Cool photo of the Space Shuttle Atlantis transiting the Sun!
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“This blog is like a fusion of the Baroque ‘salon’ with its well-tuned harpsichord around which polite society gathered for entertainment and edification and, on the other hand, a Wild West “saloon” with its out-of-tune piano and swinging doors, where everyone has a gun and something to say. Nevertheless, we try to point our discussions back to what it is to be Catholic in this increasingly difficult age, to love God, and how to get to heaven.” – Fr. Z
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- The most evident mark of God’s anger and the most terrible castigation He can inflict upon the world are manifested when He permits His people to fall into the hands of clerics who are priests more in name than in deed, priests who practice the cruelty of ravening wolves rather than the charity and affection of devoted shepherds.
St. John Eudes
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“Until the Lord be pleased to settle, through the instrumentality of the princes of the Church and the lawful ministers of His justice, the trouble aroused by the pride of a few and the ignorance of some others, let us with the help of God endeavor with calm and humble patience to render love for hatred, to avoid disputes with the silly, to keep to the truth and not fight with the weapons of falsehood, and to beg of God at all times that in all our thoughts and desires, in all our words and actions, He may hold the first place who calls Himself the origin of all things.”
- Prosper of Aquitaine (+c.455), De gratia Dei et libero arbitrio contra Collatorem 22.61
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“He [Satan] will set up a counter-Church which will be the ape of the Church because, he the devil, is the ape of God. It will have all the notes and characteristics of the Church, but in reverse and emptied of its divine content. It will be a mystical body of the anti-Christ that will in all externals resemble the mystical body of Christ. In desperate need for God, whom he nevertheless refuses to adore, modern man in his loneliness and frustration will hunger more and more for membership in a community that will give him enlargement of purpose, but at the cost of losing himself in some vague collectivity.”
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- “The modern habit of doing ceremonial things unceremoniously is no proof of humility; rather it proves the offender's inability to forget himself in the rite, and his readiness to spoil for every one else the proper pleasure of ritual.”
- C.S. Lewis
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"But if, in any layman who is indeed imbued with literature, ignorance of the Latin language, which we can truly call the 'catholic' language, indicates a certain sluggishness in his love toward the Church, how much more fitting it is that each and every cleric should be adequately practiced and skilled in that language!" - Pius XI
"Let us realize that this remark of Cicero (Brutus 37, 140) can be in a certain way referred to [young lay people]: 'It is not so much a matter of distinction to know Latin as it is disgraceful not to know it.'" - St. John Paul II
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Recent Posts
- Your Sunday Sermon Notes – Quasimodo Sunday (and “Low” and “Thomas” and “Divine Mercy”)
- ASK FATHER: We can eat meat on Easter Friday, but do we have to do some other penance?
- ROME 26/3– Day 19: Claming up
- Nuns of Gower Abbey have a NEW music disc/download!
- St. Augustine on military service and prayer in time of war
- ROME 26/3– Day 18: Flowers!
- ASK FATHER: Can we eat meat on Friday in the Octave of Easter? (Hint: YES!)
- ROME 26/3– Day 17: Itadakimasu
- ROME 26/3– Day 16: chores
- From “The Private Diary of Bishop F. Atticus McButterpants” – 26-04-03 – Aftermath of foot washing
- ROME 26/3– Day 15: foods and views and shoes
- ASK FATHER: Can the “Dies Irae” be used in the Novus Ordo Requiem Mass? Wherein Fr. Z rants.
- ASK FATHER: Grounding for the “harrowing of Hell”
- From “The Private Diary of Bishop F. Atticus McButterpants” – 26-03-28 – A bold statement for foot washing
- ROME 26/3– Day 12-13-14: whew (lots of photos)
- Your Sunday Sermon Notes – Easter Sunday
- PASCHALCAzT 2026 – 47: Easter Sunday – Joy
- “He descended into Hell” – Notes on “The Harrowing of Hell”
- LENTCAzT 2026 – 46: Holy Saturday – The last indignity – UPDATED
- ROME 26/3– Day 11: Good Friday
- From “The Private Diary of Bishop F. Atticus McButterpants” – 26-04-01 – A scare
- 3 April: Feast of St. Richard of Chichester. A comment about science.
- LENTCAzT 2026 – 45: Good Friday – Christ and our moral suffering
- ROME 26/3– Day 10: Thursday in Holy Week
- ASK FATHER: 9 1st Fridays but how do Good Friday (April 3) and St. Joseph (May 1) impact that?
