Musings of an Expagan

all I have to say is thanks for the update… my visual editor works now…

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Yes, the ruling about that surprised me. [Harris v. McRae — in 1980 the court upheld the Hyde Amendment, which forbids the use of Medicaid for abortions.] Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.

So we have a liberal justice saying that Roe was really to reduce the populations that we don’t want to have too many of…  Ok… So what is that population?

This sounds down right racist to me.

“We don’t want to many of THEM people around….”

What really troubles me is the eugenic mindset that is inherently ingrained in those who enthusiastically support abortion.  But there is a larger eugenic mindset in the American Culture today that says “All Children must be perfect.”

I remember when my wife and I were expecting our first child.  We were told there was a chance of down’s syndrome.  WE struggled with that, but at no time did we consider abortion to be a option, what we struggled with was the possibility of having to raise a child who was developmentally disabled.

I truly pray that one day we embrace the idea that children are a gift, rather than a by product of sex.

With the publication of a new motu proprio entitled Ecclesiae Unitatem, Pope Benedict XVI has folded the Ecclesia Dei commission into the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, making Cardinal William Levada, the prefect of that Congregation, the new head of the Ecclesia Dei commission.

The Ecclesia Dei commission, the Pope notes in this motu proprio, was set up by Pope John Paul II to supervise efforts to achieve reconciliation with the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X (SSPX). By allowing broader use of the traditional Latin liturgy (with his earlier motu proprio, Summorum Pontificum), and by lifting the excommunication of the SSPX bishops, Pope Benedict has advanced that cause of reconciliation.

 

"However," the Pope notes in Ecclesiae Unitatem, "it is clear that the doctrinal questions remain, and until they are clarified the Society [SSPX] has no canonical status in the Church, and its ministers cannot legitimately exercise any ministry in the Church." To facilitate the discussion of those doctrinal issues, therefore, he has make the Ecclesia Dei commission a part of the Vatican’s doctrinal office.

 

The Pope’s move, which had been anticipated for weeks, was interpreted by some reporters (most notably a Reuters correspondent) as a rebuke to the officials of the Ecclesia Dei commission, who had come under heavy criticism when the excommunications of the four SSPX bishops, apparently without having been alerted to the fact that one of those bishops had made public statements questioning the severity of the Holocaust.

 

Although it is true that the top officials of the Ecclesia Dei commission have been replaced, the president of the commission, Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, had marked his 80th birthday on July 4 and was long overdue for retirement. More significant is the fact that the commission’s longtime secretary, Msgr. Camille Perl, is replaced by Msgr. Guido Pozzo, a current staff member of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

 

Saint Andrew (Andreas) of Crete (also known as Andrew of Jerusalem) (c. 650 – July 4, 712, 726 or 740) was an 8th century bishop, theologian, homilist,[1] and hymnographer.

Born in Damascus of Christian parents, Andrew was a mute from birth until the age of seven, when, according to his hagiographers, he was miraculously cured after receiving Holy Communion. He began his ecclesiastical career at fourteen in the Lavra of St. Sabbas the Sanctified, near Jerusalem, where he quickly gained the notice of his superiors. Theodore, the locum tenens of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem (745 – 770) made him his Archdeacon, and sent him to the imperial capital of Constantinople as his official representative at the Sixth Ecumenical Council (680 – 681), which had been called by the Emperor Constantine Pogonatus, to counter the heresy of Monothelitism.

Shortly after the Council he was summoned back to Constantinople from Jerusalem and was appointed Archdeacon at the "Great Church" of Hagia Sophia. Eventually, Andrew was appointed to the metropolitan see of Gortyna, in Crete. Although he had been an opponent of the Monothelite heresy, he nevertheless attended the conciliabulum of 712, in which the decrees of the Ecumenical Council were abolished. But in the following year he repented and returned to orthodoxy. Thereafter, he occupied himself with preaching, composing hymns, etc. As a preacher, his discourses are known for their dignified and harmonious phraseology, for which he is considered to be one of the foremost ecclesiastical orators of the Byzantine epoch.

Church historians are not of the same opinion as to the date of his death. What is known is that he died on the island of Mytilene, while returning to Crete from Constantinople, where he had been on church business. His relics were later transferred to Constantinople. In the year 1350 the pious Russian pilgrim Stefan of Novgorod saw his relics at the Monastery of Saint Andrew of Crete in Constantinople.

The feast day of St. Andrew of Crete is July 4 on the Eastern Orthodox liturgical calendar (for those churches which follow the Julian Calendar, July 4 falls on July 17 of the modern Gregorian Calendar).

I love science fiction.  I don’t know it gets my mind out of today and into dreams that I lost when I was a child.

Today I was walking downtown in Elmhurst and I heard the funeral music from the series Firefly.  If you haven’t seen it, then see it.  I is a very good piece of work, and I wish I would have seen it when it first ran.  Now I have to make due with DVDs.  Sadly it seems that the Fan sites are a bit less crowded than they used to be so I have also missed out on that community somewhat. 

Back to the music.  Must be that time of year because on Sunday will be the anniversary of my father’s death, and hearing that tune just really brought it home.  He has been gone 8 years now and while it is easier to deal with when I stop to think about it… It hits that I really miss him. 

