Prayer before writing... posting...

Christ, Blessed Silence

A man's tongue can be his downfall.  Be not a detractor; use not your tongue for calumny... - Sirach 5:15-16

O Lord, set a guard over my mouth
and upon my lips an effective seal,
that I may not fail through them,
that my tongue may not destroy me. - Sirach 22:27
.
O Lord, open my lips,
and my mouth shall declare your praise. - Ps. 50
.
O God keep my tongue from evil
  my lips from speaking deceit. - Ps. 33
Keep my tongue from slander,
  from evil against my brother,
let me cast no slur on my neighbor...

Rather, grant me grace
   to speak the truth from my heart. - Ps. 14 

Glory be to the Father...
 

 

President Obama designates this weekend as three days of prayer in rememberance of 9/11

Who knew?

I only found out by reading The Deacon's Bench.  Interestingly, this news seems to have been passed over by Catholics online...

(CNSNews.com) - President Obama on Friday didn’t just declare one National Day of Prayer and Remembrance in honor of 9/11 – he proclaimed three.

In a presidential proclamation from the White House, Obama called on Americans to spend Friday through Sunday, Sept. 7-9 in “prayer, contemplation, memorial services, the visiting of memorials, the ringing in of bells, evening candlelight remembrance vigils and other appropriate ceremonies and activities” to commemorate the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. - Finish reading...
 

Anyone?
 

Our Lady's Birthday

 

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You, O little Mary, Maria Bambina, are the Cause of our Joy! Your appearance in the arms of your mother announces that the Word of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God, will soon appear in your arms. And you have but one desire, one joy: to give us your Son, to draw us to Him, that your joy might be ours and that our joy might be fulfilled. - Source

 

 

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Sweet Child Mary, destined to be the Mother of God and our sovereign and loving Mother, by the prodigies of grace you lavish upon us, mercifully listen to my humble supplications. In the needs which press upon me from every side and especially in my present tribulation, I place all my trust in you.

O Holy Child, by the privileges granted to you alone and by the merits which you have acquired, be merciful to me this day. Show that the source of spiritual favors and the continuous benefits which you dispense are inexhaustible, because your power with the Heart of God is unlimited. Deign through the immense profusion of graces with which the Most High has enriched you from the first moment of your Immaculate Conception, grant me, O Celestial Child, my petition, and I shall eternally praise the goodness of your Heart.

Hail Mary!  Full of grace!  Hail Mary!  Full of grace!  Hail Mary!  Mediatrix of all grace!  Have mercy upon me a sinner!  Hail Mary, full of Grace, the Lord is with thee!

"I am all thine, and all that I have is thine, O most loving Jesus,

through Mary Thy most holy and Immaculate Mother."

Baptizing children born out of wedlock: Just do it.

I like this story...

Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Buenos Aires has criticized Catholic pastors who refuse to baptize children born to single mothers.

The cardinal expressed his sympathy for a young woman who, after becoming pregnant, resists temptations to abortion and gives birth to the child. Then, he said, she finds herself “on a pilgrimage, going from parish to parish, trying to find someone who would baptize her child.”

The priests who reject this woman, Cardinal Bergoglio, are “hijacking” the sacrament, using rigid rules to preserve their own status, and are likely to “drive God’s people away from salvation.” He likened them to the Pharisees, and reminded them that Jesus regularly condemned the Pharisees, while spending his time with those they regarded as sinners.

“I say this with sadness, and if it sounds like a complaint or an offensive comment please forgive me,” the cardinal said. But he insisted that priests should serve the spiritual needs of the people and not “the interests of religious power.”  - CWN
 

Could not agree more.

BTW - my parents were not married in the Church, my dad was a non-practicing Lutheran, my mother a divorced, remarried Catholic.  Even though they never went to Church, they had me baptized, sent me to Catholic school, and was able to receive the sacraments of Penance, Eucharist and Confirmation.  I mention this because some priests are reluctant to baptize children unless their parents at least attend Mass.

