With men, as men, about things that matter.
No passive aggression tonight!
I’m on my home turf this evening, at St Augustine’s in S. St. Paul, MN.
Happily I am here on the date of what has become a huge deal …
The Argument of the Month.
This is an event FOR MEN ONLY.
A speaker or two are invited and there can be debates. Serious hard hitting debates.
But first booze and cigars….
Then inside …. really unhealthy food and an address.
I am guessing about 500 men of all ages!
Raymond DeSouza is speaking tonight.
Sad day in Minnesota, by the way. Very sad.
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Wonderful! Hope the cigars are good. Sounds very civilized.
Hard to argue glugging a Guinness or puffing on a good Havana stogie but then considering the Gopher State’s newly enacted gay marriage law I might make an exception.
Ach sorry! We have Havanas here in Ireland. I believe they’re still prohibited in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave
Someday … Cubans here too. For now the cigars we do have are pretty good!
I send my prayers for the poor folk of MN. Please pray for me if the same thing happens in MI.
I wrote a longish post lamenting this day in Minnesota. Even mentioned that it was 100 degrees here today, after snowing here 10 days ago. The web page hung up on me when I tried to send it. I think the Holy Ghost only wanted me to rant in private. Nonetheless, it is a sad, sad day indeed . O tempora! O mores!
Looks like fun!
[Fun doesn’t begin to get at this. Every diocese needs a group like this.]
You were there too?? Ugh! I knew I should have gone…I was at a different event with Archbishop Nienstedt and Jeff Cavins, however. :( I sometimes work with Raymond de Souza here in the Diocese of Winona. He has been a wonderful blessing to the area!…when parishes actually let him in to speak…
And believe it or not, some of us women actually WANT gatherings like this for our menfolk! Enjoy your right to assemble . . . while it’s still legal..
Any other groups like this.
It would be nice to know to promote them.
At 500 guests, I guess this one did not need promoting.
Can’t say I’m eager to smoke a cigar or a pipe. I tried it once; I don’t get it. I don’t really get why anyone would intentionally inhale the equivalent of campfire smoke. [Your premise is faulty. It is decidedly not the equivalent of campfire smoke.] Whenever I wound up breathing or having eyes open with camp smoke around, my eyes or lungs protested. Sometimes both.
(Oh my! The anti-smoking fanatics will go berserk over this….)
I will admit though, I DO like the odor of a bunch of men smoking pipes or cigars. ..And I don’t necessarily object to someone smoking cigarettes nearby, so long as most of the smoke doesn’t come to me. Pipe smoke reminds me of my grandfather and/or the parish hall when I was little. Cigarettes, well, I wound up hearing almost as much useful stuff around the smoking cans when I was in the military as in meetings. *sigh* The good old days….
But I digress, sounds like lots of fun! Likely something I could really go for. Wish we had one here.
..Which raises an interesting question or three: How DID that one start? How many people did it take to start it? When? What did they need to do?
Don’t know if I’m able to do anything locally or not, but I guarantee it won’t happen if I or others make no effort to make it happen….
What q7swallows said x 2.
Get it before someone decides you can’t be “non-inclusive”.
It had been a few years since I last attended one of these AotM meetings (and I was the speaker). It is great to see how it has grown. I would say the crowd had doubled.
The initiative started small. Thanks to diligent work on the part of the organizers, it has flourished. Many have benefited as a result, both directly (by participation) and indirectly (because the men go back out into the world refreshed and strengthened in their Catholic identity).
This is definitely an exercise of hard identity Catholicism, rather than the soft and squishy kind we see peddled far and wide.
This parish has also had the Traditional Latin Mass for many years.
Coincidence?
Sad day indeed for the great state of Minnesota. On the bright side, statutes are easier to revoke than amendments are to repeal. In Wisconsin, and I think 28 other states, the state constitution was amended to prohibit same-sex marriage. Unfortunately, it’s probably too late to amend the U.S. Constitution but perhaps a movement can get started after the Supreme Court rules on this subject this summer.
Regarding beer, cigars and unhealthy food, I think they may be on the First Lady’s hit list! Enjoy while you can.
I am hoping that somewhere, either bacon or sausages were also involved?
And I love the occasional cigar! Most people do not know that they don’t have to be inhaled deeply to be enjoyed.
My sympathies to you in MN. We share the same shame in MD.
(I hope brats were on the menu! Mmmm.)
“Can’t say I’m eager to smoke a cigar or a pipe. I tried it once; I don’t get it. I don’t really get why anyone would intentionally inhale the equivalent of campfire smoke. [Your premise is faulty. It is decidedly not the equivalent of campfire smoke.]”
