Abbey-Roads2

Just some advice - blogger to blogger - oh, and it is just my opinion:

If you use material other than your own, be it from a book, a news source, what have you, remember try and cite or link to your sources.  Especially if your entire post is nothing more than something “lifted” from another source.

If you make certain claims, try to provide your source back-up.  It is like doing a paper for school - cite.  And verify to the best of your ability.  When you are wrong - post a retraction.

If it is your opinion or you are writing from anecdotal experience - great - you are sharing something you learned.  People like that.

A blog can be a reporting tool - especially if you happen to be a news blog, such as Stella Borealis and others. Having said that, many bloggers will usually get the same information from those sources everyone else has access to.  What will make your post interesting is your view of the story you lifted.  It’s like an editorial, a letter to the editor, that makes the post interesting.  (In my case, not always.)

When you get a scoop - by all means, be the first to post it!  Or news no one else has access to - post it. 

When you write about human experience, make it your own when you can - people like that.  The life lessons from our personal experience is often helpful to others.  Just as much as the personal testimony of our faith and spiritual life can be edifying for another.

Try not to make your posts too long, people get bored.  If they happen to be long, divide the paragraphs up with headers that define what follows.  (Don Marco taught me that.)  Use pictures if you want.

Link to other sites/blogs, both on your blogroll and in the body of your post - it’s a network thing, and it also substantiates what you are writing about - especially if you got the idea from that particular site.

Not always, but occasionally acknowledge your commentators - respond to comments, blogs are not forums, but people love to be acknowledged.  It isn’t that hard to do.  (If you ignore them, they may ignore you.)

There are oodles of sites that provide news; news one doesn’t come across on television or in print - many of us go there.  Since most web savy people know the news already - give us your perspective, just don’t lift the story -  the exception would be if your blog happens to be a news blog, bulletin board, what have you.

In my opinion, blogging is kind of about that, unless it is a blog about the minutia of your daily life, a spiritual journal, a teaching blog, a spiritual blog, an author’s blog, a historical blog, etc. - which are always more interesting than reading a supplanted news story.  (AGAIN! - news blogs being the exception Stella!)

Finally, a blog can really be anything you want it to be, so go ahead, just ignore what I wrote.  It is probably just me - I don’t care for blogs that simply paste and copy news items with nothing else going on…unless they are a news source.

That’s all.

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The secret of The Secret.

It’s out!  Fr. Zuhlsdorf watched Cardinal Bertone on Italian television tonight, displaying the envelopes containing the Third Secret of Fatima, showing on camera the written text, and explaining that the sheet on which Sr. Lucia had written was folded in fours, which may have misled people into believing there was just a short written text, or something to that effect.  (A few priests and religious have actually devoted their life to trying to figure out what the secret could be  - haven’t spiritual writers cautioned about undo curiosity about stuff like that?)  Whatever.  It is not the DaVinci Code here.

Get a grip!

A Cardinal of the Catholic Church is NOT going to go on public televsion and lie to the world about “The Secret”.  To imagine some cover-up by the Church, the Pope, and the Cardinal in the first place is absurd.  The people who promote these conspiracy theories and imaginings are out of line.  What they do is instill mistrust of the Holy Father and the Church.  They foment derision and division amongst the faithful.

What exactly is it that these people think is being covered up?  In short, many believe Our Lady foretold the disintegration of the Church after Vatican II.  For instance, they insist, it foretold of a Masonic riddled hierarchy, which dismantled the liturgy and opened the Church to ecumenism, preparing the world for a one world religion and the anti-Christ - hence these people believe it is this “they” want covered up.  Gosh - I hate to break it to them, but we all know and have witnessed the division and confusion in the Church - for several decades now - it hasn’t been much of a ”secret”.

Fr. Zuhlsdorf concludes his post with this comment:

“Of course what was seen on TV tonight doesn’t really resolve anything.  Still, some one bent on saying that there is more to the secret will have to explain how what Card. Bertone showed on TV was inadequate proof.” 

I say, in the end, it doesn’t really matter.  The essential elements of the message of Fatima were revealed long before 1960.  The requests of Our Lady are well known, she revealed what was necessary for the faithful which would aid in our sanctifcation and salvation.  The “Third Secret” was for the Holy Father in the first place, and up to him to disclose it or not, and John Paul II decided to reveal it.  He did!

And another thing.

