Dismemberment and Pieces

Soooo, D&P is funding abortion lobbyists in the developing world huh?

Don't know if you've been following this one, but lots of Canuckistanis are all in a tizzy over it.

I've been thinking a bit about this whole kerfuffle and have found it an interesting exercise to examine where the objections are coming from. LifeSite did a little digging, (and it didn't take much) and discovered that the social development agency of the Canadian Catholic Bishops is funding a large number of very energetic leftist/feminist groups in places like Mexico and Nigeria who, surprise surprise, have as their main interest loosening, by any means fair or foul, legal restrictions on abortion.

I pointed out something on a LSN conference call a few weeks ago that I thought would have been obvious.

There are certain segments of the Canadian Catholic Church who have reacted with fury at LSN for daring to lift that rock and take a peek at the wriggling things living under it. Bishops and bishops' minions have screeched at us like vampires dragged out into the sun.

Why?

Is it because LSN has found and published information that is not true?

No. Everything that was published about this subject is easy to verify, just by looking up the relevant .gov.ca web pages.

Is it because LifeSite has asked that D&P funding be suspended?

No. There has been nothing published but the who-what-where-whens. Calls for D&P funding to be halted or suspended have come from elsewhere.

It's this:

D&P represents the heart and soul of the Canadian Catholic Church. Everything that D&P does and is, everything it stands for and believes is emblematic of how the Canadian Catholic Church sees itself. D&P is the essence of Canadian Catholicism.

If D&P is grossly corrupt and its habits and beliefs are, (shall we say for the sake of brevity) incompatible with the teachings of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, then...

Well.

One begins to understand the reason for the shrieking.

Once again,

me n' Binks, thinking the same thoughts on the same day. I'm beginning to wonder if he's really me and I never really left Canadia and the me that lives in Italy is realy someone else...

~ IF MEN ARE FROM MARS AND women are from Venus, then Conservatives are from reality, and Liberals are from UpSideDownistan. Take every particle of common-sense, law, custom, morality, and stand them on their heads.

Maybe I don't really exist after all.

That would be a relief. It means that someone else can do my Purgatory.

Aaaand,

There may have been ancient civilizations for which we only know names. Really: if there were folks living in a town in Jericho c. 10 000BC, how much do we really know about that era? I’m not talking about aliens or anything, just that if civilization arose long ago, environmental collapse, plague, or some other collapse could have hidden much of it from us over the intervening years.

Not having the history of those people doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Atlantis may be a garbled remembrance, though some of that may also be ancient Thera 7 Crete as remembered by the Greeks. In any case, I’m not saying it makes much difference to us– only that we haven’t got the whole story.

he seems to be thinking about the same topics as me too.

I don't know if I've mentioned this, but I've been thinking about/working on a novel for some time now that involves the proposal that human civilisations, complete with fancy schmancy architecture, writing, mathematics and government corruption existed before the big Ice Ages. The ice would have wiped out all traces of them right? and would have sent the human population back to hunting/gathering and nomadic habits right? So how do we know?

Some of my longer-term readers might remember my brief flash of obsession a few years ago about this. Well, I'm still thinking about it.

But it's weird about the Binky/Hilary mental link hey?

Must be sunspots or something.

Flowers in April

I think it's amazing that flowers can bloom so splendidly just growing out of a stone wall.

I'm going to take the camera home tonight so I can get y'all some pics of the Italian countryside from the train coming into Rome. The wheat fields are blooming and the grass is tall, and the carciofi are being harvested and showing up by the bushel-full in all the markets.

All this says summer to my Canadian brain.

So, how's mid-April where you are?

I kind of miss this stuff about the HRCs in Canada

Being now officially a member of the Eurotrash demographic, it just doesn't seem like my fight any more. But it's still pretty fun to watch from a distance. A bit like whales that way.

