Tag Archives: Pope John Paul II

2023-05-30 · 1:50 am

Mary, Mother of the Church, Mater Ecclesiae

You may remember when, on November 21, 1964, Saint Pope Paul VI declared Mary to be Mother of the Church, Mater Ecclesiae.

  • “We have felt it opportune to consecrate in this very public session, a title which was suggested in honor of the Virgin from various parts of the Catholic world and which is particularly dear to us because it sums up in an admirable synthesis the privileged position recognized by the council for the Virgin in the Holy Church. Therefore, for the glory of the Virgin Mary and for our own consolation, we proclaim the Most Blessed Mary Mother of the Church, that is to say of all the people of God, of the faithful as well as of the pastors, who call her the most loving Mother. And we wish that the Mother of God should be still more honored and invoked by the entire Christian people by this most sweet title.”

You may have heard the back story of this declaration, that there was a fierce argument among the bishops of the Second Vatican Council regarding the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, as to whether there should be a chapter on Mary at the end of the document or whether there should be a separate document for her. It was decided that she is essential to life of the Church and must be included in Lumen Gentium itself. Before this, Paul VI made the declaration above. The response was a standing ovation wrought by all present. There are various accounts, but it is said that the applause went on for some 12 minutes. If you’ve ever experienced a lengthy applause of over thirty seconds you know that by 45 seconds your hands are about to fall off. Twelve… Minutes…

You may remember that soon after Saint Pope John Paul II was shot in Saint Peter’s Square on May 13, 1981, he ordered that an image of our Lady be enshrined in Saint Peter’s Square. He wanted this to be Mary, Mother of the Church. A mosaic from Constantinian Basilica of Saint Peter’s, later in the Basilica designed by Michelangelo that we see today, was restored and ready by December 8, 1981 (pictured above).

You may remember that the residence of Pope Benedict XVI in the Vatican Gardens was called Mater Ecclesiae…

All of this speaks to a triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

In mentioning the title Mary, Mother of the Church, to a group of priests many years ago, I was instantly reprimanded that this was not a traditional title of our Lady. I just as instantly mentioned passages in Sacred Scripture and in the lengthy Magisterium of the Church so as to emphasis that this is a most Catholic and proper title of our Lady. He wasn’t convinced. I mentioned the unanimous applause, acclamation if you will, of all the bishops as one. He said: Ah, yes, Vatican II, the beginning of the end of the Church. As he was saying this, he literally got up and ran away. Yep.

Mary, Mother of the Church, is especially the Mother of priests. Pray that our bishops and priests return from their flight from Calvary, and return to accompany Mary under the Cross, and then hear those words of Jesus, “Woman, behold, your son. Son, behold, your Mother.” Hail Mary…

In the Novus Ordo liturgical calendar, Mary, Mother of the Church, is an obligatory memorial as a feast which falls every year on the Monday following Pentecost Sunday, given that, most oddly, the Octave of Pentecost was suppressed. I very much love this new feast day for our Lady. I am saddened that the Octave of Pentecost was booted in favor of another spirit of Vatican II. Meanwhile, this year, the Monday following Pentecost was 29 May, which is the feast day, an optional memorial, of Saint Pope Paul VI. I find the coincidence of those two feast days, Paul VI and Mary, Mother of God, on the same day to be rather appropriate, given that he is the one who proclaimed this title back in 1964. Am I wrong?

5 Comments

Filed under John Paul II, Paul VI, Pope Benedict XVI

Tagged as , , ,

2023-03-20 · 9:38 am

Priests are soooo lonely! Let us be married!

Pope Francis has been reiterating his ambiguity about priestly celibacy, putting an emphasis in the direction of changing what he calls a mere disciplinary measure. Celibacy is more, on a doctrinal level, which, to ignore, seems to be a denial of Christ Himself.

My own experience, having been clearly called by Jesus to His priesthood when I was only two and half years old, an experience clear and present now more than sixty years later, is that, weak as I am in following Jesus when a teenager, though this vocation was ever present in my heart, I did have a girl friend such that we were discussing marriage and discussing children. She said she had also dreamed of having lots of kids. How many? I asked. A dozen has always been my dream, she said. I said that would be great, but I was a little sad. What’s wrong? she asked. I had always dreamed of sixteen kids, but really, however many that God would want us to have. She agreed. But off I went to the seminary right after high school. Jesus’ calling was unstoppable.

