Homosexual Marriage

Og covered this topic very well here.  This is my follow-up.  Here’s more on the attacks of peaceful, loving homosexuals who have absolutely no interest in harming the Church.

In Ontario, a lesbian has began an online petition to get the publisher of a Catholic pamphlet about homosexuality to remove wording calling it disordered.  Wording that comes from the Catechism, which is the teaching of the Catholic Church on the matter.  Her kids go to a Catholic school that uses the pamphlet.  She sends her children to a Catholic school, then gets offended when they’re taught bona fide Catholic teaching.  Same as the slut who went to Georgetown for three years mainly to chop at the university for not providing for sex change surgery, in addition to abortion and contraceptives, in their health insurance plan.

This British Member of Parliament wants to ban churches that refuse to perform homosexual marriages from performing all marriages.

It will definitely go that way here.  After all, look at the metamorphosis of the Obamacare Act, which was not supposed to in any fund abortion (Henry Hyde amendment) but now wants everyone to pony up a symbolic dollar to show unanimous support for abortion.

Non serviam.

p.s.:  I seldom, if ever, swear on the blog, but since Bill Maher said that Limbaugh’s only fault in calling that woman a slut was because he has sponsors while he, Maher, can call Sarah Palin a c**t all day long because he is on cable.  So herewith, that woman who testified in a phony Congressional hearing is, on here, known as the slut.  Bill maher said it’s ok.  He gives me permission, and blesses my action in his own secular way.

Filed under: Catholic stuff, liberal games

Excommunication

They just don’t do it like they used to:

If they started with Pelosi, Biden, Kucinich, Visclosky, and kept going to Stupak, and cast the whole den of snakes out of the church and require public penance for readmission, maybe the rest would tighten up their acts and either a) do what they do and acknowledge they sometimes have to do stuff outside of their faith to go with the will of the secular nation, or b) make the commitment to applying their faith to their decisions.  But stop acting like this crap is all inline with Catholicism, and that this abomination is part of their Christian witness.

Filed under: Catholic stuff, observations

Notre Dame

Here is where we get to air our dirty laundry in front of the secular nation.  At least the nation can get to see that Catholics as a whole don’t always go lock step with whatever the priests teach, and that sometimes, they recognize a rat no matter his rank, and we see that there are a lot of rats in Roman collars.  One is Father Jenkins.  That one says we have to be open to frank discussion and a free, open minded debate on issues.  Then he has an 80 year old priest who is doing nothing but carrying a cross in protest (I don’t see the protestors overturning cars or throwing newspaper boxes through Starbucks’ windows as the leftists like to do).  A priest who is stating official Church teaching is arrested at Notre Dame.

This American Church needs an enema.  It needs a good physic, a good flushing of all the bad juju that’s been building in the last few decades.  It needs a new Teresa of Avila.

The only difference between Fr. Jenkins and a whore is that a whore is pretty well within the knowledge of what she is.  And Notre Dame isn’t looking too good right about now.  Until it vomits this whore out of the system.  Even his own bishop knows he’s full of shit.

Filed under: Catholic stuff

Lent

Let me see, what to give up for Lent, which begins Wednesday.  Well, pretty much everything that involves spending money.  Thank you, That One, for making me a better Catholic!  By time you’re done with the economy, we’ll all be as poor as St. Francis of Assisi.

Filed under: Catholic stuff, no wonder I'm fed up

Interesting Moves in Kosovo

File this under “whoda thunk?”

Muslim Albanians converting to Christianity en masse, with no evident push or draw, except coming from the people themselves.

“We have been living a dual life. In our homes we were Catholics but in public we were good Muslims,” said Ismet Sopi. “We don’t call this converting. It is the continuity of the family’s belief.”

“Fifty or sixty percent of the population are linked emotionally with the Roman Catholic religion. This is because of feelings about what our ancestors believed,” said Muhamet Mala, a professor who teaches History of Religion at Pristina Public University.

Islam in the Balkans has been quite a bit different than that found in other countries. For a lot of people, it had just been an overlay, and not a true passion.

