The Wandering Jew - NO - The Wandering Catholic!

Suddenly, Bishop Richard Williamson's apology to who(m)ever is not good enough?

I think that he has done a great deal considering his limited - very limited historic matrix - half or three quarters of an apology is better than none.

Perhaps the front line hierarchy in the Armani clad red silk Cardinal and white Papal robes might consider opening their own personal hearts in a similar manner to the Jews and the Shoah as they suddenly are asking an aged catholic dinosaur to do!

Vatican rejects Holocaust-denying bishop's apology

Like for the survivors of the Shoah and Nazi Holocaust, the everyday grind of life goes on.

So too in the Catholic sect of Christianity, life goes on and here are some narrower or is it futuristic views of that vision?

Some collateral follow-up on I hope a lighter side to show all sorts of sides to a church in a constant state of flux, looking for a stable mission and or mission statement after Vatican II.

Rather than be considered as a person doing a witch hunt on Richard Williamson and his anit-Semitic views, he is a gift that keeps giving to me in terms of the tangents and the bits and pieces of the so-called Traditionalist movement in the RC church that I find in further research on the Internet.

I call it Medieval Revivalism as opposed to Traditionalist and or anti-Modernist, like Pius X, who was not saying anything correct in using the word Modern, pro-or-con, in their temporary selfish me comfort philosophy.

Apparently there are all sorts of break away groups in and out of papal favor and or approval - in and out of “union with Rome”.

An interesting article about two brothers who studied under Richard Williamson who in their youth got a full dose of vitriol against Jews and Women when they studied in a SSPX seminary.

Bishop's vexing beliefs have deep roots

Oppenheimer, the seminarian with the Jewish sounding name who was belittled by crazy Dick Williamson in the seminary appears briefly in one of these videos showing his small sect doing the Latin Mass thing. The Canons Regular of the New Jerusalem was founded none other than by Archbishop Raymond Burke, the next pope, the future “Pius XIII“ (?), now head of the Vatican Supreme Court.



In retrospect, the French video shows in an odd way how the exact rubrics of a Council of Trent (anti-Protestant) Tridentine (not a chewing gum) Latin Mass.



In a way, nostalgia for the Latin Mass fits into the original Modernist critique of devotional reflection as something close to conveniently looking into a mirror or a well, seeing ourselves and calling it God and or Jesus. (a Gnostic view?)

In a way, nostalgia for the Latin Mass is nothing more than liking your grandmom’s fudge brownies better than your mum’s. The physical requirements for a Latin mass are more like staged Opera different than the performance of rap music and or fast food at Mickey D’s as many have called the new mass etc.

All in all, with so many wanting its own particular approach to the divine in all these spoiled RC splinter groups merely confirms my belief in the ultimate success of the Protestant Reformation was in the desire for all to reach God in an easier fashion than previously allowed under the monolith of the medieval church.

To each, his own. God save our constitutionally guaranteed “religious liberty” in the USA.

God Bless us all - each and every one!

Nancy Pelosi in Rome - WTF!

I see that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is going into the den of the great white father for a visit. A lot of the great women haters of history club in the RC church would like to tie her to a stack and kill her because she serves her flaming liberal constituency in order to serve in the U.S. Congress. In reality if she pushed the boiler plate propaganda of the male only RC hierarchy she would be not be electable. You can’t have it both ways boys! You win or you lose in American politics.

No doubt she got a mild lecture from his holiness about the contradiction of her being a good Catholic and in advocating free choice for the people in her bailiwick.

Some want pope to scold pro-choice Pelosi

There were some rumblings in the media in September about bringing the hammer down on VP candidate Joe Biden, a practicing Roman Catholic, but not a lobotomized card carrying Catholic anti-abortion rhetorical zombie. I envisioned his being dissed by a card carrying hypocrite from the Republican Party in his full nine yards of red silk slamming Biden in an attempt to destroy Obama.

I was envisioning the same stab in the back that Democratic Presidential Candidate John Kerry got from unsolicited Archbishop Raymond Burke who wanders eternally around the RC hierarchical map with no Cardinal wanting him planted in their back yard. Then in 2004, Archbishop Burke took it upon himself among all the Cardinals, Archbishops and Bishops in the United States to say that if Senator John Kerry were to go to mass in his religious bailiwick of the Saint Louis Missouri Archdiocese, that John Kerry, a proven Vietnam War hero would be denied communion because of his pro-abortion stance. No doubt Ray got great applause in his secret chapter of the “he-man women haters club” for his saying, asserting the boiler plate anti-abortion spiel.

This past year, Archbishop Burke got promoted to Rome before he got a chance to screw Joe Biden the same way he screwed John Kerry on the Abortion code word issue thing. Four more years of RC approval of the Republicans in American power would surely have destroyed the planet and or caused its suicide.

I have to wander sometimes that if the about 17-20% of the American birth rate that does not happen because of Abortion, what is the Roman Catholic’s Hierarchy’s real opinion or where is the GOP’s checkbook for women who do bring unwanted children into the world. I see that a woman, who loves children in California, brought eight children into the world recently and is in hiding because she believes in life and many in the public are making death threats against her.

