Just Say NO to P.C. Foot Washings (repost)

NB.  Fr. Michael has the Holy Thursday Mass tonight, so no homily from me.  I thought I'd repost on the Annual Holy Week Liturgical Question of Foot Washing. . .

Q: Any opinion on the yearly controversy over the rubrics regarding the Holy Thursday liturgy for foot washing?

A: I always dread this question! My iron-clad rule is: Say the black, do the red. In other words, read the prayers as they are written in the liturgical books and follow the rules as they are. Following this rule, the priest will wash the feet of twelve men from his parish.

Now, the controversy revolves around two elements of this liturgy: 1) who washes? and 2) who gets washed? Some say: everyone washes; everyone gets washed! Others follow the rubric requiring the priest to do the washing, but they usually try to mix and match the washee's to accommodate some weird need to use this liturgy to express the "diversity" of the parish (as if just looking around in the pews doesn't demonstrate this well enough).

The B.I.G. issue, of course, is whether or not women can be included as washee's. The rubrics clearly require that the washee's be men, males (viri). In the U.S., bishops are allowed to grant pastors an exception to include women. Most do, I would bet. Fine.

What this debate about rubrics usually misses is the whole point of the rite itself. Jesus washes the feet of his disciples in order to show them that he is not only their Master and friend but their servant as well. He will go to the cross as a servant for them (and for us all). The priest, acting in the person of Christ, washes the feet of twelve men in order to liturgically enact this revelatory moment.

This liturgy is not about diversity or tolerance or discipleship or community-building. This is the moment when Christ--fully God, fully man--begins to empty himself in preparation for his passion and for the cross. In one very important way, this liturgy is about who the priest is for his parish--since he is and acts in the person of Christ as head of the Church, the priest is symbolizing his servant-leadership of the community. To use foot-washing on Holy Thursday for any other purpose is simply perverse.

Some will argue that since Jesus tells his disciples "to go and do likewise" that this is reason enough to turn the liturgy in a podiatrical free-for-all. If this is the case, then let's follow the example of scripture precisely. Celebrate the liturgy as it is written and then "do likewise." In other words, the priest will wash the feet of twelve men and then another part of the liturgy can be devoted to the "doing likewise." Or maybe a foot-washing free-for-all liturgy can be planned for another time of the year, or even regularly scheduled during Lent. Not perfect solutions by any stretch, I know.

What is tiresome about this yearly debate is the constant refrain of prog liturgists that this event needs to "express diversity." No, it doesn't. There is no good reason for this liturgy to do any such thing. Why this liturgy should yield to the demands of liturgical political correctness is beyond me. There's no demand that baptisms reflect the parish's diversity. Diversity in confessions? Will every Latino couple getting married in the parish need to find an Asian couple to get married with in order to celebrate diversity? Can three black guys get ordained to the priesthood at the same time, or do they need to wait until at least one white guy is ready for ordination?

Of course, the other possibility is to simply skip it. It's optional.

2012 Addendum:  One of the stated goals of the Spirit of Vatican Two Revolution is to de-clericalize the Church by opening all liturgical roles to the laity.  Following the rubrics for the Foot Washing gets in the way of this hallowed goal; therefore, the rubrics must be ignored.  Listen carefully to the homilies tonight.  How many preachers note that Holy Thursday is specifically designed to celebrate the institution of the Eucharist and the ordained priesthood?  If your pastor doesn't mention this element of the liturgy, it is probably b/c he's never heard it himself!

___________________

Follow HancAquam and visit the Kindle Wish List and the Books & Things Wish List

Click on St. Martin and donate to the Dominicans! ------>

Judas faithfully served his god. . .

Wednesday of Holy Week (2012)
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St. Dominic Church, NOLA

We become what we worship; that is, we change into that which we love most. Ps 115 teaches us that the makers of idols and those who trust in them will be just like their own creations—with eyes that do not see, noses that do not smell, ears that do not hear, and throats that do not speak. If you love a thing of this passing world, your love will be passing as well. If you love God—eternal and boundless—your love will be eternal and boundless; you will become a partaker of the divine love that makes and sustains all of creation. Judas is an example of a man who loved passing things instead of God; he loved money, power, influence, and his own skin—all of which betrayed him when he died. Judas' betrayal of Christ is the most egregiously treacherous act in human history. But do we understand why he did it? Do we understand the nature of his betrayal? We must understand if we are to see this temptation heading our way. Judas' treason was rooted in his worship of the things of this world. He was an idolater. He became the thing he worshiped. And died in its service.

I don't mean to suggest here that Judas was transformed into a lump of silver. Money is simply a way to evaluate the relative value of things in order to make commercial exchanges more convenient. We use phrases like “he sold his soul for a drink” as a way of saying “he committed murder in order to get the money to feed his addiction.” Now, think in more spiritual terms. Judas sold Christ to the temple for 30 silver coins. To be more precise, he sold the temple information on Christ's whereabouts. But in doing so, he sold his soul for that bag of coins. Why did he do it? Judas served a lesser god while pretending to serve our Lord. He worshiped at the Altar of Temporary Things. We could call it avarice or lust for power but it amounts to the same thing: he did not love the Lord; instead, he loved his possessions and he wanted more. To satisfy his god, he sacrificed his friend and teacher. And, in the end, his god made good on its promise—Judas himself became merely a means for exchanging one thing for another. His coins bought him a hanging suicide and a name forever linked to the betrayal of one's friends. For all his infamy in our history, Judas was just a man, an ordinary man tempted to the limits of his willingness to love.

This week—especially the next three days—we delve into the darkest moments of our faith, and the limits of our willingness to love are tested. No one is going to offer us 30 silver coins for information on the whereabouts of the Lord. Nothing so spectacular as that. Our tests will be smaller, more precise, and much, much sharper. Will we fail to speak up in defense of the faith at a party? Will we deny being a follower of Christ at work? Will we secretly give our time and money to causes that undermine the Church? Will we teach theological and moral error to the children in our care? Will we fail to forgive, to love, and to hope each time the chance arises? Will we pray for those who hate us? No one will ask us to stab our Lord in the heart. However, we will asked to give him a nick here and there, nothing too big, nothing too dangerous. But one little nick from each of us here will add up to a very large, very deadly slice. Watch for the temptation to betray your Lord, listen for that jingling bag of coins, and remember the prophet Isiah: “The Lord God is my help, therefore I am not disgraced; I have set my face like flint. . .the Lord God is my help; who will prove me wrong?” 

___________________

 

Follow HancAquam and visit the Kindle Wish List and the Books & Things Wish List

Click on St. Martin and donate to the Dominicans! ------->

My prayers books. . .

Just wanted to plug my prayer books!

Treasure Old & New:  Traditional Prayers for Today's Catholics

Treasures Holy & Mystical:   A Devotional Journey for Today's Catholics 

Beatitudes & Beads:  Rosary Meditations on Blessedness

The first two books contain original litanies, novenas, and prayers written in a traditional format but addressing more contemporary issues and needs.   The second book contains an original rosary based on the Sermon on the Mount.

The third is booklet-sized version of the Beatitude Rosary that appears in the second book.  This booklet is also available in Spanish.

___________________

Follow HancAquam and visit the Kindle Wish List and the Books & Things Wish List

Click on St. Martin and donate to the Dominicans!  ----->

Monday Fat Report

Almost forgot the Monday Fat Report!

