By Mark Shea On May 6, 2009 @ 12:03 am

http://catholicexchange.com/2009/05/06/114721/

"As a dog that returns to his vomit, so is the fool that repeats his folly."
- The Book of Proverbs 26:11

I am that fool.

I wish I was less dependent on others for my happiness. It's quite inconvenient to be so dependent, because currently I am overcome by an overwhelming gloominess.

It's a bit tiresome, this. I usually go through cycles of gloomy-emo-ness which eventually dies down and then I return to what was for a while my normal state of carefree nonchalance. Hopefully it won't take too much longer.

Yesterday I was so stressed out that in the morning I took a pair of mustache clippers to my head and cut off a good deal of my hair. At least three handfuls. It took an hour and a half, time which could have been much more productively spent doing any of the many other things I had to run around doing yesterday. I've realized that as of late, I tend to deal with stress in one or more of these three ways:
- Compulsively cutting/trimming my hair
- Chewing on something; gum if I have any, if not, usually a piece of paper will somehow end up in my mouth
- Praying the Rosary

Obviously, the last of these is the most productive, but when I pray in that sort of a state, I have trouble actually concentrating on the mysteries which can actually just lead to more frustration at times.

I'm going to try to go to the gym every day over the Spring Break. The two weeks when I went regularly last month did wonders for my stress level. I suppose yesterday might have been a good day to take my anxiety pills, but I hate the idea of being dependent on pills to be able to function properly. Also, I'm not sure that I know where they are.

Even so, after all the stress I built up preparing for Newman that evening, the evening was enjoyable but somewhat underwhelming. There were not nearly as many people as we usually have and many of those who did come left early. We watched A Man For All Seasons, which was terrific. I was also somewhat disappointed since the movie did end a while after 9:00 most people had to dash off immediately afterwards, which kinda sucked because I was hoping to chat with people a bit before everyone rushed off to Spring Break. Funny, I couldn't wait for Spring Break because it meant no more Newman-stress for two weeks but then as soon as people were gone, the strangest sort of gloom came over me, which only made me realize further that Newman might be the only thing giving me a sense of purpose currently since I have no direction to aim towards otherwise; I am unsure of my vocation (frightened by my inadequacy for the priesthood, really), unsure of whether I'm finishing NYU, unsure of whether Im going to be a filmmaker. Unsure.

I really hope John or somebody else invites me to visit them over the break. I would love to just get out of the city for a while, even if only for a day.

I used to relate to my friends fairly normally, in middle school, early high school, and prior to that. At some point, I forgot how to relate to my friends except by way of being of service to them in some way, offering them food or help of some sort. I do genuinely enjoy helping people, and it has always been in my nature to seek to be helpful. This is not something for which I deserve any credit, that's just the way God made me.

But I wonder if this doesn't mean that there's something somehow wrong with the way I relate to people. I've thought about it a bit, and I've also realized part of me assumes that I'm not really worth spending time with unless I have something to offer other than my company. I can look back through the years (even as recently as this year), and see where this partly-subconscious idea has been reinforced.

Consequently, though I do genuinely love to help my friends, and in fact it helps me to feel useful, I find myself overjoyed when I am sought out for the purpose of just going out to eat, hanging out, watching a movie, talking, etc. It isn't  that I don't enjoy spending time with my friends when I'm helping them, quite the contrary; I care about these people and therefore I want to do anything I can to make them a little it happier. And it's not a matter of wanting attention, we might spend the entire evening discussing the other person's life, etc., but I guess I like it so much when we hang out without any formal purpose because it gives me a more solid impression of true friendship. In this regard I can mention Harrison, Martine, John, Paul, Stephanie, Brie, Will, Mohammad, & Lauren as recent examples. God bless 'em.

"A faithful friend is a sturdy shelter: he that has found one has found a treasure. There is nothing so precious as a faithful friend, and no scales can measure his excellence. A faithful friend is an elixir of life; and those who fear the Lord will find him."

- The Wisdom of Ben Sirach 6:14-16

I thank the Lord for the great blessing he has bestowed upon me in the dear friend he has granted me only late last year. He has been a source of great comfort, joy, and amusement to me. I seem to forget all of my troubles when I am around him - the sort of respite I rarely manage to acquire. May our friendship grow and last. For this great and merciful blessing, as well as for all others which I have failed to acknowledge, I thank the Lord. May the Lord make me worthy of it.

De profundis clamavi ad te Domine

De profundis clamavi ad te Domine

De profundis clamavi ad te Domine


Domine exaudi vocem meam fiant aures tuae intendentes in vocem deprecationis meae!

Speravit anima mea in Domino.



Domine! Pie Jesu! Miserere mei!

So, I saw this in Anneface's livejournal and I tried it. It's really pretty accurate.

Eerily so considering the simplicity of the test:
http://www.goldinuniverse.com/

My Results:

Enough is enough - you feel frustrated and rejected. You are fighting back and the going is tough. It would be just wonderful if you could be left in peace.

You like the better things in life. You are sensuous and emotional. You are a follower of the Arts and you seek an environment that will give you the fulfilment to the senses that you need.

Your confidence has been shattered. There are so many things that you would like to do with your life, so many dreams to be fulfilled - and you know that your hopes and dreams are not just figments of your imagination, they are real and you are looking for reassurance from someone. Basically your fears are such that you may be prevented in attaining your hopes and dreams. Even now you would like to broaden your fields of endeavour but in order to develop your 'inner- self' you need peace and solace. You are distressed by the fear that you may be prevented from attaining your goals. What you really need at this particular moment in time is quiet reassurance from someone close to you to restore your confidence.

Your willpower and stamina are in danger of being overwhelmed by excessive stress. Your resilience and tenacity have become weakened. You are feeling overtaxed, worn out and getting nowhere: but you continue to stand your ground. You feel that this unfavourable situation is an encumbrance which you could well do without and you find yourself unable to make the necessary decisions at this particular moment in time to change anything.

The tensions induced by trying to cope with conditions which are beyond your capabilities, or your reserves of strength, have led to considerable anxiety and a sense of personal inadequacy. Your inability to take control of the situation causes you to over-react in stubborn defiance blaming everyone but yourself for your own failures.

_________________________________________________________

So, I haven't written in quite a while. A lot has happened since my last few posts. I didn't really have the energy to write about a lot of what happened so I didn't and now I kind of regret not having a record of it. My memory is rather awful.

During the weekend of January 18th I went on the Malvern Retreat with Dan and Stephanie's family - or at least the men. They were nice. There were good things about the retreat but the entire experience was pretty frustrating over all. 

