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.
I’ve been quite irritated of late with men who are now permanent deacons. Before they were deacons they had (not much but some..) cojones and a mind that focused on what the Church Teaches. Now it seems they’ve lost both the capacity to reason with the Church and their ability to speak out. Primarily in areas of sexual morality and in regard to gross “innovations” at Mass.
Their lack of courage irritates me more than a priest who acquiesces. Reason being they have nothing to lose -except human standing. They have wives to go home to, have had successful careers and have money. What is it that causes these men to become geldings once deacons?
(Maybe they always were.)
The middle daughter who always had a penchant for challenging the rules, went up the slide backwards with her eyes closed, got to the top and fell off breaking her arm. That didn’t keep her from serving in Iraq as part of an MP unit. My 3-year-old grandson recently did the same thing on a much smaller slide and the youngest daughter completely freaked out. I said he’s just training for the military.
Before the Karens and the nannies started harassing us about each and every little thing, we did things like slide down the slide in shorts on a hot summer day. It didn’t kill us. It did teach us not to do that the second time and we grew up tougher and smarter because of that. Many today grow up without being challenged at all. Those in power don’t even want people to have their feelings hurt. We seem to be raising generations of weaklings. But there may be reasons to hope that the pendulum is swinging. “Fool around and find out” seems to be a more common statement lately.
This playground game, Spin to Oblivion, was an incentive for the reluctant child. Can’t get them motivated after their Malt-O-Meal?
Just remind them of this game and off they go running to school.
Who wouldn’t appreciate flying around and hanging on for dear life. Letting go at ludicrous factor 9, aka maximus orbital re-entry, was a sure sign of inexperience and non-respect for Spin to Oblivion.
I know.
I still have the emotional scars.
You can barely see where my open wounds were stitched up from jettison the pod to early.
David, I think a lot of it has to do with the generation. A lot of permanent deacons are boomers. They were raised with hootenanny Masses. And that pesky vow of obedience is a problem. It gives them an excuse to stay quiet. I spent three and a half years laying the foundation for becoming a permanent deacon until my saintly wise wife suggested that I might not be good deacon material. She was right. That pesky vow of obedience. The same attitude that got me kicked out of a Catholic school for refusing to take a Nixon button off in the middle of the 1960 election (and other things) might have reared its ugly head again. Stubbornness is not one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit.
This is obscure, but I’m going to rant anyway. I so disappointed in the direction Mark Shea and Shane Claiborne have taken, it really is sad. Shea was a very good Catholic apologist, a convert from Calvinism, while Claiborne is famous for founding the “Red Letter Christianity” movement. Both now are rabidly anti-Trump. That I do not mind, politics is politics, but the absolute hatred that comes out of them about Trump and his supporters is anything but Christian, and show a blindness to Christian living that is serious. I don’t get why Trump has engendered such hatred, which gets dumped on innocent people who happen to follow him. I’m not a political person, I usually don’t vote, never voted for Trump, but how Christian “influencers” feel it’s okay to breed and encourage such hatred, I don’t know or understand. Politics is sick in America right now, and I fear there’s no pulling back from the division that is being encouraged by both parties. Sorry, for the obscure rant, but this has been bugging me for a long time.
With regard to Trump, I get why some people fear him and think he’s a dictator (I was frankly afraid of him in 2015-16, and could not bring myself to vote for either him or Hillary), but I also get why others love him, given his performance in office and the deranged reaction that the Left has had to him. (In 2020 and 2024 I was firmly in the “I’ll crawl over broken glass to vote for Trump” camp.) Even if you don’t personally like his style, you gotta admit the Democrat alternatives would have been far worse. To paraphrase Winston Churchill: he’s the worst possible president, except for all the other candidates.
Lead Kindly, neither is cowardice in the face of adversity. And that’s what it is.
I never found Mark Shea a notable addition to the ranks of the world’s apologists. At his best, he was a mildly amusing magazine journalist / blogger. We deteriorate with age in all kinds of ways; his manifest decay began around 2005.
==
David, I obviously don’t know the specifics of the cases. But Aquinas says (Summa Theologiae, from II-II Question 60):
“By the very fact that one has a bad opinion of someone else without sufficient cause, he inflicts an injury on that man and disdains him. But no one should disdain another, or inflict any sort of harm on him, without a compelling cause. And so where there are no clear indications of someone’s badness, we ought to think well of him, construing what is doubtful in the best light.
“It can happen that someone who construes things in the best light is mistaken more often than not. But it is better for someone to be frequently mistaken while having a good opinion of a bad man than for him to less often be mistaken while having a bad opinion of a good man. For it is from the latter that injury comes to someone, and not from the former.”
I was thinking about this in the German deaths thread, but it may apply here as well.
Shea went off the deep end during the Iraq War and the happenings at Abu Graib. He tied conservative Christian support for Bush and the war to being pro torture.
