A simple birthday wish

Catholic Stand: Laughing at the demons

This year for Halloween snacks, Mom bought a box of 18 packages of bat- and pumpkin-shaped pretzels. If this year follows the pattern of the last five, we’ll have twelve of those bags left Friday morning. Three will have gone to neighborhood urchins, and the other three will have gone to my grandniece and grandnephews.

For one thing, we live in a cul-de-sac near the only entrance to the neighborhood; most of the houses are further up and away. For another, we live near a mall — certainly not so grand a consumerist paradise as Mall of America, but they do sabotage the spirit of Halloween fairly effectively by handing out candy and treats there. Madison Avenue has done more than four hundred years of Puritans and one hundred fifty years of skeptics to ruin Catholic festivals … simply by marketing them.

No, I’m not going to any parties. Many years ago, while resting my head on the cool porcelain of a toilet between violent bouts of vomiting, I concluded that getting drunk wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. And the adults at some of the parties I’ve been to are like the people who show up at medieval fairs dressed as characters from fantasy novels; they’ve forced me to conclude that some people just don’t “get” Halloween.

(By “fantasy” I mean they show up as either elves or dominatrices. At one major fair in Waxahachie, I saw a woman who was wearing leather “Daisy Dukes” with a sword strapped around her hips and a chain-mail top with not so much as a Brazilian bikini top underneath it. I’m guessing her research stopped around Season Three of Xena: Warrior Princess.)

So okay, if you show up at the party dressed as Yakko the Clown, I get it — clowns scare many adults. C+ for the effort, regardless of the execution. But where’s the memento mori in dressing like a French maid or Superman? To get closer to the feel of what Halloween is supposed to be about, you’re better off going someplace where El Día de los Muertos, the “Day of the Dead”, is still celebrated.

Read more at Catholic Stand!

A mortal, sinful man

On July 16, 2011, during the funeral rites of Dr. Otto von Habsburg, the last heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, a curious ceremony took place for what will almost certainly be the last time.

Following the requiem Mass at St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna, his coffin was carted through the Innere Stadt, the historic old town, to the door of the Capuchin Church of Saint Mary of the Angels. There Ulrich-Walter Lipp, a family friend, used a staff to knock on the door three times.

Just inside the door was the custodian of the Imperial Crypt, Father Gottfried Undesser. “Who desires to enter?”

Lipp, taking on the role of a herald, then began to read Otto of Austria’s numerous titles. Former Crown Prince of Austria-Hungary. Royal Prince of Hungary and Bohemia, of Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, Galicia, Lodomeria and Illyria. Grand Duke of Tuscany and Cracow, Duke of Lorraine, of Salzburg, Steyr, Carinthia, Carniola and Bukovina. Und so weiter.

Replied Fr. Gottfried, “We don’t know him!”

Lipp knocked three times again, and with Fr. Gottfried’s query, began to read Dr. von Habsburg’s many secular titles and awards. President and Honorary President of the Pan-European Union. Senior member of the European Parliament. Honorary doctorates from numerous universities; honorary citizen of many communities in Central Europe; member of honorable academies and institutes. And so on.

Again the denial: “We don’t know him!”

Lipp knocked again. This time, in response to Fr. Gottfried’s question, he announced “Otto – ein sterblicher, sündiger Mensch (a mortal, sinful man).” To which Fr. Gottfried replied, opening the doors, “So may he come in.”

Read the rest at Catholic Stand!

To our friends at NARAL

... and to every other gullible simpleton who honestly thought Pope Francis' interview in America signaled a leftward shift in Church doctrine (that means you, William Saletan):

The moral of our story is just this: Even liberals shouldn't believe the liberal media.

Ask Tony: Did the Pope just teach that atheists can go to heaven?—UPDATED

The short answer is "No". Not "not really"; not "not in so many words". Just "no".

In just a few months, a pattern has been set such that the ineffable Fr. John Zuhlsdorf could start a companion blog named "What Did the Pope Really Say?" and not run out of material for awhile. It seems that now a month can't go by without Papa Bergoglio saying something the Vatican has to explain or walk back. The mainstream press has cast the "progressive pope" filter in concrete, and will continue to run his impromptu remarks through it until he dies or relinquishes the Chair of Peter.

