Sensitive Heathens

 

“Go and live in sin. No need to wait for your husband to die”

 

 

Must one wait around for a spouse to die in order to receive Communion? Too many traditionalists seem unable to comprehend what a pastor must take into account to serve the needs of his people. They have a copy of the rule book, but what they may not have is a sensitivity to the people they serve.

This piece of comedy comes from the Fishwrap. My comments: 

1. It’s not a waiting line at the restaurant. It’s called adultery. 

2. It’s not about the perceived “needs” of the people, but their real ones: like, say, the salvation of their souls. Not that at the Fishwrap there’s any doubt about that…

3. It’s not about following the cricket rule book. It’s about God’s rules. Yes, one tends to take them seriously. 

4. A priest serves Christ first. He serves Him by leading souls to him. One cannot serve God and his flock as equal instances, much less see himself as one who serves the selfish interests of the flock. 

Christ first, and all the rest falls into place. 

Man first, and you have the Fishwrap. 

Mundabor 

The Cartoon Pope

 

This is from the Fishwrap, aka “National Catholic Reporter”. Emphases mine.

No link. Help them go bust. It’s good for their souls. 

Editor’s note: I’d like introduce a new feature, a cartoon strip drawn by NCR contributor and Celebration editor Pat Marrin. Pope Francis has made Catholics and non-Catholics alike look at the papacy and the church through new frames by challenging conventional ideas, protocols and pomposity. It seems Francis himself has recognized the humor inherent in being pope. “Francis,” the strip, picks up on that cue.

Marrin says he hopes “Francis” will remind us “to smile at our often hilarious church, which turns out to be us, from red-hatted cardinals to tennis-shoed activists.

This is what less than fourteen months of Francis have done to the pontificate. It is a personality cult that nourishes itself completely out of the demolition of Catholicism: in Her thinking, in Her praxis, in Her symbols, in Her institutions.

It is as if Francis had taken a huge wrecking ball and were now destroying the Church edifice in front of a satisfied crowd of “Catholics and non-Catholics alike”. They praise him very loud. They never liked the edifice. 

Hilarious? No.

Tragic. Pathetic. Satanical.

Mundabor

The Power Of The Comment Box

You’ve got pageviews…

And it came to pass a horrible, horrible rag that epitomises everything that is wrong with 50 years of post- V II madness had to close its comment box. The situation is still ongoing as I speak, though I do not think it will last for long. Perhaps, as you read these lines things will have already reverted to normal; or, rather, pervert.

You see, a blog is very different from an Internet magazine. A blog is like a living room, the intimate space the blogger shares with a few selected friends who share his own vision of the world. The “private” blogger isn’t interested in traffic, or popularity. He wants to make some points with those who can understand them and hopefully share them with others in turn. He runs, if you want, an Internet salon.

Not so for a magazine. A magazine is a commercial outfit operating in the publishing industry. It must make profits, and it needs traffic to survive. The more popular it is, the better.

Now: as those of you know who can observe things, in a big site traffic is driven mainly by the comments. If an Internet presence has a vast audience, the article of the day is merely the starter. What really counts are the duels developing from it, and attracting a crowd of people eager to watch the fight and support, perhaps even commenting themselves every now and then, their own heroes. Most viewers are “lurkers”: they don’t write, but follow what other people write. This is whence the pageviews, and the advertising revenues, mainly come.

Every magazine has this faithful clientele, because many commenters tend to frequent and, so to speak, set up tent in one or two of these magazines, and those who like – or hate – them soon notice it and come back regularly. Many a viewer will visit the same site several times in a day, to watch the good men fight against the bad ones and take encouragement from them. This, not the articles in themselves – though they must be somewhat good to attract quality commenters – is what drives the traffic.

You can understand from this what a tragedy it is when a magazine closes the comment box. It will have to rely exclusively on the content professional writers create for them, but it will renounce to all that content that amateur commenters write for them gratis et amore Dei – basically at the only cost of the moderation for the site – and the attending excitement, and manly joy for a manly fight, they create. Take this away, and see your viewers’ statistics go south faster than Obama’s approval rates.

