What's Not To Like?

Head over to Creative Miner-or-ity Report for PA's great description of Rush's commentary on McCain's VP choice.
She seems great to me. The only negative thing I can find about her is that she gives her kids strange names. (She would fit in well here in Utah.)

Yet Another Reason I Have Little Use For The USCCB.

In the California Catholic Daily, there is this little item about some called the Matthew 25 Network. These cool-aid sellers want to convince us that the Obamanation is the fulfillment of Our Lord's command of charity (by putting failed government programs on steroids of course not to mention getting rid of those pesky unborn.) Who is a mover and shaker in this group? One Sharon Daly, onetime mover and shaker at the USCCB.

“People like myself get a lot of attention when we talk about issues like abortion and family life, but not when we talk about helping low-income people,” Sharon Daly, a former vice president of Catholic Charities USA and onetime director of domestic social policy for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, told the Monitor. “Matthew 25 gives us the opportunity to try to get candidates to focus on these concerns.”

Obama, Daly told the Monitor, “says he found his Christian faith while working as a community organizer among low-income people in a Catholic-sponsored program.” (I bet this is more of your Catholic Campaign for Human Development dollars at work.)

Somehow, I doubt that she talks much about abortion or family life. She seems to be one of those seamless garment types who gives lip service to fundamental moral principles but seems more concerned with building up the welfare state.

Coming Soon: Orthometric Vampire Day.

To help get you in the mood, the bunnies offer this parody.

Stolen Meme.

(Stolen from Alli at Holy Cookie, who stole it from Adoro, who stole it from someone else, etc....)

Basically, the idea is to bold the books you've read and highlight the books you'd like to read. And per my usual style...commentary will accompany some of the selections.

1.Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen -
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien - (What kind of a Si-Fi geek would I be if I hadn't read this.)
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling - (Yes, I have read them, enjoyed them, and not become a Wiccan.)
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee - (I probably should read this, but I have an aversion to books most people are forced to read in High School.)
6. The Bible – (Duh!)
7. Wuthering Heights -
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell - (Great book and preparation for the Obama administration.)
9. His Dark Materials - Phillip Pullman - (Not if you paid me.)
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (Ok, so I had to read this in Jr High. I still liked it.)
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy –
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare -
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier –
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien –
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller's Wife -
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald -
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll – (No way, the movie freaked me out.)
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis - (Helped me become Catholic.)
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
37. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres –
38. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
39. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
40. Animal Farm - George Orwell
41. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown - Angels and Demons was so bad, why would I want to read this crap.
42. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
43. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving (I liked Garp but most Irving is tedious liberal crap.)
44. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins -
45. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery -
46. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
47. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood - (Feminist crap.)
48. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
49. Atonement - Ian McEwan –
50. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
51. Dune - Frank Herbert
52. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
53. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
54. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
55. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
56. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens -
57. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley -
58. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
59. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
60. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck (Tell me about the rabbits, George.)
61. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (I avoid porn even when it masquarades as literature.)
62. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
63. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
64. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
65. On The Road - Jack Kerouac -
66. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
67. Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
68. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
69. Moby Dick - Herman Melville -
70. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
71. Dracula - Bram Stoker
72. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett -
73. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
74. Ulysses - James Joyce (I tried but it was too confusing.)
75. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
76. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
77. Germinal - Emile Zola
78. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
79. Possession - AS Byatt
80. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
81. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
82. The Color Purple - Alice Walker (Feminist porn.)
83. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
84. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
85. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
86. Charlotte's Web - EB White -
87. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom - (Of course, this assumes that you get there.)
88. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
89. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
90. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
91. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery -
92. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
93. Watership Down - Richard Adams
94. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
95. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
96. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
97. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
98. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo -
9. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
100.The Outsiders (Forced to read in 8th grade. Hated it.)

Bringing Out The Big Guns.

A couple of weeks ago, we found a big wad of gum stuck to the missalette rack in the front pew of the church. I hate gum. People chewing it look like cattle. I especially don't like it in church as it ends up in very bad places. (Not to mention the problem with the Communion fast as well as the fact that Our Lord's Holy Body doesn't need company when we take Communion.) So I am thinking of post this in the entrance of the church.

Hey Joey! You Know Where I Am. Make My Day!

Several of my favorite blogs have brought up Biden's (henceforth to be referred to by Msgt. Paleolithic Papist's wonderful appellation of Joey Hair-plugs) rather pathetic defense of his own Cafeteria Catholicism.

The next Republican that tells me I'm not religious, I'm going to shove my rosary beads down their throat.

