Every once in a while I stumble on a blog and think “why didn’t I think of that?!” This happened today when I discovered a new blog, Catholic Cuisine. For those of us looking for ways to incorporate the Church Year into our everyday lives, this site will be a great source of recipes and ideas. You may recognize one of its contributors; Jennifer from Family in Feast and Feria, another blog I’ve found to be a great help in my quest to develop our Domestic Church.
If cooking is not your style, how about some Carmelite roasted coffee? That’s right, the Carmelite Monks of Wyoming roast and distribute Mystic Monk Coffee. You can even get a double-handled Carmelite mug. The best part is your money supports the Monks while supporting your caffeine addiction!
As a little background there is a documentary coming out of the Netherlands dealing with the violent side of Islam. Getting it released to theaters is pretty well impossible. These days, showing it on TV is rather out of the question too.
This “Emmaus Problem” is still with us. When the priest elevates the Host, many people still see only bread. Even those of us who believe that Christ is truly present need to grow in our ability to recognize who Christ is for us in the Eucharist and thus enter into fuller, more personal communion with Him.
A great site that is new to me is called Catholic Calendar. Among other things, it has a succinct daily summary of the liturgical calendar with the readings and mysteries of the Rosary.
Can we be as precise as to say [the Crucifixion happened at] 3pm, the Jewish “ninth hour”? Four years ago, a pair of astronomers claimed to have scientifically verified this. Their computer programme looking at star activity between 26AD and 35AD found the first full moon after the vernal equinox was registered on Friday 7 April AD 30 and Friday 3 April at 3pm on 33AD. The solar eclipse, described in the Bible, was only visible in Jerusalem on the latter date.
Much hay is being made in the blogosphere about the 60% of priests in Belleville calling on Bishop Braxton to resign. But is this accurate?
To get to the “60%” statistic being bandied about in the press and blogosphere, most are demonstrating that a lot of arbitrary and self-serving qualifications need to be used to achieve it.
To get to the “60%” mark one has to selectively excise a significant group of priests with faculties in the diocese by not counting those who were in orders and not diocesan, those who are on loan, those who are retired and have different capacities of activity.
At the end of the day, you come to 45 signatories actually located in the diocese (one is outside as a military chaplain) out of somewhere between 106-110 with faculties… and only 37 of those signatories not retired.
There are 38 active priests in the Diocese ordained 25 years or less.These are the “John Paul II” priests — attracted to the priesthood by the late Pope’s person, teaching, example. They are the bishops, chancellors, vicars general — and good parish priests — in the years to come.Of these 38 JPII priests, only 5 signed the infamous letter! That’s only 13%…This opposition to the Bishop is generational. Those trained/ordained in the 1960’s and 1970’s — who are now in their own ’60’s and 70’s — are the dissenters.
So of the Belleville 45, 40 of them were ordained in the 60s and 70s and now seem to enjoy - like a good many priests from that cohort - popularity among Call To Action and similar crowds. Interesting and telling.
I am betting dollars to donuts that the men protesting today will be found to largely be the same group that were protesting +Braxton before +Braxton even got there. I smell expedience…
A lot of folks may be unaware of the fact that if they read several blogs on a regular basis, there are many, many options for using what are called aggregators (or “feed readers”) to keep up with the latest posts at each of their favorite blogs.
Some that are out there include:
I myself am a Google Reader™man. I chose it for the simple sake that when we were with Blogger™, it was relatively easy to use that service as I already had a Google account through Blogger. Anyone who uses Gmail™ will also have an account. I don’t have any special attachment otherwise - in fact their may be aggregators among those listed above which have superior functions, I simply have not investigated others at this time.The convenience of an aggregator is really in its simplicity. Like an old time newspaper wire service, as entries are submitted to your favorite blogs, they are fed into your aggregator and simply show up at one location when you are ready to see what is new in the blogs that you have subscribed to. For Google Reader™all you need to do is copy and paste the address of your favorite blogs and enter it into the “Subscribe to new blog” field of Google Reader™ and voilayou are subscribed. This is equally useful, I have found, in tracking blogs that have especially frequent, or especially infrequent updates.
