Humor

Gerald at The Cafeteria is Closed covered a lot of bishop and Cardinal news yesterday the best though was the reaction from Bishop Bruskewitz’s reaction to the USCCB bureaucracy.

Some woman named Patricia O’Donnell Ewers, who is the Chair of something called "A National Review Board for the Protection of Children and Young People", has said that her Board "calls for strong fraternal correction of the Diocese of Lincoln." The Diocese of Lincoln has nothing to be corrected for, since the Diocese of Lincoln is and has always been in full compliance with all laws of the Catholic Church and with all civil laws. Furthermore, Ewers and her Board have no authority in the Catholic Church and the Diocese of Lincoln does not recognize them as having any significance.

It is well known that some of the members of Ewers’ Board are ardent advocates of partial birth abortion, other abortions, human cloning, and other moral errors. It is understandable then how such persons could dislike the Diocese of Lincoln, which upholds the moral teaching of the Catholic Church.

The words attributed to Ewers seem to confirm the suspicion that the members of her Board are unfamiliar with Catholic teachings, Catholic ecclesiology, and even the basic rudiments of the Catholic Catechism. Rather than concerning themselves with the Diocese of Lincoln about which they appear completely ignorant, Ewers and her colleagues would occupy themselves in a better way by learning something about the Catholic religion and the traditions and doctrines and laws of the Catholic Church.

The Diocese of Lincoln does not see any reason for the existence of Ewers and her organization.

I guess it is fitting that when someone at the USCCB thinks of fraternal correction they narrow their eyes on Bishop Bruskewitz. I remember the first time I heard about Bishop Bruskewitz before I was Catholic. I think it was 20/20 or some similar show that was covering his warning of excommunication to members of his diocese Back in 1996 he issued the following letter.

"All Catholics in and of the Diocese of Lincoln are forbidden to be members of the organizations and groups listed below. Membership in these organizations or groups is always perilous to the Catholic Faith and most often is totally incompatible with the Catholic Faith:

Planned Parenthood [Planned Parenthood is the nation’s largest promoter and provider of abortion], Society of Saint Pius X (Lefebvre Group), Hemlock Society, Call to Action, Call to Action Nebraska, Saint Michael the Archangel Chapel, Freemasons, Job’s Daughters, DeMolay, Eastern Star, Rainbow Girls and Catholics for a Free Choice.

Any Catholics in and of the Diocese of Lincoln who attain or retain membership in any of the above listed organizations or groups after April 15, 1996, are by that very fact (ipso-facto-latae sententiae) under interdict and are absolutely forbidden to receive Holy Communion. Contumacious persistence in such membership for one month following the interdict on part of any such Catholics will by that very fact (ipso-facto-latae sententiae) cause them to be excommunicated. Absolution from these ecclesial censures is "reserved the Bishop." This notice, when published in the Southern Nebraska Register, is a formal canonical warning.

I remember being impressed by him on the show since even though I had not really started down the road into the faith. I remember reading later on that after this he received thousands of letters in support of his decision from all over the country and less than ten against it. After the Bishop’s conference mandated that we should bow and not kneel when receiving communion he immediately granted a dispensation to this in his diocese. As Gerald mentions his diocese also has the highest vocation level per-capita in the U.S. Not exactly a shock to my readers that orthodoxy and a radical call to living the faith is the best environment for helping people to answer their vocations. Heterodoxy is a mule that doesn’t create new generations. There will always be mules, but they won’t by their very nature be populace.

But while I enjoyed the bishop’s statement on the board, he might not in fact be right about its authority. Canon Lawyer Ed Peter’s take on the authority of the USCCB’s Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People in that the charter was approved by Rome as "particular law" and in fact binding on all the bishops in the US.

Update: Canon Lawyer Peter Vere has a different take than Canonist Ed Peters. Part 1, Part II.