It takes a huge heart to be married and raise a family. But the priesthood, this kind of participation in the marriage of Christ with His Bride the Church, this takes one’s very heart being ripped out, taken by Jesus, whose own Heart was pierced through. The priest is be entirely standing in solidarity with Jesus at the Cross, supporting His dearest Mother Mary, Mother of priests. The heart one might have had for one woman and some children is immediately brought to one being married to the Church, with so many children. One’s way of caring for the Lord’s Little Flock is… to remain with one’s heart ripped out of one’s chest, unable to leave Calvary, unable to leave the Cross, unable to leave our Blessed Mother. Unable… So one with Christ that one says in the first person singular the marriage vows of Christ with the Church at that Wedding Feast of the Lamb: This is my body, given for you in Sacrifice. This is my Blood poured out for you in Sacrifice. The heart the priest is to have is Christ’s, and as soon as that happens… the sword pierces through…

… … …

… …

…

When John Paul II went to the USA way back in I think it was the late 1970s or 1980s, he endured a speech given by an Irish born priest who was representing, he claimed, all the priests in the USA. That guy droned on for like 40 minutes, crying, actually, moaning, lamenting, that priests are so lonely and that the Pope simply had to permit them to get married.

JPII’s brilliant and ever so brief answer was that “It’s a long way to Tipperary” referring to still Catholic Ireland.

The lonely thing coupled with a desire to get married in a one-man, one woman situation, might seem mighty tame these days when, instead, so many priests and bishops are all about same-sex sex.

But today’s same-sex sex situation developed from priests wanting to get married (male-female) back in the day. That desire to get married was a symptom of a much greater problem, that is:

Priests and bishops and popes no longer understand that presently and since their ordinations THEY ARE MARRIED TO THE BRIDE OF CHRIST, THE CHURCH, BY THE WEDDING VOWS THEY PRONOUCE WITH THE CONSECRATIONS AT HOLY MASS: This is my body given for you in sacrifice, my blood poured out for you in sacrifice. They act in Persona Christi, in the Person of Christ. That’s quite an exalted vocation, that with such marriage vows one is at the ready at any second to lay down one’s life for the Church. These vows mean that the priest be one is solidarity with the One High Priest, standing with Jesus in His trials.

Because priests and bishops no longer think they are married at all, the priesthood becomes an unnatural situation for them. Since they entrench in misunderstanding of human nature, how it is that it is the image of God (male, female, marriage, family as redeemed and sanctified by God’s own marriage to the Church at the Wedding Feast of the Lamb, the Last Supper, Holy Mass, united with Calvary)… since they are rejecting marriage and the image of God, they, by force, are smashed down into a corruption, perversion, into that which mocks marriage, mocks the image of God. Same-sex sex does just that. They embrace it.

Whenever I hear priests and bishops and popes promote priests getting married I try to dispel their likely malicious ignorance with posts like this: THEY ARE MARRIED. Priests and bishops and popes are so ignorant because they have abandoned Jesus altogether. Jesus is, for them, no longer the Living Truth who can provide them with instruction and good spiritual life.

If Church law were to change, by the way, I doubt that priests already ordained would be able to get married. They made a lifelong commitment. Being liars does not speak well to the vows they would pretend to make.

An argument for married priests is that this would attract vocations to the priesthood. I say that that’s BS. It’s the same-sex sex thing that has emptied the seminaries. Young men with a vocation from Jesus want to have their hearts ripped out for the sake of the Bride of Christ, the Church. But who is there among bishops or priests to promote the greatness of the priesthood in this way?

Chaste guardian of the Virgin, Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Here’s the truth of the matter: priests and bishops are to be in only one marriage, as Saint Paul says, that with the Bride of Christ, the Church, by the very Sacrifice of the Mass that they daily offer:

https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cclergy/documents/rc_con_cclergy_doc_01011993_bfoun_en.html

Continue reading →

2 Comments

Filed under Priesthood, Priestly Celibacy, Priestly Celibacy Series

Tagged as , , , ,

2022-09-10 · 3:07 pm

තිස්ස බාලසූරිය, ten years dead, an enemy

The name Father Tissa Balasuriya was brought to mind in the past week. He was a “liberation theologian” from Sri Lanka, an Oblate of Mary Immaculate, excommunicated for a while because of his many and disgusting heresies regarding our Blessed Mother. He died in early 2013, a week or so after Pope Benedict XVI did what he did (whatever it is that he did). It was Cardinal Ratzinger who had published the excommunication so many years earlier (1997). Here’s an excerpt:

