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Some appropriately Lenten music February 18, 2013

Posted by Tantumblogo in Art and Architecture, awesomeness, Basics, General Catholic, Glory, Latin Mass, Liturgy, Tradition.
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Works for me.  Sounds like Ensemble Organum, who have done some really novel and interesting work in resurrecting 1000 year old hymnody.  I have no idea how accurate it is, but it sounds very medieval.  Which is a good thing, to me.

Here’s something even older, from the 7th century, apparently.  I love that droning bass line.  It’s like talking to Ross.

 

Latin Mass tonight at St. Mark in Plano February 18, 2013

Posted by Tantumblogo in Admin, Basics, Dallas Diocese, General Catholic, Latin Mass, North Deanery.
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Same bat-time, same bat-place. Fine, 7pm.

Seder Meals violate the First Commandment February 18, 2013

Posted by Tantumblogo in abdication of duty, Basics, disaster, Ecumenism, episcopate, error, foolishness, General Catholic, Interior Life, Papa, scandals, secularism.
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This is a 19 minute sermon where a priest points out whole litany of reasons why Catholics should never participate in a Seder Meal, which is a Jewish passover meal that many Catholics have taken up as some kind of pious practice in association with this time of year.  It’s a very bad idea.   Readers should never get involved in one of these, and if you took part in one in the past in ignorance, I would counsel informing your confessor of the instances when this occurred and the circumstances surrounding those instances.  That’s not condemnatory in the slightest, but if you listen I think you’ll understand that these Seder meals are not only obsolete in the New Law but are directly counter to it.

http://www.audiosancto.org/auweb/20080928-Seder-Meals-Violate-the-1st-Commandment.mp3

“All religious ceremonies are professions of faith in which the interior worship of God exists.” If a man makes a false declaration of faith by taking part in a pagan rite or one of the old Jewish law, he is committing a very grievous sin – this priest describes it as a mortal sin.

That priest is the best sermonist I’ve ever heard. It is a profound indication of the utter state of collapse in which the Church presently suffers that this priest is one of only a handful I know that will address a specific action as being gravely sinful.  And say so.  How else, in our present culture, are souls to learn what is sinful, or not?

But the really sad fact of the matter is that so many priests today believe, essentially, in universal salvation.  Why get hassled by people you’ve <gasp!> made to feel bad because you spoke of sin, when everyone, or everyone short of Adolf Hitler, goes to Heaven?

This sermon, of course, opens very troubling questions over those priests and prelates who have participated in ecumenical services from some separated sect or other religious body.

Will the Holy Spirit really select the next Pope? February 18, 2013

Posted by Tantumblogo in Basics, episcopate, error, General Catholic, Grace, Papa, sadness, Society, Tradition, Virtue.
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I have read in a number of places, and even been told by a local priest, that I/we shouldn’t worry, that everything is worked out, that the Holy Spirit has selected every Pope and will select this one.  This is the first time I’ve ever disagreed with this particular priest on a point of doctrine. But I’m struggling to understand this one.

First, I should say, this is not a Doctrine, or Dogma. There is no dogmatic belief in the Church that one must accept to be a faithful Catholic regarding how the Pope is elected/selected.  And none of this is to say that the Triune God does not KNOW who the next Pope will be, its that He doesn’t strip men of free will to select the next Pope.

Pat Archbold at CreativeMinorityReport has a post that well represents my views (but I wouldn’t have been so snarky, because I think this is people acting from confusion and not malice).   I don’t understand how the Pope could be selected by the Holy Spirit without violating the free will of the cardinal-electors. I mean, I pray they cooperate with Grace and select the best, most holy Pope possible for the Church right now, which only God knows what the Church really needs, but that doesn’t mean these men will do so.  We can all refuse to cooperate with Grace. The Holy Spirit has to work through men, and men can refuse that Grace.

I don’t know of any Saints that have spoken on this.  I’d surely be interested to read an explanation of how the Pope could be selected by the Holy Spirit while the cardinal-electors preserve their free will.  It would also make some papal elections truly baffling, to think that the Holy Spirit selected a Benedict IX, John XII, or Paul VI.

I’ve also seen folks (not here, in comments at other blogs) just lose their minds when someone might mildly question Pope Benedict’s abdication or remind that the vast majority of papal actions aren’t protected from infallibility.  And that’s just evidence of a very distorted ultramontanism that is frankly quite dangerous.  It has been argued that excessive deferrence to the Holy Father is what got us in such dire straits as a Church, because once a person with semi-radical or somewhat revolutionary views was elected, there was no internal check to stop his very damaging “reforms.”

There is no dogma that says the election of a Pope is divinely inspired – at most, we can hope and pray that the cardinals will cooperate with Grace and give us the holiest, best possible candidate.

