the rosary said for the Holy Souls in Purgatory.

This is from Thomas Fitzpatrick's blog, Recta Ratio which I don't visit nearly often enough.

I know, I know!

I apologize for not blogging in months! I'll be picking up my virtual pen again.

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

Henry Poole Is Here

I rented this movie this past weekend. For some reason, it never appeared in the Boston-area theatres so I had to wait till it came out on DVD. I greatly enjoyed it but felt it moved a little too slowly for my tastes. It wasn't till at least half-way through the movie that we were told the reason why he wasn't "going to be around very long". The characters were all delightful, especially little Millie.

If you're not familiar with the plot, here's the synopsis from IMDB...

HENRY POOLE is HERE is a comedic drama about a disillusioned man who goes hiding in placid suburbia only to discover he cannot escape the forces of hope. Returning to the middleclass neighborhood where he grew up, Henry chooses to live in indulgent isolation. Real life, however, refuses to cooperate with his plans. Nosy neighbors interrupt him with curious visits and prying questions. Then the situation escalates as a stain on Henry's stucco wall is seen to have miraculous powers. His last-ditch hideout becomes a shrine; his backyard turns into an arena for passionate debate about faith and destiny. Seeking anonymous oblivion, cynical Henry Poole instead finds himself right at the center of the human comedy. A modern-day fable, director Mark Pellington's new film investigates the unexpected wonders of the everyday. A faithless man finds hope. A hopeless man finds love. Whether backyard miracles are real or triggered by hope and belief, their personal effects are permanent.

I might be tempted to buy this movie.

Material Cooperation

Since Cardinal O'Malley is evaluating whether Catholic hospitals in Massachusetts can do abortion, a.k.a. "family planning" referrals in order to win a health insurance contract with the state, let's look at some definitions/discussions on Material Cooperation.

Principles of Formal and Material Cooperation

Mediate Material Cooperation. Mediate material cooperation occurs when the cooperator participates in circumstances that are not essential to the commission of an action, such that the action could occur even without this cooperation. Mediate material cooperation in an immoral act might be justifiable under three basic conditions:


1. If there is a proportionately serious reason for the cooperation (i.e., for the sake of protecting an important good or for avoiding a worse harm); the graver the evil the more serious a reason required for the cooperation;

2. The importance of the reason for cooperation must be proportionate to the causal proximity of the cooperator’s action to the action of the principal agent (the distinction between proximate and remote);

3. The danger of scandal (i.e., leading others into doing evil, leading others into error, or spreading confusion) must be avoided.

Remote Material Cooperation With Intrinsic Evil


I wish that Cardinal O'Malley learned from Cardinal O'Connor about this type of situation.

The March for Life is like "a poor man's World Youth Day"?

Excuse me?!

This statement is from the latest entry in Cardinal Sean's blog...

I told the principals that I realize there will always be a limited number of people able to go to World Youth Day due to the travel and the expense but, in a sense, the March for Life is something of “a poor man’s World Youth Day.”

Although we do not have the joy of having the Holy Father present in Washington, the young people who go get to experience the witness of hundreds of thousands of people dedicated to their Catholic faith, and particularly the thousands upon thousands of young people that have become a growing presence each year. Many of them have been inspired to live their faith more fully after experiencing the March for Life so I urged the principals to try to be as creative as possible in finding ways to enable the largest number of their students to attend each year.

Cardinal Sean was speaking to a meeting of the Catholic High School principals in the Archdiocese of Boston. His words encouraged me to speak to the principal of a high school that I'm thinking of sending my daughter to *but* it bothered me that he missed the opportunity to state the message of why it was important for Life for young people to attend the March. My daughter attended it for the first time this year and she found it incredibly inspiring!

But it's like "a poor man's World Youth Day"?

Wow! Thanks Cardinal Sean...

Is the March for Life just a photo-op for him?

A Call to Arms!

There seems to be some confusion from Cardinal O'Malley as to whether the Pope, Cardinal's, Bishops, Priests and lay people can respond to a woman who wants to discuss abortion by giving her abortion as an option, providing her with instructions on how to obtain that abortion and a phone number to a 24 hour hotline, calling her a taxi to get her to the abortions and permitting Planned Parenthood to monitor these new Catholic standards of the Gospel of Life with a personal Planned representative to monitor conversations between the healthcare workers and the woman asking for an abortion at a Catholic facility to ensure compliance.

