I am slated to head back to the USA tomorrow. Alas, I have come down with an awful cold.
Please, dear readers, I ask your prayers for a sudden, complete and lasting recovery. I dread the international flight, lay-over, second flight while feeling like this.
I am canceling most of what I was going to do today and will try to rest. Happily, I have all my critical errands done but one.
From the Beeb:
An international team of astronomers has detected the most distant galaxy yet.
The galaxy is about 30 billion light-years away and is helping scientists shed light on the period that immediately followed the Big Bang.
It was found using the Hubble Space Telescope and its distance was then confirmed with the ground-based Keck Observatory in Hawaii.
The study is published in the journal Nature.
Because it takes light so long to travel from the outer edge of the Universe to us, the galaxy appears as it was 13.1 billion years ago (its distance from Earth of 30 billion light-years is because the Universe is expanding).
Lead researcher Steven Finkelstein, from the University of Texas at Austin, US, said: “This is the most distant galaxy we’ve confirmed. We are seeing this galaxy as it was 700 million years after the Big Bang.”
The far-off galaxy goes by the catchy name of z8_GND_5296.
[…]
z8_GND_5296 is churning out stars at a remarkable rate, say astronomers
The system is small: about 1-2% the mass of the Milky Way and is rich in heavier elements.
But it has a surprising feature: it is turning gas and dust into new stars at a remarkable rate, churning them out hundreds of times faster than our own galaxy can.
It is the second far-flung galaxy known that has been found to have a high star-production rate.
Prof Finkelstein said: “One very interesting way to learn about the Universe is to study these outliers and that tells us something about what sort of physical processes are dominating galaxy formation and galaxy evolution.
[…]
From Todd Starnes at Townhall:
City-Owned Cemetery Refuses to Engrave ‘Jesus’ on Preacher’s Wife’s Headstone
The family of a Colorado preacher’s wife is still fuming after the director of the city-owned cemetery refused to engrave her final resting place with the name ‘Jesus’ because it might offend people. The city eventually reversed course under public pressure.
“We were in disbelief,” said Stacy Adams, the daughter-in-law of Linda Baker. “Who tries to censor Jesus from a cemetery?”
Linda Baker lost her battle with cancer last week. She was the wife of Mark Baker, the pastor of Harvest Baptist Church in Ovid.
Adams said her mother-in-law was passionate about her Christian faith and her family. Her final wish was to have her cemetery marker engraved with the ichthys, a symbol of early Christianity. She also wanted the word ‘Jesus’ written inside the fish.
“At first they told us it wouldn’t fit,” Adams told me. “But after we kept pushing them the cemetery director told us that it might offend somebody. They weren’t going to allow it.”
The family was devastated and asked the cemetery director to reconsider. He refused.
“He said, ‘What if somebody wanted to put a swastika?” she recounted. “My reply was, so what if they do? It’s not my business how they want to be remembered.” [Did that blatteroon really draw a moral equivalence between the Holy Name and the swastika?]
The family then took their concerns to the Sterling city manager – but once again they were rebuffed.
“He refused to work with us,” she said. “He said he would have to take it to the city attorney. They were being difficult.”
She said city officials kept telling them that people would be offended by the name of Christ.
[…]
Read the rest there.
Bp. Paprocki seems to be a “hard identity” Catholic. We need “hard identity” Catholicism.
That doesn’t mean being mean. That means being clear. “Hard identity” Catholicism doesn’t reject compassion or diplomacy or joy. That’s what liberals do. “Hard identity” Catholics wants it all: compassion, joy, reverence, clarity and fidelity in our cult, our code and our creed.
Back to Bp. Paprocki.
I saw this at the site of the Chicago Sun-Times:
Springfield bishop: ‘Blasphemous’ same-sex advocates wearing rainbow sashes won’t be allowed at Mass
SPRINGFIELD-The head of Springfield’s Roman Catholic diocese moved Tuesday to scuttle a silent protest by same-sex marriage advocates planned at the capital city’s largest Catholic church, calling their plans to pray the rosary for marriage equality “blasphemous.” [If you are not sure about what “blasphemy” is, click HERE. I’ll add that what they intend to do also sounds like sacrilege.]
