Yesterday as I was leaving Mass I got an email from a reader that blew me away.
The reader had been touring the Cathedral of the Immaculate in Monaco and stumbled across our favorite saint of impossible causes.
St. Rita statue, Cathedral of the Our Lady of the Immaculate and St. Nicholas, Monaco
The reader had said a prayer for yours truly and my family. I am most grateful. As I have said, she’s begging us to seek her intercession and waiting to obtain great favors for us. Remember as well, that Rita, like all saints, is great because she points directly to Our Lord Jesus Christ. In her case, I imagine the thorn in her brow serves as an arrow pointing heavenward. She was devoted to the Blessed Mother and intimately united to her spouse, Jesus Christ.
The blog Les Femmes, authored by some amazing women who’s pro-life activism over the years is nothing short of inspiring, have a brilliant post up today that really made me laugh… until it made me spew chunks. Let me explain.
At the bottom of the piece – click here – is an embedded video of the Synodal Gay Ways theme song. I laughed first at the paragraph above this video. Their description of just how faggy this ditty is made me question if I had ever heard Haugen, Haas, or Schutte before. “Could this one be that horrendous?“ I mused. Side note: in typing the word “ditty” above, my phone autocorrected first to “dirty” and then to “Soddy”. Seems appropriate.
Go check out that link and tell me if you don’t instantly recognize that this synod is all about the bone ponies. Have a bucket handy. By the way, the opening notes sound ripped off from Gloria Loring’s Friends and Lovers.
Apart from the oh-so-obvious (see list below), teaching my offspring at home just makes life interesting for me.
Today I got to dazzle my daughter with my 30 year-old retained knowledge of Fr. Henle’s First Year Latin and dazzle my son with my guess work learning about glaciers and aquifers. Now I have the word “Ogalala” stuck in my head. Also, did you know that 20% of the world’s freshwater (which itself is only 2.75% of the earth’s water) is found as groundwater? Betcha’ didn’t care either. But now you do. And knowing is half the battle, as GI Joe would say.
St. Anthony, stained glass, Sacred Heart Catholic Church, OKC (unrelated to topic)
On the Latin front, we’ve taken to speaking in the manner of the textbook. As in, “You see the dining room. You see Amazon boxes. You see early Christmas presents and Daddy’s gadgets and Mommy’s new sweater. You see a Gaul. The Gauls do not praise the Romans because after the war the Roman’s made the Gauls their slaves.”
It never gets old.
Mother of Divine Grace, pray for us!
Oh-so-obvious Reasons to Homeschool
Ensure your kids learn the most important thing in life or death – the authentic Catholic faith.
Ensure your kids learn other things like how to communicate properly.
It has been a whirlwind of a few days for me. Between company going and coming and going again, and all the multiple airport runs that entails, I have been caught up in a beautiful festivity.
This day just passed was the feast of the Maternity of the Blessed Mother. This happens to be a feast on the “old” calendar that was stripped from the new. I cannot for the life of me figure out why a hierarchy that seems to detest motherhood (let alone authentic women) would want to suppress such a feast. Remember when he said our mothers needn’t “breed like rabbits”? What a vile and vulgar man…
Todays Mass from my hand missal.
I remember in seminary when our weekly rector’s conference was replaced one week by an aging couple who appeared at the pulpit in our chapel to teach us seminarians all about the joys of natural family planning. Oh they checked all the boxes of NuChurch fabulosity. They kind of reminded me of Bob and Penny Lord but without the charm. Plastered smiles and helmeted hair… Keep in mind that Aquinas was nowhere on our reading list; but NFP? They made sure we knew every in and out and, well, mostly out. It seemed to me that the number one priority of a priest was to teach couples how not to create souls for God.
My brother texted me this evening. “Did you celebrate John XXIII?” My reply, “Gross,” apparently was not what he was expecting. No, instead I started the day at the start of the day – midnight – in Adoration and singing 35 minutes of Marian hymns with other parishioners as a gift to Our Mother. I rounded out the day with my 15 decades and a sung Mass.
