Parody

<Roto Reuters> CINCINNATI A married man and former Brother did something his church doctrine says he cannot do.

Paul Hoeffer became a religious sister.

On Friday, the Deer Park resident became the 1st man to be “vowed” as a religious sister as part of the “Mens Sisterazation Movement”. A female bishop who says she was ordained by a male Catholic bishop she met in a coffee shop. led the ceremony.

Paul Hoeffer, who has taken the name “Sister Paul of the Non-Gendered Relationships in God”, released a statement:

“As a former Catholic Brother I was fed up with being a second class citizen when it came to vowed religious. Catholic Brothers are the Rodney Dangerfield of religion in that ”we get no respect.“ First off if you’re a Catholic Brother, people think you just didn’t have what it takes to be a priest. Then there is the fact that we get no attention whatsoever. Was there ever a ”Flying Brother“, ”Brother Act“, ”Two Mules for Brother Sean“ or any Hollywood attention regarding Brothers? How many Brothers had a number one hit on the charts or got viral attention on YouTube of a Brother singing a contemporary song? Again zero. If we went on a social justice tour with a bus the media wouldn’t care and no Brothers have gotten a pen from the President for helping to pass legislation.”

“Nobody ever dresses up as a Brother on Halloween and plus we don’t get to wear a wimple, cornette, or any other attention-grabbing headpiece. Plus even when Brothers go off the theological reservation they don’t get the same attention from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Even if this happened we would not get the same fawning media attention defending anything we might do.”

“All the power is really with religious sisters, which is so unfair. Scripture says ”There is neither Jew nor Greek“ and yet the Church would deny my vocation as a religious sister? When the Vatican proclaims that men can not adequately represent religious sisterness they are denying that we are equal in Christ. Besides there is a statue in Rome that just might depict a male Sister if you squint your eyes at the right time of day.”

The Archdiocese of Cincinnati issued the following statement:

“Church law and teaching are clear that only a baptized female can be vowed as a women’s religious ub the Catholic Church. Any attempted vowing of men to the Catholic women’s religious life is therefore invalid, and would be even in the unlikely event that a validly ordained bishop met in a coffee shop presided.”

Hoeffer did it anyway – even if it does mean excommunication from his church.

“I’m breaking that code. And I also believe that code was man-made and I really really want to be part of the Church where I think everything I don’t agree with, which is a lot, was man-made.”

<Roto Reuters – Random Lake, WI> Parishioners on Sunday at St. Nicholas of Myra were stunned to hear and to find out that there is more than one Advent Hymn. Parishioner Karla Townsend said “The opening hymn was ‘O come, O come, Emmanuel’ so I was all settled in for the normal repertoire during the rest of the Mass. Later I heard ”People look East“ and ”O Come, Divine Messiah“ and was shocked to realize that they also related to Advent. Who knew?”

Cantor Jaime Willis related “After Mass many surprised people came up to me rather upset that I introduced other Advent songs. When I mentioned that next week we would be singing ”Creator Of The Stars Of Night“, ”Lo How a Rose E’er Blooming“, and ”Rorate Caeli“ they weren’t very happy that there were even more of them. One gentleman told me that even though he never sings at Mass, introducing new Advent hymns was way to confusing. Besides he said ”If ‘O come, O come, Emmanuel’ was good enough for Advent for the last forty years it was good enough for him.”

Fr. Alan Ray, pastor of St. Nicholas of Myra, also fielded questions from parishioners after Mass. “I think I am going to have to do more catechesis regarding Advent. I now realize hardly anybody understood that Advent was a distinct liturgical season and not just ‘Christmas warm-up.’”

Photo credit: Bill Ruhsam via photopin Creative Commons

DAYTON | Tue Apr 2, 2013 10:32am EDT

(Roto Reuters) Senator Bob Rortman became the first prominent Democrate lawmaker to oppose abortion.

In a newspaper opinion piece on Friday the Ohio senator said he now supports the protection of the unborn.

“I have come to believe that if two people have a child regardless of the circumstances there should be commitment to love and care for that child in good times and in bad. The government should allow that child the opportunity to be born.”

“That isn’t how I’ve always felt. As a congressman, and more recently as a senator, I supported legal abortion allowing the choice to be totally depending on the mother. Then something happened that led me to think through my position in a much deeper way.”

“Two years ago, my son Bill, then a college freshman, told my wife, Sally, and me that he is now Catholic and pro-life. He said he’d known for some time, and that his religious orientation wasn’t something he chose; it was simply a part of who he is. Sally and I were proud of him for his honesty and courage. We were surprised to learn he is Catholic and a fully believing one at that, but knew he was still the same person he’d always been. The only difference was that now we had a more complete picture of the son we love. He was born again that way.”

“At the time, my position on abortion in all cases was rooted in my Democrate tradition that the fetus is just a tissue mass that can be disposed when undesirable. Knowing that my son is a pro-life Catholic prompted me to consider the issue from another perspective: that of a dad who wants all three of his kids to lead happy, meaningful lives with the children they love, a blessing Sally and I have shared for 26 years.”

