Abbey-Roads2

“Perhaps I’ve been a bit too harsh.” Nurse Diesel from”High Anxiety”.

I used Gibson’s anti-semitic slurs and his unfortunate arrest to point out that I have often heard many traditional, devout religious people make similar statements. I was implying that there seems to be an almost latent anti-semitism laying dormant in a lot of us. I received a comment on that post which I found offensive and subsequently removed, yet it pretty much proved my point. That being said, I really do not want to visit that topic again.

However, the comment harsh as it was, caused me to once again consider that what a person says or writes often comes off more harsh than the person intended. My citicism of Mel Gibson for example. Dianne Sawyer aired an earlier interview with him where he discussed issues he once had with addiction; drugs and alcohol. Evidently he has had something of a relapse, an experience I ought well to understand, as I’m always falling back to smoking my cigarettes. Much to the chagrin of my Dr. and my boss.

The interesting part of this morning’s discussion was when Sawyer interviewed a psychologist, expert in addictions and he spoke about that place in the brain that finds gratification and relief when one indulges in any pleasure that can be addictive. It is to placate that need. In reference to Gibson, he does have a dark side, a suffering that accompanies his struggle and loneliness, and he has used substances to assuage that pain. His film work obviously is nourished and enriched by his torment. I understand that.

I immediately felt compassion for him and saw in his public apology a genuine sincerity, as well as pain and sadness. I sometimes pontificate and become hyper-critical of religious people, (who do the same thing - pontificate and act holier than thou) when they slip and fall and betray the same weaknesses and mistakes I am responsible for in my own life - if not for the grace of God…

Yet the refuge some may find in traditionalist religious discipline, maybe - just maybe - especially in the black and white world of ultra-traditionalism, becomes their refuge and help to keep them on the straight and narrow. Now of course our faith is our refuge and strength, as it should be. What I’m suggesting is that the more “fundamentalist” expressions of it may be an answer to the peciliar needs of those struggling with addiction or coming from a background of instability. Mel is known, or at least suspected of being a sedevacantist, ultra-traditionalist, as is his father.

Whatever, Mel has taught us a lesson, the bigger the ego, the bigger the fall sometimes. Gibson has probably realized he doesn’t own Malibu by now, and it wasn’t the Jews who got him in trouble either.

UPDATE:
Check out “Mel’s Church” on the “Cafeteria is Closed” for some more background on Gibson’s traditionalism.

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Knock it off!

Pictured, Joan Houk, who is to be “ordained” Monday, July 31 on a boat in Pittsburgh. Here’s a statement from the diocese:

“This unfortunate ceremony will take place outside the Church and undermines the unity of the Church. Those attempting to confer Holy Orders have, by their own actions, removed themselves from the Church, as have those who present themselves for such an invalid ritual,” according to the statement released by the Rev. Ronald Lengwin, a spokesman for the diocese.

Like most guys, I absolutely must watch the evening news, national as well as local. This evening on ABC they had a segment on the so-called “ordinations” of women that are to take place tomorrow - the “first of it’s kind in the U.S.!” (I doubt it - I’ve heard of a few CSJ’s who say mass- they must have been ordained.) A German “woman bishop”, who alledgedly had been ordained by an unnamed sympathetic real bishop, will “officiate” at tomorrow’s ceremony. (The group ordained by this mysterious Roman Catholic bishop were subsequently excommunicated. Nevertheless these women assume, like many Anglicans, that the line of succesion would be intact. Crazy as that may sound - the original ordinations would have had to have been valid in the first place, and since there has never been an allowance for the ordination of women in the Roman Catholic Church’s discipline, there is no validity whatsoever. Dah!)