I was really reluctant to go on the retreat, it was the weekend right before the semester started - meaning the first weekend before the first Newman meeting of the semester. I thought work would prevent me from going, but there was no tutoring that Saturday. One excuse gone. Stephanie had been trying to convince me to go since the year before. Dan also really wanted me to go because that meant he got to be a sponsor and it also meant he was no longer the newest member in the Cerino group (there were over 100 men on this retreat). And I was living on Dan's kitchen floor, and much as I appreciate him providing a place for me to stay, I was paying $500/month to stay on a kitchen floor in a mess I soon began to dread coming home to, unable to unpack my suitcases because there was nowhere to put my stuff... Anyway, I did think of it as a favor at the time so when Dan repeatedly asked me to go, I felt obliged to acquiesce. Long story short, on the train ride into NJ I dropped my phone as I was getting off and because the train started moving had to get off without it or risk being lost alone in some dark corner of NJ with very little money. It took the frickin NJ transit system a week to get me my phone back. So, before the retreat began I was already quite distressed about having lost my phone - I really am quite dependent on that stupid thing. But I figured, ever since I lead the last Emmaus I'd been wishing I could go on a retreat I wasn't leading so I could actually relax, detox, and refresh myself a bit. I might as well do my best to not think about my phone and try to enjoy the retreat. Well, initially things seemed nice enough. There were two priests leading the same event in two separate locations for almost every available activity (everything except for Eucharistic adoration and Sunday Mass was optional). After getting lost and accidentally attending his Mass away from the rest of the group, I tended to go to the Augustinian priest's events. The others went with a priest who I assume was diocesan - Fr. O'Connelly. Well, so at one point there was a conference scheduled and i joined the Cerinos and Dan to go listen to Fr. O'Connelly give a lecture. He seemed like a good-humoured old priest and one without his mind full of fluffy nonsense - I liked that. But the lecture was in a chapel where the Blessed Sacrament was reserved and Fr. O'Connelly began using profanity quite frivolously IN THE PRESENCE OF THE BLESSED SACRAMENT. I was only mildly horrified at this point. The priest was giving us a lecture on the nature of God based on select parts of the four Gospels. He mentioned that Jesus used the phrases "Amen, Amen" and "Unless you..." to give emphasis to his statements. And he told us that there was only one place where Jesus used these phrases together; when he said that we must become like children to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. So far so good. He went on to say that this meant we had to make ourselves vulnerable and dependent on God. That might in fact be part of what Jesus meant. Ok. But then he concluded based upon this verse that this was the ONLY important requirement for entering the Kingdom of Heaven, and went on to ridicule traditional Catholic devotions, daily Mass attendance, etc. He then spat off a long list of mortal sins and asserted that they would not keep you from the KIngdom (ironically the ones he mentioned were all mentioned by St. Paul in his epistles as things that would keep you from the Kingdom). Lastly, and most horrifically, he told us that because Christ said that he was the perfect image (ikonos) of the Father and "Christ was clearly not omnipotent on earth" that God was therefore not omnipotent at all. Mind you, he began the talk by asking us to list attributes of God; some answers were: omnipotent, omnibenevolent, omniscient, omnipresent, etc. He has been building his entire talk to this point: God is not omnipotent. He illustrated this by telling us that God could not in fact stop a plane from crashing into a building. I was horrified. ONE man got up, genuflected in front of the Blessed Sacrament and quietly left. Everyone else seemed to be nodding along robotically to the old priest's "folksy wisdom". I turned to Dan to look for some sign of indignation. Nothing. I had the urge to stand up and decry his heresy. I chided myself for being judgemental, reassuring myself that in all charity I must assume that a qualification was coming. There was none. When he began concluding his talk I shot my hand up in the air, but he ignored me and launched into the closing prayer. Afterwards, I went up to the man and with the greatest amount of humility and deference to his priestly authority I could muster told him that I was greatly troubled by what he said and challenged his exegesis (really, it was actually one of the most astounding leaps of eisegesis [reading outside meanings into the text] I'd seen in a long time). I told him that Jesus' human frailty was a result of the kenosis, his temporal and voluntary "emptying", and that the verse in question dealt primarily with the identity of Christ as the Image/Wisdom/Word and His character, not with the power of the Father or even the Godhead objectively, and finally that the omnipotence of God was a dogma of the Church - though I couched all this in language of "...my understanding was..." so as not to seem confrontational. He caught me off guard by using a Protestant argument - that all of sacred Tradition must be based on sacred Scripture and also that if sacred Tradition contradicts sacred Scripture then Tradition must be wrong. It is heresy to even assert that they can contradict! How many heresies does this man espouse I wonder?! He dismissed me by commending my humility, relativizing the subject and saying that we had different opinions, and telling me to "keep searching". What h0rse$h!t. I spent the next hour and a half pacing up and down a small hallway, seething, far too infuriated to read, pray the rosary, or sleep. I avoided the priest for the rest of the retreat. There was no way I was going to receive communion from his sacrilegious hands or subject myself to his blaspheming tongue.

There were two good things I got from the retreat. I got to spend 20 minutes in private Eucharistic adoration in a very intimate room where My Lord was displayed in a monstrance. It was wonderful. I poured out my heart and felt something almost like a wordless dialogue transpiring, but my Lord's "words" were difficult for me to comprehend or retain. Even, so, that very private, intimate moment of silence alone before the Eternal Judge was amazing.

The second thing is that we were given the opportunity to interview one of the two priests on whatever we wanted - I, or course, signed up with the Augustinian. I told him that I was discerning a vocation to the priesthood and that I was considering the Dominican Order (or perhaps some other religious order), the FSSP, and diocesan priesthood. And I asked him if he could give me some assistance in understanding whether or not religious community life was for me. Now, by this point I'd already been leaning towards diocesan because of what I have described in an earlier post as "something like an internal locution", but I am a skeptic and a cynic at heart and I am not one to put my faith in signs and sensations without submitting them to the scrutiny of reason. After his description I realized that community life was not for me - I become far too attached to people and places - geographical places. It might destroy me to have to pack up and move to a different country or state on the whim of my religious superior - not that I think it's a bad thing - it's very courageous and admirable, but I don't think it's something I'm cut out for. So, IF I go to seminary, it will probably be for a diocese, probably the archdiocese of NY, unless I decide on the FSSP (unlikely).

There have been so many odd things that have seemed to point me down the path towards priesthood - but as of late I feel myself despairing that I may not be cut out for anything I'd dreamed for myself at various times - I may not be fit to be a filmmaker (I'm not ambitious enough or technically savvy), I may not be fit to be a priest, and I may not be fit to be a father and husband.

