Oooooooh... Clerical Claws Are Out!

Heheheheheh.

Fr. Longenecker threw down the gauntlet to Fr. Z, choosing, as his weapon of choice, clerical garb, with a Western twist.

Fr. Z, after a brief consideration of food and birdseed, decided upon sartorial elegance, using the classic Mulier Fortis technique, with a shot from behind. He also pointed out that he was walking on water.

Excellent stuff.

I've decided to stir things a little. 

His Hermeneuticalness, celebrating his first million hits on his blog this lunchtime, was seen to be sporting a rather swish ferraiuolo.  Yes, I know he should have been wearing his biretta, but I didn't know about the fight then. And, although he's not walking on water, he was certainly responsible for ensuring that the bar didn't run out of beer...

So, if I can't be a traddy womynpriest, I'm appointing myself as umpire. In a mantilla. The rules are as follows... first one to appear in cassock, ferraiuolo, buckled shoes and soup-plate hat wins.

Literary Pretentions...

I have a devotion to St. Anne Line, and I adopted her as a patron saint when I decided to take private vows.  She's one of the three female canonised English martyrs, and I particularly liked the feisty way she answered her judges when accused of harbouring priests.

Not much is known about her life - even the year of her birth is uncertain - though her death was well-documented.

Unfortunately, another friend of mine, none other than Auntie Joanna, knew of my affection for St. Anne, and she managed to talk me into writing a chapter about the saint for her new book, English Catholic Heroines.

It has proved to be extremely difficult to write. It should have been completed back in December. Admittedly, I did get a bad case of flu, which gives me a teensy weensy excuse. But I knew at the time that I would regret agreeing to it. I think it's done now...

I need to tape a card to my computer screen with "Gosh, that's so kind of you to ask, but I'm afraid that..." and then a selection of endings to be applied as needed, for example: "...the cat has been sick on my keyboard," "...I am temporarily insane, and so can't be held responsible for my actions," and "...I've converted to Mormonism."  And then I need to send it out to everyone who asks me to do anything.

I wonder if I can use it to get out of being a Confirmation catechist next year...

Forbearance

We had a sermon mentioning this fruit of the Holy Spirit last Sunday, and it struck me quite forcefully.

The twelve fruits of the Holy Spirit are a little difficult to remember off-hand; this is partly due, I'm sure, to the fact that there are so many different descriptions of them. I looked them up in the Catechism:

1832 The fruits of the Spirit are perfections that the Holy Spirit forms in us as the first fruits of eternal glory. The tradition of the Church lists twelve of them: "charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, generosity, gentleness, faithfulness, modesty, self-control, chastity."

No mention of forbearance. Next I tried the Simple Prayer Book produced by the CTS:

Charity, Joy, Peace, Patience, Goodness, Kindness, Long-suffering, Mildness, Faith, Modesty, Self-Control, Chastity.

I finally looked up Galatians 5:22-23 (Douay-Rheims)

"But the fruit of the Spirit is, charity, joy, peace, patience, benignity, goodness, longanimity, mildness, faith, modesty, continency, chastity."

Fr. Tim had mentioned to me that forbearance was sometimes described as "long-suffering." By doing a compare-and-contrast, and using a bit of common sense, it seems that forbearance is actually the "generosity" mentioned in the Catechism (not a meaning of the word which had ever occurred to me) and the "longanimity" of the Douay-Rheims.

Now, I'd always considered the gift of being long-suffering as a bit of a wishy-washy, insipid sort of gift to have. And what was the difference between long-suffering and patience anyway?

Sunday's sermon really brought it home to me. Forbearance isn't just "putting up with things" in a resigned, wishy-washy manner. It is accepting difficulties, insults and slights, when they are not deserved. That is what makes it generosity. It is the ultimate antidote to the blame culture.

Fr. Tim told us that sometimes the devil stirs up resentments and ill-feeling, even among very good people, by making them feel hard-done-by and unjustly treated. Forbearance means swallowing one's pride, and refusing to allow a sense of grievance to develop. He used an example from his school days, when he was caned for something he didn't do. "Ah yes," was his mother's reply, "but think of the times when you did do something, and didn't get caned."

To accept adversity and insult when it isn't deserved, to accept them calmly and with equanimity, because there may have been times when such adversity and insult would have been deserved, well, I think I can now see that this is far from being wishy-washy.

God, grant me forbearance.

About Time For Another Cat Post...

