Here is a headline that doesn’t sound quite right.
A small, highly religious town in southwest Louisiana has finally gained the right to change their 666 area code, which they consider a stigma.
For 40 years the town of Reeves, La., has battled to change the phone prefix, but has failed at least four times, Mayor Scott Walker told The Associated Press.
But beginning this month, residents and businesses can apply to change their area code from 666 to 749.
This boils down to, this is a very, very religious community, Walker said, according to AP.
The town has three churches, two Bible and one Baptist, in a community with less than 450 homes.
This reminds me of another recent story.
The highway that stretches from Laredo to Duluth, Minn., has grabbed the attention of Christians across the country, including those in Austin.
Members of Christian groups along the I-35 corridor said the highway was mentioned in the Bible, and in order to fulfill a prophecy, it needs a little saving first.
According to Light The Highway, the worldwide movement is driving thousands to prayer on the interstate. Christians said the Old Testament’s book of Isaiah prophesizes I-35 will be the United States’ “Highway of Holiness.”
Isaiah 35:8 reads: “And a highway will be there; it will be called the Way of Holiness. The unclean will not journey on it; it will be for those who walk in that Way; wicked fools will not go about on it.”
“Everything we do, we want to make sure scripture is backing us up,” said Austin’s PromiseLand Church Pastor Charlie Lujan. “I-35 being Isaiah 35, it just matched.”
Friends don’t let friends use Sola Scriptura.
Recently in the news has been the story of the 69 year old pro-life man who was assaulted outside of an abortion clinic and knocked unconscious. Pro-lifers are not surprised that this is not getting reported on knowing the media bias. Though I am surprised to find out that the police interviewed the assailant and then let him leave.
Gerald in a post titled The "narrative of the transgendered" writes:
Deconstructionism is entrenched in Academia. Nothing is what it is, only a person’s "narrative" is true. Everything is a construct. Male and female ? Constructs imposed by society. Unfortunately, politicians like Schwarzenegger are either giving in to or promoting the ideology of these fiends. Because they hysterically bitch, people give in to their demands, hoping they’ll go away. Corporations are even more cowardly than politicians, since they can be hurt where it counts. These leftist enemies of society wield power far beyond their numbers. How else could one explain the absurd accomodation of the mentally ill "transgendered" people? If you think to yourself, "Man, I feel like a woman", you’re free to use the women’s restroom. After all, it’s your "narrative", "your truth" that counts, everything else is a societal "construct". This is niftily protected by the BS known as hate crime laws – federal, no less. Mind you, I don’t care if some dude looks like a lady, but you can’t convince me, under penalty of law, that it’s just as "normal". I never had a problem with tolerance, when it meant that you live and let live. But, nowadays, if you don’t accept that 2+4=666, you’re prone to be sent to the re-education camp. It is what Nietzsche called the Umwertung aller Werte – the "re-evaluation" of all values. In order for wrong to be right, right must become wrong.
And then goes on to link to an article in the Opinion Journal "Crossing Over:
What will prevent the 250-pound linebacker from deciding he wants to share the locker room with the cheerleaders?"
Which makes me wonder if people can be transgendered why not trans-race? I mean if biology lies and people who are biologically of one sex and feel that they are another sex can advance this position and seen as perfectly normal why can’t other equal positions be advanced without ridicule? Surely if something like XX and XY karyotypes mean nothing than the amount of melanin in your skin along with other physical racial characteristics also mean nothing if the person “feels” that they are of another race.
I wonder what would happen if someone applied for a minority scholarship at a university even though they were white and then said "I always felt I was a black man and never felt comfortable as a white man." Most likely they would be given directions to the latest psychiatric ward. Too bad they don’t apply the same common sense to those who think they are transgendered and the ridiculous idea that their biology lies. Though if President Clinton could be called the first "black president" by fellow liberals than why can’t others say they belong to some race other their own. Having a problem getting a job because of affirmative action? All you have to do is to find that you feel that you belong to a minority group currently favored by a quota.
In modern liberalism feelings always trump facts which is why those who have a mental illness and think they are transgendered don’t get treatment, but special treatment as a protected class.
Since I am current reading the outstanding biography of St. Thomas More by Peter Ackroyd (The Life of Thomas More) it is interesting to make a comparison between this saint and the saint who is celebrated today — St. Thomas Becket.
Interestingly they were both born within 20 yards of each other but a little over three hundred years apart. Both wore hair shirts under their fine clothing ,though Thomas More started doing this early in his life and Thomas Becket accepted the practice towards the end of their life. They both ended up being Load Chancellor and both ended up being martyred defending the rights of the Church against the King (Henry II, Henry VIII). In both cases this included defending the Primacy of Peter.