That said, I wonder if Cardinal Bergoglio would advocate the same for children adopted by or born to gay people?  The Cardinal is definitely opposed to gay marriage and adoption:

"Let's not be naive, we're not talking about a simple political battle; it is a destructive pretension against the plan of God. We are not talking about a mere bill, but rather a machination of the Father of Lies that seeks to confuse and deceive the children of God." - Source

 

I'm not sure how the Church handles these situations now.



 Something Argentine by Astor Piazzolla.  Enjoy.

I missed Sr. Simone

Big Sister

C'est si bon.

Last night I had to go to a neighborhood crime watch meeting.  We discussed installing bunkers for the coming civil war.  I'm taking the role of Daddy - Hyacinth's daddy from Keeping Up Appearances.  We are looking for looters who remove yard signs.  Seriously, there's been a rash of 'mobile drug dealing' in the area.  I was so tempted to ask that if we catch the drug dealers, can we keep the drugs that were confiscated, but no one gets my humor.

So anyway.  I found out I missed Sr. Simone's 'pro-life' presentation at the DNC Reality Show*.  Evidently Sr. Simone explained her pro-life views with anecdotes in support of Obamacare - yet before all of that, she told an interviewer, making abortion illegal was beyond her 'pay-grade'.  Sounds like her boss, huh?  Obama said the same thing once.  Anyway, she sums up her pro-life commitment this way:

The Affordable Care Act will cover people like Margaret. We all share responsibility to ensure that this vital health care reform law is properly implemented and that all governors expand Medicaid coverage so no more Margarets die from lack of care. This is part of my pro-life stance and the right thing to do. - NCR
 

Their motherhouse is a bus.

At least she said 'pro-life' - yet oddly enough, she did not close with "God bless you!"   What was most revealing about Campbell's talk - at least for me - is how that mindset works - being pro-life and yet not knowing "if she supports laws protecting the lives of unborn children".  It's feminist screwball logic at work.  The sisters seem to me to be sisters of feminism, definitely 'seculareligious', working for a secularized catholic church.  Although they claim to be cooperators with the nations Bishops:

We agree with our bishops, and that's why we went on the road: to stand with struggling families and to lift up our Catholic sisters who serve them. - Campbell

 

Ladies Nite.

Last evening was "Ladies Nite" that is for sure.  Sandra Fluke made that perfectly clear.  I only know her from what Catholic blogs have said about her and so I kept thinking, "This is the woman who's a slut and seeks Government aid to buy contraceptives and have access to abortion if need be."  That's pretty much what the blogs have said, so I was completely unable to warm up to her - although all the women in the audience loved her.  (Oh! Oh!  I'm not saying Fluke is a slut - I'm just repeating what I noticed other people wrote - which ruminated with me while I watched her speak.  Although I'm told women with slut buttons are indeed at the convention, so I'm thinking it's not a shameful term any longer.  What?)

“In that America, your new president could be a man who stands by when a public figure tries to silence a private citizen with hateful slurs. Who won’t stand up to the slurs, or to any of the extreme, bigoted voices in his own party,” she claimed. “It would be an America in which you have a new vice president who co-sponsored a bill that would allow pregnant women to die preventable deaths in our emergency rooms..."  Scare tactics from Ms. Fluke

Holding women hostage.

Last night the show was determined to convince women that their rights will be taken away if they do not vote for Obama, and abortion is their right - or at least above anyone's pay-grade or ability to do anything about.  Which begs the question:  "In that case, are women really free?  Where is the choice?"  You either agree to abortion rights or you get thrown under the bus.

Bill Clinton loves women...

I enjoy him.  He enjoys himself - and that is always fun to watch him do.  One must always do copious fact-checking on everything he says however.  The Dems reality show format is getting to be a bit surreal now.

Best comment ever - in response to Elizabeth Warren's assertion:

"Jobs grow from the bottom up."

 

- Never had a poor person give me a job. - Adrienne.

 *FYI:  I'm watching the convention as someone might watch a so-called reality tv show - and commenting accordingly.  It's a great study - very Orwellian.

Rock Stars.  15 Minutes of fame almost up.

 

Charity never fails...

I read somewhere that St. Maria Goretti was more concerned that her attacker would commit mortal sin than she was for her life.  As she lay dying in the hospital, the young Saint forgave her attacker.