The woman pictured was presented as a devout Catholic all of her life, still married, and a grandmother - “She loves the Church”! (Celibate priesthood - that’s another rule lady. Oh Ladyeeeee!) They said she worked for years for the Church and came to finally realize her call to priesthood. She knows she is defying the Pope yet explained “rules must be broken”. As a devout Catholic she claims her love for the Church, yet in her disobedience, “she must stand up for the faith”. ABC News acts as if these women are members in good standing with the Roman Catholic Church…instead of acknowledging they have their own little sect. It’s like playing house, or dressing up for Halloween. She vested for the camera and was as nice as pie. She is so not a priest, no more than I was when I was little and cut up bed sheets and with color crayons, made vestments and had mass for my cat and dog. Don’t they know this? They will never be priests of the Roman Catholic Church, no matter how many vestments they put on or how many rituals they imitate.

These women are like a housewife I came across online while researching nun’s habits. She has a website about how she dresses up like a nun at home and wishes that she could go out dressed like that, but fears what the neighbors might think, while her family understands her. (Some transvestites have wives that understand them as well.)

Either that scenario, or they have worked so long in parishes or some Catholic charity or other agency, they think the Church is just a social agency - and obviously seem to understand the priesthood as “just a job”. Their ecclessiology and theology is really screwed up, not to mention their spiritual life.

Check out Christus Vincit and Cafeteria is Closed for the latest updates - Brian Michael Page of Christus Vincit was highlighted in the Washington Post article on the subject (no, not his hair, his post on the subject!) - Good going! Christus Vincit! (This is every bloggers dream!)

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And they said it wouldn’t last!

Long term, faithful monogamous relationships between same-sex couples is very rare indeed. Some people do manage to stay together, but many barely make it to two years. Couples that do stay together often seem to have, at one time or another in their relationship, sexual dalliance as a part of the longevity factor, independent of one another or as a team. Women’s relationships are perhaps more stable, I don’t know many lesbians so I couldn’t say- although the once famous Boston couple recently split up - after all that rucous they caused!

I have known, worked for, worked with, gay men throughout my career and so I’m not unfamiliar with their lifestyles. I know for a fact that not a few couples are deeply into pornography, possibly as a continuum of adolescent behavior that may help to satisfy their narcissism, if not just to keep the “fire” going.

All along I have believed that the gay agenda is so impassioned about the recognition of same-sex marriage because this would legitimize the homosexual in the eyes of society, placing them on par with heterosexuals. The gay agenda is intent upon this accomplishment, no matter what the cost, even to children, whom they adopt into an irregular lifestyle - with a sort of Neverland-dreamscape delusion thing going on. No matter how many blue and yellow Equal stickers or Rainbow stickers people put on their cars, the lifestyle, that is, the sub-culture, can never be on a par with heterosexual life. It’s a sad but certain fact.

What follows is an interesting piece on the same-sex marriage topic that may or may not surprise people, it looks as if few same-sex couples really want to tie the knot after all. (Although with medical insurance costs climbing higher, some couples may want to pretend to be married in order to get the benefits, if and when they are available.)

“Even when they couple, homosexual relationships are relatively short-lived. A study of homosexual couples in Holland found that same-sex unions lasted an average of 18 months and included an average of eight additional sex partners outside the “monogamous” relationship.

Surprisingly, in France, despite the legalization of homosexual civil unions in 1999, a government commission issued its report in January of this year and recommended against legalizing same-sex marriage. The “Parliamentary Report on the Family and the Rights of Children” said the government should “affirm and protect children’s rights and the primacy of those rights over adults’ aspirations.”

After canvassing experts in France, and traveling to Spain, the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands and Canada in order to assess the reforms that have occurred in those nations, the commission said that the best interests of children argue against same-sex marriage.
The commission determined that it “is not possible to think about marriage separately from filiation: the two questions are closely connected, in that marriage is organized around the child.”

As a result of that determination, the experts on the government panel realized that the right of homosexuals to marry would simultaneously or subsequently also have to include the right to adopt. “A majority of [the commission] does not wish to question the fundamental principles of the law of filiation, which are based on the tripartite unit of ‘a father, a mother, a child,’ citing the principle of caution,” the report said. “For that reason, that majority also, logically, chose to deny access to marriage to same-sex couples.”

