Pope Benedict XVI after seeing headlines of reports on the International Theological Commission discussing the fate of unbaptized babies
Pope tries to win hearts and minds by saving souls of unbaptised babies
Pope set to scrap limbo and save the souls of babies
Catholic limbo to be put out of its misery
Limbo under threat from Vatican theologians
Sean Cardinal O’Malley concurs with the Pope’s reaction
Dwight Longenecker sent me this very funny link to a mp3 of a satirical podcast in which a fundamentalist preacher rants about long hair for men, short hair on women and preachers who wear toupees.
Here are some of my previous musings about Guardian Angel.
Angels Angels
Watcha gonna do, whatcha gonna do
When our sins make you blue
Angels, Angels
Watcha gonna do, watcha gonna do
When our sins make you blue
You know Joe being a Guardian Angel isn’t all that it is cracked up to be. Yeah Uriel, I know what you mean. We are out on the mean streets all day among those who totally ignore us and generally pay us no attention. Out of the twelve choirs of angels we are on the lowest rung with no chance of promotion. Not only that Joe, but how about those pompous Seraphim sitting around all day in the bosses office, getting face time and singing over and over again. Your right about that Uriel, they have a real cushy job, almost as cushy as being Mary’s Guardian Angel. Gabriel will never let us live that one down, he keeps bragging how Mary always did the Lord’s will and that he only had to pop into her presence once and the rest of the time he kicked back without a worry in the world. Well Joe, that was a one time shot and the rest of us have to contend with humans of the non sinless type. What really aggravates me is that when humans do get on an Angel craze they decide to represent us as stunted chubby cheeked cherubs or as emotional fumbling double mocha latte drinking Angels. That gets me too Uriel, sometime I would like to show myself to them, then they will quake with fear at my glory and they won’t mistake me for some Gerber baby wannabe.
Listening in on the Guardian Angel Scanner
…Subject turning on prime time TV, possible Code 10th (commandant) in progress. Request prayers for purity.
…Subject Catholic politician about to vote against an abortion ban. We have a Code 1st and 5th in progress, request backup.
…Subject has started a weblog, be on the lookout for a code 8th.
…Subject walking into the confessional. He has detailed his sins and wait; check we have contrition. Subject has done his penance. Request that his record be excised with a recommendation of minor temporal punishment.
And thinking about my own Guardian Angel
Talk about a thankless job, being a Guardian Angel must be it. Not only are they the lowest of the nine choirs of Angels but they get stuck being shacked up with the likes of me. I think of my Guardian Angel as being rather Reaganesque and after watching my antics saying "There you go again" and "Mr. Miller , open your heart! Mr. Miller, tear down that wall between you and God!"
Angel of God, my Guardian dear,
To whom God’s love commits me here,
Ever this day be at my side
To light and guard, to rule and guide.
Amen
I was unable to to go to my normal parish today since I needed to go to a later Mass. The parish I went to I normally avoid even though it is much closer to home because of the triple folk guitar assault set on stun and that they have decided the Agnus Dei doesn’t need the part about "taking away the sins of the world."
This parish doesn’t have somebody ringing some chimes during the consecration, though of course that is totally optional. But today as the priest raised the host and said the words of consecration somebody’s cell phone went off at that exact moment. Luckily the ring tone was almost even traditional sounding and wasn’t too at odds. The same thing happened at the consecration of the Precious Blood, though this time the owner of the cell phone was much quicker to shut it off.
At Church, an ‘ATM for Jesus’
Jeans are welcome at Stevens Creek Community Church, the 1,100-member evangelical congregation Baker founded 19 years ago. Sermons are available as podcasts, and the electric house band has been known to cover Aerosmith’s "Dream On." A recent men’s fellowship breakfast was devoted to discussing the spiritual wages of lunching at Hooters.
It is a bid for relevance in a nation charmed by pop culture and consumerism, and it is not an uncommon one. But Baker has waded further into the 21st century than most fishers of American souls, as evidenced one Wednesday night when churchgoer Josh Marshall stepped up to a curious machine in the church lobby.