“A fundamental aspect of the thought of Father Balasuriya is the denial of the dogma of original sin, held by him to be simply a product of the theological thought of the West (cf. pp. 66-78). This contradicts the nature of this dogma and its intrinsic connection to revealed truth. The author, in fact, does not hold that the meaning of dogmatic formulas remains always true and unchangeable, though capable of being expressed more clearly and better understood. [In contrast, I was able to demonstrate the “mechanism” (well, God’s justice precisely in view of how He created us), regarding the transmission of original sin not by imitation but by propagation, showing the inescapable logic of this from the Hebrew text, a first as far as I can tell after a quite exhaustive examination of millennia of commentary on the matter.]

“On the basis of these positions, the author arrives at the point of denying, in particular, the marian dogmas. Mary’s divine motherhood, her Immaculate Conception and virginity, as well as her bodily Assumption into heaven, are not recognized as truths belonging to the Word of God (cf. pp. 47, 106, 139, 152, 191). [In contrast, in my own work, I demonstrated how all these dogmas are necessary upon the examination of the text of the Sacred Scriptures, again, a first as far as I know in the history of Judeo-Catholicism.] Wanting to present a vision of Mary free from «theological elaborations, which are derived from a particular interpretation of one sentence or other of the scriptures» (p. 150) [In contrast, I demonstrated how Genesis 2:4a–3:24 is a tightly scripted equation, a syllogism], Father Balasuriya, in fact, deprives the dogmatic doctrine concerning the Blessed Virgin of every revealed character, thus denying the authority of tradition as a mediation of revealed truth. [In contrast, I demonstrated the revealed character of all the present Marian dogmas, and more, that is, regarding Mary as Advocate, Mediatrix, Co-Redemptrix.]

“Finally, it must be noted that Father Balasuriya, denying and relativizing some statements of both the extraordinary Magisterium and the ordinary universal Magisterium, reveals that he does not recognize the existence of an infallibility of the Roman Pontiff and of the college of Bishops cum et sub Petro. Reducing the primacy of the Successor of Peter to a question of power (cf. pp. 42, 84, 170), he denies the special character of this ministry. [In contrast, I have attempted, as a courtesy, to correct Francis’ assertions of power as an attempt to control Sacred Tradition (he taking up Balasuriya’s heretical assertions), pointing Francis instead to correct philological exegesis of Matthew 16 regarding the limits of infallibility apart from Sacred Tradition. This is speaking with parrhesia, with charity. I must say, this has been quite the exhaustive, comprehensive examination, though spread out over very many articles over very many years.]

“In publishing this Notification, the Congregation is obliged also to declare that Father Balasuriya has deviated from the integrity of the truth of the Catholic faith and, therefore, cannot be considered a Catholic theologian; moreover, he has incurred excommunication latae sententiae (can. 1364, par. 1). [In other words, the automatic nature of the excommunication was now also declared, therefore having external penalties imposed and supervised.]

“The Sovereign Pontiff John Paul II, at the Audience granted to the undersigned Cardinal Prefect, approved this Notification, adopted in the ordinary session of this Congregation, and ordered it to be published.

“Rome, from the offices of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 2 January 1997, the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Joseph Card. Ratzinger Prefect” [So, that’s weird. I think the multiple dates here refer, perhaps, to the approval, and/or the signing, and/or the publishing.]

A year later, in 1998, this excommunication was lifted upon Tissa’s admission that there might be “perceptions of error” in his writings, whatever that means. While teaching in major seminaries in Australia a few years later, I saw a BBC interview with Tissa in which, if I remember correctly, he mocked this decision of the foolish Holy See rehabilitating him. I was intent on getting him excommunicated once again (with full encouragement of the Holy Office), and so contacted the BBC to get a DVD copy of the interview (which they advertised at the end of the program). To their credit, they responded and took my phone calls. But they got nervous and said that sharing a copy was, in this case, forbidden by the interviewee. Who would’ve guessed? The BBC guy was super nervous, as denial is against government policy (the BBC being a government agency). Anyway, you can fool what is now called the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith some of the time, but not Jesus, not Mary at any time. One way or the other, now Tissa knows the rest of the story, with great clarity. I hope he turned around before he died. I don’t wish anyone any harm, even with the infliction of penalties which are medicinal in nature. For the eternal repose of Tissa’s soul (We’re to pray for our enemies, right?): Hail Mary…

Whatever the perception of Tissa as a full-on heretic, he did get due process. That’s charity, right?

