Friday, October 31, 2008
Priest shortage
prompts closings
"A Roman Catholic diocese outside Pittsburgh will close 14 of its 100 parishes, and 28 others will merge or share clergy in an effort to deal with a priest shortage.
Lawrence Brandt, bishop of the Greensburg diocese, announced the changes. The consolidation, which will take effect Oct. 30, grew out of a three-year study in the diocese, which has about 180,000 parishioners in four counties east of Pittsburgh.
"I know that people are mentally and emotionally attached to their parishes and churches in a way they identify with no other building or entity," Brandt said in a statement. "It is understandable that they feel a part of themselves has been lost forever.""
"A Roman Catholic diocese outside Pittsburgh will close 14 of its 100 parishes, and 28 others will merge or share clergy in an effort to deal with a priest shortage.
Lawrence Brandt, bishop of the Greensburg diocese, announced the changes. The consolidation, which will take effect Oct. 30, grew out of a three-year study in the diocese, which has about 180,000 parishioners in four counties east of Pittsburgh.
"I know that people are mentally and emotionally attached to their parishes and churches in a way they identify with no other building or entity," Brandt said in a statement. "It is understandable that they feel a part of themselves has been lost forever.""
'Churches should be turned into gyms'
says Catholic and UK "Culture" Secretary:
"He also used an example of a former church, St Peter's in Liverpool, which had been turned into a themed restaurant and bar called Alma De Cuba in 2005.
'My mum said the last time she set foot in the building was 40 years ago for confession,' he said, adding 'Not everyone will be happy with that transformation. Part of me was uneasy but to her credit, my mum, a good Scouse Catholic, shrugged and raised a glass.'"
She was never told:
"He also used an example of a former church, St Peter's in Liverpool, which had been turned into a themed restaurant and bar called Alma De Cuba in 2005.
'My mum said the last time she set foot in the building was 40 years ago for confession,' he said, adding 'Not everyone will be happy with that transformation. Part of me was uneasy but to her credit, my mum, a good Scouse Catholic, shrugged and raised a glass.'"
She was never told:
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram aedificabo Ecclesiam meam
You are Peter, and on this rock I shall build my Church.
The logical consequences
of the policies of the Diocese of Linz- socialists try to ban the Cross even from kindergarten.
50 years ago last Tuesday
Another anniversary - "the good Pope" John XIII was elected and the rest as they say is history. We are Church thinks that this is a important anniversary as he wanted the Church not to be a museum but a lovely garden.
Tomorrow is a day of infamy
as it marks the day that the virulent anti-semite Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the castle church in Wittenburg. 95 erroneous theses are already 95 too many but now the protestants of Lubeck have devised an additional 12 more.
Cardinal Kasper is convinced.....
that ecumenism cannot go wrong.
After all, so many people with a longing for it have devoted so much time to the project. He has a new book out, whose last chapter is devoted to his concerns about an increasingly secularised Europe. Someone should tell the Cardinal that ecumenism is part and parcel of this secularisation, not a solution to it.
After all, so many people with a longing for it have devoted so much time to the project. He has a new book out, whose last chapter is devoted to his concerns about an increasingly secularised Europe. Someone should tell the Cardinal that ecumenism is part and parcel of this secularisation, not a solution to it.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
The Rocky Horror Rite Of Church Closure
from The Muniment Room:
"Gathering song: Be Much Afraid [To the tune Be Not afraid]
You can say Mass without vestments
To impress the teenage kids
Just ignore the GIRM
We don’t give a fig
You can fill the nave with dancing girls
and we will understand
But say the Mass in Latin and you’re done."