It was one of Stevens Creek’s three "Giving Kiosks": a sleek black pedestal topped with a computer screen, numeric keypad and magnetic-strip reader. Prompted by the on-screen instructions, Marshall performed a ritual more common in quickie marts than a house of God: He pulled out a bank card, swiped it and punched in some numbers.
The machine spat out a receipt. Marshall’s $400 donation was routed to church coffers before he had found his seat for evening worship.
"I paid for gas today with a card, and got lunch with one," said Marshall, 30. "This is really no different."
[Via Relapsed Catholic]
Reminds me of a parody I did for Spero New.
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Are you a priest or pastor of a congregation looking for new ways to raise funds to support your church and yet are having the same old financial difficulties after the collection basket is passed each Sunday? Have you preached about stewardship until your blue in the face and still the favorite denomination of your denomination is the one dollar bills? Have you given so many homilies concerning being a cheerful giver that you have lost track and yet your flock is cheerfully not giving? Have you even tried the following joke with no effect.
You have tried every conceivable means to shame them into supporting the church through tithing to no avail. Don’t despair because we have just the product for you.
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There is a funny story that goes along with the above parody. An Australian diocesan magazine paid for a couple of my parodies including the one above and ran them. The editor emailed me later that after this had run the one above, one of their pastors not realizing it was a parody called them wanting to order one.
Today being St. Jerome’s feast day I’ll repost part of an old post in relation to a patron saint for bloggers:
Hugh Hewitt notices that there is of yet, no patron saint of blogging and suggests St. Augustine as the obvious choice or possibly St. HUGH of Lincoln. While St. Augustine is a good choice, I have another saint in mind. I would nominate a contemporary of his – St. Jerome who was a prodigious letter writer. His temperament was closely suited to many bloggers and he was definitely a pundit who let loose a good rant at times He had to fight his naturally cranky temperament and is now both a saint and a Doctor of the Church. This shows that there is also hope for most of us pundit type bloggers who have been know to show similar traits at times (or everyday).
Being that he was once a hermit this would fit the media perception of bloggers to at T. They already identify us as predominantly pajama-clad white males blogging from a basement; so cave blogging would be an good metaphor for them.
"If you have trouble controlling your temper at times, being patient and staying calm interacting with others, then you are normal. Nearly everyone blows-up now and then. Grace and virtue can harness and tame you to some degree but unless you live in isolation you will most likely loose your cool occasionally. Our habits become ingrained in us. That’s the most important reason why we should cultivate good habits, especially mental habits. Our thinking needs guidance because thoughts beget habits. Jerome can enlighten you. Implore him for assistance.
Perhaps because of his wide exposures to many people and travels, he developed a pugnacious and cantankerous disposition at times. His keen intellect could be contentious when his vision of truth differed from others. Jerome was a passionate lover of biblical, written expression. His ill-nature, that all creatures possess due to original sin, was forever attacking, challenging and defending his pursuit of scriptural expression." [Source]
Besides this Saint is one that many Protestants could also embrace as a patron saint since St. Jerome said "ignorance of scripture is ignorance of Christ."
St Jerome, protector of sarcastic bloggers, pray for us!
Update: You can listen to or download an mp3 of Mike Aqualina discussing St. Jerome here, right click to download.
Fr. Z Posts on where is he burried?
Reading through the Pentateuch (it just some so Bible geeky to use this term) and especially parts of the Book of Exodus it struck me how all of the Old Testaments liturgical documents are placed here. That not only do you get an Old Testament GIRM, but instructions on Temple architecture and design of interior decorations, plus also much details on liturgical vestments, and much more. I though it was interesting that right after the moral Commandments are given to Moses and the Israelites that immediately after that details on liturgical worship are set out and of course these intimately connected as the phrase Lex orandi, lex credendi is often used to show.
