All those signs with pithy sayings outside many Churches strike me as kind of shallow. They are the Ecclesiastical equivalent of bumper stickers. No matter how clever or funny they are, they just seem like something that people do to attract attention to themselves. The sayings also get old real fast.

Bishop Murphy is going to hold 3 listening sessions for people to share their concerns and hopes. I am sure there will be plenty of "I'm a Eucharistic Minister so you should listen to me" type of Catholics there. They will tell the Bishop how the Church should become even more politically correct than it already is. He would be better off just reading my blog.

Please pray for the 3 men ordained today for the Diocese of Rockville Centre. Hopefully, they will be as "rigid" and "backwards-looking" as many of the newly ordained men have been. The one newly ordained man I met on retreat is assigned to St. Mary's parish in Manhasset. This parish was featured on EWTN a while back since it lost 14 people in the World Trade Center. Please pray for the people of this parish as well.

Some ambitious person should create a blog just to post the "Best of St. Blogs". With the bloggers' permission the best posts in different categories could be gathered in one place. Examples could be Best political post, Best rant, Best expose of heterodoxy, Best humorous post, Best commentary, Best personal story, etc... I could never do this with my dial up connection and aol...but it would be nice to see a "Best of" blog, updated either weekly or monthly or whatever.

Any readers of the Latin Mass magazine see the letter to the editor by Father Ken Lohrmeyer, J.C.L. ? Is this priest for real? The self described “liberal” letter writer begins with this absurd statement “If you weren’t there, as an active participant, please do not pretend to know ‘the real truth’ about any historical or theological event.” So I guess we can just forget history or theology huh? How boring! The letter writer then expresses in a sarcastic way the idea that he supports woman priests. He seems to believe that since women were not allowed in the sanctuary, it meant that men and women were not seen as equal members of the Body of Christ. This is false. The letter continues by implying that a Catholic cannot disagree with anything the Pope does or allows, which is simply false. He then says the most silly thing ever: that if priests have to genuflect each time they cross in front of the tabernacle, then they should also genuflect each time they cross in front of any “member of the worshipping assembly”. He tries to equate the Real Presence in the Eucharist with the presence of Christ in everyone. He ends by showing that he thinks traditionalists oppose any and all change in the Liturgy, which again is false. The silliness, secularism, and lack of appreciation for traditional Catholic thought in this letter is indicative of the attitudes of many old priests in the Post-Conciliar Church. This letter was printed in the magazine for obvious reasons-this letter writer makes the traditionalists’ points better than they could.I have seen letters in Adoremus that have done the same thing, including one from a priest who said “keep sending your rag, someday your pope will die and then we can all sing in latin Alleluia”. The editor simply replied “Alleluia is, of course, a hebrew word”.