- LENTCAzT 2026 – 44: Holy Thursday – Why we eat the victim
- ROME 26/3– Day 09: Wednesday in Holy Week
- LENTCAzT 2026 – 43: Spy Wednesday of Holy Week
- Following years of abuse Knights of Malta to formally split with the Holy See
- ROME 26/3– Day 08: Tuesday in Holy Week
Let us pray…
Grant unto thy Church, we beseech Thee, O merciful God, that She, being gathered together by the Holy Ghost, may be in no wise troubled by attack from her foes. O God, who by sin art offended and by penance pacified, mercifully regard the prayers of Thy people making supplication unto Thee,and turn away the scourges of Thine anger which we deserve for our sins. Almighty and Everlasting God, in whose Hand are the power and the government of every realm: look down upon and help the Christian people that the heathen nations who trust in the fierceness of their own might may be crushed by the power of thine Arm. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. R. Amen.
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Dixitque Deus: “Fiat lux”. Et facta est lux … Dixit autem Deus: “Fiant luminaria in firmamento caeli” … Et factum est ita.
Ante creationem Dei, vere, humilimur.
I hope this wasn’t another costly photo op from the Obama administration.
;)
Fake! If the “shuttle” really ever made it past the atmosphere/sphere of fire, it would have crashed into the sphere of Mercury and been destroyed. Sorry, but Reason should triumph over this sort of sensationalistic nonsense. Cool, but…FAKE!
Why would it be fake? Looks like a high-magnification picture of the sun with the shuttle in the foreground. Compare the size of the shuttle with the radius of the sun and you can see that it is nowhere near the sun.
I thought the sphere of Mercury was repulsive in nature. In fact adjacent spheres must be of opposite polarity, otherwise the spheres would … aagag gagag g ggagag
BWAAAAH HAH HAH HAH HAH !!!!! BWAAAAAAAAH HAH HAH HAH !!!!
Yes, I’m afraid Mark is right. I bet it’s quite hot near the Sun. But let’s not forget that in heaven, God’s love for us is hotter than the damning fire in hell :-)
What’s that your captcha keeps having me type? Think then post? … the website said “The space shuttle’s silhouette was beautifully outlined by solar fire as Atlantis passed over central Florida.”
So the shuttle need not have been that close to the Sun, but that is cool though, it really gives you an idea of how God worked everything out so well!
In the Solar System’s biggest church, the deacon has to use transportation to get back from the ambo.
Lord you people are idiots. The shuttle never leaves low earth orbit. That is, it never gets closer to the Sun than the Earth is, which is 93 million miles. This is just a picture of the shuttle outlined against the sun as it passes overhead. Not fake. You probably also believe the Earth is flat and 6000 years old and astronauts did not land on the moon. Get an education.
Why would anyone doubt that the astronauts landed on the moon, as long as you stay on the near side, at least, because that way you don’t have to penetrate the sphere and you stay on the atmospheric side where you can breathe.
No one is claiming it got near the sun! There are at least 3 crystalline spheres between us and the sun that would stop it. At least, according to the cosmology endorsed by Holy Mother Church for 1600 years (which always believed the Earth was round, countrary to black legends). And 1600 years of tradition and the testimony of Aquinas and Dante and the likes is good enough for me. Otherwise we might as well allow innovations like communion on the hand. Golly, you arent telling us all you believe in all that Galileo and Copernicus nonsense!?! They were bigger heretics than Luther himself, in fact their heresy is where we get the infamous term “revolution”…
THAT is soooo neat! What a clever idea and great shot!
For those who thinks it’s fake…you know the moon avoids a collision with Mercury and manages not to burn up during those solar eclipses too…
Mark, my namesake: I honestly hope you are joking. All excisting space agencies have sent probes to the Sun, the Mercury and Venus. Probes have photographed the other side of the Moon and have flown by or orbited all others planets. New Horizons is on its way to Pluto. The solar system is quite traversable providing there is enough fuel available.
Saint Thomas Aquinas was a wise man and has much to say that is wise and should be taken to heart. However, his knowledge of space, like his contemporaries, was simply not accurate. Far from it.
Back on topic: this is a great photo. There is another one with the shuttle closing in on Hubble, taken by the same photographer.
When is the best time for an astronaut to land on the sun? Night time!
When I saw this picture, I thought, “Wow, I never before internalized how Big the Sun was.” Then I realized that, in this photo, the Shuttle is still 93,000,000 miles away from the Sun whereas the Shuttle is only 350 miles above us.
How immense is our God and how great His Creation!
Another similar great photo was taken some time ago.
The shuttle was getting closer to ISS, just passing through the sun: http://www.skynyx.fr/legault/iss_atlantis_transit.html