Per Christum

Benedictine of Fleury and Archbishop of York, believed to be of Danish parents, his uncle was Saint Odo the Good, Archbishop of Canterbury. He is said to have died while washing the feet of the poor - his daily Lenten practice.

Saint John Cassian 360-435

“From Egypt… came to Constantinople, where Cassian became a favourite disciple of St. John Chrysostom. The famous bishop of the Eastern capitol elevated Cassian to the diaconate, and placed in his charge the treasures of his cathedral. After the second expulsion of St. Chrysostom, Cassian was sent as an envoy to Rome by the clergy of Constantinople, for the purpose of interesting Pope Innocent I in behalf of their bishop.”

Not to say I sort of wish him a happy birthday! More to say that he would likely be dating his birth by the Eastern Julian calendar. Today February 29 on the Gregorian is known as February 16 on the Julian…

Which probably is better - who wants to be a Feb 29th (Gregorian calendar) baby anyway? 1/4 of the birthdays are 1/4 of the birthday parties…

Either way - Many years!

Please Pray!

Chaldean Bishop Paulos Faraj Rahho Kidnapped In Iraq

Mosul, 29 Feb. (AKI) - Paulos Faraj Rahho, the Chaldean bishop of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul was kidnapped on Friday after he finished celebrating the rite of the Via Crucis at a local church. Eyewitnesses said that a group of armed men stopped the bishop as he was travelling in his car and took him by force.

H/T: Dhimmi Watch

“Soon I will be engaging in religious debates with my girlfriends pastor and I am looking for advice. He is an Evangelical Lutheran pastor. We are doing this so she would see a Catholic priest with me and talk about converting. So I am just looking for advice on what to talk about with the pastor.”

This is the post of a participant at Catholic Answers Forums. This is my advice:

“Ask if he will send you an email with the itinerary of his choosing so that you can prepare.Be polite, do not be rude or triumphal. If you don’t know an answer say “I will have to research that, let me write that down.” Don’t BS - that will only get you in trouble.

Thank him for his time when you arrive. Thank him again when you leave. Keep it cool.

Polite. Polite. Polite. Are the three rules to follow.”

Gentle readers, what do you think? What is your advice? Our Lutheran (yea, you LutherPunk!) and Methodist-Calvinist readership are certainly invited to weigh in.

Honestly my speakers are fussing with me… I couldn’t hear all of the audio. The video alone sold me.

Catholics come home!

H/T: Standing on My Head

Dear readers!

I’ve been wanting to write about the immigration issue(s) in the United States of America. Specifically, I wanted to analyze the immigration issue from the perspective of Catholic social teaching. However, I don’t feel comfortable writing about this topic becasue of two related reasons: (1)I’m insufficiently versed in Catholic social teaching, and in political science; (2) I don’t have the time to thoroughly investigate the issue.

Nevertheless, I do have a general understanding of Catholic social teaching as it applies specifically to immigration, and I must say that I tend to agree with the position of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) on immigration.

In any case, I have decided to post four youtube videos that address the issue of immigration. I hope you enjoy them, and I hope that you post comments about them.

Name: Father Gerry Creedon
Religion: Catholic
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wr6FbBQFUyg">

Name: Alan Keyes
Religion: Catholic

Name: Francis Cardinal George
Religion: Catholic

Name: Patrick J. Buchanan
Religion: Catholic

Being an Ohioan I could not help but watch the Democratic debate in Cleveland on Tuesday. If for no other reason, then being able to cheer when, like product placement, my hometown was casually mentioned by a well prepped politician as though they were intimately familiar (and not just passin’ through) the problems facing Dayton, Toledo, Springfield or Lima. For the record, my hometown was mentioned (Go Rockets!). My roommate’s was not. (Sorry Wooster, O.!)

The closing statement when candidates were asked what measures in their legislative careers they regret and would change was most bothersome to me in a debate that was otherwise somewhat entertaining.

Obama chose as his “take back moment” the vote he gave with respect to Senate action on Terry Schiavo. A little background from LifeNews.com on the episode (emphasis mine):

In March 2005, just weeks before Terri died from a painful 14-day starvation and dehydration death, Congress approved legislation allowing her family to take its case from state courts to federal courts in an effort to stop the euthanasia from proceeding.