The proof of her forgiveness manifested itself in a dream experienced by the would be rapist while in prison.  In the dream, Allessandro was visited by the Saint, extending her forgiveness to him in the form of a lily. 

Fifty years later, her murderer joined Maria's mother to be present at the canonization of her daughter in 1950.

It seems to me that the victim can indeed forgive the perpetrator.  The miracle of Allesandro's conversion suggests to me that without that kind of charity, one is not yet completely healed.


 

Michelle at the DNC

Excerpts from Mrs. Obama's speech.*

When it comes to giving our kids the education they deserve, Barack knows that like me and like so many of you, he never could've attended college without financial aid.

And believe it or not, when we were first married, our combined monthly student loan bills were actually higher than our mortgage.

We were so young, so in love, and so in debt.

So in the end, for Barack, these issues aren't political – they're personal.

Barack knows the American Dream because he's lived it...

And he believes that when you've worked hard, and done well, and walked through that doorway of opportunity...you do not slam it shut behind you...

I know from experience that if I truly want to leave a better world for my daughters, and all our sons and daughters...if we want to give all our children a foundation for their dreams and opportunities worthy of their promise...if we want to give them that sense of limitless possibility – that belief that here in America, there is always something better out there if you're willing to work for it...

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.** - Transcript of Michelle Obama's speech at DNC

*Made me think of the Ashford and Simpson song.

**She said "God" twice!

 

Party people this is what you want...
 

FACT CHECK!  I was right in choosing the songs I did.  First Lady's False Fairy Tale of Struggle.

Flashlight!

This is good: Fr. James Martin: In Merton's Footsteps

H/T to Deacon Kandra.  I'm encountering some of the best Catholic posts online at the Deacon's Bench BTW.   The Deacon doesn't permit comments, so I post my responses here.

Soft despotism: Obama's flacid State.

Political science...

Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people. - wiki

I know!  Although I've never studied Alexis de Tocqueville so what would I know?  Nevertheless, I wanted to know what soft despotism meant and pursued a definition online, since someone said it pretty much describes the state of our country at present.  I think it does too... but I'm not sure because about six years ago I fell and hit my head shortly after undergoing surgery, and you know what head injuries can do... poor Fr. Benedict.  But I digress.

In Democracy in America, Tocqueville suggested that democracy was capable of breeding its own form of despotism, albeit one without the edges of Jacobin or Bonapartist dictatorship with which Europeans were all too familiar. The book spoke of “an immense protective power” which took all responsibility for everyone's happiness-just so long as this power remained “sole agent and judge of it.” This power, Tocqueville wrote, would “resemble parental authority” but would try to keep people “in perpetual childhood” by relieving people “from all the trouble of thinking and all the cares of living.”

Such circumstances might arise, Tocqueville noted, if democracy's progress was accompanied by demands for a leveling of social conditions. The danger was that an obsession with equality was very compatible with increasingly centralized state-power. Leveling social conditions, Tocqueville observed, usually involved using the state to subvert those intermediate associations that reflected social differences, but also limited government-power.

Tocqueville's vision of “soft-despotism” is thus one of arrangements that mutually corrupt citizens and the democratic state. Citizens vote for those politicians who promise to use the state to give them whatever they want. The political-class delivers, so long as citizens do whatever it says is necessary to provide for everyone's desires. The “softness” of this despotism consists of people's voluntary surrender of their liberty and their tendency to look habitually to the state for their needs.- Dr. Samuel Gregg of The Acton Institute
 

Then this short excerpt by Alexis de Tocqueville:

I have always thought that servitude of the regular, quiet, and gentle kind which I have just described might be combined more easily than is commonly believed with some of the outward forms of freedom, and that it might even establish itself under the wing of the sovereignty of the people.

Our contemporaries are constantly excited by two conflicting passions: they want to be led, and they wish to remain free. As they cannot destroy either the one or the other of these contrary propensities, they strive to satisfy them both at once. They devise a sole, tutelary, and all-powerful form of government, but elected by the people. They combine the principle of centralization and that of popular sovereignty; this gives them a respite: they console themselves for being in tutelage by the reflection that they have chosen their own guardians. Every man allows himself to be put in leading-strings, because he sees that it is not a person or a class of persons, but the people at large who hold the end of his chain.

