Halo Effect

Has anyone else noticed this imagery yet? A photo is taken of our Commander-in-Chief with the Presidential Seal as a backdrop, but positioned in such a way that it creates a "halo effect"...

Dubya, Obama, and the clearly contrived

Please, some original thought?

For the longest time I thought Bill Maher was the intellectual antithesis of Sean Hannity. Both mindlessly droning on, regurgitating outdated and ridiculous rhetoric. "14 U.N. resolutions, 14 U.N resolutions, 14 U.N. resolutions..." vs. "George Bush is dumb, George Bush is dumb, George Bush is dumb..."

But behold! I have discovered one opinion writer for the New York Times who's feeble and pathetic mind surpasses all challengers. This mutant's name is Maureen Dowd and she has the superpower of making any reasonable human being wish they were illiterate. You read that correctly. The dribble she publishes is so excruciatingly vacuous that it is difficult to read, often because the pain causes my eyes to well with tears.

If she isn't spewing (self-hating) anti-Catholic remarks so vile she'd get canned if applied to an other group (say Muslims, Jews, etc), she's writing articles titled Oval Man Cave where she freely pouts about how a fellow journalist played golf with the President and she didn't make the cut. Boo-fucking-hoo.

Simply put: she's an irrelevant whiner.

Congressman Grayson

Turns out Congressman Grayson made a cameo appearance in the movie There's Something About Mary. "Franks and beans! Franks and beans!"

God's Gamblers

Cardinal Rigali of Philadelphia and Archbishop Dolan of New York are betting on the World Series, and Timmy Dolan had this to say about the senior prelate:

"Cardinal Rigali is one of my closest and dearest friends; for several years he even served as my Archbishop so I feel a particular loyalty to him. I know he has exquisite taste in most matters. I just wish he had better taste in baseball teams."

That has a ring of Divine inspiration to it... GO YANKS!

Rome-SSPX Doctrinal Discussions

On October 26th the Holy See entered into dialog with representatives of the Society of Saint Pius X. They began by identifying issues of contention, and the one on the list that jumped out at me was the Missal of Paul VI. I have recently been made aware of a study the SSPX did on the new missal titled The Problem of the Liturgical Reform. While it is an interesting read, I am mostly left with the impression that it is an attempt to generate something to gripe about all while sounding erudite than actually having a legitimate beef and knowing what they are talking about.

For instance, a claim is made that the traditional theology concerning the holy Sacrifice of the Mass is on redemption - the economy of sin and satisfaction - and thus in the Pian Missal you find a natural emphases on the Passion of our Lord. In their examination of the Pauline Missal, they claim that there is a "new theology" of the Liturgy, which has a broader scope of redemption that not only encompasses the suffering and death of Christ, but his Resurrection and Ascension. This "new theology" emphasizes all three. Somehow this supposed perversion has allegedly fucked up contemporary Catholics understanding of sin as an offense against God and twisted our understanding of blah blah blah...

Who are they kidding? They are just spinning nonsense. Shit like this:

If we consider Christ’s work insofar as it benefits men, the death on the Cross is still the most important of His actions. The Resurrection certainly contributes to our salvation, notably as an example for us, but classic theology maintains that only the death of Christ—and not His Resurrection—has a meritorious and satisfactory value. Thus for classic theology, it is the Passion rather than the Resurrection which sums up our salvation.

While I would not argue that the Passion of our Lord is the meritorious cause of salvation, I do take issue with viewing its work as distinct from the Resurrection. By separating one from the other they completely devalue the Resurrection, saying it primarily contributes to our salvation "as an example for us". What kind of fucking "example" is it? If it is simply an "example", why is Easter the most solemn day of the year? Dying he destroyed OUR death, rising he restored OUR life. What value does his Passion have if he does not rise from the dead and break the dominion of sin and death? In Holy Communion we do not receive the dead flesh and blood of Christ, but his risen and glorified body, blood, soul, and divinity of our Savior. In one of the first conciliar statements on the Eucharist and the Liturgy the Council of Ephesus said the following:

Proclaiming the death according to the flesh of the only begotten Son of God, that is Jesus Christ, and professing his return to life from the dead and his ascension into heaven, we offer the unbloody worship [sacrificii servitutem] in the churches and so proceed to the mystical thanksgivings and are sanctified having partaken of the holy flesh [corpus] and precious blood of Christ, the saviour of us all.

