25 April 2014

Coffee Cup Browsing

I know clergy (including me) who struggle to understand the Church's byzantine regs on marriage. . .so, yea. . .I seriously doubt this

Yea, I thought so. . .so, NO, there's nothing new from the Pope about "re-marriage" and communion.

To wit: "Catholic doctrines are not altered by phone calls."

Ah, behold the cool, rational behavior of a secularist.

Justice is served

On the necessity of silencing Christians: "tolerance" tolerates no opposition.

U.N. gives Iran a seat on its women's rights commission. . .good thing that the U.N. is an entirely useless entity.

"Defective fathers" deeply influence atheists

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23 April 2014

Back to school

Back to school today. . .

One more week of classes, then exams, and then graduation on May 8th.

I can't even look at the stack of stuff to be done before then. 

BUT. . .I did enjoy my Easter break reading novels and other non-NDS related books.  

:-)

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22 April 2014

Promises, gratitude

As promised, I remembered all my Book Benefactors at the Easter Mass.

My gratitude for your generosity is immeasurable!

I recently rec'd a copy of The Metaphysical Foundation of Modern Science from an anonymous benefactor. Mille grazie.

I know summer is arriving soon. . .my travel nerves are already jangling. Three out-of-state trips. Oy.
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Coffee Cup Browsing

What atheism can't explain. . . 

Infinitely malleable, undemanding metaphors are more powerful than the apostolic faith. . .

In related news: Left-liberal Christianity fails in the U.K.

This is what the West has become. . .getting an abortion to become famous

Well, maybe we aren't hopelessly circling the bowl just yet.

The original suggestion for a purge was satirical. . .but some are taking it seriously. 

Now you can spend even more time on Youtube! British Pathé puts thousands of hours of archived video on-line.

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20 April 2014

Why didn't you distribute communion, Father?

I hope you were able to watch the 8.00am Easter Mass from St Dominic's this morning. . .

A couple of HA readers have written to ask why I chose to sit down during communion rather than distribute the hosts as usual. . .

It was not a liturgical gesture or any sort of statement.

Simply put, my knee was hurting, and I didn't think I could stand that long. 

Ever since my knee went wild on me two months ago -- putting me face down on a short flight of stairs -- I've been nervous about distributing communion. I can just see my knee going out again and the hosts flying across the few first pews!

Yikes.

So, no worries about me going soft on the rubrics. . .just going soft in the knees. Harharhar. . .
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Where have you put Christ?

Easter Sunday (2014)
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St. Dominic Church, NOLA

No one sees him rise. The grave stone is rolled away. His tomb is empty. The burial shroud neatly folded and left behind. Our Lord is nowhere to be found. Mary Magdala finds all this, evidence of theft, evidence of sacrilege and runs to Simon Peter, reporting, “They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don’t know where they put him.” Mary did not see him rise. Neither did Simon Peter nor John the beloved disciple. No one sees him rise. No one who visits the tomb that morning knows what happened. Why? Because “they did not yet understand the Scripture that he had to rise from the dead.” He had to rise from the dead. And because he emptied his tomb that morning, rising to new life with the Father, we too are raised to new life. His resurrection from an ignominious death gathers us all up and treats us to the possibility, the promise of deathless lives lived in the unfiltered presence of God the Father Himself. And so, Paul declares, “If then you were raised with Christ, seek what is above. . .Think of what is above, not of what is on earth.” Seek what is above, and ask yourself: where have I put Christ?

Where is Christ? Mary finds the tomb empty. Peter and John find the tomb empty. Their Lord's body is missing, and they do not know where the grave robbers have taken him. These three disciples believe that Jesus' body has been stolen b/c they do no understand – yet – that he had to rise from the dead. Do we understand this any better? We do, but then we have a 2,000 year advantage: centuries of personal testimony, libraries jammed with theological treatises, the sanctifying assistance of the Holy Spirit, the magisterium of the Church. We certainly understand the resurrection better than Mary, Peter, and John did back then. But understanding is not believing. Understanding is not trusting. When we believe in someone, trust someone that someone becomes for us the measure and means of how we live. Not just the center but the very foundation, the whole structure of our being. Knowing this, Paul writes, “If then you were raised with Christ, seek what is above. . .” If you truly seek what is above, then you can answer the question: where have you put Christ? Where is he in your life? Have you set him aside as a decoration? An observer? Have you placed him on a shelf to be seen but not heard? If we believe in, trust in the Risen Lord, he must be more than a necklace charm, more than a dashboard saint. He must be the Lord of our lives. The means and measure of our everyday thoughts, words, and deeds. Everything we have and are is his and his alone.