By this system the people shake off their state of dependence just long enough to select their master and then relapse into it again. - de Tocqueville, Volume II, Book 4, Chapter 6 of Democracy in America

 

Blessed Teresa of Calcutta

"There is hunger for ordinary bread, and there is hunger for love, for kindness, for thoughtfulness, and this is the great poverty that makes people suffer so much." - Bl. Teresa of Calcutta

DNC in Charlotte.

She looked good.

Just a couple of thoughts...

I didn't realize the DEMs were so in-your-face pro-abortion.  I know they are pro-choice - I thought that's how they are supposed to say it - but that woman from NARAL really pushed abortion.  No more pretending.  (I haven't been keeping up with the pro-aborts propaganda I guess.) 

I actually thought last night's deal was pretty exciting - I watched it from start to when the power went out at my house.  No, I did not watch the Republican Convention until Romney's speech.  The power  came back on just when Mrs. Obama was wrapping up.  She did good.  What?  She did.  In fact I thought Kathleen Sibelius actually presented well too.  Don't worry - I see how it all works now...

So here's the deal.  Like it or not - last night's coverage showcased the United States we live in.  The celebrities were in the audience, the hot button issues were being approved, change was acclaimed, 'if you work for it' that is.  As for the change, the advances, you have to wonder, how are you ever going to take back from women what they claim as their right?  The people who are up there on the platform are the ones calling the shots.  If they win - their platform is the future - and it seems to me it is what the rest of the world wants from us as well.  They kept saying 'this is change'. 

It sure is.

I blame it on the Novus Ordo.



BTW - I heard people mention God - even Rahm Emanuel said God bless America.  I mention it because some people were saying God was banned from the Convention.


Disclaimer:  Nope - I do not support the Obama people at all - but they were so convincing - I see why popular culture follows along and believes in the hope and change proposition.  The Dems have always had star power and trend on their side.

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THAT? Fr. Peter West, HLI

Fr. Benedict Groeschel, CFR told me once after he heard about                          something I was reminded of after reading Mark                       Shea          meant  


When Fr. Zuhlsdorf left the St. Paul                But Fr. Paul Marx OSB was never asked    and then he died        however, Sr. Mary Martha reported





 that John Paul Erickson fired them for no        

When asked about the apparitions Pius               

Elizabeth Scali  on the other hand           told Katrina to shape

She said she'd rather eat paint off     when

Archbishop Dolan   and the drink was knocked       out of purportion

I was not drunk    touched me!   what
you filthy cow                                              not a pig 

what's a c                     Fr. Corapi never                     when Euteneuer told the de                       she stuck to the ceiling and firemen had to be called. 

Patrick Madrid    asked

Larry D      to        stop                       'I feel like I'm being stalked you f     freak!"

I'm scared to leave the house      with all the    

yard signs                        

ig                                norant                      sl                         ut                          pull my finger

Miss Brooks                                     molested

Walter Denton.

No I can't do that Adrienne said to Hilliard                              He's German I think

part Indian is what Cath                        Jeff I think, don't know his last name  Canon Peters

depilatory                                                    supository                    stay out of it
Kant?  Kan't?  
makes no sense                                    what is a                   Obama         ers ate the  Bachmann                        

No, I think    Belinda                       called the police

wet herself                            on the walk of fame

got her pregna                     popped        bber                         

Monsignor Ganswein

goose-wine   haha                             drunk again                      Mercury

Badger            not nuts, but maybe on                                                         the monastery    cracked under                         it happened in the cabin

Condoms and                                          closed now - dispersed

v                           dialogues                             oh mono                                                 kissed my                                      


What?

Editors Note:   Seriously folks - this is pretty close to how it is for me to post on the new Blogger!   Although I kinda manipulated the end result. 
 

What will those who condemned Medjugoje say...

If the Vatican Commission on Medjugorje investigating the phenomena decide there is nothing contrary to the faith occurring there and that pilgrims are free to make pilgrimages and - you know - even going beyond what Cardinal Schönborn* says and does?

Any negative report from the Vatican Commission on Medjugorje is absolutely out of the question, a well-informed source tells Medjugorje Today. The report that is now being finished will reflect that the experts have been working their way through an entirely positive material.