Anyway, if there is anyone left in the 'sphere who hasn't seen Ezra's take-down of that HRC toady...oh...what'shername...I can't remember...but in case you are the last one to know, here's the link to the greatest scolding a Sane Person ever gave to the Newfangled Left.


http://www.youtube.com/user/EzraILevant

I don't know if there is anyone after that who might still be wondering what the deal is with the HRCs, but in case you are,

Blazing will explain it all to you:

...the Left draws most of its motivating energy from imaginary problems, like global warming, DDT, backalley coathanger abortions, and the chronic boredome of American housewives in 1950s suburbia. The Left is very concerned about something they like to call “social justice”, which I define as the stubborn application of unworkable solutions to imaginary problems.

...

Today, gay Canadians outnumber Muslim Canadians; when that balance shifts, and it will for obvious reasons, it will be interesting to see which side Canada’s liberal establishment decides to take, or is obliged to.

[Oh me too!]

"...the HRCs are engaged in class warfare. The majority of “hate speech” cases are brought by highly educated, highly privileged white liberals -- against less educated, working class, blue collar “reactionary” whites, who insist on speaking to each other about topics like immigration, using old fashioned, politically incorrect language.

I was pleasantly surprised that Ken Whyte and his crew fought back because, well, they’re Canadians. To continue the metaphor, I’ve often said that had United 93 been an Air Canada flight, the passengers would have held the cockpit door open for the terrorists -- then said “sorry” when they stepped on their feet.

Ezra likes to say that the HRCs and Section 13 are “unCanadian.” I respectfully disagree. I can’t think of anything more Canadian. They perfectly embody the Trudeaupian, Centennial celebration Canada I was born into.

Yep.

I am just, barely, old enough to remember when all this stuff started but not quite old enough to have known what Canada was before it was put through the Trudeaupian Presto-Change-O Commie Transmogrifier. I remember the process by which it was changed, both at the national level by legislation and at the local level by hippies going to their little GestaltDreamTherapyPrimalScreamGroupHug workshops. I remember being used as part of that great experiment (gotta get to the kids right?). But I never got to see the Before Time.

But I know people who remember. And what strikes me is that when they talk about it, it is clear they are talking about something Real, about something that concerns itself with the Real. What strikes me about Canuckistan, and about our whole Mirror Universe civilisation (in Britain, Europe, Massachusetts, Oregon, etc.,) that started at the Big Bang of 1968, is that it concerns itself with nothing real. It is devoted to unreality. Its language is made up of unwords. It's politics is about imaginary grievances, and its history is make-believe history. It is as if the deadly hypnotism that addled the pates of my mother's hippie/feminist friends in 1972, had leaked out into the real, transforming it into the strange landscape of their drug-induced fantasies.

"a male-female partnership"

Your Eminence, I think there's probably a word for that in German isn't there?

I know there's one in English.

Starts with an "m"...?

...Anyone...?

...Bueller...?

BTW:

A note to Gregory's Mum,

We're all very pleased here to hear that things went well.

(Would have put a note up earlier, but someone failed to tell us until Urbi et Orbi.)

A Bit of Easter Liturgical Fun

Blessing the feast is an ancient Catholic custom. You go shopping (all day on Saturday!) and you take the feast to the parish priest for the blessings.

No kidding, there are separate distinct liturgical blessings for each kind of food.


(Note shopping cart parked in the sacristy.)


The lamb, the bread, the eggs, the olive oil, the veg, the butter and cheese, the dolce and the beer.


With cassocks and surplices and everything.




You know you're in the right religion when they have a proper blessing for the beer.

Bene+dic, Domine, creaturam istam cerevisae, quam ex adipe frumenti producere dignatus es: ut sit remedium salutare humano generi: et praesta per invocationem nominis tui sancti, ut, quicumque ex ea biberint, sanitatem corporis, et animae tutelam percipiant. Per Christum Dominum nostrum.

Ay-men.

