I just finished watching The Scarlet and the Black with Gregory Peck, John Gielgud, and Christopher Plummer. The movie was ok, the music was a bit hard to take. Anyway, the best part of the movie was at the very end-I had no idea of the full story of Msgr. Hugh O'Flaherty. Here is a good sermon by an Episcopal priest on the 1st anniversary of September 11th that tells the O'Flaherty story. A fellow Long Islander, William Simpson (a Scottish Presbyterian ), wrote a book on Hugh O'Flaherty and the Vatican's role in saving people in WWII- The book is mentioned here.

I have added some more Catholic blogs to my list and will add more later. I really need to get a cable modem because this aol thing just isn't cutting it anymore. I was excited to see on Swimming the Tiber, Sean talks about a service that allows you to see when your favorite blogs have been updated. This is great since there are so many I like to check out and some I have probably not even seen yet.

I just found out that a new Catholic bookstore opened in my neighborhood this week! The amazing thing is that it also contains a lending library, which is an idea I have had for awhile. I mentioned this idea on this blog, here here and here. I visited and spoke to the owner and I hope she does well although it will be a challenge. The store is small and since it just opened there are not enough items for sale on the shelves. The lending library contains mostly older books which, although there are some out of print gems, might not be attractive enough to pull people in. I had thought of trying to start a lending library in a parish and had some ideas about how to keep it orthodox, but I also kept in mind the idea of starting a Catholic bookstore and then having a library within. Imagine my shock when this idea, which I only expressed on this blog, and to a few people, actually came into existence right in my own neighborhood. I bought 3 books and rented a movie. The movie was The Scarlet and the Black, starring Gregory Peck. The books were:

The Fathers of the Church An Introduction to the First Christian Teachers by MIke Aquilina
My Brother Pier Giorgio His Last Days by Luciana Frassati
Salvation Outside the Church? by Rev. Peter Stravinskas

Any locals who read this blog, please check out the store Faith & Reason, Inc. at 742 North Broadway in Massapequa. It is a wonderful apostolate to support and hopefully will grow and be successful.

Alright! This blog was listed for a second time of the Giant List of Catholic Blogs under "NEW". This could mean being mentioned on the Nihil Obstat blog, which is a cool honor.

The Roman Catholic Faithful website is one of my favorite places to keep up with corruption in the Church. The way that RCF gets information and exposes people is great to see, worthy of the old 60 minutes. Here is a great article on the founder of RCF, Stephen Brady, a true Catholic hero. It is sad to see someone dedicated to being Catholic put through such turmoil by others in the Church.

"Brady heads Roman Catholic Faithful, a group he created in 1996 to address his concerns about the Springfield Diocese, which includes Catholic congregations throughout central Illinois. Brady, who earns most of his income running Leo's Pizza in Petersburg, has since expanded his field of battle. Roman Catholic Faithful's Web site, www.rcf.org, is a disorganized mixture of news updates, warnings to Catholic leaders, press releases, and links to church scandals all over the world. Brady claims his work has forced the resignations of six priests and two bishops, in dioceses from Dallas to South Africa. In 1999, he created headlines when he exposed a Web site where several dozen Catholic priests swapped stories of their sexual exploits, occasionally involving young children."


The Diocese Report is another great website, and they have this story about a priest in the Altoona-Johnston diocese who is being persecuted for being orthodox.

The efforts by some to foster “community” among parishioners have been rather childish and probably have turned some people away. Some priests, at the start of Mass, tell people to turn to the people around them and introduce themselves. One parish by me has a priest who asks if anyone is celebrating a birthday or anniversary and people shout out their answers and then everyone applauds. This caused me to stop going to that parish, I felt like a child and I really didn’t care if it was someone’s cousins’ 45th birthday. Some parishes encourage people to talk in Church before Mass. All these things are terrible but they are at least efforts to get Catholics to act like a real community. Long Island has very large parishes where it is common for most parishioners to know few of the people in the pews. I guess smaller parishes don’t have this problem. I think people should allow people to pray in Church before Mass and so talking is a bad idea. The older people are the worst, they think they are whispering but you can hear them 15 pews away. I read the readings before Mass and have been annoyed when people around me carry on conversations. I once heard an older couple discussing what type of cereal they should get at the supermarket, corn flakes or bran-flakes. I resisted the urge to turn around and throw my missalette at them. The missalette is so flimsy it wouldn’t have hurt anyway. There should be some ability to talk, converse, discuss, catch up, socialize, encourage each other, discuss cereal options, but not in Church. Churches should have some sort of vestibule suitable for people meeting and greeting. Some newer Churches and some older Churches have this. I have seen Cathedrals and Churches with nice gardens or squares in front of them and this is good for the nice weather. The traditional latin Mass in our diocese is held in a former school chapel, so the cafeteria is used for a nice breakfast after each Mass. This is the perfect opportunity for people to get to know each other. Many parishes could set up their basement or another room for a meeting spot before or after Mass. Any of these would be preferential to people interrupting the prayer and preparation time before Mass.