This sounds like a death knell to me, as I can’t imagine this is a viable business model. A successful Internet presence lives of the content generated for it by the readers, which drives up the stats, which drives up the ads revenues, which covers – and hopefully more than covers – the costs. Take that away, and you have taken the blood out of this publishing organism.

What has, then, happened by the scandalous rag in question? I seriously doubt they think they can have a permanent, successful Internet presence without the comment box. More probably, they have seen their combox permanently overrun by commenters hostile to their own editorial line, and therefore representing a threat for their own credibility. They are now, if you ask me, reorganising their moderation criteria in order to get a different set of commenters without discouraging too much the controversy they absolutely need to let the entire exercise work.

Not an easy task. Not if you are a bunch of deluded nutcases considered deranged by all but the likes of Michelle Obama.

We will see how this pans out. I am curious to see how they will tackle this problem.

Bad luck to them.

Mundabor

Monoculus Rex

Some like it printed.

The news of John L. Allen Jr’ s departure from one of the most horrible rags on the planet is the stuff of nice jokes around the Internet.

Mind, it is not that Allen can be considered in any way acceptable for a sound Catholic; it is that his colleagues are such nutcases that one is tempted to think God uses that rag to show us a complete collection of reprobates, so that we may be warned.

Rex monoculus in terra caecorum, my forefathers used to say: in the land of the blind, the one with one eye is the King. Allen used to smuggle himself for a reasonable Catholic voice merely because he worked in the madhouse. Put him in the middle of other confused wannabe Catholics unfaithful to the Magisterium and he will emerge for what he is: just another confused wannabe Catholic unfaithful to the Magisterium. He has occasional bouts of reason, showing he is not entirely bad. But seriously, in any decent Catholic publication he would fly out of the window in no time.

The atrocious rag for which he wrote up to now (no, I will not grace them with a link) will, though, have a problem. He was the token sane man in their psychiatric hospital; the one who brought them the traffic from the world of people who actually think, and their only link with sanity. With Allen gone, the place will become the editorial equivalent of Animal House, without even a John Belushi to attract the visitors.

The NCR needs another monoculus, fast. They certainly can’t afford to be seen by everyone for what they are: a bunch of ridiculous nutcases making the work of the devil day in and day out, and on their way to hell.

I wish them, editorially speaking, death as a magazine and Internet presence.

My wish has now come, very probably, nearer to fulfilment.

Mundabor

 

John Allen Tired And Emotional, Or Simply Disingenuous.

John Allen is generally the only one among the bunch of heretics writing for the National Schismatic Reporter who manages to write pieces of acceptable fairness and quality. I think he is, in fact, the token Catholic of the magazine, useful to avoid immediate and serious trouble with Rome. Not later than a couple of days ago I have linked to an article written by him.

Today, though, Allen shows a terrifying ignorance, a deplorable abuse of intoxicating substances or, most likely, a shocking disingenuousness that should not remain unnoticed or uncommented.

Speaking of the next Pope, Allen writes (and I quote): “No matter what happens, the church almost certainly won’t reverse its ban on abortion, gay marriage or women priests”.

Astonishing.

Firstly, Mr Allen should be aware that he is not writing about the small church at the corner, but of the Only Church, which must correctly be written with a capital C lest the uninformed think she isn’t the only one.

More importantly, though, Mr Allen is shamelessly pandering to the heretics reading his rag when he indicates they are allowed to think it might be legitimate, or even thinkable, to imagine the Church might one day change the vary basis of Her infallible teaching.

Such expressions should actually be enough to deprive this infamous rag of its right to call itself “Catholic”. Let’s hope it happens not before long, and not one day too soon.

Mr Allen certainly knows better, and should be ashamed.
But then again people who know what shame is don’t write for that indecent rag.