For those that are interested, this is the latest about my son John.
About four weeks ago, I went to my mother’s in Ohio as she offered to buy school clothes for my son Charlie. It was a sales tax free weekend in Ohio. While I was there I topped by my brother Jim’s house. My brother, sister in law and I talked for 4 1/2 hours. They both urged me not to give up on John, even though he did not deserve it.
I decided to enroll him in the nearest Catholic high school, Bishop Canevin. We went on a tour. John spoke to the football coach. He was enrolled and joined the football team.
This did not stop John from going hysterical about his teeth again. He had a meltdown Friday of that week that ran into the early morning and as a result we did not sleep until 3 to 4 in the AM and Charlie missed a FNE (Scouts) event.
John found a cosmetic dentist in Toronto that would fix his teeth for about $2100 USD. I got the paperwork ready that Monday but John lost his ID card. We had an appointment in the Buffalo passport office on Tuesday at 1 PM.
John slept late and would not get up to leave…we left at close to 9AM. He refused to go to the local PennDIT office…a mini meltdown occurred due to fear that someone from the local high school would see him.
On to Erie, PA…one PennDOT driver service center for almost 200K people. We wait for two hours to get another ID and I had to reschedule the Buffalo appointment for Thursday.
Returning to Pittsburgh, John asks to go to the Dick’s in Ross Park Mall (North Hills) to get shoulder pads. He didn’t like what the school issued. The store did not have the item and canceled the order. The closest store that had the pads was in Morgantown, West Virginia, 65 miles from home. Like an idiot, I drove there to get them.
On Wednesday the Toronto dentist called and said they would not do the work on August 22. They could only do it on the 29th. I said I would be in Tampa and that did not work for us. John called them, they changed their plans and agreed to do the work at 8:30 on the 22nd.
We had to squeeze in an orthodontist appointment to remove his braces that Wednesday. Not fun but it got done Meanwhile, one of our chickens got sick and could hardly breathe. A vet appointment has to be made.
Thursday, we leave for Buffalo and Toronto. Fortunately, we got our passports…John wanted to do Door Dash while the passports were prepared. So, we drove all over Buffalo for two hours. 3PM came, we got the passports and headed for Toronto. It took over three hours to drive the 85 miles from Buffalo to Toronto.
Friday morning we arrive. The dentist does the composite bonding and by 11:30 we are on our way. Of course, John wants to buy an overpriced shirt at a mall and roam around downtown Toronto.
It took another three hours to get from Toronto to Niagara Falls. No problems crossing the border but it was almost 7PM and in four hours we were home
John acted nasty with his mother and would not go to the uniform store on Saturday. I was too exhausted to fight.
Tuesday of last week, I took Charlie out of school for four days to go to Tampa. My little brother had surgery to reattach a torn tricep. I drove to Ohio to get my mom and returned to Pittsburgh to fly to Tampa as there were no direct flights from Cleveland. Mom is 85 and we are not connecting.
My brother in Tampa is as $&!? headed as my son. He got in legal trouble for a car crash and running from a police officer. He lost his job and has been under house arrest for months.
I took him to his outpatient surgery last Thursday. It was successful. Mom treated us, a long with my brothers best friend to two terrific dinners on Wednesday and Thursday evenings. Friday I took Charlie to Clearwater Beach and my brother’s friend Scott and I bought groceries and made dinner.
As I was walking into the Publix, John called me. Bishop Canevin revoked his admission to the school. He was in tears. More on that later.
During the weekend, I end up doing grocery shopping and laundry, even though Charlie and I spent the Monday before leaving cleaning.
Labor Day John melts down because he wanted to go bike riding in Ohiopyle, 75 miles away. I was in no mood for it
I spent the last two days trying to find another school. One Catholics school refuses to take seniors as transfers. Two neighboring public schools refused to take tuition students.
There is one Catholics school I am waiting to hear back from and there is one nearby public school whose principal told my wife they would accept John without tuition. I had a meeting scheduled with PA Cyber this morning but John got nasty and refused to go to the meeting.
All the while, I applied for a home refi and there is an appraiser coming in eight days. I have to repair numerous holes and dents John has put in the walls and replaced the new bedroom door he ruined as well as clean up the clutter.
While I was in Tampa, John blew off one day of school to get his driver’s license. The last three days of the week he was late every day. He was asked about it, got belligerent and as a result, they looked into his medical records …I gave approval for it as it was requested for the athletic trainer. Their excuse was that John needed an IEP and they could not provide what he needs. This is BS as an IEP is not just decided on or developed on the spur of the moment. John’s behavior opened the door for them to find a way to dismiss him. All he had to do was go to school on time and do his assigned work. He refused.
I really have reached the end of my rope. If the public school does not work out, well, he turns 18 in 4 months and two weeks and he will be out.
