Archive for the ‘catholic’ Category

Report from Louisiana: Book your reservation for Fête-Dieu du Teche Now

Posted: July 25, 2022 by Pat Austin in catholic
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By:  Pat Austin

SHREVEPORT – August is upon us and for those in south Louisiana, specifically in Cajun country, that means it is time for the Fête-Dieu du Teche which celebrates the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary and also commemorates the arrival of the Acadians in south Louisiana.

On August 15, for the past eight years, Catholics have gathered along Bayou Teche from Leonville (Pop. 2,127) to St. Martiville (Pop. 5,844) to participate in the 38-mile journey down the bayou in a Eucharist procession by boat. The day begins in Leonville with Mass celebrated in French at St. Leo the Great Catholic Church.

Then everyone loads into their boats; the Eucharist is fixed on a altar in the lead boat, under a canopy. Everyone follows by boat down the bayou to Arnaudville (Pop. 1,614) where everyone disembarks. First communicants dressed in white scatter rose petals from baskets and the Eucharist follows, to an altar on the bank at St. Francis Regis Catholic Church. Participants kneel, pray the Rosary and Benediction, and then are back on the boats to the next stop.

By the end of the day, they reach St. Martinville where they process through town to the church, St. Martin de Tours for benediction. Confession is available at each stop.

It is a sight to behold. I’m not Catholic; we are Episcopalians, and my husband likes to say we are “Catholic-lite.” But, we love attending the Fête-Dieu du Teche because face it, what’s not to love about entire communities engaged in prayer?

Last year, as everyone was getting back into their boats at Arnaudville, Steve and I walked over to the bridge so we could see the procession as they passed under us on the way to the next town. Smiling nuns with habits flying behind them waved up at us; the incense perfumed the air and then behind the laity came the families who followed along. All in all it is easy over a hundred boats.

As more people around the world learn about this event, it grows each year. This will be year eight. We already have our lodging reserved and will be there once again to witness the event. I love how this event brings families and communities together; I love how tied to their very Cajun culture this is, too. The journey to St. Martinville commemorates the journey their Acadian ancestors made in fleeing religious persecution all those years ago.

It is a glorious thing to see and I’d encourage anyone to see it if you have the chance. Joseph Pronechen wrote in some detail about the event here and the Facebook page is here. And there is a cool video here. I wrote about it last year on this blog which you can see here.

Interviews and Audio from last week’s WQPH One Day Retreat at St. Benedict’s Abbey in Still River MA

Posted: July 16, 2022 by datechguy in catholic, catholic devotions, Church doctrine, special events
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Last Saturday I attended the one day retreat at Still River sponsored by WQPH. As you might guess I shot quite a few videos

An introduction

The sermon from the event

Shared Prayers from the event

A quick talk concerning Our Lady of Americas

A great speech from Deacon Bob Connor, Part 1

And Part 2

Two Audio only files, an interview with Maureen Capistran

And her opening remarks before the Q & A

and a closing interview with Fr. Augustine

It was quite a day and I hope you can join us on the next one.

DaTechGuy on Ed Morrissey Podcast today at 2 PM EST (Plus Pregnancy centers and DaTechGuy’s Laws of Media Outrage) Update (it’s not going out live)

Posted: July 15, 2022 by datechguy in abortion, catholic, DaTechGuy on DaRadio, podcast
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Lots of stuff going on in the house as we will have a friend staying over today so just a few minutes to let you know that I will be on Ed Morrissey’s podcast.

We will be talking about yesterday’s post and Elizabeth Warren’s attacks on pregnancy’s centers

As I was tying this it hit me that all these pregnancy centers are great examples of DaTechGuy’s law of media outrage to wit:

DaTechGuy’s 1st law of media outrage:

The level of Outrage or interest of the media and their allies on the left concerning any insult or prevarication concerning a person or thing will routinely be equal to the inverse of the degree of the political distance between said media / leftists and the target of said insult or prevarication at the time it is made

Attacks by Warren on centers that help woman do not generate outrage because the target, Pregnancy Centers, are diametrically opposite from the left in practice if not in theory

DaTechGuy’s 2nd Law of Media Outrage:

The level of acceptance of the positions and/or actions of any group or organization by the left and media is directly proportional to their current or potential value in electing liberal Democrats.

Actions against pregnancy centers fires up the Democrat base so the left and leftist pols are accepting of them (if that changes this might change but for now that’s where it is.

