Month: May 2019

A cry from the heart from a Jesuit brother: Priests celebrating mass, don’t improvise!

Beautifully argued, exemplified . . .

Dominus Vobiscum: Notes from a massgoer's underground

In America Magazine, words to the wise:

O priests, who improv prayers at Mass! Who give opening monologues to start the show! Who deliver closing arguments before the dismissal! Who make meaningful statements in between the “Lord have mercy’s”! (Lord, when we are not our best selves, when others do not receive the totality of all that we could be…. Lord have mercy.)

O priests who feel the need to make Mass personal or interesting or more spiritual than it appears on the surface to be. Who suddenly put the sign of peace at a different part of the Mass or change up in some fashion the standing and kneeling and sitting. Who do not want to appear as cold, officious church functionaries just rattling off words handed to them by a hyper-literal worship committee in some cold cellar of the Vatican. O priests, trust yourselves!

Trust that you are…

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Unemployment hits 49-year low as US employers step up hiring

Oh my.

WASHINGTON (AP) ??? Hiring accelerated and pay rose at a solid pace in April, setting the stage for healthy U.S. economic growth to endure despite fears of a slowdown earlier this year.

Employers added 263,000 jobs, with the unemployment rate dropping to a five-decade low of 3.6% from 3.8%, though that drop partly reflected an increase in the number of Americans who stopped looking for work. Average hourly pay rose 3.2% from 12 months earlier, matching March???s year-over-year increase.

Friday???s jobs report from the government showed that economic growth remains brisk enough to encourage strong hiring nearly a decade into the economy???s recovery from the Great Recession. The economic expansion, which has fueled 103 straight months of hiring, is set to become the longest in history in July.

Socialism, be gone.

Has anyone beside me wondered why almost everyone goes to Communion at mass, no one holding back because he or she has not gone first to confession?

Confession out of style . . .

Dominus Vobiscum: Notes from a massgoer's underground

Yes. The last two previous popes have done so:

As John Paul II and Benedict XVI lamented, there is scant evidence in our communities of any awareness of the distinction between worthy and unworthy communions—one of the most basic lessons children used to be taught in their catechism class.

The way we were:

Children in those primitive “pre-Vatican II days” were taught to practice virtue and avoid mortal sin because they should desire to be able to receive the Lord and be ever more perfectly united to Him, until they reached the glory of heaven where they would possess Him forever. They were taught that if one received the Lord in a state of mortal sin, one committed a further and a worse sin.

Can you imagine Pope Francis talking this way?

They were taught that making a good confession, with sorrow for sin and an intention to avoid it…

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The Fifty-Year Descent to Footnote 351: Our Progressive Desensitization to the Most Holy Eucharist – OnePeterFive

Holy Communion not so holy any more . . .

Dominus Vobiscum: Notes from a massgoer's underground

Such a wake-up analysis:

The first major step was the allowance of communion in the hand while standing???a sharp break from the deeply-ingrained practice of many centuries of kneeling in adoration at the altar rail and receiving on the tongue, like a baby bird being fed by its parent (as we see in countless medieval depictions of the pelican that has wounded her breast in order to feed her chicks).

This change had the obvious effect of making people think the Holy Eucharist wasn???t so mysterious and holy after all. If you can just take it in your hand like ordinary food, it might as well be a potato chip distributed at a party.[1]

The feeling of awe and reverence towards the Blessed Sacrament was systematically diminished and undermined through this modernist reintroduction of an ancient practice that had long since been discontinued by the Church in her pastoral…

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Poll: Trump’s approval rating on the economy hits a new high – Hot Air

Mick ticks:

White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney spelled out Trump???s 2020 economic message on Tuesday ??? suggesting voters would still be willing to support the President even if they don???t like him personally.

???You hate to sound like a clich??, but are you better off than you were four years ago? It???s pretty simple, right? It???s the economy, stupid. I think that???s easy. People will vote for somebody they don???t like if they think it???s good for them,??? Mulvaney said during a talk at the Milken conference in Los Angeles. [Italics added]

What’s more obvious than that?

St. Ignatius alumni demand answers on 2017 firing of gay teacher ‘outed’ by student | Chicago Sun-Times

Messy, messy.

A group of alumni of St. Ignatius College Prep is demanding answers from the Near West Side high school after the story of a 2017 firing of a gay teacher resurfaced last month [Sun-Times
reported].

The teacher, Matt Tedeschi, wrote an essay in March sharing new details from his controversial firing, which he claimed at the time was because he was ???outed??? by a student as a gay man. In the essay published on Medium, Tedeschi revealed he had also been criticized by administrators when he forwarded a report of a student???s sexual assault to the school leadership.

One of the many wrinkles in the story:

Tedeschi, though, said he found out from an administrator that there were plans to terminate him solely because of the dating profile before the sexual assault was even reported.

Online dating profile?

Tedeschi???s trouble at St. Ignatius started in spring 2016 when a student found the teacher???s profile on the dating site OkCupid and learned he was gay, Tedeschi wrote in his [Medium] essay.

He dismissed that as a problem: “Other teachers at St. Ignatius have online dating profiles, he said, including profiles on OKCupid.” according to a DNA info story in 2017, when he was fired.

Well, if that’s not a problem, it shows how things have changed. (But you knew that, Jim.)

Tedeschi makes his case rather detailed and convincing — student sneaky troublemakers, administrators’ clumsy, covering-up responses, etc. Sneaky students you always have, Ditto clumsy, devious administrators — though a dear friend who worked many years in a high school office is quick to remind one of rules and laws that prevent administrators telling all they know.

Scandal is the issue, but so is equity.