It doesn't help that Papa's words sometimes take three or four readings to get clear ... especially if you have to rely on Zenit's English translation, which is only marginally better than Babelfish. When he was elected, Marcelo González of Panorama Católico Internacional sneered, "Famous for his inconsistency (at times, for the unintelligibility of his addresses and homilies), accustomed to the use of coarse, demagogical, and ambiguous expressions, it cannot be said that his magisterium is heterodox, but rather non-existent for how confusing it is." His unique, populist style sometimes gets in the way of his clarity of expression.

Maybe he should get his new head of the CDF, Abp. Gerhard Müller, to proofread these things. Or, there's supposed to be a rather eminent and well-respected theology professor living in retirement at the Vatican ....

Let's start with the context. Eugenio Scalfari, editor of La Repubblica and a non-believer, published three questions for the Pope, to which Francis responded in an open letter. After setting some initial ground work, Francis wrote:

It seems to me that, in the first two, what is in your heart is to understand the attitude of the Church to those who don’t share faith in Jesus. First of all, you ask me if the God of Christians forgives one who doesn’t believe and doesn’t seek the faith. Premise that — and it’s the fundamental thing — the mercy of God has no limits if one turns to him with a sincere and contrite heart; the question for one who doesn’t believe in God lies in obeying one’s conscience [bold font mine.—TL]. Sin, also for those who don’t have faith, exists when one goes against one’s conscience. To listen to and to obey it means, in fact, to decide in face of what is perceived as good or evil. And on this decision pivots the goodness or malice of our action.

The context here is not about atheism specifically, but rather about non-Christians in general. In fact, the question is closely tied with another Scalfari asked about Jews. Moreover, the question was about forgiveness, not heaven, though the two concepts are tied together. However, these distinctions were lost on the press, who proceeded to announce that Pope Francis had opened heaven to atheists, causing orthodox facepalming and Evangelical howling (as exemplified by the noted prophet and theologian Kirk Cameron, who got it wrong, too).

Catholic Stand: Tradition vs. traditionalism

The Communion song this last Sunday at the 11:30 a.m. Mass was “The Servant Song”. One might say it’s one of those Gather Hymnal songs that traditionalists point to whenever they compare the richness of the traditional Latin Mass to the relative poverty of the Novus Ordo Mass that’s been with us the last forty-odd years.

Okay, “The Servant Song” as it’s sung now is truly dreadful: with quarter notes stomping the diatonic scale on the beats, it plods along like a man flat-footing it up a sidewalk. However, I have a faint quasi-memory that at one time the melody was much more syncopated … light, sweet and inoffensive, though still too much “all about me/us” to be appropriate for worship.

So I’m a child of the 1970s. The Gather Hymnal is what I grew up with. Occasionally, though, the chorus will sing an older song, like “Lift High the Cross”, and something in me lifts up with it. And Mozart’s Requiem, though not his best work, still beats out anything by Marty Haugan.

De gustibus non est disputandum: there are times when I can really appreciate the traditionalist perspective on liturgy, especially when it comes to my first love, music. The cultural heritage of the Church is one of great aesthetic richness and beauty; when done well, the Tridentine Mass is a glorious concentrate of everything the Latin Church did right for centuries.

The great danger in traditionalism, however, is the tendency to conflate liturgical and devotional traditions with the apostolic tradition. Doctor Taylor Marshall speaks of “the [radical traditionalist] belief that Latin Mass Catholics are ‘A Team’ and Novus Ordo Catholics are ‘B Team’”, but that’s actually a bit mild: the further you move to the right, the more you run across the sentiment that Novus Ordo Catholics, or “neo-Catholics”, aren’t really Catholic at all — we’re crypto-Protestants with an idiosyncratic fondness for the pope.

Read more at Catholic Stand!

The Impractical Catholic goes on the air!—UPDATED

If you're going to be in the Louisville, Kentucky area this Thursday (9/5/13), flip your car radio to WLCR AM 1040 at 4:00 pm ET for "The Mike Janocik Show". If not, click this link to get their live feed or mobile app. Your Humble Blogger will be a guest on the show about 4:30, talking with Mike about Joseph Bottum, Dr. John Zmirak and Catholic opposition to same-sex marriage. Of course, you'll have the opportunity to call in and cuss me out (though if you do use profanity, your window of opportunity will most likely be foreshortened ... this is Catholic radio, after all). And don't be surprised if I sound like I have a permanent cold.

Ah, AM Radio. Play it, boys!

Irish whiskey steak!

One of the benefits of living just north of the 33rd parallel is year-round grilling. Theoretically you can grill year-round just about anywhere in the lower 48; in practice further north than here, especially in the Midwest and the Rocky Mountain states, Labor Day tends to see the end of the grilling season ... except for tailgate parties.