Rome at prayer II

Altars of Repose in Rome


St. Louis of France,



Sant. Agostino



The shrine to Our Lady in S. Agostino is a favourite place for ladies of Rome to pray for safe childbirth.




Santa Maria Sopra Minerva






The Chiesa Nuova

Rome at prayer

On Thursday night, I did a brief tour of some of the churches in Centro, an ancient custom, to pray with the saints and martyrs who are asleep and waiting for the final resurrection.

At Sanctissima Trinita Dei Pellegrini, the Altar of Repose

...about a hundred candles, I'm told.

The faces of the Faith...




Housewives,


Children


Princes,


Businessmen,


Young people,




Old people,


Students,


Everyone.

Urbi et Orbi : the courage to do good, "even when it costs, especially when it costs"

Viva Papa!

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Rome and throughout the world,

From the depths of my heart, I wish all of you a blessed Easter. To quote Saint Augustine, “Resurrectio Domini, spes nostra – the resurrection of the Lord is our hope”. With these words, the great Bishop explained to the faithful that Jesus rose again so that we, though destined to die, should not despair, worrying that with death life is completely finished; Christ is risen to give us hope.

Indeed, one of the questions that most preoccupies men and women is this: what is there after death? To this mystery today’s solemnity allows us to respond that death does not have the last word, because Life will be victorious at the end. This certainty of ours is based not on simple human reasoning, but on a historical fact of faith: Jesus Christ, crucified and buried, is risen with his glorified body. Jesus is risen so that we too, believing in him, may have eternal life. This proclamation is at the heart of the Gospel message. As Saint Paul vigorously declares: “If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.” He goes on to say: “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied”. Ever since the dawn of Easter a new Spring of hope has filled the world; from that day forward our resurrection has begun, because Easter does not simply signal a moment in history, but the beginning of a new condition: Jesus is risen not because his memory remains alive in the hearts of his disciples, but because he himself lives in us, and in him we can already savour the joy of eternal life.

The resurrection, then, is not a theory, but a historical reality revealed by the man Jesus Christ by means of his “Passover”, his “passage”, that has opened a “new way” between heaven and earth. It is neither a myth nor a dream, it is not a vision or a utopia, it is not a fairy tale, but it is a singular and unrepeatable event: Jesus of Nazareth, son of Mary, who at dusk on Friday was taken down from the Cross and buried, has victoriously left the tomb. In fact, at dawn on the first day after the Sabbath, Peter and John found the tomb empty. Mary Magdalene and the other women encountered the risen Jesus. On the way to Emmaus the two disciples recognized him at the breaking of the bread. The Risen One appeared to the Apostles that evening in the Upper Room and then to many other disciples in Galilee.

The proclamation of the Lord’s Resurrection lightens up the dark regions of the world in which we live. I am referring particularly to materialism and nihilism, to a vision of the world that is unable to move beyond what is scientifically verifiable, and retreats cheerlessly into a sense of emptiness which is thought to be the definitive destiny of human life. It is a fact that if Christ had not risen, the “emptiness” would be set to prevail. If we take away Christ and his resurrection, there is no escape for man, and every one of his hopes remains an illusion. Yet today is the day when the proclamation of the Lord’s resurrection vigorously bursts forth, and it is the answer to the recurring question of the sceptics, that we also find in the book of Ecclesiastes: “Is there a thing of which it is said, ‘See, this is new’?”. We answer, yes: on Easter morning, everything was renewed. “Mors et vita, duello conflixere mirando: dux vitae mortuus, regnat vivus – Death and life have come face to face in a tremendous duel: the Lord of life was dead, but now he lives triumphant.” This is what is new! A newness that changes the lives of those who accept it, as in the case of the saints. This, for example, is what happened to Saint Paul.

