About the Author II

In the years prior to the Second Vatican Council, I also remember attending daily Mass before elementary school, which, because we had fasted for three hours, allowed us to eat breakfast in Mr. Sullivan’s math class. I remember bellowing out Tantum Ergo at Wednesday Evening Benediction, which I was in the habit of attending with my Mom, siblings and “Gramp,” (her Dad, John). I also remember looking forward to participating in the praying of that most sublime form of prayer, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, with my St. Joseph’s Daily Missal.

With Pope Benedict’s having granted permission for priests to offer the Extraordinary form of the Roman Rite, we hear much ado in the form of reaction against this from Catholic “progressives,” and about how the Council placed a new emphasis on the laity’s participation at Mass, the implication being that Catholics did not actively participate at Mass prior to Vatican II, opting for such devotions as the praying of the Rosary or Holy Cards. To such persons I say: you should’ve seen me (and pal Bob, for that matter) at Mass in third grade! Not only did I pray along with the priest in the Latin Missal, but I was a better-than-average singer of Gregorian chant, thanks to convert Mrs. Crowley’s daily faithful rendering of the chanted antiphons and propers in Latin. I, who failed becoming an altar server by stumbling over one Latin syllable in my tryout test, (Sr. Isabelle must have had a bad habit day that day), also remember telling my younger brother John, who passed, how he forgot the proper order in covering the communion rails before Holy Communion.

St. Eugene’s eventually closed in the Year of Our Lord 1989 due to “white flight” and demographic changes after the 1967 riots in Detroit, and with this came to an end the place where I spent some of the holiest years of my life, years in which neither I nor my classmates were ashamed to publicly give witness to our faith in Christ (yes, I too dressed in sheets and played the priest in acting out the Mass with my siblings). My memories of participation at Mass are exalted ones. There was a sense of the sacred that has since, through misimplementation of Sacrosanctum Concilium, long since evaporated at Mass (though Jesus is just as present as He always was and will be), which has manifested itself in the words of my Catholic high school students as “Why do we have to go to Mass?”

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This video of a young boy twerking at Pride has homophobes outraged | Gay Star News

DANCING WITH MR. D: This video of a young boy twerking at Pride has homophobes outraged | Gay Star News : 'via Blog this'

A Series on Spiritual Warfare

In The Screwtape Letters , C.S. Lewis’ use of irony exemplifies distinctions between God and Satan’s attitude toward human beings; Lewis does this through the use of innuendos, sarcasm, and ironic inversions. I recently stumbled on a three-part series which builds on the truth in Lewis' writing here , here and here . Good Advent reflection!

Dancing With Mr. D: Grooming the Little Children

A former pro-transgender activist said she regretted her previous work in pro-transgender activism, adding she felt she was "indoctrinated" on gender ideology in an interview with Fox News Digital. "I started to realize that what I had been doing at my job at the LGBT Center, it was grooming," Kay Yang, a former employee of a location in New York, said. Grooming in this context means "to get into readiness for a specific objective." Kay works as a 'deprogrammer' to help parents and children who have been 'indoctrinated' by the 'cult-like' transgender agenda. Yang herself previously went by they/them and worked as a 'trans educator' in schools for years. Listen to her testimony.

Liberal Catholics, Conservative Catholics, and Holy Catholics

In Smoke , I wrote of two modifications of "Catholic" in popular parlance these days: Lest we forget, there were indeed reform-minded Council Fathers who responded to Pope John’s vision of the Church growing in spiritual riches as a fruit of the Council under the guidance of the Holy Spirit in the hope that the faithful might through grace be aided in turning hearts and minds toward heavenly things. Given what has been said thus far, it should not surprise the reader that many “liberal Catholics” view the pontificate of John Paul II as too “conservative,” and out of touch with the modern world, while the traditionalists view the writings and teachings of the Holy Father as modernist! Dr. Jeff Mirus of Catholic Culture has rightly linked Pope Francis's view of Vatican II as synonymous with those of his predecessors, who were in attendance.