Of these, my insecurities about the priesthood are the most devastating - I'd already sort of, in a manner of speaking, put all of my mental eggs into this basket. But as more time passes and daily life forces me to react to different stimuli and interact with different people and situations I find myself growing increasingly doubtful that this is something I can do - I'm afraid something will go horribly wrong. To be somewhat vague, I'm afraid that I'm too much of a freak to be a priest. I'm not normal enough. And I have too many emotional daggers in my chest to trust myself to be a shepherd of souls in the full sense (I will divulge more about this in a friends-only entry). Dear God, take pity on me!

Despite this, I cannot quite make myself deny everything that formerly pointed me in the direction of the holy priesthood. Oh, how I wish I could know what would please God! If I could be sure of this, the pain I know I will be inflicting on myself if I choose this lonely road would be bearable and sweet - for I would know that it is the cross that my King has given me to carry and not merely the burden of my own foolish mistakes.

Ugh. And I wish I had a second job and more money, and that I knew what on earth I'm going to be doing next year/semester. I detest being in this limbo, though it is far, far better having such a nice place to come home to every day for which I am very grateful to Stephanie.

Despite all of this trouble, I cannot cease to thank my God for all the blessings he has bestowed on me, but especially that of the great friend he has granted me only recently, the friend I never expected. His mere presence is a joy and a comfort - one of the few luxuries I seem to be afforded in these times of uncertainty. I don't think he realizes how much I value his companionship, but in Him I have been given some tangible sign that God still loves so miserable a wretch as I. May God and the Virgin be praised for such a gracious favor! I pray that it may be a long-term gift... 

I must constantly remind myself: this too shall pass. But when, O Lord?!

Closing Notes:

I still am not sure what my Lenten penance will be, but I am thinking that one thing I could do is to emulate the children of Fatima and find a rough bit of cord to tie around my waist under my clothes. And perhaps say extra chaplets again...

I am also currently reading True Devotion To The Blessed Virgin by St. Louis de Montfort. There is much of value in the book, but I cannot suppress a violent internal reaction against some of the things he asserts in his book - for instance, he asserts that without devotion to the Blessed Virgin, nobody can be saved. He also states that no grace reaches us from God without first passing through the hands of Mary, and also that it is presumptuous and arrogant to approach Christ directly in prayer without the mediation of his blessed Mother. To my mind, these claims border on blasphemy  and I find no real support for them in Scripture or Tradition. I know that the idea of Mary as Mediatrix of all graces is a popular theological opinion right now, (or at least, in both traditionalist and neo-conservative Catholic circles) but I really find the idea to be without sound basis and even somewhat repugnant - certainly entirely alien to the Gospel preaching of St. Paul or even all of the New Testament writers. But again, these very troubling things aside, there is much of value I think I can take from this book. I will post a more thoughtful analysis when I am finished. And nobody who knows me can accuse me of not being devoted to the Blessed Mother, I lovingly regard her as my own mother and queen, I pray and preach her rosary, I wear her Scapular, and I am committed to spreading the messages she has given us at Fatima, Akita, Good Success, and La Salette, especially that of devotion to her Immaculate Heart as the remedy for the evils of our times. It is not for lack of love of her that I reject these ideas, but because both my reason and conscience bid me do so.
_______________________________________________________

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere mei!

 This book is astounding. And incredible. Everyone who is capable of looking at history in the light of faith should read it. With almost every page I feel myself becoming at once more devastated but also perceptive, in a very bizarre sort of way. It has made it much easier for me to understand why the Church and the world are in their current state. I wish I could get this into the hands and heads all Catholics (seminarians, priests, & bishops, especially). So far, I am only about halfway through the book. At the end of this semester, or at the very latest, at the end of 2009 I think I shall compile a list of the books that have been most influential in terms of defining my worldview/influencing my behavior. This book will definitely be on that list, along with, to name a few: Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis,  Dedication & Leadership by Douglas Hyde, and The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis.

The following are a few quotes that stuck out at me for varying reasons:

"Conversion, penance, sacrifice and reparation for sinners, the mercy and exhausted patience of God, the prominence of the Queen of Heaven in the designs of Heaven and man, the threat of eternal damnation of millions of souls, the lifeline of the Rosary and devotion to the Immaculate Heart, all these sober, serious themes punctuated by unexplained phenomena, and climaxed with a stupendous, undeniable miracle that is a fact of history attested to by thousands of eyewitnesses, believers and atheists, at Fatima and as far as 30 miles away. Heaven had visited earth and delivered an unmistakably ominous warning to three rustic peasant children on a Portuguese hillside near the beginning of the most enlightened, godless, murderous and bloodstained century in human civilization. Was anyone listening?" pg. 28

Referring to a thick, rough rope that the three children wore around their waists as a penance for the sins of mankind:
"After becoming ill she [Jacinta], like Francisco, took off her penitential rope and secretly gave it to Lucy, saying, 'Keep it for me; I'm afraid my mother may see it. If I get better, I want it back again.' The cord had three knots tied in it, and was bloodstained." pg. 34

"The Fatima apparitions, and its Secret, apply with acute precision to the vale of tears that was the Twentieth Century -- the inevitable consequence of four hundred years of revolution (Luther in 1517, Freemasonry in 1717, and Bolshevism in 1917). What more logical result could occur when a worldwide secular state uproots religion from society than the members of that society losing their faith, offending God, and damning their souls? What better remedy for this crisis than the Rosary, devotion to the Immaculate Heart, and the consecration of Russia? What better remedy for the blaspheming, heretical spirit of modern man than She who is known as the destroyer of heresies, and revered as the one destined by heaven to crush the serpent's head?" pg. 63

"Like most nations, Russia has committed her share of errors. Her most enduring error was a religious one--rejecting the primacy of the Roman Catholic Pope. The Russian Orthodox Church ended up deferring to the State instead, and paid dearly for this when the Russian monarchy was overthrown.
      "Until that time, however, Church and State in Russia co-existed relatively peacefully. When czarist Russia partitioned Poland near the end of the Eighteenth Century, the Orthodox Church persecuted millions of Polish Catholics, and attempted the forced conversions of thousands more. The Russian government herded millions of Polish (now Russian) Jews into the Pale of Settlement, an immense fermenting vat for the ideologies of Communism and Zionism. Both movements, which played major roles in Twentieth Century history, originated primarily in Russia." pg. 55

