Mark P. Shea's Blog, page 1260

Prayer Request

I got this on Friday and unfortunately didn't get posted till today. Happily, God is outside time:

Many thanks to you and everyone else who has been praying for me, I will certainly offer up my Holy Communion for you all tommorow.

Can I please beg another round of prayers as I am on the verge of kicking the devil out of my mind (with God's grace of course via the works of the Angelic Doctor) its still very hard to keep the faith here in England but with the help of the mystical body of Christ and the Holy Sacrifice I am managing to do so.

It would be especially good if some of your readers who are early risers could pray for me at about 12:20 ET as I'll be going to confession to my Parish Priest a few minuites later before the Vigil mass.

Father, hear our prayer that your son made a good confession and had a fruitful Mass. Help him to find the fellowship he needs and give him the grace of your presence through Christ our Lord. Mother Mary, pray for him!

Frank Weathers...

deals with the latest bit of truthiness.

Bottom line: Holy Church says you can receive the Eucharist standing or kneeling, in the hand or on the tongue. You are not a closet Priscillianist if you don't do what some Liturgy Cop demands. People are entitled to their opinions about what they should do. They are not entitled to demagogue you about what you should do. Don't let bullies push you around.

Attention!

We are now entering the "What could it hurt?" phase of history.

Because nature is not sacramental and we can manipulate it like so much raw material. The notion of cooperating with the Creator is totally old school. Since there is no Creator in our secularized culture, there is nothing to cooperate with. If something is unnatural, so what? The motto of secular culture when it comes to Nature is, "There it is, boys! Take as much as you like and rape it how you please!"

Silicon Valley billionaire

funding creation of artificial libertarian islands

This sounds like it has all the makings of just a spectacular comedy. Or tragedy. Or both.

649 Followers!

Today, my minions, I offer you something particularly exquisite to you, my denizens in the Pits of Despair:

From the Hobbit (1977) Original Soundtrack the groovalicious "Down, Down to Goblin Town":



From the Return of the King, when Frodo and Sam are mistaken for Orc soldiers, and are made to march to an orc-camp to the tune of "Where there's a whip, there's a way! - YouTube



War-chants of the Orcs at Helm's Deep from Bakshi's Lord of the Rings Part 1:



The last one is intended to relieve the agonies inflicted by the first two. I am a merciful and clement Dark Lord.

That is all!

In Defense of Michael Voris and Simon Rafe

Just what it says.

And that is that for today. I've got a bale of work today.

Tomorrow, I'm off on a hike to Monte Cristo (a mining ghost town up in the Cascades) with the guys and their cousins. Back Monday!

Prayer Request

A reader writes:

After a 9 month fight with cancer, my niece's 1 year old daughter (she just turned one this week) is dying. She is home with her family and hospice workers and soon she will return to her heavenly home. She and her mother and father desperately need our prayers. Thank you, and God bless.

Father, hear our prayer for this child of yours and for her family and all who love her. Grant her a miracle of healing or the grace of ultimate healing that is Heaven. Grant grace, peace, consolation, strength and faith in you to all who love her and grieve. We ask this through your crucified Son, Jesus Christ. Mother Mary, pray for this child at the hour of her death and for all who love her. St. Peregrine, pray for her.

How our Culture Handles Injustice to the Weak

is the measure, according to the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats, of how it will be judged.

So it's not terribly heartening (or, alas, surprising) to see that when faced with the problem of "caregivers" in senior homes brutally bullying the old and weak, not a few readers of the Paper of Record see the solution as "Why don't old people just die?"

Mark Brumley Answers Self-Appointed Cyber-Bishops

regarding YouCat:

I understand that some people like some books better than others--even catechetical books. So some people don't care for YOUCAT. Some folks don't like the graphics or the sidebars or the layout. Some people are wedded to an older style of catechism, such as the Baltimore Catechism. That's fine. What's more, someone may think this or that statement in YOUCAT (or, for that matter, the Catechism of the Catholic Church) might be better phrased, etc. No catechism is perfect, YOUCAT included. And sometimes faithful and orthodox Catholics can disagree about the best way to present topics, especially to young people. Ok. We got that. But it's another thing altogether to claim that YOUCAT is doctrinally faulty or heretical. That is simply false. What's more, people with pet theological peeves in areas in which the Church has given latitude shouldn't accuse of infidelity or heterodoxy those who take a different stance on a particular position within that latitude. Some of the criticism of YOUCAT is just that sort of thing. YOUCAT has been reviewed by three Vatican offices, including the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. It has the imprimatur of three episcopal conferences (Austrian, German, and Swiss), and the English edition has the imprimatur of the Archbishop of San Francisco. It was compiled under the direction of the primary editor of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. And the Pope wrote the foreword, in which he states that it is his heartfelt desire that young people study YOUCAT. Those things don't make YOUCAT perfect, but they support the view that those who want to "recall" YOUCAT, or who otherwise reject it for what they purport are matters of orthodoxy, are overreacting or are simply offbase.

