The problem with the Archdiocese of Detroit viz a viz RCTV is……..UPDATED! January 5, 2012
Posted by Tantumblogo in asshatery, Basics, Dallas Diocese, disaster, episcopate, General Catholic, sadness, scandals, sickness.comments closed
…….not that the AOD is acting outside its area of competence, it’s that it is patently unjust in its incredibly inconsistent application of this particular discipline, according to Rorate Caeli:
Dr. E. Peters (via Fr. J. Zuhlsdorf) is right on the simplest interpretation of the Canon: “The plain text of this canon [Can. 216] unquestionably puts the burden on those behind an undertaking to secure consent from the competent ecclesiastical authority before claiming the name ‘Catholic’ for their project(s).”
Gorgeousness and Gorgeosity – UPDATED January 5, 2012
Posted by Tantumblogo in Art and Architecture, awesomeness, Basics, General Catholic, Glory, Interior Life, Tradition, Virtue.comments closed
A rather Arabic hymn on the inexpressible majesty and mystery of the Incarnation, taken from Ite Ad Thomam:
I believe that’s a record – 8 posts in 6 hours! I’m making up for lost time!
UPDATE: My friend David R points out that this chant is actually from the Arabic Melkite rite, in union with Rome. It is certainly beautiful.
My Christmas Epiphany January 5, 2012
Posted by Tantumblogo in Basics, Dallas Diocese, disaster, Ecumenism, episcopate, General Catholic, North Deanery, sadness, scandals, sickness, Society.comments closed
I had a minor epiphany over the long period of prayer and reflection, and much woodworking, and chasing the kids around the house, and spending time with my wife, and a little extra sleep, that was my Christmas vacation. I don’t normally get fired up about taking a vacation, because usually the work just transfers from one place to another, but this year, I really needed and wanted a “break,” such as it was. But back to the main point, I did have a little epiphany, a moment of realization, if you will, regarding the various topics I was reading on and thinking about during the break (the protestant revolt, the horrific Mexican persecution of the period 1917-1940, plus all of Dom Proper Gueranger’s work on Advent). In the back of my mind was my continual reading and re-reading of Pascendi Domini Gregis – Pope St. Pius X’s encyclical denouncing modernism as a formal heresy – “the synthesis of all heresies.”
My epiphany was this – modernism is simply, or primarily, an attempt to rationalize left wing political beliefs with the Catholic, or even Christian, Faith. There is no more explanation needed beyond this. All of modernism’s novelties, which grew out of “enlightenment rationalism” and its first practical application, the French Revolution, are focused on trying to coalesce a coherent philoosphical and theological framework amongst two radically disparate sets of beliefs – the dialectical materialism of leftism, and Christianity. That such a framework is impossible has been born out by the experience of the past century, with millions of people falling away from the faith, with the steady progression epitomized in a cartoon I once saw that showed a descending flight of stairs starting from modernism, to denial of the Resurrection, to denial of the Incarnation, to Agnosticism, to, finally, atheism and spiritual oblivion. Sadly, almost all of us have been infected by these errors to one extent or another.
I hope to get back to delving more into the Catechism of Modernism and sharing the errors Pope St. Pius X highlighted, because I think you will see how pervasive those errors are not only in our culture, but in our Church.
It’s always possible my epiphany was false! Modernism could well be more encompassing than an attempt at political rationalization, but I think the description fits to a large extent. I’ll try to develop this some more in the next few weeks, as well.
Heterodox LA bishop resigns January 5, 2012
Posted by Tantumblogo in Basics, disaster, episcopate, General Catholic, sadness, scandals.comments closed
It’s difficult to be a bishop when you’re also a father of two illegitimate kids:
The pope has accepted the early resignation of a Los Angeles bishop who recently acknowledged being the father of two teenagers.
Los Angeles Auxiliary Bishop Gabino Zavala, 60, resigned Wednesday under the code of canon law that lets bishops step down earlier than the normal retirement age of 75 if they’re sick or for some other reason that makes them unfit for office.
In a letter to the faithful, Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez said Zavala had told him in December that he had two children who lived with their mother in a different state. Zavala subsequently submitted his resignation to the pope.
Bishop Zavala has been mentioned on this blog in the past – once, for his outspoken criticism of Catholic blogs, while at the same time playing footsie with the generally heterodox US Catholic, Distorter, etc. He was a well known and outspoken liberal. He was big in PaxChristi. I pray for his sincere repentance and conversion, and pray for a much better auxiliary for LA.