Terri was not on any artificial breathing apparatus and only required a feeding tube to eat and drink. Her family had filed a lawsuit against her former husband to allow them to care for her and give her proper medical and rehabilitative care.

The Senate unanimously approved a compromise bill, which the House eventually supported on a lopsided bipartisan vote and President Bush signed, to help the disabled woman.

Barak Obama said:

“It wasn’t something I was comfortable with, but it was not something that I stood on the floor and stopped, and I think that was a mistake, and I think the American people understood that that was a mistake. And as a constitutional law professor, I knew better,”

Why he chose that and what group he was speaking to seems curious. Was it a tacit veiled hat tip to the abortion rights group? His regret isn’t just regrettable, it seems rather calculated. His way of signalling that “pro-lifers” won’t be bossing him around when it comes time to protect or not protect the helpless from being starved to death?

Why didn’t he speak more plainly and say:

“I wish I would have supported measures to pull a feeding tube from a helpless woman so she could starve to death sooner. She was starved to death, but for my part, I regret not helping to make it happen earlier.”???

See also an interesting post at Creative Minority Report about the matter. Matthew Archbold points out that she would have fared better - and given him less to regret - had she been a horse, a dog, or a bird. See also: Barack Obama Would Take Back Vote Helping Terri Schiavo Avoid Euthanasia and Obama pledged to Planned Parenthood: “I will not yield” to pro-life concerns. (H/T: Western Confucian)

I have resolved to try to post at least one of the new saints or beati daily.

Too often Catholics begin to think of saints as something in the past… Mention “the saints” and Catholic imaginations immediately go to images of statues staring at the ceiling or icons that depict other-worldly virtue in a highly symbolic fashion. To be quite clear, there is nothing, in and of itself, wrong with that sort of imagery. Nothing at all.

But I fear too many people have a disconnect between those sorts of images and the reality that saints are real, as real as you and I are. They are, in fact, as alive as you and I are. Actually, more so still!

During the Pontificate of the Venerable John Paul the Great, well over a thousand such souls were raised to the dignity of the altar. More than a few of them, had they not suffered martyrdom, would be the same age as many of the kindly grandparents we interact with daily. I really want to highlight some of these friendly God-loving souls daily (many of whom we have photographs of, some we have in color, some we have on film!) to show that sanctity is not in the past. It is difficult but not impossible. Still having love and respect and prayers with the ones that went before our modern time, I want to put some emphasis on those who were among us on this side of the vale of tears in the last 100 years when possible. Sanctity is not something “from the old days”. It is real. It is possible. It is for today.

Really when you get to know some of these souls, I imagine a good number of them were not aware in the least that they would be named saints one day. They were humble people who just begged the grace to be faithful and made it priority #1.

(Conversely as Father Isaac Mary Relyea tells us, “If you think you’re holy, that is the first sign you’re not!”)

So given this rich, rich tapestry of sanctity found even into the modern era, I want to bring some focus on these souls for personal inspiration, and also to help other Catholics develop friendship with these powerful friends of God who have already gone before us. They love God, they love us. We love God, we love them.

For a time I had thought about starting a secondary blog with a focus just on underscoring these noble souls. As I thought more about that, however, I came to realize that I rather preferred interspersing them into the sometimes somewhat eclectic posts of PC. Just as they are very real and among us still today, I wanted to keep them in the mix of our posts and our cyber-life here. I invite my 13 other blog contributors to do the same as they see fit. Please share the saints that give you friendship and share their stories with us here.

As my pastor reminds our small flock, even when there are not a lot of people in the pews, our church is always full with the angels and saints who happily join us whenever we partake in the divine and mystical worship.

And note please that the graphic on this post is the painting “The Saints” by Fra Angelico. Fra Angelico (having been beatified by our last Holy Father) is on his way to being recognized as being in the company of the saints himself.

Such a baby face!