Life's too short. I'm just not seeing the need to get too worked up here.

The last gasp of the Revolution that Failed

So some scholars from the Protestant Churches Nobody Goes to Anymore and a few tired Catholic scholars of the Woodstock Generation have come out with the new Yet Another Version of the Bible. It's big selling point: Careful Laundering of the Pronoun Formerly Known as 'He'. So the "Son of Man" becomes the "Human One" and the language of Genesis get pretzylficated into stuff that only a bureaucrat from the World Council of Church would say like, "with the rib taken from the human, the Lord God fashioned a woman and brought her to the human being". Seriously, does anybody on earth talk this way?

There are other treasures to mined as well, such as this rendering that might have come from Lilly Tomlin's Edith Ann character:

God said, "Let the earth grow plant life: plants yielding seeds and fruit trees bearing fruit with seeds inside it, each according to its kind throughout the earth." And that's what happened.

Or this unconsciously hilarious palsy-walsy improvement on the Lord's Prayer:

Our Father who is in heaven, uphold the holiness of your name. Bring in your kingdom so that your will is done on earth as it's done in heaven. Give us the bread we need for today. Forgive us for the ways we have wronged you, just as we also forgive those who have wronged us. And don't lead us into temptation, but rescue us from the evil one.

All this gender-neutralization and updating of language to please the ear of people who routinely write memos that sound like an explosion in a tin factory is a classic example of why newer is not always better. In addition to being leaden, it is, in some places heretical. The attempt to gender-neutralize the Faith really petered out about 20 years ago (reaching its high water mark with daffy attempts to reword the Sign of the Cross as "In the Name of the Creator, the Redeemer, and the Sanctifier".) It never caught on, thank God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Now we are left with some greying libs who have a weird and absurd aversion to using masculine pronouns during the Mass awkwardly turning every "Father", "he", "him" and "his" to "God" or "God's", while the rising generation just goes ahead and uses the language the Church gave us.

It all reminds me of Fr. Paul Mankowski's immortal correction of the Battle Hymn of the Republic:

(chanted to no tune in particular)

BEFORE: by Julia Ward Howe

Mine eyes have seen the glory
of the coming of the Lord.
He is trampling out the vintage
where the grapes of wrath are
stored. He has loosed the fateful
lightning of His terrible swift
sword. His truth is marching on!

Glory, glory, Hallelujah!
Glory, glory, Hallelujah!
Glory, glory, Hallelujah!
His truth is marching on!

He has sounded forth the trumpet
that will never call retreat. He
is sifting out the hearts of men
before his judgment seat. Be
swift, my soul, to answer Him; be
jubilant, my feet. Our God is
marching on!

Glory, glory, Hallelujah!
Glory, glory, Hallelujah!
Glory, glory, Hallelujah!
His truth is marching on!

In the beauty of the lilies
Christ was born across the sea,
with a glory in His bosom that
transfigures you and me. As He
died to make men holy, let us die
to make men free. While God is
marching on!

Glory, glory, Hallelujah!
Glory, glory, Hallelujah!
Glory, glory, Hallelujah!
His truth is marching on!

AFTER: Sanitized for your protection

I see God's approach; it is good.
God makes wine with God's feet, from
non-union grapes. Brightness flashes
from the decision-making apparatus.
God's worldview is currently earning
Give honor repeatedly to the god
of our tradition.
We have owned our values.

A musical instrument is summoning
many people, including women of
color, into God's presence for ongoing
evaluation. I must walk quickly
and say yes to this invitation.

God's worldview, after all, is earning
widespread respect.
Give honor repeatedly to the god
of our tradition.
We have owned our values.

Our Faith Leader had a non-Western
agrarian background. His talents and
abilities changed our lives for the
better. We should make great efforts
for civil rights because he did for
world peace. God's worldview, we
recall, is earning widespread
respect.

Give honor repeatedly to the god
of our tradition.
We have owned our values.