The Holy Father In Portugal...

Fr Gonzales (of Overheard in the Sacristy fame) posted the following photo, which made me smile. I would just like to point out to His Hermeneuticalness that the phone in question is not a clunky Android phone, but a super-sleek iPhone...

...like the one I have.

Fr. Gonzales also posted the Holy Father's text number. I hope it's true... I shall try it out tomorrow (after all, it's 10:45pm over there now, so it's a little late to be getting text messages from strange women...)

And Another Link To Check Out...

I do occasionally stumble upon new blogs (ok, new-to-me) without having received a heads-up in the com-box or a plea to be included on the blogroll.

The Noise of the Crusade is a new blog - it appears to have been started in April - and there is no information on Last Knight, the author... not even location or sex. From the subject matter, I shall assume that the Knight is male, unless he informs me otherwise... and the current blogroll (on which I am honoured to be included amongst very august company) seems to indicate that he may hail from Albion's shores...

More Links To Explore...

Autumn asked me to publicise her two blogs and to add them to my blogroll. After checking her out (she's a wife, mother, grandmother, homemaker, and still has time to update two blogs!!? I'm doing something wrong!) I am happy to recommend both of them.

I vaguely recall Autumn as "Autumn Rose" - her main blog URL seems familiar - but I suspect she got culled in a previous existence... I get rather ruthless about cutting out dead or inactive blogs from my blogroll, sometimes too much so!

Anyway, she's got lots of fascinating stuff, and her talents in the cakemaking realm leave me utterly speechless (and drooling... definitely drooling!)

So, go and visit Life on the Home Front if you want to know about cakes, homemaking, war-time recipes and other stuff, and Autumn's Leaves for musings on life, the universe and everything else... and be sure to tell her that I sent you!

Busy Again...

I've been busy with my camera this afternoon, taking photos at the last of our First Holy Communion Masses.

The children were ever so sweet.

I have loaded all of the photos onto Flickr, so they are freely available for downloading. Alternatively, you can just look at them as a slideshow.

Linky Love...

This week in Linky Love, I would like to draw your attention to four different blogs by one author, one grateful heart.

One grateful heart is a Catholic wife, mother and grandmother in the United States. Her excellent blogs are:

Grateful for Purgatory - which takes note of St. Pio's injunction to pray unceasingly, as we need to empty Purgatory.

Eucharistic Adoration for Priests - encouraging the Faithful to pray for priests, especially during this Year of the Priest, before Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament.

Grateful for Life - an excellent pro-life blog.

Venite Adoremus Dominum - what I would consider to be the blog proper!

All excellent blogs, and I can heartily recommend a visit.

Urgent Plea For Help...!

The Good Counsel Network is a group which works tirelessly to help women in crisis pregnancies. Fr. John Boyle highlighted the dire financial straits the group is in:

Today Good Counsel has £50 in the bank, we needed £445 to buy this week's food vouchers. We are supporting fourteen mothers and their children at the moment, whose only support is this small weekly voucher. Please pray the following prayer for the next nine days and if you can help, donate online (click on the sidebar link) or transfer money into our bank account (phone + 44 (0) 20 7723 1740 or email for details). As times are hard, our income has gone down and our expenses have gone up.

Please forward this message to anyone who you think may help. For more information about Good Counsel see our blog.

NOVENA TO ST. RITA

Helper of the hopeless

Holy Patroness of those in need, St. Rita, you were humble, pure and patient. Your pleadings with your divine Spouse are irresistible, so please obtain for me from our risen Jesus the request I make of you, that Good Counsel will raise the funds they need and my own request (mention it.)

Be kind to me for the greater glory of God, and I shall honour you and sing your praises forever.
Glorious St. Rita, you miraculously participated in the sorrowful passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Obtain for me now the grace to suffer with resignation the troubles of this life, and protect me in all my needs. Amen.

Our Father, Hail, Mary, Glory be to the Father...

They haven't yet set up a PayPal button, though, hopefully, they will do so very soon. I doubt that they'll mind too much which method of payment you make, but the faster the better!

Please help financially if you can, and by prayer either way!

Feast Of The Ascension...

The Bishops of England & Wales, in their valiant efforts to support the implementation of Summorum Pontificum, (*snigger*) moved the obligation attached to the Feast of the Ascension to next Sunday.

They haven't actually moved the Ascension, which is, of course, 40 days after the Resurrection... they just moved the obligation to attend Mass, along with the Mass propers for the Ordinary Form calendar. This frees up those of us with an attachment to the Extraordinary Form to attend Mass on the correct day according to the usus antiquior.