While I was kneeling during the canon, incense still billowing through the sanctuary, a thought came to me. Our Lord gave us this Mass because he loves us. He loves us enough to have died for us. And he loves us enough to give me – a degenerate and faithless sinner – a way to tell Him I love Him too. This Mass, this liturgy is His. It is His gift to us for it is His sacrifice but also because it is not an invention of man. Read the Fathers. Read Fortescue. Read the seers and visionaries and all the Catholic prophecies. Christ Himself showed us how to worship Him. This is in stark contrast to the New Order Mass written by Freemasons on a napkin in a cafe.
And then it really hit me. This is all possible because Mary is a mother. She was the living tabernacle of the Son of God. She suffered with Him in His sacrifice that I now kneel before. And He brought her body and soul to His glory. My Mother, your Mother is queen of Heaven and Earth because she is a mother.
Moms out there, let that sink in next time you doubt your vocation.
This evening after returning from Mass, I opened a very lovely email from a priest in Oklahoma. He was curious about something in my last post – Seen and Heard.
In brief, his question was: “Why is there a picture of a window in a church in Oklahoma City when your story describes something at a French Congolese Mass?” Clearly, there is no such Mass in that area. Fr. knows this.
First, I am very grateful for the question and the opportunity to clarify. Fr. was most professional and respectful in his email and for this I am very thankful. If I had a gold star, I would give it to him now.
Second, and here is the clarification, I do not always match the pictures I use to the posts. This is not normally a problem if the post is not about a specific place. I use pictures of sacred art – stained glass windows, statues, etc. – in my posts to both brighten the place up and give my readers a glimpse of sacred art. The patrimony of the Church is not limited to basilicas in Rome, you know. I have been blessed to encounter many truly beautiful churches right here in the US. I also try to stick to ONLY using pictures I have taken myself. Recently, I was in Oklahoma City and snapped a few pictures. Hence, when looking for a picture of a window or statue of the Blessed Mother to put into my post, that picture came up first.
I will try to be clearer in the future.
And Jesus Wept, statue, proximity of the OKC National Memorial, Oklahoma City, OK. (Not related to post topic)
Today, a close source informs me that the local ordinary presided over a “liturgy” for the French Congolese “community” at a local “multicultural” parish. I won’t name names but perhaps he was brain-injured by the climate shock of his last move. Or it could have been the vax. He was pretty prominent about getting that nonsense injected into his arm. The source – a dear friend of many years – had missed the earlier Mass and had no other options. Or so she thought, as I will argue in another post to come. If the New Order Mass is your only “option”, you might actually have no option at all.
Regardless, this source informs me that things got weird really fast.
“After the opening procession, I couldn’t tell if I was at Mass or a revival,” she said.
Oh it was a revival alright – a revival of Soul Train, from the description she provided.
Queen of the Rosary, stained glass, Sacred Heart Catholic Church, Oklahoma City, OK
I’ll spare you the gory details and skip to the “homily”. I couldn’t tell you what the Epistle or Gospel were about because the New Order Mass uses a different “cycle” and calls them silly things like the “First Reading,” etc.
The ordinary apparently meandered his way through a few banal thoughts before spewing forth the following gem.
“God was an immigrant too! He had to cross the border… between Heaven and earth!”
Ok 1) No. 2) What the hell? Pandering to people is now “evangelization”. And 3) See point number 1. Also, many of the Congolese in this particular parish were born here but whatever.
If only there was a universal rite of the Church that goes back to ancient days, given to us by Our Lord Himself. Imagine if all Catholics could walk into a Catholic church and worship in the same way as their ancestors and not wonder if they had wandered into a low rent Protestant megachurch. Imagine if prelates knew and believed and taught the authentic Catholic faith – vital things that might help their flocks advance in sanctity? What would that be like to enter such a Church?
This evening at a local function, I had yet another opportunity to bring up my girl, St. Rita. She never ceases to amaze me. Once again, if anyone reading this has an impossible request, please turn to St. Rita of Cascia. Here is the novena prayer.
Also, she “popped up” at the state fair this last week. LOL.
Folks, I got off all that social media nonsense a while ago. Sorry but I'm not on Twitbook, Facepalm, YouHu, WingWang or any of the others. Maybe an event will happen to make me change my mind like Peter and Paul coming down with flaming swords and commanding it be so. Until then, read the blog and if you feel a comment is in order or you feel like sharing a tip or suggestion for a topic, email me at harvey@harveymillican.com.
Harvey Millican's Blog: Musings of a Trad Dad 