I love Traditional Catholics! Or, to paraphrase an old fav, “some of my best friends are Traditional Catholics!” But what really frosts my marley is that subset of Rad-Trads (usually converts and fifteen years olds with really bad acne) who are bound and determined to turn paleo-Catholicism into neo-Puritanism.

Burqas for pre-adolescent girls; no alcohol; laughter kept to a minimum (only appropriate when sneering at some recent papal action) and, of course, holing up in isolation with stacks of dusty books and piles of blessed candles.

An example… During a recent “discussion” with the Modesty Gestapo, I was presented with a collection of  links that would, presumably, help me to work out my salvation.  (Or, rather, it would encourage women to cover up from stem to stern so that my salvation would not be jeopardized by LUTHHHHst)

Take, for instance, JMJ Modest Dress (I’m assuming it’s Catholic based on JMJ – Jesus, Mary, and Jospeh. Alas, the “Our Story” section of the webpage is blank) Look what they have on offer:

My grandmother — Latin Mass and Rosaries all of her life — never once dressed like this. She wouldn’t be caught DEAD in Amish Chic. And if we  did dress her like this when Jesus calls her home, she’d haunt us for the rest of our days.

This isn’t Catholic. It’s Amish, it’s Luddite, it’s Little House on the Prarie… but it isn’t Catholic.

_______

p.s. pre-Conciliar Catholics also smoked, drank, went to the beach, played cards, watched baseball and danced. They weren’t Ulster Presbyterians…

So did you hear the one about the fifty-one year college professor who claims to have desecrated (an allegedly consecrated) Communion Host?

Paul Zachary “PZ” Myers, a professor of biology at the University of Minnesota, got his panties in a knot when a student at the University of Central Florida (UCF) faced disciplinary action for refusing to return a consecrated Host that he secreted away from a Catholic chapel. (He has it stored in a plastic bag in his dorm room).

So the call went out from Myers.  He asked people to send him consecrated Hosts so that he could publicly desecrate them to protest the proceedings at UCF.

According to Myers’ blog, people sent them in and he made good on his threat. He drove a rusty nail through the Host (and several pages of the Koran) and then threw the remains in the garbage.

Reveling in his blasphemy, Myers wrote:

OK, time for the anticlimax. I know some of you have proposed intricate plans for how to do horrible things to these crackers, but I repeat…it’s just a cracker. I wasn’t going to make any major investment of time, money, or effort in treating these dabs of unpleasantness as they deserve, because all they deserve is casual disposal. However, inspired by an old woodcut of Jews stabbing the host, I thought of a simple, quick thing to do: I pierced it with a rusty nail (I hope Jesus’s tetanus shots are up to date). And then I simply threw it in the trash, followed by the classic, decorative items of trash cans everywhere, old coffeegrounds and a banana peel. My apologies to those who hoped for more, but the worst I can do is show my unconcerned contempt.

Let’s face it, if  Myers had pissed on a talmud he would have been shown the door before the paper dried and he would have faced personal and professional ostracism for the rest of his life.  But desecrating that which is most sacred to Catholics will probably earn him a book deal and a round of talk show appearances.

The University will fall back on “academic freedom” (which doesn’t apply) to justify keeping Myers on staff.  But what about his emotional maturity?  Is that taken into consideration? Does a well adjusted, middle aged man do these sorts of things?  (The obvious answer is no but, then again, university faculties haven’t exactly distinguished themselves in the areas of stability and maturity.)

How would you respond if your doctor or lawyer…or plumber..were caught spray-painting a swastika on a local synagogue? You’d fire him, right? Not just because you were personally offended by his behavior but because you’d have to question his emotional maturity and, ultimately, his ability to function in his profession/trade based on that behavior.

I wouldn’t trust a grossly immature neighbor with a spare key to my house. I wouldn’t let him feed my cat and walk my dogs when I was on vacation. And I sure as hell wouldn’t let him teach my children.