Medjugorje will get a thumbs up from the Vatican Commission of experts who have investigated the events in the Bosnian village since March 2010, a source close to the investigation tells Medjugorje Today. - MT
 

But... but... but........

I know!

*Thay... what does the Schönborn really say about Medj?

Cardinal Schönborn: I think that the Church’s teaching on Medjugorje is very clear. The bishops of the countries of the former Yugoslavia took a clear position in 1991. This is still valid and has been confirmed by the Vatican twice. There are three important points in this statement. First, that it is not confirmed that the events are of supernatural origin. That means it is neither confirmed nor denied. The Church left it open. The second point is that as the so-called apparition question and message question has not been decided it is not permissible to make official pilgrimages to Medjugorje. So, for example, I cannot organize a formal diocesan pilgrimage to Medjugorje as we can to Rome or Fatima or Lourdes. The third point, however, is that the people who choose to go to Medjugorje on their own are entitled to spiritual care. So, we priests or bishops are invited to provide spiritual company to pilgrims. That’s what my predecessors in Vienna did from the very beginning regarding Medjugorje, and that’s what I continue to do. I think these three points are sufficient for a good understanding of how to approach Medjugorje. The most important for me are the overwhelming good spiritual fruits of Medjugorje. - Source

As for me and my household, I will await what the Church decides.  I can't go any place anyway.

This is good...

"The unity for which Christ lived and died is not an abstract ideal.  It is the result of hard work: suspending judgment, choosing others before self, forgiving, seeking reconciliation rather than nursing hurt pride.  In other words, it requires that we die to self.  The fruit?  The blessing of God's peace!" - Magnificat, Morning Prayer, Tuesday, September 4

I see this as a contemporary interpretation of the doctrine of St. John of the Cross.

There is so much online, so much written, so much discussed, that authentic spirit can be dissipated if not lost.  I think it is important to allow ourselves to lose, to fail, to experience our impotence and powerlessness.  To allow ourselves to be taught, even corrected and rebuked, without defending ourselves, or worse, attacking one another.

"He walked in peace through the midst of them." - Luke 4:30

Art: Holy card by Ade Bethune.  I have one like it I purchased at her place many years ago, I wrote at the verse from Luke 4:30 at the base of the image.  It is in one of my books someplace.  The image used here taken from this site.

The New Martyrs of Egypt

  

In recent months Copts have also asserted their ancient Egyptian heritage in public protests.

Marchers commemorating Copts killed in clashes since the

 revolution’s onset staged a demonstration near the 

Coptic Cathedral in Cairo’s Abbasiya neighborhood. - Source

Egyptian Copts ready for martyrdom...

Could I say the same?

I was impressed with something one man told David Pinault while he was in Cairo:

My sharpest memory from Cairo is what my driver said: al-Masih biygarribna, “Christ is testing us.” I’d hired Sami to drive me around the city. As soon as I saw on his wrist the washma, a faded tattoo in the shape of a cross, I knew he was a Copt, a member of Egypt’s Christian minority, a community that predates the Muslim presence by centuries.
As we drove, Sami told me about the persecution Copts endure at the hands of Egyptian Salafists. Salafists are Muslims who want an Islamist government in which the harshest interpretations of Islamic law (shariah) are privileged at the expense of both non-Muslims and progressive-minded Muslims.

As we drove, Sami told me about the persecution Copts endure at the hands of Egyptian Salafists. Salafists are Muslims who want an Islamist government in which the harshest interpretations of Islamic law (shariah) are privileged at the expense of both non-Muslims and progressive-minded Muslims.

“Things had been less worse for us under Mubarak,” Sami said. Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s authoritarian ruler until his ouster in the revolution, had suppressed Islamist radicals. But now, said Sami, the Salafists feel bold enough to burn churches, incite anti-Coptic riots and call openly for the expulsion of Christians.