When Catholics found out the details of how the Cardinal's plan would work at the level of Catholic healthcare providers and patients seeking abortions and distributed the information, the Cardinal sent out the following:

To be perfectly clear, Caritas Christi will never do anything to promote abortions, to direct any patients to providers of abortion or in any way to participate in actions that are contrary to Catholic moral teaching and anyone who suggests otherwise is doing a great disservice to the Catholic Church. We are committed to the Gospel of Life and no arrangement will be entered into unless it is completely in accord with Church teaching.

However, Planned Parenthood made Caritas put their promises in writing and then released the content of those promises to the Boston Globe:

From the Globe:

The Connector Authority board, which oversees the Commonwealth Care program, voted unanimously in favor of the joint venture proposed by Centene Corp., a St. Louis-based health organization, and Caritas Christi Health Care Network.
The vote followed several closed-door sessions in which officials from Centene and Caritas, the minority partner in the joint venture, assured regulators that women will have "ready access" to family planning and reproductive services, an issue that sparked concerns from abortion foes and reproductive rights activists.
Among the written assurances are a pledge that medical staff operating under the Centene-Caritas insurance plan, known as Commonwealth Family Health Plan, will inform women of their healthcare options, including abortion. The insurers will also provide a toll-free customer service line, available around the clock, to inform women abou t where they can get contraception, sterilization, and other family planning services not offered in the immediate setting. In an emergency, a service representative will arrange transportation to the nearest appropriate facility, officials said.
The regulators promised to watch closely. "We will certainly monitor their performance ," said Jon Kingsdale, the authority's executive director. "We will not allow them to start up or continue if they are not in compliance."
As a measure of the underlying tensions, four board members emphasized the need for oversight.

"I remain somewhat concerned about implementation," said Nonnie Burnes, state commissioner of insurance and a former Planned Parenthood board member. "I am willing to support this as long as we have some way to monitor this" in doctor's offices and other healthcare facilities.

The Cardinal had to stop saying that there would be no abortion referrals and instead a new statement essentially saying he was ignorant of whether forcing Catholics to inform women about abortion, providing them with instructions and 24 hour hotline abortion referral service, sending her by taxi to get the abortion and permitting doctors and nurses to be monitored by Planned Parenthood passed the muster of the Gospel of Life and is waiting on the opinion of our faithful National Catholic Bioethics Center to see if this is honest to God Catholic credo.

There's a simple formula to get to that answer. If the Pope can't do it and Cardinal's and priests can't do it - neither can Catholic physicians or any other heatlhcare worker. Further physicians take a civil oath not to do any harm - and sending people by taxicab to be killed violates that oath.


The National Catholic Bioethics Center must give their opinion confidentially and it is the Cardinal's responsibility to release that opinion. A week has gone by and in that week, the Cardinal permitted Caritas to enter into the contract.

THIS IS FOCA. FOCA is here. FOCA is being put in by Cardinal O'Malley.

Please do not sweep this under the rug where the rapes of our children used to reside. This is murder and when a Cardinal is trying to implement it, we have the duty to step up into the public square and say this is outrageous and wrong - - just as we do with Pelosi, Sebelius and Obama.

We are not a cult. Release the details to the public so that they may act upon it and stop this abomination.

Boston needs your help TODAY. Please help us by getting into the public square what is going on and encouraging people to contact the Nuncio and Vatican officials.

Copied below is the email addresses, phone numbers, etc for contacting the Papal Nuncio and Vatican offices...

His Excellency Pietro Sambi
Apostolic Nuncio
3339 Massachusets Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20008-3687
USA
202-333-7121
202-337-4036 FAX
email: nuntiususa@nuntiususa.org


His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI PP
Apostolic Palace
Via Del Pellegrino
Citta Del Vaticano 00120
Vatican City State
011.3906.69.88.10.22
011.3906.69.88.53.73 FAX
av@pccs.va
email: BenedictXVI@vatican.va

His Eminence Tarcisio Cardinal Bertone
Cardinal Secretary of State
Secretariat of State
Apostolic Palace
Vatican City 00120
The Vatican
11 39 06 6988 3438
011 39 06 6988 5088 FAX