"[Rasputin] was more cynical than deluded. He called his followers 'fools' even as he encouraged their adulation. Yet Rasputin's vision was as narrow as his peasant upbringing. His primary ambition was satisfying his own lusts, not espionage. Too busy fouling his own nest to plan or participate in intrigues against the monarchy, the last thing Grishka would have wanted was a change in the status quo. As a bewildered monarchy and apathetic church lurched towards their awful fates, Rasputin loomed, a mocking specter, an unintentionally blasphemous caricature of a priest, and a sign and symbol of the state of the Church and religion in Russia at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. A Church weakened by centuries of schism produced its own reward who, instead of enlightening the nobility with vital Christianity, only made them a laughingstock. The life of Grishka Rasputin is a parable of 'Russia's errors' not normally associated with the Secret of Fatima." pg. 59

"A priest was beaten, scourged and crowned with thorns. A large beam of wood was placed on his back, and he was given vinegar to drink. The priest forgave his tormenters and blessed them. His torturers seemed bent on ritual murder, but the less demonic ones ended up shooting the priest instead. According to Thomas, 'His last request was to be shot facing his tormenters so that he might die blessing them.' Another priest, facing a firing squad, told his executioners: 'I want to bless you. Please free my hands.' The ropes were cut and his hands were chopped off. 'Bless us now,' he was told with a sneer, and bless them the priest did, moving his bloody stumps in the sign of the Cross until he died." pg. 78

"One [priest] was hung on a meat hook naked, with the sign 'Pork meat for sale' on his stomach." pg. 78

"The official version of history claims both sides were equally violent, and extols the Masonic 'democracy' of 'moderates' over Franco's 'Fascist rebellion'. Were Pius XI alive, he might term this 'diabolical propaganda'. No attempt is made here to exonerate fascist brutalities, but it cannot be honestly maintained that there was an equivalency of atrocities, for the simple fact that no merely natural force can match the satanic fury of the revolution. In the case of the Spanish civil war, there is an abundance of objective evidence confirming this assertion.
    "As for the revolution's complaint that the Spanish Republic was a legitimate government overthrown by Franco's 'illegitimate' revolution, when one considers how many Christian monarchies the revolution has put to the torch, and the rivers of blood shed in toppling governments for the sake of 'Liberty' and 'Progress', the hypocrisy of this complaint is breathtaking. At least the revolution is consistent -- they are ignoble in defeat as well as in victory. And to put things squarely in perspective, consider that the Spanish Inquisition, in four centuries, killed at most 31,000 people. This number, which even a Protestant historian of the Inquisition calls an 'extravagant guess,' is about one third of the people killed by the Revolution in the first three months of the Spanish Civil War." pg. 97

"After several days of balloting Venetian Cardinal Roncalli was elected successor to Pius XII. When asked what name he would choose, he replied, 'Vocabur Johannes' - I would be called John. The last Pope named John had been the antipope John XXIII -- a former pirate, lawyer, and Curial Cardinal named Baldassare Cossa. For five hundred years the name John had been avoided by popes for just that reason. The Cardinals were shocked at Roncalli's choice. ...After moving into the Vatican the new Pope ran into another antipope. John found an ancient statue of Hippolytus, an antipope of the Third Century. He had the statue restored and placed at the entrance of the Vatican Library. Then he visited the Holy Office to see his personal file. It was marked: 'Suspected of Modernism.'" pg. 154

There are more I would like to reproduce, but those will have to wait.

 "The heart is deceitful above all things" - Jeremiah 17:9

 I haven't written in quite some time - I guess I haven't had the energy to do so. I've been so busy this semester!

Minor update: I've been an altar boy at the Latin Mass at St. Agnes for the past several weeks! The experience is beyond words.

This has been my third semester being co-president of Newman, and whatever else may happen in the future I cannot help but be immensely thankful for the time I've been given among such wonderful people. Really, they're all quite remarkable. I wish I had the time to sit with each of them and get to know them better as individuals. How do we walk around every day and pass each other by and not realize that every human person is a separate created being with their own wills, hopes, dreams, personalities, destinies..."the universe next door", as James Sire put it. Even so, our Newmanites this year are in a class all their own. I really do cherish them. May the good Lord bless and keep them always, and may the Blessed Virgin watch over them and keep them close to her Son.

I, of course, have become a bit closer with some than others, which is to be expected, but I thank God especially for sending them to me. It has helped me cope a bit better with my friend moving away. But that aside...I don't know...I really am just grateful for them, for getting to spend time with them. Time is so precious and it slips away from us with such violence sometimes...

At the risk, nay, at the certainty of being absurd, I am reproducing the lyrics of a song from the old Hanna Barbara animated version of Charlotte's Web. This song and much of the sentiment that underlies that movie, beneath the simple exterior of the farmyard storybook drama, was very special to me as a child, and I always found a very genuine sort of sadness and understanding in this song in particular, which is the song that Charlotte sings as she dies.

How very special are we
for just a moment to be
part of life's eternal rhyme

How very special are we
to have on our family tree
Mother Earth and Father Time

He turns the seasons around
and so she changes her gown
but they always look in their prime

They go on dancing their dance
of everlasting romance
Mother Earth and Father Time

The summer larks return to sing
oh what a gift they give!
Then autumn days grow short and cold
oh what a joy to live!

How very special are we
for just a moment to be
part of life's eternal rhyme

How very special are we
to have on our family tree
Mother Earth and Father Time

There song is online here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfU75KEPV_U

I am still quite frightened at the prospect of not being a student next semester. This was not a part of my plan. If I stopped my studies at NYU it would have been to go right into the seminary - not because I can't afford it and so need to do nothing but work. That's half a year of my life wasted! I feel so old sometimes...

I still don't know how I feel about film. I do think I'm a good director, I wouldn't be bothering with any of this if I didn't think I was, and I don't think that's arrogant to say. I know I'm not the best and I know what my weaknesses are and I also know that anything good I do have is a gift from God. Still, I wonder if film is to have any part in my life after NYU. Right now, I'm a bit frustrated because I didn't take a production course this semester (I really needed a break, and also, I couldn't afford to) so I took a bunch of film theory courses instead. I do hope I can finish my studies. But perhaps it is stupid of me to hope for something like this when there are so many others in far greater need than I. Perhaps I am just wasting my time here...Newman is the only reason I know that isn't true. Campus ministry is so important and I do think (or at least, I hope) that I've been able to contribute something of value here. But perhaps I shouldn't be so presumptuous. I hope the work I've done has been pleasing to God in some measure, and I hope I've somehow been helpful to our members.