327lbs.  Nothing lost, nothing gained.

Gotta lose a little before Good Friday. . .those prostrations before the Cross ain't gonna do themselves.

P.S.  Doh.  I just noticed that last week was 328lbs.  So, I lost one!  :-)
___________________

Follow HancAquam and visit the Kindle Wish List and the Books & Things Wish List

Click on St. Martin and donate to the Dominicans!

End of an era. . .

Keep Scuba Mom in your prayers!  Today is the first day of her retirement.  She's worked at the same bank for 30 yrs. 

Also, keep Pop in your prayers as well. . .he's responsible for entertaining her.  Good luck with that, Pop!

Follow HancAquam and visit the Kindle Wish List and the Books & Things Wish List

Click on St. Martin and donate to the Dominicans ----->

A vespers homily

A Vespers homily from fra. Thomas More Barba, OP, student friar of the Southern Dominican Province. . .

fra. Thomas is preaching in the chapel of the new studium priory in St. Louis.
___________________

Follow HancAquam and visit the Kindle Wish List and the Books & Things Wish List

Click on St. Martin and donate to the Dominicans!

Coffee Cup Browsing

On an Army base in Afghanistan:  a cross is offensive. . .but a rainbow flag is just fine.

Plane makes emergency landing b/c two kids refuse to buckle seat belts. . .apparently, their parents were with them!  Give them a few years and they'll "Occupying" something with all the other brats.

". . .the nearly impenetrable parochialism of American liberals."  They are shocked that someone, anyone could disagree with them.  Make that "American liberal Catholics" and this article describes the contemporary Church perfectly.

Heh.  The MSM is shrieking about the ideological prejudices of the five conservative Justices who ripped into ObamaCare this week.  No mention of the ideological prejudices of the liberal Justices who had to make B.O.'s argument for him from the bench.

Devious, dishonest, creepy. . .she forgot amateurish.

NBC caught red-handed editing the 911 call from Zimmerman.  Read the transcript of the actual call and you will understand why our media are the least trusted of America's professionals.

Catholic biblical interpretation. . .excellent article for Easter studies!

The U.N. is the enemy of life. . .abolish it.

Conservatives understand liberals. . .liberals do not (cannot?) understand conservatives.  The consequences of self-righteousness?

___________________
Follow HancAquam and visit the Kindle Wish List and the Books & Things Wish List

Recommend this post on Google!

Choose wisely who you will be this week. . .

Palm Sunday (Year B)
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St. Dominic Church, NOLA

The King has arrived in Jerusalem! We shouted his name. We sang “Hosanna, hosanna in the highest!” We waved our palm branches, welcoming him among us. Then, we read aloud his Jerusalem Story. He's anointed in the house of a leper. He's sold as a fugitive to his enemies by Judas. He celebrates the Passover feast with his friends. He gives us the bread of life and the chalice of salvation, his Body and Blood. He is abandoned by his friends in the Garden of Gethsemane. Denied three times by Peter and betrayed by Judas. He is tried by Pilate, convicted by the crowd, scourged by legionaries, herded to the Place of the Skull, and nailed to a cross. To die for us in our sins. The question of Holy Week, the challenge set for us is this: how far do you follow him? Are you the woman from Bethany? Peter? Judas? Pilate? Are you in the faceless crowd? A Roman solider? Or, are you Mary, his mother at the foot of the Cross? John, his beloved disciple? Are you the Good Thief? Who you choose to be this week determines who you will become Easter morning. Choose wisely, choose Wisdom!

___________________

Follow HancAquam and visit the Kindle Wish List and the Books & Things Wish List

Recommend this post on Google!

A 1st Century Scapegoat No More

5th Week of Lent (S)
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St. Dominic Church, NOLA

Once attained, power—political, religious, financial—is very difficult to give up. There's something about the ability to impose one's will on people and events that's highly addictive, even corrosive to one's capacity to hear the truth. Caiaphas is a good example. He served as High Priest of the temple in Jerusalem for eighteen years, an unusually long term for the office. Caiaphas must have been an excellent politician. His nation was ruled by a foreign military power, the Roman Empire. His people were sharply divided into competing regional and religious factions, some of whom were militant nationalists and terrorists. His life was made even more difficult by this itinerant preacher who went around healing unclean outcasts; cavorting with tax-collectors and prostitutes; crashing bible studies in synagogues; and worst of all, publicly proclaiming his own divinity. The scribes and the Pharisees had reported that this country-bumpkin preacher only had a small group of devout followers, but he was also drawing big crowds and talking about the destruction of the temple. When he raised a man from the dead, Caiaphas had had enough. The threat had to be eliminated. Powerful people do not easily tolerate competition or opposition. The Way, the Truth, and the Life does more than compete and oppose—he wins. Always has, always will. 

We might have some sympathy for Caiaphas and his allies. There's no doubt that they are in an untenable bind. They govern a subjected nation and rule only b/c their conquerors allow them to. If they can't suppress the religious and political zeal of their own people, the Romans will do it for them. The Sanhedrin had long hoped to bring all the people of Israel back to their Promised Land. To do this, they need a lure, a draw; they need an intact temple and functioning priesthood. The last thing they need is some street preacher stirring up more trouble. That he appears to be who he said he is only makes their situation more dangerous. Raising Lazarus from the dead proves to be the one competitive stunt, one oppositional act that they cannot let slide. Caiaphas prophesies that the death of one man will save his people. He's right, of course, but not in a way that he can ever imagine. We can be sympathetic to his situation, but his religious and political power render him unable to hear the truth; he is both deaf and blind to the righteous Way that Jesus forges for the people of God.

Caiaphas' position as an the supreme Jewish authority in his nation prevents him for seeing who it is that he is plotting against. Deaf and blind to the Word, he sees a future for his people in the death of one man. I wonder if we share his vision. I mean, do we see a future for our people, the People of God, in the death of just one man? Caiaphas sees a scapegoat to appease the Romans. What do we see? Tomorrow, the final leg of our journey to Jerusalem begins. We walk into the crowds behind Jesus. They cheer; they call his name. They wave palm branches and welcome him as a king, shouting, “Hosanna!” We know where our king ends the journey, and we know where he finally ends and how he gets there. Our eyes and ears are wide open. But what do we hear in the cheering? What do we see in the clamoring crowds? Do they understand what we does for them? Do we? The temple of his body is destroyed on a Roman cross. And God's people are saved. Not from the Romans, or the Venetians, or the Ottomans, or the Nazis. They (and we) are saved from the corrupting power of sin. We are a graced nation won on a cross.

___________________

Follow HancAquam and visit the Kindle Wish List and the Books & Things Wish List

Recommend this post on Google!

R.I.P. to a Pro-Life Icon

Fr. Matt Robinson, OP died in Irving, TX  last night.  He fell last week and broke his hip.  Our provincial reports that he died in hospice care with the prior and sub-prior of his convent singing the "Salve."

Fr. Matt is a Pro-Life icon in Texas.  He encouraged Norma McCorvey ("Roe" in Roe v. Wade) into the Church.  Served as chaplain for several pro-life groups.  Operated a website.  

At nearly 98 y.o., Matt could rattle off Aquinas' Five Ways in Latin; tell you why science and faith can never be in conflict; fix your alarm clock while hearing your confession; and prepare, deliver, and defend a eight-week series of homilies on why the Mass is a true sacrifice!