Advocates for the Senate Bill 10 plan to attend a 5:15 p.m. Tuesday Mass at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception as part of what organizers describe as a “loud Catholic Presence for marriage equality” that will wrap up a daylong rally in support of the stalled legislation.
But Bishop Thomas Paprocki, head of the Springfield Catholic diocese, said anyone wearing rainbow sashes won’t be permitted inside the church. [Reason #3 to bring back the Minor Orders and confer the order of Doorkeeper on brave, somewhat menacing men, perhaps with CCW licenses and lots of training. We could start with police officers. They have to give of their time, treasure and talent to Holy Church just like everyone else, right? Being Doorkeepers at Mass could be a way for them to see to the material (and spiritual) well-being of the Church!]
“It is blasphemy to show disrespect or irreverence to God or to something holy,” Paprocki said in a statement released late Tuesday morning. “Since Jesus clearly taught that marriage as created by God is a sacred institution between a man and a woman (see Matthew 19:4-6 and Mark 10:6-9), praying for same-sex marriage should be seen as blasphemous and as such will not be permitted in the cathedral.
People wearing a rainbow sash or who otherwise identify themselves as affiliated with the Rainbow Sash Movement will not be admitted into the cathedral and anyone who gets up to pray for same-sex marriage in the cathedral will be asked to leave,” Paprocki said.
“Of course, our cathedral and parish churches are always open to everyone who wishes to repent their sins and ask for God’s forgiveness,” he said.
Fr Z kudos to Bp. Paprocki.
One of these days, there will be another Carrington Event.
There will be a huge coronal mass ejection from your planet’s yellow star that strikes your planet square on. The result will be a vast electromagnetic pulse which fries almost all your electronic stuff. You will be plunged in an instant back to something like the 19th century.
Will you have what it takes to survive?
On the other hand, perhaps there will be nuclear attacks that cause EMPs, or perhaps there will be a pandemic or other natural events which brings down the world’s economy, resulting in much the same.
On that cheery note, I read at Spaceweather:
ERUPTING FILAMENT AND EARTH-DIRECTED CME: During the early hours of Oct. 22nd, a long filament of magnetism erupted on the sun: movie. The explosion hurled a lopsided CME into space, and a new analysis suggests it could be Earth-directed. Click to watch the movie, then scroll down for more information:
The eruption occured squarely on the Earthside of the sun, but the CME is not squarely Earth-directed. The bulk of the ejecta will fly north of the sun-Earth line. Nevertheless, the CME is expected to deliver a glancing blow to Earth’s magnetic field on Oct. 24-25. It might even merge with a pair of minor CMEs traveling ahead of it. If so, the combined impact would be more likely to spark a geomagnetic storm. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras in the nights ahead.
Watch for auroras!
They are events of terrible beauty, presaging we know not what.
My page with all the translations is HERE. You can always find it by going to the list of Pages at the bottom of this blog.
I often forget to pray before using the internet. I often fail in charity when using it. This tool of social communication and research and entertainment has amazing upsides and spiritually deadly perils. We all should be very careful in how we use it – and through – use each other, “use” in the finer sense of “treat”.
A little while ago I got a version in Klingon. Fun.
WARNING: This may not show up correctly if you don’t have the right fonts. Someone posted a comment on this, below.
So, here is the newest version in ….