Given my propensity to oversleep, I found this rather amusing. Unfortunately, I cannot blame Sylvester for doing anything of the sort... he would never do anything which might delay breakfast time!

A Saint In The Making...

Fr. Ray has received a request for information from his Baptismal Register. Nothing new there, you might think, Parish Priests are always getting requests for information about Baptisms.

But this is a request with a twist. Rather than the usual required confirmation that a person has been baptised and is free to marry, this request was asking why the person concerned was conditionally baptised, and whether her parents were also conditionally baptised... because the person concerned is having her Cause for Beatification and Canonisation introduced.

Wow... a local saint. What an honour for the parish of St. Mary Magdalen. The lady in question appears to have been a nun by the name of Madaleina Catherine Maria Clarice Beauchamp Hambrough, which seems a little bit of a mouthful, but who am I to judge...?

In the meantime, pray for the good sister's Cause. I hope that Fr. Ray will keep us all informed.

Support Our Holy Father...

The Holy Father has been taking a lot of stick from the mainstream media over his courageous decision to welcome the members of the SSPX back into the fold. Unity, it seems, is all very well, but not if the people concerned are of a traditional ilk.

Anyway, there's a petition being put together. Go HERE to sign it, and show the Holy Father that the whingers and whiners are in a minority.

Pondering The Mysteries Of The Universe...

I am finally tackling my last bookshelf, the one in the hall. Up until now, I've been using it as a repository for whatever item I hadn't quite gotten around to finding a place for. These items have now been displaced to other positions, many of them equally temporary, but at least I can decide what I want to put on the shelves...

I thought I could put some box files and lever-arch files on the bottom shelf, but that required a little rearrangement of the heights of the middle and top shelves. The middle shelf came out easily enough, and three of the doobrey-whatsits upon which the shelf rested also came out easily. The fourth one was a bit of a struggle. I succeeded in removing it after a battle of fifteen minutes, however, and put the little doobrey-whatever-you-call-thems down in front of the bookcase.

I did a bit of rearranging, in order to discover the height of the shelf needed for the box files to fit. And then I decided that I didn't want the box files in my hall after all; I plumped for cookery books, a book about wine regions, and a book about sewing instead. This left rather a lot of space on the bottom shelf, (I'm not the most domesticated of females) but I figured that I can add more stuff later. Of course, this meant that the middle shelf just had to go back in from whence it came...

You probably know what I'm going to say next. Yes, one of life's imponderable mysteries (for those involved with flat-pack furniture, at any rate.) One of the doobrey-whatsits has gone missing, and I cannot find it anywhere. It has just vanished into thin air.

I'll let you know if I find it...

Idle Speculations...

A short while ago, the Curt Jester idly speculated that it would be quite a fun idea to start off a LOLSaints website, along the lines of the Icanhascheezburger.com LOLcats.

For the handful of people who have missed the LOLcats phenomenon, Icanhascheezeburger.com is a site where silly captions are added to photos (mostly of cats), with the sort of spelling a five year old child (or a text messager) might use.

Well, it seems that someone else thought this was a good idea, and so the LOLSaints site is now open for business, with a special St. Blaise "capshun" competition.

Now, about that little idle speculation on the Westminster succession I had the other day...

Candlemas

Candlemas was really great.

I arrived at church early, figuring that someone needed to switch on the heating. Jonathan and Patrick (two of our senior servers) were lurking in the small hall, waiting to find out whether there was actually going to be a Mass, as they thought that Fr. Tim might have gotten stuck at Wonersh. Explaining that I hadn't heard anything negative, we went ahead and set up for the Old Rite Mass... we decided that an outdoor procession would probably be inadvisable, as there wasn't anything in the rubrics about dealing with broken limbs.

Just before Mass, Fr. Tim came in and informed us that the organist and choir would be unable to make it. I tried not to whimper too loudly, and sat down beside the piano to try and learn the chants to accompany the distribution of candles and the procession... One of the senior servers is a music graduate, and so he was "volunteered" as another voice. Three members of the choir did actually manage to turn up, and we muddled through, helped by Fr. Tim. The Mass propers were much easier, as the tones were similar to the ones we had on Sunday.

Unfortunately, being rather preoccupied with unexpected singing duties, I didn't manage to get a single photo. I'll try again next year!

Not That I'm Bothered, Or Anything...

...but it would be nice if I got a few more votes than last time. I know I haven't a snowball's chance in hell of getting more votes than the eminent Fr. Z or His Hermeneuticalness, but it would be nice to be in the top ten...