 If I'm honest with myself, I must acknowledge that if I had to leave permanently before getting my degree, leaving Newman is the part that would make me saddest. It's become a sort of a second family to me, not that I don't have several other very good, very cherished friends elsewhere, even at NYU, but there is something very special about the fellowship of faith and of facing the difficulties and pleasures of the college experience together. I've always been aware of the fact that I'd have to leave eventually, and that's fine. The true friends I have made will remain my friends after the fact, and the others will remain in my heart and memory. But leaving early is something I wasn't prepared for.

And now, for the last and perhaps the most bizarre part of this post. ...Maybe it isn't very smart to write out all these for other people to see...
Oh well, I bet hardly anybody reads what I write anyway. Maybe one or two tops. Maybe I'll just be really ambiguous.

I've been debating the question of diocesan, Dominican, Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter,etc. for some time with little hope of resolution in sight. Something (a very tiny but somewhat inexplicable something) that happened on Monday while I was at Upward Bound has pushed me farther in the direction of diocesan. It was something vaguely like an internal locution, which is not something I'm prone to (or think I'm prone to, if you don't believe in that sort of thing); somewhat similar to what happened to me a couple years back in Rubin when I was praying the Chaplet of Divine Mercy.

A bit of light shining in the darkness? Perhaps. It is only the amazing people I've met along the way that has made this tortuous journey worthwhile...

Oh, there I go, taking myself too seriously again.

These are some articles on various unrelated topics I've enjoyed reading online recently:

Searching For Bethlehem: The Light At The End of The Tunnel
http://www.remnantnewspaper.com/Archives/2008-1225-cullen-warring_against_christmas.htm

In Defense of a Tradition (on the origins of the holy Rosary)
http://www.rosary-center.org/ll49n5.htm

The Rosary In The Bible
http://unitypublishing.com/godskingdom/rosary.html

Reflections On The Decline of Masculinity
http://jcrao.freeshell.org/Masculinity

The Clothes Horse And The Beggar
http://www.shenango.org/Bailey/article1.htm

So........my cousins slept over at my house last night, which was terrific fun. I love bonding with my cousins. We watched The Witches and Leave It To Beaver, two of my favorite childhood films. I also made tea and cupcakes and a platter of mini sandwiches. I'm afraid I wasn't very peppy though because I'm still recovering from the surgery I had on my gums (for which they needed to carve off some of the flesh from the roof of my mouth to graft onto my lower gums). Wait - I'm not peppy anyway. Well...unless it's late and I've had a lot of sugar and I enjoy your company and feel like you won't hate me for being a little wild. Otherwise, I guess I'm pretty reserved.

So, we went to bed really, really late around 5am or so. My cousin Hugo slept in my room with me and my cousins Katy and Shanti slept in the game room also upstairs and my brother slept in his room. And then I woke up at around 10:45am to take my antibiotics. I did and saw that my cousin Hugo was awake on the mattress next to mine and listening to his ipod so I offered him the use of my laptop because I was going to go back to sleep for a little while. After a few minutes, I heard someone ring the doorbell. I didn't get up because I assumed it was the mailman bringing another package. I tried to go back to sleep but there was a lot of racket going on downstairs. I started to get a little annoyed because I assumed it was my brother either being unnecessarily loud in the kitchen or flinging his tennis ball around the house which is something he often does. But I was really tired and my face was all swollen so I ignored it. Then I heard this tinkling/crackling sound and it took me a little while to realize that it was the sound of glass breaking. It was about 11:00am. I thought "what the hell is he doing down there?" so I decided to go down and tell him to stop whatever he was doing. I turned and looked at my cousin Hugo and realized that he wasn't hearing anything because he'd plugged his headphones into my laptop so that he wouldn't wake me. So I started going down the stairs, half-naked, with a blanket in my hand. As I reached the mid-bottom of the staircase, a large, bald black man wearing an oversized faded black polo came into my view. I hate polos.

Anyway, I saw this man and I thought, "Oh great. Dad hired another man to come and do something to our house and he didn't tell me about it...again. I wish he'd quit doing that. And here I am, hardly dressed." And then I saw the gun in his hand and the shattered glass around his feet. He turned and looked at me and seemed really startled. His eyes bulged a bit. I guess he thought the house was empty. It took him like 2-3 seconds to react. Then he raised the gun and aimed at me and said "Get down on the ground." Well, I was still standing on like the fourth step up from the bottom of the stairs so I sort of awkwardly laid down on the steps. The man kept the gun on me and then turned as if he was looking at someone in the family room. I have to say, I'm almost surprised at myself - I was entirely calm throughout the whole thing. It was just one of those situations where I knew there was absolutely nothing I could do, so why should I freak out when it's not going to do any good? So I just cooperated and didn't say anything. As I was moving down onto the steps I remember thinking, "maybe this is how I die", though I wasn't terribly alarmed. It's weird, things that happened at the beginning of this summer upset me a great deal more than the prospect of a violent and unexpected death. Then he walked out of sight and into the family room and I saw another, thinner man's arm come into view, also holding a gun. He pointed it at me and said "Get down on the ground." "I'm already on the ground, genius," I thought. "Close your eyes" he said, which was a great deal smarter than the first thing he said. But I'll give him a break, he was nervous and I'm sure he meant to say "stay on the ground". Then I started thinking, "Oh goodness, if we're having financial troubles now, what's it going to be like after they rob us?" Then I thought, "well, if they're going to do me in I might as well spend my last few moments in prayer", so I started praying the Our Father. Then I heard some noises upstairs. I remembered my cousins and my brother were up there and then for the first time I started to get nervous. I hoped to God they wouldn't try to come down the stairs at that moment. It seemed at that point (after a couple minutes) that they weren't going to do anything to me but I wasn't so sure they'd stay quite as in control if there was more than one person they had to deal with. Nobody seemed to be coming downstairs... I could hear some scuffling as I prayed, as if the men were walking around the house not knowing what they were going to do. Then they opened the front door and I didn't hear anything anymore. I opened my eyes. I waited about 15 seconds before moving. Then I got up, looked at the shattered glass in the back door, and then at the wide open front door. I ran up to the window and through the window managed to catch the reflection of a white van on the glass door of the office as it turned the corner and went out of view. My cousin Hugo and my brother came down the steps just a few moments later. As I looked around, I realized that they didn't take anything. Then I saw my sister's bedroom door open (her room is on the first floor) and I panicked. I ran in and saw that her bed was made, so I figured she had to be with my mom. I told my brother to call 911 and I called my mother to make sure my sister was with her. Mercifully, my mother had taken Keisha to tutoring that morning. By this time my cousin Hugo, my cousin, Shanti, and my brother were all downstairs. My cousin Katy was still upstairs, entirely oblivious to what had just happened.

