I have one major reservation about The Passion by Mel Gibson. I never liked really violent movies and this one is being described as worse than Braveheart. If that is the case I may wait till it comes out on video so I can watch it with my finger on the fast forward button.

From the Diocese Report, Michael S. Rose has published his latest book: Priest Portraits of Ten Good Men Serving the Church Today. I will say it again, Mr. Rose has done more good work for the Church in his 33 years than many who are twice his age.

I am totally late in blogging this but the great Dancing of the Giglio Feasts have come and gone. One is held in my neighborhood and I did not even know it. I will try to get to this next year. I can still make it to the St. Rocco's Feast! These public, cultural things (common with Italians and Latinos) are just the thing we need to keep people connected in some way to the Church. What attracts more people -great zeppolis or deep theological discussions??

Split Over Nassau Sept. 11 Memorial


"Nassau County has chosen a memorial design honoring nearly 300 county residents who died in the 9/11 terrorist attack, but the county and the designer disagree about building a separate wall for uniformed personnel."

This is similar to the argument occurring at Ground Zero-should the police and firefighters who died on Sept. 11th be given a separate monument?

"The crabby little girls of today are the crabby old women of tommorrow!!"

---Lucy Van Pelt

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO PEANUTS by Robert Short

Before discovering St. Blogs, I found various apologetic and traditional Catholic websites that introduced me to orthodoxy. The ability to speak online with fellow Catholics was limited to AOL chat rooms. These are nightmares. There are people who espouse nothing but the most stereotypical nonsense of both the conservative and liberal variety. Regulars were often nasty and did nothing but fight (not argue but fight). I actually was glad for the frequent children who came in to yell and curse, at least they livened up the room. Discovering St. Blogs meant I could forget the chat rooms and never go back. The blogs have better commentary, better arguments, better personalities and I have actually learned things from them. The only problem is that there are so many that it is impossible to check them all frequently. I wish there was a "Best of St. Blogs" site with only the top posts of various types.

Bishop urges home schoolers to feel at home in Church as well

"As Bishop William Murphy offered Mass for home-schooling families at St. Agnes Cathedral here June 30, he urged families to feel at home in Church as well.
“We are at home in the cathedral church,” Bishop Murphy told about 200 parents and their children who have opted for lessons at home rather than at a school. “Here, we are the family of Church.”

Priest-vet’s war stories included in book

Msgr. Fink is, well, no fink. He was one of the 3 people who answered questions at the "Faith on Tap" open forum discussion-for Catholics in their 20's and 30's. Fr. is very bright, orthodox, and I had no idea he converted when in college.

“If the Church of the future knows John Paul II as ‘John Paul the Great,’ it will be for this reason: at another moment of peril, when barbarisms of various sorts threatened civilization, a heroic figure was called from the Church to meet the barbarian threat and propose an alternative. In the case of Pope Leo the Great (440-461), the barbarians in question were Attila and his Huns. In the case of Gregory the Great (590-604), the barbarians were the Lombards. In the case of John Paul II, the barbarism threatening civilization has been a set of ideas whose consequences include barbarous politics-defective humanisms that, in the name of humanity and its destiny, create new tyrannies and compound human suffering.”

p. 863 Witness To Hope The Biography of Pope John Paul II by George Weigel

WAS POPE JOHN PAUL I MURDERED????????



No. Thus concludes Sandra Miesel in her article in Crisis magazine. Actually the article (not online yet) was a “debate” between 2 authors of books on the subject. Both authors are anti-Catholic bigots and do not deserve mention but Miesel’s article was interesting. What stuck out most in this issue was not this article though but a book review also written by Miesel, a frequent commenter at St. Blog’s. The review was of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myth: Understanding Middle-earth by Bradley J. Birzer. The last line of the review has been rolling around my head (where there is plenty of space) since I first read it. It is said that the book

“exemplifies a worrying trend among younger ‘orthodox’ people: They play in the approved Catholic sandbox only and ignore the catholic beach beyond.”