Leave a comment

Filed under Immaculate Conception, Mary

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

2022-05-16 · 8:24 am

“We have no king but Xi Jinping”

The Vatican-China deal stands in stark contrast to the papacy of Saint John Paul II who boldly confronted communism in Western Europe. He is widely believed today to have been an essential force in the collapse of the Soviet Union. Sticking my own neck out perhaps a bit too far, I can only conclude that the concordat signed by Pope Francis is reminiscent of the Chief Priest’s response to Pilate (John 19:15), “We have no king but Xi Jinping.”

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/chinese-communist-imprisonment-cardinal-joseph-zen-gordon-j-macrae/

2 Comments

Filed under Free exercise of religion, Politics, Pope Francis

Tagged as , , , , , ,

2021-09-22 · 4:13 pm

Pope Leo XIII: Les droits de l’homme, c’est de la merde! (Traditionis custodes)

Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus promulgated 1 November 1900, contains the teaching of Pope Leo XIII:

  • “The world has heard enough of the so-called ‘rights of man.’ Let it hear something of the rights of God.”

Quite exactly one century later, when a cauldron of Marxist priests hotly desiring to kill oppressors boiled over and execrated their demands for the secular rights of man in the face of Juan Luis Cipriani Thorne, he responded, here in the paraphrase of French newspapers:

  • “Les droits de l’homme, c’est de la merde! Let’s respect the rights of God.”

Then, just thirty days later, Saint Pope John Paul II made him a Cardinal. Lol. I love that. The rights of man, to be legitimate, must be consonant with the rights of God, of the Creator, over us mere creatures.

In these days there are ecclesiastics who are upholding the rights of man and are making sport of Catholic priests who respect the rights of God in order to assist man in his vocation to go to heaven. The bad and evil ecclesiastics are cutting the throats of those priests who don’t want abortion-tainted “vaccines” and are forbidding them from providing the sacraments. The bad and evil ecclesiastics attack those priests don’t want to insult the Sacrifice of the Mass, who don’t want say that the Jesus’ Sacrifice is not reflective of any lex orandi, law of praying.

I also repeat with Leo XIII (in paraphrase):

  • “Les droits de l’homme, c’est de la merde! Let’s respect the rights of God.”

Leave a comment

Filed under Liturgy

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

2021-08-15 · 5:40 am

Mature conscience choosing vax = mature conscience choosing abortifacients: 1968

The bishops and priests who rejected the encyclical letter of Saint Pope Paul VI (part of the infallible ordinary magisterium) back in the summer of 1968 (the nineteen-sixty-haters) and made total hell for those seminarians like me who wanted to remain faithful to Jesus and Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition and the authentic interventions of the ordinary and of course of the Supreme Magisterium of the Church… those bishops and priests have been reincarnated in the new breed of compromisers and browbeating bullies who today shriek that we are all mature Christians with our own mature consciences which can, they shriek, choose wonderfully to reject all that is good and holy because, you know, like, um, because…

  • “We’re smarter today than God and His Church and everyone for the past thousands of years of Judeo-Catholicism, smarter than any natural law, because, like, um, we live today that they don’t. We’re the ones! We’re the only ones! We have power! We can slit the throats of seminarians and priests who don’t get with the program of our self-referential narcissism!”

You gotta know, I saw a great deal of that slitting of throats of faithful seminarians and priests in my lifetime. I was eight years old in 1968. In the mid-1970s as a teenager, I saw that my diocesan seminary just down the road from my home was filled with homosexualists. The horrific desecration of the Blessed Sacrament that happened at the seminary was from hell, the maggots in the Tabernacle… there are so many horrible things I myself witnessed… Along with this rejection of the Church, of all doctrine, of all morality, there was the predictable proclamation that we are mature Christians and we can make up our own mind about, well, really, everything. One of the courses given at the seminary was by an ex-priest whose for-credit for-ordination classes was a presentation of how to rationalize an abortion in any situation. He “assisted” his father to kill himself. He hotly desired to kill his handicapped daughter. He told all this to me personally. His pro-abortion course was a kind of reparation for not having killed his daughter by abortion.

