Parody

St. Joseph is the Rodney Dangerfield of saints. He just can’t get no respect. First off he was roundly ignored for the first half of Church history and when painted was not painted alone. Devotion slowly developed after the first millenium, built up some steam in the 14th century and by the 16th century devotion was flourishing. So he finally gets his due with churches and people being named after him and what happens. Why of course he starts getting buried in the ground by people to sell their houses.

Conversations about this popup from time to time in St. Blogs and recently there have been newspaper articles on this. Now it is bad enough they bury him in the ground, but to place him upside down as if this will get his intercessory attention to me seems kind of like a Catholic Voodoo statue. I idea of doing things to statues to get a saints attention for me is rather creepy. I have several statues throughout the house that at time have fallen to injury and subsequently have things like hands superglued back on. If the Catholic Voodoo statue phenomenon had any basis then I am really sorry for those broken hands and assorted chipped off body parts.

Now if burying St. Joseph upside down is better than right side up, then why stop there? Why not make the statue as uncomfortable as possible to get your house really moving.

First off why not try the Abu Ghraib technique on St. Joseph to humiliate him into real estate action?

If you have a drippy faucet why not put the Chinese water torture to work on St. Joseph the worker. Get to work selling my house or I will wash your clothes right off you.

Or if you have a plastic statue setup a slowly dripping bottle of finger nail polish remover. That ought to get him interceding before he melts into a plastic blob.

But if you really want to sell your house fast and don’t want to mess around with less effective St. Joe incentive packages then you just have to get this kit coming to a Catholic book store near you.

Bury them both together and in no time you will be signing closing papers. With Jack’s supercomputer disguised as a normal cell phone and his harsh interrogation techniques you just know Jack will take no time in getting St. Joseph busy interceding for your property. Though if you later make it to Heaven you might want to dodge meeting St. Joe for a bit first.

* For details on the history of devotion to St. Joseph see Sandra Miesel’s excellent article on the topic and send a few prayer’s her way since her husband died today.

I have found out via one of my sources that the Pope has not just strictly been vacationing at Castle Gondolfo and that he has in fact been working with a group of people on a new program. There has long been a speculation of a reform of a reform of the liturgy, but that the Holy Father is not going to take drastic steps. Many of us have been waiting for the final document from the Synod on the Eucharist which is expected to be released later this year. In the meantime Pope Benedict XVI has decided to concentrate on the basics.

Many have complained about liturgical abuses and outright disobedience. Francis Cardinal Arinze said "The do-it-yourself Mass is ended. Go in peace," but we have not seen too many concrete actions in this direction. What we didn’t know is that the Holy See has started looking at this problem from a direction most of us have not considered. We have assigned all types of reasons for liturgical abuses that in many cases were not the most charitable explanation possible. We have assumed ill will in cases where none existed. The breakthrough came about through via some testing that provided surprising results. A group of 500 priests were tested with a sample page from the sacramentary and asked to read aloud the text and to perform the rubrics. The results showed that a large group of priests got most of the text right, yet failed to perform the rubrics satisfactory. These results lead to further testing. The astonishing result was that a large group of priests had a form of color blindness that was not known in medical circles.

This is an example of what priests who did the rubrics satisfactory sees.

This is an example of what the other priests see.

Rubric blindness, or rubric vision deficiency, in humans is the inability to perceive rubrics. It is some times of genetic nature, but may also occur because of eye, nerve, or brain damage, or due to exposure to certain liturgist and heterodox theologians. What normally happens is that this condition is not caught in seminary before they are ordained. The priest knows he is suppose to do something at these points but does not want to embarrass himself by saying he can’t see them. They go on like people who are functionally illiterate and cope with the world around them. Unfortunately when they look around at other Masses to see what other priests are doing at these points in the liturgy they find no standards.

As a result this is what they come to see in the sacramentary. A type of optical illusion confirms for them what they suspect must be there. The human brain often tries to fill in information when it perceives missing data and this is the basis for many optical illusions. There is an old saying about people seeing red when they are angry, but now we know there are also a class of people who don’t see red when reading from liturgical documents.

The study classed these people as illiturgerate and that many liturgical abuses were from those who were acting as functional illiturgerates. Illiturgacy is not something that we just have to live with and is something that should not stigmatize priests. The researches found that those suffering with rubric vision deficiency could indeed overcome this liturgical disability and go on to not only see rubrics (many for the first time) but to follow them.

The Pope is just about to release a new program that will specifically address these problems and as a world exclusive I can give you the details.