Mundabor

Sensible Words on Male Priesthood

Male priesthood.

There is an excellent blog post about male priesthood from Jennifer Fulwiler on the National Catholic Register. The blog post is the more interesting, because the now-converted (Deo gratias…) author remembers her reasoning about the male priesthood when an atheist and – as she herself admits – a feminist.

Mrs. Fulwiler brilliantly puts it as follows (emphases always mine):

At the time I had recently become a mother, and there’s nothing like pregnancy and childbirth to hit home the fact that men and women are really, really different. Even outside of the Catholic perspective, there’s no denying that whoever created us—whether you call it God or Nature or Allah or whatever—created men and women with complementary yet entirely separate capabilities. Women can carry new human life within their wombs, men can’t. Women can breastfeed, men can’t. Men are generally stronger; the strongest man in the world is always going to be the stronger than the strongest woman in the world. The list of the innate differences between the genders goes on and on. Assuming that the entire human race was not born into an inherently unfair situation, it would seem that our Creator does not believe that you need to be able to do all the same stuff in order to be equal.

This injection of common sense would do a lot of good to a lot of feminist – be they atheist, or wannabe Christian – out there. But such an injection would require them to sacrifice some holy cows, which is why they choose to remain impervious to logic, and allergic to truth. One of these cows is described by the blog post author as follows:

[…] I had begun to question this pervasive modern idea that what you do is your value. […]. One of the results of this idea is that we, as a society, decided that if women are not invited to do every single thing that men are invited to do, the only possible explanation could be that they are valued less — and being barred from doing certain activities means that their options for reaching complete fulfillment as human beings are limited. The more I considered it, the more this worldview struck me as sadly utilitarian. I started to think that it’s possible to believe that men don’t make good lactation consultants, women don’t make good guerrilla warfare combatants, etc. without it being a commentary about the inherent worth of one gender over another.

I generally explain this concept with my persuasion that feminists want to be men, and therefore feel as a deminutio every instance in which it becomes clear to them – or,  alternatively,  to the thinking part of the human race – that they cannot. Strangely, you never hear feminists fighting for the abolition of one of the last, blatant bastion of sexual discrimination: the separation of men and women in sport competitions. No need for equality there. Differences must be taken into account. There are structural specificities that would be impossible to ignore.

Exactly.

The next injection of common sense comes regarding the male priesthood itself:

When God took on human flesh, he did so as a man. He could have come down as a woman, as a brother and sister team, or as a genderless being. But he didn’t. If you want to reject Christianity as untrue, that’s one thing; but if you accept Jesus Christ as God incarnate, it seems like you must also accept that God sees the male gender as having a special role to play in the world.

Yes, brilliantly and amusingly true. Once again, the contradiction of accepting Jesus as God Incarnate and refusing what choices this God Incarnate made is clearly absurd. The fact that 100% of the Apostles were men (no female quota there, in a clear show of political incorrectness) actually closes the question.

The best part is for the end: the Blessed Virgin.

Once I discovered Catholicism, one of the many things that rang true about its teachings was the emphasis on Mary. It made perfect sense that God would give a woman a critical role in his plan, someone who could serve as an example of perfect feminine holiness—and it made sense that his true Church would understand and celebrate this fact.

I add to these beautiful words a fact that to me seems extremely relevant: that in the heavenly hierarchy (yes! There is a heavenly hierarchy!) the Blessed Virgin is above every saint, above every Apostle, even above Peter and Paul and St. John the Evangelist and St. John The Baptist; even above every Angel, every one of them! Only the Trinity is higher in glory than the Blessed Virgin!

So let me reassume the brilliant feminist theory: a bunch of chauvinistic traitors manage to utterly ruin the clearly feminist, emancipated message of Jesus; they isolate Mary Magdalen and succeed in cancelling from history every trace of her apostolate; they proceed to create a rigidly man-dominated system, clearly showing which one is the qualitatively better sex………then they proceed to put a woman in the highest place conceivable for a human being, and this in a society that had come to consider women as little more than reproduction instruments.