If so few homosexuals want to get married when they are given the opportunity, why are “gay” and lesbian activists fighting so hard for legalizing same-sex marriage? Probably because homosexual activists are interested in the cultural victory that legalized same-sex marriage would represent, said Price.

“While winning the right to marry may be the ‘crown jewel’ of the gay-rights movement, what homosexuals really want is for homosexuality to be declared normative, natural and God-ordained,” he said. “Their deepest desire is that homosexual behavior would no longer be sin.” -Agape Press

If you know of anyone who is trying to break free of the gay lifestyle or who is seeking to live a faithful Roman Catholic life while dealing with this issue, there is a support group known as Courage, check it out.

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The Jews! The Jews!

Gibson had a bad-boy image all along - you saw “Mad Max” and “Road Warrior” - so he got a DUI. Who cares? John of the Cross says ‘esteem no man because the Devil will show you his faults’. He’s a celebrity, drank too much, and the police were on top of their job - they arrested him. I thought - big deal. Then I read remarks he made in a rage during the arrest process, for which he apologized when he sobered up. I expect he’ll go to Betty Ford and all the rest and make some grand overture to counteract his ant-semitic slurs. (What an ego for a short guy though, saying “I own Malibu.” and other power play phrases. Wow! People sure think they’re important. Money, money, money! Honor, honor, honor! Fame, fame, fame!)

Did you ever see his interview with Raymond Arroyo where he couldn’t sit still, acted like he had a twitch, and kept rubbing his hair? I thought he was on something, if not, just wierd. He’s no saint. people seeemed to want to canonize him for “The Passion of the Christ” - him and Cavesiel. Get out! (Katherine Hepburn was being interviewed once and asked why she did not live in Hollywood and questioned about what she thought of the acting community, she answered, “They’re pigs. They’re all pigs.” Words pretty hard to ignore from a Hollywood insider.)

What I find interesting with Gibson’s remarks however is how it is not that uncommon for the “devout” to harbor a deepseated, unexpected hostility towards Jews. I hear it almost every day; I’ve heard really good priests and nuns express mistrust as well as condemning remarks - it betrays at the very least a suspicion of Jews, if not down right anti-semitism. My dad called Jews “kikes” - Gibson’s dad blames them for pretty much everything wrong in the world. Gibson might have picked something up from his dad. Drunken remarks, like the proverbial “Freudian slip” can reveal alot about a person. Little more has to be said.

But don’t try to tell me “The Passion of the Christ” was an anti-semitic film - it wasn’t - the movie pretty much illustrates what happened to Christ. But don’t try to canonize the actors - or the director for that matter.

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Feast day for the very, very nervous.

“Jeepers Richard! I’m nervous!” Madelaine Kahn’s character, Victoria Brisbane, from “High Anxiety.”

Everyone always likes to use Mary and Martha as examples for the so-called active and contemplative life. I cannot dispute the Fathers and all the other saints, if time allowed I would write how Teresa of Avila praised the so-called active life and called attention to its own unique contemplative qualities. Teresa of Calcutta and her sisters are marvelous examples of this. Enough said on that.

When it comes to Martha complaining about Mary not helping out when the Lord was at her house, I wouldn’t be surprised if she wasn’t incited to do so by the men in Our Lord’s company who may have thought it unseemly for Mary to be sitting at the Teacher’s feet - after all, it was the men Jesus was speaking to, a woman’s place was indeed servile. Martha’s exasperation may have been with this attitude, plus having to leave her work to call Mary. Of course we don’t know that.

What we do know is that Martha was agitated, a bit anxious and nervous. Don’t we all get like that? Today I am. Everything seems overwhelming for me today, I’m worried about many things, I need St. Martha’s intercession to help me realize that “Only one thing is necessary.” (Hard to understand sometimes when you’re in the throes of anxiety.) Nevertheless, I think I should get some medication for panic attacks, while asking Martha for her help.

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Ann Coulter!