As I walked in the kitchen to look for any damage, I paused in front of the crucifix over the doorway and I said a short prayer of thanksgiving. And I have much to be thankful for; were it not for Our Lord and the blessed Virgin there could have been quite a few corpses laying about.

Certainly, it wasn't the most harrowing experience I could have lived through, but it was the first thing of this sort that's happened to me. I trust it won't be the last. As I said to my friend Face of Moon when she asked about what happened: "May as well get used to it I suppose. I intend to piss off a lot of people before I leave this earth - ad majorem Dei gloriam, I hope."

It's odd though, and I've only come to realize it's odd because the police officer and the detectives that came kept telling me afterwards, "You don't seem like you had a gun pointed at your head just a little while ago." "Why are you so calm?" In fact, the detectives came back a second time to interrogate me and make sure I wasn't psychotic, delusional, schizophrenic, etc. because apparently my state of calm was alarmingly abnormal to them. I think I have a tendency to become really, really calm when I'm in a situation that's plainly a crisis to everyone present. It's when something is dreadfully wrong and everybody else is calm that I begin to freak out - especially if, say, I'm going to be late to something important because the people I'm with are taking their jolly old time (punctuality is very important to me) or if someone is putting their soul, health, or lives in danger and taking little notice of it (the first of these is the cause of much of my grief). Still, there are a great many things that I perceive as tragic that other people don't give a second thought to and vice versa. This morning's situation, had it been limited to me and had it ended badly, doesn't really strike me as particularly tragic - that is, assuming I'm in a state of grace at this moment, which I think and hope is the case. Perhaps it would have done some good for the world. Perhaps in my absence my family would finally have begun to take their sacramental life seriously, perhaps my parents would have been moved to learn and pass on the faith to their children as something of actual value and importance. Perhaps those others who would remember me fondly would take the trouble to look into the faith that I've made the center of my life. Perhaps, too, the world and certain persons in it would be better in being free from my silly obsessions... Sometimes I feel like such a parasite. But I'm alive for a reason and life is a precious gift. I shan't waste my time wishing it away. God clearly must have some reason for keeping me here. I pray that I may make good use of this gift and please him every day.

I hope nobody reading this has let themselves become disturbed by that last bit - I'm simply writing out the sort of thoughts that most of us keep in our heads and they're only the rather vague reflections of a tired, medicated (for my surgery), emotionally frustrated young man writing at some ridiculously late hour waiting for the sorbet to freeze so he can go to sleep and stop thinking.

O Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, help me to love You more each day.

So, Teddy (Dean Rox) and I (BumCake057) were talking about how they wreckovated all those beautiful Catholic churches in the 70's and made them into soul-less modernist atrocities. The conversation that followed was just so perfect I thought it was worth preserving.


BumCake057 (2:08:32 PM): OH! And if ever I get made pastor of a church I will definitely be doing some de-wreckovating

Dean Rox (2:08:42 PM): well
Dean Rox (2:08:44 PM): cant i just like
Dean Rox (2:08:50 PM): build my own church and get you in there?

BumCake057 (2:09:04 PM): Haha, you'd have to run that by the bishop

Dean Rox (2:09:14 PM): oh i could buy a bishop easily
Dean Rox (2:09:27 PM): yeah take this couple millon and buy a cultural center or whatever it is you do
Dean Rox (2:09:37 PM): certainly not instruct the faithful and beat back ravenous wolves
Dean Rox (2:09:52 PM): oh and let me have the real weird priest
Dean Rox (2:09:54 PM): who's emo
Dean Rox (2:09:58 PM): to staff my private church
Dean Rox (2:10:11 PM): the Church of the Final Judgment

So I'm 21 now. God help this poor old world, it's had to put up with 21 years of me. Haha. It doesn't really feel all that momentous. I'v long since ceased to have birthday parties for myself (except for of course the obligatory family barbecue). But I am so grateful for having been able to have lived through the past year. It was quite difficult at times (relatively speaking, within the scope of my rather privileged life, at least), but there were many wonderful things that occurred and I would never ever choose to have been spared the difficulties if it would mean having missed out on the rest. I think it would be a good exercise to try to remember some of them, especially given how terrible my memory is.


One fantastic thing that happened is ( Read on... )

Here are a few passages from G.K. Beale's amazing commentary on St. John's Apocalypse from the New International Greek Testament Commentary series. I was frankly rather surprised to find even these few but powerful statements on the Apocalypse' relationship to the Liturgy in Beale's book being that he is a member of the United Church of Christ, which really does not have a formal liturgy to speak of. I will be posting more wonderful and much longer excerpts from this book dealing with the theology of the Apocalypse later on.

"...the Apocalypse is a prophetic work which not only posits a theodicy for some Christians already suffering, but also sets forth definitions of reality for Christians in general that run counter to the dominant political, economic, and religious society in which they live. John views the church as a group that is to function to preserve the 'plausability structure' for the counter-definitions' of reality' revealed by God; in particular, the church's liturgy reminds believers of the true cosmic order undergirding them and all society. This is likely the same purpose of the liturgical passages found in the visions in the book." [emphasis mine]
(pg. 29)

"And one of the purposes of the church meeting on earth in its weekly gatherings (e.g., 1:3, 9) is to be reminded of its heavenly existence and identity by modeling its worship and liturgy on the angels' and the heavenly church's worship of the exalted lamb, as vividly portrayed in chs. 4-5. This is why scenes of heavenly liturgy are woven throughout the Apocalypse, especially in concluding sections, which serve as interpretations of preceding visionary narratives. That such an emphasis on worship is already present in ch. 1 is evident from the liturgical background of 1:4-8, 10, which introduces the themes of the book. It is in this manner that the churches are to learn how to worship in their gathered meetings and are to be given a zeal for the worship of the true God. The intended consequence is that believers experience an increasing attitude of worshipful reverence for God, not only in church assemblies, but in bowing to divine sovereignty in every aspect of their lives and in every facet of its outworking." (pg. 176)

