We tend to get the government we deserve. This week a lot of people were wondering what they did to deserve this. The answer is simple: When the last election was stolen you went along with it.
So enjoy the $5 gas, the debacle in Afghanistan, the open borders, the crime and the terror attacks to come because all of these things we collectively as Americans have richly earned.
A lot of people are wondering how the people responsible for Afghanistan live with themselves. That’s easy. When you become a post Christian society then loving your neighbor as yourself is no longer a priority, nor is truth, nor is the common good.
All of these thing were stressed in Christianity and it amazes me that folks are shocked that without it they disappear.
Speaking of shocks I’d like to say I was shocked by the behavior of Mets players going after the fans for daring to boo them after their 3 1/2 game lead became a 7 game deficit in a month.
While ownership is unhappy the players have figured out that even if they lose a percentage of the fans it won’t be enough to keep them from making a nice enough living so they will never have to live like the fans they despise unless they do something stupid with their cash.
Milo Yiannopoulos is very sick with COIVD and is using Ivermectin to counter it. He may or may not make it. If he doesn’t it will delight a lot of his enemies but will disgust the great enemy as he has already moved away from his clutches. If he does make his enemies on the left will be upset and the great enemy will still have hope, but the way things are going it seems to me much more likely that if he makes it he’ll help grab a lot of souls out of his clutches.
I wish him the best either way.
Finally you’ve likely noticed a few odd posts here. That’s because I’ve decided it’s better to have the occasional sponsored post to generate revenue that ads or banners that slow down the site. In the end the hosting and the writers need to be paid for and if people are willing to pay for a post (as long as it doesn’t violate my basic guidelines) I’m going to take their money.
Courage is the first of human virtues because it makes all others possible.
Aristotle
If you are a Roman Catholic who went to mass Sunday you heard the readings from Lectionary 122 for the 21st Sunday in ordinary time. and if you paid attention to your Missal you might be subject to an Irony overload.
Everywhere that mass took place the faithful heard the same reading from the Book of Joshua 24:1-2, 15-18 where Joshua gives the people a choice to follow God or no declaring: “As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord”.
And also everywhere that mass took place that reading from Joshua was followed by the same responsorial Psalm verses from Psalm 34 (Ps 34:2-3, 16-17, 18-19, 20-21) with the refrain: “Taste and see the goodness of the Lord.”.
But depending on where you went to mass and the choice of the Pastor the next reading might have been different. The Lectionary calls for the 2nd reading to be from the letter of St. Paul to the Ephesians 5:21-32 which goes like this:
Brothers and sisters:
Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is head of his wife just as Christ is head of the church, he himself the savior of the body. As the church is subordinate to Christ, so wives should be subordinate to their husbands in everything.
Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her to sanctify her, cleansing her by the bath of water with the word, that he might present to himself the church in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. So also husbands should love their wives as their own bodies.
He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one hates his own flesh but rather nourishes and cherishes it, even as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.
For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother
and be joined to his wife,
and the two shall become one flesh.
This is a great mystery, but I speak in reference to Christ and the church.
However an option is given to reduce this reading to Ephesians 5:2a, 25-32 adding the 1st part of verse 2 which looks like this (omitted verses in strikethrough, added verse in underline)
Brothers and sisters:
Live in love, as Christ loved us.
Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is head of his wife just as Christ is head of the church, he himself the savior of the body. As the church is subordinate to Christ, so wives should be subordinate to their husbands in everything.
Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her to sanctify her, cleansing her by the bath of water with the word, that he might present to himself the church in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. So also husbands should love their wives as their own bodies.
He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one hates his own flesh but rather nourishes and cherishes it, even as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.
For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother
and be joined to his wife,
and the two shall become one flesh.
This is a great mystery, but I speak in reference to Christ and the church.
So as you can see rather than both Husbands and wives being subordinate to one another and each having duties the duties of the wife are omitted while the duties of the Husband are retained. This is done to avoid the anger of feminists within the church which is very ironic given that once you have exercised your option on the 2nd reading all congregations are given the same final Gospel reading, the end of Jesus the bread of life discourses in the Gospel of John 6:60-69 begins:
Many of Jesus’ disciples who were listening said, “This saying is hard; who can accept it?”
However Jesus rather than equivocating or ducking the issue or offering an alternate teaching challenges his disciples:
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.”