What a b***h! That’s what women are called when they’re straight forward and honest and cut to the chase. While those who speak the Truth and stand against the liberal establishment are labeled with even worse expletives. Coulter is tough, intelligent, as well as grounded in her faith enough, not to be intimidated - by any man, even Hilary Clinton. I love her! (No offense, but she’s pretty hot looking too! Hilary, eat your heart out - Oh! That’s right, you don’t have one.) Here’s a couple of quips from her interview with Charlotte Allen of beliefnet:

Q: Is it important to you as a woman to be standing up for positions that many people (especially liberals) think are unrepresentative of women: opposing abortion, favoring the death penalty, and so forth?

AC:The answer to any question beginning “Is it important to you as a woman” is: No. It’s important to me as a Christian and an American to take the positions I take, but I would hold the same positions if I were a man. And by the way, despite your nearly mystical fascination with polls in earlier questions, you have apparently not brushed up on the abortion polls if you think opposition to abortion is “unrepresentative of women.” No matter who takes the poll or how the questions are asked, women almost always oppose abortion more than men do. Abortion is a convenience for men who want to be able to have sex with women without consequence. Women love and protect children. Godless men–like Herod in Jesus’ time, the Pharaoh in Moses’ time, and Bill Clinton in our time–target babies for destruction.

Q: As a woman, do you long for that source of great fulfillment for many women: a husband, a family? Or do you see your life’s vocation as primarily in the public arena?

AC: As a journalist, do you long to have a sense of decorum? Or do you see your life’s vocation as primarily asking strangers utterly inappropriate personal questions?

Q: I found your book enormously entertaining. But when I finished, I asked myself: What was the point of this book? What would you say the point of “Godless” is?

AC: It is a clarion call, a flashing neon sign warning people that liberalism is the opposition party to God. (And by the way, I had the same reaction the first time I read the Bible: Sure, it’s fascinating and wise and full of important information, but what was the point of it exactly

Read the entire interview on beliefnet. The lady speaks for me! (I wanna do another interview! I’ll set something up with Jon Lovitz - maybe he’ll call me a b***h!)

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Did you realize there is a connection?

Things are getting more serious by the day in the Middle East.

The Roman Summit failed yesterday, much to the Vatican’s dissapointment.

Israel and Hezbollah continue duking it out.

Al Qaeda has thrown their hat in the ring calling for world wide holy war. (I thought that’s what they have been doing however.) “It is a jihad (holy war) for the sake of God and will last until (our) religion prevails … from Spain to Iraq,” al-Zawahri said. “We will attack everywhere.”

The neo Nazi President Mohamoud Ahmadinejad of Iran keeps up his threaats, while students in Iran are volunteering to go fight in Lebanon. ” Iran is a sworn enemy of Israel and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called for the Jewish state to be “wiped off the map”. -While Israel accuses Iran of arming Hizbollah”

No wonder polls are saying that Americans are by and large pessimistic about the future. Over 50% of those polled feel The war in the Middle East will escalate to full scale war involving other nations.

It is an incredibly unstable time all around. I can’t help but take it all very seriously. A person in my office commented how unusual it is for our country to be at war and yet nothing has changed in our daily lives. So much so, that if one does not watch the news and has no one they know in the armed forces, one’s lifestyle is not at all affected. We are in big denial I think.

Naturally I have been pondering the Arab-Israeli hostilities and wondered what it all means. Did you ever read Roy Schoeman’s “Salvation Is From The Jews”? It’s a couple of years old now but still available and relevant of course. Mr. Schoeman is a convert to Catholicism from Judaism, although he sees his conversion more as coming into the fullness of faith, as do I.

He traces the history of Judaism very simply and intelligently, as well as it’s fullfillment in the Roman Catholic Church. I misplaced my copy but I recalled many points of his connecting the current virulent anti-semitism of the Arab world and radical Islam to Nazi Germany. The above picture is from Roy’s website of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem meeting with Hitler. They were in each other’s back pockets, as it were, when it came to anti-semitism. An irony of course because Arabs are also non-Aryan semites. Isn’t it curious however that Islam and Naziism could find a common ground. Hitler wanted to use Islam to help exterminate the Jewish people. Schoeman believes that today, radical Islam has continued the Nazi legacy. He’s not alone in this thought.