I am open to rebuttal on this, but it needs good evidentiary support, because I don’t see how free will can be overcome.  Perhaps subconsciously?

Poor Cardinal Mahony feels humiliated February 18, 2013

Posted by Tantumblogo in abdication of duty, asshatery, Basics, disaster, episcopate, error, foolishness, General Catholic, horror, sadness, scandals, self-serving, sexual depravity.
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Cardinal Roger Mahony is noted for being rather sensitive to criticism.  He has kept a brigade-sized force of lawyers at his beck and call for decades in order to help insulate him from culpability for his negligent administration of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.  That wall is finally collapsing, and the worst possible thing in the world is beginning to happen to a liberal, which Mahony most certainly is.  He’s being made to feel bad………the horror!  From his very own blog, Cardinal Mahony at first laments his being humiliated, but he apparently had a great epiphany on Ash Wednesday – now he understands that….well, tell me if you agree……he’s rather like Jesus:

Given all of the storms that have surrounded me and the Archdiocese of Los Angeles recently, God’s grace finally helped me to understand:  I am not being called to serve Jesus in humility.  Rather, I am being called to something deeper–to be humiliated, disgraced, and rebuffed by many.

I was not ready for this challenge.  Ash Wednesday changed all of that, and I see Lent 2013 as a special time to reflect deeply upon this special call by Jesus.

To be honest with you, I have not reached the point where I can actually pray for more humiliation.  I’m only at the stage of asking for the grace to endure the level of humiliation at the moment.

In the past several days, I have experienced many examples of being humiliated.  In recent days, I have been confronted in various places by very unhappy people.  I could understand the depth of their anger and outrage–at me, at the Church, at about injustices that swirl around us.

Thanks to God’s special grace, I simply stood there, asking God to bless and forgive them.  [Forgive them, you see.  Because Mahony’s actions, which put rapist sodomite priests back into circulation time and time again, to ruin hundreds more young lives, are above reproach, and the anger of these people is unjustifiable.  Therefore, they are the ones to be forgiven.  Not him. How very Christ-like of him]

Over the coming days of our Lenten journey I hope to explore with all of you some deeper spiritual insights into what it really means to take up our cross daily and to follow Jesus–in rejection, in humiliation, and in personal attack.

Coincidentally, on the day Mahony wrote the above, the following story was reported on California Catholic Daily:

Pressed to come up with hundreds of millions of dollars to settle clergy sex abuse lawsuits, Cardinal Roger Mahony turned to one group of Catholics whose faith could not be shaken: the dead.

Under his leadership in 2007, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles quietly appropriated $115 million from a cemetery maintenance fund and used it to help pay a landmark settlement with molestation victims.

The church did not inform relatives of the deceased that it had taken the money, which amounted to 88 percent of the fund. Families of those buried in church-owned cemeteries and interred in its mausoleums have contributed to a dedicated account for the perpetual care of graves, crypts and grounds since the 1890s.

Mahony and other church officials also did not mention the cemetery fund in numerous public statements about how the archdiocese planned to cover the $660-million abuse settlement. In detailed presentations to parish groups, the cardinal and his aides said they had cashed in substantial investments to pay the settlement, but they did not disclose that the main asset liquidated was cemetery money.

In response to questions from the Los Angeles Times, the archdiocese acknowledged using the maintenance account to help settle abuse claims. It said in a statement that the appropriation had “no effect” on cemetery upkeep and enabled the archdiocese “to protect the assets of our parishes, schools and essential ministries.”

The Archdiocese maintains that they have such excess of funds from current “sales” of funeral plots, expenses for burials, etc., that they wouldn’t have needed this fund until the year 2200.  Or, almost two centuries from now.   Which begs the question, why are they charging so much, to have built up such an excessive perpetual care fund?

I wonder how the bad feelings Mahony is experiencing now compare to those of the boys who were raped by sodomite priests?  Mahony doesn’t seem to get the irony of his new-found experiences of “humiliation” – does he ponder how humiliated those boys and their families felt, having been raped by priests, men of God they should have been able to trust?  Boys and families who then later got to learn that the violent depravity of these men was well known and the Los Angeles Archdiocese – Mahony –  kept shuffling them around in order to cover up for previous crimes and enable new ones? The same Mahony and Archdiocese that spent tens of millions of dollars on an army of lawyers to keep these despicable deeds from coming to light? Does this guy have a clue what a self-absorbed asshat he sounds like?

From what I have read, this kind of narcissism is very in character for Mahony.  It’s also very in character for most of the cherished disciples of Joseph Cardinal Bernadin, he, the huge fan of the Windy City Gay Men’s Chorus and possibly other things too unspeakable to contemplate for a prince of the Church.