CZECH
Modlitba před připojením k internetu
Všemohoucí věčný Bože, který jsi nás stvořil k obrazu svému
a přikázal jsi nám hledat vše dobré, pravdivé a krásné,
obzvláště pak v božské osobě Tvého jednorozeného Syna, našeho
Pána Ježíše Krista, daruj nám, prosíme tě, abychom na
přímluvu Sv. Isidora, biskupa a doktora, během naší poutě
internetem směrovali své ruce a oči pouze k tomu, co je Ti milé a
abychom projevovali lásku a trpělivost ke všem duším, které
potkáme. Skrze Krista našeho Pána. Amen.
and in
WELSH
Gweddi cyn cysylltu â’r Wê
Hollalluog a thragwyddol Dduw, a’n creodd ar dy wedd a’n hannog i chwilio’r hyn sy’n dda, gwir a hardd, yn anad dim ym mherson duwiol dy Unig-anedig Fab, ein Harglwydd Iesu Grist, dyro, yr erfyniwn arnat, drwy eiriolaeth y Sant Isidor, Esgob a Doethur, ar ein teithiau drwy’r Wê, inni arwain ein dwylo a’n llygaid i’r hyn yn unig sydd yn ddymunol i Ti, a thrin gydag amynedd a chariad bawb yr ydym yn cwrdd â hwy. Trwy Grist ein Harglwydd. Amen.
In my reading today, I discovered that the website for Obamacare – you know, the one that doesn’t work – has cost taxpayers over $300 million dollars.
$300 million. For the website alone.
It could actually be a lot more than $300 million. HERE
Here’s an idea.
Let’s just create medical “bank accounts” for every person in the USA. Heck. Let’s include illegals.
Then let’s just give every man, woman and child $1 million, earmarked for healthcare. You are born: ka-ching! – you get a million bucks for healthcare from the American tax payer. Whatever the person hasn’t used in her lifetime can then just revert to the taxpayer.
$300 million. For the website alone. And Mooer’s Law is kicking in right on schedule.
What’s this all going to to cost by the time we get into it for a while? Billions. Probably trillions. Good grief.
Over at Fishwrap (aka National Schismatic Reporter), the editor is already starting to wring his hands.
The editorial is a bit mawkish, but you can forgive that.
Here is a sample:
Francis is the exclamation point on Vatican II
Thomas C. FoxI already hear concerns that the reformist church of 76-year-old Pope Francis might not survive his pontificate. I hear talk that the anti-reformists who took back the Second Vatican Council will likely do it again once Francis is gone from the scene.
We ask: Will a church groomed by compassion and mercy, as Francis would have it, be the church of our future? [Or will it be the oppressive Church of Benedict and JP2 with their torture chambers and auto de fé?] Will our church be guided, as if with a compass, by the lives and needs of marginalized people? Can a pastoral Catholicism, embedded in the Beatitudes, be the Catholicism we offer the world? [Good grief. Get this man some tissues, for the love of God.]Viewed solely as a moment in church history, the Francis moment might not last. Post-Vatican II history teaches us that entrenched forces have ways of enduring. In this view, Francis could be a passing fancy. [big *sigh*….] However, from the long view of history, the Francis pontificate could well be the exclamation point on Vatican II — change and reform is the default mode of operation, not a one-time activity.
[… more sloppy stuff here… up to the big peroration!… ]
So, again, is our church on an irreversible, ever-reforming path? Or will Francis fade like the council, a meteorite in the night sky? [duh duh DUUUUUHNNNN!] Francis is the first pontiff educated during the council. He is a product of the council. In this sense, he is the first post-conciliar pontiff. Further, he embraces the theology and spirit of the council with seemingly unbridled affection. [Keep tuned to this channel. They’re figuring out that their “spirit” and Francis’ “spirit”, might not be the same.] The Francis era is really a new phase in an unfolding church reform story, one, as Francis reminds us, that will be full of surprises. [And how, dear readers, is that different from any other modern pontificate?]
Not to kick a guy when he is down, but Pope Francis excommunicated the Australian, former-Father Greg Reynolds. HERE
Why did he excommunicate him? For upholding two things that Fox’s Fishwrap promotes: homosexual lifestyle and the ordination of women. (Not to mention Communion for quadrupeds.)
Get out your handkerchiefs.
All around Rome there is buzz that soon we may be seeing something from the Holy See about the issue of Communion for divorced/remarried couples. Of course there would be, right? There is a synod on the family coming up.
