SSA Catholic

Proving once more that I'm a ramblin' man, I'm moving yet again to Typepad.  So see the new site at http://ssacatholic.typepad.com.

Hat tip: Rorate Coeli

Coming Friday morning, Sept. 14 at 8:00:

Communiqué: EWTN to Televise Live Tridentine Mass Celebrated by the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter

DENTON, Nebraska - AUGUST 17, 2007 - For the first time in its 26 year history, Mother Angelica's Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) will be broadcasting a live Solemn High Mass at the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Hanceville, Alabama on September 14, 2007 at 8:00AM EST. EWTN has asked for the assistance of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, an international Society of Apostolic Life of Pontifical Right, to help celebrate this "extraordinary" form.

This past July 7th, Pope Benedict XVI affirmed the beauty and importance of the Tridentine Mass by issuing Summorum Pontificum, a papal document encouraging and confirming the right of all Latin Rite priests to use this more ancient use of the Mass starting September 14th. The Tridentine Mass was the normative liturgy experienced by Latin Rite Catholics prior to the Second Vatican Council.

[Hat tip: Diogenes]

George Weigel's weekly column jumps ugly, and rightly so, on the propensity of the Vatican, and sometimes even the Pope himself, to issue vacuous statements on things that have very little to do with the salvation of souls.  I previously addressed the document on Pastoral Care of the Road (!).

Pontifical councils like “Migrants and Itinerant Peoples” were created after Vatican II as in-house think-tanks, intended to initiate serious studies for the benefit of the pope, the Roman Curia, and the world’s bishops. Over the past forty years, however, too many of these councils have become typical international bureaucracies, churning out paper because churning out paper is what international bureaucracies do, no matter how few people read what’s churned out. An evangelically-minded pope like Benedict XVI (a BMW man, by the way) might consider whether all this faux-theological blah-blah isn’t an embarrassment to the Holy See and an impediment to the Church’s evangelical mission.

Je suis d'accord.  You often see news items on such silly things with headlines like "Pope: Vacation Is Good for You."  Hence the headline of this entry.  Anybody have any other ideas?  How about this:

Vatican: Sun Will Rise Next Thursday At 6:27 a.m.
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The Meteorological Working Group of the Pontifical Academy of the Sciences announced last Wednesday that the sun would rise next Thursday at 6:27 a.m. . . .

Max was arguably the greatest drummer to come out of the bebop movement. Here is the obit.

I returned from my vacation Monday and now have regular access to this journal, so I'm hoping to keep up with my entries. 

The news is that I'm moving back to Brooklyn on Sept. 1.  I grew up there, but I'll be living in a different neighborhood, Dyker Heights.  Dyker Heights has a reputation for being home to some the capos, lieutenants, soldiers, etc. who comprise La Cosa Nostra.  It's also home to a number of competing Christmas light displays.  For example:







Alright, I think you get the point.

Anyway, I'll be seeing you in this old familiar place.

It's been quite a while since my last post.  I am on vacation for a couple of weeks, and the place where I'm staying has only dial-up.  I ventured out to the local library to get a faster connection.

I've been doing a little apartment hunting in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn, which is where I spent part of my time growing up.  This latest separation from my wife will indeed be final.  I talk to my daughter regularly, but the conversations do not last very long.  She seems to be a combination of pissed off, depressed, and guarded in what she says to me (since her mother is hovering over her).

I have nothing significant to say about much of anything.  Haven't been following the Catholic blogs, but I have been reading the papers.  Naturally, I'm irritated when I do this: why am I compelled to care about BritneyNicoleParisBrangelinaA-RodBonds, and all of the other crap forcefed to me daily?  Come on Rodriguez, please hit your @#$%*&^ 500th home run already so we can move on with our lives!  

The Church, her sacraments, and the Word of God carry me through, however.  I am grateful.

This Library is open every day, so for the next week or so, I'll stop by and enter whatever I think is worth talking about.  Then again, it's probably best that we all stop talking and listen to Him.

Bus driver fired for 38,000 text messages

WARSAW, Poland (AP) - A Polish bus driver has been fired for sending 38,000 text messages on his company cell phone in a losing effort to win contest jackpot, a spokesman said Thursday.

Leszek Wojcik, a bus driver in the northwestern Polish city of Slupsk, ran up a tab of some 94,000 zlotys ($34,000) with his text messages while trying to win a 100,000-zloty ($36,000) SMS contest that ended June 30, Slupsk city transport spokesman Hubert Boba told The Associated Press.

Boba said a city bus drivers' monthly company phone bill is supposed to be limited to 15 zlotys ($5).

Wojcik sent an average of 1,200 SMS text messages a day, each costing 2.40 zlotys ($0.86), on his work cell phone.

Wojcik told TVN24 television he wanted to buy a second car with his possible winnings.

"Now I'm without work," he said.

Hmmm.  Do you think maybe he should have thought of that BEFORE he made those calls on the company's time and money?

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From the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute. (hat tip: Orthodoxy Today)

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I think I need to correct myself with respect to yesterday's entry regarding the indictment of former Newark Mayor Sharpe James.  I should not have referred to him as a thug.  I will insist, however that his actions are thuggish.

Still. it's tough to be charitable considering the arrogant, cocky attitude evidenced by photos of James leaving the courthouse after his arraignment.  For example:

. . . and revealed at last as the thug we always knew he was!

Focus on the Family reports:

Beginning next week, a task force set up by the American Psychological Association (APA) will begin reviewing the organization's 10-year-old policy on homosexuality, which opposes counseling that treats same-sex attraction as a mental illness, but does not forbid various therapies that address unwanted same-sex attraction. Focus on the Family has joined more than 250 pro-family organizations and individuals in urging the APA to recognize the religious beliefs of clients and to allow those who struggle with unwanted same-sex attraction to receive therapy. The letter is signed by the Southern Baptist Convention, Assemblies of God, Church of the Nazarene, the American Association of Christian Counselors, the National Board of Christian Clinical Therapists and more than 22 higher-education institutions.

As I've said before on my old blog, I'm not entirely sold on reparative therapy. Understanding the roots of one's unwanted SSA may help, but I don't believe it can rid of it entirely. By a life of prayer, penitence, and the development of healthy but non-sexual friendships, a person with SSA can reduce the attraction significantly. "It's a diet of the mind," says the John Nash character in the film A Beautiful Mind.  In other words, the attraction may still present itself, but one learns not to follow the temptation.