Though St. Thomas Becket is truly someone who grew in office. In the U.S. they refer to Supreme Court justices who become more liberal during their time on the court as growing in office, but Thomas Becket truly grew in office since he grew in holiness. No one would have pegged Thomas Becket as someone likely to be martyred earlier in his career. His appointment as the Archbishop of Canterbury was largely a political appointment with Henry II thinking he was stacking this position in his favor. Yet St. Thomas Becket became an ascetic and took his duties seriously and defended the Church against local control of the Church.
It has been reported that Henry II said "Who will rid me of this turbulent (or troublesome ) priest?" or something along that and his command was taken as authority to kill the Archbishop. You do wish there were more troublesome priests/bishops in England today that annoyed politicians.
Reading the Liturgy of the Hours this morning it reminded me of what the International Theological Commission said in their document this year "The Hope of salvation for infants who die without being baptised."
5. Secondly, taking account of the principle lex orandi lex credendi, the Christian community notes that there is no mention of Limbo in the liturgy. In fact, the liturgy contains a feast of the Holy Innocents, who are venerated as martyrs, even though they were not baptised, because they were killed on account of Christ. There has even been an important liturgical development through the introduction of funerals for infants who died without Baptism. We do not pray for those who are damned. The Roman Missal of 1970 introduced a Funeral Mass for unbaptised infants whose parents intended to present them for Baptism. The Church entrusts to Gods mercy those infants who die unbaptised. In its 1980 Instruction on Childrens Baptism, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith reaffirmed that: with regard to children who die without having received Baptism, the Church can only entrust them to the mercy of God, as indeed she does in the funeral rite established for them. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992) adds that: the great mercy of God who desires that all men should be saved [1Tim 2:4], and Jesus tenderness toward children which caused him to say: Let the children come to me, do not hinder them (Mk 10:14), allow us to hope that there is a way of salvation for children who have died without Baptism
On a quick trip to Rome a few weeks ago, I made it a point to visit the Gesu, the mother church of the Society of Jesus, and to pray for the Jesuits and their general congregation opening January 7. I found much of the church’s magnificent Baroque interior concealed by scaffolding set up for a housecleaning before that crucial event.
The symbolism couldn’t have been more apt. Just as the Gesu, in the historic heart of Rome, needed renovating, so does the Society itself. Rather than operating at the cutting edge of the Church, Jesuits in recent decades have fallen increasingly behind the times and, not unlike the Gesu, now stand in need of some serious renewing.
This is not an anti-Jesuit polemic. I am grateful for the education I received from the Society. Over the years I’ve known many Jesuits, and most have been and still are admirable men, loyal sons of the Church deeply devoted to the service of the people of God. Many have been, and still are, my friends. Yet as 217 Jesuits from around the world convene at the Society’s headquarters near St. Peter’s Square for the 35th general congregation in the order’s history, they face the challenge of not only electing a new General Superior but setting directions for a body in long-running crisis.
Business as usual won’t work. The Jesuits need an overhaul and they need it soon.
Numbers underscore the urgency. Forty years ago there were 35,000 Jesuits in the world. Now there are 19,000. The dropoff has been even steeper in the United States, where the Society counted over 8,000 members in 1965 and now has under 3,000.
…Two years ago Father Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, S.J., General Superior of the Society since 1983, announced that he would retire in 2008 when he turned 80. The delegates to the 35th general congregation have the task of choosing a successor and setting policy for the years ahead. People who care about the Jesuits should wish them much success. That’s what I prayed for at the Gesu when I was there.
The problem with so many religious orders and what is evident with the Jesuits that instead of refocusing on their orders charism and jettisoning what gets in the way of it they also jettisoned essentials. It is like the old comedies taking place on a train where pieces of the train are taken apart to feed the boiler and everything else is thrown over the side to keep it moving. Vatican II’s Perfactae Caritatis called for a "constant return to the sources of all Christian life and to the original spirit of the institutes" not throwing the surrender flag to modernity.
Unfortunately Jesuits being faithful to the Magisterium are the exceptions and not the rule, but I certainly do hope and pray that an election of a new General Superior of the Society can help them return to the Jesuits of old that will take their charism into the modern world in a more faithful way.
The questions is will they elect someone who realizes just how far the Society has fallen or someone that will say the parrot is not dead. The current Jesuit General had this to say in an interview this year.
In recent years, the Society of Jesus has seen a drop in candidates for the novitiate. What are the reasons?
Sometimes we forget that a religious family is, in a happy expression of the Second Vatican Council, a gift of the Spirit to the church. The church cant be the church without clergy and laity, but it can be church without religious life in its present form. The church lived for centuries without the Jesuits! Religious families are born and they disappear, not because they did something wrong, but because the church requires other gifts to meet other needs of the people of God. The simple fact that today a young man who wants to put himself at the service of the church doesnt necessarily have to choose between the seminary and the novitiate, but can also find his mission in one of the new ecclesial movements that are also a gift of the Spirit, changes the whole context of consecrated life.
To quote Monty Python once again "What are you going to do? Bleed all over me." Talk about denial.
