In the swampy Hell Hole that was St. Paul Seminary in the 1980s Fr. Z and Fr. Robert Altier were classified as the Alpha and Omega. He endured persecution … to his present point, not a little from cowardly bishops. I endured my persecution…. …. ….
Whereas I was hammered in subsequent years because of what I wrote (mostly), Fr. A got hammered by what he preached in the pulpit (mostly).
If they aren’t shooting at you, you aren’t over the target. (Which sort of makes some particular bishops into the enemy, but I digress.)
Here is Fr. Altier’s sermon for this 16th Sunday after Pentecost at St. Augustine’s in S. St. Paul (where I was supposed to go before the powers that be pulled a fast on and at the last minute sent me to a blankity blank blank pastor who had orders to tear me down).
Some day I may write my memoirs. Until then, listen to this. I think you will want to share it.
Yes, I have found that the first step to my acceptance of who I am as a woman is to dress like a woman. The first step is to wear dresses and skirts, every day, it matters in how I see myself, how I comport myself, and protects me from doing things that would draw me into behaving like a man. It matters way more than I ever imagined. My husband did not care what I wore, but I saw it was important and so I made the decision to dress accordingly……now he sees what a difference it makes and my sons have thanked me for accepting this discipline because they have told me it makes our home more peaceful and they notice how chaotic it is outside our home by seeing women not only in manly clothes, but quite frankly without much clothing at all, even supposed Catholic women. If women knew how much it meant to the men in their lives to dress modestly, womanlike and beautifully, maybe they would choose it. But more and more women have hearts of stone and not flesh and blood. Too bad that.
I’ve heard Fr Altier’s sermons many times at an alternate venue. Good to be able to connect a name and face with the voice.
I listen to Fr. Altier’s sermon essentially daily and have for a long time. I dress like a girl! Always in skirts or dresses for Holy Mass.
Although I love what Fr. Altier had to say about the God-designed role of women, and the power they have to bring immense good into the world, I fear the demon has control of the levers of global power and is using them to degrade and destroy mankind on a worldwide scale. I believe this latest case regarding the lady who killed her three children is the beginning of the psyop to decriminalize, if not legalize, infanticide. And given the massive success they seem to have had in the past with changing culture using psyops, such as feminism, homosexuality, transgenderism, they will more than likely succeed.
The only more horrific thought than this is to consider what things human society still considers abhorent, and realize they will eventually get around to forcing public acceptance of those as well.
God help us.
Thank you Father Z for posting this; I have sent it out to my “email-blog” distribution list, which I copy below as a statement of how good I think your friend’s homily was.
*****
Fr Zuhlsdorf’s— whose notes I often quote and/or send around— included a “Sunday Mass homily” from a priest-friend of his as one entry in his today’s blog. The homily is long— more typical to Sunday-homilies as they were in my youth—and it is stunning in its consistent, relevant message-clarity. I am overwhelmed with the beauty of its clear truth, able to be seen for the exceptional quality of his serious-but-loving delivery
I don’t often say about long videos— this one is ~25 Minutes— that you need to listen to it all; this time I do. PLEASE do!
Whereas pieces of it may sound familiar, some even pedantic/a bit-over-detailed (esp the first ~7 minutes), EVERY part of this is serves the whole, each piece referring back to earlier parts and also moving to new ways of telling its truth. A great speaker, with a superb oral lesson—such always need repeats— and very specific to the day’s evils that all need to hear, esp Christian believers.
For that is the ONLY way— Christ: putting Christ at the center of our lives (as you will remember from my ACTS XXIX notes and those following) —that we will save ourselves and our children and theirs with HIS help, saving both in this life—and we still may fail for a time in that saving for how bad we have let things get— but we MUST get it right before the next life; we had best NOT fail at that.
Thank God for my wife – she got this message early on in our marriage. From that point forward, she always and only dressed as a lady (skirts, dresses), and raised our daughters the same way. It’s ingrained as a part of who they are, and I believe it’s made a tremendous difference.
I’m a little dismayed that so many girls at even “conservative” Catholic colleges will wear dresses to dances and classes but switch to shorts or jeans the first chance they get. While I can understand why the colleges aren’t strict in enforcing their published dress codes (it is, after all, a business), but it’s depressing to me that this lessons seems to be understood only superficially by so many.