Now we get to the anti-Bruskewitz – Cardinal Mahony and the latest dissident fest at this years religious education conference. It does make you wonder if in a alternate-universe if the two men had been switched with Mahony in Nebraska and Bruskewitz in L.A. Can their be any doubt that they would be building seminaries in L.A. and tearing them down in the diocese of Lincoln? That instead of inviting pro-abortion politicians and others to the cathedral that instead they would be denounced and prayed for instead. That liturgical abuses would be something theoretical instead of a daily experience. You can easily imagine that the sham known as the religious educations conference would be much different than it is know. Now as it stands not only are wolves allowed among the sheep but they are invited in and given silverware to make their dining easier. Some years back EWTN covered one of their conferences and not surprisingly they were not allowed to sit in on some of the conferences, at least with any recording equipment.

Though I guess I should be somewhat thankful to Cardinal Mahony because each year he gives me ample portions of things to parody. For example from the hula mass Hawaiian liturgy I came up with Lei Witness or my captioning one year of their photos.

Though it is getting rather boring since once you have seen one "arena liturgy" with dancing girls you have pretty much seen them all. Though there are always some pictures to have fun with.

Shall I play for you, pa rum pum pum pum, On my drum? Please don’t, I think I will stick with Neil Peart from Rush

.
Monkey to Man.

Stages of Liturgist evolution (or is that liturgical deevolution).

This years motto for liturgical posturing "Stand up -Never Forget" and oh by the way never kneel.

This man didn’t listen and dared to kneel during the consecration.
He is about to be executed by a women brandishing a razor sharp pole.

Deacon holds up the Diocese official version of the Kama Sutra.

"I have gestured you all to sing so start singing before I get mad."

"Can’t we just lay the altar cloth over the altar as usual instead of holding it up during the whole Mass?"

"This liturgical dancing is really tiring, I think I will take a nap"

Heil der Mahony

Strings attached. Women puppeteer demonstrates her Marionette devotion
and skill with the new Cardinal Mahony marionette.

Though I guess the main reason I am so annoyed by these youth Masses is that it is understandable to try to reach out, but this is the wrong way to go about it. Speaking from my own experience toward the end of my high school years my mother converted to the Catholic Church and wanted me to go with her to Sunday masses. Being an atheist at that point this was not exactly something I wanted to do, but I did to please her. It was a very typical 1970s style liturgy in Portland, Or and the music was very modern with a high energy level. Since I love to sing I didn’t mind it at all and even later joined their small choir of about four people. We sang from a prominent place on what I considered the stage. Growing up with a father who was an actor and puppeteer and doing a lot of shows myself I just considered the Mass a kind of performance of religious people. There was never anything in the homilies that bothered me as an atheist and it was fun to all hold hands and sway back and forth while singing "Day by Day" from Godspell. What I considered to be the audience did the same and the people even moved into the aisles between the rows to hold hands. This was all fun and entertaining it just wasn’t about worship, transcendence, the sacrifice of the Mass. Calvary was conspicuously absent. I had no problem with the liturgy being all about me and directed to the people in the pews, after all I didn’t believe in God. The problem with these contemporary liturgies is that they just don’t prepare us for worship and love of God. Looking back I feel cheated that my exposure to the Catholic Church was a cheap performance instead of what it should be. Of course it doesn’t mean that if my mother had dragged me along to a beautiful and faithful parish like Holy Rosary in Portland that my conversion had been much sooner, but it certainly would have been nice to be introduced to not only the beauty of the liturgy but the awesome beauty of the faith – even if my hard-headedness was not ready for it.

Kota Kinabalu: The Catholic Church in Sabah expressed regret over the actions of one so-called Ustaz Tajuddin Othman Abdullah, who claims in an Internet posting to be a former Catholic priest by the name of Thomas Laiden serving at one St Mary’s Church, in 1988.

Head of the Catholic Diocese of Kota Kinabalu, Rt Rev. Bishop Datuk John Lee said Monday, the man also claimed to be currently attached to a so-called Unit Kristianologi of the Majlis Agama Islam Melaka.

"There is no such priest by the name of Thomas Laiden in the Catholic Church in Sabah.

"Whoever the individual is, his attacking the Church portrays a total ignorance and misinterpretation of Catholic teachings," he said in a statement here.

Bishop Lee said the Church deplored the underhand tactics used by the "ustaz" as "his action would definitely not contribute to the harmonious setting of a multi-racial and multi-religious nation like ours."