Thou Shalt Not Spin

Ruminating on excerpts from John Allen’s one year review of the pontificate of Pope Francis (in red): Many Points of Praise for Pope’s First Year By John L. Allen Jr. GLOBE STAFF MARCH 12, 2014 ….In the year since, Pope Francis has electrified the world with his taste for the improbable: his spurning of the papal apartment, his resolutely informal personal style, his startling words, such as his instantly immortal “Who am I to judge?” line on gays. Quite right! Who are we to judge anyone? He’s popular at the Catholic grass roots and may be the most celebrated pontiff ever in non-Catholic venues, and even some secular circles where criticism of the papacy is much more common than praise. I rejoice at this, and pray that the world will listen to all of Francis, even the hard sayings…. Symbolically, Francis, 77, has changed the narrative about Catholicism. Substantively, he has taken bold steps toward reform and reoriented the church toward the political an...

Libido Redux: Porn Stats

If one types "Libido Redux" on this blog's search engine, you will see various events which corroborate Pope Paul VI's prophecy that the human libido is a "crack" through which Satan can play havoc with souls. Here is the latest in the series, which should enlighten the reader, the stats on children and Christians in particular. From one who knows the truth of Paul's prophecy: "I have posted on a number of other articles about porn, but I wanted to post here as well to reach out to anyone else who, like me, is a porn addict. I tried for the first 9 years of marriage to stop looking at porn, and I could not. I asked God to help me stop, I went to confession, I received the Eucharist daily, but I could not stop. It was not enough for me to do it on my own with God. I had to ask for help from other people, see a counselor, and get into a 12-step recovery program, and that is how God is healing me. I believe the numbers here because I understand ...

Thou Shall Not Bear False Witness Against Thy Neighbor

Tucker Carlson: The Biden Scandal Is Real And Not Going Away Posted By Ian Schwartz On Date October 30, 2020 TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS: It's been obvious for decades now that the Biden family has gotten rich from selling influence abroad. Joe Biden held a series of high level jobs in the U.S. government. Based on that fact and that fact alone, Biden's son and brother approached foreign governments and companies, sovereign wealth funds, energy conglomerates, Third World oligarchs and dictators, and they offered to exchange favors from Joe Biden for cash. The polite term for that practice is influence-peddling. Sometimes it is legal under American law, sometimes it is not. But it has always been the economic engine of the Biden family. They've never done anything else. Until recently, no one debated this fact. Several liberal news organizations, in fact, have written detailed stories about the Biden secret business dealings over the years. Look them up, assuming you still c...

Dancing with Mr. D: Gender Ideology

In a private conversation with Bishop Andreas Laun on January 30 as part of the Austrian bishops’ ad limina visit , Pope Francis strongly condemned “gender ideology.” In so doing he follows the example of Pope Benedict, who is on record as saying that gender ideology is “a negative trend for humankind,” and a “profound falsehood,” which “it is the duty of pastors of the Church” to put the faithful “on guard against.” Bishop Laun The Austrian bishop stated, “In response to my questioning, Pope Francis said, ‘Gender ideology is demonic!’” As I have chronicled on these pages, the Holy Father often refers to the work of the devil. Of gender ideology, Bishop Laun explained that “the core thesis of this sick product of reason is the end result of a radical feminism which the homosexual lobby has made its own.” “It asserts that there are not only Man and Woman, but also other ‘genders’. And furthermore: every person canchoose his or her gender,” he added. “Today,” he said, ...

Blogging Disciples!

To promote a book I spent years in writing , I began this blog. I am a baby boomer who knows all too little about blogging and the latest techie stuff. As I was perusing various Catholic blog sites, I noticed a post by Fr. Longenecker entitled, "The Smoke of Satan." If one troubles oneself to read Fr.'s quite accurate assessment, and becomes interested in just exactly how, according to the Pope who coined the phrase "Smoke of Satan" the Devil made his entrance into the post-Vatican II Church in the U.S., then my book is just what the Savior may have ordered, so why don't you!?

Read the Documents!

The third reflection in the series on why Catholics must know the real Vatican Council II: 3) “The Church acknowledges Gregorian chant as specially suited to the Roman liturgy: therefore, other things being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgical services” ( Sacrosanctum Concilium , #116). Here's why.

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