He was a dynamo!  And he will be sorely, sorely missed. . .

R.I.P.
___________________

Follow HancAquam and visit the Kindle Wish List and the Books & Things Wish List

Recommend this post on Google!

Making & Maintaining Room for Christ

5th Week of Lent (W)
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St. Dominic Church, NOLA

In our readings for most of last week and all of this week (so far), Jesus shocks and outrages the religious believers of his day with increasingly ridiculous revelations about his true nature. He starts by claiming the authority to heal the sick by forgiving sins. He goes on to reveal that he is the Son of God. Then, yesterday, he makes his most blasphemous revelation, “. . .if you do not believe that I AM, you will die in your sins.” In other words, if you do not accept me as the Lord your God, you will die unforgiven. For the Pharisees, this is more than mere heresy, more than blasphemy—it's suicidal insanity! Surely, this man Jesus is demonically possessed or dangerously brain-damaged or both. And just in case the Pharisees aren't outraged enough, just in case they aren't already prepared to tear him limb from limb, today, Jesus throws a truckload of gasoline on the roaring fire, “. . .you are trying to kill me, because my word has no room among you.” Why is this so inflammatory? Our Lord is accusing his accusers of being the ones in rebellion against their God! Jesus' string of gobsmacking revelations raises an essential question for us: is there room among us for his word? If not, how do we make room?

Before we can answer these questions, we need to understand what “making room for his word” means. We've all heard—ad. nau—pastoral admonitions about “clearing out the clutter of our lives” during Lent. We've heard the demands for more silence, more contemplation, less work, less worry. There's no doubt that Lent provides us with the spiritual reasons and necessary excuses to slow down and pay attention to our personal and ecclesial relationships with God. But Jesus accusation here—there's no room in you for my word—is substantially more serious than a teacherly finger-wagging about the need to calm our busy lives. If I say to you, “Here's a 45ft. statue of the Sacred Heart for your house. . .”; or “Here's a pet elephant for your kids;” you would probably say, “Um, thanks, Father, but we don't have room for that.” You mean, “We have no place to properly store, properly house such a thing.” When Jesus accuses the Pharisees of having no room for his word, he means that they are completely unprepared to store, to house, to live with, to thrive in his teachings; they are unable and unwilling to build room into their lives, or renovate their lives so that his word can take up residence in them. Therefore, they will die in their sins.

At the moment of our baptism a room is built for us. Our parents, our godparents, the Church all pitch in and construct an indestructible room for us to store Christ's word. The room is permanent, but who lives in our room is a decision each of us makes day to day, hour by hour. If Christ's word is not in residence, something or someone else is. How do we make sure that we are keeping Christ and his word thriving in our room? There's no magic here. . .just the hard work of virtue, the good habit of trusting in God's promises; loving Him by loving each other; by seeing in the people we meet everyday a daily revelation of God's truth, goodness, and beauty; by sacrificing for the poor, the oppressed, the sick, the lonely, and the helpless; defying sin by forgiving those who sin against us; by wantonly throwing ourselves on the mercy of God and receiving every blessing He has to give us. With this kind of busyness, we keep our indestructible room filled to the ceiling with the Word of Christ. "If you remain in my word, you will truly be my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."

___________________

Follow HancAquam and visit the Kindle Wish List and the Books & Things Wish List

Recommend this post on Google!

Coffee Cup Browsing

Great news!  It looks like 7 of the 9 Justices of the Supreme Court aren't buying B.O.'s assertion that the individual mandate is a tax. . .meaning Congress has no authority to impose it.   Of course, guessing SC votes is like reading tea leaves.

Did B.O.'s lawyer take a dive yesterday?  ObamaCare is wildly unpopular.  Having it struck down by the SC would save him from having to defend it before the Nov elections. 

Mark your calendar. . .politician caught telling the truth.  His mic was on and he didn't know it.

I'm looking forward to performing this rite! 

When every other argument/plea/threat fails, throw the Safety Card.  I did this a few times when I worked in the psych hospital.  Sometimes it was the only move left after being slapped down.  The bosses don't like workers documenting a "safety issue."

A bunch of self-anointed Brights use their superior intellects to mock religious belief.  This reads like the puffed-up rantings of a adolescent brat.  There are good atheists out there.  The Church needs them b/c they keep us sharp, e.g. Kai Neilson.  Why is Islam never an atheist target?

Race-baiter endangers the lives of a elderly FL couple.  In the old days, they'd call this a "lynching."

Oh, those Inconvenient Narratives. . .they are always messing up a perfectly good fairy tale!

The Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite finally reintroduced in England.  Sorry, but that miter is too much. . .

___________________

Follow HancAquam and visit the Kindle Wish List and the Books & Things Wish List

Recommend this post on Google!

Sisters supporting our bishops. . .

To any young women out there considering a religious vocation:

Many congregations of women religious women in the U.S. have publicly expressed their support for our bishops and their fight against B.O.'s violation of our religious liberty.

Many congregations of women religious women in the U.S. have thrown their support behind B.O. and his plan to force us to fund the mortal sin of others, providing him with "Catholic cover" for his power grab.  The LCWR has issued a statement lauding the contraception mandate.

If you are looking around for a congregation to join, may I suggest you consider one of these:

Religious Sisters Speak Out (link)

At press time, 22 orders of women religious who have posted on their websites statements supporting the bishops’ position against the HHS mandate:

Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia
Little Sisters of the Poor
Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist
Sisters of St. Francis of Perpetual Adoration, IHM Province
Sisters of Life
Carmelite Sisters of the Aged and Infirm
Carmelite Sisters of the Most Sacred Heart of Los Angeles
Religious Sisters of Mercy of Alma, Mich.
Daughters of the Immaculata
Dominican Sisters of the Immaculate Conception
Carmelite Sisters of the Divine Heart of Jesus, Central Province
Congregation of the Divine Spirit
The Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, N.Y.
Franciscan Daughters of Mary, Covington, Ky.
School Sisters of St. Francis, Panhandle, Texas
Servants of Mary, Ministers to the Sick, Kansas City, Kan.
Sisters of St. Francis of the Holy Eucharist, Independence, Mo.
Sisters of the Resurrection, Castleton, N.Y.
School Sisters of Christ the King, Lincoln, Neb.
Franciscan Sisters of Dillingen, Immaculate Heart of Mary Province, Hankinson, N.D.
Sisters of Charity of Our Lady, Mother of the Church, Baltic, Conn.
Sisters of Our Mother of Divine Grace, Port Sanilac, Mich. 

It goes w/o saying that there is more to selecting a congregation to join than assessing their position on one political issue.  However, if a congregation is openly undermining our bishops on this fundamental issue, well, that's a pretty good sign that the sisters have seriously lost their way.

Why join an order that pretends to be an alternative magisterium? 

___________________

Follow HancAquam and visit the Kindle Wish List and the Books & Things Wish List

Recommend this post on Google!

Monday Fat Report (Octave)

It's +1 this week. . .ah well.  Up to 328lbs.

It could be much worse, I guess!
___________________

Follow HancAquam and visit the Kindle Wish List and the Books & Things Wish List

Recommend this post on Google!

Blog-begging for our OP novices and students. . .

I haven't done any blog-begging in quite a while, so here goes:  The Province of St. Martin de Porres is in the midst of its annual 1216 Campaign. . .