The so-called Ustaz’s attacks were contained in an article written in Bahasa Melayu. It also contained a testimony from him on why he converted to Islam.

Well this only adds to all of the other fake conversion stories of people claming to be Catholic priests who converted to another religion. I wonder what an Islamic version of a Chick Tract would look like?

… about a hare shirt anyway?

Dom reports that the Cardinal Newman Society has now alerted the University of Notre Dame to a second instance of possible plagiarism involving dissident theology professor Rev. Richard McBrien.

CNS yesterday faxed Notre Dame President Rev. John Jenkins, C.S.C., an 11-page comparison of numerous citations from McBrien’s 1997 book Lives of the Popes which closely paraphrase and sometimes identically resemble wording in the 1986 edition of The Oxford Dictionary of Popes by Rev. J.N.D. Kelly. This “troubling problem” was first revealed by another Notre Dame professor—Rev. Marvin O’Connell, professor emeritus of history—in a 1998 book review published in Books & Culture magazine.

Interesting since Dan Brown is also in the news today for his plagiarism trial where the judge called him a liar. Fr. McBrien was hired as an advisor on the Da Vinci Code movie and now we know the reason why. Maybe Dan Brown wanted a fellow (alleged) plagiarist with (not alleged) wacky theology on the set.

It does make me think of doing a top ten list.

The top ten things Fr. McBrien will not Plagiarize.

10. Actual documents from Vatican II
9. Academic Mandatum
8. The Catechism of the Catholic Church
7. Catholic Answers: Voter’s Guide for Serious Catholics
6. General Instruction of the Roman Missal
5. Ex Corde Ecclesiae
4. Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons
3. Redemptionis Sacramentum
2. Humanae Vitae

And the top document that Fr. McBrien will not Plagiarize is:

1. Ordinatio Sacerdotalis

Considering the news that the Pope has been spotted around the Vatican using his new iPod Nano and sporting the white earbuds this cartoon is pretty appropriate.

Dave Coverly’s Speed Bump.

It does make me wonder that since the reason that the Pope wears white is because of a tradition started by a Dominican Pope what will be the effect of the Pope wearing white earbuds have on future Popes? Will the color of the headphones change based on the liturgical season? I hope they won’t be restricted to the ones that come with the iPod and can have a decent pair instead.

I also wonder if the Vatican website will start displaying the Pope’s playlist. Even cooler if they could sync it up with his iPod "The Pope ‘s is currently listening to _____".

SOUTH SIDE — A man was charged Monday evening with one count of burglary, just hours after he broke into a South Side chapel and stole religious relics and a priest’s boots, authorities said.

Ricky Anderson, 42, of the 10200 block of South Forrest Avenue, Chicago, was taken into custody at 2:30 p.m. Monday, near the chapel of St. John de la Salle Catholic Church, 10212 S. Vernon Ave., where the burglary occurred less than an hour before, a Chicago police spokesman said.

While Anderson was stealing brass candleholders, a pair of boots and bones believed to be those of a saint, a priest startled him, causing him to flee, authorities said.

Anderson was arrested a short time later, wearing the boots, authorities said. The priest positively identified him, the police spokesman said.

Rather odd choices taking boots and a relic, maybe he was a pious thief?

Tangentially I was thinking that the Vatican should create an SQL (Sacramental Query Language) database tracking all known first degree relics. This would be pretty cool since you could enter the name of a saint and find out where all of their relics are. And of course you would submit the request via a relic query.

The pope’s new 2-gigabyte digital audio player already was loaded with a sampling of the radio’s programming in English, Italian and German and musical compositions by Ludwig van Beethoven, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Frederic Chopin, Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky and Igor Stravinsky. The stainless steel back was engraved with the words “To His Holiness, Benedict XVI” in Italian.

Once the pope, who is also a pianist, gets the hang of the device’s trademark click wheel, he will be able to listen to a special 20-minute feature produced by the radio’s English program that highlights Mozart’s life and music to commemorate the 250th anniversary of his birth.