Technically, it depends on the nature of the campfire. It is very similar to burning leaves in one’s backyard, but not quite as similar to a wood/leave campfire. The best study of campfire particulates and components is Rogge, et. al’s study from 1999:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1465997299000483
Both cigarettes/campfires will create carcinogens, carbon monoxide, cyanide, assorted hydrocarbons, etc. Neither one is safe to inhale for long periods (with campfire being 12x more concentrated with 40x more biogenic activity than cigarette smoke). While smoking an occasional pipe or cigar is unlikely to kill you, those addicted, who must smoke large amounts per day, are at risk.
Sorry to rain on anyone’s parade, but science is science and wood science is an area I happen to have some expertise in.
The Chicken
As an inveterate reenactor and inhaler of campfire smoke… bah. I also enjoy my dear old briar pipes and the odd cigar. And I am very glad to see the kind of turnout at such an event. Congratulations!
Sorry regarding the situation in MN. Sad to see the Heartland going down that pathway.
A sad day indeed for this fourth generation Minnesotan. (Now aging in CA) If I read correctly, MN was the first to VOTE in gay “marriage.” The other eleven were by judicial activism.
Conference sounds great!
I’m not an advocate for habitual smoking. But I do doing something unhealthy (unhealthy food, cigars, pipes, being lazy for a day) once in a while is healthy. People need to relax and decompress and that’s ultimately health, provide it’s done in moderation.
I don’t know what it is but when I have some cigars with my fellow Catholic men, the caliber of the conversation is very high and we all leave wanting to repeat the evening in the near future.
Wonderful! We were fortunate to have Raymond de Souza speak at our Blessed Karl of Austria TLM & Conference at St. Titus Church in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, last month. Great speaker. The event was sponsored by the “Traditional Knights.” Photos and a brief report can be found here: http://knightsofcolumbuslatinmass.blogspot.com/2013/04/report-2nd-annual-blessed-emperor-karl.html
“Every diocese needs a group like this.”
Dale Ahlquist has remarked likewise–and yes, we women would like to see more of these events!
I think this is great.
This woman would appreciate some events like this for the womenfolk.
Teas, fashion shows, etc., aren’t bad in themselves.
They’re not intellectually stimulating, either. Catholic women need their own call to arms to adequately defend their communities and children.
[If I understand correctly, I think a women’s group is getting organized!]
For the ladies- Guiness goes well with chocolate, too!
Neat to hear it, Father Z. The turnout looks great for this event. My husband would love it!
If there were any debates of general interest, I’d love to hear a sequel to this post.
And prayers for the good people of MN. Sad times, indeed. Out here in CA, I look to states like MN to come to our cultural rescue.
“Neither one is safe to inhale for long periods (with campfire being 12x more concentrated with 40x more biogenic activity than cigarette smoke). ”
LOL! OK, I’ll bite, Chicken! I pulled up the link and saw a bit of analysis that referred to burning pine wood, but didn’t wish to spend $31 on the whole paper. Where did you get the numbers you cite? I’d be interesting in knowing also whether you see different concentrations of particulate matter in pine wood (a “soft” wood) vs oak or maple (both “hard” woods)?
Can’t say I ever had much knowledge of wood science per se, but I took a degree in atmospheric science, so I’m acquainted with the notions of ppm, particulate matter, and so on.
So a campfire might be MUCH more toxic for you than a pipe or cigar, huh?
OK, so, I”m going to have to risk annoying people for a minute:
Dad has been a moderately heavy smoker for most of my life, but made quite clear that I was NOT to get into the same habit. Given the odor I usually smelled from his cigarettes, I never had much cause to rebel against his direction.
So the one time I bothered to buy a pipe and some tobacco, I can’t say I necessarily did so eagerly.
I’ve often wondered though: If a person would want to smoke a pipe, could you suck in the breath only as far as the mouth, then blow out? Or do you really need to take it all the way into your lungs?
Not sure I like the idea of the latter. I rather like my lungs able to breathe thoroughly and I recall my college choir director having given a fellow choir member a hard time about his smoking habits.
I suppose someone could take this to be a really bad joke, but, how often could one smoke a pipe or a cigar before having trouble?
(Boy, Dad will NOT be happy with me if he ever finds out……!!)
“The initiative started small. Thanks to diligent work on the part of the organizers, it has flourished.”
Do they have a web site? It’d be interesting to e-mail the organizers and find out how they “done it”.