This is a burning issue. The flames of the issue were recently fanned when a second rate official of a new vacant (lacking a bishop) diocese in Germany issued on his own a statement contrary to the Church’s laws that the d/remarried would be given Communion, no problemo. See canonist Ed Peters This is why we have Canon 428.
I am told by those who know things that next week we may see something in L’Osservatore Romano on the questions. I doubt it will be an official document. It’ll probably by just an essay, which is not uncommon for L’O. But it would not be nothing. [UPDATE: I should I have look at today’s – rather, tomorrow’s (23 Oct) – issue. Thanks to a reader who caught it and posted in the combox. Archbp. Müller of CDF, no less. HERE The next day’s issue of L’O is released the afternoon before, Rome time. I wrote this before that hour.]
Furthermore, before I left the states for the Italian pilgrimage and this subsequent time in Rome, I had been told by a bishop somewhere or other that one of the ideas that was being explored was something that then Card. Ratzinger had advanced back in the 1990’s. I was going to write about this back then, but … I got busy.
At Vatican Insider there was something about this back in 2012 HERE:
Benedict XVI himself admits that communion for divorced and remarried persons is an open question. He spoke about it in a meeting with the priests of the diocese of Aosta on July 25, 2005 and, more officially, in his speech to the Roman Rota, on 28 January 2006. Both times, the Pope urged them to “deepen” a particular case: the possible invalidity of a marriage in the Church celebrated without faith, for those who, having passed to a second union, have returned to the practice of Christian life and request communion.
More on that Ratzingerian essay from Magister: HERE
The idea is this: if putative marriages can be said to have been null on the basis of psychological immaturity or inability to make a commitment, etc. (a common rubber-stamp reason in Canon Law used by marriage tribunals far and wide for a long time – happily now abating), then perhaps we might be able to say the same thing about putative marriages in which the couple really had no concept of or knowledge of or intention of faith.
Think about this: we are in a post-Christian society in many places in the world. Many who were baptized, perhaps children of parents to baptized for the sake of appeasing gramma and who themselves had no idea of what the Catholic Faith is, who never had either the faith by which we believe (qua – the virtue) or faith in which we believe (quae – the content of doctrine, etc.), might not actually be married sacramentally even though they married another baptized Catholic and went through the form of the sacrament of matrimony without a single flaw in the form.
You could look at all the documents and say that, yes, they are married and there ought to be a sacrament binding them. But… really? Juridically yes. More deeply, theologically? And, if so, can that be determined with moral certitude?
This is an old argument. Like I said, Ratzinger tossed this out there back in the 1990’s.
However, as I was catching up on email and blogs after our anabasis in Italy, I noted this posted on an Italian blog I look at… back on 9 October.
E Ratzinger risponde: 5 obiezioni e 5 risposte dell’ex-Papa sulla pastorale dei divorziati risposati … And Ratzinger responds: 5 objections and 5 responses from the ex-Pope on the pastoral (approach to) the divorced and remarried.
Lo and behold, the blog post begins with the very issue I have been hearing rumblings about for several weeks.
The game’s afoot, friends.
I can’t imagine what would happen in tribunals far and wide were some “solution” like this adopted and somehow enshrined in a change to the Code of Canon Law.
I can picture sweat breaking out on the brows of canonists who are reading this. They will need to stock up on their midnight oil and Mystic Monk Coffee.
There are seriously theological thorns in the proposal that “incapacity” due to insufficient faith might be somehow identifiable in such a way that a tribunal (for there would still have to be a tribunal process – marriages have juridical effects and the proper process of discernment and judging has to be involved) could declare a sacrament never took place on the basis of the lack of faith of two proven baptized Catholics who, even though they were psychologically mature in every respect, were insufficiently mature from the point of view of faith (both fides qua and quae).
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since Sat., 25 Nov. 2006:
People wearing a rainbow sash or who otherwise identify themselves as affiliated with the Rainbow Sash Movement will not be admitted into the cathedral and anyone who gets up to pray for same-sex marriage in the cathedral will be asked to leave,” Paprocki said.