Explain this, angry feminists….

It is beautiful to see that, when one is ready to apply some elementary logic rather than senseless slogans, a lot of things start to appear very clear, and to make a lot of sense.

Even for an atheist.

Mundabor

One Day At The National Catholic Reporter

Hieronymus Bosch, "Hell", Detail.

Below are some of the comments in the comment box of the National Catholic Reporter. Let us see what kind of deluded humanity we find there.

There is the one who has decided that 2000 years of Tradition are just wrong, whereas he himself is, of course, right:

The whole system of leadership appointment needs change and should come from the bottom up not the top down.

Then there is the one who doesn’t need the Church, because the Church doesn’t serve him and doesn’t accommodate his needs:

I answer to God not to any priest, bishop, or pope. I find less need everyday for a non-responsive, self-serving hierarchy.

Interesting is also the one who thinks that God himself has been conned these last 2000 years. Thankfully, we now have him to tell us what God always wanted:

The “Way” that Jesus showed us and invited us to follow had no hierarchs, not even the Temple priests

Amuse yourself with the one who says himself a Catholic, whilst also saying that being Catholic is bad (hey, his ex-Lutheran wife, but rather still Lutheran wife, “taught” him so). One wonders who has converted whom:

I was raised as a Catholic (Big C) and married a Lutheran, who converted to the big C. She has taught me that the word ‘catholic’ should never have the big C. The day we accept that we are catholic, and not Roman Catholic, we will all be better off.

Or do you prefer the obsessed trendy with nightmares of Trent restoration:

Benedict is doing a more disgusting job than John Paul II in trying to drag Catholics back to Trent.

What about the Pentecostal “the Holy Spirit directs us” chap, who at the same time is obviously not directed by the Holy Spirit to write in proper English (emphases mine):

Since Vatican Council II—the People of God have implemented what the Council was directing them to do. It was JP II (the Grate) and Benedict the Panzar Pope, who were/are trying to drag people back to where THEY were comfortable—a Church of subserviant people—who are “little people, simple (read stupid) who need their bishops to point out the way for them (this is a synopsis of Benedict’s thoughts)

Finally, there’s the anarchist revolutionary, believing in Revelation through the Internet. Unfortunately he misses the signs of the times, big time. He also seems to believe that higher education is a modern invention:

When all is said and done, I think point #4 in your critique is the bedrock of the revolution that is now happening in the modern church. The current so-called leaders are still living in the ages where only members of the clergy could read and only members of the hierarchy could make spiritual decisions. Now, in the modern age, vast numbers of people are thinking for themselves because of the effects of institutions of higher learning and the availability of research and documentation.

This is just the result of a couple of minutes of browsing, and all the comments are taken from merely two blog posts.

You’d never say this come from the site of a magazine calling itself “Catholic”.

Mundabor

Mind Your Click: On The Wise Use of Your Mouse

The wrong click, and you can find yourself in a rather unpleasant place...

Just in case someone is confused (I am; time and again)…..

The National Catholic Register is very orthodox. Excellent bloggers like the Archbold brothers can be found there. They still belong to the Legionaries of Christ, a group that, whatever you may say of their disgraceful founder, can’t be defined as “liberal” by any stretch of the imagination. They were, last time I looked, in the process of being bought by EWTN.

The National Catholic Reporter is, on the other hand, the disgusting, openly heretical, leftist, pacifist and, well, cretin-ist publication often exposed on these pages as well as in countless other blogs. They are good to test your patience on very calm, relaxed days. They are also good to start being extremely worried should you, for a strange coincidence, happen to be of their opinion. Can’t remember it ever happening to me, though. We might agree on 2+2=4, but that’s about it.

Therefore please keep in mind: reporter= bad. Very easy to memorise, I should say.

Similarly, if you look at the “good” American Catholic you land here, a thoroughly orthodox site always good for some good reading and, at times, a good laugh.