Nothing has changed. In the past it was almost impossible to find even one priest who stood with the Church. The faithful were marginalized, hunted, scorned, the scum of the earth. I have so many accounts of those I’ve personally met and became friends with. Some in formation at the time saw this and stood by Jesus in His trials, and blessed are they, but some ran in fear – the cowards! – and those freakoids, unrecognizable to Jesus (“I don’t know you; go to hell”) are now, of course, in positions of power. They side with Satan over against the Church and proclaim that we are all mature Christians and can go ahead and choose to persecute Jesus in the least of the brethren. And among all these are those who are loudly proclaimed to the icons of orthodoxy, our saviors in these dark times. Always the same.

I mean, this throws me into nostalgia about how many times I suffered to remain faithful. I’m seeing the whole thing being replayed again. Even the ultra-orthodox famous icons of orthodoxy fall on the side of murdering healthy, fully developed children who were purposely used for research and/or development and/or testing of “vaccines.” They shriek:

  • “We’re mature Christians! We can decide about doctrine and morality all on our own! The teaching of sycophants-of-Satan-ecclesiastics in Rome tell us we can follow our own conscience as devoid of any formation by either the natural law or revelation or the interventions of the authentic magisterium of the Church. We’re us! We live today! We’re not the heretics of the past! We’re the ones! We’re the only ones! And that’s why we’re right and can attempt to please everyone all the time about everything, and be damned anyone, including God His damned Church of the Ages who gets in our way. We have POWER! GO AHEAD AND TAKE THE VACCINE IF YOU WANT BECAUSE IT’S ALL ABOUT YOU!”

But it’s really about them being high priests of death of the image of Jesus. In the past this was about destroying the image of God (male and female in marriage and the family) using contraception, and then quickly murderous abortifacient chemicals (the Pill, etc.), and then quickly abortion, and then quickly infanticide, and then quickly the murder of undesirables, you know, those with hydro-encephalitis, etc. Today, there are those who reject all those things, telling themselves that they are pro-life and holy and good, you know, before God and everyone. But no. They are still the same murderous ecclesiastics who persecute Jesus in the least of the brethren.

I mean, this throws me into nostalgia about how many times I suffered to remain faithful. I’m seeing the whole thing being replayed again. Even the ultra-orthodox famous icons of orthodoxy fall on the side of murdering healthy, fully developed children who were purposely used for research and/or development and/or testing of “vaccines.”

Here’s the deal: I have not compromised. I will not compromise. I will not murder anyone. I will stand with Jesus in His trials. I’ve been through all this before. I’m trained up. The horrific things I went through to remain faithful to Jesus could fill many volumes. Jesus was surely training me up for these days. I know something that these power-brokers of hell do not know. There are many of us who are faithful, who are happy to stand close to Jesus, who won’t compromise, not because we are “rigid” but because we are exuberant in the joy of the Holy Ghost, because we have profound peace from the Prince of the Most Profound Peace, because we, totally unworthy as we are, are Tabernacles of the Holy Spirit, because they carry not “vaccine” inside of us, but because we instead carry about the death of Jesus within ourselves so that others may see the resurrected Jesus in us. And it must be this way for all of us. We beg Jesus that this may be so. I beg Jesus that He may provide me this great grace always unto heaven. I beg this for all. We must be saints and go to heaven lest we go to hell. We must not apologize for having great joy and love and truth that is stronger than any political correctness, stronger than any temptation, stronger than being marginalized, stronger than death, strong enough to get us to heaven.

Do you join me in this joy of the Holy Spirit? Let’s be on our way to heaven!

6 Comments

Filed under Coronavirus

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , ,

2020-02-11 · 9:00 am

The Pride of Graham County: TitleTown Saint Pope John Paul II on Sports

wp-15808358524952485905516370408335.jpg

There are still celebrations going on for The Black Knights, the Football Team of the Graham County High School on the North Side of Robbinsville.

They’ve taken their 14th A 1 State Championship. But I wouldn’t want to give the football team too much publicity. Graham County excels in plenty of other sports on the State level, particularly wrestling.