Hit the nail on the head. Thank you Father for posting this.
Dear WVC,
You wrote:
I’m a little dismayed that so many girls at even “conservative” Catholic colleges will wear dresses to dances and classes but switch to shorts or jeans the first chance they get.
I agree for the Humanities, but not for the Sciences. Safety protocols in labs have tightened over the years and require skin coverage and not wearing loose clothing. Most women did not take organic chemistry in the 1950’s. Today, there are more women than men in the classes (because more women are going into medicine). Many of these compounds are skin absorbed. Some women wear burkas, and this creates a fire hazard because of all of the extra combustible material. It’s the same with loose skirts and dresses, especially if they wear nylon hosiery, which is especially susceptible to acid attack. Same with nylon leggings. Shorts are bad for obvious reasons. Professors much prefer jeans on all students (or flight suits, which are even better).
The Chicken
These days there are women’s pants and shorts that are made for women, ergo they are women’s clothes and perfectly fine to wear depending on the occasion!
@Chicken
I concur and am all for safety protocols. My concern is actually about the time outside of classes, when many of the girls seem to immediately revert back to shorter than it would seem is necessary shorts and jeans.
To be fair, I’m also not a fan of guys wearing shorts, either.
The awful news story he mentions underscores the necessity of federal laws designed to protect life at every stage, from conception until natural death. I’m convinced that a society cannot experience peace until life at every stage is treasured, respected and protected. The most vulnerable lives need the most protection: the very young and the elderly. A culture simply cannot know what it is to love when people are able to kill their own offspring in the womb or allow the elderly to be killed. That is simply not human and it needs to stop. Any culture that cannot see these truths has basically gone insane and laws are the only way to get things back on track.
The culture also ought to consider how our clothing and “fashions” have contributed to the downfall of societal norms. How have the changes in our everyday dress shifted desires for new and different roles and how can the wrong clothing cause a sense of dissatisfaction with who God made us to be? Clothing tells the world a little about who we are. It has the ability to influence behavior for better or for worse. Our clothing should reflect truths about our nature: that we are all made in God’s image and likeness and created either male or female. Everyone should aspire to dress well, fully aware of their dignity.
The fashion and clothing industries are making it difficult for women to dress well. The stuff that passes for “clothing” nowadays is outrageous. It’s immodest, cheap, poorly constructed, and often made from unnatural materials like plastic. Designers don’t need to have actual talent or any real knowledge of what styles are universally flattering and becoming on women or men. They don’t seem to care if everyone looks bad in their cheap clothing that needs replacing often, as long as they make plenty of profit. They produce stretchy, plastic, chemically-laden articles and people continually buy them up. They change the fashions to accommodate their inability to use quality natural materials. They hide the fact that they have no talented workers and try to sell immodest clothing because it’s easier to make. Clothes have become shorter and smaller because they are cheaper to sell and easier to make. Whatever happened to outfits being tailor-made to fit a particular person?
Society and individuals suffer when they wear immodest, ill-fitting clothes. Immodest dress brings a woman the wrong kind of attention and sends her down the wrong path in life. It’s no wonder women don’t know how to behave anymore: they have never been taught how to dress appropriately. When they aren’t dressing like ladies they won’t get treated like ladies and therefore won’t behave like ladies. The fashion industry produces variations of uncomfortable plastic wetsuits and expects everyone to feel good about themselves. It’s unbelievable.
So many don’t have a clue about style or what looks good. And so many just don’t care. There is a severe lack of talent and knowledge all around that is at the root of it and it’s super frustrating to witness. When the fashions are corrupted, the people become corrupted.
Fix the failing fashion and clothing industries and bring some real style, life and virtue back to society. Educate people on how to dress with class and style by producing garments that are of a higher standard. The cheap immodest stuff out there should be shunned. Then see what happens. My prediction is that a whole lot of filth will disappear and life will begin to be cherished and respected again.
By the way, I’ve read and heard that skinny jeans and the stretchy material used in leggings are not good for a woman’s fertility. I’m pretty sure that’s done on purpose.
Fr. Altier’s homilies are posted daily on YouTube under the name Catholic Parents Online, and they are excellent. I frequently have my children listen to them, or listen myself as I work, because he has such a gift for preaching.