This is our major fundraising (i.e., mendicant, begging) event of the year.  Since Katrina our fundraising base here in the Nawlins' area has diminished considerably, so we are reaching out well beyond the local church.

The money we raise during the 1216 Campaign provides a huge portion of what we need to form our novices in Irving, TX and educate our students in St. Louis.

Since 1980, our OP students have been attending Aquinas Institute in St. Louis.  This is a collaborative studium with the Province of St. Albert the Great (Chicago).  Our students have been living in Jesuit Hall (!) on the campus of St. Louis University.  

In December of 2011, this living arrangement changed rather dramatically.  Our students moved into their own place.  We renovated a convent nearby and gave our students a place of their own.

You can see the new St Dominic Priory here.  The student brothers no longer pray in the basement of Jesuit Hall!  The young friars are particularly excited about the new choir stalls installed just a few days ago.

Formation costs for the novitiate and studium eat up a large portion of our annual budget.  So, we need help!  We need your help.  

If we are to provide the Church in the 21st century will well-educated, faithful, dynamic preachers, we need the support of those who have benefited from the preaching ministry of the Order.

If you have benefited from our ministry or long to see Catholic preaching and teaching thrive, please donate to our campaign.

You can donate online.  

Or send a check to: 

Southern Dominican Province
1421 N. Causeway Blvd.
Ste 200
Metairie, LA   70001

___________________

Follow HancAquam and visit the Kindle Wish List and the Books & Things Wish List

Recommend this post on Google!

Retreat report

Beautiful day yesterday in NOLA area!  Sunny, cool.  

The retreat with the Mt Carmel Academy faculty was a lot of fun.  Good food, good company, great facilities--Solomon Retreat Center in Robert, LA.  No one threw a book at me, so my part of the gig was (at least) not offensive, or not offensive enough to throw a book.

We covered:  reasons for the new translation, the Mass parts, nature of the homily, theology of offering and sacrifice. . .lots of fun.

Yesterday was the first time I've been across the Pontchartrain Bridge since I was about 11 y.o.  My family moved from Belle Chase to Slidell, and I vaguely remember us driving over the bridge.  It's not as scary some 35 yrs. later.

Off today!  See y'all tomorrow.

___________________

Follow HancAquam and visit the Kindle Wish List and the Books & Things Wish List

Recommend this post on Google!

Retreat Day

Headed across The Lake this morning to give a retreat to the faculty of Mt. Carmel Academy.

We'll be reading/discussing the Mass. . .line by line.  My fav retreat topic!

Fr. Philip, OP
___________________

Follow HancAquam and visit the Kindle Wish List and the Books & Things Wish List

Recommend this post on Google!

Coffee Cup Browsing

Welfare State + Contraception = Demographic/Financial Collapse. . ."Surely, this is the ultimate expression of the suicide cult that is the modern Left. . ."

EU Court:  same-sex "marriage" is not a right; however, if SSM is legalized, churches must comply. 

Like teenie-boppers squealing for the Beatles, EU Nannies welcomed the 2008 election results.  Now, not so much.  I believe the appropriate term is "Rubes."

Jesuit owned America Magazine once again beclowns itself by attacking the bishops' support for religious liberty.  Wonder what they will spend their 30 pieces of silver on?

A predictably dismissive NPR piece on last Friday's Religious Freedom Rally.  NB.  the use of polling to minimize Christian concerns and condescending labels for participants.


Atheists rally in D.C. to show support for non-religious liberty.  Good for them.  The Constitutional right to practice one's religion includes the right to practice no religion at all.  Now, will these folks stand up for our rights when the time comes?  The rational ones will.  Dawkins?  Not so much.
_____________________

Follow HancAquam and visit the Kindle Wish List and the Books & Things Wish List

Recommend this post on Google!

No Cross, no Throne. . .

NB.  I wrote this homily three years ago while living in Rome.  Since the community Mass on Sunday in the convent was celebrated in Italian, I never got to preach it.  So, I thought I'd give it a hearing this weekend.

Fifth Sunday of Lent (2012)
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St. Dominic Church, NOLA

Jesus is troubled. What should he say? “Father, save me from this hour” or “Father, glorify your name”? He chooses to glorify God’s name. Why? He says, “…it was for this purpose [to glorify God’s name] that I came to this hour.” By glorifying God’s name he fulfills his purpose. Does this glorification of God’s name accomplish any vital tasks other than praising the Father? Yes. Jesus says to the crowd at that time of judgment, “. . .the ruler of this world will be driven out. And when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself." What Jesus says and does is the mechanism of our salvation; his word and deed makes us sons of the Father. What does he say? “Father, glorify your name.” What does he do? He dies. And then he rises from death to take us with him. So, why is Jesus troubled? To rise with him, we must die with him and our deaths must be in service to him. We cannot hope to escape the betrayal of Judas, the passion in Jerusalem, the nails and wood of the cross, and then expect to be part of a glorious Easter harvest. If we will follow Jesus up from the earth, we must follow him on the earth. This is what troubles our Lord: “. . .unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit.” To rise, we must fall; to produce much fruit, we must die.

So, are you ready to die? I mean, are you ready to follow Christ and produce the fruit he produced by dying on the cross? Most of us hope to avoid the kind of death that Christ died. And most of us will. At least in the particulars. Few of us will be scourged. Or force-marched to a burning landfill and nailed to a cross. Few of us will be subjected to public ridicule and executed to spare the nation the wrath of its foreign military governors. Few of us will be accused of blasphemy, religious sedition. If we are killed for the faith, it will be incrementally. Slowly. Almost invisibly. The proverbial frog boiled by degrees of increasing heat. The Enemy’s strategy this time around is far more subtle. More understated and restrained. This time we will be accused of hating ourselves, our neighbors, and our God; we will be accused of standing against truths the science and progress, against the beauty of Mother Earth, against the innate goodness of our human nature. This time, we will be charged with being inhumane, intolerant, uncompromising, divisive, and ignorant. And like all the other times, we will die. . .for preaching the simple truth of the gospel.

God’s will be done; therefore, we are troubled. So, what do we say: “Father, save us from this hour” or “Father, glorify your name”? We could ask our Lord to save us from this hour. We could. But why should we? Can we honestly claim we didn’t know what was in store for us? Can we look God in the eye and say, “Hey, this wasn’t in the brochure!”? “No one every said anything about suffering for the faith!” No, that would be a lie. If you know what it means to be baptized into his death, then you know what it means to be resurrected into his life. If you will rise, you will die. Why would you beg God to save you from the very thing you signed on for? Yes, we were promised a garden. . .and we will have it! Look for the path marked “Gethsemane.” Ask yourself: why do I deserve a better life and death than Christ? You might say, “Didn’t Christ die so we wouldn’t have to?” No, he didn't. No, he died so that we might have eternal life and have it most abundantly! That path—the Way to an abundant life, an eternal life—cuts straight up and through Gethsemane. And there is no escalator, no detour.

No detour, for sure. But there is hope; and here it is: “…when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself." Though we may understandably fear the death we have signed up for, part and parcel of that death is the promise—the guarantee—the death is not the end; that is, death is not our end, our purpose. We were not created to die. We do not live to die. Though our bodies fail us, and we cease to live, we do not stop being exactly who God made and remade us to Be. In fact, in Christ, we are made perfectly who were first made to be. And only in Christ—perfect God, perfect Man—can we be perfectly who we are made to be for all time. When Christ dies on the cross, humanity dies with him. When Christ rises from the tomb—dead for three days, three nights—humanity rises with him. If you and I will be among those who rise with Christ, we must be among those who die with Christ. As Christ himself teaches us: “Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there also will my servant be.” If you read any detours in that sentence, you might need to get your eyes checked.