What does all this mean? The resurrection is all about new life, new beginnings, a fresh start in an old world eaten through with corruption and bitter disobedience. The resurrection is all about leaving behind our old ways and taking up The Way in Christ, following after him toward the perfection of holiness. Yes, all of that. But more. Much, much more. You see, if you believe in, trust in the Risen Lord; if you give everything you are and everything you have back to him for his use in bringing the Kingdom to fruition; if you follow him, sacrificing for love of him and giving that love a body and soul in this world; then, you become Christ. Not just a follower. Not just an attendee. You fulfill your baptismal vows and become Christ. Paul says it, “For you have died [in baptism], and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” To hide your life in the life of Christ means that you have placed Christ above you, over you, hiding within his life so that yours is indistinguishable from his. The resurrection makes it possible for us to hide in Christ. Our human nature is made new in the resurrection. We have joined him in death, now we can join him in life eternal.

That promise – eternal life – is our Easter promise. We hide our lives in Christ so that his work is our work, his mind is our mind, his body is our body. In faith, we are bound to him. So much so that Paul says, “When Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with him in glory.” But to be bound to him takes more than understanding. It takes much more than just knowing the story of the resurrection, knowing the details of the tale. The resurrection gives us the authority and the power to act, to speak, to think with the heart and mind of our Risen Lord. Until he comes again, we are his Body. Until he comes again, we are his hands and feet. We are not Pilate, fidgeting over politics, making carefully crafted decisions with an eye on our reputations. We are not the crowd in Jerusalem, frothing for blood and easy victory. We are not the Roman soldiers at Golgotha, just obeying lawful orders. And neither are we Mary, Peter, or John, despairing at the loss of Christ b/c we do not yet understand. We know what has happened. We know what is happening. Christ is risen. With the Father, he lives. In his Church, he lives. And if we hide ourselves in his risen life, he lives in this world. No one sees him rise. But everyone is watching to see if his Church will rise. Show the world the Risen Christ. In your words and deeds, show them Christ!
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19 April 2014

What do you and Pontius Pilate have in common?


Because he's just like us: postmodernist wienies

Pilate is not bloodthirsty.  Nor is he indifferent to justice.  If given the choice, he would prefer that the innocent not die, but neither truth nor justice are his highest priorities.  He is more concerned with keeping the peace and keeping his job.  Pilate fears the passions of the crowd and the opinions of his superiors.  He is a canny enough politician to know that it is best to stay the middle course.

This is an apt description of many of us: pastors, bishops, religious superiors, school principals, professors, just plain ole ordinary Catholics. . .

Easter is all about NOT being Pilate. 

Hmmmm. . .I feel an Easter homily theme coming on!
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Abysmal ignorance into execrable prose. . .

David Bentley Hart -- one of the best Christian writers alive today -- shreds a silly post from some nobody secularist. . .fun, fun, fun.

Journalism is the art of translating abysmal ignorance into execrable prose. At least, that is its purest and most minimal essence. There are, of course, practitioners of the trade who possess talents of a higher order—the rare ability, say, to produce complex sentences and coherent paragraphs—and they tend to occupy the more elevated caste of “intellectual journalists.” These, however, are rather like “whores with hearts of gold”: more misty figments of tender fantasy than concrete objects of empirical experience. Most journalism of ideas is little more than a form of empty garrulousness, incessant gossip about half-heard rumors and half-formed opinions, an intense specialization in diffuse generalizations. It is something we all do at social gatherings—creating ephemeral connections with strangers by chattering vacuously about things of which we know nothing—miraculously transformed into a vocation.

[. . .]
 
Which brings me to Adam Gopnik, and specifically his New Yorker article of February 17, “Bigger Than Phil”—the immediate occasion of all the rude remarks that went coursing through my mind and spilling out onto the page overhead. Ostensibly a survey of recently published books on (vaguely speaking) theism and atheism, it is actually an almost perfect distillation of everything most depressingly vapid about the cogitatively indolent secularism of late modern society. This is no particular reflection on Gopnik’s intelligence—he is bright enough, surely—but only on that atmosphere of complacent ignorance that seems to be the native element of so many of today’s cultured unbelievers. The article is intellectually trivial, but perhaps culturally portentous.

Simply said, we have reached a moment in Western history when, despite all appearances, no meaningful public debate over belief and unbelief is possible. Not only do convinced secularists no longer understand what the issue is; they are incapable of even suspecting that they do not understand, or of caring whether they do. The logical and imaginative grammars of belief, which still informed the thinking of earlier generations of atheists and skeptics, are no longer there. In their place, there is now—where questions of the divine, the supernatural, or the religious are concerned—only a kind of habitual intellectual listlessness.

Give yourself an Easter gift. . .read the whole thing!
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18 April 2014

Good Friday from St Dominic's Parish, NOLA

St Dominic's Good Friday Service starts at 3.00pm CDT.

Here's the link to watch the live-stream.

I'll be in The Box hearing confessions.
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Coffee Cup Browsing (Good Friday Edition)

A 2012 Good Friday homily featuring W.H. Auden. . . 

