Assignment: write three sentences - one with a possessive verb, one with an action verb, and finally an exlamatory sentence

One of my sons recently sent the following email to family members:

I have sworn on my grandfather’s grave never to send out cute things my kids say, but I’m going to make an exception. Augustine [his son] was asked in grammar yesterday to write three sentences: one with a possessive verb, one with an action verb, and finally an exclamatory sentence:

1. I have a flamethrower.
2. I torched my grammar books.
3. “Wow! I have no more grammar books!”

Sorry, I couldn't help sharing ...

The Hollow Crown: Shakespeare's History Plays

Son Christopher informs me that there are still things worth watching on television, if one has a television set. He writes: "Proof that there is still stuff worth watching on television ... this is actually very good -- with Patrick Stewart, Jeremy Irons, and that guy that played 'Loki' in the movie Thor." He is referring, of course to The Hollow Crown, a lavish new series of filmed adaptations of four of Shakespeare’s most gripping history plays; Richard II, Henry IV, Part 1, Henry IV, Part 2 and Henry V on THIRTEEN’s GREAT PERFORMANCES beginning Friday, September 20 at 9 p.m. (Check local listings.)


[Hat tip to C.B.]

"How a children's cartoon destroyed Japanese agriculture"

An article by that title was just sent to me by Christopher Blosser. It relates how a popular anime TV program in Japan called Araiguma Rasukaru, about a kid and his adorable raccoon sidekick (based on the popular Disney movie Rascal), led to a disastrous surge of imports of North American racoons as intended pets in Japan, which, in turn, led to one of the worst invasive species events in Japan, with estimated agricultural damage of approximately US$300,000 per year on the island of Hokkaido alone.

However, Japanese interest in the lowly raccoon antedates the anime by upwards of a century. Sapporo's famed shopping arcade Tanuki Koji, named for the animal and with a shrine honoring it in the middle of the arcade, is commonly known as Sapporo's oldest shopping area, dating from the late 1800s. Some shops there have been in business for 100 years. It's an amazing place, burgeoning wish all sorts of shops, from clothing stores to the nationally famous "Sapporo Ramen" and "Jingisukan" shops.

How amusing.

[Hat tip to C.B.]

Verrecchio: Would Pius X have considered Pope Francis a modernist?

Louie Verrecchio, who once shared his testimony to God's providence with Ralph Martin during a session of the popular EWTN program "The Choices We Face," has just posted a piece bearing the audacious title "Is Pope Francis a Modernist?" (Harvesting the Fruit of Vatican II, September 25, 2013).

Well, "audacious" doesn't even begin to describe the piece, actually. While the author raises some very serious questions, he explodes from the starting gate of his post like Jon Stewart's opening blast on his half-comic The Daily Show with the following:

I have little doubt that the title to this piece pretty much guarantees that the majority of Cotton Candy Catholics won’t even bother to read it. You see, for those who prefer to dwell in that fairy tale version of Catholicland wherein nary a crisis endures, the very question alone is like a serial killer making a cameo appearance in a child’s bedtime story.

And, with that, he's off and running, with a list of recent utterances of the Holy Father, which he holds up against the measuring rod of the imposing Engyclical, Pascendi, by Pius X.

[Hat tip to L.S.]

The End of Christendom: How must we then live?

A courier was waiting outside my door when I answered the knock this morning. He handed me a letter containing the following lengthy and meaty ruminations (slightly edited) from our correspondent on retainer, Guy Noir, Private Eye:

So why does this ["Secretary of State and married priests," RC, Sept. 12, 2013] depress me? It's not Celibacy: It's Celibacy and Everything Else!

Let' see...

The Vatican Secretary of State thinks priests should marry. Because that will help the drastically ebbing tide of vocations. The answer is to upturn old policy and down the requirements.

Benedict XVI is tired, and can no longer stomach his job, so he thinks the answer is upturning old policy and allowing Popes to retire.

George Weigel finds old school legalism off-putting, so historic modies of expression should be upended and "Friendship with Jesus" as the answer.

Francis thinks clerical trappings are a turn-off to moderns, so the answer is to overturn old policy and be the plain brown wrapper pontiff.

This Pope thinks pagans feel unwelcome in Church, so we should simply baptize their babies.

Christopher Schonborn thinks we have disenfranchised gays and lesbians, so the answer is to do a reverse and admire their relationships and install them on parish boards.

The head of the CDF thinks traditionalists are embarrassing, so they should be upbraided and abandoned.

Hans von Balthasar and Robert Barron are offered as replacements for the now deserted Garrigou-Lagrange and Gerald Vann. Adrien Von Seyr is the new Sister Lucia. GK Chesterton is to be sainted, and on the internet he and Benedict XVI are wishfully dubbed mystics by their articula champions.

