AN OCCASION OF SIN?

It seems that only my angry or uncharitable posts get any reaction.

I am tired of looking for things to be angry and uncharitable about.

I worry about being a cause of anger and uncharity in others.

I'm going to give this blog a rest - I don't know for how long.

Thanks and apologies.

WHAT'S LOST

in the translation is poetry - and readers, too, I guess.

The Soldiers of Westerplatte by Konstanty Ildefons Gałczyński

Pieśń o żołnierzach z Westerplatte

Kiedy się wypełniły dni
i przyszło zginąć latem,
prosto do nieba czwórkami szli
żołnierze z Westerplatte.


( A lato było piękne tego roku ).


I tak śpiewali: Ach, to nic,
że tak bolały rany,
bo jakże słodko teraz iść
na te niebiańskie polany.


( A na ziemi tego roku było tyle wrzosu na bukiety ).


W Gdańsku staliśmy tak jak mur,
gwiżdżąc na szwabską armatę,
teraz wznosimy się wśród chmur,
żołnierze z Westerplatte.


I ci, co dobry mają wzrok
i słuch, słyszeli pono,
jak dudni w chmurach równy krok
Morskiego Batalionu.


I śpiew słyszano taki: - By
słoneczny czas wyzyskać,
będziemy grzać się w ciepłe dni
na rajskich wrzosowiskach.


Lecz gdy wiatr zimny będzie dął,
i smutek krążył światem,
w środek Warszawy spłyniemy w dół,
żołnierze z Westerplatte.


The first battle of the Second World War took place at Westerplatte, near Gdańsk, September the first, 1939.

My translation, inadequate as always:



A Song About the Soldiers at Westerplatte


When their days had been fulfilled
And it was time to die with the summer
Straight to heaven, four by four,
Went the soldiers of Westerplatte


And the summer was beautiful that year.


And so they sang – Ah it’s nothing
That the wounds hurt so
For how sweet now to walk
In heavenly glades.


And on the ground that year, there was so much heather for bouquets.


At Gdańsk we stood just like a wall
Whistled at the Swabian cannon
Now we rise amongst the clouds
Soldiers of Westerplatte


And those who have good eyesight
And hearing are said to hear
How in Heaven, rumbles the steady tread
Of the coastal battalion.


But when the cold wind blows
And sorrow wraps the world
In the centre of Warsaw we will pour down,
The soldiers of Westerplatte.

Tennyson on Catullus and Sirmio

Catullus was not always tender, but Tennyson's poem is still beautiful. I post it here for its own sake, and also as a penance for my last effort.

ROW us out from Desenzano, to your Sirmione row!
So they row’d, and there we landed—‘O venusta Sirmio!’
There to me thro’ all the groves of olive in the summer glow,
There beneath the Roman ruin where the purple flowers grow,
Came that ‘Ave atque Vale’ of the Poet’s hopeless woe,
Tenderest of Roman poets nineteen-hundred years ago,
‘Frater Ave atque Vale’—as we wander’d to and fro
Gazing at the Lydian laughter of the Garda Lake below
Sweet Catullus’s all-but-island, olive-silvery Sirmio!

Failed! Failed! FAILED! Sorry Catullus! O Me Miserum, Catulle

 I wrote http://left-footer.blogspot.com/2011/01/catulluss-farewell-to-ashes-of-his.html that I would try to translate Catullus's Carmen 101 into English (and as a sonnet forsooth!) Rash, I was, foolhardy and, well ...... 

Even with the lapidary quality of Latin, it is difficult to make ten lines into fourteen, without padding them out, and losing the starkness of the original.

Catulllus Carmen 101

Multas per gentes et multa per aequora vectus
Avdenio has miseras, frater, ad inferias
Ut te postremo donarem munere mortis
Et mutam nequiquam alloquerer cinerem.
Quandoquidem fortuna mihi tete abstulit ipsum,
Heu miser indigne frater adempte mihi,
Nunc tamen interea haec, prisco quae more parentum
Tradita sunt tristi munere ad inferias,
Accipe fraterno multum manantia fletu,
Atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale.

My attempt in blank verse is not completely faithful, as any Latinist would point out, and certainly is mere verse, not poetry.