But if you are inattentive, you may easily land on this site, a Franciscan outlet which, when it writes something right, does it purely unintentionally and on which I have read, in months past and whilst being inattentive, some of the most stinking post-Liberation Theology crap ever. Might be improving, though, as the Grim Reaper incessantly works through the ranks and files of the once-glorious Franciscans.

This should be easier, as upon seeing that one has landed on a Franciscan site the desire to click oneself away should be, actually, automatic and almost irresistible.

Think before you click, then, and be aware of the consequences. I remember serene afternoons utterly ruined at the thought of the people reading the “reporter” and leaving comments about how wrong Catholic doctrine is, perhaps ruining others in the process. Not a nice thought.

Mundabor

NCR, Heresy and Bishop Morris

Spot the difference with heretic bishops

I have already written about the removal of bishop (little b) William Morris from his diocese of Toowoomba, in Australia. The matter seemed to me so straightforward as to not even deserve a long post: a bishop is openly heretical, refuses to recant for around five years and is, as a consequence, (merely) removed from office.

There is obviously an element of novelty in terms of something being actually done, but the matter in itself should be, I thought, rather not worth the discussion.

Wrong.

A magazine astonishingly calling himself “catholic” (National Catholic Reporter is the official name; must be a remnant of times long gone) devotes to the matter its editorial. This editorial makes for astonishing reading and I wonder whether even rabid Episcopalian feminists would express themselves in the way the CNR editorial team, people in dire need of our prayers, do.

This editorial shows either the most appalling ignorance of the bases of Catholicism (which is not credible, these being professionals) or a deliberate will to defend and propagate heresy. This is not even cafeteria Catholicism. This is marijuana Catholicism, and no mistake.

Let us take some example:

1) the removal of the bishop is registered, but on the merit of the removal nothing is said. The question “is a Pope in the right when he removes an openly heretic bishop?” is not posed at all.

2) Instead, the usual comparison with the pedophile scandal is made. Whilst this might have a point in showing that the Pope (and clearly: the former Pope) might have been harsher with other bishops too, it fails to tells us why he shouldn’t have been as harsh with our Morris dancer.

3) These people appear never to have read Ordinatio Sacerdotalis. That even the discussion about women priests is forbidden (to everyone, let alone to bishops!) simply escapes them. That a Pope be authorised in view of the Church’s Magisterium to do so, evidently, too.

4) The clumsy, whining attempt at Morris’ defence is contradictory: on the one hand it is said that the bishop’s questions were, so to speak, “rhetorical” ones; on the other side it is opined that this was so just to avoid trouble. So they want us to do believe that the bishop is a heretic, but also that he shouldn’t be removed because he didn’t say that openly and the Pope has, clearly, to be stupid whilst the NCR people are intelligent.

The entire article is written in this spirit. Heresy is called “to speak freely”, and the decision to silence heresy “dysfunctional”.

I know Muslims who are more Catholic than these people, and far more likely to obtain salvation.

Please pray for these unfortunate people.

Mundabor

Associated Press Angry At Catholic Crusaders.

Bad Shepherds Exposed

Father Z has reported a piece of news from the Associated Press.

Though the intent of the piece is not exactly that, its content is extremely flattering for all those who, with their blogs or contributions or TV channels, are contributing through the Internet to the return to Catholic sanity.

The list of compliments paid to Conservative Catholics active on the internet is very long: they are said to be “enraged by dissent”, something every true Catholic would love to have acknowledged of him from High Above the day he dies; they think, says AP News, that this has gone “unchecked for decades” and here I think no sane person can move any objection whatsoever, so they must be right; they “dissect the work” of clerics for “any hint of Marxist influence”, which shows their dedication to the cause and their love for Truth; they “comb through campaign finance records” to expose catholic agencies covertly supporting abortion.