... Post-evangelical Derek Webb has a new album out called "I Was Wrong, I'm Sorry, and I Love You." Sounds like the current message of Modern Catholicism. A Church that does nothing but change seems to have very little base unchanging truth it is called to defend. Oh... enter the essential theological thrust of Modernism. Enter Bishop Jerferts Schori and ABC Rowan WIlliams. We seem that much closer to That Glittering Unity. The new Church Basilica can be in what the Holy Father might call The Malvinas.

Jeremiad against hypocrisy and denial over ecclesial collapse

Earlier this month St. Michael's Media released a two-part episode called "Catholic Establishment Media 09-04."

Part I involves an interview with Jay McNally, former editor of The Michigan Catholic, detailing what happened when he wanted to address "uncomfortable" questions about homosexuality within the Archdiocese of Detroit well before the Boston Globe blew the lid off the Catholic sex-scandals across the United States.

Part II involves an animated exposé‎ by Michael Voris of the "Catholic Establishment Media's" concerted effort to keep a lid on the problems surrounding the wholesale collapse of the Church, particularly featuring previously unaired backstories on various attempts to marginalize and silence the apostolate of St. Michael's Media.

This second part is of notable interest for several reasons. First, it details the development of Michael Voris' career and the watershed moment of his alma mater, Notre Dame, honoring President Obama with an honorary doctorate. Second, it reveals very clearly what animates Voris' work: what some might call his Johnny-Come-Lately discovery seven years ago that the problems in the Church stem, not from external attacks or scandalous behavior of nominally-Catholic politicians like Pelosi receiving Communion (these are merely symptomatic), but from those within the Catholic establishment themselves who appear to have a vested interest in keeping the lid on the real problems within the Church.

The whole piece is well worth listening to, but about 35 minutes into the second episode, the Jeremiad gains full force in a veritable tyrade against the hypocrisy and public denial among Catholic leaders regarding the utter collapse of the Church and the distortion of truth and loss of clarity in her message.

I developed a keen sense of smell early in life, even as a Protestant, for preaching or lecturing or writing about religious subjects with an air of unreality -- "God talk" that floats two feet above reality and contradiction like the dialogues of the Laputians in Gulliver's Travels. Do you know what I mean? This is what I get all too often while travelling when I visit other parishes and listen to priests going on and on in their homilies about everything except what really matters.

I remember once taking a visiting Presbyterian minister to Mass at a previous parish. He was a career missionary in Japan and well acquainted with what constitutes a good sermon. I was therefore particularly sensitive to what the priest might say in his homily that Sunday. At the beginning of the homily, a congregant's cell phone rang, and the priest spend the rest of his ten minutes of "homily time" addressing the issue of cell phones in Mass and never got around to proclaiming the Gospel, let alone expositing the text of the lectionary for the day.

And the amazing thing is that this is not at all surprising anymore.

In a 2002 article entitled "The Kasper-Ratzinger Debate & The State of the Church" (New Oxford Review, April 2002), I wrote:

With few exceptions, the results of Catholic catechesis over the past forty years has been dismal. We Catholics, both laity and clergy, are all too often abysmally ignorant of our own Tradition. For more than two generations now, we have been robbed of the fullness of Catholicism, which is our birthright. With a few thankful exceptions, our collective acquaintance with Scripture is piecemeal, our knowledge of Tradition is pathetic, our hymns are embarrassing, our religious art is ugly, our churches look like U.N. meditation chapels, our ethics are slipshod, and our aesthetic and spiritual sensibilities are so far from being sublime that they almost look ridiculous.

In light of this, and many other examples we could offer, it may be concluded that what Michael Voris is saying is not really new. What is new is the fact that he is willing to address these issues which so few people seem willing to talk about.

Even when the facts are abysmally depressing, it can feel like a breath of fresh air to hear someone publicly acknowledging them for what they are, like the kid who cried out "The emperor has no clothes!" -- especially when everyone around him seems intent on steering all conversation away from what is plainly before our eyes. At least then we hear someone describing the same reality that we see around us and know we're not simply going insane in our perceptions.

"Cardinal Kasper plotting an anti-Ratzinger progressive Papacy"?

That is what Christopher Gillibrand suggested in his article by that title in Cathcon (March 7, 2013). Here is one provacative extract:

The former assistant to Hans Küng [Kasper] was removed in 1999 by John Paul II as Bishop of the Diocese of Rottenburg-Stuttgart and transported to Rome, where he was until 2010 President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. (Cathcon- what a pair Cardinal Lehmann, research assistant to Karl Rahner and Cardinal Kasper, assistant to Küng- although Cardinal Kasper has proved effective in assimilating himself to conservatives around the journal, Communio. This was founded by among others Joseph Ratzinger as an antidote to the ultra- progressive journal Concilium, supported by Küng, among other radicals). The promotion was part of a smooth reconstruction of the German episcopate by repression of the progressive influence. While as a "minister" of the Holy See Kasper moderated his attitudes, he has not abandoned them. Within the Roman Curia, he was theologically the real opponent of Benedict XVI. Since the resignation announcement, it was not difficult for the Cardinal to advance as the most important representative of the progressive camp among the Conclave participants. This is a direction that is numerically no longer great among the Papal electors , but they are looking for allies. (emphasis added)

Read more >>

[Hat tip to A.G.]

