Afghanistan: Marines and Holy Mass

On Weasle Zippers, one of the best names eh-vur, have a look at some photos of US Marines on the job.  Scroll down to find a photo of …

Navy priest Lt. Carlos Davantes holds up a communion wafer as he delivers a Catholic Mass for several U.S. Marines from the 3/4 Infantry Battalion, at a small outpost in the Gereshk Valley, Helmand province, southern Afghanistan, Saturday, Aug. 20, 2011. Davantes travels constantly, as do U.S. military clergy of all major faiths, to serve the faithful in remote parts of the Afghan war zone, where military access to places of worship is nonexistent.

Pray for chaplains and those they serve.

Posted in Just Too Cool | Tagged , , ,
8 Comments

Catholicon continues in Houston

Catholicon in Houston continues today. There was an EF Mass this morning. Now there are “Clare Camps”, breakout sessions, on use of tech and on content.

Fr Chris Decker is teaching now.

20110827-095732.jpg

Jeff Blackwell on audio production.

20110827-095942.jpg

20110827-100350.jpg

20110827-100404.jpg
The Catholic Underground set up:

20110827-101342.jpg
Live polling about media in parish life:

20110827-101630.jpg

20110827-101824.jpg

20110827-102143.jpg

Very often when I travel people say “What’s that?!” when I am working with a gadget. Today the roles are reversed! I am learning new things.

20110827-110311.jpg

20110827-110616.jpg

20110827-110716.jpg

20110827-111234.jpg
Fr Humphries on video production:

20110827-111647.jpg
An issue raised is USCCB putting a copyright on the Word of God, CCC, etc.

In other words: could they be driving people who want to use New Media to create content from, say, the Baltimore Catechism and Roman Catechism? The old Roman Missal instead of the new translation of the Novus Ordo?
Quaeruntur.

There was an apparition before Midday Prayer.

20110827-122015.jpg

20110827-043606.jpg
Think-tank is going on.

20110827-051107.jpg

Posted in New Evangelization, On the road, What Fr. Z is up to |
11 Comments

QUAERITUR: If and when disaster strikes you, do you have a plan?

During breakfast this morning I was watching the news about hurricane “Irene”… odd name for a hurricane… I guess the people who name these things don’t think about what names mean… “Irene” heading toward NYC.

This leads me to the question I occasionally raise for you readers.

If because of some imminent weather danger, impending social breakdown, or other disaster, you had suddenly to pick up and leave, to bug out, could you do it?  Do you have a plan?  Do you have some things set aside which you could simply pick up and then walk out the door and get out of Dodge?  This is a tough enough question for singles or young couples.  Have you thought about getting your children to safety?

Do you know where you will go?  Do you know what you will eat?  Will you have fresh water?  Can you stay warm and keep your loved one’s safe?

In the news coverage I saw a shot of a Manhattan grocery store’s bare shelves where bread had been.

Do you have a plan?

UPDATE:

PS.  If you are in the area affected by Irene and you know of someone who is sick or shut in, you might take a little time to check on them.

UPDATE:

[CUE IMPENDING DOOM DISASTER MOVIE SOUNDTRACK MUSIC]

Come to think of it, having to dash from home and drinking plain bottled water or purified water can be a little demoralizing.  How about some MYSTIC MONK TEA bags in your bug out bags?

Sure there might be a tornado out there, or ravening hordes of looters about to burn down your apartment block.   Why not chill with some Mystic Monk Coffee?

When disaster strikes, don’t be caught short!  Even when disaster doesn’t strike, have lots on hand.  The in-laws might show up!

Mystic Monk!

For the strength to fight off zombies!

[CUE PEACEFUL SOUNDING END OF DANGER WHEN EVERYONE IS RELIEVED BEFORE THE CREDITS MUSIC]

Posted in Global Killer Asteroid Questions |
25 Comments

160 million baby girls selectively aborted in Asia and East Europe in last decades

From CNA I share this.  You can read the rest over there.

Washington D.C., Aug 27, 2011 / 07:33 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Imagine waking up one day to find that every single woman in the U.S. has disappeared.