Many times, in the context of the Pauline year, we have had occasion to meditate on the experience of the great Apostle. Saul of Tarsus, the relentless persecutor ofChristians, encountered the risen Christ on the road to Damascus, and was “conquered” by him. The rest we know. In Paul there occurred what he would later write about to the Christians of Corinth: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come”. Let us look at this great evangelizer, who with bold enthusiasm and apostolic zeal brought the Gospel to many different peoples in the world of that time. Let his teaching and example inspire us to go in search of the Lord Jesus. Let them encourage us to trust him, because that sense of emptiness, which tends to intoxicate humanity, has been overcome by the light and the hope that emanate from the resurrection. The words of the Psalm have truly been fulfilled: “Darkness is not darkness for you, and the night is as clear as the day”. It is no longer emptiness that envelops all things, but the loving presence of God. The very reign of death has been set free, because the Word of life has even reached the “underworld”, carried by the breath of the Spirit.

If it is true that death no longer has power over man and over the world, there still remain very many, in fact too many signs of its former dominion. Even if through Easter, Christ has destroyed the root of evil, he still wants the assistance of men and women in every time and place who help him to affirm his victory using his own weapons: the weapons of justice and truth, mercy, forgiveness and love. This is the message which, during my recent Apostolic Visit to Cameroon and Angola, I wanted to convey to the entire African continent, where I was welcomed with such great enthusiasm and readiness to listen. Africa suffers disproportionately from the cruel and unending conflicts, often forgotten, that are causing so much bloodshed and destruction in several of her nations, and from the growing number of her sons and daughters who fall prey to hunger, poverty and disease. I shall repeat the same message emphatically in the Holy Land, to which I shall have the joy of travelling in a few weeks from now. Reconciliation – difficult, but indispensable – is a precondition for a future of overall security and peaceful coexistence, and it can only be achieved through renewed, persevering and sincere efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. My thoughts move outwards from the Holy Land to neighbouring countries, to the Middle East, to the whole world. At a time of world food shortage, of financial turmoil, of old and new forms of poverty, of disturbing climate change, of violence and deprivation which force many to leave their homelands in search of a less precarious form of existence, of the ever-present threat of terrorism, of growing fears over the future, it is urgent to rediscover grounds for hope. Let no one draw back from this peaceful battle that has been launched by Christ’s Resurrection. For as I said earlier, Christ is looking for men and women who will help him to affirm his victory using his own weapons: the weapons of justice and truth, mercy, forgiveness and love.

Resurrectio Domini, spes nostra! The resurrection of Christ is our hope! This the Church proclaims today with joy. She announces the hope that is now firm and invincible because God has raised Jesus Christ from the dead. She communicates the hope that she carries in her heart and wishes to share with all people in every place, especially where Christians suffer persecution because of their faith and their commitment to justice and peace. She invokes the hope that can call forth the courage to do good, even when it costs, especially when it costs. Today the Church sings “the day that the Lord has made”, and she summons people to joy. Today the Church calls in prayer upon Mary, Star of Hope, asking her to guide humanity towards the safe haven of salvation which is the heart of Christ, the paschal Victim, the Lamb who has “redeemed the world”, the Innocent one who has “reconciled us sinners with the Father”. To him, our victorious King, to him who is crucified and risen, we sing out with joy our Alleluia!

Lies. All lies!

Except for the part about all Canadians being totally gay.

That's true.

Well, it worked for Mahoney didn't it?

The Tablet has welcomed Archbishop Vincent Nichols to Westminster with a snide and mean-spirited profile which suggests that he has become more orthodox in his theology in order to achieve promotion in the Church.

Looks like Damian is going to be less fun to read from now on. No problems with the good archbishop's assertion that, hey, it's OK to adopt children to homosexual singles but, whoah nelly! not to "married" homosexual partners. No way! Indeed, Nichols is "our man" in Westminster for the "anyone but Roche" crowd.

I get the impression that this is not the sort of Catholic moral issue of interest to Damian.

Kathy Shaidle, when writing about people who complained that George Bush was Hitler [I can hear you saying it: "Wait! I thought the pope was Hitler..."], would invariably ask, "If Bush is Hitler, how come you guys aren't lampshades?"