Through many seas and through many peoples borne
I come to perform these miserable obsequies,
To give you, dead, the last gift to the dead,
To speak in vain to voiceless ash and mourn.
Since fate has snatched you away, O my poor brother
So unjustly torn you from me, accept these rites
From ancient times through family custom learnt
Ancestral ceremonies here intermingled
With bitter sorrow, flooded with brotherly tears.
And now for ever, brother, hail and farewell.

SORRY, CATULLUS, AND ANYONE WHO READS THIS.

Give me one adverse comment and I'll take it down.

40 DAYS FOR LIFE LONDON BLOG

Forty days for Life have a blog - http://40daysforlifelondon.blogspot.com/  .

They write:
Cast the Vision event Wednesday 23rd February at the London Oratory
You are warmly invited to our 2011 'Cast the Vision' event. The evening will provide you with an introduction to 40 Days for Life. You will get to hear from the people who launched our first 40 Days for Life in 2010, and the stories that inspired all of us.


This event is for all those who were involved last time, all those who wanted to be involved but were unable, and all those who are learning about the 40 Days for Life experience for the first time.


This is your opportunity to save lives and inspire hearts and minds. You will learn how to speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves. The evening will also give you the time to meet with pro-life leaders over food and drinks, all on the house.


Our guest speaker is Margaret Cuthill.


Margaret Cuthill is a Post Abortion Trauma (PAT) counsellor and is the National Co-ordinator of ARCH. She herself has had abortion experience and struggled with PAT.


Margaret has recovered her life through receiving PAT counselling, and has since been working as a full time PAT counsellor for the past 20 years. Margaret will share her experiences with us, and her hopes for this year's 40 Days For Life.

Save the date - Wednesday 23rd February, 7.30pm. 


We'll see you there.



They deserve our follows, tweets, support, and prayers.

What more to say?

LEFT-FOOTED HERESY? TRUTH, LOVE, LIES

Of mental reservation, lies
I've really had a bucket
-ful. I read long dissertations
On Truth, and think,"Well chuck it!"

When faced with murder, rape, seems we
Must check the Cathechism.
Saints Augustine and Acquinas,
Before we make decision

On whether to choose Life or Truth:
When murder may ensue,
To save an innocent life, I'd lie.
For me, better be true

To family, neighbours, those I love,
Than bow to an abstraction
And make a god of truthfulness.
Better the infraction

Of Truth  (what is it?  Ideas clothed
In speech, blurred in translation),
Than stand aghast, afraid to lie,
While Rachel mourns her Nation.

For what was good for Raphael,
For Rahab, Esau, And Pope
Pius XII will do for me.
Mercy my duty and Hope.

Words are the dress of thoughts, or so
Lord Chesterfield remarked.
Language translated, dress of dress,
Dog-matically barked,

By those who try to confine God
To Truth or Love or Beauty.
He's no abstraction, but Infinite,
Personal.  And our duty

Is to obey, love, follow Him, 
And after Him, love our neighbour,
Not erect doubtful words as gods
And use them to belabour

The brave, who for the Love of God
And neighbour, like serpents, wise
Weaponless, helpless, terrified, struck
With weakness's weapon: lies.


Notes:

1. Yes, "chuck it", with a nod to the shade of Bowdler!

 2. I am aware of the weak, half-rhyme or assonance of Cathechism - decision, and hope to improve on it.

ON THE HOLY NAME

I am delighted, perhaps unusually for me, to read belatedly that the Holy Father proscribed three years ago the speaking or singing in the Church's Liturgy of the Holy Name YHWH.

Aware that the Name by Which God identified Himself to Israel is Holy, numinous, not to be spoken lightly if at all, I was never happy with Its use, either in Biblical translation, nor in the gimcrack 'praise songs' in which happy-clappy Catholics so greatly rejoice. 

We know, of course, that Jesus referred to his Father as 'Abba'. This may have approximated to 'Daddy', but I think not, and would suggest that the sense conveyed was slightly closer to 'Papa', or some word appropriate to a Father and Patriarch.

Fathers today are nothing. The cultural content conveyed by 'Abba" has been demolished over the last 100 or so years, and we are left with Happy Pappy, into Whose lap we can crawl and ask for sweets, money, a cuddle, a doll, or a train set.

I think not.

The Father Whom we worship and sometimes try to obey, ordained the Four Last Things: death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell. He is not a cuddly old man going soft at the edges.

In the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. I am very afraid.

Emasculating the Liturgy? Why "Power and Might"?