I consider myself a “younger orthodox people” and since my reversion I have had a nagging feeling that I am concentrating too much on Catholicism in whatever I read or see, to the exclusion of other things. Here is how I look at it: Most of my life was not steeped in Catholicism despite 16 years of Catholic school. When I drifted from the Church it had nothing to do with the Church herself but with the many horrible people I was meeting in my life. This lead to much examination and that lead to the internet which led to good apologetic websites and organizations such as Ignatius Press and EWTN and Tan Books, etc... These things in turn made me aware of a mass of great stuff: intellectual, cultural, social, historical, spiritual, political, etc.. This stuff has astounded me with its depth and beauty and now that it has been a few years, I have not grown the least bit tired of it, but am more interested than ever. It does kind of consume you so that everything you see and read and experience is seen through certain lenses. It is not like I have been unaware of non-Catholic things, it is just that the Catholic world seems so deep and incredible that I want to explore more, and have no interest right now in examining much of the “non-Catholic” world, except through Catholic lenses. For instance the books and magazines I buy and read are almost exclusively Catholic in nature, although I will scan other types at the bookstore. I only read Catholic blogs and not any other types. I don’t know if this would explain some or all of the Catholic sandbox thing but I think it does. I sometimes hear older Catholics talk of not having any non-Catholic friends when they were growing up in the “Catholic ghetto” or not being exposed to much non-Catholic stuff but the past 25 years have been nothing like this. I think my generation wants to explore Catholicism since it was never presented to them at all. While the older people run from the ghetto, we are trying to rebuild it. Perhaps ultimately it is not a matter of totally ignoring the beach beyond but rather chilling on the sand in a nice comfortable spot, keeping an eye on the larger beach and utilizing it when necessary or desirable. Or is this just trying to justify laziness or small mindedness??

The reason I am always glad to see posts on or about converts is that as a cradle Catholic revert I am blown away by converts. They have played a major role in my "becoming Catholic" and I am always amazed at the zeal, intelligence, knowledge, and depth of their discussions and writings. I should mention David Armstrong of Biblical Evidence for Catholicism -his website is loaded with great info. It seems to me that after the confusion of the 60's and 70's the Church is once again enjoying an increase in the number of converts and they are helping cradle Catholics to wake up.

Catholic Pages Convert Page

Some individual Conversion stories

Gerard Serafin at Catholic Blog for Lovers posts a great list of converts and I added two in the comments:

Joseph Pearce: the author of Literary Converts, Old Thunder, Tolkien Man and Myth, and Wisdom and Innocence. He is the co-editor of the St. Austin Review and a writer in residence at Ave Maria.

Thomas Reeves: author of America's Bishop: The Life and Times of Fulton J. Sheen, A Question of Character A Life of John F. Kennedy, The Life and Times of Joseph McCarthy, and The Empty Church: The Suicide of Liberal Christianity

Great review of Mel Gibson's film The Passion at Church of the Masses! Great to hear that it is well done. Looks like Gibson is a shining example of how to be a lay Catholic working in the world to bring Christ to people. Ironic that this most Vatican II of ideas is being put into action by someone who basically rejects Vatican II.

Catholics Are Stupid!

This is the title of a book that Fr. Benedict Groeschel said he wanted to write. He was referring to how Catholics have neglected their incredible heritage and allowed silly people to take away their best art and traditions. I thought of this phrase for an entirely different reason when reading the local anti-Catholic rag today. Bishop Murphy held the first of 3 listening sessions and of course Newsday's reporting on the event is incredibly biased. But many of the people sound, well, stupid. The fact that Murphy has not had a single priest on Long Island abuse anyone in the 2 years he has been here seemed to be ignored. The fact that Bishop McGann, under whose watch most of the abuse occurred, never paid any attention to the people of the diocese was also ignored by the Voice of the Faithful types. The more I have learned of what went on in this diocese under McGann, and now under Murphy, I'll trust the current leadership and try to ignore anyone associated with the former leadership.

Very Sad Story

This very sick man walked into Our Lady of Peace Church during Mass last year and shot to death the priest and a parishioner. He had been treated for paranoid schizophrenia and was not taking his medicines. He had been educated at Chaminade High School, my alma mater, and today called as character witnesses, four of the priests and brothers from the school who taught him. Ironically, they also teach at least one family member of the murdered parishioner. The sick man comes from a good Catholic family, the priest was an great priest, and the parishioner came from a good Catholic family which had already had more than its fair share of troubles. The whole situation is just awful.

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.