So, I've just got to ask,

If

the Catholic church is once again taking a course towards reaction, anti-modernism, and the middle ages,

how come you haven't been strapped to a stake yet?

Enjoyed our last book tour did we?

The Wonders and Glories of the New Springtime of Novusordoism Never Fail to Captivate

So, do I understand this correctly? Are people in Novusordoism being told that they are not supposed to go to confession on Good Friday?

Every year I get e-mails about priests who will not hear confessions during the Triduum, especially on Good Friday. They say the directions in the Missal forbid confessions.

Errr...

Huh?

Now, I might be mistaken here, but even I, having been raised in perhaps the most "liberal" of all the dioceses of Canada ... even I know that you're supposed to go to confession on Good Friday, even if it is the only day of the year you go.

Did something happen in Novusweirdoland while I was looking the other way?

What a bunch of freaks!

Sheesh, what's next?

Are they going to tell us next that we're not supposed to pray for the conversion of the perfidious Jews to the Holy Faith?

Adding to my already vast collection of deathlessly nonsensical Tony Blair quotes is always fun.

Here's the master of self-contradictory blither on religion:

I think that for all religions, the challenge is how do you extract the essential values of the faith from a vast accumulation of doctrine and practice? For many people, the reason for their religious faith is less to do with the doctrine and
practice, and more to do with the values like love of God and love of your
neighbour.

We're fine

Earthquake.

But not in Rome. And not in Santa Mar.

Everyone here is fine, but lots of people dead elsewhere.

Pray for Italy.

If you like to be surprised

almost all the time,

then Italy is the place to live.


This morning, on the train.

Sometimes it's fiddlers.


Get smarder and lern to spel. Read the Trivium.

Pfaffing About

Had a lovely weekend. Did a bit of sewing for the parish on Saturday, then went home and watched some BSG.

Spent Sunday morning

loafing about on the terrace in my jammies,

went to the beach later and


strolled about taking photos of the


flora and fauna,


(You can eat the red things, I understand. Going to try making Prickly Pear jam this year.)


The geraniums on the terrace: suprisingly hard to kill, but I haven't given up.


Remember the wisteria that wasn't at its peak? We're there.



Most of old Santa Marinella is being torn down and replaced with cheap, lousy apartment blocks (the kind with the cardboard and plaster-of-Paris walls that let the rain through) but


there are a few nice little houses left in our neighbourhood that have lovely gardens.

I missed a train and had an hour to kill, so I wandered around Santa Marinella for a bit. As I was passing an empty lot, I heard a racket that I took at first for a flock of ducks. Looking down, saw no ducks while the noise continued, quite loud. There was a pond, though, and I realised that the racket was coming from frogs.


Thousands of them. All very noisy and lively.



The neighbourhood nearest the beach has some


rather grand houses, and are obviously occupied year round


with people who can afford gardeners.


Catholicism is everywhere here.


Plenty of public access to the beach.


This is Italy: splendour and decay.



The sea the sea! The view (through a zoom lens) from the terrace.


From the end of the road. (So how's April where you are? Still snowing?)


This rocky beach is so very similar


to the kind I grew up around it was hard not to be transported in memory. (Note cool holes indicating bubbles of gas while the rock was still liquid...science! Cool!)

I can't tell you how odd it felt to be climbing around on the rocks, peering into tide pools and poking (the brilliant red, not green) sea anemones after all this time. It was as if I were ten years old again, and waiting to hear my grandma calling me to lunch on the veranda.


Grandma taught me to swim in a place that looked almost exactly like


this

...only with fewer palm trees...and probably a lot colder water.

Then got on the train and went to Rome and shopped. Mmmmmm Sunday shopping...


Got to a nice, blessedly short, low Mass for Palm Sunday and then ate Italian food for dinner and went home.

The perfect weekend.