Of these two passages, the first and more succinct one was more striking for me. That the liturgy's purpose is to help the Church "preserve the 'plausibility structure' for the counter-definitions' of reality" and to remind us of the "true cosmic order undergirding" us and all society. If this is indeed one of the purposes of the liturgy (other than the fact that in the context of the Mass it is a holy, propitiatory sacrifice which is its primary purpose) then the Novus Ordo Mass as it is generally celebrated fails miserably. The Mass of tradition was once called "the most beautiful thing this side of heaven", and this very sentiment is an expression of its power to elevate the mind to the heavenly realm for those who understand its meaning, perhaps if not with their heads at least with their hearts. When one goes to a Latin Mass or even any of the Eastern Rite Masses (perhaps with the exception of the Westernized modernized Maronite Rite) one feels lifted out of the mundane old world, as if one were being given a glimpse of the something just beyond reach. As if, to borrow an idea from the title of John's book, the veil were being drawn back. This beautiful mysticism and reverence has been, quite disastrously, lost. There is no longer any awe at standing in the presence of God before the holy Eucharist; at being able to kneel in the presence of the "Lamb, standing as if slain" on the altar. In point of fact, there is quite often not even an altar; merely a sad table upon which we share a "communal meal". Is it any wonder then that Catholics today are so worldly-minded and that their conception of the Gospel is limited to the scope of a few bland platitudes, timeless truths, and a vague program for social justice? How little do those ordinary laymen who have inherited the mess of the post-conciliar Church consider the Four Last Things or their littleness before God, or even the reality of the cosmic struggle which they are (or are not) taking part in. As Pope Paul VI infamously said when speaking of the deformation of the liturgy "the smoke of Satan has entered the Sanctuary of God as if by some mysterious crack, no it is not mysterious." How will the troops be strong to fight if they don't realize where they must go to find their nourishment? How, indeed, will they fight if they have forgotten that they are at war? Who will remind them?

I pray that the Holy Father's Motu Proprio and that his "reform of the reform" of the Roman liturgy may be blessed by God and made to bear fruit.

Pope St. Pius V,
Pope St. Pius X,
St. Thomas Aquinas,
St. Edmund Campion,
Blessed Maria de Jesus Torres,
Our Lady of Fatima,
Ora pro nobis!

Cor Jesu sacritissimum, miserere nobis!

Oh, it's my birthday. Funny thought.

I finally got to go to a Traditional Latin Mass again. It was like eating again after having fasted for several days. How wonderful. Certainly, it wasn't quite as grand as St. Agnes with it's pipe organ and its beautiful choir singing Gregorian Chants, all of the beautiful side altars, architecture, etc. Still, there was a certain beauty in its quiet, humble simplicity. It was actually a Low Mass that the priest said somewhat as a High Mass, obviously he hadn't received any formal training in the extraordinary form. The church, All Souls in Sanford, was once an indult parish, Bishop Wenski's response to a nearby SSPX chapel. Bishop Wenski is one of the many bishops who illicitly proclaimed after the Motu Proprio was issued that there would be no new Latin Masses within his jurisdiction, claiming that All Souls would suffice for the Orlando-Sanford community. All Souls is like 50 minutes away from me. My family can't afford that much gas every Sunday.

I printed out Spanish Missalettes for my family. My mother and my aunt Soffy really enjoyed it. I'm not quite sure what my father, my grandfather, or my Uncle Hugo thought. But it was encouraging to have even been able to convince them all to go there in the first place, which I never thought I'd be able to do. Oh, and it was so refreshing for me personally! I felt nourished. And my sister behaved quite well. I spoke to her about proper mindset and ettiquette during Mass during her catechism lesson earlier that day. And I taught her to say "Et cum spiritu tuo" in response to "Dominus Vobiscum", and what that means, and I taught her the Kyrie and the Agnus Dei. She's making some progress.

__________________________________________________________

I wish I did not have so much anxiety regarding speaking to my friends - I'm speaking here of my really good, close friends, of which there are few. The people I care about - I would love so much to speak to them but I dread becoming a nuisance. I don't want them to become tired of me. This becomes a constant problem with me, I never know where I stand with regard to other people unless they explicitly tell me and when I come to care about what they think I become paranoid that I'm being bothersome. Sometimes I don't know if that's just my common sense or my paranoia. I do love talking to my good friends. Some of them, speaking to them or being around them is just such a pleasure, but though I'm generally very good at reading people, when I come to care a great deal about someone sometimes I lose that ability. And then I never know what to think of how they might feel about me or whether I'm being intrusive by striking up a conversation or anti-social by not doing so. I would like to say that I need more confidence in my relationships with other people but I don't know if that's true, perhaps I am just being sensitive to people's boundaries. I really dislike being so confused about things. It makes everything more difficult.

So, I don't think I'm depressed anymore, which is fantastic. I'm not exactly entirely happy either, but then, I don't have to be. I am so grateful to my God for pulling me through this time of trial and anxiety. I'm somewhat ashamed that I've been thinking so much about myself lately. I mean, I don't think I've been outright selfish but I've spent a great deal of time sorting myself out and just soaking in my own confusion; I haven't really put enough time or thought into the outside world or the people that I care about.

Today was a rather unproductive day. I need to learn to manage my time better. I don't quite understand how it just manages to slip through my fingers.

I need to get back in to the habit of praying one set of mysteries of the Rosary every day. I've been slacking lately, cutting it down to one or two decades on several occasions and on others, sometimes omitting it altogether and saying several other shorter prayers instead. I must cultivate a stronger prayer life if I expect to put myself, or to allow God to put myself, and my life together in any sensible way.

For some odd reason, I'm listening to the soundfile for my final project, Pater Noster (my b&w horror piece) as I type this. A bit creepy, no? But really, one of the best soundtracks I've ever put together - irrelevant.

After I finish drawing some further portraits of my friends I should really go to Sam Flax and purchase some supplies to do the two larger pieces I've been wanting to do for a while now. They are two images that have been weighing down on my heart for some time - both of them centering on the apathy of Catholics; one towards the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the Eucharist and the other towards the admonitions and requests for reparation and penance from Our Lady in her apparitions - I'm thinking here specifically of Fatima, Akita, Good Success, and La Salette.

Currently, I'm reading
The Book of Revelation (The New International Greek Testament Commentary) by G.K. Beale, cross-referencing it with The Apocalypse of St. John (The Catholic Apologetics Study Bible, Vol. II) by Robert A. Sungenis, which I've already read, and The Apocalypse: In The Teachings of Ancient Christianity by Averky Taushev. I'm really anxious to finish (it's really, really good!) so I can move onto the rest of my summer reading. But it's 1157 pages long! I may have to skim through bits of it. So far I'm on page 243.

