The end of the world according to the ATARI Prophecy

The end of the world according to the ATARI Prophecy

Sleepy morning. It took me a minute to get the connection between "Atari" and pixel.

I like it.

Lord have mercy.

h/t to Patrick Madrid.

Attacks on the Church

Kim Yu-na is standing next to Cardinal Cheong Jin-suk in this picture from Rok Drop, the blog about Korea. It's a nice picture accompanied by not so nice comments. The comments saddened me. Instead of honoring Kim Yu-na, the comments were focused on the priest. And His Eminence did nothing to deserve any disrespect. The ridicule was on the church. One commentator asked if the Cardinal had abused her yet. One response was that she was a girl--not a boy. When another commentator suggested that the comments were out of line. The retort was simply, "It's a valid question."

This reminded me of exactly what's happened with Pope Benedict. Of all people, who have worked tirelessly to rid the church of permissiveness of all kinds and at all levels!

Since BXVI has taken office, he has been taken to task: at Regensburg for being an enemy of Islam, forced to cancel a talk at La Sapienza, criticized for reconciliation with Lefebvrists, and TAC, and dialogged with Constantinople, and now accused of covering up the scandals of priests sexually abusing children. Is he going to be blamed for the weather, next?

Would I be accused of paranoia if I expressed a conspiracy to discredit the Church? You do have to wonder. Who benefits from disgracing the Church? Whatever, or whoever it is, comes under the general noun "Satan." Whatever and whoever benefits, does not have the best interests of humankind in mind. That's evil; that's Satan.

Do you know the pray to St. Michael, the Archangel?
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Ethics

"P-P" day, today. Every once in awhile I take a day off from work to "Pray and Play." That's how come today I found myself reading the April issue of Philanthropy Journal. I have never heard of this illustrious magazine. But this morning found me surfing the web for "ethics," and I came across this interesting article by Tim Delaney.

It all started with my reading of the blog by Fr. Tim Finigan, "The Hermeneutic of Continuity." Fr. Tim comments on an article by Jason Berry in the National Catholic Reporter. Father Tim relates how ironic it is that the media is attacking BXVI, who wouldn't accept gratuities for speaking engagements.

This resonated with me because we're suppose to sign an "ethics statement" at work. Some co-workers are pissed off about it because they feel that our wages are so pitiful that when someone wants to tip us,it should be accepted, maybe even acceptable--sort of part of the job (much like tipping the paper boy). However, the Town Administrator, Jeffrey Nutting thinks that the best way to handle the ethics question is to refuse all gratuities. Then you don't have to even think. "Just say 'NO.'"

Having the time this morning, I looked up the Federal standards for ethics. which sounded like the state of Massachusetts'. All this is governmenteese for "they're covering their asses."

OK. I see the government's point; also Jeff's. It would be best, not to take anything. But why? It's against the Ethics' Law is one reason, but I wanted a moral reason. So I did a "ProLifeInternet.com" search, (a moral version of Google). This is how I found Tim Delaney's article, "Ethics require background, not compass."

The article lists some of the trouble that ethical failures have recently been noted for: Enron, governors' taking bribes and breaking vows, members of Congress-likewise, priests causing scandal, investors influencing the Baptist Foundation, ditto American University, ditto again the Smithsonian Institute, etc. Ugh.........

Delaney ends his article with an admonition that if you have to ask if it's permissible for you to accept a gift, then don't do it.

Don't do it. It's just easier. Don't even start. Don't take anything from anybody. Make it a rule.

Forgiveness and Ego

AQ says that honesty is being open to the truth. This idea was more or less the theme in Study Group Tonight. We were discussing "forgiveness." We were honing in on what makes it difficult to forgive. And you know what I attribute the difficulty to be?

Ego

Yup. If you personally were hurt by someone, it is nigh near impossible to forgive. You really need the grace of God to forgive.

My brothers related many stories. Someone told one brother, "I hope you rot in hell." Another was told that he would never be forgiven. These victims feel deeply hurt (ego). It's ego that won't let you forgive.

Just try to give up "ourselves," and try to see the other point of view, is a start to forgiveness. Give up our egos and look at the other side. It's not about me, or us.