10th anniversary of death of Michael Davies (R.I.P)

Fr. Z writes:

Michael Davies was a real gentleman, a dedicated Catholic and lover of the Church, and a zealous advocate of reverent liturgical worship.

He went to God on 25 September 2004.

A reader reminded me:

"Of your charity, please pray for the soul of Michael Davies:

"Author, teacher, lay theologian,
President of Una Voce International,
Loyal son of Wales,
Husband and father,
Faithful son of Holy Church and a great defender and champion of the Faith.
Today is his Ninth Anniversary.

"I have been profoundly touched by the news of the death of Michael Davies. I had the good fortune to meet him several times and I found him as a man of deep faith and ready to embrace suffering. Ever since the Council he put all his energy into the service of the Faith and left us important publications especially about the Sacred Liturgy. Even though he suffered from the Church in many ways in his time, he always truly remained a man of the Church. He knew that the Lord founded His Church on the rock of St Peter and that the Faith can find its fullness and maturity only in union with the successor of St Peter. Therefore we can be confident that the Lord opened wide for him the gates of heaven. We commend his soul to the Lord’s mercy."

- Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

(Translated from the original German)
9 November 2004

How he – in his earthly life – would have loved Summorum Pontificum.

Archbp. Vigneron defends statement on Communion and supporters of same-sex marriage

Patrick B. Craine, "Detroit Archbishop defends his stance that gay ‘marriage’ supporters should not receive Communion" (LifeSiteNews, September 24, 2013):

DETROIT, Sept. 24, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Despite strong criticism and a public rebuke from another bishop, Detroit’s Archbishop Allen Vigneron has reaffirmed his insistence that Catholics who support same-sex “marriage” should not receive Holy Communion.

God bless the good Archbishop!

[Hat tip to Fr. Z.]

Return

A word of thanks to those of you who have been praying for me and my family during our leave of absence. Your prayers have been amply answered, and, as the previous couple of posts indicate, we are back again.

Pertinaciously yours,
PP

The Christian Genocide

"Is there any other name for what is happening? Yes, the time has come to use the G word: what is happening is Genocide, the small Christian minorities in several Muslim countries are being targeted in order to attain their disappearance from where they live and have lived for centuries." Read more here:

• "The Christian Genocide" (Rorate Caeli, September 24, 2013).
• "Are you praying for persecuted Christians?" (Rorate Caeli, September 25, 2013)

"When I hear that so many Christians in the world are suffering, am I indifferent or is it like one of my family is suffering? When I think or hear that so many Christians are persecuted and even give their lives for their faith, does it touch my heart or not at all? ... I will ask you a question, but do not answer in a loud voice, but in your hearts: how many of you pray for the Christians who are being persecuted? How many of you? Each one of you answer in your heart. 'Am I praying for that brother, for that sister, who is facing hardship for professing and defending his faith?'"

Franciscus
General Audience
September 25, 2013

Chilling personal account of anti-traditionalist Catholic academic censorship

Dr. John Lamont, "Traditionalism and academic censorship - a personal experience and a very grave episode" (Rorate Caeli, September 25, 2013). What is all the more disturbing is that this anti-traditionalist academic censorship comes, not from the "usual suspects" of the Catholic left wing, but from the "conservative" editors of the respected journal, Nova et Vetera, Matthew Levering and Reinhard Huetter (both Catholic converts and well-respected "conservatives") who had initially accepted the eventually-censored piece for publication and attested to its academic excellence and had no creditable ground for suppressing the piece except the traditionalist leanings of the author.

Leave of absence

I will be blogging infrequently, or not at all, for the next two weeks. Please be assured that any comments entered in the comment boxes will eventually be posted. In the meantime, say a Hail Mary for us during our absence. Kind regards, Pertinacious Papist

Photo Album Posted for Cathedral Mass

"I will go in unto the Altar of God
To God, Who giveth joy to my youth"
Tridentine Community News (September 8, 2013):

A beautiful album of photos taken by Aaron Harburg at the August 30 Tridentine Mass at Detroit’s Blessed Sacrament Cathedral has been posted on the Juventútem Michigan Facebook page. Two examples from the album give an eyewitness perspective on this history-making event:




Summórum Pontíficum Sixth Anniversary Mass

This Saturday, September 14 marks the sixth anniversary of the effective date of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s 2007 Motu Proprio, Summórum Pontíficum, which freed any priest to celebrate the Tridentine Mass on his own initiative. This was arguably one of the greatest achievements of our Holy Father Emeritus’ pontificate. Not only has there been a dramatic increase in regular and special celebrations of the Extraordinary Form worldwide, but in many locales the Ordinary Form of Holy Mass is now celebrated with additional solemnity, including traditional practices such as kneeling for Holy Communion, and use of Gregorian Chant and sacred polyphony.

