Our SSPX community in Linden, VA recently started a website that is now online. I invite and encourage you to visit virtually and then join us for Sunday Mass if you live in the area or are visiting. If you've never been to a Traditional Latin Mass it will no doubt seem a little uncomfortable at first. What's going on? Why is the priest doing that? Where am I in the book?
If the Society and priests who minister to me are about to be declared schismatic and excommunicated, I want to know the rationale and justification for their consecrating bishops without a papal mandate. Canon law 1387 from the 1983 revised code of 1917 says this about those consecrations:
Can. 1387 Both the Bishop who, without a pontifical mandate, consecrates a person a Bishop, and the one who receives the consecration from him, incur a latae sententiae excommunication reserved to the Apostolic See. [For anyone who wants to read the law, the entire 1983 code is online here.]
My husband and I went to the opera last Sunday -- not a complicated opera, but a simple opera. We saw Hansel and Gretel in the English version at Shenandoah Conservatory. What a delight! And, as I watched, I thought how right G.K. Chesterton was in his essay on Fairyland where he describes the mistaken notion of poets to think the fairies operate with a freedom that is really license to do exactly as they please. Chesterton vehemently disagrees:
I think the poets have made a mistake: because the world of the fairy-tales is a brighter and more varied world than ours, they have fancied it less moral; really it is brighter and more varied because it is more moral.
Virginia Supreme Court declines to overturn injunction to temporarily halt certification of redistricting vote
The laity are not members of the Society so if rumors turn out to be true, I presume we will be told we cannot fulfill our Sunday obligation by going to Mass at SSPX chapels and that they do not have the authority to forgive sins so sacramental confessions will be invalid. And, of course, so will the sacrament of Confirmation and Matrimony. Whew! The sword of Damocles will be over our heads wielded by Cardinal Fernandez of kissing and porno book fame. Really, it boggles the mind. So while Pope Leo embraces and dialogues with Patriarch Bartholomew of the schismatic Easter Orthodox Church, he refuses to meet with the SSPX.
What a father, eh?
Are Catholics masochists who turn every landscape into a dystopian city of suffering? What do you think?
In his homily this morning, Father mentioned reading an article by a psychologist who stated that Catholics worship pain and suffering. His evidence? Our churches have a bloodied crucified man at the center, many of our saints suffered gruesome martyrdoms, we offer a Mass with the unbloody sacrifice of the slain Lamb of God, etc. And, of course, there's the guilt factor. Father didn't mention that, but it's part of the picture painted by disbelieving psychologists. The Church lays a guilt trip on their followers who need to spend significant time (and money) de-compressing with a professional who will relieve them of their guilt. All those poor Catholics who wear a metaphorical hair shirt, if not a real one, are paralyzed by unending guilt that needs to be eliminated by drugs or talk therapy. Hmmm.
Many of us have known for decades that the Southern Poverty Law Center is an evil, lying grifter group. Now we have the proof. Let us hope and pray they get dismantled and the fraudsters go to jail!
“For those who believe in God no explanation is necessary. For those who do not believe in God no explanation is possible.”The quote is often attributed to Franz Werfel who wrote Song of Bernadette, because the film included a similar quote in the introduction. It does not appear in the historical novel, however, although Werfel's powerful testimony to the Lourdes miracles proclaims it without words.
Tazewell County Circuit Court Judge Jack Hurley Jr. issued an injunction barring certification of the election results pending appeal. The judge reaffirmed prior rulings, declared the referendum unconstitutional and the amendment process of HB 1384 unconstitutional.
God bless Judge Hurley and his tribe. I would love to see a class action lawsuit against the Democrats by voters. I'm no lawyer; is that even possible? I would join in a nano-second and contribute to the legal expenses. Virginia is my patria.