I have three books that I need to read for Newman, the last two in preparation for my talk for our Emmaus retreat, which I still have to write:

Dedication and Leadership by Douglas Hyde
God's Word: Scripture, Tradition, Office by Pope Benedict XVI
The Last Word: Beyond The Bible Wars To A New Understanding of The Authority of Scripture by N.T. Wright

Then there are a few others I'd like to read for myself:

Fatima in Twilight by Mark Fellows
What's So Great About Christianity? by Dinesh D'Souza
The Everlasting Man by G.K. Chesterton
The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity by Leon J. Podles
The Spirit of the Liturgy by Pope Benedict XVI

There were a few others I wanted to get to, but I know for sure that I won't unless I somehow end up stranded on a desert island with my own personal cook and nothing else to do:

Libido Dominandi: Sexual Liberation and Political Control by E. Michael Jones
Neo-Conned: Just War Principles: A Condemnation of War In Iraq by various
Neo-Conned Again!: Hypocrisy, Lawlessness, and The Rape of Iraq by various
On The Reliability of The Old Testament by K.A. Kitchen

"It was the final session of the [Second Vatican] Council, the most essential, in which the Pope was to bestow upon all humanity the teachings of the Council. He announced this to me on that day [presumably December 7, 1965] with these words, 'I am about to blow the seven trumpets of the Apocalypse' " (Jean Guitton, 'Nel Segno dei Dodici,' interview with Maurizio Blondet, Avvenire, October 11, 1992)

I do not think it at all likely that this statement was fabricated. Guitton had been a personal friend of Giovanni Montini (Paul VI) for 27 years, and he, like Paul VI was also a Progressivist.

Why on earth would Pope Paul VI say such a thing? Even if he was merely being poetic (which is my assumption), this is a very disturbing thing to say. In St. John's Apocalypse (chapters 8 & 9) the blowing of each trumpet signals a coming catastrophe - each a judgement from God provoked by mankind's wickedness. The trumpets are blown each in succession by an angel (of which there are seven in this passage, one for each trumpet).

(I'm reproducing this section below from a portion of Fisheater's outline of the Apocalypse)

Chapter 8
Opening of the Seventh Seal:
7 angels are given trumpets. An angel with a golden censer goes to the altar and offers the prayers of the saints. That angel takes fire from the altar, fills the censer with it, and throws it down to the earth bringing on earthquakes, thunder, and lightning.

Four Trumpets:
First Trumpet --> hail and fire
Second Trumpet --> mountain of fire thrown to earth, a third of the sea becomes blood
Third Trumpet --> the star named Wormwood poisons the waters
Fourth Trumpet --> 1/3 each of the sun, moon and stars are smitten

Chapter 9

Fifth and Sixth Trumpets:
Fifth Trumpet --> locusts from the bottomless pit to kill those without God's seal (the king of these locusts is named "Abaddon" in Hebrew, or "Apollyon" in Greek)
Sixth Trumpet --> 4 angels loosed from the River Euphrates to slay a 1/3 part of men

The seventh trumpet occurs in Chapter 11, in which "The trumpet blows and voices praise God, saying that all the kingdoms of the world are His and Christ's."

It is taught in the Catholic amillenialist interpretation of the Apocalypse that the book is recapitulationist; that is, that the book is divided into sections that recapitulate the same narrative, each commencing with the first coming of Christ and ending with the second. It is interesting to note that as Frere Michel de La Sainte Trinite tells us in his landmark work The Whole Truth About Fatima (Volume III, The Third Secret) that Sister Lucy, "when questioned on the contents of the third Secret, ...answered: «It’s in the Gospel and the Apocalypse, read them!» We even know that one day she indicated chapters 8 to 13." What precisely this means is entirely puzzling to me. Also bizarre is that these chapters fall within different narratives which are as follows: Chapters 7-9, Chapters 10-11, and Chapters 12 - 14. The chapter of his book in which Frere Michel mentions this ( http://www.catholicvoice.co.uk/fatima3/ch3-8.htm ) seems to elaborate on the matter somewhat but does not go into detail about the seven trumpets. I must give this text a thorough reading once I finish studying The New International Greek Testament Commentary: The Book of Revelation. Hopefully when I arrive at chapter 8 in the book I am presently reading I will be able to form some clearer thoughts on the matter and whether what Sister Lucia said has any relation whatsoever to what Pope Paul VI may have meant.

The one thing I can say though is that the imagery of the first trumpet is frighteningly similar to one of the chastisements predicted by Our Lady at Akita, Japan:

"As I told you, if men do not repent and better themselves, the Father will inflict a terrible punishment on all humanity. It will be a punishment greater than the deluge, such as one will never have seen before. Fire will fall from the sky and will wipe out a great part of humanity, the good as well as the bad, sparing neither priests nor faithful. The survivors will find themselves so desolate that they will envy the dead."

- Our Lady of Akita to Sister Agneson on October 13, 1973 (the anniversary of the Miracle of the Sun)

But then, this similarity may not mean much since the Apocalypse is composed of symbols. I am anxious to progress in the NIGTC so that I can analyze the OT background of this portion of the book.


Here is the original text of the quote from Pope Paul VI:




This is the newspaper from which the text was taken:





Pope Paul VI, what were you talking about?!

I am usually asleep way before this time. I have Mass today at 10:00am.

...My hours are slumberless,
Dearest the shadows I live with are numberless...

I am in desperate need of some grace, and a good night of unbroken rest. Thank God tomorrow I will have access to the Holy Eucharist to refresh me.

Dear God, my King, my Salvation,
I'm listening...tell me how to feel...tell me what to do...I feel lost. My Lord, help me to accept that what Thou givest, Thou also takest away. Help me to carry this cross with a cheerful heart. Never in my wildest dreams could I have expected this. O Comfort of the afflicted, grant me peace, if not of heart, grant me the peace that comes with knowing that I may in some way too offer this up as something to be united with Your will. I do not understand to what this points or why it has arisen. I beg you, my Lord, give me direction. Open my ears that I may be attentive to the Wisdom that comes only from You. Dear God, without You I am nothing. I implore you to counsel your poor servant, that I may not falter.

Thy will be done.

The Church in Crisis

And Scenarios for a Solution


THE LATIN MASS: Dr. von Hildebrand, at the time that Pope John XXIII summoned the Second Vatican Council, did you perceive a need for a reform within the Church?

ALICE VON HILDEBRAND: Most of the insights about this come from my husband. He always said that the members of the Church, due to the effects of original sin and actual sin, are always in need of reform. The Church’s teaching, however, is from God. Not one iota is to be changed or considered in need of reform.

In terms of the present crisis, when did you first perceive something was terribly wrong?

It was in February 1965. I was taking a sabbatical year in Florence. My husband was reading a theological journal, and suddenly I heard him burst into tears. I ran to him, fearful that his heart condition had suddenly caused him pain. I asked him if he was all right. He told me that the article that he had been reading had provided him with the certain insight that the devil had entered the Church. Remember, my husband was the first prominent German to speak out publicly against Hitler and the Nazis. His insights were always prescient.

( Read on... )