Cool

My Catholic Howl poem has been posted on a philosophy professor's website. I wish I had been told-this is neat since I can link to it. Professor Philip Blosser's website is great. Here is an article he wrote entitled "What I Learned from U.S. Catholic Magazine: Discerning Editorial Bias " Also, check out his personal info:

"I was born in China (Chengdu) and raised in Japan (Sapporo & Tokyo). After twenty years of living in the Far East, it is still difficult to feel completely at home in the United States. Nevertheless, since taking up residence in North Carolina in 1984 to teach at Lenoir-Rhyne College, I have earned honorary Tar Heel citizenship by eating twenty-six grits, drowned in red eye gravy, two moon pies, and one hush puppy (in one sitting, I'll have you know)! I do continue to favor fine sushi cuisine whenever I can find a restaurant where it ain't called "fish bait."

Also, just found this old article:

Gen-X Christians want their churches to be spiritual, not hip

"The church always goes wrong when it tries to appear cool. It never goes wrong when it tries to attend to people's deepest thirst."

"I'm not necessarily in favor of taking Smashing Pumpkins and Sarah McLachlan and making that church music," Beaudoin said. "I find most Gen-Xers suspicious when the church comes too closely to resemble what they're doing in their secular lives."

"For example, he said, "I work with so many young, moderate-to-progressive-thinking Catholics who want to pray the Rosary, who are interested in Marian adoration, very curious about the Latin Mass, and who love Taize-style worship."

Just found this from the Mystical Rose page:

You might be a Gen X Catholic if...

"...You think Extreme Unction is a new professional wrestling show on TV. "
"...If a non-Catholic says, "I wish I'd been exposed to the rich, fascinating cultural and spiritual heritage of Catholicism", you think, "Yeah, so do I."

One of my favorite sites, The Catholic Educator's Resource Center, has so many good articles on their front page you should go there right now. Examples:

Thomas More for Our Season by Robert Bork (!)
God's Secret Agent: Interview with Sue Thomas by Barbara Nicolosi
12 Claims Every Catholic Should Be Able to Answer by Deal Hudson

I went to the first Mass of Fr. Gilbert Lap today at St. William the Abbott parish. The new priest had 14 of his brother priests concelebrating with him. The parish choir sounded wonderful with a trumpet player joining them. All things considered, we have a pretty good parish.

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”.

So the Great Debate between Fr. Pacwa and Dr. White was over "Is the Catholic priesthood biblical and historical?". I did not come away from the event with a good knowledge of the biblical and historical basis for the priesthood, but this was not Fr. Pacwa's fault. I did have my interest raised though, so I may have found a good site to learn from---

Catholic Apologetics On the Internet

N.H. Episcopalians Elect Gay Bishop

A funeral was held today at Our Lady Star of the Sea for the youngest firefighter to die on Sept. 11th.

Thoughts on a couple of old posts

Sometime ago there was discussion at Catholic and Enjoying It! on Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly as “tribal Catholics”. I put in a half-hearted defense of my fellow Long Islanders with the observation that, when it comes to Catholics in the public square, I’ll take what I can get. Not exactly a resounding hurray but I was thinking about this lately. The charge is that Catholics like Hannity and O’Reilly, and many other Catholics, are Catholic due to upbringing and they are ignorant of their faith. Their faith is not strong enough to overcome the political and cultural biases they have. I would agree with this idea. Recently, a Crisis magazine article began with this quote from the fictional Cardinal in Godfather III: “Look at this stone. It has been lying in this water for a very long time, but the water has not prenetrated it…The same thing has happened to men in Europe. For centuries they have been surrounded by Christianity, but Christ has not penetrated, Christ does not live within them.”

We long islanders live in a very middle class, upwardly mobile area where religion is quietly tolerated but expected not to get in the way of our financial and social goals. People easily spend money for parties on baptisms, communions, confirmations, and weddings-but very few see them as deeply religious sacraments. I grew up with an image of the “Bible Belt” as a place where people were nuts about religion and that we were more sophisticated than that. Of course, the truth is that we never really examined our faith much, and I suspect Catholicism is 95-99% cultural with most Long Island Catholics. This would also explain the Potemkin Village post of Fr. Johannsen at Thrown Back. Our diocese fits the description.