Chuck Morse has a splendid article on the connection of Islamic terrorism to Nazi Germany, covering much of the data written about in “Salvation Is From The Jews”.

From David Greenberg I have this concise history which corresponds succinctly the association of Nazi influence and fascist Arab anti-semitism we are seeing today:

“Then came the Holocaust, which not only marked the pinnacle of European anti-Semitism but encouraged it in the Arab world as well. Because Arab leaders shared the Germans’ hostility to Britain and France—the dominant colonial powers in the Middle East—they were eager to make common cause with Hitler, despite Nazi belief that they, like the Jews, were inferior to Aryans. The mufti of Jerusalem, among others, actively spread propaganda about “Anglo-Saxon Jewish greed” while praising the Nazi war effort. Even years later, sympathy for Nazism could be easily found in Arab culture. When Israel apprehended Adolf Eichmann in 1960, a Saudi newspaper headline read, “Capture of Eichmann, Who Had the Honor of Killing Five Million Jews.”

If the Holocaust nurtured Arab anti-Semitism, it also helped to discredit such bigotry in the West. Indeed, it helped mobilize support for a Jewish state internationally. In 1948, Israel was finally granted independence. As if to welcome their new neighbor into the region, the Arab countries promptly invaded. Israel repulsed the attacks, and in the three Arab-Israeli wars that followed (1956, 1967, 1973), the Jewish state managed to survive and even to expand its territory. Most controversially, it took over the Gaza Strip from Egypt and the West Bank from Jordan, which were home to large numbers of Palestinian Arabs.” [snip]

Our Lady and Islam, the better connection.

I always go back to Our Lady of Fatima and her call for prayer, penance, and fidelity to the Commandments, as the means to acquire peace, that peace God has entrusted to her. I just can’t help but think there is a connection of her apparitions in 1917 to the times we are now living, even if only by inference. We must pray, pray the prayers of the rosary for peace.

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You have got to read this from Don Marco, my priest-monk friend from the Abbey of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme in Rome. (I’m not posting tomorrow so this is it! He is absolutely brilliant and ought to have either his own blog or write more books!)

“We live in the company of the saints. We are in communion with them, and communion implies communication. There is, at every moment, a mysterious exchange taking place between us and the saints who surround us. The Letter to the Hebrews says that we are “watched from above by such acloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12:1).

I was shocked and saddened to read that a group of citizens are planning to bring a lawsuit against the city of Las Cruces, New Mexico to have the three crosses removed from the city’s official seal. (The city is named after the three crosses of Mount Calvary.) Similar objections have been made against the symbolism associated with Sacramento, California and Corpus Christi, Texas, both named for the mystery of the Eucharist. California is dotted with cities and towns named after the patron saints of the missions around which they grew up, San Francisco being the most famous of these. Ignorance of the saints, or even indifference to them, is one thing: an ideology that seeks to erase their memory from the collective consciousness is quite another.

The names of saints are more and more rarely being given to Catholic babies. While there is a part of ignorance here, today’s parents were the victims of the disastrous lack of catechesis that followed the Second Vatican Council, there is something more. The pressure to secularize every area of life is picking up momentum. Change what people say, and you will change what they think. The modification of vocabulary, and in this case the suppression of the glorious heritage of Catholic saints’ names, will lead to a modification of values and, ultimately, of morality.

Monasteries have the splendid custom of attributing a saint’s name or a biblical name to every room and place, from the cells to the workrooms to the storage rooms. The significance of this age­ old custom is as beautiful as it is profound: the monastery is inhabited not only by the visible people who live within its walls, but also by its invisible residents, the angels and the saints. The naming of a room for a saint is a confession of faith; it flies in the face of secularist ideologies that would have us believe that reality stops with what is visible.