Jesus doesn’t back down one jot and because of this some of his disciples leave
As a result of this, many of his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him.
At this Jesus turns to the twelve. Rather than having second thoughts about his teaching he doubles down and gives the same option to the apostles who come back with the right answer
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. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.”
So think about that for a second. The very week that Jesus in the Gospel stands up for his teaching even if it costs him many disciples the US Bishops precede that critical moment with the option for the local pastor to run for cover in case anyone might be offended by divinely inspired scripture. This is a shame because the church teaches us that courage is one of the four cardinal virtues.
The irony is palatable, but not as palatable as the cowardice
ARNAUDVILLE LA – Being retired has its perks, one of which is that you can attend events that you could not when you had to work.
I finally was able to attend the Fete Dieu du Teche this year which takes place on August 15: the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. My husband and I are both practicing Episcopalians, or as he calls it, “Catholic Lite.” There are enough similarities in our services that I can easily follow along although as non-Catholics we are not allowed to participate in Communion.
The day begins at 8 AM with Sunday Mass in French by Bishop Douglas Deshotel at St. Leo the Great Catholic Church in Leonville.
Following the Mass there will be a procession with the Blessed Sacrament and a statue of Mary and St. Joseph to the nearby boat landing. Families are encouraged to join the procession as a family and follow to the boat landing for Benediction. At 9:30 AM boats will depart in procession down the Teche toward St. Martinville, retracing the voyage made by the Acadians over 250 years ago.
August 15 is a significant date as it is the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Patroness of the Acadian people and of Acadiana. It is also a day that marks the 256thanniversary of the arrival of French-Canadian immigrants who brought the Catholic faith to Acadiana after enduring great trials and suffering.
Bishop Deshotel of the Diocese of Lafayette states, “Fete Dieu du Teche has become an annual celebration in commemoration of the arrival of the first Acadians from what is now Nova Scotia. They were the first examples of ethnic cleansing in the New World when they were forced to leave their homes and go into exile because of their Catholic Faith at the end of the French and Indian War. A large number of them found their homes in South Louisiana which was Catholic and French. Many settlements were established along the Teche river where they built Churches, homes and a new life.
We stay in Arnaudville, Louisiana five weeks of the year, spread throughout the year; our place in Arnaudville is on Bayou Teche and half a block from the church. We watched the French mass via live stream then walked down to the landing site at the church to participate in the ceremony.
It was simply beautiful to see the boats coming around the bend, down the bayou, slowly making their way to the landing site. The boats tied up along the bank, the procession made its way to the top of the hill, and the Rosary began. From The Daily Iberian:
Father Michael Champagne, organizer of the event said, “Having a Eucharistic Procession by boat on the waters of the Teche rather than by foot in the streets makes a lot of sense. Fête-Dieu du Teche on the Feast of the Assumption recalls our rich Acadian history and, in a way, re-enacts the journey made by the Acadians over 250 years ago.”
Champagne said that having a boat procession with the Blessed Sacrament and a statue of the Assumption involving priests, religious and laity is basically what happened in 1765: “In order to serve the Acadian settlers in the Attakapas district, Father Jean-Louis de Civrey accompanied the Acadians on their journey down the Bayou Teche. Father de Civrey became the first resident priest. In his records, he refers to his new home as ‘la nouvelle Acadie’ and his new parish ‘l’Eglise des Attakapas’ and later, l’Eglise St. Martin de Tours. It is believed that St. Martinville is named after the church.”
During Fête-Dieu du Teche, the Blessed Sacrament will be carried on an altar under a canopy on the lead boat. Another boat will carry the statue of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This year will feature a St. Joseph boat as well as a boat carrying relics of the saints. The procession will stop and disembark at makeshift altars along the Teche for recitation of the Rosary and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament.
I felt truly blessed to be able to participate in this and I will definitely return next year. If you want to watch any of the live streams, including the French mass or the procession down the Bayou Teche, be sure to check out the Facebook page here. There are also nice, short videos about incense, relics, the monstrance, and other pieces.
Metal staples and indoor-grade wire. What more could you ask for?
