Archive for the ‘catholic’ Category

Five Sunday Morning Thoughts Under the Fedora, A good sign, Colin Baker Disease, an unintentionally comical take, Cat Lady Candidate and Hey Elon What about Stacy McCain?

Posted: May 19, 2024 by datechguy in catholic, catholic devotions, doctor who, media
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I mentioned yesterday that my sons were taking me to the Tycoon Arcade in Manchester yesterday, I’ll have a video and write-up later in the week but I want to mention something on the side.

We all figured we needed confession and fortunately there was a Catholic Church Ste Marie’s right across the street a very French Canadian Parish.

Not only is the church incredibly beautiful, not only does the parish have 24-7 adoration and a parish school but when we got there we had to wait because there was a long line for confession including a nun properly dressed as a Nun.

Catholic Pro-tip. As a general rule if you see a line for confession you know that’s a parish to consider joining no matter what the AP thinks.

Despite the RIP Doctor who stuff out there I decided I was going to check out the first three new episodes. I’ll review them properly later but I wanted to mention a common theme that all of them suffered from. You could call it Colin Baker disease.

When the 6th Doctor was first introduced the showrunner at the time decided they wanted to make him disagreeable and then eventually win the audience over. They managed the first but not the so much the second to the point where they ended up firing him.

Of course this was the same issue with Whitaker but they didn’t dare fire the first woman Doctor and it goes without saying they won’t do that to the first black gay doctor.

Looking at the three episodes as a group it’s almost as if they really haven’t figured out who or what this Doctor is, only that he is

  1. The inferior to his companion
  2. Part of an agenda

This in my opinion has severely weakened the stories I’ve seen, there are flashes of both Davies and Moffat but you get the feeling they’re there strictly to try to bail out the merchandizing sales because Disney has already provided the cash.

On the bright side my oldest who actually watched the Whitaker years informs me that all three episodes are superior to anything from the Chibnall era. Talk about damning with faint praise.

Speaking of people from British TV John Cleese tweeted out something unintentionally funny yesterday

Now it goes without saying that Cleese is not only highly intelligent but one of the great comic genius in the history of mankind but I have to say that the joke is on him here.

I understand that he REALLY dislikes President Donald Trump but as this is an election between him and President Joe Biden but if your goal is to convince people that Mr. Biden is the better choice making an argument comparing either their mental facilities or physical facilities for that matter just might not be the wisest course of action.

This isn’t a parliamentary system where the party can just choose another head or perhaps he thinks the Democrats will plan on having someone else at the top of their ticket who is younger by the time election day rolls around.

Speaking of Dumb Takes I see Laura Loomer decided to attack Dana Loesch for having supported Ron DeSantis in the primaries and suggesting that she should not be a speaker at conservative events over it.

It’s one thing to think Trump was a superior choice to DeSantis, people I respect like Don Surber had that opinion and there are credible arguments that could be made in that direction. It’s another to label anyone who didn’t have Trump has their first choice as “dick riders” particularly someone like Loesch who was fighting the good fight for conservative causes before Loomer was out of school.

Trump was always my 2nd choice for President among the candidates and I’m happy to support him this time around not because of folks like Loomer but despite them.

This girl has future as a cat lady written all over her.

Finally while I don’t think much of Miss Loomer I do agree that she was improperly banned from twitter and my tastes aside deserved to be restored to the site.

That being said can anyone explain why Robert Stacy McCain is still banned?

Stacy McCain was along with Milo one of the first conservatives banned from the site for the crime of quoting liberals in their own words. Pretty much what libs of Tic Tock Does only without videos. I theorized at the time that he was the test case to see if it could be done without trouble and sure enough the wave of conservative banning followed before the last election.

With the coming of the age of Musk many of those who were banned have been restored but for reasons still unknown Robert Stacy McCain who was doing shoe leather reporting before Laura Loomer was born still has not.

This has cost Stacy money and exposure which prevents him from raising the funds needed to go on the road as he has in the past. Of course with a bunch of grandchildren and being of retirement age perhaps life at home is more comfortable, but seriously, wouldn’t the coverage of both the Biden & Trump campaigns along with key congressional races be a whole lot better with Stacy on the ground in the districts giving an eye witness account of what is going on?

I think it would be but the only way that happens is with a full tip jar and the best way for that to happen is to restore him to his rightful place on Twitter/X

Over to you Elon.

The Future Belongs to Those Who Show Up, Catholic Edition

Posted: May 6, 2024 by datechguy in catholic, catholic devotions, Church doctrine
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These things he said while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum. Then many of his disciples who were listening said, “This saying is hard; who can accept it?” Since Jesus knew that his disciples were murmuring about this, he said to them,

“Does this shock you? What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the spirit that gives life, while the flesh is of no avail. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe.”