There is no balanced or hopeful middle ground in this inane abortion conundrum. Pot bellied religious bureaucrats, who have no known children, fiddle with political code word issues not unlike Nero while the world burns with real life decisions about life, money, comfort, love and respect for the theory of life. Churches close. Schools close. Hospitals close. It is definitely a wide stance issue.


Soon to be Cardinal and I predict next pope Raymond Burke continues to assert RC boiler plate PR releases.

Archbishop Burke says bishops' document helped Obama campaign

In an exclusive interview with LifeSite News, Archbishop Raymond Burke has charged that the US bishops' document on voting responsibilities, Faithful Citizenship, contributed to the electoral victory of Barack Obama in last year's presidential contest. Archbishop Burke-- who was Archbishop of St. Louis before he was called to Rome to head the Church's top canonical court-- said that the bishops' statement "led to confusion" by suggesting that Catholic voters might, in some circumstances, be justified in voting for a pro-abortion candidate. Those circumstances did not apply, the American prelate said, and mentioning them only clouded a straightforward moral issue. Archbishop Burke argues that the lack of clear moral guidance from the hierarchy was a contributing factor in Obama's victory, because many Catholic voters supported the Democratic candidate.

Perhaps there is hope in that some of the sane hierarchy in the RC church that do not want the right wing “Burkies” showing up without an offical invitation in their designated religious bailiwicks.

UK Cardinal says Burke can’t say Latin Mass at Westminster Cathedral

According to London’s Daily Telegraph, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor has told a Catholic organization to rescind its invitation to former St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke to celebrate the traditional Latin Mass at London’s Westminster Cathedral in June.
On his Holy Smoke blog, the Telegraph’s Damian Thompson says the Latin Mass Society had invited Burke - now the head of the Vatican’s supreme court - to be the main celebrant at its annual Latin Mass at the famous cathedral. Canon law says only the bishop of a diocese - in this case Murphy-O’Connor - can invite another bishop to celebrate Mass at a church in his diocese.

And so it goes. Life and the rotation of the planet.

Nostalgia and the Latin Mass

Forty five years later I still remember some of my altar boy Latin:

Suscipiat Dominus sacrificium de manibus tuis ad laudem et gloriam nominis sui, ad utilitatem quoque nostram, totiusque Ecclesiae suae sanctae.

(May the Lord receive the Sacrifice from your hands to the praise and glory of His Name, for our good, and that of all His holy Church.)

We altar boys were responding in many places for a silent audience behind us. Then came the “The Secret”. The Priest said the day’s secret prayer etc.

I wore a black cassock and white surplus. To accent this were white gloves, a celluloid 1920's style collar with brass collar button and a white silk scarf tied into a bow. This description reminds me of some secular lyrics from a Sinead O’Connor song. Wow! Where’s the party?

There is this return to the Latin Mass thingy in the R.C. church. I don’t understand it on one level but then I tend to see things from some very odd angles.

I read the comments of a priest once about how a “Cardinal Ratzinger wanted fewer and only obedient Catholics in the church”. I cannot find the context or the argument on the Internet anymore. The concept remained in my mind and I had to wonder how you could support a leaner meaner R.C. machine.

I grew up in the Philadelphia experiment of Saint John Neumann whereby the immigrant Catholics built a separate but superior education system. That bygone formula consisted of many, many Catholics contributing a little here and there and on a regular basis.

Indeed, having moved to NYC some thirty years ago, they were restoring St Patrick’s cathedral for it’s centennial around 1979 and the concept of how this great Gothic structure had been built literally with the pennies, nickels and dimes of the faithful was a common concept mentioned in the press releases. ( I do not like the majority of the stained glass in St. Patrick’s but that is another story. )

At the basis of the Constantine Church from its beginnings around 325 C.E. is, if not money, then property and the generation of goods for trading. In the most basic European sense of anything, property is not shelter, property is land and crops and trade (income).

Where does this new leaner, meaner more obedient future R.C. church come from? It comes from the lonely dying boomers whose property and portable cash wealth, that was estimated a decade ago at about six trillion dollars.

No doubt most of that goes to children and grandchildren but hey, even Public Broadcasting System stations these days are begging for consideration in your last will and testament. They do that on pledge breaks in between snippets of The Lawrence Welk Show etc.

Oddly enough, the people clambering most for the nostalgia of their youth and the return of the Latin Mass are old farts such as myself from the boomer generation (but not me specifically).

Comments on many blogs and customized websites exclaim the joy of being able to go to a Latin Mass just like when they were young etc.

Hey, it’s all marketing (and The Golden Rule) these days and the reward is BMW’s for the clerks at the Vatican and Mercedes cars for the big shots. Funded in the near future by mom’s estate.

Have I ever mentioned before how cynical I can be? It is one of my cardinal sins and or virtues.

I don’t knock this craving for stability (nostalgia) or the comfort of the village of one’s youth when the village was real and not virtual. I did the same when I sought out the grace, that many times accompanies a group of the faithful in prayer, and in celebration of a common liturgical service in a mainstream Protestant church.

The fear of death is as motivating a thing as any, like the fear of God, to look for some concrete answer as to what happens passed death. Buy your tickets to eternity now and buy them early.

Vorrei prenotare un posto a sedere.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/jul/16/italy.religion
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