What aggregators do our readers like to use? I note that we have about 30 who subscribe to us via Google Reader™… What else are you using? What do you reccomend?
“The sorrow is that few know that condoms (leaving aside morality) are only “protective” if adequately shipped and stored. The latex perforates in heat (in the back of a semi). These perforation are so minute you don’t see them, but the nasty STDs get through. Worse, AIDS virus is so small it goes through the latex easily. “
Of course I agree… It is all true enough… But would that it were just that simple and easy! There is more to is still!
If the failure rate was the only problem, the Sexual Revolutionaries would then only have to lobby for more funding and research into better product design, transportation and storage. Maybe, if push comes to shove, they could just advise those in the joyful throws of “modern company keeping” to “double bag it!”
BUT (big “but” here) all the titanium condoms in all the world aren’t going to do a good deal to change the reality on the ground just reported by the CDC - that ONE in FOUR teenage girls has an STD…
(”Really?” sez you! “Really!” sez me!)
WHY?
The dirty little non-secret is that for many of them, the venereal diseases they contracted (21%+ HPV& Herpes combined infection) they could and would still contract. Even if condoms were 100% stored correctly, 100% break free… well they would still be getting HPV (which is transmitted skin-to-skin, not via seminal fluid) and still exponentially increasing their chances for cervical cancer as well cervical cancer, as well as anal cancer, vulvar cancer, penile cancer and infertility as a result. Neither of HPV nor Herpes is curable as both are viruses…
(We can save for another day the fallacies that current HPV vaccines on the market prevent all HPV - they protext against a limited number of strains… Mostly focussing on the strains that lead to visible wards. Perons who get the vaccine may never see warts, but could easily become part of the population infected with the other strains… What you can’t see, eh?) Read the rest of this entry »
I whole-heartedly agree with our Pope for the great need of confession.
I have read how past saints had their own confessors and spiritual advisers and hunger for the same.
I realize that there is a lack of priests, yet would love to hear more wisdom and dedication to our souls from them and be given more time to confess.
I believe the cleansing from confessions is so beneficial and certainly makes us more accountable.
Sincerely,
Barbara Cascio
I think Barbara is definitely unto something here. This week I plan to take a look at the correlation between frequent confession, greater priestly & religious vocations and marriage.
Plainly put, more of the former, leads to a good deal more of the latter.
From a recent post over at Clerical Whispers (or as I like to call it “All the Gossip & Bad News that Fits in Print”)
The call to Braxton to resign was lauded by a national Catholic reform group, Call To Action, based near Chicago.
“We applaud the courage of the Catholic priests in the Belleville Diocese,” the group said in a released statement. “This action, done in times of church crisis, only occurs in rare instances such as when a group of Boston priests similarly came together to call for Cardinal Law’s resignation after massive revelations of sexual abuse.”
Cardinal Bernard F. Law resigned a few months after he received a “no confidence” letter signed by 58 Boston area priests, a relatively small percentage of those assigned to the urban area.
Once CTA is on your side and you are trying to bring the sex abuse scandals into the debate, you lose all my confidence.
+Braxton, Your Grace, put out the help wanted sign and fire these bums. You need priests favored by CTA like you need a pack of adult unhousetrained mastiffs.
Call or write and let His Grace know you support him and that he should not be bullied by dissident priests taking a page out of the Call To Action manual. +Brukewitz in Lincoln excommunicated those jokers for a reason.
Diocese of Belleville
The Chancery
222 South Third Street
Belleville, IL 62220
The Islamic charter school in Minnesota that I wrote about in Human Events today is not the only one. Back in August Patrick Poole wrote about several such schools in Ohio. Where is all the concern for the Establishment Clause that we see regarding Christians and publicly-funded schools? Where is the consistency? Where is the ACLU?