Beatified in 2003, Mother Theresa became a heroine to many Albanian worshippers. A new cathedral, still under construction at Pristina’s Mother Theresa Square, will be the tallest building in the capital and big enough to hold 2,000 churchgoers.

Now that would be an amazing sight to behold.  A cathedral in Kosovo.

“We don’t make appeals to anyone to convert. People call us,” said Don Shan Zefi, chancellor of the Church’s Kosovo diocese. “We are not talking about individuals any more. There are inhabitants from dozens of villages who have contacted us.”  Zefi said the process started decades ago, but added that today there are thousands of people who “want to become Roman Catholics again”.

Of course, someone has to complain:

The head of the Kosovo Islamic community, Mufti Naim Ternava, has opposed building a cathedral at the heart of Pristina and scoffs at new churches built across Kosovo.  “No human brain can understand how a church should be build in the middle of 13 Muslim villages,” he said.

Tough noogies; now shut up and deal with it.

The only problem I see with that is how this can inflame problems with the Orthodox.  The region has a long, sorry history of terrible war between Orthodox and Catholic Chirstians, two groups that are so close as to nearly be twins, except for cultural and hair-splitting legalistic reasons.  And considering the destruction that the Orthodox community endured in the last ten years, I wonder what outreach is being made to them.

Filed under: Catholic stuff, fact nugget

Tridentine Mass

I’m the only one I know who gets into the Tridentine Mass. I was born and raised after the changes in the Church happened, so I don’t have any wistful reminiscences of days gone by. Which means I don’t have nostalgia interfering with my objectivity.  My first Tridentine Mass was over a year ago at St. John Cantius in Chicago (www.cantius.org). I went there again before Christmas, and now a local priest has occasional Tridentine Masses, which saves my fuel.

As I said, I came to this order of the Mass without any emotional baggage, other than knowing that this was the Mass for the past 400 years, and that there are a number of people who remain attached to it, enough for the previous Pope to allow it under restrictions, and the new Pope to allow its free and unhindered expression. And, thanks to a tip from the site Gapers Block, I was able to go to the one parish in Chicago whose mission is the preservation and advocacy of the Old Mass, so I knew I was in for a treat.

I’ve been to both Catholic Mass and Orthodox Divine Liturgy, and I always thought that our Mass, as far as capturing the mystery and glory of God, can’t hold a candle to what the Orthodox have preserved. They say that Vladimir I, the first true Czar of the Rus, looked to the world for a new great religion to unite his tribes. He dismissed Islam, saying the Russian would never give up his vodka. He went to Rome and saw Mass, and was lukewarm. Then he saw the Divine Liturgy at the Haggia Sophia, and decided this was his new country’s new faith, for in it he saw the glory of God brought down to earth. I felt the same, until I saw the Tridentine Mass for the first time, and wondered why on earth they made such changes to something as fine as it. Couldn’t they make it in the vernacular, and still keep the old Mass?

The priest’s back isn’t to the people as much as he faces in the same direction the people do, and he is at the head of the group. The Eucharist is the focus, not the priest. The readings and the sermon are in the vernacular, so to say that the whole Mass was an unintelligible miasma is wrong. Latin was the language of Mass because, well, things got fossilized and didn’t advance as quickly as history. As late as the Enlightenment, Latin was the language of Europe. There was resistance against innovation, so this kept things frozen, even after national languages replaced Latin.

But before I go into the rabbit hole of minutia, I’ll end it with a story. I saw the Old Mass said at my childhood church, and for once, I understood how all of the altar design and church architecture so very well fixed the focus on the execution of the Mass. But one detail in particular stuck me.

There is a carving in the center of the back (Tridentine) altar that shows a stork feeding its brood in the nest, with the baby birds’ heads back, awaiting the stork’s feeding. Its presence never made sense. As I was keeling at the communion rail and put my head back for the Eucharist, I saw this relief out of the corner of my eye, and for the first time understood its purpose and meaning. Mr. Altar Sculptor, you sly dog.

Filed under: Catholic stuff, observations