Whose path do you follow? Where are you on that path? Which Way do you go? You, like every man and woman ever created, will be offered, at some point, a bag of thirty silver coins. The Powers of this world want one thing for this price: a simple, easy accommodation, a compromise; an answer from one who has chosen to follow the Way of Truth and Life—“So that the many may avoid persecution or pain or inconvenience or anxiety, tell us what we want to hear; tell us that this Christ is a fraud, a myth; tell us that his good news is simply one message among many equally valuable spiritual options; tell us that we do not have to suffer the Cross and die in order to rise again; tell us that we can make our own lifestyles choices and still have eternal! Tell us, Christian, that God loves us just the way we are and doesn't want us to change.” At this moment, staring down at thirty pieces of silver, who are you? Where are you and where do you hope to end?

Before you answer. . .before you commit. . .hear again: “[Jesus] learned obedience from what he suffered; and when he was made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.” If you will learn, if we will be saved. . .we will first suffer—maybe physically, maybe emotionally, maybe socially or spiritually. But we will suffer, and when we suffer for the sake of Christ's name, we obey his commandment to love. He loved us all the way through his Passion, all the way through the garbage of Gehenna, and on to the Cross. Like Christ, to rise, we must fall; to produce much fruit, we must first die.

___________________

Follow HancAquam and visit the Kindle Wish List and the Books & Things Wish List

Recommend this post on Google!

The Nawlins' Rally for Religious Freedom

The thunderstorms that rolled through Nawlins' on Thursday night fled Friday morning at the sight of about 300-350 religious believers (mostly Catholics) meeting in front of the Federal Building on Camp St.  

We had our signs.

We had petitions.

We had priests, religious, seminarians, lots of Pro-Life lay folks.

We had moms with babies.  Teens, dads, grandma's and grandpa's.

We had a large group of students from a couple of Catholic schools.

We even had one of the original framers of the Constitution give us a short history lesson!

Most of the people driving by honked horns and gave us the Thumbs Up.  A few shouted obscenities.

As expected, no media.  

Yours truly flubbed his own admonition to take pics.  I'd let the battery die.  After I got home, I remembered that my fancy-pantsy phone can take pics.  Oy. Poet-theologians are not tech-savvy.

When we left the rally, the group was praying the rosary.  

How did the rally turn out in your neck of the woods?

Update:  The Anchoress has some pics from all over, including links to more pics.  Doing the job the media won't do.
___________________

Follow HancAquam and visit the Kindle Wish List and the Books & Things Wish List

Recommend this post on Google!

Media Watch

The MSM will send two dozen reporters and cameramen to cover the adolescent antics of four OccuTards in Peoria. . .but they completely ignore 300,000 Pro-Life marchers in B.O. backyard.

I expect today's Stand Up Rally for Religious Freedom will either be ignored completely or portrayed as some sort of clergy led astroturf against the administration.  

Let's keep a watch on the MSM!  Take pics, vids during the rallies, and watch your local news and papers.  When they pull their usual deceptive nonsense, call them on it immediately.  We already know most "journalists" are little more than pipelines from the White House to the public.  Don't let them get away with any anti-religious

___________________

Follow HancAquam and visit the Kindle Wish List and the Books & Things Wish List

Recommend this post on Google!

Get caught being Catholic in public!!!

Get caught being Catholic in public!!!

___________________

Follow HancAquam and visit the Kindle Wish List and the Books & Things Wish List

Recommend this post on Google!

On being a small but brighter light

4th Week of Lent (Th)
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St. Dominic Church, NOLA

We are all children of the Enlightenment; that is, we were all raised on a daily diet of rational skepticism, the need for scientific proof, and a general suspicion of the supernatural. Add to this mix a uniquely American pragmatism and common good sense, and you have a model for the modern person who strives in live in the real world of things. However, like most children, we've taken bits and pieces of our upbringing and incorporated our own experiences into a worldview that seems coherent to us. Since we are believers, we have rejected the idea that there is no supernatural realm. We've accepted the existence of God; the reality of angels and their fallen kin; the destructive consequences of sin and the free availability of freedom from sin. Though few of us would claim to fully understand how the supernatural world works, most, if not all, of us would agree that there is something like a world beyond the physical world. How did we come to this conclusion? Evidence? Wishful thinking? Just a gamble? Maybe a little of each? If we follow Christ, we do so by choice. We made a decision to believe, a decision to trust the promises of God and to follow His Christ. Evidence plays a supporting role and reason helps us to understand, but ultimately, we choose. We choose to believe the witness of faithful generations.

Jesus confronts his accusers with a radical assertion: I am the Son of God. He shocks the Jews to their religious core by claiming to have the authority to pass judgment on sins, to forgive those sins, and heal the sinner. In effect, he is claiming to be God Himself. So why does he say, “If I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is not true”? First, let's understand what he is saying. He means, “When I testify for myself, you do not believe me.” He's not saying that his self-witness is false, only that his testimony is not heard as the truth by those who will not to believe. Augustine says it perfectly, “For He knew well that His Own witness of Himself was true; but for the sake of the weak, and hard of belief, and [those] without understanding, the Sun looked out for lamps. For their weakness of sight could not bear the dazzling brightness of the Sun.” The sun, our brightest star, looked for lamps. The Son of God looked for smaller lights to reflect his brightness so that those blinded by the brilliance of his witness could see him for who he really is. 

The Church—for 2,000 yrs—has been and continues to be a global collection of those smaller lights, each reflecting a sliver of Christ's light, each shining out a glimpse of his true glory. The accumulated light of 50 generations, 20 centuries, with each new generation adding to the brightness of our corporate witness, this gathered light tells the true but as yet imperfect story of our collective labors toward bearing a final witness to Christ's triumph over death. Evidence supports our claim that the Church is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic, even if individual lights in the Church fail at being one or all of the above. Reason—as a divine gift oriented toward the Gift-giver—supports our incomplete understanding of God's complete Self-revelation. But evidence and reason alone do not constitute faith. Reason and evidence do not suffice as truthful testimony. We choose to trust; we choose to love; we choose to hope. And when we choose to trust, love, and hope, our smaller light is added to the global witness, making the Church's testimony to the glory of God's mercy all the brighter. We can choose to brighten the light of our witness, or we can choose to darken it. Join the faithful generations in bearing witness to the saving power of Christ!

___________________

Follow HancAquam and visit the Kindle Wish List and the Books & Things Wish List

Recommend this post on Google!

Coffee Cup Browsing

His frustration with the bishops is understandable. . .but his rhetoric and understanding of canon law are deeply flawed.  

Boys castrated in Dutch Catholic psych wards in the '50's.  This sounds like the sort of thing that trendy scientific "thinkers" of the progressive-wing would do.  Orthodox Catholics know better.

Update:  Yup.  Turns out that those castrating shrinks in the Netherlands were just "following orders" from the All Benevolent State, specifically a mandate to castrate sex offenders.  

Occu-Idiots:  No Chores Strike on May 1st.  Looking at the recent pics of Occupy herding, I'd say not one of them as ever done a chore.  Much less held a real job.

