The AP is reporting that His Holiness has spoken to the Roman Rota about the number of annulments granted by the Church, reminding them that pastoral Charity isn't to be confused with upholding the Church's teaching on marriage and trying to keep couples together.
The AP also reports that this is directed mostly to the church in the United States, which has logged, in the last reporting year more requests for annulment than the rest of the world combined!
And certain quarters persist in believing that Catholic Morality, Knowledge of the Faith, and adherence to the Precepts of the Church are doing just fine in America.
Nope--we are slouching towards Laodocia as fast as we can.
TRIUMPHALIST--YOU GOT A PROBLEM WITH THAT?
Friday, January 29, 2010
The Queen of the House
Well, just how strange is the Queen of the House? Let me put it this way:
She's a
Guitar Strummin'
Hand Clappin'
Arm Wavin'
Song Singin'
Tounge speakin'
Toe Tappin'
Charismatic.
Who
Attends week day mass in both the OF and the EF
Likes the EF (TLM)
attends a traditional parish with high standards of the Ars Celebrandi
prays the Rosary
prays the Chaplet of Divine Mercy
celebrates the Liturgy of Hours
likes Mass with chant
highly venerates our Lady
believes in everything the Church teaches
makes visits to the Blessed Sacrament
Goes to Benediction
supports Eucharistic Adoration
reads the Fathers and the Saints
Yep, she's something special.
And I am very, very lucky to know her!
She's a
Guitar Strummin'
Hand Clappin'
Arm Wavin'
Song Singin'
Tounge speakin'
Toe Tappin'
Charismatic.
Who
Attends week day mass in both the OF and the EF
Likes the EF (TLM)
attends a traditional parish with high standards of the Ars Celebrandi
prays the Rosary
prays the Chaplet of Divine Mercy
celebrates the Liturgy of Hours
likes Mass with chant
highly venerates our Lady
believes in everything the Church teaches
makes visits to the Blessed Sacrament
Goes to Benediction
supports Eucharistic Adoration
reads the Fathers and the Saints
Yep, she's something special.
And I am very, very lucky to know her!
Angst as Art
The author of Catcher in the Rye passed away. May he rest in peace.
I have read the book. Now, for the first time in 30 years, I will speak of it.
It sucks.
All across the news media, people have been mentioning it's staying power and the number of copies sold. No one mentions that it sells so many copies because it's required reading in so many high schools. The book sucks.
This is one of those "great pieces of literature" that are kept alive nearly exclusively through the work of high school English teachers who want us to be sensitive and understanding. The book was not a literary breakthrough--it was a cultural contaminant. Yep! I said that!
Holden Caufield is a self involved, spoiled little rich kid. He whines--incessantly--about his teen angst and alienation. Somehow, someone got the idea that this was some sort of revelation because it was written in second rate English and the first person. I got news for English teachers across America: there is nothing new about teen angst and insecurity. Those years are the years when we discover who we are becoming, and begin to consciously shape who we are. That's hard. There is no profit in this books exposition of alienation and angst, merely a tendency to enshrine it as something deep.
Look, teens are highly imitative--that's how they finally become socialized as adults. So now for at least two generations teens have been exposed to this overly self involved, emotive dreck and have decided that it's OK to be an alienated, self involved whiner. I don't think that it's accidental that we boomers, who were the first generation to be made to read this book, are also one of the most self referential generations in history. And the Xers who came after us did do that whole goth thing, and now it's Emo. Stylish alienation. An emulation of a paradigm that is continued tends to end is failure of an individual to become fully functional and emotionally stable.
Catcher in the Rye as a book simply provided a severely alienated and self involved man to put on paper his dysfunction. Catcher in the Rye as part of our "literary and educational canon" makes being a whining, self involved underachiever stylish and enables people to decide that being immature is artistic and meaningful. They should have stayed with Huck Finn.
I have read the book. Now, for the first time in 30 years, I will speak of it.
It sucks.
All across the news media, people have been mentioning it's staying power and the number of copies sold. No one mentions that it sells so many copies because it's required reading in so many high schools. The book sucks.
This is one of those "great pieces of literature" that are kept alive nearly exclusively through the work of high school English teachers who want us to be sensitive and understanding. The book was not a literary breakthrough--it was a cultural contaminant. Yep! I said that!
Holden Caufield is a self involved, spoiled little rich kid. He whines--incessantly--about his teen angst and alienation. Somehow, someone got the idea that this was some sort of revelation because it was written in second rate English and the first person. I got news for English teachers across America: there is nothing new about teen angst and insecurity. Those years are the years when we discover who we are becoming, and begin to consciously shape who we are. That's hard. There is no profit in this books exposition of alienation and angst, merely a tendency to enshrine it as something deep.
