A TIME TO PRAY . . .

In the spring of 2006, our parish collapsed the Sunday mass schedule from 8:30 and 10:30 to only 9:30, for reasons evident to anyone familiar with our shortage of priests and reduced mass attendance.

“Some of us will groan” at this, our pastor said in the bulletin, making the best of it: “Some have been going to [one
or other of these masses] for years and don’t know the parishioners at the other masses!” The change provides a chance for us “to see each other and know each other.”

There’s merit to that. The change would be an exercise in habit-changing for the sake of “unity.” The one-mass celebration will be “joyful,” he predicted, and will “remind us of our oneness in Christ.” A stick drawing had a crew in rowing shell and the words “Pull together.”

Prudent parish management for logistical reasons…

“Trial of the century,” heh, running into bump in road to justice:

To date, the trial has had a rocky rollout. Vatican prosecutors, known as the office of the Promoter of Justice, initially defied a court order to turn over video and audio recordings of witnesses, citing privacy rights.

The prosecution did this?

The Vatican tribunal rejected that claim, insisting evidence in a trial is, by definition, public.

Prosecutors this week turned over 52 DVDs full of recordings to the court, which will be available to defense lawyers, but included a list of 38 omissions justified only by “investigative interests.”

The deleted material could be as much as two hours long, and the cuts have elicited howls of protest from the defense.

The court had to explain to the prosecutors why not to hold evidence back? It’s a public trial, the court had to say. Vatican no…

Not the rich and famous.

Pope Francis, as all the regular surveys tell us, enjoys the goodwill and favor of ordinary Catholics, as every pope does.

Quite unlike the experience of John Paul or Benedict, he is highly popular with the heads of the Big Tech giants who regularly visit him, the international Davos elite, which considers him an ally on climate and immigration, the U.N. leadership, which welcomes his support for its global agenda,to say nothing of the international media consensus, which praises him as a courageous reformerupdating the Church in order to better conform to the 21st century.

Indeed, there has never been a pope so popular with the wealthy and influential — both without the Church and within, if one considers the immensely rich German bishops.

So.

Examined and eye-dropped by the kindly Kate, I sit and wait.

I do not stand, like the blind Milton, but I serve none the less, I guess.

Probably the most common, second to classroom deliveries, delivery of (more or less) planned oratory in the Western World, the sermon deserves our careful attention.

I gave it some, a while back, and came up with this:

Church Reporter: Tips for writing better sermons

(POSTED: 9/19/11) . . . What about (self-imposed) TIME LIMITS FOR SERMONS, say 12-15 minutes for Sunday, three or four for week days? This calls for TIGHT WRITING, a heavy dose of Strunk & White’s OMIT NEEDLESS WORDS. That’s onetime Cornell University English prof William Strunk Jr. and his onetime student, the essayist E.B. White, in their book The Elements of Style, which would make good reading for any preacher.

A few of the S&W rules, adapted to preaching:

* PLACE YOURSELF IN THE BACKGROUND: It’s the message not the messenger. Not “I was reading a book the other day, and it said . …

By Wash Examiner:

What is one to make of Jen Psaki?

Conservatives find the White House press secretary decidedly off-putting, an avatar for an unearned smugness that suffuses the Biden administration.

This agitation goes beyond ideological hostility to fiscal profligacy, identity fetishism, “leading from behind,” or any of the other liberal lurches embraced by the White House.

Joe Biden campaigned on returning stability, competency, and decency to Washington, but his administration has been characterized by bumbling and skulduggery.

Psaki is the face of an administration that approaches public justification in a manner that manages somehow to be simultaneously high- and underhanded.

Hey, my people stopped in this area on their way to Chi-town, long time ago.

A Catholic diocese in Canada will be requiring proof of vaccination and identity verification for anyone age 12 or older to attend Mass or other events held at parishes. “Effective October 22, 2021, it will be mandatory for all persons 12 and older wishing to attend Masses or Services in our churches to demonstrate proof of vaccination by using the Vaccine Passport: NLVaxPass or by showing proof of vaccination by presenting their QR code before entering our churches,” said an Oct. 15 letter from Bishop Robert Anthony Daniels of Grand Falls to the priests and pastoral leaders of the diocese.

The Diocese of Grand Falls is located in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Its territory is approximately half of the island of Newfoundland.

As I say, I have a remote stake in…

Analysis by Matthew B Crawford, senior fellow at the University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture.

I live in the Bay Area, in a county where the vaccination rate is in the mid-80s. In late July, I was dropping my younger daughter off for a soccer day camp each morning. It was 10 kids running around an open field. They wore masks for six hours each day, and it was about 85° that week. Telling my fully vaccinated daughter to put that thing on, I felt compromised for participating in the charade. The old Scots Irish belligerence started welling up.

What to do?

Rules are meant to codify some bit of rational truth and make it effective. These days, we find ourselves in situations where to do the genuinely rational thing might require breaking the rules of some institution. But to do so is to invite…

Harumph.

This kind of rhetoric has no place on our tri-campus, nor does it promote the Irish Rover’s mission of “preserving the Catholic identity of Notre Dame.” Instead, it alienates important members of our community and actively ignores the Church’s teachings of respect, compassion and non-discrimination.

Classic censor’s mentality.

Speaking of his cool, calm and collected LA Dodgers teammate Chris Taylor, who had hit 3 home runs, 4 hits in all, and batted in six runs in a must-win playoff game,

“He’s very soft-spoken and doesn’t get easily excited,” said outfielder A.J. Pollock, who thumped two homers and had four R.B.I., giving him and Taylor a combined 10 of the team’s 11. “The only thing that excites him that I’ve seen is, he likes to have a beer. He gets excited about that, a beer with the boys. And then he loves watching surfing.

“Maybe the three home runs today might have spiked his adrenaline, but probably not. Most likely just the beer and watching surfing.”

It’s a gift.