His Eminence William Cardinal Levada, S.T.D.
Cardinal Prefect
Congregation for Doctrine of the Faith
Secretary - Fr. Luis Francisco Ladaria Ferrer, SJ
Piazza del S. Uffizio 11
00193 Rome
Italy
email: cdf@cfaith.va
011 39 06 6988 3357
011.3906.69.88.34.13
011-39-0696100596 FAX
011.3906.69.88.34.09 FAX
cdf@cfaith.va

His Eminence Claudio Cardinal Hummes
Cardinal Prefect
Congregation For the Clergy
Piazza Della Città
Leonina I
00193 Rome
Italy
011 39 06 6988 4151
011 39 06 6988 4845 FAX
Secretary: Most Rev. Archbishop Csaba Ternyak

Rev. Msgr. Arthur Calkins
Assistant to President Dario Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos
Pontifical Commission "Ecclesia Dei"
Piazza Pio XII 3
00193 Rome
Italy
011.3906.69.88.41.51
011.3906.69.88.48.45 FAX

His Eminence Cardinal Antonelli
President
Pontifical Council For the Family
Piazza S. Calisto 16
00153 Roma, Piazza S. Calisto, 16
011.3906.69.88.72.43
011.3906.69.88.72.72 FAX

His Eminence Franc Cardinal Rode
Prefect
The Congregation For Institutes of Consecrated Life and For Societies of Apostolic Life
Piazza Pio XII 3
00193 Rome
Italy
011.3906.69.88.41.28
011.3906.69.88.45.26 FAX
Secretary: Most Rev. Archbishop Piergiorgio Silvano Nesti, C.P.

His Eminence Cardinal Francis Arinze
Prefect of Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Roman Curia
Mailing Address:
Palazzo delle Congregazioni, 00193 Roma, Piazza Pio XII, 10
Telephone: 06.69.88.43.16; 06.69.88.43.18
Fax: 06.69.88.34.99


Most Reverend Albert Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith Patabendige Don
Secretary
Congregation for Divine Worship & Discipline of the Sacraments
Piazza Pio XII 10,
00193 Rome
Italy
011 39 06 6988 4316
011 39 06 6988 3499 FAX
cultdiv@ccdds.va

His Eminence Giovanni Battista Cardinal Re
Cardinal Prefect
Congregation For Bishops
Piazza Pio XII #10
00193 Rome
Italy
011 39 06 6988 4217
011 39 06 6988 4300 FAX
011-39-0669-885303 FAX
Secretary: Most Rev. Archbishop Antonio Maria Veglio

(source)

A Prayer Request

Please pray for my daughter, for wisdom to make a good decision over the next few days.

My Life Would S*** Without You

I can't embed the video but it's at this link...

Enjoy!

Guess this means you're sorry
You're standing at my door
Guess this means you take back
All you said before
Like how much you wanted
Anyone but me
Said you'd never come back
But here you are again

Cuz we belong together, yeah
Forever united here somehow, yeah
You got a piece of me
And honestly,
My life would suck without you

Maybe I was stupid for telling you goodbye
Maybe I was wrong for tryin' to pick a fight
I know that I've got issues
But you're pretty messed up too
Either way, I found out I'm nothing without you

Cuz we belong together, yeah
Forever united here somehow, yeah
You got a piece of me
And honestly,
My life would suck without you

Being with you is so disfunctional
I really shouldn't miss you
But I can’t let you go
Oh yeah

Cuz we belong together, yeah
Forever united here somehow, yeah
You got a piece of me
And honestly,
My life would suck without you

Cuz we belong together, yeah
Forever united here somehow, yeah
You got a piece of me
And honestly,
My life (my life) would suck (would suck) without you

The Great Peanut Scare

The latest salmonella scare, involving peanut butter and products which contain it have made over 500 people sick and caused 7 deaths.

The HPV vaccine, Gardasil, has reportedly caused over 10,000 adverse reactions and 27 deaths.

Where's the outrage?

How We Won the War: A Little Known Christmas Story

This is an excerpt from the book by Dr Peter Kreeft, The Angels and The Ants...

This is a true story. It took place on the eve of D-Day.

The greatest of world wars was at its most critical turning point.
Until then, the war had been mostly a series of stunning victories for the Fuhrcr. Dictatorship had apparently proved highly efficient. Most of Western civilization was under his control. The only hope was the great counterattack, the invasion plans. Both sides suspected the time was ripe for D-day; the only unknowns were when, where, and how.

