The usual Open Thread rules apply: be concise, be charitable and, above all, be amusing!
Open Thread
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
Just wishing and hoping. We’ll see.
Well, I’ll start.
I was planning a trip to see my brother in Tampa. I made a hotel reservation and texted hit to let him know we would be coming- me and my youngest son. His response was unexpectedly rude. He said he would be lousy company. I took him at his word and changed my plans.
We will wrap up family counseling. My older son has refused to participate and we reached a conclusion. I pointed out to him that because he trashed a picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and a calendar from ICKSP that this childish behavior will be met by a refusal to pay for a year of Catholic high school. He has begged to go to school elsewhere and the tuition has been outrageous. I found Weirton Madonna for $6800 a year but the continued immature behavior will preclude this.
There will soon be a conversation with the probation officer. His is moving ever closer to receiving a boot up his posterior for his 18th birthday.
Like so many other employers, my employer did away with its Work from Anywhere policy enacted in 2021 and has ordered everyone within 50 miles of the office to return to the office three days a week. Employees hired during the WFA policy are upset. Cubicles were removed and there isn’t enough room for everyone. No matter to our CEO. He is on an ego trip. He authorized millions of dollars spent on refurbishing the first two floors of the office building and they can’t get any tenants to lease space. I was going to the office almost every day anyway and I have 8 1/2 years to go before retiring. When I turn 65 in three years the bus ride is free. I don’t like it but I will offer it up and one way or another it will soon be all behind me.
The bishops who, for some reason, have decided to enforce TC to the letter while giving Communion to abortocrat politicians, or ignoring Ex Corde Ecclisiae (lately Charlotte and Detroit) have shown just how much the Church has regressed and the Francis impact will be with us for a long time. Commenters on Anthony Stine’s Return to Tradition YouTube channel daily wear Internet hairshirts and bewail the condition of the Church….as if nothing was bad before. Voris used to do his Vortex ripping up someone on an almost daily basis and he is now back at it. I can’t take Taylor Marshall. He took an hour to say something that could be covered in five minutes. Things will never be perfect in the Church, just as in all other aspects of daily life. It would help not to get so hung up about it.
As for Iran….Iran has been an enemy since November 1979. The mullahs are far worse than the Shah ever was and they haven’t even been punished yet. Who are their allies? Russia, China and North Korea.
God bless the United States Submarine Service: death from below:
https://defence-industry.eu/u-s-navy-uses-30-submarine-launched-tomahawk-cruise-missiles-to-strike-targets-in-iran/
On a much brighter note, here’s a You Tube video on the 13 most underrated faith-based films. They include some well known among Catholics such as “The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima”, “Lilies of the Field”, “The Song of Bernadette”, and “The Nun’s Story” with Audrey Hepburn in the title role, but there are others you may have never heard of, such as “The Big Fisherman”, based on a Lloyd C. Douglas novel, with Howard Kiel as St. Peter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzXsiFtW0Zw
a meme I made for your edification/amusement. (hopefully it shows up below)
My brother last visited at the end of 2016. He was around here for a work-related conference and to check-in with another relation nearby, so we had dinner as well. I last set foot in his house in 1993. We are not antagonistic; we just have nothing in common other than we are brothers and we eat dinner. As a rule, I’m lousy company, btw.
==
I have a dear cousin with a troublesome son. She and her husband were planning to eject hi from the family home on his 18th birthday, but he left that day without being asked. It took him another seven years to straighten up and fly right (bar an unfortunate tendency to f-bomb the world). He never saw the inside of the state prison, but he did have visits to the emergency room and the county jail.
The bombing of Iran will probably have a salutary effect on several other countries much as Samuel Johnson’s comments on the treatment of horse thieves.
I certainly feel the comments about getting together with siblings. Both of mine are hopelessly woke and so blue they could blend in at a Smurf beach party.
Interactions almost always veer off into their “truth”, so we have very few of them. I miss the relationship we had a few decades ago, but I’m not going to change them any more than they’ll change me.
It seems that leftism has always been about sowing division in society and in families. The methods may evolve but the underlying strategy of replacing cultural cohesion with class warfare doesn’t change.
Prayers for all who are suffering these familial conflicts. Life is hard enough when we’re together.
LCQ, There is a St. Elizabeth Seton medal that is strictly for the sea service. At Sat. and Sun. Masses father passed them out to those of us that had served in the USN.
If I truly believe that God is perfect and infinite Love, as God truly is, then I must treat the Sacred Heart of Jesus as the Redeemer and Savior of all mankind, each and every human being, body and soul loved in the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ on the altar after Transubstantiation.
(Jesus loves and redeems Hitler, but Hitler returned rejection of Christ’s love and redemption, or maybe not, but Hitler, Judas and the like, renegades and atheists are in the Sacred Heart of Jesus)
When the priest faces the people during Mass, the priest’s back is to the Real Presence, really.
When the priest leaves the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ on the altar to give the kiss of peace to another at the priest’s back, the priest is turning his back on the only really important reality of the redeemed souls, all in Christ. Pope Benedict XVI asked to have the kiss of peace before the Transubstantiation. The Bible says to leave your gift at the altar and make peace with your neighbor. Leaving your gift at the altar would be before Mass.
Turning one’s back to one’s God is rather rude.
II
When a sovereign person is silenced, all sovereign persons are denied their freedom to accept, reject or reason about the issue. There is no longer “We, the people” for some sovereign persons have been excluded, interrupted and ended. “Us” is denied and freedom no longer exists for all of us. Freedom or plunder only exists for the tyrant.
When the Supreme Court in Engel v. Vitale said that the atheist, Madalyn Murray O’Hair “could go her own way” the newspapers bannered: PRAYER BAN. Rule by the oligarchs. Put it on the ballot so that the sovereign citizens may have a say in their daily life. After all, when the Congress persons voted to give themselves a raise, the raise they gave themselves is a lifetime salary for one term in office.
The sovereign citizens institute their government. Government officials are ordinary individuals who are public servants from the president to the street cleaner, the dog catcher.
Somebody told Donald Trump’s mother that her son could become president of the United State and I am glad that Donald Trump is president of the Unite State.
Thank You.
Frank:
The Blessed Trinity is a family. Evil cannot violate the Blessed Trinity family.
Prayers.
Mary De Voe
When Jesus Christ’s heart stopped beating, Jesus had given man and all creation into the shelter of the Blessed Mary, His Mother’s
heart, making Blessed Mary our Mother, and Blessed Mary’s heart, our church, preserved before all ages by the Holy Spirit.
Jesus Christ before He died on the cross gave His Mother’s heart, our church, into the care of Saint John who took our church and Christ’s Mother, Blessed Mary into his home, his heart.
After three days of darkness steeped in sin, Christ, the innocent Man and God, rose from the grave, taking up His life as He had promised.
Jesus then ascended into heaven and presented redeemed mankind and all of creation to His Father, God. Jesus Christ received from His Father in heaven the forgiveness for which He, Jesus Christ, the Son of God crucified, had prayed; that all of mankind’s sins, original and actual be forgiven, now and in eternity.
Preserved before all ages by Divine Love
For the gift of understanding and love for our siblings. When we strive to love a difficult family member we do so because we are loving God in the difficult process. Love thy enemies. Love? Love THEM?
Yes. For the sake of God we set all differences aside and love the smurfs, the belligerent, the drunkard, the cheat. We love them because God loves them.
This is the way. Not our way, but the way Our Beautiful Big brother wishes us to go.
Miracles happen. Be a part of one in your own family.