Is there any relation between left wing heterodoxy and inability to remain faithful to priestly vows? Some data says yes, but you can always find “orthodox” priests who fail in this regard.
The BlackSheepDog is down January 5, 2012
Posted by Tantumblogo in Admin, blogfoolery, General Catholic, sadness.comments closed
Corapi’s site is down. I haven’t followed him at all since he left the priesthood, but apparently his website went dark a day or two ago and hasn’t come back.
I wonder what’s up with that? Legal problems? A change of heart? I understand that his following largely collapsed after leaving the priesthood, and that he wasn’t moving much merchandise. His website had not been updated for months.
Pray.
Seven reasons to completely avoid the Traditional Latin Mass January 5, 2012
Posted by Tantumblogo in awesomeness, Basics, Dallas Diocese, episcopate, General Catholic, Interior Life, Latin Mass, North Deanery, priests, scandals, sickness, Society.comments closed
This is totally post stealing, and, frankly, I’d rather steal another post from this site, but I’m afraid that might be politically incorrect and lead to all kinds of calamaties. So, here it is, from the site I’ve just discovered Philothea on Phire (thanks, Terry C!), seven reasons to completely avoid the Traditional Latin Mass:
When and where was this future portent written? January 5, 2012
Posted by Tantumblogo in Basics, Dallas Diocese, disaster, Ecumenism, episcopate, foolishness, General Catholic, Glory, persecution, priests, sadness, scandals, sickness, Society, Tradition.comments closed
A test from my vacation reading………….when and in what country were the following comments made?
“The reactionaries say and the clericals say that the child belongs to the home and the youth to the family; this is a selfish doctrine, since the child and the youth belong to the community, and it is the Revolution that has the obligation of doing away with prejudices and devloping the new natinoal soul………For this reason I call upon all governors throughout the Republic, on all public authorities, and on all Revolutionary elements to proceed at once to the field of battle which we must make, because the child and the youth must belong to the Revolution.”
The person making the comment? Plutarcho Elias Calles, dictator of Mexico from 1926-1936, a socialist fascist with a high interest in Nazism (when he was finally arrested and deported in 1936, the soldiers happened upon him reading a copy of Mein Kampf). But haven’t we heard similar words in our own country? Haven’t we heard that children belong to the community, that it “takes a village,” and all that? As is said in Ecclesiasticus, there is nothing new under the sun, our vanity and pride are constant.
Calles was, of course, the prime persecutor of the Church, whose actions precipitated the Cristero rebellion about which I have blogged recently. In his Masonic zeal to persecute the Church (for, he was a “devout” Mason, and strongly supported by the Grand Orient of France. The entire Mexican revolution was perpetrated by freemasons, and was supported by masons in the US government starting with Woodrow Wilson and extending into the Roosevelt Administration), he extended his efforts to every aspect of life in Mexico. At this time, Mexico was about as Catholic a country as there was. Catholicism was the air that Mexicans breathed. But the socialist state can brook no competition, and most of all must possess the souls of its citizens in order to insure the success of the “revolution,” and so the Church must be destroyed. He went about this process of destruction in every possible way – seizing Church property, making public and even private worship illegal, declaring priests to be outlaws, using communist militias to assault and devastate sacred places, etc, etc.
One of the final avenues of assault was on education. Socialist education became the law of the land, forcing all Catholic schools to completely apostasize, or close. So, they closed. But part and parcel of this “socialist education” was sex education. Sex education is necessary to immerse the souls of youth in filth and separate them from the life of Grace. This sexual education was of a horrific variety – in the book Mexican Martyrdom by Fr. Wilfrid Parsons, SJ, Fr. Parsons relates: “What happened is well authenticated. Children were taken to stockyards to see the coupling of animals. They were taken into maternity wards to witness parturition. They were undressed in schools of both sexes and had explained to them the process of copulation. One teacher put on a school dance in which all the boys and girls were unclothed. Other, and unprintable, things occurred.” I should note that these teachers who remained were all largely socialist fanatics, placed in the schools by the government when the previous teachers, predominately Catholic, left, rather than inculcate socialist dogma into the students.
Such actions would cause outrage in any country outside Scandanavia today. In 1930s Mexico, they caused outrage on an immense level. The atrocities that are attributed to the Cristeros – perhaps 300 socialist “teachers” killed or maimed by having their ears cut off – were all totally in response to both the socialist mantras against religion that were repeated constantly in class (No hay dios – there is no god, dios muerta – god is dead, etc), and of course to the outrage over this destruction of the innocence of youth. In many cases, these socialist dogmatists were killed by the mother of children who ran home from school to tell of what was ongoing. These murders were of course grave sins, but put into context the ostensible “crimes” of the Cristeros – and keep in mind there was no recourse to laws or courts in Mexico at that time. The police, the army, the courts, were completley dominated by Calles men.