Over the years, youve handled delicate relationships between some Jesuit theologians and the Vatican. What are the necessary limits, and whats the space for welcoming a plurality of theological reflection in the Society?
[Theology] unfolds today in a nervous atmosphere of conflicts and polarization, in which everything is immediately classified as either right or left, as conservatism or progressive thought. Even a constructive critique by a theologian, based on deep competence, pastoral concern and discernment born in prayer, runs the risk of being taken up by the mass media in a partial fashion (either unwittingly or deliberately) in order to turn it into front-page news. On the other hand, the church cant renounce its right, and its duty, to protect the faithful against errors or possibly erroneous interpretations of a given theological work, even if its valid in itself. In this context, which at first blush can seem discouraging, its important to be grateful for so many theologians among them, not just a few Jesuits who provide the church the indispensable service of positive, clear and creative theological reflection, which serves the greater good of the whole church in its socio-cultural diversity.
No wonder that out of the really small number of theologians that have been investigated by the CDF, four of them have been Jesuits. You also get the feeling the Jesuit theologian he is praising are not in the mode of Cardinal Dulles, S.J. May the next "Black Pope" have a lot firmer ideas about both the charism of their founder and an understanding of the problems.
From a CNS article
As for Pope Benedict’s use of older, much taller miters, Msgr. Marini said they are a sign of how the church moves forward in history without ignoring or forgetting its past.
“Just as in his documents, a pope cites the pontiffs who preceded him in order to indicate the continuity of the church’s magisterium, so in the liturgical sphere, a pope uses the vestments and sacred furnishings” of previous popes, demonstrating a continuity in prayer, he said.
I wonder how in the world anybody at a Catholic High School would think it would be a good idea to rent out their gymnasium for a Sen. Obama campaign stop. But Newman Catholic High School in Mason City, Iowa must have thought so. Here is a senator as pro-abortion as they come who as a state senator did what he could to block a Illinois state version of the born alive infants act. He voted to block the partial birth abortion ban and is in favor of embryonic stem-cell research. He is also in favor of homosexual marriage. So you have a Senator in favor of not only abortion but infanticide once the child is born and yet he is allowed to boost his campaign at a Catholic High School.
Though I am also not in favor of any candidates at any level of office speaking either in Catholic churches or Catholic schools.
As a side note I do wonder what the Obama banner covers up on the knight’s shield and especially wonder if it might be a cross?
One of the nice side effects of becoming Catholic is that I have opened up my reading horizons. Most often I would read from SF and Fantasy, then with a smattering of military fiction, horror, suspected novels, and an occasional mystery and perhaps whatever might catch my eye in the new book stack at the library. Since my conversion I have opened up to a much wider world of literature based on recommendations from other Catholics.
I just finished In This House Of Brede by Rumer Godden and I was just about stunned at how good of a novel this is. The story takes place in a made-up Benedictine abbey in England as a career women finds she has a vocation and leaves her successful career behind her to become a nun. This book is certainly no pious stereotype of perfect contemplative nuns, but instead a book that reads more like an autobiography than a novel. The characters in the story are so real that you forget you are reading a novel. From the abbess down to the novices each person described could easily find their counterpart in real life.
Rumer Godden who his the author os some sixty books wrote this book after her conversion to Catholicism and spent three years living outside of a Benedictine abbey researching for this book. Her research certainly pays off because there is such an authenticity to her description of the Benedictine life and the struggles among the nuns to grow in holiness. There is also much wisdom in the book given as advice among the nuns that shows the author must have had a very deep understanding of living the spiritual life. The prose in the book is just a joy to read and there were many points where I dog-eared a page to be able to go back to something that was written. This is something that I pretty much never do with fiction. At one point she explains to one of her subordinates about being enclosed in the abbey.
"Enclosed?" this unfamiliar word seemed to ring in Penny’s ears. "You mea-shut up?"
"Not shut up. The walls are not to keep us in but to keep you out."
"But why?"
"An enclosed order is like a kind of power house, " said Mrs. Talbot. "A powerhouse of prayer; you protect a power house not to enclose the power, but to stop unauthorized people getting in to hinder its working."
This book being written in the aftermath of the Vatican Council you also get some of the feel in the abbey of some of the whirlwind of changes that were affecting religious life, though you only get the feel of this towards the very end of the book. But you certainly get the idea that the author was less than pleased with some of the changes for change sake made. One of the nuns laments and dreads the idea of the priest praying Mass facing the community saying it will be as if the priest is giving a performance and not leading us to God as he faces the altar. Though the majority of the book does not give in to criticisms but the daily life and difficulties of these nuns in community.
This is a great novel from a wonderful writer and one I look forward to reading more of.
Julie from Happy Catholic has been reading from another of the author’s books called China Court. Julie got permission to read this on her Forgotten Classics podcast even though the book is still in copyright. Check it out here .