Jesus knew from the beginning the ones who would not believe and the one who would betray him. And he said,

“For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by my Father. As a result of this, many (of) his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him. Jesus then said to the Twelve,

“Do you also want to leave? Simon Peter answered him, “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.

John 6:60-68

Apparently the AP is shocked SHOCKED that the Catholic faith in the United States is being populated by people who, you know actually believe and follow the faith:

They often stand out in the pews, with the men in ties and the women sometimes with the lace head coverings that all but disappeared from American churches more than 50 years ago. Often, at least a couple families will arrive with four, five or even more children, signaling their adherence to the church’s ban on contraception, which most American Catholics have long casually ignored.

They attend confession regularly and adhere strictly to church teachings. Many yearn for Masses that echo with medieval traditions – more Latin, more incense more Gregorian chants.

“We want this ethereal experience that is different from everything else in our lives,” said Ben Rouleau, who until recently led St. Maria Goretti’s young adult group, which saw membership skyrocket even as the parish shrank amid the turmoil.

If the young adult group is souring that means there will be a future generation in the parish consisting of the children of that young adult group. If there are families with four and five children, that means that their children will in a generation fill the pews that the contraception/abortion crowd has been abandoning for two generations.

It’s simple math. People who treated the Church as an Elks club that meets on Sunday tend not to bother to follow the teaching of the church on abortion, contraception and confession. Thus their children don’t bother to come or don’t bother to get married and don’t teach their children. And they certainly aren’t going to be going to the seminary to commit themselves to a life of service. They will be like this seed in the parable of the sower:

This is the meaning of the parable. The seed is the word of God. Those on the path are the ones who have heard, but the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts that they may not believe and be saved. Those on rocky ground are the ones who, when they hear, receive the word with joy, but they have no root; they believe only for a time and fall away in time of trial. As for the seed that fell among thorns, they are the ones who have heard, but as they go along, they are choked by the anxieties and riches and pleasures of life, and they fail to produce mature fruit.

Luke 8:11-14

And it goes without saying that their children, particularly those who might be gay who in past times choose the church as a respectable cultural option now in a society that embraces and celebrates open homosexuality have a ton of other options. (I’ve always found it interesting while 78% of the cases in the church sexual scandals involved gay men the media unexpectedly of course ducked that fact like the plague.) So who is populating the seminaries now? People like this:

At a time when U.S. college enrollment is shrinking, Benedictine’s expansion over the last 15 years has included four new residence halls, a new dining hall and an academic center. An immense new library is being built. The roar of construction equipment never seems to stop. Enrollment, now about 2,200, has doubled in 20 years. Students, many of whom grew up in conservative Catholic families, jokingly call it “the Benedictine bubble.” And it might be a window into the future of the Catholic Church in America.

I suspect you won’t be seeing anybody calling for the death of the Jews on that campus either.

I find it interesting that the article never mentions Mother Angelica and EWTN who spent decades working to get Catholics catechized with the truth while the Vatican II people didn’t bother. That combined with the liberals going elsewhere means that people who actually believe had the seed of th word planted on good soil, the result:


But as for the seed that fell on rich soil, they are the ones who, when they have heard the word, embrace it with a generous and good heart, and bear fruit through perseverance.

Luke 8:15

And it’s those faithful Catholics who are bearing fruit and giving meaning to their kids in the world that doesn’t offer any.

In the end any institution belongs to those who show up. The conservatives who actually believe the teachings taught those teaching to their children and thus their children go to church and pass those teaching on. The liberals who didn’t bother did not so they find themselves in a church and wonder where their Elks club went.

It’s simple demographics.

Merrick Garland is a coward

Posted: May 5, 2024 by John Ruberry in catholic, education, Israel, Israel vs Hamas, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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By John Ruberry

In terms of numbers and in geographic reach, America is possibly suffering from its worse outbreak of anti-Semitism ever. I’m referring of course to the pro-Hamas and anti-Israel protests at many colleges. Many of these “spontaneous” events are illegal encampments filled with similar tents, exact-copy signs, that are populated with angry students and other interlopers chanting the same slogans.

Fortunately, for now at least, the worst outrages at these hate rallies are isolated incidents.

Last month, a protester at George Washington University held a sign with a Palestinian flag and “the final solution.” At Columbia, a protest leader, the pronoun challenged Khymani James, was banned from campus after a video surfaced where, James declared, “Zionists don’t deserve to live.”