The iPod also contains an English-language radio drama on the life of St. Thomas a Becket and a 10-minute feature on the creation of Vatican Radio, with original sound clips of the inventor of the radio, Guglielmo Marconi, and Vatican Radio’s founder, Pope Pius XI.

The pope also can relive the historical papal transition of April 2005. On the player, the radio’s German program included a mix of news and interviews done during the death of Pope John Paul II, the conclave and the election of Pope Benedict.
[Via Domenico Bettinelli]

I think the Pope needs a larger iPod then the Nano with much more space. I am sure he would rip his classical music CDs using the Apple Lossless encoder. He has worked hard to prevent a degradation of the faith and I am sure he would want his music the same way. He doesn’t put up with Theology Harmonic distortion, so I am sure it is the same goes for his music.

There is another reason the Pope should have a larger iPod. When he showed his Nano to Francis Cardinal Arinze, the Cardinal replied "Mine is bigger."

The iPope picture is from my Rome Depot parody.

At a website specializing in Puritan writings from other centuries includes a list of 1,050 commands in the New Testament for Christians. The list found via Michael Barber is pretty extensive and kind of funny to read with heading like Three "Ask’s", Seventy-four "Be’s", and Three things to cast out or away: Good thing that God didn’t dump these on Moses because either he would have been squashed or at the minimum pulled something coming down the mountain.

New Testament Commands [PDF]

Though I like Jesus’ list much better because it is so much easier to memorize since it contains only two.

"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

This website does have a sense of humor though. Under What’s New it says "There is nothing new under the sun." Ecclesiastes 1:9."

Introducing the latest and most refreshing and relativistic gum – Dissidentyne. Up to now every brand of gum the flavor would fade as you chewed. Dissidentyne solves the problem by having no taste at all so it will never fade! Simply sing a new taste into being. Use your creative imagination to choose how you want it to taste. The primacy of taste buds guides you on how you alone will favor what flavor or interpret the taste.

Why be stuck with the same old traditional flavors passed on down in recipe succession. It’s the 21st century so choose what tastes fit your tastes and not be bound by dogmatic definitions of Spearmint, Wintergreen, etc. Why be universal or have a consistent gum flavor. At one time all the gum was the same till the advent of Babelgum with its towering taste that is different for everyone.

Dissidentyne was developed by, who better than Bishop Gumbleton. With a name like that and his experience who would know better about both gum and dissent.

"I wanted a gum I could chew in the cafeteria or when giving my latest speech at a Call for Action conference or while writing a column for the National Catholic Reporter. All the other gums left me cold and I wanted one as bland as heterodoxy itself. When I created my own gum, just as how I have done other things in life, I didn’t rely on what was passed down or what you might expect from a traditional gum – I went my own way."

If Dissidentyne is not for you then you might prefer Big Rad Trad. It includes the smells and bells of traditional Catholic gum – but is totally obedience free.

I greatly admire those bloggers who give up blogging for Lent, but as for me I will continue blogging as a penance for others. I will try to provide you with plenty of punance during this punitential season.

Here is some Lent trivia I posted in previous years.

The capybara kap-i-‘bar-uh, hydrochoerus hydrochaeris, is a semi-aquatic rodent of South and Central America. It is the only species in its genus, which belongs to the family Hydrochoeridae, order Rodentia.

When the Spanish missionaries found the capybara in Brazil during the 16th century, they wrote to the Pope to ask – there’s an animal here that’s scaly but also hairy, spends most of its time in the water but occasionally comes on land; can we classify it as a fish (and thus, the indigenous people could continue to eat it during Lent)?. Not having a clear description of the animal (and not wanting the petitioners to starve), the Pope agreed and declared it to be a fish.