LIke every son and every father, we had our differences.  I am glad he got to see the first four of my five children.  Sadly, my little Ben, will not meet him, in this life. 

06 – The Funeral

i.e. Germany has warned SSPX not to ordain new priests… 

Now lets turn off the Sarcasm flag here and get to the meat of this.  Germany is not, by any measurement, the bastion of Orthodoxy.  So why are their bishops making pronoucements about the ordinations of a schismatic catholic group?  One has to wonder that if everything were peachy keen in the German church, and attendence was up, why the fuss. 

Well one of the issues is that not everything is as peachy keen as the German bishops would like us to think.  Actually mass attendence and church membership are pretty much… ummm… how you say…. terrible? dismal? almost non-existant? 

Reminds me of a statistic that I heard once about France… don’t know if this is true… that the society of St. Pius the 10th has better attendance than the Roman Church.  My guess is that is a urban legend, but I would not be surpised if it were true.  Man longs for the mystical, and making the mystical more mundane doesn’t help you and in many ways hinders you. 

If you drag files around via a USB drive, I have something for you.

The utility is dropbox

If you click on the logo you will be sent to my referal section, the more people you refer the more online space you earn. 

Or click on this link to be refered.

https://www.getdropbox.com/referrals/NTE0MjA1ODg5

However if you would like to see this little gem in action:

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Microsoft has announced pricing for Windows Vista the fixed Edition 7

Home Premium: $119.99 upgrade; $199.99 full version

Professional: $199.99 upgrade; $299.99 full version

Ultimate: $219.99 upgrade; $319.99 full version

Now compare and contrast this to Apple Snow Leopard:

If you have Leopard:  29.00

If you don’t have Leopard:  129.00

If you don’t have Leopard, or iLife 09 or iWork 09 – 169.00

So is Redmond smoking crack or what??

Update:  Microsoft says that you can preorder for 50% off.  Wow… what a deal…   Lets see… I purchased Vista the joke edition Ultimate.  I spent 200 on it… so now I get to spend another 100.00 to upgrade… Hmmm…

Yeah… this is why I love my Mac.  I will be pulling out the 3 Hamiltons and get my upgrade when it ships in September. 

Well Archbishop Weakland has announced that he is Gay.  Wow… so can  I ask who didn’t see this coming?

I mean, the paying off of the guy he was trysting with was one clue…

Perhaps another clue would be the blatant disregard he had for the Liturgy and Traditions of the Catholic church. 

So now he closet door is open and Archbishop Weakland has stepped through…

My guess is that nothing what so ever will be done, by either Rome, or the USCCB.  The faithful will continue to be scandalized, many will simply lose their faith and walk away.  A small percentage will move to the more traditional elements of the Church i.e. Opus Dei, Institue of Christ the King, Society of St. John Cantius, The Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter. 

Some, like myself, will find their way to the Eastern Catholic Churches. 

St. Paul tells us not to embrace this world, that we must live in it, but not be of it…  wise advice… to bad many do not take it.

As an after thought to the last post, I thought that I would discuss the idea that what and how you pray says a lot about what you believe. 

Take for example the storms that hit the Church after the Vatican II council (Which I will point out for the 10000th time was needed by the Church)

When the liturgy was wrenched from its traditional foundations, many people’s faith was damaged, and what is real sad is that this is something that is really not talked about all that much.  After Vatican II, mass attendance dropped like a lead balloon, and it has continued to drop to the point where 25% of those who are Catholic attend services on a weekly basis at this point in time.

Critics of Vatican II like to point out the missing 75% as the fruits of Vatican II, but what I believe really happened was, again, the implementation of Vatican II was handled very poorly, so poorly that many people simply didn’t understand what had happened.  Couple this with the experimental period that followed and you have a recipe for disaster.  

Even in my own little corner of the East we have had issues with our liturgy and our Bishops who have thought "Mary and Joesph Eastern Catholic are too stupid to understand English" have handed us some changes that, for me, are still too hard to stomach. 

Which brings me to the point of the title of the post which is Lex orandi, Lex credendi, which very loosely translates into as the law of prayer is the law of belief.  If the Liturgy is rushed, the music is bad, the vestments look cheap, then you aren’t going to get a hell of a lot of buy in to the whole worship thing. 

Example… If I were a priest, and I decided that the Vestments weren’t that important and I said mass in a 1970s Corduroy Leisure Suit, with the lapels out to my shoulders, My chalice was a 8oz Batman drinking glass from Burger King, and the rest of the tools of my trade were along the same lines…  There is a good chance that quite a few in my congregation would notice this.  If they happened to mention it, I might say something about "How God loves us all, and doesn’t need all those trappings." and they go away shaking their head and possibly go home and never come back.

Or this could happen

Yes… just brings us closer to the greatness of God… NOT… 

God doesn’t need those trappings… Yes… that is a correct answer… The REAL answer is that we, humans, need them and need them badly.  For some reason we are wired to know that if something is important then we invest a heck of a lot into it.  Don’t believe this?  Then check out some youth sports sometime, and watch the parents.  See where their gold is stored…

There is a reason why The Emissaries from Russia were awestruck when they entered Hagia Sophia, because the worship of God is supposed to be Awe Inspiring.