___________________

Also worth a read:

- Pantyhose bandit causes sheer annoyance in Massachusetts:  Ok, some unknown Bay Stater is leaving piles of black pantyhose in the streets of Milford, Mass and one local says “it’s scary for the kids”.  SCARY?!! You’re kidding me, right? Vampires are scary. Sharks are scary. This is not “scary” My God, we’ve gone soft…

- Women’s brains are different from men’s – and here’s the scientific proof But we already knew this, right?  Actually, this is a very interesting read.  If you want to know why your wife or girlfriend can remember word-for-word dialogue of a heated conversation six months after it happened then don’t miss this article.

[WARNING: Very disturbing sexual content]

Pope Benedict’s recent apology to the Australian victims of rapists-in-roman collars came as somewhat of a surprise to me because, until last week, I had (naively) assumed that the worst of the abuse had occurred in America and Ireland.  (And, to a lesser degree, Canada)

As someone who prides himself in possessing a very high shock threshold, l was completely unprepared for the shock that awaited me as I began to dig into the problems down under.

The background: Until just after the Second World War, the British Government had a policy of shipping many of its undesirable youth to the far corners of the Empire.  By XXIst Century standards, it seems barbaric but, at the time, it was assumed to be in the children’s best interest.

Vagrant, illegitimate boys on the streets of London or Liverpool were doomed to a life of sub-human existence.  If the kids were removed from the squalor of the inner city and set up in a farm school in the wilds of Australia, they would — or so the thinking went — be given a fighting chance to overcome their desperate circumstances.

The Child Migrants (as they’ve come to be known) were sent to Australia and (generally) segregated according to religion. The Protestant kids went to church and state run facilities and the Catholic kids  — in many cases, the illegitimate offspring of Irish immigrants — were handed over to the Religious Orders. The girls went to the Sisters of Mercy and the boys went to the Christian Brothers.

In the late 1990s, both the UK and Australian Governments held hearings on the subject of Child Migration and what they uncovered relative to the Christian Brothers could make any grown man cry.

I speak from personal experience because when I read the following in the (British) House of Commons report I cried for the first time in my adult life:

It is hard to convey the sheer weight of the testimony we have received. It is impossible to resist the conclusion that some of what was done there was of a quite exceptional depravity, so that terms like ‘sexual abuse’ are too weak to convey it. For example, those of us who heard the account of a man who as a boy was a particular favourite of some Christian Brothers at Tardun who competed as to who could rape him 100 times first, his account of being in terrible pain, bleeding and bewildered, trying to beat his own eyes so they would cease to be blue as the Brothers liked his blue eyes, or being forced to masturbate animals, or being held upside down over a well and threatened in case he ever told, will never forget it.

That’s the British House of Commons not the National Inquirer.  What happened to those kids was an organized, pervasive, systematic, decades-long ordeal of rape, torture and abuse perpetrated by Catholic Religious.

Documentation [.pdf] provided to the Australian Senate adds:

4.2 The accounts of sexual abuse and assault at these four institutions are horrendous, supporting and amplifying the UK Committee’s description of ‘quite exceptional depravity’. The stories from the ex-residents of Bindoon, Castledare, Clontarf, and Tardun [all in Western Australia] provide an account of systemic criminal sexual assault and predatory behaviour by a large number of the Brothers over a considerable period of time. Evidence was given of boys being abused in many ways for the sexual gratification of the Brothers, of boys being terrified in bed at night as Brothers stalked the dormitories to come and take children to their rooms, of boys as ‘pets’ of the Brothers being repeatedly sodomised, and of boys being pressured into bestial acts.

This information came to light during the reign of John Paul II.  At the time (mid to late 1990s) he was still in good health – yet he failed to act.

Ironically, the pope that apologized for the sins of many of his long dead predecessors uttered not one word of sorrow and took no responsibility for his own myriad failures.

I could live to be 100 years old and I’ll never get that image of a battered child beating his own eyes to change their color out of my mind…

_______________

Maybe the justice sought was ultimately delivered by the hand of God because the Australian Province of the once great (Irish) Christian Brothers has been reduced to this:

Deo Gratias!