Wow. . .yet another 9-0 Supreme Court Smackdown for B.O.  Maybe appointing all those political hacks to the ranks of the DOJ is turning out to be a really bad idea, uh?

Only the minds of a public service union could come up with something this twisted.

Decades of socialist dreaming and cradle to grave welfare have destroyed Italy's future.

Outrageous salaries for archdiocesan bureaucrats. 

What is going on in China?  Tanks in the street, a reported military coup in Shanghai, ousters of Party officials. 
_____________________

Follow HancAquam and visit the Kindle Wish List and the Books & Things Wish List

Recommend this post on Google!

Jesus is not equal to God

4th Week of Lent (W)
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St. Dominic Church, NOLA

Jesus heals a crippled man at the Pool of Bethesda, ordering him, “Rise, take up your mat, and walk.” The Jews who persecute the Lord accuse him of breaking the Sabbath Law. When Jesus hears these accusations, he answers them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, the Son cannot do anything on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for what he does, the Son will do also.” This is Jesus' answer to persecutors' question, but what is the question? What do the accusing Jews ask of Jesus? Implied in the accusation is the question: just who do you think you are. . .healing on the Sabbath, forgiving sins, and ordering others to break the Law?” Jesus answers, “My Father is at work until now, so I am at work.” This answer only adds to the fury of his accusers “because he not only broke the sabbath but he also called God his own father, making himself equal to God.” The sheer audacity of Jesus' claim to be the Son of God is breathtaking b/c no creature can ever be divine, no mere mortal can embody the glory of the Creator. Breaking the Sabbath Law is crime enough to warrant severe punishment, but to claim divine sonship is beyond the pale, beyond anything these religious folk have ever heard. It violates the First Commandment of the Ten. Of course, as Jesus makes abundantly clear, he is no creature; he is no mere mortal.

Had Jesus' persecutors fully understood what he is claiming about himself, they would've been really, really upset. According to John's Gospel, the accusers charge Jesus with the heresy of proclaiming himself “equal to God.” Jesus does no such thing. He never claims to be equal to God. He claims to be God Himself. Does this seem like a distinction w/o a difference to you? Well, let me ask you: two nickels equal a dime, right? But would you say that those two nickels are the same as one dime? How many of you would say, “I am equal to myself”? Americans claim that men and women are equal, but we do not claim that they are the same. Being equal to someone is not the same as being identical. We can be “equal under the law” while being very different in every other way. The claim that Jesus is making about his person, his mission, and his ultimate destination are all bound together in who he is as the Son of God made flesh. When he acts, speaks, and thinks, we witness the acts, speech, and thoughts of God. It took us a few centuries to wrestle this insight out of revelation, and it matters a great deal that we guard it well. 

Why does it matter how we think about the identity of Christ? We need to get this bit of theology right b/c we place so much of the weight of the faith on the person on Christ. We claim to follow Christ. To do and say all that he did and said. This means following him all the way to the Cross, into death, and on to the resurrection. Imagine how different our understanding of salvation would be if we had concluded (wrongly) some 1,800 yrs. ago that Jesus was just a man with a really deep insight into the divine. He died a criminal and so would we. He didn't rise from the tomb and neither will we. Our whole faith would be limited to being nice to one another, doing a few good works, and sharing a communal meal once a week. Is that worth dying for? Would you give your life to imitate an executed 1st century Jewish heretic? Instead we have this, “. . .whoever hears my word and believes in the one who sent me has eternal life and will not come to condemnation, but has passed from death to life.” That, brothers and sisters, is why any of this matters.

___________________

Follow HancAquam and visit the Kindle Wish List and the Books & Things Wish List

Recommend this post on Google!

It's not about your feelings. . .it's about the Truth!

The Soft Tyranny of Sentimentalism

Elizabeth Scalia

If 20th-century atheism rode in on the backs of totalitarian regimes, the 21st-century has delivered unto the world an anti-God, anti-Church movement that fits seamlessly into shallow, postmodern popular culture. Having no need for uprisings and the hardware of destruction, the new fog of faith has crept in on the little cat feet of Sentimentalism and it now sits on its haunches, surveying its splendidly wrought sanctimony.

Sentimentalism is the force of feel-goodism, the means by which we may cast off the conventions of faith and casually dismiss those institutions that refuse to submit to the trending times and morals. The Sentimentalist trusts his feelings over hallowed authority or the urgings of his reason, frequently answering hard religious questions with some noble-sounding phrase like "The God I believe in wouldn't . . . " (fill in the blank). What fits in that blank is typically some tenet of traditional faith that isn't currently fashionable, some moral demand that pop culture considers impossible—and hence, not worth even trying. Thus the Sentimentalist, while believing he follows the inviolate voice of his conscience, is really sniffing after trends, forming his heart according to the sensus fidelium of middlebrow magazines and public radio.

A Sentimentalist cannot reconcile religious convictions—whether rooted in scripture, tradition, or cultural practice—that do not correspond with his own considered feelings, which for him are both weighty and principled. Convinced that the people he loves cannot possibly be denied anything they want by a just God, or that the same just God would not permit deformities, illness, war, childhood abuse, or any of the human sufferings common to us all, he will not participate in a Church so fault-riddled and out-of-step with a generous and enlightened generation as . . . his own.

[. . .]

Sentimentalism nearly reigned supreme in the priestly formation programs of the 70's and 80's, thus producing a generation of pastors who casually dismiss Church teaching in favor of "following one's heart."  This Disneyesque approach to caring for God's children has inevitably bequeathed to us a generation or two of Catholics so sensitive, so imperiled by reason, authority, and tradition that the merest suggestion that Behavior X might be a sin or self-destructive is met with poo-poo's and derisive giggles.  

How often have you heard/read the phrases "out of step with the culture" or "throwback to pre-Vatican Two" or "turning back the clock on reform"?  All of these should be a loud, glaring warning that the speaker/writer is shoveling postmodern dung and calling it Something New.  The whole "Spirit of Vatican Two" project has been a long, disastrous experiment in global sentimentalism and, thankfully, the biological clock tracking this failed agenda is winding down. 

Unfortunately, it will take two generations to completely purge the ectoplasm of the "Spirit" and re-catechize Catholics in the truth of the faith.

Read the whole thing. . .it is WELL worth your time.
___________________

Follow HancAquam and visit the Kindle Wish List and the Books & Things Wish List

Recommend this post on Google!

NPR calls BXVI "a famous gay icon"

NPR game show host makes a series of offensive Pope BXVI jokes.  

Your tax dollars at work, folks!  Read the transcript and then contact NPR and let them know what you think. 

You might also consider contacting your Senators and Congressman to suggest that there are better ways to spend your taxes than paying some smug lefty to offend the Pope on public radio.

___________________

Follow HancAquam and visit the Kindle Wish List and the Books & Things Wish List

Recommend this post on Google!

Flaming clowning and a little dog too. . .

I'm a big fan of smelling good!  My cologne collection is very modest but stocked with reasonably high quality scents.  Below is a commercial for AXE Body Spray.  Never smelled the stuff. . .and don't plan to.  But the ad is pretty funny.

Got a laugh out of the flaming clown and the little dog.  :-)
___________________

Follow HancAquam and visit the Kindle Wish List and the Books & Things Wish List

Recommend this post on Google!

