For your “Just Too Cool” file, I direct your attention to Astronomy Pic of the Day and a viewing of …
… The Spectre of Veszprem.
This truly is just too cool!
Want an explanation? Of course you do.
This is a phenomenon called The Glory or Heiligenschein or the Specter of the Brocken!
Want more? Go HERE
Do any of you know of a site where someone has compared, side by side, the readings or “pericopes” for both the Extraordinary and the Ordinary Forms of the Roman Rite, for the whole liturgical year?
That is to say, I am wondering if there is a chart somewhere where you can see the correspondence of the readings. As in, the pericope Matthew 16:13-20 appears on the 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A as well as (more or less the same) appears in the 1962 Missale Romanum on Sts. Peter and Paul.
I found the Scripture Index of Gospel Readings, 1962 Missale Romanum as well as the Scriptural Index of Chants and Readings in the Missale Romanum(1962), but that seems to require, to download, a subscription that I don’t have. (Anyone?)
CLARIFICATION: It would be good at least to have this side by side chart of correspondence for SUNDAYS at least. That would be the most useful.
I saw something in a TV segment while doing some chores in the Steam Pipe Distribution Center about the show hosts’ favorite “One Hit Wonders”.
You know what those are, right? Some artist has one big hit and is virtually never heard from again.
So… what are yours?
Off the top of my head, I can think of…
And as a runner up, just because I heard it recently when I watched Kung Fu Panda:
Digression on Kung Fu Fighting. I was once asked me via email what comic book character I most identified with.
Well… since my favorite as a kid was Superman, I’d have to say Superman. After all, your Earth’s Yellow Sun has been pretty good to me. But I can also absolve and consecrate. Take THAT, Superman!
That said, even though I didn’t grow up on the Marvel side of things – for the world is divided into Marvel people and DC people – I’d have to go with a combination of Wolverine and Po the Panda.
Wolverine, because someone quipped about me that I am the best at what I do, but what I do sometimes isn’t very nice. Po, because I need to lose weight, I did Karate for years, I wear black and white, I have a thing for good Chinese food, I screw up massively all the time, the people I beat up aren’t really hurt, and, in the end, things seem to work out okay.
ORIGINAL: Aug 19, 2014 @ 12:02
Something both funny and serious at the same time.
A HuffPo reporter at Ferguson, MO spotted some foam earplugs on the ground and thought they might be rubber bullets. I think he was probably eager to report how the violent police officers using excessive force on the crowds were making matters worse. That’s my guess, at least. This was a HuffPo guy, after all. To be fair, he did ask for a confirmation. But, yes, I think his eagerness lead him astray.
Anyway, the Twittersphere went after this poor guy with some benign mocking. You can find tweets HERE Some of them are pretty funny, if you want a chuckle.
At the same time, in a more serious vein, I am amazed at how anti-gun folks (yes, I am making an assumption that the HuffPo guy is probably not on board with the 2nd Amendment… I hope I am wrong) are so ignorant about gun-issues. That’s a problem, especially when they are reporters.
Moreover, you don’t have to be into guns to know what earplugs are. Right?
A sample of the Twitter reaction. More HERE
UPDATE 22 August:
As a follow up, the legendary Jerry Miculek explores whether or not ear plugs can be fired as “rubber bullets”. He even shows a real rubber bullet. There is some good slow motion video.
The Obama Administration’s war on religion continues unabated.
From Catholic News Agency:
Obama administration announces new HHS mandate rules
Washington D.C., Aug 22, 2014 / 10:33 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Department of Health and Human Services issued on Friday new rules regarding its contraception mandate, after the Supreme Court ruled against its application to certain companies this summer.
The rules create a new way for non-profit groups to state their objections to the required coverage, prompting their insurance company to pay for their employees’ contraceptives. For closely held for-profit companies such as Hobby Lobby, the federal department said it is asking for ideas on how to extend the same accommodation being offered to non-profits.
Friday’s news rules deal with the federal contraception mandate – issued under the 2010 Affordable Care Act – which requires employers to offer health insurance covering contraception, sterilization and some drugs that can cause early abortions.
The mandate has been met with controversy since its introduction, leading to more than 300 lawsuits from individuals and groups who say that it forces them to violate their religious beliefs.
For non-profits, the newly-issued rules “lay out an additional way for organizations eligible for an accommodation to provide notice of their religious objection to providing coverage for contraceptive services,” the Health and Human Services department stated Aug. 22.