Now that the Church of England has followed the Americans and Canadians into another clean break with Apostolic Tradition by authorizing the “ordination” of female “bishops”, it’s dead certain that a time will come when a bishopette will be tapped to occupy the See of Canterbury.

Which begs the question: what will Rome do in that eventuality?

Despite the fact that the Roman Church does not recognize the validity of Anglican Orders (male or female), Pope John Paul liked to engage in a bit of hand-holding with the Archlayman of Canterbury. (To his credit, Pope Benedict is a bit cooler with the current primate.)

So when       is replaced by

will the Anglican Primate still get invited to the Apostolic Palace for tea and light refreshments? Or is this a tar baby that even John Paul wouldn’t get within a hundred miles of?

Maybe it’s time to appoint a Catholic bishop to the See of Canterbury and, ecumenism be damned, raise him to the dignity of Primate of England (And throw in the Red Hat for good measure).  After all, our separated brethren already established such a precedent when the Church of Ireland (sic) installed an Anglican clergyman as Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland.

That position had, of course, already been filled by  St. Patrick’s legitimate successor.

________

Ok, I admit that I wrote this entire entry just to have an excuse to re post that pic of Her Grace.

]]> http://antiquam.wordpress.com/2008/07/22/the-archbishopette-of-canterbury/feed/ 1 Brendan http://antiquam.wordpress.com/2008/07/18/gal-bishops/ http://antiquam.wordpress.com/2008/07/18/gal-bishops/#comments Fri, 18 Jul 2008 18:38:29 +0000 Brendan http://antiquam.wordpress.com/?p=102 ]]>

I don’t know if the blogger at this site is in favor of ordaining women to the episcopate, but by posting pics like these she’s not doing her cause any favors. Here’s a small sampling:

Catherine M. Waynick Bishop of Indianapolis, Episcopal Church (USA)

Caroline Krook Bishop of Stockholm, Sweden / Lutheran

Rosemarie Köhn Bishop of Hamar, 1993-2006, Church of Norway (Lutheran)

Carolyn Tanner Irish Bishop of Utah, Episcopal Church (USA)

And my hands-down favorite:

Elizabeth Stuart Regionary Bishop of the Liberal Catholic Church International, Great Britain and Northern Ireland

Wow…

And it’s not going to be easy because I am absolutely addicted to MSNBC (an NBC affiliate) for political coverage. But so help me God, NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, and any other part of that Beijing Olympics broadcasting coven will not play in my home during the games.

In addition to its myriad and well publicized human rights abuses, there’s this allegation of pure, unadulterated evil:

Book Reveals Fetal Soup Served in Chinese Restaurants

[..]  “New macabre manifestations of this conscienceless abortion mentality include the recent opening of five restaurants in the region of X, which began serving ‘fetal soup’ at the price of 300 Yuan (approximately $40) a bowl! Recent medical publications have praised the exceptional health benefits for the consuming of ‘fetal remains’ (this jargon allows them to overlook what this really is-unborn baby bodies). Therefore, local entrepreneurs jumped on the opportunity to distribute this new health breakthrough to the chosen few who could afford the price. So evil and scandalous is this fetal soup trade that the Government shut down the Web sites advertising the restaurants, in fear that they would scandalize the reputation of the People’s Republic to outside countries and businesses.

The book is The Seven Sorrows of China by Dr. Mark Miravalle (Professor of Mariology at Franciscan University). You can read the entire article (excerpted above) here.

Pope Pius XII considered himself an expert on, well…, everything.  He was just as much in his element addressing Nuclear Physicists as he was holding forth to a group of French sanitation workers.

Pope John Paul II, it seemed, never had an unpublished thought. He wrote prolifically and spoke (literally) until his voice failed him at the end of his life.

But in this blogger’s humble opinion none of the great pontiffs of the last century said or wrote anything as succinct and profound as Pope Pope Benedict XVI when he addressed the seminarians of the Archdiocese of New York last month:

Truth is not an imposition. Nor is it simply a set of rules. It is a discovery of the One who never fails us; the One whom we can always trust. In seeking truth we come to live by belief because ultimately truth is a person: Jesus Christ.