I love to grill. I'm actually a pretty good cook, though I don't think Bobby Flay is gonna challenge me to a throw-down anytime soon. (I'm still waiting on the Iron Chef battle between him and the Swedish Chef.) And I kinda-sorta follow Fr. Leo Patalinghug; I hope someday we can swap recipes for chicken adobo. So there's your Catholic connection — I do believe in the power of home cooking to bring families and friends together, to reinforce "the domestic church".

Um ... where was I? Oh yeah! Grilling! 

Because I grill pretty often, I use a lot of different marinades. In a couple of restaurants, I've come across variants of steaks marinated in a Jack Daniel's base. I've got no problems with bourbon or Tennessee sippin' whiskey, but it's not my first drink of choice. And Scotch is a horrible, blasphemous corruption. They tell me, "It's an acquired taste," which is shorthand for "It's nasty, but you get used to it." You can get used to hanging by your thumbs, too ... but why would you want to?

So, Irish whiskey it is.

RNS puts a new twist on the "liberal Pope" trope — UPDATED

From Religion News Service ... of course:

Pope Francis is unsettling – and dividing – the Catholic right

 David Gibson

(RNS) For more than three decades, the Vatican of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI operated on a version of the conservative maxim, “No enemies to the right.”
While left-wing theologians were silenced and liberal-to-moderate bishops were shunted aside in favor of hard-liners [Oh, what a give-away!], liturgical traditionalists and cultural conservatives were diligently courted and given direct access to the apostolic palace.
But in a few short months, Pope Francis has upended that dynamic, alienating many on the Catholic right by refusing to play favorites and ignoring their preferred agenda items even as he stressed the kind of social justice issues that are near and dear to progressives. [To be fair, commentariat liberals aren't the only ones who conflate political conservativism with doctrinal orthodoxy and liturgical traditionalism.]
“I’ve personally found many aspects of this papacy to be annoying, and struggled against that feeling from the beginning. I’m hardly alone in this,” Jeffrey Tucker, editor of the New Liturgical Movement blog, wrote as Francis basked in the glow of media coverage of his recent trip to Brazil. [The name of Tucker's post? "The Tedious Press Narrative of Pope Francis". That, my friends, is irony; it's as if Gibson were blindly determined to illustrate Tucker's point.]
“Every day and in every way we are being told how glorious it is that the bad old days are gone and the new good days are here,” he lamented.
Tucker and other traditionalists who are dedicated to high church rituals have been especially miffed at Francis’ simple — they might say simplistic [then again, they might not] — style since the moment the former Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio was introduced to the world as the new pope back in March.
“How can I love a Pope who doesn’t even want to be Pope?” Katrina Fernandez, a popular conservative blogger, wrote in a column about her disillusionment. [Kat commented, "I'm a little flattered the author referred to me a popular blogger. Puzzled at the label 'conservative'. And annoyed that my one flipping post is being used to paint me as a pope hater."]

Katy Perry's chest can't stay out of trouble

What does a writer do when s/he doesn't have the talent to write for People but is too proud to work for the National Enquirer? The answer is obvious: S/He goes to work for the New York Post. The Post is a wanna-be British tabloid — lots of celebrities, lots of sex, lots of celebrity sex, lots of rumors denied in order to get them started.

I didn't know there was a rumor that Katy Perry was dating Robert Pattinson. I didn't know that the aforementioned Pattison had broken up with Kristen Stewart. I didn't know that Pattinson and Stewart were dating in the first place.

Yes, I do know who they are. At least, I know who Perry and Pattinson are. You get the feeling my mind's been elsewhere other than on the romantic entanglements of the young and over-publicized?

So Perry told Elle UK, "I sent [Stewart] a text message saying: 'I know you've seen all this stuff but you know I would never disrespect you. I'm not that person. I'm just trying to be a friend to him but it is unfortunate that I do have a set of tits.'" Of course. Even if Perry were a more modest person who didn't leverage her cleavage for the sake of her career, she knows that entertainers aren't allowed to have opposite-sex friendships — unless they're "friendships with benefits".

What's the Post's headline?

Katy Perry blames Robert Pattinson romance rumors on her breasts

(facepalm) Oy-oy-oy.

Anybody remember when boob meant "moron"? I don't know what's worse — that an editor would risk looking like an idiot to print an attention-grabbing headline, or that the headline does grab attention, or that it grabbed my attention enough to provoke me into writing about it.

Vanity of vanities ....