Previously, religious groups were instructed to sign a form voicing their objection to the coverage, which would authorize their insurer or a third-party administrator to pay for the products.
Many religious groups had objected to this arrangement, saying that it still required them to violate their religious beliefs by authorizing an outside organization to pay for the products they found to be immoral.
The new rule announced Friday allows these non-profit groups to notify the Department of Health and Human Services of their objections. The federal government will then contact insurers and third party administrators to provide the coverage.
The non-profit rule goes into effect immediately, although it is an “interim final rule,” meaning that it is open to comments from the public and has not yet been finalized. [“interim final rule”…]
Regarding closely held for-profits, such as Hobby Lobby, HHS said it is asking for comments on how it might extend to them “the same accommodation that is available to non-profit religious organizations.”
“The proposal seeks comment on how to define a closely held for-profit company and whether other steps might be appropriate to implement this policy.”
Friday’s announcement is the latest in a series of revisions to the controversial mandate. While the mandate includes a narrow religious exemption for houses of worship and their affiliated organizations, many faith-based groups – such as soup kitchens, hospitals and schools – do not qualify for the exemption because they are not affiliated with a specific house of worship.
[…]
Read the rest there.
Meanwhile, a reaction from the President of the USCCB, Archbp. Kurtz of Louisville.
Archbishop Kurtz Provides Initial Response To Revised HHS Mandate Regulations
Disappointed that regulation will not expand exemption, only modifies ‘accommodation’
Extending ‘accommodation’ to exempted businesses reduces religious freedom
More thorough study and detailed comments to comeWASHINGTON–Today, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that it is issuing an additional set of interim final rules to implement its requirement that health plans, including employer-sponsored plans, provide for sterilization, contraception, and drugs that can cause an abortion. In response, Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz of Louisville, Kentucky, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), provided the following statement:
“The Administration is once again revising its regulations on the HHS mandate. We will study the regulations carefully and will provide more detailed comments at a later date. In keeping with our practice, we will evaluate the regulations according to the principles set forth in ‘United for Religious Freedom,’ a March 2012 statement of the USCCB Administrative Committee that was later affirmed unanimously by the body of bishops at the General Assembly of June 2012.
“On initial review of the government’s summary of the regulations, we note with disappointment that the regulations would not broaden the “religious employer” exemption to encompass all employers with sincerely held religious objections to the mandate. Instead, the regulations would only modify the “accommodation,” under which the mandate still applies and still requires provision of the objectionable coverage. Also, by proposing to extend the “accommodation” to the closely held for-profit employers that were wholly exempted by the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Hobby Lobby, the proposed regulations would effectively reduce, rather than expand, the scope of religious freedom.”
From a reader:
We are trying to help make a very reverent Ordinary Form mass. Any suggestions?
We thought Ad Orientem and Sung Propers might be a good start! Any other suggestions?
Right off the bat, we can all improve our own participation at every Mass by being in the state of grace. So, GO TO CONFESSION.
We have to start with ourselves.
Yes, you are on track with ad orientem worship. For you new arrivals here, ad orientem, “facing toward the (liturgical) East”, places the priest and the congregation on the same side of the altar, so that they are both oriented in the same direction, “toward the Lord”. The great liturgist Klaus Gamber considered that the turning about of altars (which Vatican II did NOT call for) was the single most damaging things done to Mass in the name of Conciliar “reform”. With good catechesis, this can be accomplished. It’s fruits are manifold.
Yes, you are on track with sung propers. We must use the actual prayers of Holy Mass, the propers, that is, those antiphons and so forth which are provided in the Roman Missal.
I also suggest
Perhaps the most helpful thing, which might also bring about some of the points I list above, would be to provide funding for Father to go to a workshop to learn the older, traditional form of the Roman Rite. The good canons at St. John Cantius in Chicago and the FSSP in Denton, NE, have effective workshops.
I’ll say this several ways, to get the point across. The way Father says Mass is going to be a significant factor in the reverence of the people who attend. The manner in which Father says Mass has a knock-on effect. The priest’s ars celebrandi will have a lasting effect on the way people in the congregation participate.
Father’s own approach to his role must, per force, expand outward into everyone’s overarching perception of the sacred. Heightened awareness of the sacred will prompt recognition that there are sacred things, people, times and places. A church is a sacred place. We must not behave in church in the same way we behave in our living room or at a public swimming pool.
If Father is a rube and celebrates Mass as if he were David Letterman, if the music is unworthy of a circus calliope, if the vestments, vessels, decorations, gestures betray the premise that what is being done there isn’t about the transcendent in contact with the human, but rather is all about the horizontal, the human merely, then… good luck with decorum and reverence in church!