As explained by Adoremus http://www.adoremus.org/0602Sanctus.html , Dominus Deus Sabaoth means something close to Lord God of Armies, or Hosts, referring, probably, to the Heavenly Hosts of Angels.


Why was this changed to "Power and Might", an inaccurate translation? Was it anti-militarism, the wish to emasculate or feminise the Missal? Or what?


If we are talking about normal vernacular English, "The Lord be with you" contains a subjunctive, "be", which is hardly modern English usage. The response, "And also with you." is not a translation of the Latin; it is not modern English, which would be "And with you too." It dumps the word, and with it the idea, of Spirit. Why?


And why, forsooth, in my local very middle-class Catholic parish in England, did the Prayers of the Faithful, refer only to "the Spirit", and never to "the Holy Spirit"?


New ageism?


Ichabod.

Exquisite Formality - Police-Style

This is not meant to be funny. I give it here simply as an illustration of what a culturally aristocratic people the Poles are, even in situations like the following.

The scene is a railway waiting room near Zakopane, in the Tatry Mountains, Poland, 1 am, about four years ago. Force 8 gales have brought down power lines and there are no trains. The temperature outside is around -15c. It is crowded, the restaurant is open, has run out of food, but is doing a brisk trade in tea, coffee, soup, and vodka.

An old gentleman, not rich because his clothes are cheap, but elegantly and respectably dressed - and cheerfully drunk, is lying full length on a wooden bench. He is singing quietly to himself and from time to time waving a bottle and offering a swig to anyone so inclined. No one accepts his offer.

Two young policemen come in, gaunt-faced like Mr Putin, and therefore clearly new, and just off the normal very rigorous initial training course. They are very tall and wearing normal night patrol uniform - baggy padded blouson, baggy padded trousers, boots, all in black, and equipped with guns, tear gas, truncheon, and handcuffs.

They walk over to the tipsy man, and the following conversation ensues. I give the literal translation, not because I think it is funny, but because it illustrates the extreme formality of everyday discourse in Poland with people you do not know.

Policeman: Good evening O lord. Is everything in order?

Man: Good evening to the lords. Everthing is in order.

Pol. And has the lord been drinking alcohol?

Man: Yes, O lord, I've been to a wedding.

Pol. I ask the lord for his identity document.

Man. Here: the lords have it.

Pol. (returning document) Where is the lord going? Has the lord a ticket? Is the lord aware that it is illegal to be drunk in a public place?

Man: Mother of God! I know. But I was at a wedding. Here is my ticket. (hands them ticket. Reaches into his plastic bag, and produces a litre bottle of vodka) A bribe, perhaps?

Pol. (faces wreathed in benevolent smiles) We ask the lord to put the vodka away. We do not accept bribes. The lord must take care of himself and button up the lord's coat. It's cold. Goodnight to the lord. (exit policemen, desperately trying to keep straight faces.)

Pan = Mr
Pani = Miss or Mrs
Państwo = Ladies and Gentlemmen.

No, not really. God is Pan Bóg = Lord God, not Mr God. Anioł Pański = the Angel of the Lord, as in the Angelus. 

The same rules apply in all conversations, in shops, when asking directions, when talking to people who are not friends.

Not funny. Not quaint. Just beautiful.

THOUGHTS ON GROWING OLD

When I was a little child
I loved my mummy and daddy.
At 21 girls drove me wild.
I was an amorous laddie.


Once married, wife and children were
The fuel and oil that kept me
Working. Now old,  rage is my spur:
I pray God will accept me.

Good Man! Good Priest!

Father Tracy S.J (but o.k.!) told a nice story.

A friend of his, a prison Chaplain, was asked by a non-Catholic chaplain, "Doesn't it worry you that 47% (or whatever) of prisoners in the U.K. are Catholics?"

"Yes it does," replied the Priest. "I wish to God it was 100%."

Yup! My kinda Priest.

Why blog?

How sad to be a blogger,
As I know far too well.
To be the unpaid slogger
At what I cannot sell.

To bore oneself, one's readers,
To burn the lamp at night,
For what? To tell the sullen truth -
To shed unwelcome light?

Or is it terror of the Dark
That eggs me on to post,
As men light fires and make a noise
To drive away a ghost?

POLAND AND RUSSIA - 2 - RESPECT AND PRAYER FOR THE DEAD

Two more stories, which I cannot guarantee as true, but I know and trust the people who told me.