Hooked on Rubrics works by using a series of flash cards with varying red colors on them. Repeated drill and variation of color shades enables the priest to start to discern colors that previously appeared transparent to them. When this first step is satisfactory completed the next step is to drill an association with reading the rubrics and then performing them without illicit variations.

Previous liturgy teaching methods were part of the problems instead of relying on age-old methods to teach the liturgy they relied on untested teaching theories that failed in practice. The whole liturgy instructional philosophy that is currently prevalent emphasizes seeing the whole liturgy instead on concentrating on all the different parts that make it up. Some priests who were once able to see rubrics were trained not to see them, Hooked on Rubrics reverses this process. Hooked on Rubrics instead concentrates on getting the little things right, thus ensuring the big things are also done correctly. He who is faithful in little is faithful in much.

An added benefit to the Hooked on Rubrics method is that they have actually been able to see other colors better and how they coordinate with other colors. Many after going through this program went back to their parishes and had many stoles thrown away that had horrible color combinations that they were previously unaware of and were now embarrassed of having owned.

Hooked on Rubrics for priests is just the start of some of the new programs coming out. There will also be versions for the laity. While most of the laity don’t suffer from rubric vision deficiency they do suffer from "simon says" syndrome where constantly most of the gestures and postures they perform are done in imitation of the priest instead of doing the ones specially meant for them. Many of the laity are quite surprised to learn that there is a part of the Nicene’s Creed where they bow or that the strike their breast during the Confeitor.

A version of Hooked on Rubrics was also developed for liturgists. Unfortunately so far all attempts at getting them to see or follow rubrics has been to no avail. Two liturgists in the tests who started to discern rubrics ended up going insane and subsequently had to be locked up. Seeing rubrics for the first time made them doubt everything they believed and stood for and it was just too much for them. There might be some underlying psychological reason for this. For some reason all liturgist given a ink blot test saw liturgical dancers in every pattern. They also had the tendency to move about the furniture in the psychologist’s office for no discernable reason.

Other programs soon to be developed:

• Hooked on Homiletics – Flash cards from the Church Fathers serves as an introduction.
• Hooked on Vatican II – This program experiments with the mostly untried method of actually reading the documents of Vatican II.
• Hooked on Orthodoxy
• Hooked on Magisterium
• Hooked on Jesus – A course for all of us.

I thinks these are sound parish pedagogical practices and hopefully they will soon be seen in a parish near you!

At the beginning of the month there was a story about Sister Judith who runs the Vatican web site and that she was designing a new site to bring together the faithful that was describe as MySpace.com for Catholics. I was intrigues by this idea and subsequently emailed Sister Judith to get some more information on this new initiative. She was kind enough to send me the following screen shots and information about the new site.

This is a sample of the main login page at myworshipspace.com

	MyWorshipSpace Vatican.com
prayer | novenas | bible | catechism | magisterial documents | wednesday audiences | videos

myworshipspace music video           search Seattle sensation    Praying Chantis  Watch Now MyWorshipSpace Music         [more music] Fr Stan Rap All songs recorded live by Fr. Stan with his bass and percussion instruments using his boomerang phrase sampling pedal. Recorded live first takes… no studio overdubs or punch-ins… MWS PODcast                [more PODcasts] Subscribe to our PODcast which each week explores the latest Pious Over Devotional practices. What prayers are your peers praying? What novena is hot? What is the latest up-and-coming devotional practice? Don’t be left out – subscribe now via Vatican.

Member Login Email User name Parish Lost your Password? Pray to St. Anthony Cool New People     Benny         Johnny        Sr. Greta Cool Dead People   St Therese St. Pio  Bl. Francesco Papist Photo of the Day Pope out paddy cakes Hugo Chavez.

Users can build their own profile pages with information like the following:

Unlike myspace.com "No way in Hell" and other variances will be rejected in the Children column. I think there coolest new service is the ability for IM.

The Vatican Intercession Messenger. With VIM you will have lots of vigor to pray.

VIM includes an intercessory contact list so you can easily select your favorite saints for intercession. The prayer database lets you keep track of prayer requests from friends and others. Use the enemies list so you can also pray for your enemies.

All the feature of the new site look pretty cool, but I am really looking forward to one of the new features. Many have complained that it is almost impossible to find anything on the Vatican web site since. If you do find the document you want it is almost always be guaranteed to be in a language you don’t speak, even if you speak multiple ones. The Vatican must have been listening sine they have gone ahead and worked out a deal with Google to implement the new search engine. Below is the new logo on the search page.