Tim told a humorous story about coming home at 2 AM and making a lot of noise. His next door neighbor peeked through the blinds and hollered for Tim to be quiet. Tim gave some rude comment and was angry at his neighbor.

Like it was the neighbor's fault? Tim was the one making all the noise at 2 AM. See, Tim was corrected, and rightly so, but he didn't look at himself; he blamed the neighbor.

Tim it's not all about you. Be honest and open to the truth.

I Couldn't Say It Any Better

This is from Mark Shea's A Catholic Notebook. I couldn't say it any better, so here it is.
It seems crazy to me to believe that God supernaturally protects the church against errors in faith and morals in very narrowly defined cases, but allows an almost unimaginable culture of abuse and corruption. That makes for a very very weird, legalistic conception of God, IMO.
And the idea that we should defer our opinions on sexual morality to a church whose abuses and corruptions are in precisely that area .... That seems even more crazy.
The depth and extent of the sex abuse crisis is simply astounding. Not in the percentage of priests who were wicked, but in the way the institution covered it up, attacked the accusers, and enabled the abusers to abuse again. It shows that something is horribly, deeply, disastrously wrong at the core of the RCC.
And we’re supposed to believe a bunch of tortured moral analysis from those same guys?
Humanae Vitae would have us believe that there is an important moral distinction between a married couple temporarily delaying conception through NFP and the same couple doing the same thing with some barrier method. It rests on a very weird set of assumptions and arguments. And we’re supposed to accept that from these guys?
It strains credulity beyond the breaking point.

There seem to me to be several notions blended together here. Let’s tease them apart.

First, is the (to me, baffling) claim that saying that the Holy Spirit guarantees that we idiot humans do not muck up the content of the gospel is “legalistic”. I have no reply to that, because I cannot grasp what my reader means. Legalism is the notion that one can be saved by keeping the law, rather than relying on grace. What that has to do with anything here I cannot fathom. Certainly, as Catholics we do not believe that a Pope who transmits the Tradition accurately is automatically bound for heaven. They’ve all done that. They can’t help it: they have been given the charism of infallibility. But they can still be scoundrels and fail to practice what they preach. So how this amounts to legalism, I simply don’t know.

Second, there is the notion that the Church’s teaching stands or falls with the faith and morals of the Pope and bishops. That would be true—if the teaching of the Church was their personal invention and private property. But, of course, it’s not. It’s a Tradition: a thing they are handing on from others which they themselves did not invent and can neither add to nor subtract from. Bishop, including the Pope, are not prophets speaking from some personal revelation or charism of sanctity. They are merely custodians of the Tradition, regurgitating stuff that the Church has always said. They may not believe, practice or even understand it fully to do that.

Exhibit A: the first Pope, Peter. The guy promulgates the Church’s teaching that we are saved by grace through faith in Christ and not by works of the Mosaic law, one of the absolute pillars of the Catholic faith. In short, he is the guy who tells us that you can’t be saved by legalism. Next thing you know, he’s chickening out on his own inspired teaching at Antioch and Paul has to chew him out and get him back on track (Galatians 2). A Judaizer of the first century could have (and some probably did) say, “It seems crazy to me to believe that God supernaturally protects the church against errors in faith and morals in very narrowly defined cases, but allows the teachers of faith and morals to then ignore their own teaching and avoid eating with Gentiles.” Ironically, such an objection would bind us to… legalism since it would “prove” that we shouldn’t listen to an unstable two face like Peter and his weird teaching!

Paul, in contrast, believed that when the Pope and the Church in council taught something, that something remained true even when the Pope wimped out on it later on due to the fact that he was, in the words of Chesterton, a coward, a shuffler and a snob: in a word, a man. And, of course, we believe the same about bishops who fail to uphold the Church’s teaching.

Humanae Vitae is an expression of the Church’s teaching. It is not Paul VI’s personal opinion. It is basically a restatement of the same thing the Church has always said: God is the author of nature and we can cooperate with the nature he has created, but not thwart the nature he has created. It’s the same logic which says, “If you are fat, eat less and exercise more, but don’t try to lose weight by reinstituting the Roman vomitorium.” The former cooperates with how God made you. The latter tries to strip mine pleasure while defying what God created the body to do.

