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Many need reminding that the Papal Magisterium does not extend to prudential judgments on the efficacy or safety of an array of possible vaccines, medicines, prophylactic regimens or public health approaches. Bonus insight: nor does infallibility pertain to papal diplomacy.

MORNING OFFERING I

O my God, I offer You
All my prayers, works, joys, and sufferings
My thoughts, words, and deeds
My whole heart, my whole soul,
my whole mind, and all my strength
As my ordinary and reasonable service to You
Because You are All-good
And deserving of all my love.

I offer myself to You because I belong to you:
Yours I am, a sheep of your flock.

You formed me in my mother’s womb
And are still forming me to this very day:
You are the potter, I am the clay.

MORNING OFFERING II

Lord, I firmly believe
that the good work You have begun in me,
You will bring to completion:
And that You will profit from Your investment in me,
You will bring good from my life.

For you decreed:
“My name shall be great among the Gentiles;
In every place incense shall be offered to My name,
And a pure offering;
For My name shall be great among the Nations,”
Says the LORD of hosts.

So I offer myself, body, blood, soul and humanity,
Praying that You will make of me
a perfect and acceptable offering
In union with Your Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity,
in the sacrifice on Calvary,
And in that same sacrifice
On every altar in the world.

Amen.

Hey, I got your card and I was tickled.

Monday my pastor surprised me at the last minute (I mean, literally 90 seconds before Mass) by asking me, beinst it’s a special Mary feast, to lead in singing the “Ordinaries”

Well, Mrs. Flexibility here, I hadn’t practiced or prepared, haven’t sung Ordinaries since early March and didn’t have my music with me, but I did it with a right good will.

Looking out at the little 8:30 Holy Day of No Longer an Obligation congregation — about 24 people scattered at alienating distances across the pews in the nave— -looking dispirited like a Biden Rally— I don’t think anyone was singing but me. Felt sad, really.

But leaving Church, an old lady (defined as: older than I am) said something incomprehensible, and I looked at her expressing perplexity with my eyes I guess, so she dropped her mask to her chin and said, “You have a lovely voice.”

Made my day.

Love you and all your chickadees, Tax chiquita.

Sigue cantando.

I’ve been hangung out more at Twitter lately.

The galling, maddening downside: censorship (though we’re learning it’s possible to get around it.)(Sometimes.) (For now.)

The upside: at least the theoretical possibility of escaping the “preaching to the choir” syndrome and communicating with people who are not your ideological clones.

The downside of that: but do I? I don’t know. Maybe it’s just another choir.

I do miss the meatier menu at FReeptown and may come back when Twitter gets their speech-suppression algorithms perfected and most of us are bound & gagged.

Not ruling out other skulduggery of the fascinating spy-vs-spy sort, but McCarrick was publicly famous as a guy who assidulously cultivated millionaires and billionaires. He courted them.

He also was known to roam around the Termini with fat envelopes full of high-denomination euros, handing them out to arriving clerics and, as the Gospel (Luke 16:9) says about the unjust steward, making friends for himself with his filthy mammon.

You are right.

But --- some Canadian correct me if I'm wrong --- I don't think the Catholic dioceses of Canada had a choice in the matter. If I am understanding this correctly, the govt. at some point just stepped in and took over all the schools, a total secularization move.

They then granted to some faith groups (Church of Canada, Catholic, etc.) --- as if by concession --- that they could keep their identity as faith-based schools in certain respects, while actually being public schools whose funding and whose rules for admission of students, hiring and firing of teachers, curriculum, etc. would still be those of public schools.

So they are in fact public schools with an exceedingly thin veneer of their church-related origins.

There was some fight-back at the time. But not much.

We should make sure people realize that the Catholic Church recognizes what is called “natural marriage,” which is truly marriage even if it is not a Catholic sacrament. In other words, the Church says that married Jews, or Buddhists, Zoroastrians,or Hindus,or even atheists are truly and honorably married, if they intend a lasting union of life with openness to childbearing and child-raising.

The Church does not disrespect Natural Marriage. In fact, as Grace builds on Nature, Natural Marriage (one husband, one wife, for life, with kids if God grants them that blessing) is, you could say, the substrate of Sacramental Marriage.

Not so for homosexual unions, which the Church teaches is in no way even analogous even to real natural marriage.

THE ILLUSTRATED PRO-LIFE POPE FRANCIS

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The church (building) and property belong to the Bishop, not the pastor and not a separate corporate body (all property is held by the bishop in Catholic churches. I think the bishop can yestify that they did not have permission to be there, doing what they were doing. Like if if a grocery store manager were having some sort of orgy while on company property.

I feel sure they can bring some kind of criminal charge against Fr. Whoopee.

In the original, they have no flesh tones at all. It’s all canberra marble.

That's not a problem, --- in those cases, because they are the result of the aging/oxidation and darkening of the lacquers and pigments used on the original art.

But 2 millennia of art show the irrepressible devotion of the artists in portraying Jesus and His Blessed Mother in the noblest and most beautiful ways they can conceive. This will vary by cultural epoch. There is nothing wrong with this. It is the homage of the artist's heart.

"...for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.

--Gerard Manley Hopkins "The Kingfisher"

Yes, Johnson City: about 1.5 mi from my house.

I’m verklempt.

What an ending for a truly stunning convention. We’ve never seen anything like it. May God bless and protect this country -— and the way to cooperate with that blessing was told us by that Maria, Mary of Nazareth, pointing as she always does to her Son: “Do whatever He says.”

Bishop Stika has never yet answered a question nor a letter of mine, of over a dozen in the past 8 years or so. But one can sometimes get a tweet-back, so you could ask him yourself. Do you have a Twitter account? It’s @BishopStika.

The Church does not need the State’s approval but the Church deserves, and can claim the State’s protection. Reference Constantine, Charlemagne, and Louis IX.

Yeah, I get your Big Picture approach, ebb, but I still think it’s somewhat tiresome that you never even let Bishop Stika get away with doing the right thing.

In the American political conext, Religious Liberty is the struggle to secure for the Catholic church the liberty She needs to carry out Her mission.

"I have said before, and I will say it again, Congress and all of our leaders, past and present, have failed in many respects in dealing with this issue (illegal immigration)."

I'd certainly agree with that. Illegal immigration is to be stopped. Stopped, that's it. Our *legal* immigration, is, for the most part, a set of just laws. And the enforcement --- enforcement entails *force^ when need be --- of just laws, is social justice.

Just for accuracy's sake: Bishop Stika did not criticize Trump in this tweet string. He praised Trump and was flat-out anti Biden/Harris.

I like it when he comes on like a pro-life flamethrower.

Bishop Richard Stika is my Bishop, Diocese of Knoxville, TN. He did not bring up the border/migrant issue or any other issue in this particular tweet,or series of tweets. He praised Trump for both his anti-abortion and pro-religious-liberty stances.

And he absolutely scorched both Biden and Harris for their over-the-top extreme pro-abortion enthusiasm.

It's true Bp Stika has criticized Trump on other issues in the past, but in this instance he was pure pro-Trump and anti Biden/Harris.

So I'm proud of him.

I think we should go to his Twitter @BishopStika and let him know about it, too. He needs support. He's being trashed by the Catholic Left.