Monday, March 29, 2021
Reading - The Bible
Sunday, March 28, 2021
Saturday, March 27, 2021
The Daughter of Time (Tey)
I kept seeing references to The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey on a number of best mystery novel lists. The fact that it also dealt with history, and that the author is actually a Scottish writer by the name of Elizabeth MacKintosh, convinced me I had to read it.
Thursday, March 25, 2021
Liberal Nun Claims Holy Spirit Led Her to Promote Joe Biden, Killing Babies in Abortions
Kamala's Hex
Wednesday, March 24, 2021
Dickens (Yes, another reading goal!)
Oliver Twist
The Old Curiosity Shop
Bleak House
Hard Times
Great Expectations
Our Mutual Friend
Sunday, March 21, 2021
Plates (limerick)
Friday, March 19, 2021
Sigh.
As for the threat of low-paid grocery store workers losing their
jobs, that is already happening. Wegmans, Tops, and other grocery stores locally,
for example, as well as pharmacies and even the state Thruway tollbooths, have
already installed some self-check-out aisles. While it likely does have something to do with
cutting labor costs, there is nothing to indicate that it has anything to do
with the issue of illegal immigrants.
Thursday, March 18, 2021
Praying Outside Planned Parenthood
Tuesday, March 16, 2021
Told You: Biden Supports Homosexual Marriages - National Catholic Register
Monday, March 15, 2021
Juan
Vatican: No to blessing homosexual unions
Vatican's "No"
Seems pretty clear - no blessing of homosexual unions. From the AP -
The Vatican decreed Monday that the Catholic Church cannot bless
same-sex unions since God “cannot bless sin.”
The Vatican’s orthodoxy office, the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith, issued a formal response Monday
to a question about whether Catholic clergy can bless gay unions.
The answer, contained in a two-page explanation
published in seven languages and approved
by Pope Francis, was “negative.” ...
Sunday, March 14, 2021
Cuomo's "No"
Saturday, March 13, 2021
The Diary of a County Priest (Bernanos)
I just finished The Diary of a Country Priest by Georges Bernanos, one of those Catholic classics constantly touted as one of those books "you have to read."
Tuesday, March 9, 2021
Henry IV Part II (Shakespeare)
The Taming of the Shrew
Romeo and Juliet
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
The Merchant of Venice
Henry IV Part I
Henry V
Julius Caesar
Hamlet
Othello
King Lear
Macbeth
The Winter’s Tale
Monday, March 8, 2021
Thanks Bob
Andrew Cuomo Needs Our Prayers
derisively dismisses excommunication's potential blow.
"I stopped being Catholic, after all,
when I embraced Moloch and Ba'al." (1/30/2019)
might now be listening to the winter winds blow.
But I can't help but wonder if when he's dying
the sound that will haunt him will be of aborted babies crying. (1/27/2019)
if he has White House dreams should know,
his liberal New York values are viewed
by most of the nation as skewed. (8/9/2018)
"should be granted to all members of the genus homo.
But I can't be bothered with the right to wed
the woman who shares my bed." (10/6/2010)
Saturday, March 6, 2021
Alfred Hitchcock (Clerihew)
Friday, March 5, 2021
Save us indeed!
By Phil Lawler | Mar 03, 2021
Do you wonder why many Catholics have grown cynical about their bishops?
The Pillar news site reports that this year’s budget for the Archdiocese of Washington includes $2 million for the “continuing ministry” of Cardinal Donald Wuerl— who resigned from active ministry nearly two years ago amid what polite people call questions about his role in the McCarrick scandal.
Two million dollars. $2,000,000.00. That comes out to almost $5,500 every day to support the retired cardinal in doing… what? The archdiocesan budget does not specify what the “continuing ministry” involves.
Sadly, the Washington archdiocese was forced to cut its “archdiocesan charitable giving” by 30% this year, Pillar reports. Charitable giving is allocated just a bit over $400,000, or one-fifth of the Wuerl-maintenance allotment. Which, by the way, is up 35% from the previous fiscal year.
Another new Catholic-news source, Exaudi, boasts an exclusive interview with Archbishop José Gomez of Los Angeles, who sounds just a bit defensive about the bishops’ role in the Covid lockdown:
… Pope Francis and the bishops around the world did not close down our churches and schools because the government told us to. We closed our churches out of love for the souls entrusted to our care, especially the elderly and vulnerable.
I see. And it’s pure coincidence, then, that in one jurisdiction after another, the bishops, motivated solely by their concern for souls, closed down their churches immediately after the secular authorities ordered lockdowns. Even at the Vatican— which, bear in mind, is a sovereign state— St. Peter’s basilica barred visitors a few hours after the City of Rome closed off access to St. Peter’s Square.
Archbishop Gomez continues:
As I said, the Catholic Church in California has supported and cooperated with public officials’ efforts to contain the spread of this deadly disease, including closing our schools and suspending public worship. We took these steps, not because the government issued an order, but because our God is love and he calls us to love for our neighbors.
God also calls us to offer public worship, but leave that aside. Isn’t it remarkable that in one diocese after another, the bishop’s concrete expressions of love for his flock dovetailed so neatly with public officials’ edicts?