If you want greater reverence, work on yourselves and then help Father to learn the older form. My experience is that once a priest learns, or relearns, the traditional Roman Rite, his way of the Novus Ordo changes markedly. He has a greater awareness of who he is as a priest at the altar. That, in turn, has an effect on everyone involved.
When I was at the recent Napa Institute Conference, we were offered an early screening of the new movie with Jim Caviezel called When The Game Stands Tall. I wrote at that time:
I saw an advance screening of a movie with Jim Caviezel,When The Game Stands Tall. The name is a bit odd, but it explains itself along the way. This is a new contribution to a well-established genre, the high school football movie. It is based on a true story of Catholic De Lasalle Highschool, which had a football team winning streak of – I am not making this up – 151 games.
The coach’s desire was to bring out of all the boys a perfect effort, not necessarily a win, and, thereby, help them become men.
The movie is, in an over-arching way, formulaic – as true stories often are, you know. Man remains the same, fallen and risen. So, the winning team has a crisis they have to overcome and they find themselves along the way. The coach has a crisis, and he has to figure out being both a coach and a husband and father. There is a moment of truth (involving – yes – a football game). Sound familiar? It ought to.
But this movie does it well. A while back I watched a similar movie, made by Evangelicals from a big church in Georgia (US not Asia). Same basic common themes, but will overt Evangelical “Bible only” … well… thumping… and not a little prosperity Gospel stuff tossed in for good measure. This new movie is not overtly Catholic. Though it is at a Catholic Highschool, there is no cleric involved. The only church scene is in a baptist church. Scripture verses figure a couple times, and prominently and appropriately. You see the players at prayer twice (I think) and, that, the Lord’s Prayer. So, this is not in-your-face Catholcism. But, the world-view in the movie seemed Catholic to me.
The concept of the team promoted by their coach seemed to be founded on sacrificial love: seek that which is good for the other, not just for oneself. Make a perfect effort.
ACTION ITEM! I hope that, [now that the release date as arrived], you will, in your parishes and groups, promote the film and even organize trips to the theater as groups to see it early in its release.
This would be great for a parish father/son event, for a trip to the movies with the parish’s altar boys, and young men.
We have seen some films, and pretty ones – all things considered – from Evangelicals, Facing The Giants. They are trying to use this medium (film) to advance that which is dear to them. Watching the credits of the Georgia football movie blew me away, as I saw dozens and dozens of people and organizations and businesses that contributed to the effort, which was, effectively, a parish initiative… to make a movie. Get that? Could your parish make a movie?
Here is the trailer for the new Caviezel film:
ALSO… see what I wrote about the new movie The Giver. HERE
I wonder how many Imams have called the Foley family to express sorrow and to distance themselves from the Caliphate?
From ZENIT:
Pope Francis Calls Parents of James Foley
Pope Francis has called the parents of James Foley, the American journalist who was killed by the Islamic State (ISIS).
In an email to ZENIT, Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi confirmed that the Holy Father telephoned John and Diane Foley. Although no details were given as to what was said in the conversation, Fr. Lombardi confirmed that the “call took place [on Thursday] evening.
The world was horrified as a video surfaced of the journalist’s beheading at the hands of a terrorist from the Islamic State. According to the video, the murder was in retaliation to recent military action taken against ISIS.
ISIS currently has one known journalist, Steven Sotloff, still hostage and have threatened to murder him depending on US President Barack Obama’s next move.
During a press conference on his return flight from South Korea, Pope Francis emphasized that while an unjust aggressor, like ISIS, must be stopped, it must take a united effort among nations.
“One nation alone cannot judge how to stop an unjust aggressor,” he said. “After the Second World War there was the idea of the United Nations. It is there that this should be discussed. Is there an unjust aggressor? It would seem there is. How do we stop him? Only that, nothing more.”
Prayers are needed.
At The Spectator there is a must read piece by Damian Thompson for anyone who is puzzled about what Pope Francis may be up to, especially in regard to the Roman Curia.
Here is an excerpt with my emphases:
[…]
As a Latin American who didn’t know his way around Rome when he became pope, he approaches the Curia as an outsider. That is why the cardinals elected him. They did not imagine that this previously austere figure, who even as a prince of the church travelled on buses dressed as a simple priest, would turn on the charm for journalists and become a global celebrity. (In Buenos Aires he rarely gave interviews.) But they did suspect that he would kick the living daylights out of Vatican politicians who seal sleazy deals with Italian businessmen while stuffing their faces with saltimbocca alla romana.