Sports have done much for Graham County. It’s one of the very poorest, marginalized counties in all of North Carolina, and in the Appalachian Mountains throughout the Eastern USA. That they so very frequently finish up in first place says much of the local spirit.

Another sport has been added very recently: marksmanship. How well do they do with that, you ask? Well, those of you who are as old as I am may remember a skeet-shooting session in the The Beverly Hillbillies. It’s kind of like that:

Sports have done so very much to promote unity among people of different backgrounds and of different wherewithal on whatever level and in whatever way. I’ve seen this before in Rosman and Brevard North Carolina, where there have been some amazing coaches. I am reminded of Saint John Paul II’s words on sports:

  • “Playing sport has become very important today, since it can encourage young people to develop important values such as loyalty, perseverance, friendship, sharing and solidarity.”
  • “Sport is a factor of emancipation for poor countries and helps to eradicate intolerance and build a more brotherly and united world.”
  • “Sport…protects the weak and excludes no-one…frees young people from the snares of apathy and indifference and arouses a healthy sense of competition in them.”
  • “Sports, in fact, can make an effective contribution to peaceful understanding between peoples and to establishing the new civilization of love.”
  • “Sports contribute to the love of life, teaches sacrifice, respect and responsibility, leading to the full development of every human person.”
  • “Every Christian is called to become a strong athlete of Christ, that is, a faithful and courageous witness to his Gospel. But to succeed in this, he must persevere in prayer, be trained in virtue and follow the divine Master in everything.”
  • “Sport trains body and spirit for perseverance, effort, courage, balance, sacrifice, honesty, friendship and collaboration.”
  • “Give thanks to God for the gift of sport, in which the human person exercises his body, intellect and will, recognizing these abilities as so many gifts of his Creator.”
  • “Lord Jesus Christ, Help these athletes to be your friends and witnesses to your love. Help them to put the same effort into personal asceticism that they do into sports; help them to achieve a harmonious and cohesive unity of body and soul.”

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under John Paul II

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

2018-02-21 · 11:25 am

Billy Graham RIP 99: Jesus loves us

billy graham john paul ii

Billy had neutral pressure hydrocephalus, which fill the vacuals of the brain with fluid and creates enormous pressure in the cranium. It makes for unbelievable pain and for the corruption of body movement, destroying the spinal cord etc. Almost zero treatment. He himself said that it was the most horrible disease any human being can have.

Usually, people die of this right away. He lived on and on. That’s a lot of pain.

I didn’t know that he died when I got an email this morning from a convert parishioner which simply said:

Father: I found one more person who says God/Jesus loves us all and he died today.

As you know, I conclude all my homilies with “Jesus loves us so very much.” I didn’t know who he was talking about until I looked on line. It was the top story everywhere.

In other words, he went through hell and still insisted that Jesus loves us so very much. That’s a lot of faith. I would hope that if I went through hell I would still say that Jesus loves us so very much.

Meanwhile, Bill Donohue of the Catholic League has this to say:

Growing up Catholic in New York in the 1950s, the Catholic we most identified with was Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, the first televangelist. The Protestant we most clearly revered was Rev. Billy Graham. In both cases, they had no rival.

For Catholics, Graham was more than just the titular head of the Protestant community, he was a man who inspired us. He was a man of prayer, and his deep spirituality was contagious. Moreover, his ecumenical efforts were legion.

When Graham was at his peak, our culture was Christian-friendly, allowing him to follow a decidedly pastoral approach. Those ministers who came after him were forced to take a more aggressive public stance, owing to the advent of the culture war.

I have one fond remembrance of him. In the late 1990s, he contacted me about some cruel story that had circulated about him—it made him out to be an anti-Catholic bigot. The story was completely bogus. I appreciated how seriously he took this issue, and how quickly he responded.

Rev. Billy Graham will be missed. I am happy that he is with our Lord.

2 Comments

Filed under Ecumenism, John Paul II

Tagged as , ,

2017-10-01 · 3:32 pm

Homily 2017 10 01 Prostitutes & Porn & me & St John Paul II (Yikes!)

I guess I should apologize. Perhaps I get a bit carried away. Super repetitive. It’s a little longer than the weekday homilies. The Sunday homilies are always a little longer.

I failed to mention that there was a story in the paper here about an epidemic of the local kids sexting and, with that, bullies right away doing the extortion and blackmail thing. So sad. So many hurt. So many drawn in and smashed down.