“I wrestled with how to reconcile my Democratic faith with my desire for children to have the same opportunities to pursue happiness and fulfillment by being born. Ultimately, it came down to the Bible’s overarching themes of love and compassion and my belief that we are all children of God. It’s really about equality and whether the child is male/female or unborn/born they should have equal rights before the law to life, liberty, and the persuit of happiness.”

Rortman’s 21-year-old son, Bill, told the senator and his wife in April 2011 that he was Catholic and had been “since he was initiated in the Easter Vigil.”

Rortman was quoted by the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper as saying he now believes abortion should be illegal and overturned at the Federal level and subsequently in any states that try to keep it legal. Unborn children should be eligible for the same federal benefits granted to born children.

Update: I guess this was not obvious as being satire. I am satirizing Sen. Rob Portman’s support of same sex marriage a reversal that came about since his son has same-sex attraction. I just edited some of the coverage and the Senator’s actual letter.

LONDON | Thurs Feb 7, 2013

(ROTO REUTERS) The House of Commons voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to approve a bill redefining poverty in Britain, indicating that the bill is assured of passage as it moves through further legislative stages.

Prime Minister David Cameron had been concerned about the increasing poverty rates and the growing problems poverty entails. The bill changed the definition of poverty to only include those who have less than a shilling and don’t have any family members to support them. Members of The House of Commons are enthused about this historic vote which wiped out poverty overnight.

After the approval of a bill legalizing same-sex marriage David Cameron said “I was thinking if we could change the definition of marriage to mean whatever we wanted it to mean then what is to stop of from doing this in other areas? If we can go from an understudying of marriage as the union of one man and one woman to hardly having a definition at all, then certainly that provides a precedent.” Mr. Cameron has also outlined some other legislative efforts such as redefining illness thus saving millions regarding the National Health Service.

Many people are probably aware of the social media service “foursquare”, for those not in the know Wikipedia says:

Foursquare is a location-based social networking website for mobile devices, such as smartphones. Users “check in” at venues using a mobile website, text messaging or a device-specific application by selecting from a list of venues the application locates nearby.^[3] Location is based on GPS hardware in the mobile device or network location provided by the application. Each check-in awards the user points and sometimes “badges”.

Now I have never used this service since even rocks call me sedentary in my ways. When I am not working in front of a computer monitor, I am likely to be behind a book and so my check-in history would be rather repetitive and extremely boring.

This social networking service does make me wish for a different type of service that would be more useful than letting your friends know what store or restaurant you are currently are visiting.

What I would like to see a service called;

But of course with a logo that doesn’t suck.

Now I would envision prayersquare as the place to check-in with your private and liturgical prayers.  You could then follow the prayer activity of  fellow members of the body of Christ and have events such as:

• Praying the Sorrowful mysteries.
• Attending daily Mass.
• Reading the Office of Reading in the Liturgy of the Hours.
• Praying for the repose of the soul of my loved ones.
• Prayerfully preparing for the Sacrament of Confession.
• Praying before the Blessed Sacrament.

Though this would have to be social networking with a twist. Your prayersquare account would have to be totally anonymous to discourage people bragging about how pious they are. Not much point in bragging like the Pharisees about how much they contributed to the Temple.  Seeing the prayer activity of others would help encourage people to join in and pray themselves.

I can also envision some cutting edge technological integration to make checking in of prayer easier.

• Mobile phone Liturgy of the Hours apps such as iBreviary and Unversalis could have prayersquare integration and as you read through the various hours it posts your prayer check-in.
• Wi-Fi enabled  and touch sensitive Rosaries could check in after a decade or a set of mysteries.
• Location aware phone apps could check you in when you go to your parish.
• Logos bible software integration.
• Phone personal assistant applications like Siri could detect prayer ejaculations and check them in.  Though it would have to have a “Jesus prayer” filter so as not to check-in every utterance of this prayer so as to not clog up the prayersquare timeline.

Like foursquare there could also be achievements. For example:

• Volunteered for 3 AM adoration in the Blessed Sacrament chapel.
• Found a priest giving confession out of the hours of 5 to 5:30 PM on Saturday.
• Graduated from the purgative way to the illuminative way.
• Found a spiritual directory that doesn’t believe in that anonymous Christian crap.
• Read the Catechism in a Year via flocknote.
• Actually “prayed attention” during Mass.

Now of course this post is firmly tongue-in-cheek, but really I wish a service like this existed.

I’ve been working on a story idea for television and I am looking for a capable screenwriter who can take my idea and bring it to life.

Here is my synopsis.   Walter Write is lapsed-Catholic who has been cooking meth taking advantage of his knowledge in chemistry.   His conscience has been tamed and the amount of damage his product brings to the world does not concern him.  He is only in it for the money and the prestige of being a high quality meth cook.  He is  diagnosed with Stage IIIA lung cancer and as he becomes aware of his mortality he comes to confront the choices he has made and the man he becomes.  In his journey towards truth he comes in contact with a young Catholic seminarian Jessie Redman who begins to evangelize him.   His conversion starts to bring him full circle and starts to wonder if he is being called to the priesthood as his love of the God and the Eucharist grows in leaps and bounds.

The name of the series:

* For those unfamiliar with the show “Breaking Bad”, here is the Wikipedia entry.