Well Joey, I'm telling you that you are not a religious Catholic. You may well be a very religious Wiccan, Unitarian/Universalist, or Molochist, but your views make you anything but a relgious Catholic. Come to Ogden and we will see what object ends up in whose orifice.

(Moreover, I suspect his beads would be something like these.)

Plastic Jesus.

(Another attempt to drive Tom in Vegas over the edge.)

Liturgical Pet Peeves.

It has been a while since I have done one of these, but I am hearing more and more about this one: the congregation being instructed to greet one another right before Mass begins. (In fact, one of my deacons ran into this and a bunch of other non-sense while visiting Colorado last weekend. From what he told me, I could do a whole series on the abuses from that parish.) But back to the topic. Some may be asking what is wrong with this. It sounds nice and builds community. WRONG. Firstly, it is an illegitimate addition to the liturgy. If Rome had wanted us to this, we would have been instructed to do it in the rubrics. Second, it blows the hell out of any sense of reverence. (See chatting in church.) :Like hand-holding during the Our Father and the cocktail party sign of peace, this is yet another case of focusing on us to the detriment of who the liturgy is really all about: God. Community and love of neighbor is a fruit of the Mass show by our behavior after the dismissal. We love our neighbors because we love God above all things.

(See also this great post from Victorious Anita.)

The Fifth Mark Of The Church.

When I was beginning study at the seminary, I was introduced to a priest from my home parish. He was ordained for another diocese and has been a very good friend. (He is also one of the few people who is almost as conservative as me.) I have always remembered one of the things he said to me in our first conversation. It went something like this:

Don Vincente: Erik, always remember the fifth mark of the Church.

Me: Fifth mark?? (Thinking that father had gone off into lala-land.)

Don Vincente: The Church is One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic and funny.

I had a good laugh over it at the time. But increasingly over the years, I have come to realize how right he was. A lot of funny things happen it the Church. Not in a sacrilegious or mocking sense (those these happen too), but joyful and happy things. Take for example, the innocent malapropisms that happen during the readings: the letter of St. Paul to the Filipinos, flaming brassieres, and once an unfortunate mispronunciation of organism in a pre-Mass announcement. Little children at Mass: "I just went poopie!"and "Is he done yet?" Somehow I don't think the Lord minds when we finds these entertaining and smile.

The One

I love it!

Violence On Sesame Street.

What I Have Been Up To.

Yes, I have been learning the Extraordinary Form. Unfortunately, I have been unable to go to any of the training sessions held around the country. (Most of them are held during wedding season, which makes my attendance all but impossible.) So, I have been studying the rubrics and watching videos. Recently, I realized I had reached the limit of what I could learn by doing that, so I have progressed to hands-on walkthroughs. (I find it much easier to learn things while I am doing them.)

Curiously, I find the Extraordinary Form more difficult to learn than the Maronite Rite was. I think it is because the Ordinary and Extraordinary Forms are just similar enough to encourage confusion.

Anyway, it is progressing well. I am looking at October for the first public celebration and we will see what interest there is in the parish. (At last, decades of rescuing missals, altar cards, and vestments will bear fruit.)

Let The Joyful News Go Out To All The Nations!

The long reign of darkness is over. Our friends at the CDW, fresh from causing much wailing and grinding of teeth in the FDLC and Diocese of Erie with the uncompromising approval of Vox Clara translation of the ordinary of the Ordinary Form, have charged out onto the field and eliminated the Four Letter Word. Yes Orthometrists, no longer will we be terrorized by the use of "Yahweh" in bad 70s era songs. I have additional cause for joy in that I have been fighting these songs for all of my priesthood. And for the same reasons that the CDW has cited! In your face Liturgihippies! Here is a link (via The New Liturgical Movement) to the CDW letter and its USCCB cover. Now if you will excuse me, I need to go back to singing the Ren & Stimpy "Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy" song.

Dropkick Me Jesus!

Not a parody.

Shouting From The Roof Tops!

Read this great post from Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex. Beware the blue-shirts!

New Parishioner And Her Fan Club

Click here to see. (Oh no! Sings-at-Mass-toddler has a baby sister.)

Priest Secrets And Upcoming Road Trip.

