08 June 2010

Coffee Bowl Browsing

Americans aren't buying the anti-Israeli/pro-Hamas spin of the MSM's coverage of the flotilla fracas.  Good on them.

Lots of pics and reports on the recent Stop the Mosque at Ground Zero rally. I'm not entirely sure what I think about this issue.  Not all Muslims are terrorists.  Nothing--that I know of--requires Muslims to be violent in the propagation of their faith.  But I can certainly understand why the families of 9/11 victims would be peeved.

Is there a "pedator-priest" problem in the Catholic Church? No.

Is being anti-Catholic essential to being English?  I hope not!  If I forced to renounce my American citizenship, I would immediately apply to become a subject of Her Majesty, the Queen.  My third choice?  Refugee status in the Vatican City State.

As a reasonably educated person with a deeply held sense of fairness, I realize that Wal-Mart is not always good for the local businesses it usurps.  However, as a Partisan Redneck with limited funds, I say, "Leave Wal-Mart alone!"

Fr. Z. tackles the thorny issue of female altar servers at a celebration of the Extraordinary Form of the Mass.  I've never celebrated the E.F.--probably never will--so I don't have a dog in this fight.  If I were a parish priest, I would not allow female altar servers for all the reasons normally given for this exclusion.  However, as a university chaplain, I frequently asked young women to serve.  The difference?  Boys are put off serving when girls are allowed to serve.  I hope this isn't a problem for college-aged men.  And I wish it weren't a problem for the boys!

Q:  do the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip need humanitarian aid?  A:  Not if infant morality rates are any indication of humanitarian need.

B.O.'s failure to promote an essential American value:  religious freedom.

The inevitability of a persecuted Catholic Church. . ."the gates of hell shall not prevail. . ."

Gangster hermeneutics:  Robert Frost as Poetic Thug 

On lying to children about the culinary habits of rhinos.

40 sayings from Nietzsche that promise to rock your world.

You know you wanna hear this guy's story!

Are you a psycho-killer?  Take the test!

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12 comments:

  1. Jason S7:21 AM

    Father about your remark dealing with alter girls. You said that you did involved women at the university level in liturgy inferring that college age men would not feel push out (unlike younger boys). But at my own parish during the Corpus Christi procession at the end of mass all 6 people dressed in white that followed the priest and the Body were woman. I would say no matter at what age, women chase men away, whether it is poker games, beach volleyball or liturgical celebrations. A man might take seriously the all male company softball league, but you never see a man take seriously the intergender league.

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  2. The inevitability of a persecuted church - don't worry. God is in control. Rejoice in suffering and keep practising subversive, non-violent resistance (as Jesus taught us) and All will be well.

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  3. It bugs the heck out of me to hear someone won't let girls serve at the altar. We have both girls and boys serving in our parish. Most often, although not always, they don't serve together at the same Mass. However, I don't believe that's a policy.

    Boys have a problem serving with girls? Too bad. They need to change their attitudes and the adults in their lives, especially the men, can lead the way. Don't cop out with "I wish it weren't a problem..."

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  4. Anonymous10:38 AM

    Father, please reconsider that the sacramental significance of your own priesthood -- not to mention that of the Sacrifice of the Mass -- is obscured when females serve in the sanctuary.

    Ruth Ann -- Service in the sactuary isn't just a function. As part of the liturgy, it has symbolic freight. Service by females is to be rejected for many reasons besides the "vocational discouragement" usually cited:

    It obscures the complementary sexual distinctiveness of men and women.

    It disparages the dignity of womanhood as inadequate and unfulfilling.

    It sometimes implants in girls futile expectations that cannot be fulfilled.

    It misrepresents the participatio actuosa prescribed for the faithful as a call for lay busyness, and propagates a clericalism that disparages the role of lay faithful assisting quietly from the pew.

    It misrepresented service in the sanctuary as a matter of rights (which it is not, for any lay person).

    Romulus

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  5. Eek!! Got the answer correct to the psych-killer exam. :S

    Though a funeral is a really odd place to ask someone out. :/

    DT

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  6. Outside of a convent or exceptional circumstances (war, plague, etc.), women have no place at or around the altar.

    Altar Girls, like Communion in the Hand, are an abominable innovation imposed contra legem. I look forward to the day when such nonsense is consigned to the ash heap along with other really bad ideas.

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  7. "I would say no matter at what age, women chase men away, whether it is poker games, beach volleyball or liturgical celebrations. A man might take seriously the all male company softball league, but you never see a man take seriously the intergender league."

    And I say a man who's chased away by women needs to grow a pair.* That you can't take me "seriously" in the liturgy has absolutely nothing to do with whether I should be in the sanctuary or not. More importantly, it has nothing to do with whether men are fulfilling their callings. Are you also frightened away from voting because I vote, or scared to go to college because of my truly awesome Master's Degree? Do you refuse to help out around the house because your wife is there, and you can't take domesticity seriously anymore? Grow up, put on your whitey-tighties, and do your job, whether it's taking out the garbage or becoming a deacon. If men are letting fear of cooties drive them away from their duties, then women aren't the only ones who've forgotten their place.

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  8. re: "Predator Priest problem". I disagree that the Catholic Church does not have this problem. Where I think we agree is that it is the same problem that plagues the rest of Humanity. Perhaps we should say the Church does not have any WORSE of a problem.

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  9. Regarding Altar Servers - "Once prohibited in the Catholic Church, female altar servers, also called altar girls, are now allowed provided that the diocesan bishop and the parish priest allow the practice. Today only one Roman Catholic diocese in America, the diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska, does not allow female altar servers." (Wiki)

    Also:
    Canon 230 #2 lays down that:

    "Laici ex temporanea deputatione in actionibus liturgicis munus lectoris implere possunt; item omnes laici muneribus commentatoris, cantoris aliisve ad normam iuris fungi possunt. "

    The Pontifical Council for the interpretation of Legislative Texts was recently asked if the liturgical functions which, according to the above canon, can be entrusted to the lay faithful, may be carried out equally by men and women, and if serving at the altar may be included among those functions, on a par with the others indicated by the canon.

    At its meeting of 30 June 1992, the members of the Pontifical Council for the Interpretation of Legislative Texts examined the following dubium which had been proposed to them:

    "Utrum inter munera liturgica quibus laici, sive viri sive mulieres, iuxta C.I. C. Can. 230 #2, fungi possunt, adnumerari etiam possit servitium ad altare."

    The following response was given: "Affirmative et iuxta instructiones a Sede Apostolica dandas."

    Subsequently, at an Audience granted on 11 July 1992 to the Most Reverend Vincenzo Fagiolo, Archbishop Emeritus of Chieti-Vasto and President of the Pontifical Council for the Interpretation of Legislative Texts, Pope John Paul II confirmed the decision and ordered its promulgation. This will be done in the near future.

    In light of the above, I cannot understand why anyone would object to female altar servers! Let's hear it for the girls!

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  10. Jason S9:09 PM

    Just because the Pope says something is possible does not make it right. He is still just a servant of the faith.

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  11. Careful, Jason. . .don't try to be more Catholic than the Pope. There are elements of the sacraments that not even the Pope can change. But there is nothing about the sex of altar servers that changes the nature of the Mass.

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  12. Anonymous11:42 PM

    I love the absolutely correct sign that a man is holding in one of the pictures in the link to the mosque at Ground Zero issue. The sign says simply, "All I need to know about Islam I learned on 9/11." Fantastic. That's my new motto.

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