Look, teens are highly imitative--that's how they finally become socialized as adults. So now for at least two generations teens have been exposed to this overly self involved, emotive dreck and have decided that it's OK to be an alienated, self involved whiner. I don't think that it's accidental that we boomers, who were the first generation to be made to read this book, are also one of the most self referential generations in history. And the Xers who came after us did do that whole goth thing, and now it's Emo. Stylish alienation. An emulation of a paradigm that is continued tends to end is failure of an individual to become fully functional and emotionally stable.
Catcher in the Rye as a book simply provided a severely alienated and self involved man to put on paper his dysfunction. Catcher in the Rye as part of our "literary and educational canon" makes being a whining, self involved underachiever stylish and enables people to decide that being immature is artistic and meaningful. They should have stayed with Huck Finn.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Dear Mr. President
You have just managed to put yourself in the same league, constitutionally speaking, as Old Hickory himself--Andrew Jackson.
When Mr. Jackson decided to violate treaties and implement genocidal policies, he was thwarted by the Supreme Court of the United States. He treated their decision with contempt and proceeded with his agenda using his capacity as Commander in Chief.
What you have done sir, is treat SCOTUS with contempt, and assert that you will work with congress to pass another unconstitutional law.
Has it occurred to you that you have frightened people once again? That those of us who are afraid of a president who has written a paper calling for the executive to get beyond constitutional limits of power are now just a little more afraid of a president who has decided to work for an new law, to enforce restrictions that SCOTUS has defined as unconstitutional, makes us fear for our civil rights?
And, with all your education, hasn't it occurred to you that it would be simpler and far less frightening to redefine what corporate identity means, than to decide that a legal entity with rights as an individual can have it's political speech silenced? Especially since, as a human individual, I am a legal entity! And if one class of legal individual can be silenced or censored, will I be next?
Mr. Obama, I think you, and your followers, are nascent fascist thugs.
When Mr. Jackson decided to violate treaties and implement genocidal policies, he was thwarted by the Supreme Court of the United States. He treated their decision with contempt and proceeded with his agenda using his capacity as Commander in Chief.
What you have done sir, is treat SCOTUS with contempt, and assert that you will work with congress to pass another unconstitutional law.
Has it occurred to you that you have frightened people once again? That those of us who are afraid of a president who has written a paper calling for the executive to get beyond constitutional limits of power are now just a little more afraid of a president who has decided to work for an new law, to enforce restrictions that SCOTUS has defined as unconstitutional, makes us fear for our civil rights?
And, with all your education, hasn't it occurred to you that it would be simpler and far less frightening to redefine what corporate identity means, than to decide that a legal entity with rights as an individual can have it's political speech silenced? Especially since, as a human individual, I am a legal entity! And if one class of legal individual can be silenced or censored, will I be next?
Mr. Obama, I think you, and your followers, are nascent fascist thugs.
Round Up!
Here are somethings that have caught my attention in the news:
1--A Federal Immigration judge in Tennessee has granted asylum to some Germans who were fleeing the legal ban and jail time parents are subject to when they home school. It's interesting--this law dates to the Nazi era. It was in fact passed by the Nazis to keep parents from avoiding the political indoctrination in the school to which the kids were subjected.
The judge ruled that their basic human rights were being violated.
BTW--I thought that after the war the Germans de-nazified their country. I guess since they are using a Nazi law to stop people from opposing their governments policies and world view they didn't. In fact, I think that perhaps there will be a new wave of fascistic oppression, just against Christians and Liberty loving people.
2--Cultural Censorship. Dawn Eden was interviewed by VH1 for their program on virginity and Chastity. She made her usual excellent and outstanding comments, and was cut from the show. It didn't jive with it's main thrust of cynicism and permissiveness. NO, no bias in the music and video entertainment industry.
3--Robert McCartney, pro-murder columnist has noticed something--that more than half of the pro-life marchers were under 30. Most reporters from the dark side tried to paint them as little old Catholic ladies.
1--A Federal Immigration judge in Tennessee has granted asylum to some Germans who were fleeing the legal ban and jail time parents are subject to when they home school. It's interesting--this law dates to the Nazi era. It was in fact passed by the Nazis to keep parents from avoiding the political indoctrination in the school to which the kids were subjected.
The judge ruled that their basic human rights were being violated.
BTW--I thought that after the war the Germans de-nazified their country. I guess since they are using a Nazi law to stop people from opposing their governments policies and world view they didn't. In fact, I think that perhaps there will be a new wave of fascistic oppression, just against Christians and Liberty loving people.