Also at Columbia, a knucklehead there screamed, “Go back to Poland, go back to Belarus” at pro-Israel counter protesters.

Can you imagine the uproar–it would be a well-deserved one–if someone screamed, “Go back to Africa” to Black protesters? The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division would be there at Navy Seals speed.

The head of the Department of Justice is Merrick Garland, the US attorney general. When the situation fits, he likes to remind people that he is Jewish and had two members of his family perish in the Holocaust.

Last year, when questioned about the infamous FBI memo that suggested Catholics who favor traditional Latin mass services could connected to “the far-right white nationalist movement,” Garland responded emotionally. “The idea that someone with my family background would discriminate against any religion is so outrageous,” he said, “so absurd.”

In March, in an address to the left-leaning Anti-Defamation League’s Never is Now Summit, Garland was more specific about his family and the Holocaust.

“My family fled the pogroms of Eastern Europe at the start of the 20th century,” he said. “My grandmother, who was one of five children born in what is now Belarus, made it to the United States, as did two of her siblings.”

“The other two did not,” the AG continued. “They were killed in the Holocaust.”

Oh yeah, Belarus, the same place the hater at Columbia said, along with Poland, Jews should return to.

Garland is a native of Lincolnwood, Illinois, a Chicago suburb. He graduated–as class valedictorian-from Niles West High School in nearby Skokie. It was in Skokie, several years after Garland’s graduation, where Neo-Nazis attempted to march. Thousands of Holocaust survivors lived in Skokie at the time; Garland almost certainly was classmates with children of survivors of the Shoah.

Why hasn’t Garland specifically and forcefully spoken out against the anti-Semitism at these pro-Hamas protests? His boss, President Joe Biden, hasn’t either, of course.

When the time is right–or better, when the politics are right–Garland speaks out against anti-Semitism.

But is Garland even running the Justice Department? In the May 3rd Chicago Way podcast hosted by John Kass, the great Charles Lipson, a professor emeritus of political science from the University Chicago, had this to say about Garland: “The attorney general’s office right now is being running by a woman named Lisa Monaco, she’s the number two-person, Merrick Garland’s not doing anything.”

Well, he can do something now. Garland can unequivocally denounce the anti-Semitic protests at college campuses and the Biden administration’s weak response to them.

And then resign.

It’s up to Garland to convince me that he’s not a coward.

John Rubery regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Divine Mercy Sunday Epilogue

Posted: April 7, 2024 by datechguy in catholic, catholic devotions
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Cardinal Lamberto: Would you like, to make your confession?
Michael Corleone: [laughs] Your Eminence, I’m uh – I’m uh — it’s been so long, I wouldn’t – wouldn’t – wouldn’t know where to uh, it’s been thirty years, I’d – I’d – I’d use up too much of your time, I think.
Cardinal Lamberto: I always have time to save souls.
Michael Corleone: Well, I’m — I’m beyond redemption.
Cardinal Lamberto: [speaking in Italian to the priest looking after Dom Tommasino] Give us a couple of minutes alone please – thanks… [Turning back to Michael once they leave in English] I hear the confessions of my young priests here. Sometimes the desire to confess is overwhelming. And we must seize the moment.

Michael Corleone: What is the point of confessing, if I don’t repent?
Cardinal Lamberto: I hear you are a practical man. What have you got to lose, eh?

The Godfather Part 3 1990

Today is Divine Mercy Sunday the premier time for repentance. Yesterday I led with a quote from Godfather 2 and note that like Michael Corleone trying to convince Hyman Roth that there was nothing to fear the Devil tries to convince us that our soul is not in danger or in need of confession.

But if we are far along the path of sin there is another tack that is used, the idea that we are beyond redemption.

This is actually the standard MO for the enemy, first to minimize sin when it is happening and then to maximize it to keep you from confession.

For ten days now I’ve been arguing for doing the Divine Mercy chaplet and praying the novena and yesterday I argued for going to a Divine Mercy event today and getting confession and absolution. If none of those argument have flown with you I want to give you one final one, the same one that Cardinal Lamberto gave to Michael Corleone: What have you got to lose?

Closing thought; Here is the scene of Michael confession. Note how it ends:

The Cardinal notes that

  1. Michael’s sins are terrible
  2. It’s just that he suffers for them
  3. Michael won’t change because he [Michael] doesn’t believe he can be redeemed.

YET HE ABSOLVES HIM ANYWAYS.

Despite it all he gives Michael Corleone the clean slate and the CHANCE to choose another path. The Cardinal does his part to save Michael’s soul and give him a fresh start.. It’s on Michael to decide what to do with it.

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