In short, grace perfects, not destroys or defies, nature. This is not something Paul VI invented in 1968, and though every bishop in the world were in a state of mortal sin it would not change that fact one iota. You won’t get an argument from me about there being something rotten in the Church—just as long as you don’t mean “In those people over there, not me, of course.” The something rotten in the Church is, precisely, seen whenever any one of us finds an excuse to reject what the Church teaches when it touch on something dear to us. That’s not something confined to bishops who ignored revelation and the sense God gave a goose to protect pervy priests. It’s also something we righteous laymen participate in when we use the sins of bishops as an excuse to pretend that some piece of the Tradition we dislike can be safely ignored. The old-fashioned term for that is ad hominem. Ad hominem works when the argument rest on the personal sanctity of the person making the argument. The used car salesman who says, “Trust me” can be refuted if you produce his rap sheet. But the math teacher who says that 2+2=4 is not refuted when you show him to be a drug dealer. The truth that bishops hand along does not depend on their personal holiness, any more than the truth of our salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ was disproven by Peter’s chickenhearted failure to live by his own preaching at Antioch.

A useful thing to recall on the evening our entire Church remembers Peter’s cringeworthy declaration: “Though everyone else deny you, I will never deny you!” Paul’s advice is still sound: “Let any one who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall” (1 Corinthians 10:13)

Easter Vigil

Since Hubby is a Christmas/Easter Catholic, we go to celebrate Easter wherever he is the most comfortable. He always picks Mt. St. Mary's Abbey, in Wrentham, MA. I like it too. Good choice! However, I would like to celebrate the catechumens that are entering the church. My parish had seven. I love to hear and see the spontaneous applause that erupts in the church when they're baptized. But on the other hand, for a chance to have my husband praying beside me, I'll forgo my druthers for his.

The sisters' voices were heavenly, as usual. Fr. Gabriel's voice is always a pleasure, also. I particularly enjoyed the different sisters reading the Readings, and singing the Psalms. I wonder how they chose whom to do what. They were all good, right on cue, very practiced.

The ride home was romantic. The moon was hazy and there were stars. It was so quiet. We were the only ones on the road.

The two of us were just riding along and talking about all that we had just witnessed and while we were conversing, Jesus Himself also drew near and went along with us. I felt His presence and was greatly comforted, but the other's eyes were held, so that he did not recognize Him.

Controversy

An incident happened yesterday at work, that required my defense of my faith. It surprised me.

It was not about the Pope and what he knew and didn't know about Fr. Murphy. It was not about the sex scandal, or pedophile priests, or the Eucharist, or anything else that its news.

It was about the Shroud of Turin.

The people I work with are all non practicing Catholics. One is a practicing Wiccan. So they all assume that they know all about the Catholic Church. IOW, you can't tell them anything because they all went to Catholic schools and were taught the erroneous ideas that they know hold.

The Wiccan happened to say that it was interesting to see how old the Shroud of Turin is and how they can determine how the person died and how old it was, etc. Well, it just so happens that I have my doubts that that shroud is Jesus'. I base my opinion on 1Corinthians 11:14. "For a man to wear his hair long is degrading."

St. Paul is a contemporary of Jesus. No, they did not know each other, but they lived at the same time, i.e., same fashions. No man, especially one not married would wear his hair long, because homosexuals did that. Jesus would not have wanted to take the chance of being labeled homosexual, especially if He were unmarried, which was unusual for a man at that time. Holy men married and had lots of children.

Anyway, that's why I have my doubts that the shroud is Jesus'. Well, the Wiccan said "I believe Jesus was married to Mary Magdalen." Another said "How can you believe that nails were hammered..." I retorted that their objections were historical facts, not religious. They finally settled on the Resurrection. They all agreed that the story of the Resurrection was just that, a story.

I did my best, but this is a matter of faith. Of course, now 24 hours after the fact, I'm going over what I should have said. What would Patrick Madrid have said?