Musings of an Expagan

actually its mostly my blog at this point lots going on and many issues that I am dealing with.

On the secular side of things:

We are getting two kittens on Wednesday.  Its going to be weird to have the pitter patter of small furry feet around the house.

On the Spiritual side of things:

I am reading the Balamand Statement that was signed by Pope John Paul II, and The Patriarch of Constantinople (Not signed by JPII)  It is a document that deals with the “Uniate Problem” (me and my Church) and why Uniateism is not the preferred way to unity.

I am reading the Orthodox Study Bible (the New Testament and Psalms) and I am finding it enjoyable and wonderful to have a text with scholar notes that don’t drive me up the wall with their textural criticism.

Will post more later..

Two years ago, I applied and was hired as a part time Apple Specialist.  Tonight is my last shift there.  A myriad of factors have gone into this decision.  The most important of them is that I want to spend time with my family.  Working an additional 16 to 20 hours a week meant that they saw very little of me.

I also want to start delving deeper into theology.  Many of you who have read this blog over the years know that I have transformed.  I started the blog a few years after I converted to Roman Catholicism.

A few years later Jesus wasn’t done with me and he brought me into a deeper communion with himself via the Eastern Catholic Churches.  Now I want to dig deeper into Eastern Catholic prayer, thought, theology and liturgy.  I cannot do this if I am working 80+ hours a week.  So something had to go.

I was asked “If money were no object, what would you do?”  I would enter seminary.  I know that I am being called into something deeper, and to figure this out means that I have to move away from the secular and move toward the liturgical life.

I was told to pray more than I study, and now I am asking you to pray for me.

Back in the Early days of the Church there was a problem.  That problem was the destruction of images, and for some reason this keeps coming up even after the question was put to rest (There was a resurgence of this heresy in the post Vatican II years in Western Europe, and in the United States.)

An Attack on the icons really in itself is an attack on the incarnation of the Second person of the Blessed Trinity in the womb of Mary.  In reality it is an attack on Christ’s humanity.  God, walked this earth as a man and this man Jesus can be depicted in images since Christ was the invisible God made Visible.

When we chant our theology in our Liturgy, we sing the following:

Troparion – Tone 8

Most glorious are You, O Christ our God!
You have established the Holy Fathers as lights on the earth!
Through them you have guided us to the true faith!
O greatly Compassionate One, glory to You!

Kontakion – Tone 6

The Son who shone forth from the Father
Was ineffably born, two-fold in nature, of a woman.
Having beheld Him, we do not deny the image of His form,
But depict it piously and revere it faithfully.
Thus, keeping the True Faith,
The Church venerates the icon of Christ Incarnate.

You can’t put it any better than this.  Christ was born of a woman, he was visible, in two natures.  We have seen him, and we can depict the seen.

As a side note, you may not know that the Eastern Church has never made an Icon of God the Father.  The reason is that we can’t.  No one has seen the father except the son, therefore we cannot depict him.  The closest we come to this is the Icon of the Hospitality of Abraham and Sarah.  In this Icon we depict the three angles who are a forshadow of the Trinity in the old testament.

Perhaps he should have been my patron Saint.  I tend to have doubts.  As it is my Patron Saint is St. John Fisher.  Why?  Because I hope when the persecution hits that I am able to stand up for Christ.

Troparion – Tone 2

You were a disciple of Christ
And a member of the divine college of Apostles.
Having been weak in faith you doubted the Resurrection of Christ.
But by feeling the wounds you believed in His all-pure passion:
Pray now to Him, O all-praised Thomas to grant us peace and great mercy.

Kontakion – Tone 4

Thomas, the faithful servant and disciple of Christ,
Filled with divine grace, cried out from the depth of his love:
You are my Lord and my God!

Who speaks for these women?  Who, when they condemn violence, talks about these violent acts?  Many times, the choice for an abortion is not made by the woman having it, but by the boyfriend, husband, or parents.

But sometimes woman and/or girls will choose not to abort, and then something dark and sinister can happen.

New York physician Stephen Pack was sentenced to prison after repeatedly stabbing his girlfriend with a syringe filled with an abortion-inducing drug. A witness said that Pack shouted, “I’m giving you an abortion!” as he forced the woman to the ground near a hospital parking garage. She later gave birth to a healthy boy.

A pregnant Arkansas woman was within days of her due date when she was beaten and kicked in the abdomen by three men, killing her unborn baby girl. She said she pleaded for her child’s life as her attackers told her: The woman’s boyfriend, Eric Bullock, was convicted of planning the attack.

Andrew Jerome Gaither pleaded guilty to two counts of simple assault for beating up his girlfriend outside an abortion clinic in Washington, DC. Witnesses said that Gaither beat the woman after she refused to enter the clinic after speaking with pro-life advocates outside. She later gave birth to a healthy baby.

These are just a small part number of unheard, and unwanted voices about pro-abortion violence.  Lets face it, Abortion allows men simply walk away from their responsibility.  Have consensual sex with an underage girl, take her to a clinic.  Don’t want to pay for another child, take your wife to a clinic.  Since the clinics tend to make VERY good money with the termination of a child in the womb, they really don’t have any reason to report child rapists, or coercions by husbands to the Authority.

Wanna read more?  There are more than 20 pages of examples in this one report here:

http://www.theunchoice.com/pdf/FactSheets/ForcedAbortions.pdf

The pro-abortion advocates are great about talking up the “millions” of women who would die in back alley abortions or the “100,000*” lives lost because of illegal abortion; these same advocates who are so concerned about the lives of women who seek abortions are silent on those lives snuffed out in the name of “Choice.”

We are facilitating the killing of the unborn to the tune of a million plus per year.  Now that abortion is so deeply ingrained into our cultural ethos, that the small step to killing the elderly is already already in place.  While you may think the Dr. Kevorkian was a nut job, the problem is that he was but a tip of the iceberg.  Once you devalue life, all life becomes devalued.

BOSTON, Sept. 27 — A grand jury indicted Bishop Thomas L. Dupre, the former head of the Springfield, Mass., Roman Catholic diocese, on two counts of child rape, but he will not be prosecuted because the statute of limitations on the case has expired, a county district attorney said Monday.

Meanwhile – Up in Canada

The former Roman Catholic bishop of Antigonish, N.S., ended his brief turn as a fugitive Thursday, handing himself over to police in Ottawa.

Raymond Lahey, 69, walked grimly and silently through a crowd of reporters and photographers into the police station, where he was fingerprinted and interrogated by investigators for the first time.

Once hailed as a brave advocate for survivors of child sexual abuse, Lahey faces one count of possession and one count of importation of child pornography, after the discovery of images on his laptop computer at Ottawa’s airport while he was returning from a foreign visit on Sept. 15.

Too bad, these two bad apples didn’t make the right career decisions.  If they had chosen wisely they may have been able to get away with it for a few more years, and then have Hollywood try to protect them.  Like this man:

One of these things does not belong…

As the old sesame street song goes….

So kiddies, today we are playing a game.  I am going to show you three pictures

A)

B)

C)

Ok… Which of these things is not like the other?  The answer is A.  Roman Polanski is not like the other two.  Since he isn’t a priest, he is an artist, and he is a Hollywood director, which makes his rape conviction, and his fugitive status moot.  You see, you only get nailed by the law if abuse children and you are a priest.  However, if Roman had been wearing the collar which his name mirrors, you can bet your happy butt that Hollywood would be doing its damnedest to have his happy little rear end nailed to the wall.