Check out Father Abe, CSR! Over at his blog, The Splendor of the Truth he has posted photos of himself celebrating his first TLM, and likely the first TLM in that part of the Phillipines (Sorsogon Province) since the Pauline rite entered the picture! (see more…)

I am not one to stump for the old rite or rail against the new. I am at peace either way, though I seldom attend either. Mostly what this Greek Catholic finds pleasing about this news on these islands on the other his world is this: Catholics far and wide across the four corners are enthusiastically exploring their patrimony and different new (to them!) elements of prayer and spirituality. As much as some people maintained that there would be a limited or exclusive appeal of the old rites, honestly, that is just not proving to be the case.

Way to go Father A!

Soutwest Airlines Bans Two Girls Who Are Too Pretty!

Southwest Airlines, responding to claims by two female passengers that they were discriminated against because of their good looks and banned from future flights, released a statement via YouTube disputing their story, adding that it doesn’t have the ability to selectively ban passengers, “even if we wanted to.”

“We would be out of business if we banned pretty people from Southwest Airlines,” spokeswoman Brandy King said. “The two passengers that are referenced in the media were using vulgar language, aggressive behavior, threatening gestures at 30,000 feet.”
Click here to watch the video.

University of South Florida student Nisreen Swedberg and her friend Sarah Williams claimed the flight crew was rude to them throughout their flight from Tampa Bay to Los Angeles on Feb. 14, TampaBays10.com reported.

“I think they were just discriminating against [us] because we were young decent-looking girls,” Williams told TampaBays10.com. “I mean, nobody else on the plane looked like us except us. [The flight attendants] were like older ladies. We were younger. Who knows, they could have been just jealous of us because we were younger.”

‘Too Pretty’ College Students Escorted From Flight

They were released about two hours after the plane landed, and no charges were filed.

photo: TampaBay10.com

Oh girls, don’t I know it!

You see gentle readers - all 12 of you - ASimpleSinner is so beautiful himself he dare not put his photo in his profile as as his avatar… The hate I feel as a pretty person day in and day out is almost too much to deal with. I get detained for hours after every flight I make because I am so gorgeous! Normal people (or as we beautiful people call you “normies”) never understand this personal hell.

I know this is a slight change of pace from my regular posting habits. I do make effort to keep all posts related to our Catholic faith in some fashion. When I saw this though, I just had to post it in solidarity with these two fellow beautiful people. Raising awareness about “beautiphobia” is very important to me. (Truly, it is a social justice issue.)

It had been my intent to write about the seven deadly sins today. For good measure, I will at least mention them. They are:

• Lust
• Gluttony
• Greed
• Sloth
• Wrath
• Envy
• and…..

Damn. What was the last one? I am just too beautiful to remember all these things!

It is related of St Catherine of Siena, who was also favoured with the visible presence of her Guardian Angel, that once while praying in the church she turned her head slightly to gratify her curiosity.Her Guardian Angel gave her so severe a look for her disrespect in the presence of the Most Holy that for several days St Catherine was inconsolable and performed severe penance in atonement.

wow.

I heard this several weeks ago but I cant stop thinking about it; I am trying to be less distracted when I am in adoration, at Mass or in front of the tabernacle, and more acutely aware that JESUS IS THERE and HE deserves my full attention.

I can’t satisfy my curiosity of ‘who has just walked into the Church? ‘ or ‘who is making that noise’ if it means turning around and losing my focus on HIM, who is truely present in front of me.
My noseyness is not more important than Jesus’s presence.

St. Pio (’Padre Pio’) wrote a beautiful letter describing how we should compose ourselves inside and outside a Church:

Here is one small section:

Then take holy water and make the sign of the cross carefully and slowly.

As soon as you are before God in the Blessed Sacrament, devoutly genuflect. Once you have found your place, kneel down and render the tribute of your presence and devotion to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. Confide all your needs to him along with those of others. Speak to him with filial abandonment, give free rein to your heart and give him complete freedom to work in you as he thinks best.

When assisting at Holy Mass and the sacred functions, be very composed when standing up, kneeling down, and sitting, and carry out every religious act with the greatest devotion. Be modest in your glances; don’t turn your head here and there to see who enters and leaves. Don’t laugh, out of reverence for this holy place and also out of respect for those who are near you. Try not to speak to anybody, except when charity or strict necessity requests this.

If you pray with others, say the words of the prayer distinctly, observe the pauses well and never hurry.

In short, behave in such a way that all present are edified by it and, through you, are urged to glorify and love the heavenly Father.

Read rest here