My mother and father were already in the process of getting a divorce, which she requested.Read more >>
Dad took my sister and me to the hospital to see our mother. She had undergone surgery the day before to remove a tumor. The tumor was benign.
What happened after a reporter revealed that you had plagiarized?[Hat tip to C.B.]
When you embarrass the President, a divorce takes place. You become persona non grata immediately. Through my own fault, no pressure, no stress, no extenuating circumstances, because of what I did and the choices I made, I inflicted shame and embarrassment on the man who has given me the greatest professional opportunity of my life. I inflicted shame and embarrassment on my wife, my children, my 20 years of interns—I was a total hypocrite—and I resigned.
How did President Bush react?
I resigned, no excuses, on a Friday. On a Monday I came in to take the pictures off my wall and clear off my desk, and I received a call from the chief of staff, Josh Bolton. He asked me how my wife and children were doing and told me he forgave me. He said, "The boss wants to see you." That means the President. When I got there, it was just the President and me, and I apologized. He looked at me and said "Tim, I forgive you." I tried to apologize a second time, and he said, "Grace and mercy is real. I've known it in my life and I'm sending it to you." And I said, "Mr. President, I apologize. Please forgive me." He said, "I'll say it again: Grace and mercy is real. You are forgiven. Now we can talk about all of this, or we can talk about the last eight years." We spent 20 minutes together. We prayed and we embraced. I cried when I was looking around the Oval Office for the last time. And as I prepared to leave he said, "By the way, I want you to bring your wife and sons here so I can tell them what a great husband and father you've been." Sure enough, he invited them to come. He was the leader of the free world, validating me, after I did what I did, before my wife and children. (emphasis added)
Did anybody happen to catch the NPR interview with Jimmy Fallon on "Fresh Air" the other day? It was quite interesting. After a lot of banter about his television program and Saturday Night Live, he talked about his upbringing as a Catholic in the 1980s. Unlike a lot of popular comedians who were raised Catholic, Fallon had nothing negative to say about Catholicism whatsoever. He said that he was very grateful for his Catholic upbringing and loved everything about the Church - he loved Catholic school (St. Mary of the Snow in Saugerties, NY), loved the nuns, loved going to Mass, loved receiving at the rail, and loved the way attending Mass made him feel. He even shared that he had been an altar server, revered and looked up to his parish priest and had once believed he had a vocation to the priesthood. This sort of warm praise of Catholicism was a very welcome thing to hear from a pop comedian.[Hat tip to J.M.]
But even more interesting was when the host, Terry Gross, asked him if he was still a practicing Catholic. Fallon explained that, as often happens, the practice of his faith waned during his teen years. He ended up getting into show business and moved out to Los Angeles. There, around the mid-ninties, he tried to attend Mass again but complained that the Mass had "changed" from the Irish-Catholic Masses he knew as a boy in Saugerties. Among his complaints: the atmosphere was way too casual, there was a rock band playing, people were holding hands constantly, and (tongue in cheek of course, or hopefully) he complained about frisbees being thrown around. This, he said, was not Mass. He went on to say how he cherished the old Mass - the bells, the incense, the kneelers and the aesthetic it all created. Then, in the one quote I can recall with certainty from the interview, he said that he totally disapproved of Mass with all the "bells and whistles," following that up by saying, "Just give me the Mass."
It was inspiring, but also sad, because this experience of an apparently ultra-banal Novus Ordo in the L.A. diocese turned him away from the practice of his faith and, though he still considers himself Catholic, he no longer attends Mass at all. Sure, Fallon is ultimately responsible for whether or not he fulfills his Sunday obligation, but I'd have to think, when stuff like this happens, the persons responsible for these abominable liturgies also share the blame.
Also interesting is what more "traditional" Mass it is that Fallon is remembering so fondly. As someone born in 1974, he never knew the pre-1969 liturgy. It sounds like what he experienced as a boy was simply the Novus Ordo done more or less according to the rubrics in one of New York's more historic churches. He recalls nuns, communion rails, and incense, and this all in the late eighties!
Nothing offends liberals more than colonialism. It is, in their eyes, racism, sexism, and chauvinism all in one; it is the forcible imposition of Christianity and capitalism; it is the epitome of Western triumphalism. It is everything that leftists profess to hate.Read more >>
So, what better costumes to don for Halloween than those of great British imperialists throughout the centuries? ...
I, a former Lutheran, think all readers of the Fishwrap should pay special attention to this post I picked up from Fr. Longenecker.Fr. Z adds:
These ... what do you call them ... incongruities? ... exist in order to make irony redundant.
This, friends, is where the liberal agenda will take Catholics:In celebration of Reformation Day I thought readers might like this photograph of the heirs of Luther:
That would be Lutheran bishop of Stockholm Eva Brunne on the left. Eva is in a 'registered and blessed' homosexual partnership. She and her 'partner' have a child conceived through artificial insimination.
I remember how in [Catholic] seminary I was forced, over my objections and with realistic threats of expulsion from the faculty, to go to a Lutheran church on [R]eformation [Day] and sing as part of a choir “A mighty fortress is our God”.Redundant ironies indeed.
As we know, Universae Ecclesiae spoke to the need for Latin Church seminarians to know the Extraordinary Form.On the linked post, Fr. Z gives instructions on how to reach him and offer feedback.
I would appreciate notes by email from seminarians about what is going on in their programs of formation.
I will of course preserve your anonymity.
I would like to see the liturgy become what Vatican II intended it to be. That’s not something that can happen overnight. The bishops who were the fathers of the council from the United States came home and made changes too quickly. They shouldn’t have viewed the old liturgy, what we call the Tridentine Mass or Missal of Pope John XXIII, as something that needed to be fixed. Nothing was broken. There was an attitude that we had to implement Vatican II in a way that radically affects the liturgy.His Excellency goes on to say that he has himself begun celebrating Mass ad orientem, leading by example rather than by dictate. Most importantly, he declares:
What we lost in a short period of time was continuity. The new liturgy should be clearly identifiable as the liturgy of the pre-Vatican II Church. Changes, like turning the altar around, were too sudden and too radical. There is nothing in the Vatican II documents that justifies such changes. We’ve always had Mass facing the people as well as Mass ad orientem [“to the east,” with priest and people facing the same direction]. However, Mass ad orientem was the norm. These changes did not come from Vatican II.
Also, it was not a wise decision to do away with Latin in the Mass. How that happened, I don’t know; but the fathers of the Council never intended us to drop Latin. They wanted us to hold on to it and, at the same time, to make room for the vernacular, primarily so that the people could understand the Scriptures.
But we must approach the liturgy on bended knee with tremendous humility, recognizing that it doesn’t belong to us. It belongs to God. It is a gift. We worship God not by creating our own liturgies, but by receiving the liturgy as it comes to us from the Church.A point, surely, that needs to be reiterated throughout the Church these days.