Somehow, I suspect that their Lordships didn't quite anticipate this state of affairs when they freed up an extra Thursday in the calendar...

Be that as it may, I shall be getting my dose of Latin, lace, bells and smells this evening! I may even take a few photos...

One Of Life's Imponderables...

Why is it that, when I have a cup of tea during my 15 minute morning break, I burn my tongue trying to drink it, but, a cup of tea made first thing in the morning goes cold while I'm brushing my teeth?

*sigh*

It's Been A While...

...so I thought a cat picture was in order. Enjoy!!

The End Is Just The Beginning...

After what has been the most interesting UK election in decades, (ok, interesting for me... the others have all been predictable, boring and over in 24 hours) the end has been declared. Gordon Brown has resigned (and not the grudging "I'll step down in September to allow the Labour Party to make a pact with the LibDems" statement of yesterday) and David Cameron has gone to the Palace.

So now we have a new Prime Minister. David Cameron takes over immediately, which is in stark contrast to the way things happen across the pond.

Personally, I distrust politicians as a group. The parties will promise anything in order to get your vote, and then do whatever is politically expedient. The old joke goes something like this:

How do you know when a politician is lying?

Simple.

If he scratches his nose, he's telling the truth.

If he rubs his chin, he's telling the truth.

If he pulls at his earlobe, he's telling the truth.

But if he opens his mouth...

The incoming Conservative government is unlikely to be much better than the outgoing Labour one. If the rumours are true (see at 21:13), in order to make a deal with the LibDems, Cameron has already bargained away tax breaks for married couples - which was one of the few pro-family policies the Conservatives had in their manifesto.

Wait and see...

Linky Love...

Blogs-to-be-featured this week:

Gabriella's Blog demonstrates her love of Archbishop Fulton Sheen and G.K. Chesterton, as well as allowing the linguists among you to brush up on your Italian. The likes of me has to use the "translate" button she has so thoughtfully added to the top of her sidebar...

Chronicles from the Front - this blog has two authors, Lazy Disciple and Humbly Presumptious... and occasionally, the two actually seem to engage with each other on the blog, which gives it the feel of an exchange of letters.

Argent by the Tiber has a very amusing (and pertinent) post on the new Mass translations - it seems that Marty Haugen et al. have tried to fit the new words to the old "tunes": I particularly liked the references to the "Massive Cremation."

Raquel Welch & The Pill

...and no, I'm not referring to the dissident CINO* British weekly!

The actress Raquel Welch believes that the Pill is responsible for the breakdown in morals, pretty much echoing what the Catholic Church has been teaching since Paul VI. I'd have said "teaching from the year dot" - as the Church doesn't change her teaching - but, of course, the Pill hasn't been around that long!

Interesting.

However, what I really want to know is what face cream she uses. The woman is nearly 70. She has, I understand, had plastic surgery, but then again, so did Michael Jackson, and he didn't look half as good...

Twitch of the mantilla to John Smeaton.

*In case you didn't know: CINO - Catholic in name only!

First Holy Communions...

Last week we had one child make his First Holy Communion at the Missa Cantata - for some reason I don't seem to have uploaded the photos I took... I shall get that done shortly.

Today it was the first of our dedicated First Holy Communion Masses. I was taking photos for the Parish website, but, because the children were right at the front, and their families were sitting behind, I sat myself right at the back where I wouldn't be a distraction.

I shall try and zoom in on some of the photos later, but I just wanted to get the set up as quickly as possible on Flickr. The set is open access, and on a Creative Commons license, so anyone can download it and use it, as long as they credit me for it and don't use it for commercial purposes.

It was interesting to see the recently instituted "Benedictine Arrangement" for Mass - the donation of a set of very nice silver-plated candlesticks for the Lady Altar means that the brass candlesticks can stay on the High Altar...

And of course, my favourite moments...

In Case You Hadn't Heard...

...the result was a hung parliament.

When I suggested, to my fellow drinkers in the parish club last night, that Gordon Brown might be prepared to do a bit of horse-trading in order to keep his hands on the keys of Number 10, I was told that Her Majesty wouldn't ask the leader of the losing party to remain as Prime Minister.

However, it seems that I was actually correct in assuming that Mr. & Mrs. Brown might not be ready to call in the removal firms just yet...

We shall just have to wait and see... In the meantime, it seems that Evan (Dr. Death) Harris has lost his seat - good news for all pro-lifers. One of my Facebook friends reported that he took his defeat with Dignitas...