I also failed to mention that in another homily on porn way back in the 1980s and I was still a deacon. I was pretty ferocious then too. After Mass, I went outside the church and down the steps and down the walkway to the sidewalk down at the street. There were about five more steps down just before the street. I was there greeting people, who, instead, were pretty much ignoring me, looking a bit miffed.

Meanwhile, a girl, say, ten years old, came flying off the steps and threw her arms around my neck. She slid down to the sidewalk and everyone had turned and was glaring at me like I was a monster, until, that is, that the little girl started exclaiming loudly and exuberantly that I had given the best homily ever in the world ever, and that all other priests were cowards and never talked about this and it had to be done because it’s just everywhere and no one says anything and thank you so very much for being so brave as to say something and that was best homily ever in the world… and on she went.

Meanwhile, this out of the mouths of babes extravaganza was not missed by the Mass goers, who were now shamefacedly running away as fast as they could. Ha! Guardian angels set up this kind of thing. I hope it got a few people to heaven.

Also today there were many who thanked me wholeheartedly for saying some strong words. That’s encouraging, as I’m always thinking I’m too strong and too offensive. Perhaps today I was. I don’t know. Tell me what you think. I’m willing to learn.

 

5 Comments

Filed under HOMILIES, Missionaries of Mercy

Tagged as , , , , ,

2016-12-06 · 5:26 am

Update on malicious fires: Blame me!

rain

In the last week or so we’ve had three long rains, the first rains for the better part of a year, with this last rain lasting for days, looking like it’s going to rain until late tonight. I’m guessing even the deep-down-in-the-forest-floor smoldering fires are pretty much totally out, though a firefighter told me last night at the fire house that there were still some pretty serious smoke columns going up here or there.

Pretty much every single fire was man-made, even malicious, what with burning tires stuffed with whatever rubbish and drenched with flammable liquids rolled down mountains, etc. So many lost their lives. So many lost their homes and livelihoods. A firefighter died of a heart attack fighting the blazes. One of the many arsonists was actually trying to blame someone innocent. Pretty bad, huh?

Well, what if someone instead came along and took the blame for the whole lot of it? In fact, what if someone apologized for anything and everything even though he was innocent of all evil, being innocent Himself, the very Son of the Immaculate Conception, Christ Jesus Our God? What if Jesus were to say to His heavenly Father at His Baptism by John in the river Jordan: “Treat me like I enslaved everyone in sin from Adam until the last man is conceived”? That’s what He did, right, standing in our stead, therefore having the right in His own justice to have mercy on us? “Blame me,” He said. Yes. But…

Let me make this personal. What if I, a priest hearing confessions one Saturday afternoon in my parish, suddenly saw Jesus Himself kneel at the screen and start confessing every sin I’ve committed since birth, you know, all my sins? I think I would start not just crying in thanksgiving for such love so utterly unmerited by myself, but I would be a total wreck, bawling uncontrollably. But that’s what He’s done, and for all of us.

And then there’s Pope John Paul II, a canonized saint, mind you, who not once, not twice, but many times apologized for what sinners did throughout the millennia, you know, those individuals calling themselves Catholic but not acting as Catholics. Remember when all those self-righteous armchair pundits publicly berated him for doing what he couldn’t possibly do, saying that “the Church” didn’t commit those sins, so you can’t apologize for them!

“Nevertheless, it’s only right for me as the Supreme Pontiff to do so,” he responded, entrenching all the more. Right. In solidarity with Jesus as He is in solidarity with us, that is what we are to do. Blame me!

“No, no!” people bitterly complain. “I didn’t light those fires! And I’m not al-Qaeda or ISIS! I don’t do those kinds of things and I’m not going to apologize for what I didn’t do!”

B as in B and S as in S as a famous internet personality exclaims. You and I, innocent perhaps of whatever terrorist or whatever incident, have all done something much worse, so bad that it encompasses all other evil ever done since Adam until the last man is conceived. We’ve all crucified the Son of the Living God with our sin, original sin and our own personal rubbish.

Jesus, Mary’s Son, I’m so very sorry. Please, forgive me. Send upon my the gentle rain of grace and put out the fire of my hell, bringing me into your friendship, having me walk with you through this life and into heaven, for I know you will come to judge the living and the dead and the world by fire. Amen.

3 Comments

Filed under Terrorism

Tagged as ,