One feels proud of what these Conservative Catholics do. The article is, unwittingly, so appreciative of the way these worthy citizen operate that it doesn’t dare to even hint at their being, say, heterodox or sedevacantist or otherwise rebellious. Truly, it’s good news all around.

Why, then, is your humble correspondent more than a tad peeved at the AP News article? Mainly because its writer, whilst unable to point out to any theological error of these Conservative bloggers, actually clearly implies that in being right, they are actually wrong. Why it is this? Because they are “uncharitable”, apparently and here the author really, really needs to know what “charity” is.

The evidently biased report also makes ample use of the usual leftist smokescreens all the world over; an “analyst” for the National Catholic Reporter is cited as an authoritative source on the alleged problems caused by the Conservatives, but the reader is not told that the NCR is considered largely unreadable leftist waste product by every true Catholic able to breathe. Similarly, a “preoccupation” of the Church hierarchy is cited as a proof that these people are getting obnoxious, which firstly utterly ignores the encouragement of the Holy Father for Catholic activities on the net (even extended to clergy, the vast majority of whom are also clearly on the conservative side) and secondly begs the question, as what the Catholic internet activists want is precisely that the Vatican starts acting and finally gets the shop in order.

At the end, though, the writer of the article gets a bit more realistic. Things aren’t going to change, no matter how many appeals to “charity” are made. The problem that the AP doesn’t see is that what they call charity is false charity, and therefore rightly fought against by the faithful.

Moreover, I am rather irritated at this calling Conservative Catholics “Talibans”. Talibans are heretics of the first water, so this is utterly inappropriate. Talibans themselves do not call us Taliban, but “Crusaders”. Now this is a beautiful epithet! Crusader!

Dear readers, all of you are, in one way or another, Crusaders. Be proud of this! It is from the effort of true Catholics (both clergy and laity) that enough pressure will be generated to clean the rather shabby looking shop of the Only Church. The Catholic hierarchy, like the American Bishop’s Conference calling to “charity” (not even knowing what it is) are not the solution. They are the problem.

Faithfulness to the Only Church demands that we say this out loud. And we do. Thank Goodness, we do.

Mundabor

How to confuse Catholic minds.

Thanks, but no thanks.

The “National Catholic Reporter” is, so to speak, the US equivalent of the infamous “Tablet”. Whilst claiming to be Catholic, this rag is in open conflict with the Church on doctrinal issues. They think it very cool and very modern, presumably.

Today they have, though, a different approach to heresy. As you can read here (if you really want) they have invited a Presbyterian would-be priest to tell us that he does his best not to tell Catholics what to believe but still tells us that “we miss a lot” without priestesses. His main argument seems to be that after seeing the first would-be priestess in his church, his daughter thought about becoming one. “Well, she didn’t do that”, he informs us before our curiosity becomes unbearable, “but at least she could think realistically about being a clergy member”. Now that is an impressive argument…..

Still, one must at least concede that the old man is a heretic and says so, whereas the NCR editorial staff are also heretics but don’t admit it. The brownie goes to the old man, then.

But this is not all: if you manage to read the article and succumb to the curiosity of reading the comments the entire catastrophe of modern (non)catechesis comes to light: one commenter asks (probably innocently) why “we” don’t “forget women priests” and “simply authorise nuns to give the Eucharist”. It would seem that (s)he just has a problem with having to receive from a man and that it is just a matter of “what we forget” and “what we authorise”. Another commenter defines doctrinal definitions as “self-serving” and says that “the sooner they are changed, the better” and this really takes the biscuit.

If NCR’s readers expect to find there the source of sound doctrine they are gravely deluded. More probably, though, they are so in the dark that they do not even know what Catholic doctrine is in the first place or they would avoid spreading such heresies and outright blasphemies.

Proper catechesis is at the root of proper Catholicism. We see every day the damage created by the inadequacy of a large part of our clergy, utterly unwilling to I do not say defend the teaching of the Church, but to give basic instruction about it. This will change, but it will take time. In the meantime, let us do it ourselves in our own little way.

Mundabor