The pretzel has a deep spiritual meaning for Lent. In fact, it was the ancient Christian Lenten bread as far back as the fourth century. In the old Roman Empire, the faithful kept a very strict fast all through Lent: no milk, no butter, no cheese, no eggs, no cream and no meat. They made small breads of water, flour and salt, to remind themselves that Lent was a time of prayer. They shaped these breads in the form of crossed arms for in those days they crossed their arms over the breast while praying. Therefore they called the breads “little arms” (bracellae). From this Latin word, the Germanic people later coined the term “pretzel.”
[Full Article]

The Teutonic word Lent, which we employ to denote the forty days’ fast preceding Easter, originally meant no more than the spring season. Still it has been used from the Anglo-Saxon period to translate the more significant Latin term quadragesima (Fr. car�me, It. quaresima, Span. cuaresma), meaning the “forty days”, or more literally the “fortieth day”. This in turn imitated the Greek name for Lent, tessarakoste (fortieth), a word formed on the analogy of Pentecost (pentekoste), which last was in use for the Jewish festival before New Testament times.

Carnival means "farewell to meat.”

It was thought that misfortune would come to those who married during lent – “Marry in Lent, live to repent” – because lent was a time for abstinence.

Jimmy Akin has a good roundup of Lenten information.

I have also changed one of my top graphics to this.

Now as for Lenten practices this year I have decided to give up giving up things for Lent. Well actually I have thought of some really good modern practices to give up that could be quite penitential.

• Switching from broadband to dial-up
• Turning off your popup-blocker
• Turning off your spam filter
• Not fast-forwarding through commercials on programs you have recorded on a DVR.
• Watching CNN

Though I am not spiritually advanced enough for these severe penances. But I am only half joking about turning of the spam filter. It use to be that when I woke up in the morning and found a lot of comment spam on my blog I would get pretty upset and even at times unleashed an expletive or two more appropriate for when I was a sailor. I contemplated what circle of Hell spammers deserved and devised appropriate tortures in my head. Knowing that this was a fault I started directing prayers towards the spammers instead as I deleted their offerings. Now I don’t look forward to this deletion ritual, but at least now there is no anger involved. Amazing what prayer and grace can do. If St. Terese can pray for a murderer maybe even a spammer is worth some effort on our parts.

Being that Lent in English means spring I think that is quite appropriate. Instead of spring cleaning we are engaged in Lenten cleaning. Everyday you have to clean up your house, but during spring cleaning extra effort is made to clean deeper and to throw out all the junk that has accumulated. Exactly what we should also do in Lent. To look at those faults that need some extra attention and scrubbing and to work on tossing out those distractions that have accumulated and to give them the heave ho. It is great to toss out this junk, but it is not just to make room for the addition of even more junk. The negation of Lent is to really make more room for Christ.

Spiritual reading is always a great disinfectant for Lent cleaning. Happy Catholic and The Anchoress both have reading lists of what they will be turing their attention to. One of the things I love about the Catholic faith is the inexhaustibility of the spiritual reading available. Even if you could read every book, so many deserve repeated readings. I read a lot of the classics during my entry into the faith. Though much of it was like a first grader reading college level material. So I am looking forward to re-reading some of those same books again.

One will be To Know Christ Jesus by Frank Sheed. I remember Frank Sheed once saying in effect that to be a good apologist you need to get soaked in the Gospels. Whether you are an apologist or not this is great advice and what all Christians should aspire to. He obviously took his own advice because this book is soaked with the Gospel and the spiritual insights in it are not just dry apology, but deep spiritual reading.

Another book is Thomas A. Kempis’ On the Passion of Christ: According to the Four Evangelists : Prayers and Meditations. Yes he wasn’t just a one hit wonder with the Imitation of Christ.

Fr. Dubay’s Fire Within: St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, and the Gospel-On Prayer. I remember first seeing a series by Fr. Dubay some years ago on EWTN where he talked about these two great saints. His descriptions of contemplation and that it was not just something for those in religious life really sparked an interest in me. Coming from the desert of atheism the idea of knowing and loving God more is obviously desirous. I really thank Fr. Dubay for introducing me to the these two great Carmelite doctors and for prompting me to read their works. I especially love St. Teresa of Avila for both her wit and ability to explain deeply spiritual ideas in easier to understand language. Maybe one day Carmelite spirituality might actually start rubbing off on me (I can hope), though maybe I need to read "Contemplation for Dummies" first. I would like to change the name of this blog to the Contemplative Jester, but Curt is still way to accurate.

So I wish you all success in your Lenten cleaning and your making more room for Jesus!