Last year Francis described his ‘court’ as ‘the leprosy of the papacy’. By ‘court’ he may have been referring to monarchical trappings — but employees of the Curia suspected that he was talking about them. For those good priests who found themselves trapped in a sclerotic bureaucracy it came across as a needless insult. ‘Morale is tremendously low,’ says a Vatican source. ‘And matters aren’t helped by Latin American clergy swanning around Rome telling us how they’re bringing us simplicity. There’s a new ultramontanism of the left. You can disagree with anything the church teaches so long as you think Francis is fabulous.’
But neither the Pope’s cheerleaders nor his critics grasp the essence of his mission. The battles between liberals and conservatives, progressives and traditionalists, defined the last pontificate — not this one.
The Pope has begun his attack on the Curia by placing its scandal-ridden financial structures under the control of a new department with unprecedented powers: the Secretariat for the Economy. Its first prefect is Cardinal George Pell, the conservative former Archbishop of Sydney.
[…]
And then…
[…]
When it comes to reform of the entire Curia, Francis is advised by the so-called ‘C9’ committee of nine cardinals, of whom George Pell is one. It’s chaired by Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga of Honduras — a charismatic pastor who is unremittingly hostile to ‘neoliberal’ America. He shoots from the hip. In January he told Archbishop (now Cardinal) Gerhard Müller, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, to stop seeing the world in black and white. This was a bit rich coming from Rodriguez, who in 2002 suggested that America’s Jewish-controlled media was playing up the paedophile scandals to punish the Catholic church for its support of Palestine.
How will the C9 reform the bits of the Curia covering doctrine, evangelisation, clergy, foreign affairs and so on? To repeat: major changes on marriage and homosexuality aren’t on the agenda. In October, a synod of bishops will discuss the family: since it’s almost certain to reject calls to admit divorced people to the Eucharist, Francis needs to lower expectations. He doesn’t want to find himself in the position of Paul VI, who provoked a hysterical reaction when he vetoed proposals to allow artificial birth control. [It might be too late for that.]
What is on the agenda is ‘decentralisation’, the current buzzword. The problem is that, while taking power out of the hands of Vatican bureaucrats is a good thing, giving authority to national bishops’ conferences isn’t much better. [Disaster, more like.] Consider the mediocrity of the English hierarchy, made up of grey, jargon-spouting liberals. Here we encounter one of Francis’s weaknesses: his ignorance of the Anglosphere. He doesn’t speak English. He has never been to the United States.
[…]
Wow. There is some hard-hitting commentary here.
UPDATE 21 Aug afternoon:
I received an email that the consecrated Host has been delivered up to Archbp. Coakley.
I hope there was only one and that this event is being shut down by prayers and public sensibility.
_______ ORIGINAL Aug 21, 2014 @ 9:37 _____
I read at the National Catholic Register that His Excellency Most Reverend Paul Coakley, Archbishop of Oklahoma City has brough a suit against the people who would perpetrate a public Satanic event, a black mass.
OKLAHOMA CITY — Attorneys for the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City filed a lawsuit at noon today [20 Aug] to stop the satanic black mass that organizers are planning to stage next month in the Oklahoma City Civic Center Music Hall.
The lawsuit asks the Oklahoma County Sheriff‘s Office to retrieve the consecrated host that the event‘s organizers claim to have, and return it to Oklahoma City Archbishop Paul Coakley. The lawsuit also argues that the consecrated host was obtained under fraudulent circumstances, and thus it must be returned to the archdiocese.
“Our contention is that they are in possession of stolen property,” Archbishop Coakley told the Register. “They cannot complete their satanic ritual without a consecrated host, and they have no means of acquiring one except through theft. We are asking the court to order them to return it immediately to me.”
Archbishop Coakley added that the archdiocese, in consulting with the attorneys who filed the lawsuit, formulated a sound argument rooted in canon and civil law.
“We are trusting the court will recognize that and act accordingly,” the archbishop said. “We hope this is a way that we can prevent the desecration of the Eucharist from taking place by removing from their possession what they have obtained illegally, that is the consecrated host.”
Michael Caspino, [I met him during the recent Napa Institute conference. A stand-up guy.] one of two attorneys who filed the lawsuit on behalf of the archdiocese in Oklahoma District Court said the legal argument for the case is simple: “A consecrated Eucharist belongs to the Church.”