That Good Friday when I was within 20ft. of BXVI at St. Peter's. 

Excellent Good Friday meditation by NDS' academic dean, Prof. Tom Neal.

Beginning the Passion. . .


Reflections on our Good Friday readings. . .
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17 April 2014

More thanks for Easter

Just in time for Easter. . .

Books arrived today from Jenny K and Evandro M. . .many, many Mendicant Thanks to you both for visiting the Wish List and shooting these my way.

Jenny K. has been on my Book Benefactor Prayer List for years now, and Evandro M. gets a spot now too.

Happy Easter Everyone!
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Coffee Cup Browsing (Holy Week Edition)

The forces of death lose in Colorado! Of course, they won't give up. Remember how they operate: one tiny step at a time.

Flannery on Good Friday & Easter. . . 

Choosing Christ: On Pilate's postmodernist wishy-washiness.

Where is the Holy Spirit in the New Evangelization

Facing down "ambient universalism."

Good Friday Way of the Cross meditations from Rome.
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16 April 2014

Easter Mass. . .

Father Michael gave me a choice of Masses to celebrate on Easter Sunday. . .

I chose the 8.00am Mass. 

I'm up early, so why not?

The live-stream link is working now, so come on over and watch me sweat and gimp through Easter Sunday Mass!

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Coffee Cup Browsing

Gym in D.C. = Church in the South. I knew it! I just knew it!

Having Zilch-Zero-Nada to acclaim, B.O. campaigns on racial and sexual resentment

Fundamentalist anti-theist leads honest atheists back to the Church. Good job, Dick! Keep spewing your harebrained nonsense.

The U.N. is getting nuttier and nuttier. Someone please give these people a real job. . .like cleaning up public parks, or a Burger King cashier.

Slipping down the secular slope: a time-line of social de-evolution.

The Dems learned this tactic from the UK Labour Party: more immigrants, more votes for them at election time.  

Warning against Maria Divine Mercy. We do not need visionaries to be good Catholics. We have Scripture, the Sacraments, and the Magisterium. Nothing more is needed.
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15 April 2014

Thanks and Easter Mass

A few kind and generous souls have been peeking at the Wish List and sending books my way. . .

Always appreciated!

I will be celebrating one of the Easter Masses at St Dominic's this weekend, so my intention will be for my Book Benefactors. . .may God bless them abundantly!

Once Fr. Michael assigns a Mass to me, I'll post the time. All of St Dominic's Masses are lived-streamed now. Check it out.*

* We had a power outage in NOLA early this morning, so the server isn't working properly just yet.  It will be ready by the weekend.
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Knee Doc Report

Just got back from the Knee Doc.

Verdict: moderate arthritis in my right knee, mild in my left.

Doc shows me the x-rays, "Father, you can see here and here that there's not much cushion btw the bones. . ."

Me, "Great. Only place on my body w/o enough cushioning."

Sooooo. . .who knows anything about Methylsulfonylmethane (MSM), Glucosamine, and chondroitin sulfate?
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14 April 2014

Pastoral Responses to the New Atheism



Dr John Cavadini, McGrath-Cavadini Director, Institute for Church Life, presented at the Symposium: Pastoral Issues in Science and Human Dignity, University of Notre Dame, February 12-14, 2014
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No conflict btw Faith and Science

A longish video on the false conflict between faith and science.





Fr Robert Spitzer, S J, Magis Center of Reason and Faith, presented at the Symposium: Pastoral Issues in Science and Human Dignity, University of Notre Dame, February 12-14, 2014

Fr. Spitzer is also the author of New Proofs for the Existence of God. I've read it. It's tough going if you don't have a background in physics. 

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13 April 2014

Can we survive our fools?

A great quote from Cicero:

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.

Change "nation" and "city" to "Church" and it still make perfect sense. 

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Coffee Cup Browsing

Younger priests prefer older Mass. . .well, if NDS is any indication, they prefer a reverent Mass w/o the clerical-egocentric goofiness of the 80's. 

Another instance of the Pope being All Catholic and Stuff. This time he's on the Devil! 

Crdl. Dolan learns the value of a politician's word. Zero. Nada. Nil. Zilch.

10 essays about death. . .

Noah takes a dive; God is Not Dead takes wing. . .

Surviving the Coming Zombie Apocalypse. . .Five Best/Worst States. Thankfully, I'm an honorary citizen of the Republic of Texas.

Here's what the push for same-sex "marriage" is really about: the destruction of the family and the growth of gov't power.  Totalitarianism must always destroy the faith and the family. No competition allowed.

Why is B.O.'s press secretary's home decorated with Soviet propaganda?  Yeah, I know. . .rhetorical question.

Americans, look to Sweden for our future. . .we're on Supreme Court ruling away from it happening here.

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