DaTechGuy’s 3rd Law of media outrage:

The MSM’s elevation and continued classification of any story as Nationally Newsworthy rather than only of local interest is in direct correlation to said story’s current ability to affirm any current Democrat/Liberal/Media meme/talking point, particularly on the subject of race or sexuality.

The fact that these pregnancy centers have been doing incredible work to help woman, particularly poor women has been ignored as a story for decades because such help does not affirm and in fact contradicts democrat talking points on everything from sexuality to religion and of course abortion.

DaTechGuy’s 4th Law of Media Outrage:

The degree of media exposure of the corruption or illegality committed by any individual or organization under investigation is directly proportional to its distance from the media’s ideology.

While a lot of churches and pregnancy centers are under attack lately the truth is they have been regularly under physical attack for decades but because the radical groups who have been doing these attacks have no distance from the media none of these stories made national news and frankly barely make local news.

DaTechGuy’s 5th Law of Media Outrage:

Any positive actions, even one that supposedly advances a goal or, or done by a group allied or identified with the radical left, will not be considered newsworthy nationally, if said action has the potential to highlight a failure and/or inaction by a Democrat administration that is in power at the time of said positive action

Supposedly helping pregnant women, particularly poor women of color is a positive action that would normally be lionized by media but because said help are provided by religious non profits that get no federal money and tend to be service that are not provided by Democrat allies such stories are not newsworthy as they would highlight the failure of the left and Democrat administrations to provide such needed services

DaTechGuy’s 6th Law of Media Outrage:

The degree of protection by or attack of the media on any person is governed by the degree of danger and/or usefulness to the Democrat party’s electoral goals said protection or attack represents

Because pregnancy centers are not centralized so they don’t have a national face this law is the hardest to apply but we can apply it to Senator Warren in this case. Her attacks on centers that help poor women, if done by a Republican, would normally cause scorn by the media, but Warren is protected from such attacks as they are considered vital as part of the Democrat’s electoral goal of using the Dobbs decision to energize the left base which has very little reason to feel energetic lately.

Update: Didn’t realize it wasn’t live so I don’t know when it will be on I’ll update the post when I know.

Why the Democrat Left in General and Elizabeth Warren in Particular hate Pregnancy Centers in five words: No opportunity for Government Graft

Posted: July 14, 2022 by datechguy in abortion, catholic, politics, Uncategorized, Uncomfortable Truths
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It’s been really something watching Elizabeth Warren go wild about pregnancy centers in the post Roe world because I’m so familiar with such centers and the work they do.

Such as Mira Vida, at Belmont Abbey College which allows pregnant college age women to transfer to Belmont Abbey college and get 10 classes hours for free while Mira Vida provides help both before and after the birth of their child.

Or Visitation House that gives residency, food, shelter and help on parenting and more including counseling and life classes to pregnant woman before and after they deliver.

Or problem pregnancy that provides financial, spiritual, social and physical needs of pregnant women so they can keep their children without fear.

As you can see the attacks on the center have been taking place long before the Dobbs decision.

and of course the video from this week about First Concern pregnancy centers that again focus on removing the problems that can prevent a woman from having their child rather than seeing the baby as the problem

All of these centers have some things in common

  • All of them attack the problems that women might face with pregnancy rather than the child being the problem
  • All of them serve a lot of women in financial need particularly the poorest
  • None of them restrict their support based on the religion or lack thereof of the mother
  • They get little or no attention from the media for the work they do

But there are two points that are really central to the hatred of these centers by the Democrat left in general and Senator Warren in particular

  1. All of these centers operate through private donations vs taxpayer funds meaning that the money is going to support women and their needs rather than financing Democrat activists and allies.
  2. Since there are no federal millions going to these centers there is no money to be kicked back to the Democrat party or their superpacs, or the campaigns of individual democrats running at the local, state or federal level.

Put simply there is no graft in it for the left and thus they are of no use to Democrats.

This is also why the media has had little or no interest in covering, promoting or extolling the good works that these groups and hundreds like them all across the nation are doing because every donated dollar to these organizations that saves a child’s life eats into Planned Parenthood’s bottom line which mean it eats into the campaign funds and support of thousands of Democrat activists and candidates.

It’s one thing to help women & children but if it shows Christianity in a good light and doesn’t help the Democrat Party it’s just not newsworthy.

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