A brief recounting of Japanese convert Keiko Uemura’s conversion to the Catholic Church at the end of her very short life. It really always does help to remember as Catholics we always understand that to die well is to have lived well.
I hope you all have 100 happy years to become a saint.
I need to be clear about two things right off: (1) At this time this venerable order is in a state of canonical irregularity with the Holy See, in part due to their working relationship with the Society of Saint Pius X and (2)I have always respected and admired them - who can’t? - for the tenacity that they have show in re-establishing (after centuries!) a monastic community on an island off the coast of Scotland. In watching that, it becomes pretty clear, that is not an easy life.
In my admiration of them, I had long hoped that their situation of canonical irregularity would be regularized and their relationship to the Holy See would become unimpeded… But figured it was a long shot.
When the SSPX made it abundantly clear they would NOT be obedient to the Holy See (so what else is new?) and use the revised Good Friday Prayers for the 1962 Missal, The TAR very cooly and humbly asserted:
Notice
In what concerns the Solemn Prayers of the Good Friday Liturgy, the Transalpine Redemptorists will obey with submission the newly promulgated Prayer for the Jews as ordered by His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI on February 4th 2008.
Fr. Michael Mary, C.SS.R.
Vicar General
8 February, 2007
+ William: Well, is there anything going on between the Redemptorists and Rome?
+ Our little monastery is separate from the SSPX. As one SSPX priest told us when we were having a penniless moment: “We are united in Faith and separated in finances.”
I liked the quip! It shows that the two organisations are separate. And it follows that if the SSPX is able to speak with Rome there should be no reason why we would not be able to do so either.
+ William: What is the basis of having relations with Rome?
+ It is because we believe that Benedict XVI is the Pope, of course. He is the head of the Church. We are set upon working towards reunion. If we remain in an ‘imperfect communion’ we will eventually become a separate organisation altogether.
+ When I recall the day of the Consecrations in 1988 there were numbers of young children playing on the grass around the canvas cathedral. Do you know, now 20 years later, most of those girls and boys will be married. The 3rd generation of 1988 Tradis is on its way: that is, a generation that does not know normal Catholic life, that has no real contact with their juridical bishops, parishes and clergy. Already there are possibly 2 generations of people who are isolated from the Catholic ‘wheat and chaff’ that makes up a diocese. This is a serious situation unless we want to become a separate Church fitted out with our own bishops, parishes and clergy. We need a reconciliation asap.
*Well, actually they kind of are… An antipope by definition, makes effort to suppress the legitimate Pope and is a cause of confusion… At this time, I don’t think many are all that confused, or that P13 is managing to much suppress B16…
[Originally posted March 10 by ASimpleSinner at the old blog address.]
That was mighty nice of ‘em! Maybe if I write to the authorities in Ukraine, they will sell me my dog and my car and my TV… At a fair price I am sure!
(http://www.risu.org.ua/eng/news/article;21058) Trans-Carpathian Region— Head of the Trans-Carpathian Greek Catholic Diocese, Bishop Milan (Shashik) celebrated on 14 February 2008 a thanksgiving hierarchical liturgy in the Church of Assumption of the town of Tiachiv, which was returned to Greek Catholics after many years of court proceedings, reports Orthodoxy in Ukraine internet edition in reference to a story by the Mukachevo.net agency.In order to regain their church built by their forefathers, the Greek Catholics agreed to pay 500 000 UAH (100,000 USD) to the Orthodox. The money was gathered from throughout areas under jurisdiction of the Tiachiv Deanery. Many of the faithful even took out loans to be able to raise large amounts in a short time. Bishop Milan thanked the faithful for their love for the Church and the beneficence they showed.
8 Comments | 
Blogs, Family and Domestic Church, Holidays | Tagged: coffee, cuisine, Domestic Church, homemaking, monks | 
Permalink
Posted by Jennifer
A great site that is new to me is called 
David Bennett
Jennifer
asimplesinner
Fr. J.
Chad Toney
Jorge Flores
Jonathan B
carmelbennett
nicenehobbit
Jason S
jaybird68
papaz