Feast of All Sacred Relics conserved in the Churches of the Cistercian Order
"The times of refreshing from the Lord had indeed come to the forlorn monastery ; the unheard-of conversion of so many noble youths filled the world with wonder. It was a proof that the Church was not only not dead, but not even asleep. At the beginning of the eleventh century, the heart of Christendom seemed to have failed, and all men thought that the world was coming to an end ; throughout the whole of the century the Church was either preparing for, or actually engaged in a deadly struggle with the civil power, and in that miserable confusion men seemed to ha^e lost their landmarks, and not to know what was to come of all the perplexity which they saw about them. Meanwhile, the Church herself felt the deteriorating effects of the struggle men saw the strange spectacle of courtier- bishops, acting as the ministers of kings, and behaving in all respects like the wild nobles, from whom they were only distinguished by wearing a mitre, and carrying a crozier. Let any one think how bishops behaved in the contest between St. Anselm and the king, or again in Germany, how many of them sided with the emperor against the Pope."From Cistercian Saints of England. One day the Catholic Church will have the Bishops the laity deserve, but not in this generation either.
2 Jesuit priests are slain in Moscow
"Two Roman Catholic priests were murdered in their apartment in an upmarket district of Moscow, investigators said Wednesday. Victor Betancourt, a Jesuit priest from Ecuador, was killed in the apartment on Saturday and Otto Messmer, a Russian who led the country's Jesuits, was killed there two days later, after returning from a foreign trip, their order said in Rome"
St Thomas More- the pleas of the Poor Souls in Purgatory
. . [O]pen your hearts and have some pity upon us. If you believe not that we need your help, alas the lack of faith. If you believe our need and care not for us, alas the lack of pity. For who so pitieth not us, whom can he pity? If you pity the poor, there is none so poor as we, that have not a bratte [rag] to put on our backs. If you pity the blind, there is none so blind as we, which are here in the dark saving for sights unpleasant and loathsome till some comfort come. If you pity the lame, there is none so lame as we, that neither can creep one foot out of the fire, nor have one hand at liberty to defend our face from the flame. Finally if you pity any man in pain, never knew you pain comparable to ours; whose fire as far passeth in heat all the fires that ever burned upon earth, as the hottest of all those passeth a feigned fire painted on a wall . .. . Remember our thirst -while you sit and drink; our hunger while you be feasting; our restless watch while you be sleeping; our sore and grievous pain while you be playing; our hot burning fire while you be in pleasure and sporting; so may God make your offspring after remember you; so God keep you hence or not long here; but bring you shortly to that bliss, to which for our Lord's love help you to bring us, and we shall set hand to help you thither to us.
Feast of the Douai Martyrs
The history of the College and her many martyrs. The school founded in England is now closed for ever. Such a great history!
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Friday, October 24, 2008
Thursday, October 23, 2008
The Devotion of France to the Sacred Heart
Established by the Clergy assembled together in 1765 and dedicated to the Queen of France (seen in the picture).
It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then the dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like the morning star full of life and splendor and joy. 0h, what a revolution! and what a heart must I have, to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall! Little did I dream, when she added titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom; little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor, and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult.
But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded, and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever. Never, never more, shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom! The unbought grace of life, the cheap defense of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise is gone. It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honor, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness.
Edmund Burke on the Queen of France
Among the belongings of Queen Marie Antoinette, guillotined out of revolutionary hatred, was found a drawing of the Sacred Heart, with the wound, the Cross, and Crown of Thorns, and the inscription: "Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us!"
It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then the dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like the morning star full of life and splendor and joy. 0h, what a revolution! and what a heart must I have, to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall! Little did I dream, when she added titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom; little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor, and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult.
But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded, and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever. Never, never more, shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom! The unbought grace of life, the cheap defense of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise is gone. It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honor, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness.
Edmund Burke on the Queen of France
Among the belongings of Queen Marie Antoinette, guillotined out of revolutionary hatred, was found a drawing of the Sacred Heart, with the wound, the Cross, and Crown of Thorns, and the inscription: "Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us!"
God is everywhere on the internet
"God is everywhere on the internet"
Their youth website.
We are living in a world where many are "canonised" when they die, or at least guaranteed a place in heaven. Children are given angel's wings while living. Original sin is forgotten.
Their youth website.
We are living in a world where many are "canonised" when they die, or at least guaranteed a place in heaven. Children are given angel's wings while living. Original sin is forgotten.
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