1.
The grandfather of a friend who was in the A.K. (Armia Krajowa - Home Army) in the last war, fighting the Germans, was, naturally enough, arrested by the Soviets in 1945, convicted of being a 'fascist bandit' , and sent to a Russian gułag in 1946.

When the trainload of hungry, tired prisoners arrived at the nearest town to the gułag, they found the station platform lined with local Russian people, carrying parcels of bread, sausage, whatever they had. They, too, were starving, but had been told that a train-load of bandits, fascists, and agents-provocateurs was coming, saw through the lies, and wanted to give.

2.
A group of Polish workers were, voluntarily and paid, working in Russia in 1980, laying an oil pipe-line. They were housed in huts near the site.

When it was dark, stealthy Russian locals would come with gifts of vodka, cigarettes, bread, and sausages. They thought the Poles were slave labour and hungry. The Poles explained that they were being paid far more that the local Soviet wages, but the visits and gifts continued.

One night, A Russian took a group of Poles to a piece of waste ground nearby, where lamps were burning, as on a grave. The Russian said that when he was a boy, he remembered the sound of shooting, going on for hours, and afterwards it was seen that the ground had been disturbed. He explained that it was rumoured that the site was a mass grave of Poles murdered by the Soviets, and that the local Orthodox came at night to pray for the souls of the Polish Catholics, and light a znicz - a traditional grave light.

RAPE AND FORGIVENESS - POLAND AND RUSSIA

The Red Army 'liberated' the  large town where I spend my weekends and holidays sixty-seven years ago today. The Soviet soldiers who died in the battle are commemorated in a large social-realist war memorial in an annexe to the cemetary, inscribed in Russian, and topped with a red star. Their graves, well-tended by the Poles, are there too. The Poles have erected a large wooden cross between the monument and the street.

Most Poles I know still fear and distrust the Russian government, especially Putin, though they express admiration and even affection for the Russian people: fellow Slavs.

Things are not always what they seem. The Red Army had a reputation for raping and looting as they 'liberated'. A friend's wife, aged about 60, told me the following story, and having heard similar accounts from countless other people, I believe it.

"My grandmother told me that when the Russians arrived in the town, she and my grandfather smeared my mother and her sisters with filth and put them in the cellar, reached by a trapdoor under the living room carpet. They left the front door open, otherwise they soldiers would have kicked it down and been even angrier.

"A Russian burst in and demanded to know where the girls were. My grandmother said their were no girls, so the soldier set about raping her.


"My grandfather, helpless, looked out of the window and saw a Russian officer approaching and called out to him "Rape. The're raping my wife!"


The officer came in and calmly shot the rapist through the head, in flagrante delicto, apologised for the bad behaviour, and supervised the looting of the house."


Today, as I passed the War Memorial, an open air Mass for the repose of the Russians' souls was taking place there, with soldiers from the Polish Army, Police, and civilians of an age to remember.

Forgiveness! And one soldier buried there was shot by his officer in the act of rape.

Moral Theology and Human Rights.

Moral Theology: Paper One.

Question (1)

'Human rights' are a man-made construct. The Ten Commandments prescribe only duties and prohibitions. The Beatitudes pronounce blessings on the good. The Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy are duties. Human rights are not enshrined in Catholicism.


Only God has 'rights'.


Discuss.

(Marks will be deducted for Jansenism, collectivism, rigorism, latedutinarianism, syncretism, Nicholsism, modernism, trollism, and er....)

A JOKE

I heard this from an uncle, a Church of England churchwarden, when I was a boy. You have to think back 100 years to bishops' palaces, rectories, breakfast eaten from the sideboard, standing or walking, and cold houses with big fires.

For obvious reasons, the joke doesn't work for a Catholic Bishop.

The bishop has four sons, three are Rectors in good livings, and one is an army major. It was the bishop's 60th birthday yesterday, and he and his four sons had a feast.

Now today, at 10 am, the bishop is standing before a roaring fire, warming his nether regions and waiting for his sons to come down.

"Ah, Matthew, good morning my boy! And have you slept well?"

"Good morning father! Very well, thank you, and I had a beautiful dream. I dreamed I was in Heaven, and, do you know, it was wonderful, just like home."

"Splendid, my boy. Help yourself to breakfast and join me at the fire."

The second son comes down.

"Ah, Mark, good morning my boy! And have you slept well? Did you too have a dream?"

"Good morning father! Strange you should ask. I had a beautiful dream. I was in Heaven, and, do you know, it was just like home."