The Fathers of Ephesus shoot down their bullshit theory that the "classical" theology of the Mass is an emphasis on the Passion apart from and over the Resurrection and Ascension and the study itself reveals them as the blithering imbeciles they truly are.

Twisted Children

Since entering my late twenties, I've experienced a strong impulse to spawn a legion of mini-Timmys. Basic biology is hard at work, but one of the things that has always given me pause is the fear of how my children would turn out. Take half my DNA, throw it in the blender with that of even an ordinary woman (let alone some of the misfits I'm a magnet for), and BAM! Meet the next Ted Bundy, Richard Ramirez, or disgruntled postal worker from Oklahoma. Aside from the genetics, my parenting skills would no doubt supercharge their psychosis.

But wait. There are worse parent-progeny train wrecks than I have the potential for! Two different stories have come to my attention recently and are topically related: juvenile gang rape.

The first incident involves a woman who was raped in her own home by 10 or so teenagers. Her 12 year old son was tortured for about twenty minutes, forced at gunpoint to have sex with his mother, all before being doused with flammable liquids. They, however, were not set on fire as planed because no one remembered to bring a lighter. After the gang left, the two victims walked an hour to the hospital...



In the second case we have a 15 year old girl who was raped by 4 to 7 other students after her homecoming dance. As unnerving as that is, the real kicker is that roughly a dozen other students witnessed the whole thing over a 2 1/2 hour period. Taking pictures and recording it with their cell phone cameras.



And I thought my kids would turn out to be low lives. These other kids though... damn. Rape is not an intramural tag-team sport. These kids should become familiar with the story of Alberto Pocaterra, a serial rapist who only after 5 hours in prison was himself stabbed, raped, castrated, and then decapitated by twenty other inmates.

And then they used his head as a football.

Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus Dominus Deus Sabaoth

In a previous posting I spoke of the disintegration of Anglican communities and the potential impact on the Catholic Church. In 2007 the Traditional Anglican Communion, a group long splintered from Canterbury, petitioned the Holy See for reunification. Well, two years later it has come to pass. Rome has announced that it will publish an Apostolic Constitution in the coming weeks which will provide for conversions en masse of entire Anglican parishes, diocese, and provinces.

Reactions?

"May I firstly state that this is an act of great goodness on the part of the Holy Father. He has dedicated his pontificate to the cause of unity. It more than matches the dreams we dared to include in our petition of two years ago. It more than matches our prayers. In those two years, we have become very conscious of the prayers of our friends in the Catholic Church. Perhaps their prayers dared to ask even more than ours.
While we await the full text of the Apostolic Constitution, we are also moved by the pastoral nature of the Notes issued today by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. My fellow bishops have indeed signed the Catechism of the Catholic Church and made a statement about the ministry of the Bishop of Rome, reflecting the words of Pope John Paul II in his letter Ut Unum Sint.
Other Anglican groups have indicated to the Holy See a similar desire and a similar acceptance of Catholic faith. As Cardinal Levada has indicated, this response to Anglican petitions is to be of a global character. It will now be for these groups to forge a close cooperation, even where they transcend the existing boundaries of the Anglican Communion." -Archbishop John Hepworth, Traditional Anglican Communion

"This is a remarkable new step from the Vatican. At long last there are some choices for Catholics in the Church of England. I'd be happy to be reordained into the Catholic Church." -Rt. Rev. John Hind, Bishop of Chichester

Hands down the best commentary on this topic goes to Father Rutler.

BREAKING NEWS!!!

I just remembered I had one of these when I received a bill for the renewal of my domain. So I guess that means I'm gunna have to get back to posting...