When I first began working as an Ethernet cabling installer, I often worried that my skills weren’t “commercial grade.” It would take me a long time to snake cables through walls, install professional looking Ethernet ports, and properly hang, install, and setup a network box. I often thought to myself “I bet the professionals at Cox and Verizon do a way better job than I do.” That desire to be considered a “professional” drove me to keep improving my craft and learning something new every day.
Recently, I went to a potential clients house for a survey, and I opened up his fiber box to inspect the cabling. The Ethernet wire coming from the fiber box was haphazardly wired, and the installer stapled a non-outdoor rated cable to the bottom of the vinyl siding. Worse still, he simply drilled a hole straight through the outside wall to reach the clients living room, instead of running the wire in the crawlspace or in conduit. Sloppy work, from someone who probably considers himself a professional, and certainly from a company that should have higher standards.
Sadly, this poor installation is just a sample of low standards in industry. Journalism has suffered greatly too. My wife informed me of an article from The Catholic Virginian that talked about the recent changes to the Latin Mass. I’ve already written about these changes, and in general, I’m not a fan of what the Pope did. I also don’t read the Catholic Virginian, mainly because I find most Bishops incredibly dull and boring. Sorry for saying that out loud, but lets be really frank here: how often has your Bishop ever visited your church? I typically see his likeness once a year, during the Bishop’s Request for Funding…I mean, Annual Appeal.
Anyway, at my wife’s behest, I dug up the July 22nd article by Cindy Wooden. Now, I’m used to reading poorly written articles, but only because the Babylon Bee is making fun of them in some way. But Cindy? Her article is particularly lame. It might as well have been written by CNN. Let’s dive into this, section by section, because you probably need a good laugh for a Saturday afternoon.
Cindy starts off by quoting Archbishop J. Augustine Di Noia, who for the sake of fun we’re going to call “Archbishop Montoya” because it rhymes and allows me to make Princess Bride jokes. Cindy quotes Montoya, who says the Latin Mass ban “fearlessly hits the nail on the head: the TLM (Traditional Latin Mass) movement has hijacked the initiatives of St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI to its own end.” Now, that quote begs some questions. What is this TLM movement? Who runs it? And what exactly has it hijacked? Well, Cindy hints at this two paragraphs later, where she writes “When St. John Paul and Pope Benedict expanded the possibility of using the pre-Vatican II Mass, they were hoping to promote unity in the Church and to counter abuses that were widespread in the celebration of the post-Vatican II Mass…”
Now, an intelligent reader would then expect to hear a discussion about why the Latin Mass somehow didn’t promote unity AND didn’t address widespread abuses in the post-Vatican II Mass. Don’t worry about that second part…we’ll never get to it, since that might unwind some of Cindy’s arguments. In the next paragraph, we get the first point: that the Latin Mass allowance was made to try and bring in the currently outcast group of former Catholics called SSPX, or Society of Saint Pius X. The article continues to quote Montoya and suggests that the Latin Mass was allowed specifically to placate members of SSPX.
But is that true? Does Archbishop Montoya keep using words that he doesn’t know the meaning of? Apparently. It’s not hard to find that Marcel Lefebvre (the founder of the SSPX movement) objected to a lot of things about the post-Vatican II church. He even said so in his “Open Letter to Confused Catholics.” This isn’t hard to find. Lefebvre was mad that there was a joint Catholic-Lutheran Commission. He was mad that kids in Catholic schools barely knew their prayers or said grace before meals. He was mad that people didn’t pray in public. And on and on.
In short, Lefebvre had a fever, and the only cure was a lot more cowbell in the form of prayer, fasting, and a return to a lot of things done in the past. I don’t particularly like the guy, but after reading what he wrote, I can at least understand his viewpoint. He makes many valid points while going a bit overboard on others. More importantly, only one of his points was the Latin Mass. So it’s really disingenuous to say that was the whole reason for having the Latin Mass around. Don’t worry though, Cindy demonstrates true journalistic integrity when she lays out the next section, titled “Betrayal of two popes’ intentions.”
Cindy provides us a link to latinmassdir.org, which, like The Catholic Virginian, was something I didn’t know existed. Thankfully for me, I followed Cindy’s link and realized my church’s information was woefully out of date! I quickly created an account and updated it, including the links to the streaming Masses, since I was the guy that set those up in the first place. Certainly can’t have false information floating around on websites, otherwise we’d wind up like some flawed CNN-like publication….anyhow, back to the article.