The movement to secularize every thing and every place is as pernicious as it is aggressive. It is part of the “smoke of Satan” that Pope Paul VI saw penetrating the Church to foment confusion. It is important that we respond to the crisis with courage and with conviction. The invasion of the secular must be countered by a renewed acceptance of the sacred, and by re­claiming all things for Christ under the patronage of his saints and his mysteries: our cities, our towns, our homes, our institutions, our rooms, and, yes, our children.

The feast of Saints Joachim and Anna invites us to consider these things. Joachim and Anna arrived in North America with the first colonizers from France and Spain, those who named every new place for the saints of Christ. By this, they made it clear that the Kingdom of Heaven was also expanding and that all places and peoples were invited to live in communion and in communication with the saints.

In seventeenth century France devotion to the Holy Family became a mark of the renewal that, following the Council of Trent, blew through the Church like a refreshing breeze, a mystical invasion. The Holy Family was understood, at that time, to refer to the entire extended family of Jesus, including his grandparents, Joachim and Anne.

From France, Jesuit missionaries, Ursuline and Hospitaller nuns,and devout layfolk carried the devotion to the Holy Family to New France. A sanctuary dedicated to Saint Anne was built in 1658 between the Saint Laurence River and the Beaupré coast in Québec. Other smaller shrines to Saint Anne mark the “Catholic geography” of New England.

After the French Revolution, the Church knew an extraordinary burst of energy characterized by the foundations of hundreds of new religious communities of women; many of these nineteenth century foundations were dedicated to the Holy Family and, again, the grandparents of the Lord were not excluded. Some of these French communities came, in turn, to America where they taught generations of Catholics to reverence the human family of Christ and to live in communion with the saints.

Saint Anne and Saint Joachim have a special message for the grandparents among us. Grandmothers and grandfathers have a particular vocation in the order of grace. Grandparents are called to foster the supernatural life of their grandchildren, to pray for them, to pray with them, and to model holiness for them. Grandparents can reach places in a child’s heart that no one else can reach. Grandparents can introduce their grandchildren to the joy of living with the saints.

We are the spiritual descendents of the saints. We profess our faith in the communion of the saints and acknowledge their presence in our homes and in our lives. We renounce the evil ideologies of secularization that, by suppressing the things that call to mind the saints, aim at erasingthe supernatural from daily life.

In the Eucharist, heaven descends to earth and earth is assumed into heaven. In the Eucharist there is infinitely more than what meets the eye. Saints Joachim and Anne are present to us; their most holy Daughter, the Virgin Mary, is present to us. Let us ask them to join their intercession to ours, imploring peace for the Middle East. This too is the communion of the saints: the Holy Sacrifice offered here can bring peace there. Live then, as if you were seeing the invisible! There is nothing more real than that.”

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Pope Benedict XV

Pope Benedict XV had a peace plan in 1917, in accord with Emperor Charles‘ support (now Blessed Charles of Austria) which was subsequently ignored by other world leaders who were capable of preventing the ‘Great War’, World War I. Popes have often gone ignored in history, or defamed and lied about, such is the case with Pius XII, and more recently, Paul VI in his encyclical “Humanae Vitae”. Now perhaps Benedict XVI is being ignored as one of the lone voices speaking out against the escalating conflict in the Middle East.

It is reported today that the Holy Father emerged from a chapel dedicated to the Holy Virgin saying, ” ‘It seems to me that in this moment, something is moving,’ Benedict told reporters on his return from a visit to the Our Lady of Healing shrine where he prayed for peace.” [snip - Guardian] He must believe something is happening that may lead to a peaceful settlement. He asked prayers for the meeting in Rome today of leaders seeking a peaceful solution to the war betwen Hezbollah and Israel. (Although it appears there has not been any firm resolution forthcoming from the Roman meeting as of this post.)

“Pray the prayers of the rosary for peace.” Our Lady of Fatima from her peace plan of 1917.

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