Over the last century many support groups have arisen for substance abuse, alcohol abuse, and other addictions. But until now one much needed organization was missing. What about liturgiholics who abuse the liturgy? People drunk on power to change the liturgy in their parishes to their own visions divorced from liturgical history have had nowhere to turn to. That is until now.

Introducing Liturgical Anonymous (LA) an international, spiritually oriented community of liturgical abusers who meet in local groups to help each other end this destructive addiction to changing the liturgy as one wants. Liturgical Anonymous follows a 12 step program and not one of the steps are a dance step.

The first step on the way to authentic liturgical recovery is of course to admit you have a problem. Many liturgical addicts deny they have a problem and will often brow beat those who complain about their "little changes" to make the liturgy more relevant and more oriented to the people. Denial is very common and when challenged to explain why all the attempts at opening the Mass to the people results mainly in declining Mass attendance will just complain that the pew sitters just don’t get it.

Once a liturgical change addict admits they have a problem they are ready for Liturgical Anonymous. My name is [Insert Name Here] and I am a liturgical abuser. Welcome you are on the road to recovery.

As is often the case liturgical abusers just don’t hurt themselves, but those around them. Those sitting in the pews often have misgivings about what they see happening, but also deny that there is even a problem. Parishes often even encourage this liturgically destructive behavior which makes it much harder for the liturgical change addict to admit they have a problem in the first place. We realize that liturgical education is the first requirement to stop this problem, thus we have also started umbrella groups to help out such as MALADY (Mothers Against Liturgical Abusing Destructive Yahoos). We must remember and to educate others that good intentions are not sufficient and that there are very good reasons for liturgical norms in the first place. The Mass being the highest prayer there is needs to prayed, not played with.

Here is an example of some of the steps in the process.

1. Admit that we have no right to change the liturgy of the Church.
2. Come to believe that there are liturgical documents greater than "Environment and Art in Catholic Worship."
3. Make a decision to follow the rubrics in the GIRM.
4. Make an examination of conscience and determine where you have deviated from liturgical norms.
5. Actually read the documents regulating the liturgy.

Our meetings include scripture study along with a study of the rich liturgical history of the Church within both the Eastern and Latin rites. With a greater appreciation of the organic development of the Mass former liturgical abusers find the richness that already exists and learn to appreciate it. The meetings used are based on official liturgical documents, texts from The Spirit of the Liturgy from both Romano Guardina and later from then-Cardinal Ratzinger, Jimmy Akin’s Mass Confusion and other classic texts. Many of our members also require help to throw off the vapidness of most modern liturgical music. Most find that a too rapid introduction to Gregorian Chant for instance is too much beauty to handle so quickly. Thus are program slowly weans them off of the music of Haugen-Daas with a drug equivalent of music Methadone. This drug with a high sugar content is slowly reduced over time to allow a tonal rearrangement in the subject. For priests we have a special program called "Seeing Red: Rubrics are your friends." With liturgical dancers we helped to teach them that the only acceptable dance at Mass is attendance.

The meetings are open to church designers, wreckovators, liturgical dancers, choir directors, liturgists, makers of rainbow stoles, priests and bishops, and anybody else that freely admits to having a liturgical abuse problem. Though it sounds far-fetched this group centered treatment has even been effective on a couple of liturgists with college degrees! Though we have to admit much prayer and fasting was involved. At the end of LA meetings everyone says in unison the words of the Prefect of Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments – Francis Cardinal Arinze ‘The do-it-yourself Mass is ended. Go in peace.’"

Our headquarters for Liturgical Anonymous has a 24 hour hotline staffed by liturgical counselors. If you ever feel tempted to deviate from the norms give us a call and we will help you to overcome this temptation. Alcoholics can go cold turkey and avoid bars, but the liturgical abusers must learn to be attend the Mass with full, conscious and active prayerful participation without thinking how they would have done it different or how they would have redesigned the sanctuary. Also difficult for our members is attending Masses with liturgical abuses without becoming overly angry. God has given us the Mass not to be a point of anger, but of grace. Concentrating on the invisible reality and praying the Mass takes precedence over tallying the abuses. We hope to one day open our hotline to everybody with liturgical concerns, but we can’t yet hire the thousands of liturgical counselors that would be required.