I told him the statistics: in 2011 and 2012, since the revolution’s onset, over 100,000 Copts have fled Egypt. “Well, I’m not going to leave,” Sami insisted. “Christ is testing us. I tell my friends to stay. Christ could end this suffering, this trial, at any time. How will you feel, I tell my friends, if you’re in Canada instead of Egypt when Christ returns?” - Source

 

“Christ is testing us. I tell my friends to stay. Christ could end this suffering, this trial, at any time. How will you feel, I tell my friends, if you’re in Canada instead of Egypt when Christ returns?”
 

"... our rituals and our cassocks are pompous." - Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini

What?  I didn't say it.

Fighting in the blogosphere.

I just read several blog posts by different authors attacking this Catholic author, that Catholic priest, the other Catholic priest - severe condemnations of one another and declarations of knowing one and the others guilt and, and, and ... I think some of them believe they can read hearts and can tell you not only who is going to hell, but who is there already! 

I don't feel so bad now.

 

A Famous New York Retreat House yields its secrets...

Inisfada - St. Ignatius

Inisfada... Gaelic for Long Island.

Inisfada is now a retreat house.  The incredible mansion was donated to the Jesuits in 1934 by Genevieve Garvan Brady, widow of the business mogul Nicholas F. Brady, who died in 1930.  Both devout Catholics, they built their home on what came to be known as the Irish Channel on Long Island. 

While not exactly an insult, the "Irish Channel" wasn't precisely a compliment either. During the politically incorrect 1920s, it was a smug WASP joke referring to an imprecisely bounded section of Long Island's North Shore favored by rich Irishmen.

The Irish business barons of the late 19th and early 20th centuries tended to fall into three groups vis a vis Catholicism and American "society." According to the old saw, heaven was a palace with many doors, but a gentleman used the one marked "Episcopalian." Ergo, the first group either abandoned Catholicism altogether and/or raised their children in whatever fashionable Protestant church was handiest. The second group may or may not have been good Catholics, but didn't care about society so it didn't matter what they did. The third group embraced Catholicism with a special intensity, sometimes showering Catholic charities with sufficient millions to attract the attention of the pope himself. Utilities and tobacco mogul Nicholas F. Brady (1878-1930), builder of the Tudor Revival palace in the vintage aerial below, falls into category three. He called his Manhasset estate Inisfada (pronounced in-ish-FAH-dah), which means Long Island in Gaelic. - NYSD
 

Cardinal Pacelli was once a guest ...

The heart of Inisfada is the great hall, seen below in its salad days. The widow Brady's grandest hour arguably came in the fall of 1936 when Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, visited the United States and stayed at Inisfada ... for a month. According to the Times, the visiting cardinal "appeared greatly impressed by the magnitude of the structure." Mrs. Brady, who had been received by the pope in 1935, was by this time considered the preeminent Catholic woman in America. Before the cardinal left, she gave a dinner in his honor for 700 guests. It was Inisfada's last great party. - NYSD Here are Mrs. Brady and the cardinal in the great hall at Inisfada during his 1936 visit. Today the hall is a chapel, intact architecturally but looking quite different with pews.

One of the chapels.

St. Ignatius Retreat House - but not for long.

After 75 years, first as a Jesuit school, then a seminary and more recently a retreat house, St. Ignatius is closing Inisfada next year. This was an economic decision that has saddened everybody. The church's long stewardship of this invaluable cultural artifact comes, however, with a responsibility to the greater community. Disaster threatens Inisfada, as much from vandals who would destroy it if improperly secured, to developers who would demolish it to build another condominium community. Not yet officially on the market, interested parties are circling the property already. We can only hope that everyone involved does the right thing. As of this writing the retreat house is still functioning; the link is www.inisfada.net. - NYSD

Fairy tale ornament from the childless Mrs. Brady.

The same year that Mrs. Brady donated Inisfada to the church, she married William J. Babbington Macauley, the Irish Free State's Minister to the Holy See. One year later, in 1938, at the age of 53, she died in Rome as suddenly and unexpectedly as her first husband. A thousand people attended her memorial at St. Ignatius Loyola on Park and 84th. She was buried, alongside her first husband at a Pennsylvania novitiate he had endowed before his death. - New York Social Diary
 

The estate is much too expensive to maintain, which strikes me as very sad - if the donors had only known.  It reminds of how many churches and monasteries, once built, bequeathed, endowed, both by wealthy and poor Catholic faithful alike, which have now been sold, torn down - or simply sacked as a result of the upheaval generated after Vatican II.  Equally as sad is the knowledge some of these properties have had to be sold to provide funds for lawsuits against the Church.  The Protestant reformers would have been delighted if they had foreseen what has happened. 

