Mark P. Shea's Blog, page 1327

Blessed John Paul II

Missed the beatification ceremony because Italians are weird and do everything in the middle of the night. However, I'm glad JPII has been honored thus. It is piquant to see that the National Catholic Reporter and Robert Sungenis are on exactly the same page in their loathing for the man (and in their growing loathing for his successor). That just tells me that, on the whole, he lived a holy life (not a perfect one, but a holy one).

Bl. JPII, pray for us.

Here's a little story from just one of the billions he touched.

Looks fun

A reader writes:

My name is Susan Lawson. I am a member of a family, my mother and 2 sisters, who began developing solid FUN Catholic based Vacation Bible School Programs as an alternative to the more Protestant based VBS Programs with some Catholic companion or "add-ons". Anyway, I came across your website and I just wanted to introduce myself and Growing with the Saints. We have 4 totally Catholic VBS Programs – we like to call them CKC (Catholic Kids Camp) where we celebrate our Catholic Identity in EVERY element of our VBS Programs.

Please visit our website at and review our information. You can go to our download section and download our VBS Program Overviews. If you like what you see, we would appreciate any help spreading the word about GWTS and our mission developing engaging, interactive, hands-on Catholic materials which teach the Bible from the Catholic perspective where we include our Tradition, Sacraments, and our LOVE for the saints!

Very good!

By the way,

I don't know what's up with the commenting software. It just stopped working on Friday (as well as losing the archived comments for the past week). I've written Echo support, but they have responded with the sort of casual "Hey, you're just using the freeware, don't expect us to do anything" contempt that I pretty much expected, so I'm stumped about how to make it work again. If any of you are geeky enough to know what's wrong, please drop me a line cuz I'm at a loss.

Many thanks!

Hey Western Washington!

The next Catholic Professionals breakfast meeting is Friday May 6, 2011?. Spread the word about this dynamic gathering. Next topic: How the human genome project will change medicine by Dr. Robin Bernhoft. Mass at 7:15, Breakfast at 8:00 a.m.
The company is great, the speakers are very interesting, and the food is the best.

Be there! Aloha!

Funniest Thing You Will See This Weekend

This kills me. HT: Binks.

Since it is common knowledge...

...that I have a secret "agenda" that is, in secret secrecy, secretly "supporting" Obama (because I keep begging the Thing that Used to Be Conservatism to get real and not be commandeered by nutjobs who take Donald Trump seriously and are still wasting our time with "Obama is a Kenyan Muslim" lunacy, I offer this deft evisceration of the grotesque hypocrisies of the garden variety Leftist Obama worshiper:

[A]sk a good movement liberal or progressive about the two and you'll quickly be informed that yeah, Ron Paul's good on the war stuff -- yawn -- but otherwise he's a no-good right-wing reactionary of the worst order, a guy who'd kick your Aunt Beth off Medicare and force her to turn tricks for blood-pressure meds. By contrast, Obama, war crimes and all, provokes no such visceral distaste. He's more cosmopolitan, after all; less Texas-y. He's a Democrat. And gosh, even if he's made a few mistakes, he means well.

Sure he's a murderer, in other words, but at least he's not a Republican!

Put another, even less charitable way: Democratic partisans – liberals – are willing to trade the lives of a couple thousand poor Pakistani tribesman in exchange for a few liberal catnip-filled speeches and NPR tote bags for the underprivileged. The number of party-line progressives who would vote for Ron Paul over Barack Obama wouldn't be enough to fill Conference Room B at the local Sheraton, with even harshest left-leaning critics of the president, like Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi, saying they'd prefer the mass-murdering sociopath to that kooky Constitution fetishist.

The Left is just as dominated by tribal allegiances as the Right and I have never been hesitant to point that out. Yet I constantly hear from Righties that I'm pursuing a dark "agenda" against the Thing That Used to Be Conservatism and somehow "supporting" Obama.

Clues for the clueless: the Biggest Deepest Secret about my super duper secret "agenda" is that there's no secret agenda. My agenda is plain and obvious. I won't support any candidate who asks me to support something gravely sinful or contrary to the Church's teaching. As far as I know, most of my readers are not terribly zealous about making the tribal excuses for Obama that the readers of Counterpunch are inclined to make, so it's not super urgent that I dissuade them. But lots of my readers are eager to overlook the absurdities of the Thing That Used to be Conservatism. So I try to point out to my tribe that this is bad too. Result: People vehemently suspect me of a Super Duper Secret Obama Love Agenda because I suggest that Birther Nuttery is a bad way to keep the guy out of the White House. In reality, I'd just like to see American political discourse return to the way it was before MSNBC and FOX trained an increasingly Paris Hilton People to bray about trivialities in an apocalyptic world.

That the Left is just as inclined to do this is evident from the crie de coeur above. Obama can launch mad and pointless wars in Libya and the tribalists in the Thing that Used to Be Liberalism will and have sold their souls for a pot of message on NPR and a chance to get an exclusive pass to the White House Press Corps Dinner and schmooze with the cast of "Glee". I have no more use for that than I do for conservatives making excuses for war crimes.

HT: Western Confucian

Sealofconfession.com

...for all your online confession needs.

What could be more secure than posting you sins on the internet to Some Guy with a Website? I hear you can get indulgence credits from Facebook for use in Mafia Wars. Ten indulgences is good to pay for one mob hit. Good deal!

Let's be clear: these people are frauds. They are also blaspheming the sacrament. I hope somebody with web savvy can find out who they are and, if it's possible, find a way to shut them down. Unwitting people could open themselves to blackmail and all manner of harrassment. This is not some well-meaning bit of stupidity from an ignorant Catholic. This is deliberate fraud calculated to snare the unwary.

Cathy Berberian!

Attention, People of Earth! I will continue to post one Cathy Berberian Youtube each day until your governments agree to pay me one milllllllion dollars!

Resistance is futile!

Not sure if the comboxes are working

If not, keep trying.

Thanks be to God...

...for sparing the good folk at EWTN.

I was down there once during a tornado watch. There was a giant hailstorm roaring on the studio roof just before we went on the air (it was the Journey Home with Marcus Grodi) and then the power went out. We all sat around looking at the pitch dark till the generator kicked in. Those guys are pros, so the broadcast went off without a hitch. Doesn't surprise me that the tornados stayed away. Those nuns are serious intercessors and they've got an in with the Holy Angels. Don't mess with them.