Good Questions.

...Although one hopes Fr. Orthometer didn't mean to encourage apostasy, but rather the acceptance of church teaching. I may go so far as to say that such an attitude has the opposite effect on me.

Being a good Catholic by definition entails believing all that the Church teaches to be true. Why be a Catholic if you don't believe in what the Church teaches.

A: Because leaving, I fear for my soul. Staying, I fear for my sanity.






ADDENDA: He does continue to amuse me, however. Because it should still be done right. And no, we don't have anything quite that bad in the Calvert House sacristy.

While doing this, I found an artifact of pure liturgical evil. I don't know what it is called. I don't want to know what it is called. All I know is that it was used to inflict folk Masses on innocent people.

YES I SHOULD BE WRITING MY BA THESIS NOT READING CONSERVATIVE CATHOLIC BLOGS I AM HERMITING MYSELF AT JAS' DESK WITH TEA, MY BOOKS, AND ST. NICHOLAS THE MIRACLE WORKER OK BYEBYE.

"If you will not communicate for your own sake, the communicate instead for Jesus Christ. To communicate for Jesus Christ is to console Him for the neglect to which the majority of men have abandoned him; it is to confirm His wisdom in instituting this Sacrament of spiritual sustenance; it is to open the riches of the treasures of grace which Jesus Christ has stored up in the Eucharist only that He may bestow them on mankind; nay more, it is to give to His sacramental love the overflowing life it desires, to His goodness the happiness of doing good, to His Majesty the glory of bestowing His gifts. By receiving Communion, therefore, you fulfll the glorious purpose of the Holy Eucharist; for if there were no communicants, this fountain would flow in vain; this furnace of love would inflame no hearts; this King would reign without subjects."

"Something divine will then come to pass in the one who communicates; man will labor, and Jesus will give the grace of labor; man will keep the merit, but to Jesus will be the glory; Jesus wil be able to say to His Father: 'I love Thee, I adore Thee, and I still suffer, living anew in My members.
"This is what gives Communion its highest power: it is a second and perpetual incarnation of Jesus Christ; between Jesus Christ and man it forms a union of life and love; in a word, it is a second life for Jesus Christ."

-St. Peter Julian Eymard, Holy Communion

Saunders Lewis breaks my heart.

Even in translation.

About women no one can know. There are some,
Like this one, whose pain is a locked sepulchre;
Their pain is buried in them, there is no fleeing
From it and no casting it off. No ebb
Nor tide of their pain, a dead sea without
Movement upon its depth. Who--is there anyone--
Who will take away the stone from this sepulchre?
--Saunders Lewis, "Mair Fadlen"
(trans. Gwyn Thomas)

It's the Fifth of November...

And I direct you here for the 1917 Catholic Encyclopedia's coverage thereof.

In other Catholic news, the four "Golden Calves" described here are extremely pertinent to some of the discussions we've been having about Calvert House (and the American Catholic Church in general). I'll just quote the three most pertinent here.

Politicized faith -- "I can look back also and see that my own intellectual pride helped me build a weak foundation for my faith. When I converted to Catholicism in 1992 . . . it was a sincere Christian conversion. But I also took on as my own all the cultural and intellectual trappings of the American Catholic right."

Churchcraft as a hobby -- "I had become the sort of Catholic who thought preoccupying himself with Church controversies and Church politics was the same thing as preoccupying himself with Christ. Me and my friends would go on for hours and hours about what was wrong with the Church, and everything we had to say was true. But if you keep on like that, it will have its effect."

Clericalism -- "Without quite realizing what was happening, I became a Professional Catholic, and got so caught up in identifying with the various controversies in the American church that I began to substitute that for an authentic spirituality. This is nobody's fault but my own. Part of that involved hero-worshipping Pope John Paul II, and despite having a healthy awareness of the sins and failings of various bishops, exaggerating the virtues of bishops my side deemed 'orthodox.'"

From Kevin Knight writing about Rod Dreher's article on his conversion to Eastern Orthodoxy.