Picture this, writes author and scientific journalist Mara Hvistendahl, and you will come close to understanding the magnitude of over 160 million baby girls being selectively aborted in Asia and East Europe over the last few decades.

Already critically acclaimed since its release in June, Hvistendahl’s book, “Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys over Girls and the Consequences of a World Full of Men,” meticulously documents the phenomenon of “missing” girls and its dire implications for the future.

[…]

But I am sure pro-abortion Catholic VPOTUS Joe Biden fully understands how this can happen.

The are some pretty horrible scenarios that result from this ghastly selection, including a probable need to “correct” the imbalance in some… wholesale way.

Technology can be used for good things.  But it can also be used for evil.  What is lacking here is a proper view of humanity.

Posted in Emanations from Penumbras, Global Killer Asteroid Questions, The future and our choices | Tagged ,
5 Comments

Like Don Camillo? There’s an app for that.

Some of you may know that I have read many of Giovanni Guareschi’s Don Camillo stories in PODCAzTs.  I haven’t done any for a while, but they are in the archive and I will get back to them, I promise.

However,… if you would like to see some don Camillo clips from the movies … I can’t believe I am about to write this… there’s an app for that.

Yes, the world’s inventory is nearly complete when we can find iDonCamillo for our iPhones.

20110827-080422.jpg

Posted in Just Too Cool, Lighter fare | Tagged ,
5 Comments

A priest’s nightmare

This is horrific.  From the St. Catherine Standard.

Extorting $90,000 from priest earns jail time for Niagara man
By Peter Downs, Standard Staff
Updated 3 days ago

A Niagara Falls man who preyed on a Catholic priest’s fear of being falsely accused as a sexual predator will spend another eight months behind bars.

Robert Sammut, 46, was sentenced to 18 months in jail Monday in St. Catharines court. He has been in custody since his arrest last November.

An admitted long-time drug addict with more than 30 previous convictions on his record, Sammut pleaded guilty June 27 to extorting approximately $90,000 from a Niagara Falls priest.

Court previously heard Sammut didn’t know the priest, who cannot be named under a court-ordered publication ban, when he first approached him for money in the fall of 2009.

The priest gave him $30 after Sammut said he needed cash to help support his kids and also owed money to people who would hurt him if he didn’t pay up.

Court was told Sammut began approaching the priest regularly for handouts and eventually threatened him. By January 2010, he told the priest that if he didn’t give him cash, he would tell the police and the media he had been sexually abused by the priest.

Fearing his reputation would be ruined by the groundless allegation, the priest handed over dozens of payments of $150 to $200 over several months, court heard.

“In order to compel the priest’s generosity, he threatened the priest to come forward with false charges,” Judge Joseph Nadel said.

“Given the glut of fallen priests who have fallen prey to these venal acts, this priest feared he would be painted with their brush.”

The priest only went to police to tell them of the extortion after he had wiped out his personal savings, maxed out his credit cards and borrowed money from friends and the church to give to Sammut.

[…]

What. A. Nightmare.

Posted in SESSIUNCULA |
35 Comments

What do these words have in common: cathedraticum, dicastery, juridic, quinquennial, Referendary, Signatura, and vindicative

The Canonical Defender, Prof. Peters, at his excellent blog In The Light Of The Law, has this fun post:

Taking Microsoft to canon law school

This has never happened to me.

I’m typing away on a canon law paper, just as I’ve done scads of times before, when up pops a message from Microsoft Spell Checker. The message said something like “Microsoft has noticed an unusual number of words in your writing that are not part of the Speller Checker Program. Please review the list of unusual words that Microsoft has noticed and, if you want, click here to send these words anonymously to Microsoft for consideration for inclusion in future editions of Microsoft Speller Checker.”

Some of my unusual words were: cathedraticum, dicastery, juridic, quinquennial, Referendary, Signatura, and vindicative. Anyway, the message looked legit, so I figured, what the heck, and sent them in.

Here’s hoping that by doing so I’ll eventually save some poor blokes out there needless worry over spelling these terms correctly and maybe, along the way, broaden the horizons of some software programmer!