All of this though did make contrast the reaction to the liturgy of past and present. To think about Old Testament liturgical abuses and compare and contrast. The story of the Gold Calf make me think of Rad Trads in that this was a very early form. Those who held that Moses had no right to change the liturgy and they preferred the sacrifice of the Egyptians. Idol worship of course would be a very severe liturgical abuse. I also wondered if they had people like myself and others who talk about liturgical abuses? I can imagine a conversation in my head between two Orthodox Israelites complaining about Temple worship.
Isaac did you see what I saw at Temple today? Well Jephthah if you are referring to that lamb they sacrificed, I sure did. I mean did you see those blemishes on that lamb? Disgraceful! I even talked to the Levite in charge today about it and he told me some mumbo jumbo on how it didn’t matter just as long as he felt a lamb with blemishes was an acceptable sacrifice.
You are right it is disgraceful and this isn’t the first time they did this. One time I waited after the sacrifice to talk to the priest serving that day. I noticed that not only was the lamb not male, but it obviously had a broken leg! When I was growing up you would have never seen such an abuse, but I never know what I will see next in these modern times. I was well prepared with the appropriate documentation and I showed him the specified scriptures from my scrolls on Exodus and Leviticus and he just told me that I was being picky and that his conscience told him it was alright to sacrifice any lamb he wanted and that it doesn’t matter if the lamb is male or female that they are all one to God. He even had the nerve to tell me that Moses was a bit of a misogynist when it came to female sheep and that those instructions were based on this bias. I also wrote a scroll to the High Priest to complain, but I never did get a reply.
Well one thing you can say about the Temple sacrifice is you never saw a High Priest wearing a rainbow colored Ephod. Though in many ways there have always been the same problems. King Saul got into trouble when he decided he could offer a sacrifice on his own. He was starting his own version future church that didn’t require an ordained priesthood. Moses had to deal with plenty of dissidents. Parallel magisteriums have always been around. Consider the case of Korah and his company who set up their own tabernacle, kept court, and had plenty of followers. In my less charitable moods I kind of like the idea of the earth opening up and swallowing up whole bands of dissidents in one fell swoop. Though I see why letting the weeds grow along with the wheat is a much better idea, especially considering the weeds that end up as wheat.
We can also thank much of the New Testament, especially the Letters of St. Paul, to liturgical and theological abuses. The New Testament would have been much thinner if St. Paul didn’t have to write letters to address these problems. People have always been scandalized when it comes to the liturgy considering how important it is. The Church is always in need of reform simply because the same is said of each of its members in spades.
MONTREAL — If you thought your days of paying rent would be over when you died, think again.
Cash-strapped Roman Catholic parishes across Quebec are demanding a form of rent on burial plots or else the bones of Great Uncle Aloyisius will be, well, evicted.
It’s what almost happened to Michael Cloghessy when he went to bury his aunt last week in Sorel, Que., and was told the 99-year lease on the family plot was up in 1986.
"They told me the cemetery has the right to resell the plot, remove the monument, dig up the bones and bury them in a common grave. I said this is ridiculous. What are you talking about?"
Cloghessy quickly coughed up the unpaid rent — known as a concession in cemeteries — and thus avoided the potential exhumation of his ancestors.
Now talk about a tough landlord. Is someone who doesn’t pay this rent a dead beat? Would not doing this be a grave sin?
Quebec laws consider burial plots to be "sacred goods" that can neither be bought nor sold, only leased. Dwindling space in Montreal and other parts of Quebec requires some "turnover" in cemeteries, Gosselin said.
Well I have often heard about someone turning over in their grave, so turnover seems apt.
"You mean Halloween is on the 31st of October?, Boy am I embarrassed."
This sign won first place in the "Pakistani Islamists Ironic Placard contest."
I recently connected the dots and figured out the real reason for the Muslim outrage against the Pope’s Regensburg speech. It has nothing to do with Manuel II Paleologus and everything to do with a simple misunderstanding. The problem was they confused Logos with Legos. Those toy blocks are made by a Danish company, the same country that printed the Mohammad cartoons. They thought the pope said "God acts with Legos" and "In the beginning was the Legos." This specific approval of a Danish product that is used by God could easily be seen as approval of those cartoons.