At least help get me higher than all those atheist blogs... Click on the link to go to the Best Religious Blog category. I'm on page 3 at the moment...

More Snow...

As I suspected, snow has brought the south of England grinding to a complete halt. All London buses have been withdrawn from service due to dangerous and adverse weather conditions. Trains and tubes have also been affected.

Normally, bad weather sets in after I've gone to work, resulting in a difficult journey in to school, followed by more than a few hours spent trying to get back home. Today, I found out that school is closed for the day before I left home. Snow day! Woo hoo!!

Just so any of my readers from across the pond can see what "adverse weather" is considered to be in the UK, I wrapped up warmly and went outside to take a few photos.

This one was taken from the courtyard outside my block of flats...

This next one was from the entrance to the courtyard looking out onto the street...

And this is looking down the road. I'd just like to point out that this is a major bus route, and normally there would be big double-decker buses driving down here...

I then ventured round to the back of the block, as Sylvester's wooden ledge had several inches of snow piled on it and it needed to be cleared (the cat flap is in the kitchen window because I don't have a back door.) For some strange reason, Sylvester seems reluctant to step onto a snow-covered ledge...

Anticipation...

Jonathan, one of our senior servers, is a bit of a handyman. Not satisfied with building a super-structure for the back of the High Altar, he decided that we really needed something along the lines of frontals, in the correct liturgical colours, to dress it up a bit. So he has knocked up a structure from which to hang things.

On Sunday morning, after Mass, I happened to notice various items being tried out for size, like this red frontal...

Later today we will have Mass for the Purification of Our Lady, also known as Candlemas. It should be interesting: the vestments are purple for the blessing of candles and procession, and white for the Mass itself. Not sure what will happen with the altar frontals. I feel a You Tube video coming on...

In the meantime, one of the other senior servers sent me this little gem, with strict instructions not to let Jonathan see it, lest he get any ideas...

Male & Female He Created Them...

I was discussing the interesting differences observed between our Confirmation groups with Fr. Tim. We have the girls' groups on one night, and the boys' groups on another. Most boys still consider girls to be an alien species. In contrast, once again, most of the girls in my group had worked out the details of their weddings already. Some were quite upset that they wouldn't be able to get married on a beach, but cheered up again when I pointed out that the reception could be anywhere they liked, as the church didn't have to be British, just Catholic.

Over at +In Hoc Signo Vinces+, Paulinus has a post where he recognises the differences between men and women. The following graphic demonstrates the thought processes which occur in response to the question, "Do you want to go for a drink?"

Valkyrie

I'm not a fan of Tom Cruise, but the subject matter sounded interesting, I was in the mood to watch a film, and there wasn't much else by way of an alternative.

I really enjoyed it. I understand that it was extremely inaccurate, but I only had the sketchiest of ideas about the assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler orchestrated by Colonel Klaus von Stauffenberg.

Even though the ending was obvious, I found it an absorbing and entertaining tale. I can't wait for it to come out on DVD, as I think it's one I'd want to watch again.

Be Careful What You Pray For...

...or rather, who you pray for.

A nurse in Weston-super-Mare was suspended without pay after she asked a patient if she'd like her to say a prayer for her recovery.

The patient allegedly reported Caroline Petrie, a community nurse, because, although she herself was not offended by the question, she thought that another person might be.

So, it seems that one can now complain on behalf of other people who might be offended by something. Aldous Huxley and George Orwell couldn't have dreamed up anything like it...

Twitch of the mantilla to John Smeaton.

Our Lady Of The Snows...

I parked in the church car park before Mass this evening. It was cold, but the sky was fairly clear; No snow on the ground at all. There had been warnings of heavy snow due overnight, but this is Britain, so that could just have meant an inch of snow...

I left the church about half an hour after Mass, and this was the sight which greeted me.

Despite the roads having been gritted, enough ice had formed for me to go into a skid as I drove downhill, and I crashed into the kerb. Luckily, I had slowed down to about 5 mph, and there wasn't a parked car next to the kerb (or a pedestrian) so no real problem (apart from a bit of a fright.)

My Guardian Angel is probably on overtime...

What Are The Odds On That?

I definitely am not claiming any inside knowledge on this one. And I would hate to start off any irresponsible rumours, but...

What are the odds that the rapprochement with the SSPX has been sorted so rapidly in order to allow Pope Benedict to parachute in Bishop Fellay as the next Archbishop of Westminster?

Do you think Paddy Power would be willing to play ball?

Heheheheheh...