2--Cultural Censorship. Dawn Eden was interviewed by VH1 for their program on virginity and Chastity. She made her usual excellent and outstanding comments, and was cut from the show. It didn't jive with it's main thrust of cynicism and permissiveness. NO, no bias in the music and video entertainment industry.
3--Robert McCartney, pro-murder columnist has noticed something--that more than half of the pro-life marchers were under 30. Most reporters from the dark side tried to paint them as little old Catholic ladies.
It's about time!
At the end of November, I talked about Spaulding University--an allegedly Catholic institution--having a pro-murder (Oh! Excuse me, I meant to say Pro-choice and Pro Reproductive Health and Pro Reproductive rights!--OK I didn't, and typing those monikers just made me queasy!) speaker on campus who was financed by Women in Transition, which is in turn a recipient of grant money from the Campaign for Human Development.
Now women in Transition are being looked into by Abp. Kurtz, and will likely not be receiving more money. This is going to be a problem for them, because the largest amount of cash they get is from CCHD, and without it they may fold. Good Riddance.
It's the sort of thing that brings up two issues.
The first is that of press coverage. The Louisville daily, the Courier-Journal, reported this as fairly straight news, while being damned sure not to mention that the funding cam e from the CCHD--which the editors support wholeheartedly when it supports progressive causes. The Leo, the local progressive fish wrap, is all up in arms. You know--big bad rich catholic fascist woman hating oppressor of the poor silences dissent. What was really interesting to me was that they accused the Church of retaliation. Retaliation for what? What did the WIT people do that can qualify as being the cause of the retaliation? Also, the Leo quite simply distorted the groups ties to pro-murder activities. The subtext of course is that the Church has no real right to support those causes it chooses, and that it has some sort of twisted duty to finance it's own enemies.
The second is the mostly lay bureaucracy that runs the Archdiocese, to include Catholic Charities, who administered the grant. I am not a chancery insider. (Thanks God!) But I know people who are, or whose mothers are. The laity employed in administration and various "ministries" in the Archdiocese of Louisville really, really dislike our Archbishop, feeling him to be way to conservative, and are hoping for him to "leave" soon. (And yes, Archbishop is kind of a terminal assignment--not much further up you can go, or many places you can be transferred--so I feel they are hoping for him to die. Nothing new there, "progressive catholics" were waiting for years for John-Paul II to die, and are now ardently waiting for Benedict XVI to die.) These people actively block the Archbishop where they can, delay things, and try their best to confuse things so that the reform of this Archdiocese doesn't proceed.
So that's where the issue of Church Funded proponents of child murder sit right now.
BTW--smart money is on Abp. Kurtz banning WIT from receiving catholic cash.
Now women in Transition are being looked into by Abp. Kurtz, and will likely not be receiving more money. This is going to be a problem for them, because the largest amount of cash they get is from CCHD, and without it they may fold. Good Riddance.
It's the sort of thing that brings up two issues.
The first is that of press coverage. The Louisville daily, the Courier-Journal, reported this as fairly straight news, while being damned sure not to mention that the funding cam e from the CCHD--which the editors support wholeheartedly when it supports progressive causes. The Leo, the local progressive fish wrap, is all up in arms. You know--big bad rich catholic fascist woman hating oppressor of the poor silences dissent. What was really interesting to me was that they accused the Church of retaliation. Retaliation for what? What did the WIT people do that can qualify as being the cause of the retaliation? Also, the Leo quite simply distorted the groups ties to pro-murder activities. The subtext of course is that the Church has no real right to support those causes it chooses, and that it has some sort of twisted duty to finance it's own enemies.
The second is the mostly lay bureaucracy that runs the Archdiocese, to include Catholic Charities, who administered the grant. I am not a chancery insider. (Thanks God!) But I know people who are, or whose mothers are. The laity employed in administration and various "ministries" in the Archdiocese of Louisville really, really dislike our Archbishop, feeling him to be way to conservative, and are hoping for him to "leave" soon. (And yes, Archbishop is kind of a terminal assignment--not much further up you can go, or many places you can be transferred--so I feel they are hoping for him to die. Nothing new there, "progressive catholics" were waiting for years for John-Paul II to die, and are now ardently waiting for Benedict XVI to die.) These people actively block the Archbishop where they can, delay things, and try their best to confuse things so that the reform of this Archdiocese doesn't proceed.
So that's where the issue of Church Funded proponents of child murder sit right now.
BTW--smart money is on Abp. Kurtz banning WIT from receiving catholic cash.
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