Update, 26 Aug: It happened again, this time for words like delictual, dimissorial, and sanated.

Posted in Just Too Cool | Tagged ,
11 Comments

Houston: Catholicon 2011 gets underway

20110826-025212.jpg

Posted in Just Too Cool, What Fr. Z is up to |
2 Comments

The music you listen to can rot your brain, make you stupider and kill your soul.

One of my philosophy profs, a former Marine DI, told us that if everything that goes into our brains has no or little relation to reality, then we can’t expect to produce good and rational results.  We will be, in fact, insane.  In Latin we would say purgamentum init, exit purgamentum.

Remember what Bp. Aquila of Fargo recently said about Catholic pro-abortion politicians?  Refresh your memory here.

Via Stella Borealis and Courageous Priest and ultimately EWTN comes this about the music you put into your head and heart.

Madrid,Spain,Aug 20,2011 / 07:51 am (EWTN News) -Bishop Samuel Aquila used one of his World Youth Day catecheses to urge young people to scrub “evil” music from their iPods.

Bishop Samuel AquilaBishop Samuel Aquila

“You need to look at the music you listen to and the words. Don’t fool yourself. It impacts upon you,” said the Bishop of Fargo, North Dakota,at his World Youth Day catechesis session on Aug. 19.

“There is good music out there that you can listen to,but there is also a lot of trash. And it is simply evil. It is the evil because it distorts the gift of human sexuality,the gift of sexual intimacy,the gift of human life.”

Bishop Aquila was talking to several hundred English-speaking pilgrims in the parish church of Virgen del Mar in the Madrid suburb of San Blas.

He told the youngsters how he was recently visiting a friend with two teenage sons who wanted to show him the music they had downloaded onto their cell phones. The title of one particular song grabbed the bishop’s attention.

“A few days later I read the lyrics of that song,and very honestly I was horrified,” he said. “The words used objectified women” and the woman the featured in the song “was very simply a toy for men and their sexual pleasure.”

Bishop Aquila said he’d then asked the two boys if they “would want your sisters’ boyfriends to treat them as the woman is being treated in that song?” That question “stopped the conversation completely,as these boys would defend their sisters to the hilt.”

He concluded by explaining to the young pilgrims that while the witness of a bishop can be effective,it was more important for young people to witness to each other when it comes to ditching “evil” music.

“Be not afraid to get rid of that sort of music from your iPods or your iPads or your iPhones or wherever you put that kind of music. And don’t be afraid to shut it off because it can play constantly in your head. Give witness to that.”

This morning’s catechesis session was only one of 220 being given in 27 languages all around Madrid.

The reaction to Bishop Aquila’s talk seemed overwhelmingly positive.

“I think that it’s important for the youth to hear what he said about music,because that sort of music is all over the place,it’s infected many levels,even young kids are listening to this stuff,” said 17-year-old Sean Palmer from Philadelphia.

“So it’s important that Catholics lead the charge and show the world what music is right and what music should be avoided because it affects our subconscious in ways we sometimes don’t realize,” Palmer said.

His friend,17-year-old Andrew Parrish also from Philadelphia,agreed,saying that “music is really language and it can be used to express beautiful things or things that aren’t so beautiful.” He added,“it was important to hear that message from Bishop Aquila because you don’t hear it that often.”

Posted in "How To..." - Practical Notes, Our Catholic Identity, The Drill, The future and our choices | Tagged , , , ,
61 Comments

CDF speculations

You might want to have a look at the intrepid Andrea Tornielli’s article in La Stampa (in English) about the proximate need for a a new Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.  Card. Levada is coming to the end of his term.

Tornielli tosses out some names.  I guess he had to.  There is, however, the possibility that the Holy Father will keep Levada in that post.  After all, he himself, who longed to retire and write, was kept in place by John Paul II.

Pius XII was his own Prefect for the Holy Office, by the way.

In any event, lots of people are speculating about who would be the perfect prefect.

Posted in The Drill, The future and our choices | Tagged ,
23 Comments