Here are just some of the testimonial of successful members of Liturgical Anonymous:

I’m John [Last name withheld] the former clown altar server. I served at many Masses especially in the seventies. I saw no problem with it at the time and even served with priests also dresses as a clown. In Persona Bozo presented no theological difficulties for me. I thought I was just bringing joy to the people, I mean what could be wrong with that? Then one day while traveling and looking for something to listen to on the radio I ran across a Catholic radio stations during a program on the Mass. The show talked about how the Mass was a representation of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. The the Council of Trent said the Mass maintains essential identity of both sacrifices, holding that the main difference between them is in the different manner of sacrifice — the one bloody the other unbloody. This shocked me to realize that this was the one and same sacrifice at calvary only represented. I realized that I would never have donned a clown costume at the foot of the cross. Any clown makeup would have been rent with tears. How could I bear to wear floppy feet as his feet were pierced with nails? Needless to say that ended my stint as a clown altar server forever. When I found Liturgical Anonymous they helped me to get passed my previous mistakes and to start a ministry to help other liturgical abusing clowns.

I am a priest and former "Designer and Consultant for Worship Environments." I worked on the renovation of traditional Catholic churches as well as for the design of new Catholic churches. To me beauty was stark emptiness. I just loved removing and destroying things. As a child I would build traditional churches out of Lego’s than either destroy them with firecracker for my pleasure or to rip out the Lego high altars and altar rails. Later I found out that I could actually use my love of destroying traditional things and actually do it professionally. After seeing the work of fellow priest Richard Vosko I though if he can destroy all those churches with the actual cooperation of bishops, priests and congregations; then why couldn’t I do that to. Being a priest it helped to give me a certain credential and it was easy to make up a architectural philosophy to justify my love of destroying traditional church architecture. When hired as a consultant they would actually listen to me when I talked about worship spaces for their "church" to become a parish centrum with an assembly hall. I told them that to live the spirit of Vatican II that they had to have a church to match and they bought it all. I always admired the architecture of gymnasiums and city halls so of course the central tabernacle, statuary, shrines, elevated sanctuary, Communion rails, baldacchino, high altars, etc all had to go. I would setup "revision committees" in these parishes and stack them with people sympathetic to my goals. There were often parishioners less than pleases with what I was doing. Using the various committees and saying things such as "the church will be restored in a way that reflects its original beauty" it was easy enough to stall the opposition. Over the years though I started to notice conversion stories about people entering what they considered to be "beautiful" churches and how the architecture had a profound effect on them that was used by God to later bring them into the Church. They would talk about such things as stained glass windows and how the sound of the pipe organ attracted them. Some of the very things I was ripping out they were talking about with joy. I told myself well beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but just why was it these conversion stories based on architectural beauty never happened in my redesigned churches or the churches of my fellow architects who had the same architectural philosophy? It hurt when my work was called "wreckovations", but I started to wonder if perhaps it was way too accurate a description. One day I ran across a local chapter of Liturgical Anonymous and decide to attend a meeting to see if maybe their were answer for my questions. I sat in the back row in the corner listening to the testimonies of others as they talked about the beauty of the liturgy and how it’s prime purpose was to be oriented at the worship of God. That as the angels continuously sing Holy, Holy, Holy in praise and worship of God that that is what the whole liturgy is also directed towards. I realized that my structure did not exactly sing this out and that they were really made for praise of my architectural skills and their daring and not praise for our creator. Thanks to Liturgical Anonymous I am now relearning my craft and sitting at the feet of the masters who have gone before me. Not that everything has to be Baroque or Romanesque, but that it must be oriented towards the divine architect.

Here are some real world stories of former liturgical music abusers.

A Liturgical Guitarist Reformed
Confessions of a folk Mass guitarist

Is Liturgical Anonymous for you? If you want to control the liturgy then you may be a candidate for LA. If you belong to the Diocese of L.A. then you are probably an ideal candidate for LA. If you are in the below photo please call our offices now at 1-800-BAD-LTRG.

There is no disgrace in facing up to the fact that you have a liturgical abuse problem. So why not join now before some parishioners stage an intervention.

Remember "Friends don’t let friends abuse liturgy."

*Other resources:
St. James in Ogden, Utah has an ideal program for those detoxifying themselves from liturgical dancing.

From the National Catholic Reporter on the new reality-show.

Many are aware of a reality-TV series coming to A&E, premiering on Easter Sunday, called “God or the Girl.” This five-part series follows four young men with a calling to the priesthood who must decide whether to enter the seminary or serve God as laypeople. While the idea appears to be a laudable effort to positively portray the Catholic faith, we must positively protest the the title of this show. Why not "God or Significant Other" or "God or boy or girl" or some other more inclusive title? There are currently many good homosexual priests and bishops and you might wonder how they would feel about seing such a narrow-minded presentation of the priesthood?