More Voting To Be Done...

...only this time it's important!

The 2010 Cannonball Catholic Blog Awards are up and running. I had nominated a few blogs, but hadn't expected to be nominated myself, but it seems that His Holiness Pope Zephyrinus (who comments, but doesn't have his own blog) thought I should be up for Best Potpourri of Popery and Terry (Idle Speculations) nominated me for Best Church Militant blog.

I don't deserve either nomination, but would like you to vote for me anyway. Otherwise I shall sulk...

Voting Time...

If you want to know about your own constituency, there is a useful site which gives information on all of the candidates, as well as a description of the constituencies - twitch of the mantilla to James Preece, who has a thoughtful post on how to choose where to put one's mark. The lovely Bones has a breakdown of the policies of the main parties - and ends up with a heartfelt prayer to St. Thomas More. SPUC has a very useful archive of MPs' voting records, though, for this election they encourage voters to contact their office directly to find out about MPs and candidates.

We have a duty to vote - something pointed out in the Catechism of the Catholic Church and Gaudium et Spes. If it truly impossible to vote for any of the candidates in all conscience, then there is always the option of spoiling the ballot paper - at least it shows that it's not apathy or sloth which prevents us from voting.

Off you go, if you haven't done so already...

Another Blog Worth A Mention...

Keeping up with the Blogosphere can be a time-consuming process. I find that Google Reader is the best way of finding out which blogs are being updated without the hassle of having to check them all individually.

This has the disadvantage that I miss out on many blogs, because I'm only checking the ones I already know. Occasionally I will stumble upon a blog which is new to me when the blogger comments on one of my posts, and sometimes it happens if I follow up an interesting-looking link on other blogs. Every now and then, however, I go out hunting: I will scour my SiteMeter stats and Google Blog Search in order to discover where people are coming from and who is linking back to me.

I'm not a major blogger by any means, but I do like to spread the linky love... so I have decided to start a regular blog feature - probably weekly - where I mention either blogs I've just discovered or blogs which have just caught my eye for some reason. Obviously I will continue to give credit to bloggers whose posts inspire me to write my own stuff...

So, to start off, we have Gregory the Eremite and his blog From the Desert. Enjoy!

Our Lady of Guadalupe On Tour...

John Smeaton has a post on his blog alerting us to the nine-month tour of England & Wales of a replica of the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, patroness of the unborn.

Edmund Adamus, Director of the Department of Pastoral Affairs in the Diocese of Westminster, is co-ordinating the nine-month novena tour which will conclude on 12th December 2010, the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

The image is one of 220 digitally reproduced images which were commissioned in 2004 by Cardinal Rivera Carrera. This Saturday, 8th May, the image is going to St. John's Cathedral, Portsmouth.

I've had a devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe ever since reading about the apparitions and the miraculous image on the tilma. I sincerely hope that the image will come to Southwark at some time during the tour... and that there will be better publicity for it. I'd have loved to see it at Westminster Cathedral if I'd known about it.

Video Clips...

These two video clips are from the Society of St. Catherine of Siena's Solemn High Mass at the Conventual Chapel of the Knights of Malta.

I was pretty impressed by the video quality - taken just on my little Canon IXUS 100, the same camera I use for my photos. The Oratory School Choir were singing the Byrd Three Part Mass (according to His Hermeneuticalness...) I'd never heard it before, and it sent shivers down my spine!

In the Extraordinary Form, if the parts of the Mass are being sung by a choir (as opposed to being simply chanted) the Sanctus is split before and after the Consecration (which is in silence... more goosebumps time.)

I didn't want to video the Consecration - I wanted still shots for that - but I did manage to get the Sanctus before and after... Enjoy!

Patience Is A Virtue...

You may have gathered, by now, that I love taking photos. I seem to take quite good ones - more by luck than judgement. It helps that I love going to churches and the traditional Latin Mass - the Extraordinary Form is just so photogenic!

Editing photos so that they are the correct size for the web is a bit time-consuming. If I put the photos up without editing, the blog takes forever to load. So, I have to cut them down to size... which means that I don't always get the photos up on the blog as quickly as I would like...

I have been told that the best way to share photos is via a Flickr account. I have been told this on several occasions... and I have finally gotten around to setting one up.

I'm still trying to figure out the difference between galleries, sets, collections and whatnots... I suspect I'll get there eventually. In the meantime, you can see my photos HERE.