Slides can be dangerous!
I never had a sliding board as big as that one.
We would throw handfuls of dust on the sliding board to decrease the friction and make it go faster. It would also cool it off on hot, sunny days.
Mom didn’t like what the dust did to our pants.
Michael Hitchborn from Lepanto Institute gives a good interview regarding the possible possession of killer;
https://youtu.be/LrmHSuVHKeI?si=0T2krpPSvm0jwOTL
Pinky, there seems to be a bad opinion of my bad opinion….
I’ve been told the bishop is lgbt friendly… and that is reason for deacons silence.
Seems a weak reason to me, especially when these men are set in life. I’m not buying their “obedience” stick.
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When I was in elementary school we had this game called “Toilet” that we played on the monkey bars, where a bunch of kids sat on top of the monkey bars and there was the person who was “it” who had to try and drag someone through the space between the monkey bars and onto the ground, and then that person was said to have been “flushed” and then was “it.” Part of the thrill and challenge was the jockeying for position on top and forcing people into the slats so you didn’t get flushed. The teachers watched on as we played this game without interfering. It was stupidly fun.
At one school I went to they had this hill made out of old tractor tires on the playground that was sort of terraced on the way up, probably about a 15-20 foot hill. We of course had games where we tried to jump from the top to lower terraces without totally wiping out, parkouring before that was a thing, we played “tag” on this hill of death, king of the hill, staged military battles, etc. One time a kid got his arm broken, but they didn’t make us stop playing on it, just told us to be more careful.
There was also a giant (to a six-grader) tractor tire that was perfect for king of the hill, and it was a brutal winner-take-all affair. If you played you usually didn’t walk away without drawing at least some blood. So fun.
Philip:
“Michael Hitchborn from Lepanto Institute gives a good interview regarding the possible possession of killer;”
As a citizen, the killer brings himself to Justice. The killer is executed through his own power of attorney.
The Minneapolis killer did not commit suicide. The Minneapolis killer executed himself.
Witness for the Prosecution by Agatha Christi is well worth watching.
Somebody needs to tell the Lavender Mafia that they are going to die.
Question: When God created Adam and Eve in free will and intellect, where was the state?
Answer: When God created Adam and Eve, Adam and Eve were the state.
The Mass for Father Vincent Capodanno @ the crypt of the basilica of the Immaculate Conception was beautiful, crowded full with the Dominican Sisters, the Knights and Ladies of Malta, Service men and women and families. Father Timothy Broglio said that Father Capodanno brought the only thing no one else could…the Sacraments.
It was beautiful and reverent.
The Mass at Lourdes: Everybody got clapped for. Oh Boy.
Thank You for this Open Thread.
Father Clayton Kilburn, C.M., a Vincentian priest of the Association of The Miraculous Medal at 1811 West Saint Joseph Street, Perryville, Missouri 63775-1598.
1-800-264-6279. 573-547-8343. http://www.amm.org. [email protected].
has a goal of distributing more than 2,000,000 Miraculous Medals starting during the pandemic in 2019
PERFECTED SOVEREIGN PERSONHOOD
We, the people from Adam to the end of time and of the United States are in the Sacred Heart of Jesus, True God and True man. We, the People before all ages are in the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Jesus gave us all to His Sorrowful Mother from the cross. Bishop Saint John took all mankind in Mary’s Immaculate Heart into the Catholic Church.
There in the tabernacle on the altar is Jesus Christ waiting for us to visit, to love Him and acknowledge His love for all mankind.
In 1830 Our Lady appeared to Sister Catherine Laboure and gave to Sister the Miraculous Medal of the Immaculate Conception, the heart of the Perpetual Virgin.
Blessed Mary’s Sovereign Personhood is defined by the oval frame surrounding Her.
In 1531 Our Lady appeared at Guadalupe, pregnant and wearing the cloak of a native princess with the stars of the constellation on her cloak. Our Lady of Guadalupe’s image was imprinted on Juan Diego’s cloak and is now framed in the Basilica in Mexico City. The aura surrounding Blessed Mary is her inviolable sacred sovereign Personhood.
In the Book of Revelation Mary appears clothed with the sun. The brilliance of the sun is Blessed Mary invincible sovereign Personhood surrounding Her.
Because We, the people are in Mary’s Immaculate Heart our broken sovereign personhood is perfected by Mary’s love for all mankind. Our broken sovereign personhood is perfected by and in the Sacred Heart of Jesus, risen from the dead.
Perfected sovereign personhood for all mankind from Adam until the end of time is waiting for us in the Blessed Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist.
Mary De Voe
Sliding down a hot slide in shorts should be enough of an experience to not do it again.
Looking at that picture, I’m starting to wonder if the lower part of the slide is really less steep, or if that’s an illusion caused by the curvature of the earth.