Caspino, the CEO and partner at the Busch & Caspino law firm in Irvine, Calif., told the Register that the Church has exercised “dominion and control” over the Eucharist for more than 2,000 years. The lawsuit provides information on Church processes set up to safeguard the consecrated host.
“The Satanists procured the consecrated host by illicit means, theft or fraud,” Caspino said. “We are simply asking the court to return the stolen property to its rightful owner, the Roman Catholic Church.”
Named as defendants are Adam Daniels, an Oklahoma County resident, and Dakhma of Angra Mainyu, a group that has rented the Oklahoma City Civic Center’s 88-seat City Theater to stage the black mass on Sept. 21. Daniels, a member of Dakhma of Angra Mainyu, has told various media outlets that a friend mailed him the consecrated host, and that it will be desecrated, “stomped on” and destroyed during the satanic ritual.
Daniels, who has been involved in organizing public Satanist events in Oklahoma City since 2010, is a registered sex offender.
Contacted by the Register, Daniels struck a defiant tone. He called the lawsuit “frivolous” and said it was meant to intimidate him from holding the black mass. He said the archdiocese’s efforts will backfire.
“It will not work. We are not cancelling. We are moving forward,” said Daniels, who also threatened to “sue everybody I can sue” for defamation of character. He added that the court has 14 days to serve him with the lawsuit.
“They have two weeks to serve me, if they can find me,” Daniels said.
[…]
The Legal Argument
The legal argument in today’s lawsuit partly frames the consecrated host issue as a matter of property rights. It essentially argues that the Catholic Church, through its sacramental theology and code of canon law, sets the conditions for how the Eucharist is consecrated, distributed to the faithful and reposed. Anyone who deliberately obtains a consecrated host under illicit circumstances, either through sneaking it through the communion line or outright stealing it, violates the Church’s legal right to regulate its internal life.
“The Church is asking for the protection of its most basic right, namely not to have its sacraments used inappropriately. In civil law, Archbishop Coakley is acting as a responsible steward of the Eucharist. The Church enjoys the same protection of civil law that any other entity would enjoy,” said J.D. Flynn, a canon lawyer based in Lincoln, Neb.
Flynn told the Register that canon law spells out what is appropriate and inappropriate reception of the Eucharist. Anyone who discards a consecrated host, or retains it for a sacrilegious purpose, incurs an automatic excommunication that can only be redressed by the Holy See.
“If anyone obtains the host for sacrilegious purpose, they are violating the tenets by which the Eucharist is governed in the context of our Church,” Flynn said. “And the right of free exercise of religion allows us to administer the Eucharist in the context of the governing documents of our Church.”
The five-page lawsuit, as well as an accompanying declaration written by Dominican Father Joseph Fox, an expert in canon law, explain the theology behind the Eucharist and the various disciplines the Church has developed over its 2,000-year history to ensure the integrity and protection of consecrated hosts.
For example, the documents say that only a validly ordained priest can consecrate the Eucharist, and that ministers of Holy Communion need permission to take consecrated hosts outside a church building for specific pastoral purposes.
Father Fox writes that the Catholic Church “maintains ownership of all consecrated hosts throughout the world,” and that to Catholics, the consecrated host, making the person of Jesus Christ himself physically present, “is the most sacred, respected and revered thing in the world.”
The defendants, the lawsuit adds, “do not have consent or authorization” from Archbishop Coakley — who is tasked to safeguard the Church‘s property — to possess a consecrated host outside the church. The lawsuit is seeking a court order that the defendants not consume, damage or profane the consecrated host, if they indeed possess one.
[…]
Read the rest there.
I hope that this lawsuit produces some positive results.
The legal approach, the argument that the Church is the owner of the Eucharist, which is property, is interesting. You might recall that a while back I commented favorably about something written by Fishwrap’s Phyllis Zagano (HERE), who had said that what these loons were planning was “vandalism of religious property“. At the time I expressed reservation about that approach. This lawsuit in OK turns on it.
Finally, from the NCReg article
Archbishop Coakley has previously asked that the Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel be said at the end of every Mass, beginning on the Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord on Aug. 6 and continuing through the Feast of the Archangels on Sept. 29. [I don’t think they should stop doing it. As a matter of fact, they should reinstate the Leonine Prayers after all Masses.] The archbishop has also requested that individual Catholics and parishes make Eucharistic holy hours “to avert this sacrilege and publicly manifest our faith in the Lord and our loving gratitude for the gift of the Holy Eucharist, the source and summit of our lives.”
Coat of Arms by D Burkart
A Daily Prayer for Priests
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