By the numbers: Fat Report and Page Views

Hmmmmm. . .looks like I gained four pounds.  This doesn't sound right.  I've gone down a notch on my habit belt.  Maybe the last weigh-in was a fluke.  Oh well.

Happier number:   1,003,833.   That's the number of page views for HancAquam since Feb. of 2006.  HA averages 557 page views a day. 

Thanks for reading!

Fr. Philip

___________________

Follow HancAquam and visit the Kindle Wish List and the Books & Things Wish List

Recommend this post on Google!

The original cell of social life

Solemnity of St. Joseph
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St. Dominic Church, NOLA

If you ask a Catholic pastor how many members he has in his parish, he will say something like, “Oh, about 800 families.” Or 1,000 families, or 2,000 families. The number isn't as important here as the unit of measurement: families. Not individuals but families. Even if a household consists of one individual, it's counted as a family. This may seem odd until you read what the Catechism says about the family, “The family is the original cell of social life”(no. 2207). The most basic unit of our lives together as Christians is not the individual Christian but the Christian embedded in his/her family life. Given this, we can say that the parish then is a family of local families. The diocese is the family of all parochial families, and the Universal Church is the family of all the diocesan families. What is the Universal Church? The Church is the heir to God's promise made to “Abraham and his descendants that he would inherit the world, [not through the law] but through the righteousness that comes from faith.” When we believe on the name of Jesus, we are adopted into the family of God, becoming brothers and sisters to Christ, and co-heirs to the Kingdom. This means that Joseph, husband to Mary and adopted father of Jesus, is the our father in the Church. He is the Pillar of the Family, the Christian model for honoring God as our heavenly Father.

What little we know about Joseph comes from the gospel accounts of his betrothal to the virgin, Mary. Matthew tells us that he was “a righteous man,” a man consistent in his duties to God, following the Law, and keeping closely to the covenant. His personal integrity is demonstrated by the fact that he was unwilling to expose his wife to shame when she became pregnant before their period of betrothal had ended. Having decided to divorce her quietly, an angel came to him in a dream and told him that Mary's child was a gift from the Holy Spirit and that he (Joseph) should take them in and name the child, Emmanuel, “God is with us.” Matthew reports, “. . .[Joseph] did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him. . .” It is precisely Joseph's obedience to the Lord, his unwavering faith in the promises of God that forms the foundation of the Christian family, the original living cell of the Church. Had Joseph stubbornly followed the letter of the Law, Mary might have been a single mother raising a son without a father in the home.*

A recent study in England revealed that 2/3 of failed families there were fatherless. Most households below the poverty line in the U.S. are headed by single mothers and most of the young men serving prison terms in the U.S. were raised w/o a father in their lives. Now, there's nothing magical about having a man living with the family. Fathers can be abusive; a drain on the family finances rather than a help; and a bad example of fidelity to the vows of marriage. But a father who is faithful to God, faithful to his vows, and faithful to his children is a blessing beyond measure. The Catechism notes that “authority, stability, and a life of relationships within the family constitute the foundations for freedom, security, and fraternity within society” (no. 2207). If the original cell of social life, the family, is infected with selfishness, infidelity, uncontrolled addictions, and violence, then society at large is in danger of dying. The cure for these infections is to be found in the holy example of St. Joseph. A selfless life lived with sacrificial love in the service of one's family motivated by an unwavering faith in God. Joseph obeyed the Lord and his family flourishes still 2,000 years later!

* It has become expedient in recent years for Catholics of a particular political bent to claim that Mary was an "unwed mother."  This is patently false.  Mary was betrothed to Joseph.  If this were not so, how could he consider divorcing her?  Another politically expedient myth about Joseph and Mary is that the members of the Holy Family were "illegal immigrants."  This is also patently false.  If they were "illegals," why were they traveling to Jerusalem to participate in the Roman census? 

___________________

Follow HancAquam and visit the Kindle Wish List and the Books & Things Wish List

Recommend this post on Google!

Another B.O. blow to our religious liberty

From the NYT:

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration took another step on Friday to enforce a federal mandate for health insurance coverage of contraceptives, announcing how the new requirement would apply to the many Roman Catholic hospitals, universities and social service agencies that insure themselves [. . .]

Some otherwise solid Catholics are claiming that this mandate is not a violation of religious liberty.  I can't follow the logic of their twisted arguments.  If you pay for it, you're complicit. 

What I do know is that progressive social engineering by our Self Anointed Betters is indeed progressive, or rather it is incremental.  If the mandate stands, other mandates will follow until the only thing we're allowed to practice is our choir voices and maybe the occasional baptism. . .using FDA approved luke-warm, organic bottled water, of course.  

That's what B.O.'s whole freedom of worship rhetoric is about--the exclusion of religious voices from the public square. Keep your religion confined to the church. Our Constitution categorically restrains any governmental intrusion in our faith lives, guaranteeing our freedom of religion and not only our freedom to worship as we see fit.

STAND UP for our religious liberty on March 23rd!  And do not buy the lie that this battle is about women's health, contraception, or the right to privacy.  That's just faux political posturing to frighten women and shore up support among secularists.

___________________

Follow HancAquam and visit the Kindle Wish List and the Books & Things Wish List

Recommend this post on Google!

Return to Him all that is His. . .

3rd Week of Lent (S)
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St. Dominic Church, NOLA

Hosea prophesies to those who turn from God, "Come, let us return to the LORD, it is he who has rent, but he will heal us; he has struck us, but he will bind our wounds. He will revive us . . . he will raise us up, to live in his presence. . .let us strive to know the Lord. . .” Let us strive to know the Lord! To know the Lord, to hear His Word and live according to His law, is the one sacrifice He will not refuse. To turn our heart and mind to His purpose and surrender our strength to His end is way back to His presence. But what turns us from the Lord in the first place? Hosea accuses God's people of practicing a piety “like a morning cloud, like the dew that early passes away.” Soft, thin, easily evaporated—a piety that collapses under the slightest pressure, that hides itself when threatened. Such a dainty love for God cannot stand along side the demands of righteousness. And it didn't. “For this reason I struck them through the prophets, I slew them by the words of my mouth. . .” If our Lord does want burnt offerings, if He rejects pietistic ritual and empty prayer, what does He want from us? “. . .it is love that I desire, not sacrifice, and knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.” To be truly righteous, we must love God and come to know Him in that love.

Jesus preaches a parable: a Pharisee and a tax collector approach the temple to pray. The Pharisee is convinced of his own righteousness, while the tax collector is convicted in his sin. The Pharisee cries out, “O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity—greedy, dishonest, adulterous. . .I fast twice a week, and I pay tithes on my whole income.” The tax collector “would not even raise his eyes to heaven but beat his breast and prayed, 'O God, be merciful to me a sinner.'” The Pharisee believes that fasting twice a week and paying a tithe on his whole income makes him righteous, makes him unlike the rest of us. He believes that his own actions—in following the Law—are the source of his holiness. His prayer is a lie. The tax collector approaches the temple, freely confessing his sin, and throws himself headlong into God's mercy, placing himself squarely and fully into God's hands. He knows that any righteousness he might enjoy is solely the work of the Lord. His prayer is true. Which of these two offers an acceptable sacrifice? Jesus says, “I tell you, the [tax collector] went home justified, not the [Pharisee]. . .” 