This is one of the reasons why people ignore the Fatima message in the first place, because of all the nut-jobs associated with “the cult”.  Even when I was little, Blue Army people floated around in blue suits and dresses and chapel veils, looking like overly pious, scared-to-death people, certain the world was going to end the next day.  Not a few of them may yet be found in the more extreme Sede/Trad movements of today. 

That’s all. - as Miranda would say. 

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Bosch: “Temptation of St. Anthony”

Temptations against chastity

Summer is upon us, and already the navel gazing starts.  Tight, low, low rise shorts, jeans, bare midriffs, low cut tops - but enough about what I’m wearing.  Nevertheless, it’s a distracting time of year, living in a pagan culture not unlike ancient Rome or Greece.  “Body, body…”  “Shake your groove thing, yeah, yeah…”  We are surrounded by all of that nudity, no longer just on the beach either.

Tanquerey on continence:

“Absolute continence is a duty of those who are not united in the bonds of lawful wedlock.”  (Now there’s a term you don’t hear very often these days - “lawful wedlock”.)  “Chastity is a frail and delicate virtue that cannot be preserved unless it be protected by other virtues.  It is, as it were, a citadel that requires for its defence the raising of outward ramparts.  These are four in number:

1)  Humility, which produces mistrust of self and prompts one to flee from dangerous occasions.

2)  Mortification, which by means of waging war against the love of pleasure, reaches the evil at its roots.

3)  Devotion to the duties of one’s state in life, which protects one from the perils created by idleness. 

4)  Love for God, which by filling the heart, prevents it from giving itself over to dangerous affections.

Within these four ramparts the soul is not only ready and able to repulse the onslaughts of the enemy, but also to grow in purity.” - The Spiritual Life 

Humility

Tanquerey goes on to discuss how humility is the guardian of chastity.  Now that I am older, I can tell you how lacking in humility I was as a young man, and even more so now.  Humility is so necessary in the spiritual life, the foundation of it.  The author of “The Spiritual Life’ explains that the virtue produces in us three dispositions;distrust in self and confidence in God, avoiding dangerous occasions of sin, and candid sincerity in the Sacrament of Penance.  Tanquerey quotes from another author in connection with his own statement, “Many a soul falls into impurity through pride and presumption.”

“Father Olier thus explains; ‘God, who cannot suffer pride in the soul, humbles it to the very depths; and, desiring to show the soul its weakness, and that it has no power of itself to resist evil and persevere in well doing…allows it to be tormented by those terrible temptations, and at times, even to fall, because such temptations are the most shameful and leave behind them the greater confusion.” -ibid

Distrust self - have confidence in God

Tanquerey warns, “This distrust must be universal.  It is necessary to those who have sinned grievously, for the temptation will return, and without the help of grace they will be exposed to a fresh fall.”  -ibid 

So fellas, pray, keep custody of the eyes - and ears - music is pretty titillating as well - pray some more, and when you feel that tickle - run like hell.  Get thee to Church, get back to work, run a marathon, whatever.

Even though we’d like to say, “The devil made me do it!” it is always our own fault.  Remember, we are tempted by the world, the flesh and the devil - and the first two usually save the devil a lot of work.

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Marialis cultus 

This feast day of the Visitation was once known as the feast of Mary, Mediatrix of all Graces, and in 1954 Pius XII proclaimed it as the feast of the Queenship of Mary.  (At that time the Visitation was celebrated on July 2.)  Obviously, after the Council, the Queenship of Mary was moved, and the Mediatrix of All Graces was suppressed, for whatever reason.  I’m of the opinion that it was to appease our Protestant brothers and sisters, who, on the more fundamentalist level, have no theology or liturgy, and think the Catholic Church is the whore of Babylon anyway.  Yet it was important to appease them I guess.  The loss of this feast in no way diminishes the truth, the dignity, or the glory of Our Lady, rather it diminishes our consciousness of the Divine Mysteries associated with devotion to the Virgin.

However, when we meditate the Gospel of the Visitation, we can see how Our Lady acted as Mediatrix in the fact that her visit to Elizabeth, while carrying the Infant Jesus in her womb, occasioned the grace of sanctification for the Baptist yet in Elizabeth’s womb.  His leap of joy seems to convey this truth in a mystical way.  The Mother of God did not sanctify the infant St. John, Christ, the Son of God did so, through what I would call the Blessed Virgin’s mediation, in cooperating with the plan of God.

Hallowed Ground has a nice post on the history of the feast of the Queenship of Mary, Mediatrix of All Graces - with a link to Pius XII’s proclamation. 

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