Father and two sons now in front of the roaring fire.

The third son, John, arrives.

"Good morning etc etc...."

Same story, same beautiful dream. Four clergymen now in front of the fire.

A door slams upstairs. Stamping, stumbling on the stairs. Enter fourth son.

"Ah, Ralph, good morning my boy! And have you slept well?"

"Not at all. I had a terrible nightmare. God, I feel foul."

"A nightmare? My goodness. What was it about?"

"Dammit, I dreamed I was in Hell!"

"And what was it like?"

Ghastly Just like home. Couldn't see the fire for priests"

FRIENDS OF GOD

Trying hard to find something positive to say, I have been thinking back to what was probably the happiest time in my life, as a project worker in homelessness charities in London from 2000 to 2005.

Someone said I would learn more from my clients than they would ever learn from me. He was right.

 They were aged from 18 to about 50, criminals, many ex-prisoners, thieves, liars, alcoholics, drug addicts; the feckless, the unloved, the lovely.


Friends of God, all of them, religious, many Catholic, lapsed, but prayerful, with a sometimes skewed morality all of their own, best illustrated by example. All names have been changed.

 Wain: “My room-mate was a thieving bastard. He stole my coat, so I couldn’t go out. And it was mine – my girl-friend nicked it for me.”

Wain had been raped at the age of 12 and infected with HIV and potentially fatal hepatitisas, as had his 9 year old sister (it was on his records). The rapist was his mother's new boyfriend, who, when her pregnancy deprived him of sex, despoiled her children. Wain had ambitions to give up heroin, get a job, get married, have children, and be a good husband and father. He had perhaps 10 years to live. He prayed, injected, stole. So would I probably have in his position.

Augustus, seeing me getting on my bike to go home coatless in the pouring rain: “Chris, have my coat til tomorrow. I’m not going out, so I don’t need it." (St Francis and the cloak). I gracefully refused, of course, saying it was against the rules.

Abdul, a Somali, who had seen a project-worker hit his head on the corner of a cupboard, came to see him an hour or so later to make quite sure he was ok.

The Muslims (I love Muslims, though not Islam) fasting from dawn to darkness through Ramadan only to find the kitchen and dining room closed by order of the manager, when it was dark and they could eat and drink. We got round that and quietly cooked halal chicken for them.

Clients helped each other continually, and fought like tigers when honour had been transgressed. Two were fighting, facing automatic eviction, when I caught them. The cassus belli was a nearly empty plastic lighter whose ownership they disputed.

Being 60 years old, I could stop any fight by getting in between them. No heroism. They were gentlemen and would not hit an old man.

I always carried extra lighters and cigarettes, so confiscated the nearly empty one, gave them a new one each, and asked them what kind of people they were to force me to lie that they had not been fighting. All fights had to be reported, and eviction was inevitable. They were perfect Christian gentlemen and apologised.

If you did them a kindness, however small, they remembered.

They were full of beautiful surprises. One of our duties, in pairs, was to search clients’ rooms for drugs, under the pretence of health and safety checks. I remember the floor of one room covered in potting compost with cannabis growing under bright lights, strictly business, of course. The tenant wouldn’t touch the weed. He was a crack addict.

On the wall, besides the usual ikons, the client had a portrait reproduction of a black man in 18th century dress, with a powdered wig. I asked who it was of.


"Dr Johnson’s black servant (Francis Barber),” came the reply. "Samuel Johnson was a good man, a real Christian and left him his money when he died." How many English people know of this?

 A scholar, a Christian gentleman, and a crack-addict.

How I miss them – God-fearing, pious, lovable – villains, rascals, disreputable, as God knows we all are, if we examine our consciences honestly.


Sorry! No, not you of course.

WISDOM, CUNNING, CRAFTINESS, DISSIMULATION - AND BEYOND? 'STRUTH!

"Behold I send you as sheep in the midst of wolves. Be ye therefore wise as serpents and simple as doves."

 Wise (φρόνιμοι), in the sense of practical wisdom, craftiness, or cunning even, if we think of the serpent in Eden.

 

I AM AN ATHEIST (well, just for now...)

My name is Christopher Richard Hawker-Dawker and I am an atheist.

My 9 year old grandson, a cradle Catholic, who is spending the weekend with me, asks me, "Is there really a God, and was Jesus really his Son?"

So, now, all you Catholics who believe that telling the truth is an absolute duty, above saving life, innocence, virtue, honour, what do you say I should do?