To be truly righteous, truly justified, we must love God and come to know Him in that love. And when we love God and come to know Him in that love, we are made righteous by Him whom we love. Hosea tells God's people that they have been humbled by the Lord b/c of their flimsy piety. Rather than humbling themselves like the tax collector, they choose instead to exalt themselves like the Pharisee; so now, they are urged to return to the Lord to be healed, to have their self-inflicted wounds bound by the very one they disobeyed. Hosea prophesies to God's fallen-away, “Let us strive to know the Lord!” And in knowing Him, love Him. He wants our contrite hearts, hearts well and truly turned to Him; He wants our strength, our courage turned to His purpose; He wants all of us, each of us; but He also wants all, everything from each of us. Not our pious gestures, nor our memorized and mumbled prayers. He wants from us all that He gives us: love, mercy, patience, and humility. Everything we have to give was first given. Before it all became ours, it was His. Return to Him all that is His; sacrifice your contrite heart. Know Him and love Him.

___________________

Follow HancAquam and visit the Kindle Wish List and the Books & Things Wish List

Recommend this post on Google!

Coffee Cup Browsing

No comment necessary:  local Planned Parenthood CEO arrested for indecent exposure.  

NAACP asks the UN to investigate state voter ID laws. . .in the US!  Given the UN's history as an overpriced but worthless collection of radical blowhards, I'm not worried.

The priest who fell for the Lesbian Buddhist set up finally speaks out. 

Canonist Ed Peters says that the Good Father does not understand the relevant canons.  I agree.

Fantastic vid from a Catholic woman challenging the B.O./MSM meme about the Church's "war on women." 

The woman who wants the Church to pay for her birth control pills vacations in Spain and Italy with her rich boyfriend. Apparently, $9/mo. for condoms will cramp her partying budget.

"You're more awesome than a monkey wearing a tuxedo made out of bacon. . ."  LOL!

Odd.  NYT won't publish "It's Time to Leave Islam" ad b/c it might endanger the troops. . .yet, they regularly argue that publishing leaked military info must be published despite any threat to the troops.
_____________________

Follow HancAquam and visit the Kindle Wish List and the Books & Things Wish List

Recommend this post on Google!

Stand Up!

The Nationwide Rally for Religious Freedom is being held Friday, March 23 at noon, local time, outside federal buildings, Congressional offices and historic sites across the country. The theme for the Rally is “Stand Up for Religious Freedom—Stop the HHS Mandate!”

Will there be a rally near you?  Check it out.  If not, organize one!

___________________

Follow HancAquam and visit the Kindle Wish List and the Books & Things Wish List

Recommend this post on Google!

Can an acorn produce anything but an oak?

3rd Week of Lent (W)
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
St. Dominic Church, NOLA

You've probably never thought of Moses as a salesman. But think about it. He sales thousands of Hebrew slaves on the idea of following him out of slavery. He sales them on a plan to follow him through the desert. . .for forty years! He sales them the truth of a number of improbable revelations from God. Perhaps his best sales pitch comes when he delivers the Lord's Ten Commandments. Note this sentence in particular: “Observe [these commandments] carefully, for thus will you give evidence of your wisdom and intelligence to the nations who will hear of all these statutes and say, 'This great nation is truly a wise and intelligent people.'” That's brilliant! Moses knows that the commandments aren't going to be all that popular; they're going to be downright tough to swallow. That these commandments come from God should be enough for the fleeing Jews, but Moses knows his people. So, a little sugar is added to make any bitterness sweeter. Moses isn't fudging the truth. Following God's law is a sign of a wise and intelligent people. But a simple moral code like the Commandments needs to be practiced over time before it can develop into a proper ethical worldview. When Jesus announces that he has come to fulfill the law, he means that his arrival marks the full maturing of the Commandments' potential. At the deepest root of every oak tree is an acorn.

One of the many delusions of failed revolutions in the modern period is the idea that the traditions of a people must be destroyed before the revolution can succeed. The enlightened revolutionaries of 18th century France murdered priests and nuns. Destroyed churches. And set up a temple to reason. Bolivar, Castro, and Chavez all attacked the Church and their cultural heritages. It's no accident that both Stalin and Mao destroyed the religious and cultural heritages of their respective nations in the pursuit of secular, totalitarian utopias. They saw the past as the enemy of the future and (quite literally) bulldozed churches, temples, museums, and burned whole libraries of books. Their socialist utopias had to be built on a foundation of absolute dependence on the state and the party. Faith, tradition, family, individuality, and equality under the law were all named “enemies of the people” and destroyed. For these two murderous dictators, the past was an inconvenient truth, an obstacle to be eliminated. They came to destroy history not to fulfill it. And without a proper foundation, their revolutions collapsed.

The revolution that Christ brings is the fulfillment of his religious heritage, the full actualization of his tradition's potential. Moses handed down a moral code, a code of behavior designed to regulate how God's people behave toward Him and one another. Behind this code of behavior is an ethical imperative, a universal mandate that gives life to those words chiseled on cold stone, a living, breathing spirit that grows in us with time and practice. At the root of the Christian revolution is the Mosaic Law. Jesus says, “. . .until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law. . .” How can it? Our Lord's commandment to love God and one another rests on the historical foundation of his Father's commandments given to Moses. And Moses' law rests on the spiritual foundation of the Father's love. We cannot love and ignore the law nor can we follow the law without love. Can we grow an oak tree w/o an acorn? Can an acorn produce anything but an oak?

___________________

Follow HancAquam and visit the Kindle Wish List and the Books & Things Wish List

Recommend this post on Google!

Monday Fat Report (Dispensed)

I didn't weigh myself on Monday. . .after confessions and Mass, I collapsed into a glorious nap after getting only about one hour's sleep this night before.  

I'll catch up this coming Monday.
___________________
 
Follow HancAquam and visit the Kindle Wish List and the Books & Things Wish List

Recommend this post on Google!

Coffee Cup Browsing

Folks often ask me if God is going to punish America for allowing abortion.  I say, "No.  He's going to allow the natural consequences of this sin to punish us."  Ergo.

B.O.'s The Catholic Church Hates Women Because It Refuses to Subsidize Mortal Sin meme backfires.  Lies never win. . .in the end.

You must have valid I.D. to drive; open a bank account; buy beer, tobacco, Sudafed; but, not to vote.  Well past time for the SupCrt to gut Section Five of the Voting Rights Act. 

Speaking of. . .undercover vid of voter fraud in VT.

Heh.  Pew Poll:  self-described political liberals are the most intolerant of dissenting views.  Told ya.

Some advice from Fr. Z. to orthodox seminarians trying to navigate the death throes of Baby Boomer modernist-progressive "formation teams."  Remember, guys:  tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.

No, Fr Marcel was not suspended for refusing communion to that lesbian Buddhist activist in MD.  He is on administrative leave. . .a very, very different sort of thing altogether.

We're not going to jail. . .yet.  

___________________

Follow HancAquam and visit the Kindle Wish List and the Books & Things Wish List

Recommend this post on Google!

Mea culpa, mea culpa, maxima ZZzzzzzzzzzz. . .

What?  No homily, Father?!

Yes, call me a slacker.  I got about one hour of sleep last night.  Not only am I cycling through my quarterly bout with insomnia. . .but we had a wall shaking thunderstorm come through NOLA sometime around 3am.  

I recycled an old homily and took off to hear confessions at St Mary's Academy.

Now.  Naptime!

Follow HancAquam and visit the Kindle Wish List and the Books & Things Wish List Recommend this post on Google!