On the eve of the invasion, a conversation much like the following took place between two close friends, both captains in the invasion forces. The conversation was never written up in memoirs or reported in any newspaper--until now.

“Gabby, you know all about the invasion plans, don't you?"
"No, Mike. No one knows all about them. You know how Army Intelligence works."
"Sure, and also why. They're afraid you'd live up to your name and your gift of gab will get picked up by enemy ears."

"No way. Our new spy behind enemy lines has the only receiver that can pick up my messages. But I have to tell you some startling things tonight. The General himself told me to. It's you who have to keep this top secret."

"You know you can trust me, Gabby. I was only kidding about you."

"Captains don't kid, Mike. You know that. Now listen up. I have three secrets for you."

"Shoot."

"First, the invasion is tomorrow night."
"That's no surprise. What else?"

"The place. Look here on the map. It's a little town no one would ever suspect."

"There? Never heard of the place."

"After tomorrow, the whole world will know about it. We'll put it on the map."

"OK, what's the third secret?"

"The identity of our new spy. She's a woman."
"A woman! Why?"

"Mike, don't be such an old chauvinist. This one's perfect for the job, just perfect. She's been preparing the landing place now for months."

"How do you know all this?"

"I was the one that got the first message through. That was extremely tricky, let me tell you."

"Why?"

"Because I had to wait for her reply. Sending wireless messages is easy, but waiting to receive them is much harder. This one especially, because the General absolutely insisted that we wait until we got her permission."

"Permission? The General waited for the permission of a woman before the great invasion could happen?"

"Exactly."

"Why?"
"Well, he's a gentleman, you know. Very old-fashioned that way. And he knows the job is terribly dangerous."

"I'll bet. Look at what happened to all the spies we sent in before her."

"Yes. Most were tortured."

"So what if she had said no?"

“Then the whole invasion plan would have been scrapped, at least for now, maybe forever. Who knows?"

"Incredible! If I didn't know better, I'd swear the General had lost his marbles."

"You haven't heard the half of it. Hold on to your hat for this one, Mike. The General insisted on personally leading the invasion, not just directing it from across the Channel."

"What!"

"That's not all. He's already there, in disguise. He landed nine ago."

"This is incredible, Gabby! And horribly dangerous. Suppose he's captured? What a plum that would be for the Fuhrer! What kind of strategy is that--to walk right into the enemy's territory?
Remember what happened to all those spies in the past? How does he expect to pull this off?"

"Well, the disguise is incredibly good, for one thing. But tomorrow, he's coming out of hiding. In fact, I think he may even be planning to be detected and eventually captured."

"What kind of a plan is that? Everything you tell me makes less and less sense than the thing before it. Why would he let himself be captured?"

"Believe it or not, I think he plans to confront the Fuhrer himself, face to face."

"And what then?"

"I have no idea. He hasn't told anyone that."
"You know, if I didn't trust him implicitly...."

"I know. But you know what they say, `Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do or die.'"

"It's true, Gabby. That's the army way. Trust and obey."

"You know what I wonder about, Mike?"
"What?"

"Suppose the invasion works, and we liberate all the captive people. What will they do once they're freed? I'll bet many of them will still cling to the Fuhrer's `New Order.' It's so much a part of their lives now, it feels half comfortable to them--like a jail cell that's become your home. Even when you're paroled, you're afraid to leave. One thing is sure, anyway: Even if we win, the world will never be the same again: too many scars, too much devastation, no simple return to pre-war innocence."

"No, but we can at least give the tired old world a chance for a new start, eh?"

"Absolutely, Mike. By the way, who is `we'? How many troops are in the invasion forces? If you're leading them tomorrow, you must know."

"You wouldn't believe it. The world has never seen an army this big. The whole sky is gonna have to open up for this one!

On Christmas Day, 4 B.C., the legions of General King of Kings under Michael the Archangel descended en masse in a field outside a little town called Bethlehem. The General himself came out of the hiding place Mary had prepared for him nine months before, disguised as a helpless baby.

The General wants all citizens to know that the invasion has been successful and the mop-up operation is still under way. All are urged to join this operation. There is still plenty to do. But the General assures all his troops that final, total victory is absolutely assured.

Hallmark is wrong. Christmas is not cute and cozy, sweet and sentimental. Christmas is God's D-Day.

For, this day is born to you a Saviour...

who is Christ the Lord, in the city of David.



Merry Christmas everyone!