To be fair, in recent weeks a number of bishops have protested the continued tight restrictions on public worship. There have also been a few bishops insisting that they will keep restrictions in place even after government regulations are lifted. There is no longer the same tight symmetry between the bishops’ orders and those issued by civic officials that we saw last year.
Still, even after the Brooklyn diocese won a clear-as-day Supreme Court ruling that the Covid epidemic has not erased the First Amendment, American bishops have been notably reluctant to challenge intrusive government restrictions— to announce that they will set their own standards for public worship, thank you very much, and if the governor wants tighter restrictions, we’ll see you in court.
You might, by force of habit, look to Rome for inspirational leadership. Alas you might be disappointed. In the Catholic Herald, Christopher Altieri takes a careful look at the current Vatican trial of two clerics charged with sexual abuse of seminarians inside the Vatican’s own walls. The case presented by prosecutors raised some obvious concerns about how Cardinal Angelo Comastri responded when the abuse was first reported. The cardinal himself is not a defendant in this case, however. And that is the point.
Cardinal Comastri could have been investigated, Altieri observes, under the sweeping terms of Vos Estis, the 2019 document in which Pope Francis provided for disciplinary action against negligent bishops. But apparently no such investigation has been launched. Because, you see, Vos Estis makes it possible for the Vatican to investigate a bishop, but does not make the investigation mandatory. Altieri sums things up:
Lots of people can order or request a Vos estis investigation, but nobody must order or request its activation. In other words: if the law has a trigger, lots of fingers may be on it but none of them have to pull it.
So if you’re wondering when Catholic bishops will be held to account for their leadership and stewardship, short of the Pearly Gates… keep wondering.
Eucharistic Coherence? Maybe ...
Thursday, March 4, 2021
Some cinquains
The pope’s
infallible
when it comes to matters
of faith and morals, but not the
weather.
G. K.
Chesterton stood
before the throne of God
telling a rollicking tale, and
God laughed.
The stars
in their beauty
provide proof God exists.
Skeptic crumples an argument
that failed.
With each
beer I savor,
I think of the monks who
brewed such fine brews, bow my head, and
thank God.
Death claims
Stephen Hawking.
Now he finally knows
just Who really was behind the
Big Bang.
As I
walk I see so
many abandoned shrines,
but then spot one with fresh flowers -
faith lives.
Behold,
Brother Death comes
to help celebrate not
our end, but our transition to
Heaven.
A priest
silently prays
in the back of the church,
and just then, somewhere, someone's soul
is stirred.
Adam,
along with Eve,
chose to disobey God
closing Eden’s gates for both them
and us.
Her child,
conceived in an
unplanned moment, now waits
helplessly, innocently, for
her choice.
The moon,
hidden tonight,
like all the secrets kept
carefully concealed behind clouds
of words.
My love,
haloed by sun
during our honeymoon.
Leafing through our album before
night falls.
Your smile,
so radiant,
overwhelms the darkness
in my heart and replaces it
with light.
Matthew
left his table
to respond to the call
to share with all the Lord’s message
nothing he said
was free of consequence,
so he chose to retreat into
Walking
the dog shrouded
in the predawn darkness,
and then … then … suddenly, Easter
sunrise.
you focus on
is the darkness, then all
you'll know is darkness. Choose instead
the light.
now Solanus
Casey, holy doorman,
may you inspire us always to
give thanks.
Two hearts
once out of sync,
now beat in harmony
and will until that day both fall
silent.
Heart-felt
mea culpas
are sometimes not enough
to soothe the hearts of those who felt
betrayed.
Austen’s
novels are full
of satire and romance;
it's sadly ironic she died
alone.
Giving
morality
the cold shoulder might just,
in the end, lead you to a place
that's hot.
All those
old photographs
of Adelaide Crapsey
fail to reveal the depths that birthed
cinquains.
Moments
of pain confirm
'that, despite his cold stare,
that pale, black-hooded one has not
won yet.
A vase,
perfect in form,
leaps from its niche convinced
its Creator erred, and ends up
shattered.
A cat
snares a robin
just beneath a nest where
three eggs will now likely remain
unhatched.
As I
walk I see so
many abandoned shrines,
but then spot one with fresh flowers -
faith lives.
If you
see Godzilla,
remember that he is
another one of God's creatures,
then run.
Clumsy
astronaut steps
on insect-like creature
and is held on Planet X for
murder.
Star ship,
boldly going
where no man or woman
has gone before, brought down by poor
ratings.
Life form,
so alien
people run from it in
terror, is itself so aghast
it flees.
two moons
rise above the
lunatic asylum
inspiring the Martian inmates
to howl
He longed
to kiss her lips
but was uncertain which
pair of her lips it would be safe
to kiss.
This world,
silent except
for the rattling of
the colony ship’s wreckage in
the wind.
What if
we discover
that for Planet Earth we're
basically an invasive
behind the clouds
watching the world like a
shy girl seeking shelter behind
curtains.
Watching
the clouds racing
across the sky like wild
stallions fleeing what they know is
coming
Allan Poe seemed
a very troubled soul.
But the tales he left us trouble
our dreams.
regretted betraying
Jesus, but Peter trusted God's
Full moon,
obscured tonight
by the clouds and my grief,
in spite of those clouds and that grief
years of delving
into the mysteries
of nature he humbly knelt and
silvery full
moon will inspire true love,
will a hazy half moon inspire
just lust?
Pax et bonum