Believe it or not, I had never made the connection that Mexico’s constant inability to provide for its people was due to its socialist oligarchy form of government. While Calles and his allies preached socialism for the masses, they enriched themselves on confiscated Church and private property. That process has continued to the present day – Mexico has a very small, very rich elite, a small middle class, and a vast impoverished class, many of whom emigrate to the US.
Calles set out to destroy the Church in Mexico. Did he succeed? In the 1930s, Mexico had a population that was 95-97% Catholic, and most actively practiced the Faith. Today, that number is about 80%, and about half of those practice the faith. Evangelical protestants are making large inroads, and the Church is still denied the right to worship in public, to evangelize publicly, to have access to media (there is no EWTN radio in Mexico, for instance). Religous orders cannot publicly recruit – a good order of Dominicans near Monterey is slowly dying because of this limitation. The Church is not dead, but it has been gravely wounded – perhaps as much by the changes instituted at Vatican II as by anything, for the adherence to the Faith remained strong until the modern day mass apostasy began around 1970. But, most Mexicans are still Catholic, at least culturally. Many US bishops count on it remaining so.
There are sadly, many Americans who would like to have a socialist government in this country. Of course, they would “do it right,” seeing as it has failed everywhere else. As far as the sex education goes, I say thank God for homeschooling, and thank God we live in Texas where homeschooling is a snap. Not so in other states.
Thus concludes my “What I did on Christmas vacation” post.
A Catholic VBS program? January 5, 2012
Posted by Tantumblogo in awesomeness, Basics, Dallas Diocese, General Catholic, Interior Life, North Deanery, scandals, Virtue.comments closed
A commenter over the Christmas holidays pointed out a Catholic Vacation Bible School program, noting that I had lamented that so many parishes (all that I have encountered) use protestant-based VBS programs. The program is called Growing With The Saints, and it is intended to have a Catholic focus. This is important, because personal experience, and numerous comments of others, have shown that there are problematic aspects to these protestant-based VBS programs. I have been told by some VBS leaders, who are frequently volunteers helping out in charity for these summer programs, that they felt compelled to amend some of the program content in order to delete some false aspects or to add distinctly Catholic content into the programs.
Anyway, this program appears to have a more Catholic focus. The one sort of odd aspect is that they are claiming that they are “sold out” of the program for this coming summer 2012. They are taking orders for 2013. I guess they only printed a certain amount of material, or…………..?
Those who are interested in these summer programs may want to check them out. When I have blogged on the use of protestant type VBS programs in the past, I have thought there must surely be a Catholic alternative. Well, there is. It seems to be somewhat similar to the protestant-based programs in appearance – lots of cartoons, sort of kid oriented, etc. It appears to be a viable alternative, although I have not reviewed the program in depth. I’d say it definitely bears checking out.
Santorum’s surprising show January 5, 2012
Posted by Tantumblogo in awesomeness, Basics, General Catholic, Society.comments closed
Sort of alliterative? I don’t know if many of my readers listen to me on the radio, but on my last night on before Vicki shut down the show on the 23rd, Pastor Stephen Broden commented on how he felt Iowa was a race between Paul, Santorum, and Romney. He said the polls were wrong, he had toured the state for a week or more and Santorum had as much or more support than anyone. So, perhaps Santorum’s constant dismal showing in the polls was not representative of his true level of support. Or, Iowa could just be a one off – I hate that the two earliest, most influential primary states are so unrepresentative of the body politic at large – Iowa is I guess sort of OK, but New Hampshire? Perhaps it was representative 100 years ago, but not so much.
Anyways, it will be very interesting to see if this will be a one off event in an idiosyncratic state, or if his support truly is wider than has been reported. I, of course, pray for the latter. I could very strongly support this faithful Catholic candidate. I pray I get a chance to vote for him in Texas.
Another reason to support him is to watch Dan Savage and all the other degenerates heads explode. If I were the Republican party insiders who submarined Santorum’s senatorial re-election bid in 2006, I’d be very nervous right about now.
And DEO GRATIAS to at least have a faithful Catholic make some impact!
UPDATE: He got CatholicVote’s endorsement. And, and more.