Alert! I am going to let you in on a trade secret about Confessions. (No, I am not going to violate the seal.) They can be a lot of fun. Of course, they can be extremely humbling and uplifting, such as when we reconcile someone after 20 or more years away from the Faith. But they can also be entertaining, especially Children's Confessions, though to adapt Bishop Sheen's line about hearing the Confessions of nuns, it is a bit like being stoned to death with popcorn. It can also be fun when people slip when reciting the Act of Contrition. Many has been the time I have heard, "Oh My God, I am hardly sorry...." Even better is when someone begins to say, "Bless us Oh Lord and these Thy gifts...." But the best was when a young man gave the Boy Scout oath. I can't help but think that Our Lord is chuckling too.

Next month, I am going on retreat with Fr. Benedict Groeschel at the Sacred Heart Retreat Center in Alhambra, CA. It turn out that I will have coverage the weekend before, so I can go down a little early for an In-N-Out and Fry's fix.

Musing Of A Sleep Deprived Monday.

Didn't get much sleep last night and I don't know why. What little I did get was interrupted by the 50 pound Gunny wanting to go outside at 3:00 a. m.. So when I woke up, I was semi-comatose. When I said my first Mass I was semi-comatose, but as it was for St. Jean Marie Vianney, my patron and whose relics lie in our altar, I gave it the old seminary try. Afterwards, the blessed caffeine hit my system. (Did you know that if I drank over 340 cans of Diet Pepsi at one sitting, I would die of caffeine toxicity?) This was followed by a visit from our stained glass maker. He brought the plans for the rest of the windows in the church: 4 seraphim, an alpha, an omega, and the eight days of creation. They will be wonderful! The afternoon was spent visiting the sick. I was able to have a nice conversation with an old friend from Carbon County and received some good advice from some kind parishioners. (I think the later was a gift from the Cure of Ars.) Then I visited Mary's Muse and her new spudlet #8, a beautiful 7 pound baby girl who is adored by her parents and siblings. Lastly, the evening Mass. I think it will soon be time for sleep.

10 Things I Want To See In Action.

Kit, Esq. has tagged me with the "10 things I want to see in action" Meme. (And very creatively I might add.) Here they are in no particular order, but please keep in mind that: I am a pyro, grew up around Marines, and collect Imperial German memerobilia.

1. An Atomic Explosion. (Film just doesn't cut it. I want to see the real thing. No not used on anyone, just a demonstration. I think they should set one off above ground every ten years for both entertainment and to remind folks of how destructive they are.)

2. A Full-Broadside From An Iowa Class Battleship. (Again, film doesn't cut it. And if it should happen to be directed at the GTU in Berkeley, well....)

3. The Paleolithic Papist On His Heretic Worshiper Tour. (I especially look forward to the LA Congress, the Diocese of Rochester, St. Joan of Arc Minneapolis, St. Sabina Chicago, and the next Poncho Gal Coven.)

4. The Inquisition. (Old School version.)

5. A Real Crusade. (That way the Muslims will know the difference.)

6. An Ordinary Form Mass Celebrated With The Unadulterated Vox Clara Translation.

7. Papal Tiara, Sedia Gestatoria, and Flabellum. (Can someone tell me how their retirement has actually improved papal ceremonies? Rhetorical question.)

8. Instruction on Certain Questions Regarding the Collaboration of the Lay Faithful in the Sacred Ministry of the Priest.

9. Redemptionis Sacramentum.

10. SPORE!

Tagged are the Tara-ist at Loved Sinner and DGD & Company at The Sci-Fi Catholic.

Don't Shop At Petco On Saturdays!

It is pet adoption day and I almost came home with a third dog!

Soggy Fish Sandwich Sunday.

Yup, it is the Eighteenth Sunday of the Year during the A cycle of readings. This means the Gospel reading is the multiplication of the loaves. This also meaning that throughout the Modernist world dipsticks, some well-meaning others not, are preaching the soggy fish sandwich story. This explains away the miracles by saying, "Jesus didn't really multiply the loaves. He was just such a good person that everyone shared the bread and fish they had brought with them. Sharing was the real miracle." Thank you, Barney. (The title for this explanation comes from Fr. Benedict Groeschel CFR.) Aside from being an assault on the plain meaning of Sacred Scripture, it is an indirect assault on the doctrine of the Real Presence. The multiplication of the loaves was a prefiguring of the Holy Eucharist. In other words, this is heresy.

So, if you should encounter any homilizing this weekend I encourage you to follow the example of my friend Miss Diane Q.. A few years ago after hearing a soggy homily, after Mass she marched up to the offending deacon and stongly, but charitably, explained to him what was wrong with this. Let no heresy go unchallenged!

Problem With Internet Explorer and Blogger

There seems to be a glitch with blogger that IE doesn't like. Will be posting after it is fixed.

Update: Yes it work with Firefox, but I still like IE. (I know. I am a sick puppy.)