One of the local parishes most influenced by Summórum Pontíficum is Ann Arbor’s Old St. Patrick. They have reinstalled – and use – a Communion Rail. They now celebrate most Holy Masses, even in the Ordinary Form, ad oriéntem at the High Altar. They have implemented an impressive sacred music program and have become a center for traditional devotions and parish activities. Credit for these initiatives goes to pastor Fr. Gerald Gawronski, former music director Mara Wehrung and current music director Sipkje Pesnichak, and ubiquitous Tridentine organizer Paul Schultz.


It is therefore most fitting that Old St. Patrick will hold an Anniversary Mass for Summórum Pontíficum on the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, Saturday, September 14 at 8:30 AM. Details are on a Facebook event page.

It would be an act of charity for the readers of this column to offer a prayer of thanksgiving to God for this great development in the life of the Church in our era, as well as a prayer for the welfare of Pope Emeritus Benedict.

Tridentine Masses This Coming Week

• Mon. 09/09 7:00 PM: Low Mass at St. Josaphat (St. Peter Claver, Confessor)
• Tue. 09/10 7:00 PM: Low Mass at Assumption-Windsor (St. Nicholas of Tolentino, Confessor)
• Sun. 09/15 2:00 PM: High Mass at Assumption-Windsor (Seventeenth Sunday After Pentecost) – Guest celebrant: Fr. James Roche, Episcopal Vicar of Windsor. Fr. Roche will make the formal proclamation of establishment of the St. Benedict Tridentine Catholic Community. A reception will follow Mass.

[Comments? Please e-mail tridnews@detroitlatinmass.org. Previous columns are available at http://www.detroitlatinmass.org. This edition of Tridentine Community News, with minor editions, is from the St. Josaphat (Detroit) and Assumption (Windsor) bulletin inserts for September 8, 2013. Hat tip to A.B., author of the column.]

Perils of Prosperity

John Teevan, "10 Perils of Prosperity" (Acton Institute PowerBlog, September 5, 2013) - Excerpt:

So Why is Sustained Prosperity a Peril? Nearly everyone on earth prefers a life free from poverty and from the need to focus on survival. Call it liberty or call it comfort, everyone prefers this life. Now nearly 2b people enjoy that level of living thanks to the growth of economic freedom. But there are problems.

1. People think that nothing can go permanently wrong.
   Money cures everything and there is plenty of it and always will be. Period.
2. People think that all moral issues are irrelevant.
   Ask Miley Cyrus ... the latest casualty who is also a Disney role model: see #9.
3. People think that they can afford anything and suddenly want everything.
   So the richest people on earth fuel their lives with even more debt financed stuff.
4. People are dissatisfied with life and find it boring. They are also ungrateful.
   Mental illness, substance abuse, and suicide are ever increasing.
5. People think that all who lived before their era were deficient or foolish.
   In olden days people had to work hard, be moral, and watch out…what idiots!
6. People think that it is not necessary to learn, work, or stick to it to have a comfortable life.
   If I get a job I like, fine, otherwise I’ll just move back home with my folks. Big deal.
7. Governments believe the economy can be taxed to pay for any government program.
   If the rich just paid their fair share we’d all have comfortable incomes; spread it around.
8. People forget what a life of discomfort was like and are ‘spoiled’.
   OK, I broke the blender, but the jerks at Walmart wouldn’t take it back.
9. People adopt a new value system that is narcissistic and worships the self.
   How can I go to work today? It’s my birthday. All drama–all the time, for many.
10. Governments believe that the welfare state is the only compassionate use of such prosperity.
    Even a single dollar of reduction of social security will leave grandma out in the cold.

We must be very careful of prosperity. It has a way of deluding us into thinking that we can afford anything and that we can absorb any shock. For seven decades this has been true. But now we have changed our thinking and our planning and our savings as we ignore the possibility of real economic disaster: Beware.

It's heartening to see this come from the Acton Institute, which has sometimes seemed to me all-too-cozy with laissez-faire Austrial Libertarian theory of the kind found in Murray Rothbard and Ludwig von Mises. I should wonder if any their disciples of could utter the prayer that St. Louis de Montfort linked to the Rosary's Third Joyful Mystery of the Blessed Nativity: "We ask of Thee through this mystery and Thy Blessed Mother, for a detachment from the things of the world, a love of poverty and a love of the poor."

[Hat tip to Chris Garton-Zavesky]