1. Tell the truth as I believe it to be? Remember, I am very clever and persuasive, and he will believe me.  His Faith will have been destroyed forever.

2. Prevaricate? Rush for the lavatory? I cannot - I have my intellectual conscience to consider.

3. Say that some people think so, and some do not, leading to more questions? (see 1)

4. Lie, and tell your 'truth', which I know to be false, and leave his illusion intact, and my 'immoral soul' in your view, imperilled? (and see 2)

THE FACTS WILL NOT LEAVE ME ALONE

I made a New Year Resolution, to be positive, to avoid odium theologicum, to post happier thoughts.

Then I read this, http://disq.us/12wgna in The Catholic Herald.

Do these fundamental orifices through which the Devil speaks (to paraphrase, from memory, the words of St Thomas More, speaking of Luther) have any concern, in their academic arrogance, for the spiritual, moral, and physical threats their propositions pose to the young, the confused, the weak, the tempted?

Judith Konemann, a professor from Munster and one of the signatories, told the German daily Suddeutsche Zeitung: “It looks like we struck a nerve.”

Her grammar (or the translator's) stinks, as does her arrogance. How can one charitably answer such as have no charity towards their readers and hearers?
 
Torquemada, anyone? Now there was a man!

MAY THEY DROWN IN THEIR OWN ENURESIS BAGS

Yup, the f*ckw*ts' forum is at it again, as reported in the Catholic Herald.http://disq.us/12wgna. I quote in full.


More than 140 Catholic theologians from universities in Austria, Germany and Switzerland have called for the Church to end priestly celibacy, ordain women and allow lay people to help select bishops, among other changes.
The 143 professors said their appeal was made in response to the clergy sexual abuse scandals that surfaced in Europe last year and that they no longer could remain silent in the face of what they say is a lingering crisis within the Catholic Church.
The theologians, who also called for the Church to welcome same-sex couples and divorced and remarried couples, said their statement was issued to open a discussion about the future of the Church.
“We have the responsibility to contribute to a new start,” the statement said.
Judith Konemann, a professor from Munster and one of the signatories, told the German daily Suddeutsche Zeitung: “It looks like we struck a nerve.”
Most of the changes sought by the theologians have no chance of being adopted by the Catholic Church. The Church teaches that it has no right to ordain women to the priesthood, and that any sexual activity outside of marriage, understood to be between a woman and a man only, is sinful.
Regarding divorce and remarriage, in the Catholic Church civil divorce doesn’t exclude one from the sacraments. A person cannot receive the sacraments if he or she remarries outside the Church while still bound by a previous marriage.
The German bishops’ conference said it would discuss the proposals at a meeting in March. Pope Benedict XVI will visit his native Germany on September 22 to 25.
The theologians’ appeal comes two weeks after a group of prominent German politicians urged the bishops to ordain older married men because of the dwindling number of priests.
The German bishops have said two-thirds of all parishes will not have their own priest by 2020 and have embarked on an effort to merge parishes in response.
The statement said that enacting the reforms would attract people back to the Church.
“The Church needs married priests and women in Church ministry,” the theologians said. The Church should not “shut out people who live in love, loyalty and mutual support as same-sex couples or remarried divorced people”, they said.
The professors also questioned actions by Pope Benedict that have brought back older worship practices. “The liturgy must not be frozen in traditionalism,” they said.



Perhaps they are not the aged would-be hippies my title suggests, but I wish them, as my mother-in-law used to say, in Hanover, where no doubt some of them are.


A pox on them! (Shakespeare, who may have been a Catholic)

Social Evangelisation

About fifteen years ago, at a Faith Forum meeting in England, I asked a married couple, older than me, what it was like, living through the Second Vatican Council.

The Husband replied, "Terrifying, but my wife said to me again and again, 'Stick with the Pope and those who support him, and it will be all right.' "

As a fairly recent, and often fearful,  convert, I took great comfort from those words, and they still sustain me.

That was for me an excellent example of the power of normal social Evangelisation.

A New Commination Service - Or Just Wishful Thinking

I am a Catholic, and have been for over 21 years, but as a former member of the Church of England, put this forward as an adjunct to part of the Anglican  Patrimony which, brought up to date, should not, perhaps be lost. I refer to the Commination Service (Book of Common Prayer) on which I blogged earlier.