Cindy quotes Montoya again, stating “…the intentions of the two pontiffs who permitted the celebration of the 1962 Missal to draw traditionalists back into the unity of the Church. What the Holy Father is saying is that the TLM movement is working for objectives that are precisely contrary to what St. John Paul and Benedict XVI hoped for.” Again, this implies the “TLM movement” (whatever that is) is outside the church. So this is talking about SSPX? But by SSPX’s own words, they had a whole list of gripes. Did we solve those? Did we fix Catholic education, or the whole list of other things Lefebvre had a fever over?
Not really. So are we surprised that it didn’t work?
The article ends with this quote from Montoya: “Pope Francis is right to see in the repristination of the pre-conciliar liturgy at best a form of nostalgic dalliance with the old liturgy and at worst a perverse resistance to the renewal inspired by the Holy Spirit and solemnly confirmed in the teaching of an ecumenical council.”
Ouch. I had to lookup “dalliance” because I don’t know what Montoya meant. Dalliance means “a casual or brief romantic or sexual relationship.” Man, good thing I don’t have to explain that word to my kids!
Let me just say it: this article is trash. It’s poorly resourced and poorly written, and I say that because:
It has one source (Archbishop Montoya).
That source, like pretty much all sources, has a bias.
It makes no attempt to bring in any counter arguments to balance the source bias.
It lumps a lot of people into the same group (we have words for that behavior that end in -ist).
It ignores other, similar things the Church allows.
Points 1 through 3 are pretty obvious. A good article challenges our thinking. It brings in contrary facts and demands that we sort these out in our head. I recently read an article about a man who used a sophisticated AI chatbot to “bring alive” his dead girlfriend. The article bounced between the obvious trauma someone feels when losing their loved one to the technical challenges of simulating humans to the ethical questions about whether it was right or not. In the end, the article made me cry a little and think a lot about the ethics and humanity behind it all. It brought in opposing viewpoints. It was smartly written. I’ll bet it’ll sit with me for a while.
Cindy’s article contains none of this. It’s obviously biased. It misses opportunities to ask other people for their thoughts. It certainly doesn’t challenge us to use our brains. And thus, like most of the other publications coming from the Diocese, it’ll be forgotten.
I addressed point 4 in my previous article about the Latin Mass changes. Yes, there are SSPX people out there that aren’t in Communion with the Catholic Church. And there are people in more traditional non-SSPX parishes that think Vatican II was the worst thing ever, and kids in public school have lice, and girls with skirts above their ankles are border-line prostitutes. Yup, those people exist. But there are a large number of people that just don’t want guitars and joking at Mass. They flock to the Latin Mass because its a bit more serious. More focused. More…religious? Many of these people send their kids to public school, and they don’t believe that the Illuminati took over the Vatican in the form of Pope Francis.
Lumping these people in with SSPX, which is exactly what Cindy Wooden does, is unfair, biased, and just poor journalism. It’s the racist equivalent of lumping black Africans in with black Haitians, or Japanese and Chinese people into one group and assuming they have similar backgrounds. It demonstrates low reporting standards. It’s the equivalent of a poor Cox or Verizon installation, and the editor should be ashamed for allowing it in the first place.
On point 5, the article ignores a pretty key point. The Catholic Church is mainly composed of the Latin Rite, but it has many others. There are plenty of approved deviations, including the Armenian Rite, Melkite Greek Catholic Church and others. We let these churches celebrate the same Sacraments slightly differently. Is it that hard to allow some parishes to celebrate in Latin? Wait, doesn’t the Pope celebrate Mass in Latin? Isn’t that, like, the official language of the Vatican?
I’ll end with a comparison. Marcel Lefebvre attempted to ordain priests and eventually a bishop without approval from the Pope. For these actions, on July 2nd 1988, Pope John Paul II excommunicated him, and rightly so. Ever since then, SSPX and the Catholic Church have been working to find a way to reunite. In 2019, Pope Francis reached a deal with the Chinese Communist Party to attempt to protect Catholics in China. In 2021, the CCP blocked the Pope from essentially having any say over the appointment of Catholic Bishops in China.
I ask the reader: what standards were applied?
“…hoping to promote unity in the Church…”
– Archbishop Noia
“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
– Inigo Montoya
This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.
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