There’s the Gospel and catechism in a nutshell.

Viva il Papa!

Rioting German Christians confiscate and burn hundreds of Jewish holy books. Deputy Mayor leads the mob.

Bavaria

BAVARIA – German Christians have burned hundreds of Talmuds in the latest act of violence against Jews in Europe.

Rolf Mueller, the deputy mayor of the southern German town of Josefsbad, says he got into a loudspeaker car last Thursday and urged people to turn over hundreds of Talmuds and Jewish religious tracts.

The books were dumped into a pile and seminarians set them afire in a lot near a church, he said.

The Munich newspaper reported Tuesday that hundreds of students and seminarians took part in the book-burning.

But Mueller told The AP on Tuesday that only a few students were present and he was not there when the books were torched. Hundreds of Talmuds were burned, he said.

Jewish religious literature is frowned upon in Germany but is not illegal in most cases.

So are you shocked and outraged? You should be..but, to be honest, I played with the facts a bit. Here’s what really happened:

JERUSALEM — Orthodox Jews have burned hundreds of New Testaments in the latest act of violence against Christian missionaries in Israel.

Uzi Aharon, the deputy mayor of the central Israeli town of Or Yehuda, says he got into a loudspeaker car last Thursday and urged people to turn over hundreds of New Testaments and missionary material recently distributed by missionaries.

The books were dumped into a pile and religious students set them afire in a lot near a synagogue, he said.

The Maariv newspaper reported Tuesday that hundreds of students took part in the book-burning.

But Aharon told The AP on Tuesday that only a few students were present and he was not there when the books were torched. Hundreds of New Testaments were burned, he said.

Proselytizing is frowned upon in Israel but is not illegal in most cases.

Source: Fox News

______________________________

UPDATE: The International Herald Tribune has a much more substantive article re: the above.

Like the term “tolerance” the word “apology” has undergone a subtle transformation in understanding (if not in definition) over the past decade. Tolerance once meant something akin to respect for differing opinions. Now its usage suggests (or demands) agreement or submission to opinions differing from one’s own.

An apology was always understood to be sincere regret for words or actions that caused harm to another; now it’s morphed into some vague remorse that one’s words or actions have been misunderstood.

Enter John Hagee – the virulently anti-Catholic fundamentalist preacher who is pulling out all stops in his support of John McCain’s presidential bid.  Hagee, a long time Catholic basher (You can read some of his choicer quotes here) recently offered a politically timed apology to Catholics:

“Out of a desire to advance a greater unity among Catholics and evangelicals in promoting the common good, I want to express my deep regret for any comments that Catholics have found hurtful.”

Did you catch it? He didn’t say “I was wrong” or “I repudiate my anti-Catholic screeds” he just expresses general  regret for whatever Catholics may have found “hurtful”.

It’s as if I purposely ran over your dog and then said “I’m sorry if you were hurt by my actions” (no personal responsibility) but not “I’m sorry FOR my actions.” (Clear personal responsibility)

It’s not an apology.

In any case the media will accept it as a done deal and anti-Catholicism will continue apace without so much as a tsk-tsk from our friends in the press. (See my earlier entry: Pat Buchanan and the Jews for proof of that…)

In the movie Raising Arizona, “Glen” responds to an obvious question by positing: “Does the Pope wear a funny hat?”

Well, you tell me…

The hat is called a Capello Romano (lit: Roman Hat) or Saturno (because the brim is said to remind one of the rings of Saturn. I don’t see it…)

Pope Benedict has made a habit (pardon the pun) of telegraphing his conservative orientation by dressing in more traditional papal duds than his immediate predecessor. Here’s a portrait of his namesake, Benedict XV (who reigned during WWI) in his saturno.

I don’t know why the pope’s wardrobe fascinates me but it does. In any case, I have to have one of these hats…

And, yeah, I definitely need a hobby.