Abhorrent be he who:

1. Attempts to use his Creator or his religion as a means of his own advancement, self-satisfaction, or vanity


2. Perverts or denies the Gospel in order to further his own advancement, self-satisfaction, or vanity

3. As a Bishop, Priest, Deacon, or Teacher, Parent, or other, knowingly and wilfully endangers the Faith of the weak, impressionable, or ignorant, or confuses them


4. Corrupts the innocence of another by example or persuasion


5. Wilfully directly aborts the child in its mother's womb 


6. Denies the human status of another


7. Fails to defend those he knows to be innocent and weak or helpless


8. Knowingly and wilfully impoverishes the weak and the poor


9. Mocks, sneers at, or belittles the humble Faithful


10. Denies to others the freedom to speak the Truth, on the grounds that it is offensive.


11 - ? - your suggestions, please

Miss T

A nice little poem from Walter de la Mare.


The late Monsignor Alfred Gilbey used it, as I remember, to encourage regular reception of Holy Communion. I liked his logic.


Miss T 

It's a very odd thing -
As odd can be -
That whatever Miss T eats
Turns into Miss T.;
Porridge and apples,
Mince, muffins and mutton,
Jam, junket, jumbles -
Not a rap, not a button
It matters; the moment
They're out of her plate,
Though shared by Miss Butcher
And sour Mr. Bate;
Tiny and cheerful,
And neat as can be,
Whatever Miss T. eats
Turns into Miss T.

Why Don't The Wreckers Just Come Clean?

Objectors to the new I.C.E.L. translation of the Mass, cannot validly complain of its inaccuracy.

The problem for them is that it is just too Roman Catholic.

Antony Ruff OSB, the Irish Association of Catholic Priests calling for a five year delay before implementation of the new Missal, the Pepinsisters and Chitistitchers - all of them want a democratic Church. Once it is democratic, it will soon become an oligarchy of the vociferous and determined. And, perhaps, the mad.

Of one thing I am certain: God is not a democrat. Dissent, for Satan and his friends, resulted in one thing - eternal banishment.

Saint Michael pray for us!

ANTONY RUFF OSB OBJECTS TO TOP-DOWN MANAGEMENT (BY THE POPE)!

Read this and vomit!

An Open Letter from Anthony Ruff, OSB

A nice answer to this nonsense can be found here: http://exlaodicea.wordpress.com/2011/02/05/new-icel-3/

The following excerpts  http://www.praytellblog.com/index.php/2011/02/04/an-open-letter-from-anthony-ruff-osb/ are taken from an open letter to the U.S. Catholic bishops by Father Anthony Ruff, OSB. The letter, which concerns the new translation of the Roman Missal, is being published by America magazine in their February 14 issue.

We at PrayTell support Father Ruff completely and without reservation. We sincerely hope that the bishops will read and take to heart the important message the letter conveys.

YUCK




  

Syncretism 2

All religions contain some element or elements of truth, a fact which I would not wish to deny, but:

(1) Is it reasonable for a Catholic to suppose that the Holy Spirit has revealed to other religions or to sects truths which have not being made available to, or have been repudiated by, the Catholic Church?

If so, the pretensions of the Catholic Church seem, to this humble and ignorant Left-footer, to be just pretensions.

If not, why read the scriptures of other religions or sects except with the purpose of converting their adherents. Or why read, quote, or endorse protestant theology?

(2) Can a Catholic learn anything of spiritual value, from other religions?

If so, what?

(3) Can a Catholic learn anything of value from the practitioners of other religions?

Well yes. There are good and wise people outside the Catholic Church.To give examples, from Muslims we can learn the worth of zeal, fasting, pilgrimage, and prayer, and from Jews, reverence, tradition, and scrupulousness (and more).

But the Catholic Church is as right as it is possible to be in matters of Faith.

Anything which differs or diverges is WRONG.

SYNCRETINISM (SIC)!

So Pope John-Paul II  is to be beatified. He was a great, good, and holy man, and I rejoice.

But what are we to make of the shenanigans at Assisi? Of a heathen statue on the altar? Of the later Koran-kissing, if true as reported?

Ecumenical? Charitable? Universalist? Ill-advised? Foolish? Syncretist?

Sometimes some people, including me, were frightened.

Kidney Basin

We regret that on our post of 28th Januaryhttp://left-footer.blogspot.com/2011/01/blair-and-newman.html, the last two words, as per title above, were omitted.