Ever since the Congregation for Catholic Education issued the document in regards to admission of homosexuals to the seminary and Holy Orders and the seminary visitation there has been increased pressure from the Vatican. Has A&E knuckled down to a Vatican edict? Were they only allowed access to four heterosexual seminarians? You would think that a network with a name like Arts and Entertainment would show more tolerance to homosexual seminarians instead of locking them in a seminary closet not to be viewed from the outside world.

Again we laud A&E for the effort to highlight the vocation shortage and the difficulties of recruitment to the priesthood in modern times. Yet did they ever consider the lay women and nuns who feel a calling to the priesthood and have been shut out? Was "God or the Dyke" ever considered? What about those married people who feel a calling to the priesthood? "God and the girl/boy" would have been another possible series that could highlight the restrictive effect of limiting the clergy to celibacy. Bravo had "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" and you would think that a network like A&E would in this day and age would not show a hetero-centric view of the priesthood that is so limiting.

We urge are readers in the name of tolerance and not being exclusive to boygirlcott this show and to write A&E and the producers of this show to take a more enlightened view towards the priesthood instead of the rather strict model used for the last two thousand years. Just think of the emotional harm caused to aspiring priestesses and men already discriminated against by the Vatican to see this propaganda show that could easily have been orchestrated right out of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Okay the above is a parody piece, though I can easily imagine seeing it in the NCReporter. For real information on what looks to be an excellent series see American Papist for details.

Following up the tip Dawn Eden gave me earlier this week on the Planned Parenthood iPod giveaway she gave me another heads up on another offer. This time it is Denver’s Planned Parenthood offer where if you refer someone to their clinic and they use the card you gave them you get two free movie passes. Moloch would be proud of such an offer.

# Give Tell-A-Friend cards to any friends who don’t go to Planned Parenthood;

# When they come in for an appointment – and turn in your card – we will mail you two FREE movie passes*, and your friend will receive $10.00 off their visit

Tell-A-Friend about Planned Parenthood and enjoy the movies on us!

Though Planned Parenthood and much of Hollywood does seem like a match made in the opposite direction of Heaven. In fact don’t be surprised if you see these soon.

Dawn Eden tipped me off to San Francisco’s Planned Parenthood page that includes this offer

Dawn wondered about what just might be on their iPod and what it might look like. Well I did some digging around and found this about to be released ad.

Hat tip to RC at Catholic Light for the suggestion of doing a WWJD-40
parody.

Gerald focuses on a project called "Find-Fight-Follow" in Austria which seems to be their equivalent of some Life Teen Masses but taken to the next level of culture trumping the Mass.

So go check out the pictures and what he has to says about it.

One of the pictures from one of their Masses did spark my interest and I thought I would let you know what it is all about.

Introducing Sacrament-Vision! See the Holy Spirit descend and through the miracle of Transubstantiation© watch the constituent elements transform into the very Body and Blood of Christ! Watch adults being baptized and see all their sins washed away right before your eyes. Watch people coming out of the confessional with their professed and repented of sins vanished through one of the greatest sacramental special effects of forgiveness of sin. So if you are a Thomas and must place you fingers in the nail holes you will love Sacrament-Vision! If your parish must use fads and cultural phenomenon to bring people to Mass then Sacrament-Vision is for you. Though others might prefer the old system of sound catechesis on the Eucharist that enables the eyes of faith to come and adore Christ in the Most Holy Eucharist and to desire above all things to receive him in Communion.

Are you a Sunday only Christian? Or do you only attend church on Christmas, Easter and Ash Wednesday if your Catholic? Do your friends and co-workers have no idea you’re a Christian? If so than you will probably think this product is a great idea. From the manufactures who brought you tasteless salt and stealth technology to hide cities set on a hill comes the latest innovation – the Basket Light!

This decorative basket contains a high quality lamp fixture and UL rated cord. Use a high or low wattage light bulbs as you desire since the basket is granted not to emit any light at all! Perfect for those concerned about light pollution since our basket lamp will keep you totally in the dark. Nobody will know that there is actually a light shining within.

Our basket light includes our patented burned out light indicator since this is the only way you can tell when the light has burned out.

If it makes sense for you to be a Christian and not have it modify how you live your life you will just love a lamp that also will have no influence on the dark around it. Why must a lamp be put on a lampstand? Why be tied to traditions such as using a lamp for light to see with? Just as people don’t know you’re a Christian, they won’t know this is a lamp either when they see it in your house (if they can without light).

Order now and we will send you a free basket case!

Check out some of our celebrity testimonials:

"Wow this lamp influences the dark as much as my faith influences the way I vote." – Sen. John Kerry.

"Amazing! You can tell that this is a lamp just as easily as you can discern that I am a Catholic." – Gov. Jennifer Granholm