For many more photos, go to: New York Social Diary: Big Old Houses
 

Here's a cool Labor Day film...

Most readers are probably too young to remember this.

Have a nice Labor Day.

Catholic geeks...

Niches in hell... shrines of self-opinion and pride for the arrogant.

 

virtual insanity.

I forgot what I was looking for but I came across a 'Catholic' forum conversation - pronouncing the 'doctrine' Catholic women should not go to university or waste their money on higher education if they are going to be married.  (Now I know where one of my friends gets his ideas!  Ha ha!)  The thread continued onto issues of modesty: should you be modest in the privacy of your home?  In bed?  The participants appeared to involve single men and women and the discussion had me wondering how mature or stable they might be.  It was a world - or chat room - I never want to get involved in.  Not that it makes any difference, the site was a 'sede' site - sedevacantist - although I'm told such discussions take place on other traditional Catholic sites as well.  On the site I was reading, one fellow actually recommended his readers read Mel Gibson's dad's book on Catholicism.  I know!

So anyway.  The experience helped me see how there are little niches in cyberspace - little clubs or cliques, where the discussions which take place are peculiar to their special interests.  Just like here at Abbey Roads. 

To repeat what I said in an earlier post, 'don't go to strangers'... and I might add, don't get too weird - lay off the forums and Facebook and Twitter and blogs - it's an awful lot of biased chatter.  Read the Catechism and Scripture instead - and try praying more.  The rosary is good - 20 decades now.  That should keep our meddlesome minds busy and grace-filled!  Isn't that right Ros?


Photo:  HUMAN ROCKS
At the end of the stony road of 2 km, which heads to the west at the 5th km of the asphalt road heading from Kızkalesi to Hüseyinler Village of Silifke, you reach the Devil's River. At the steep slope of this valley, in 9 niches on the surface of rocks, there are 11 men, 4 women, two children and one mountain goat embossment, coming from the 2nd century AD. - Source

Holiness for ordinary Catholics

The 'greatness of ordinary life'.

When St. Josemaría was asked what Opus Dei could be compared to, he pointed to the first Christians as the role models. For the first 200 years or so, all spirituality — whether of bishops, priests, deacons or laity — could be simply summarized as Christ and his Spirit, as handed down through the Scriptures and the authority of the Chair of Peter and the bishops in communion with him. During this time the Church grew and flourished throughout the known civilized world and beyond without the need of external structures. From Nero to Constantine, Christians were illegal at worst and second-class citizens at best. - FATHER C. JOHN McCLOSKEY  Review of Eric Sammons, Holiness for Everyone: the Practical Spirituality of St. Josemaría Escrivá

Mass Chat: *Nun's habits - a footnote...

Throw a black veil on these two (or not), and you've got nuns.


*Some nun's habits originated from the fashion of the day and locale of the foundress.

Perfectae Caritatis never said “abandon the habit” but it left it to each community to interpret their mission and determine their dress-needs accordingly.  For some that meant shedding the habit, which had become an anachronistic reflection of what had been the “ordinary” wardrobe of a foundress. As a Cenacle Sister once explained to me, the pleated headpiece and bonnet they wore until the mid-1960′s had nothing to do with “custody of the eyes” as some might imagine, but was simply a traditional reflection of what Couderc and her secular contemporaries wore. Their purple capes were designed not with a mind to penance, but because the abundant local flora of Lalouvesc allowed for the plentiful weaving of purple cloth. For these sisters, whose charism is all about retreat-giving, hospitality and spiritual direction, it made a great deal of sense for them to abandon such outmoded garb, which would almost seem pretentious, given their work. With few exceptions, most of these sisters are identified by the broad gold cross they wear as a pin or necklace. - The Anchoress
 

I knew that.

 

If Democrats are so concerned about minorities...

Why don't they take better care of the 1% then?  Help them out with tax breaks and stuff.  No wonder the Dems are losing.

What?