A Little Advent Humour...

I saw this video on Creative Minority Report, and it made me laugh out loud. Silent monks singing the Hallelujah Chorus... you really have to check it out!

The Papa Stronsay Calendar...

On Thursday, Fr. Tim put up a post about the 2010 Calendars produced by the Transalpine Redemptorists of Papa Stronsay Island. Later that evening, after Benediction, he popped into the Parish Club to show a few of us the calendar... Jonathan can be seen inspecting it in this photo...

I liked the calendar so much that I decided to order one from their blog. It's pretty easy - you can either click on the button on the blog's left-hand sidebar to be taken to the PayPal site, or you can send your address (via the message form) and the number of copies you would like, and they will invoice you.

The calendar follows the 1962 Ordo, and it also notes several anniversaries which occur in 2010: for example, St. Paul was shipwrecked on the Island of Malta 1950 years ago. It helps to remind us that the Saints are real, they are not just "nice ideals" of what a person should be, they actually existed, and the Church has a record of when they lived. This is more important than you might realise - especially for the young, who view anyone over 25 as having one foot in the grave. I still remember the terrific jolt I got when I read that there have been 266 popes (including Pope Benedict XVI) and the Church has a record of all their names...

It is important to support this and other religious communities, as they do such stirling work: hidden away from the world, but continuing to pray for the rest of us, all the while offering their lives as an oblation to God. Visit the blog, leave a message of encouragement, subscribe to their newspaper, buy a calendar... and say a prayer for them all.

Renewing My Vows...

It's a big day today - I'm renewing my vows, something I do each year. Although I consider the vows to be permanent, renewing them helps me to focus on how faithfully (or not) I am living up to the promises I made. If you want to know what those promises were, you can see them HERE. And if you are wondering why I made them, I try to explain a little more HERE.

The whole thing kicks off this morning at 10:30am with the usual monthly Missa Cantata at Our Lady of the Rosary, Blackfen. Mass is followed by Benediction. There is then a brief pause (basically to allow the schola and Fr. Tim to draw breath) and the service where I renew my vows starts at 12noon. It's a short one, the highlight being the Litany of Saints, which this year is in the traditional form. The down-side to this is that I can't just slot in my favourite saints, as the list is set. Hopefully they will understand!

Refreshments will follow in the small hall, prepared by the UCM. I had hoped to arrange for the party to be in the Large Hall, but there is a charity event booked in. Blackfen is a busy place. Next year I'll make sure I have done the paperwork in triplicate!

Several of you have left messages of support and prayers. Thank you all very much, I am extremely touched by this, and be assured that I shall pray for all my blog readers this morning.

Archbishop McDonald Resigns...

Breaking news for the Archdiocese of Southwark:

At 11:00 am (GMT) on Friday, 4th December 2009, The Holy Father accepted the resignation of Archbishop Kevin McDonald of Southwark in accordance with Canon 401 §2.

The Archbishop submitted his resignation to the Holy Father having taken account of medical advice.

The Archbishop has had a triple heart bypass and also suffers from severe osteoarthritis. This has already necessitated surgery and the Archbishop envisages further surgery in 2010.

"I feel great sadness at having to relinquish my post as Archbishop of Southwark. Although I have had to contend with illness over the last three years, this appointment has been a great grace. It has been a privilege to lead this great Diocese and I have received a wonderful response to everything I have tried to do. I have also been very appreciative of the prayers of so many people while I have been ill. The Diocese will continue to be very much in my thoughts and prayers in the time ahead."

A Diocesan Administrator will be appointed soon and he will be in charge of the Diocese, until a new Archbishop takes possession of the Diocese.

The Archbishop's resignation letter can be seen here.

I guess PaddyPower will be featuring again as speculation among the UK bloggers is bandied around! In the meantime, one wonders who will be appointed as Administrator.

Heheheheheheh... Blog campaign: His Hermeneuticalness for Archbishop!!

On a more serious note, I am sure everyone will join in offering prayers for Archbishop McDonald's speedy recovery.

Twitch of the mantilla to Fr. John Boyle.

You Can Put Relatives In A Pressure Cooker...

The headline on Luke Coppen's Catholic Herald Blog (It's OK to put your relatives in a pressure cooker, says Catholic ethicist) was certainly an attention-grabber, and I just had to read more.

No, nothing to do with serving up Great-Aunt Bertha for a Sunday casserole. It's all to do with green funerals... and the respect demanded by the Catholic Church for the mortal remains of said Great-Aunt.

It seems that acid baths (as popularised by Crippen and Haigh) are no longer fashionable, but a pressurised soak in alkaline solutions is enough to strip one's bones clean. The bones can then be ground down, and placed in an urn for burial in consecrated ground.

Following last year's tour of the local crematorium, I found the whole thing extremely interesting... though, personally, I still want to be reduced to air pollution, if only to have my revenge for being forced to teach the topic as part of the GCSE syllabus...

Tackiest Nativity Contest...

The Crescat has a contest going for the tackiest Nativity scene. There are some pretty awful examples displayed.

One of the weirdest has to be the ducks... ooops, sorry, apparently it's geese...

Twitch of the mantilla in the direction of the Ironic Catholic.

Monday Madness...

Just for Fr. Steven Fisher's cat...

Chemical Magic...

Today I was demonstrating what happens when you react metals with oxygen. Iron filings in a Bunsen burner create lots of lovely sparks, and copper and zinc filings are even prettier (they make green sparks and blue sparks respectively.) I used magnesium powder too, which makes a brilliant white sparkler effect... and a magnesium oxide "snow" which gave me what looked like a severe case of dandruff.

The "ooohs" and "ahhs" were very gratifying.

Mind you, I then used a glowing splint to test for oxygen in a gas jar. The wooden splint bursting back into flame got the biggest cheer of all.

As I said before, Year 7 are just so easy to impress...

Karen's New Blog...

Karen, the Oceanic Gem, has decided to start up a second blog, concentrating on stuff to do with the Extraordinary Form of Mass - details of saints, catholic heritage and so on. She's including references to her source material, so it'll be a useful resource.

Go and have a look at Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie when you have a chance.

The Chocolatisation of Advent...

Miss Ellen E. has a very good and thought-provoking post on the chocolatisation of Advent.

By virtue of the fact that I had a German mother (and thus a doting German grandmother living abroad) the Advent calendars of my youth always had chocolate in them. And not in a box below the picture, either: these were proper Advent calendars, with a Nativity scene, lots of glitter, and proper chocolate... with a different shaped chocolate behind each door.

I wasn't brought up as a Catholic, and not even as a Christian - I was baptised at the age of thirteen - but I knew the Christmas story (a rather garbled version, to be sure) from school Nativity plays. I knew what Christmas was actually about, and presents and Santa Claus were an enjoyable result of the birth of Christ.

With the modern tendency to remove any Christian themes from Christmas, most children now know nothing of what Christmas is actually about, and we cannot blame them for wanting to have their favourite cartoon characters on their chocolate calendars. Finding Advent calendars with religious scenes is hard enough - calendars with religious scenes and chocolate are like hens' teeth. It's up to us to tell the manufacturers what we really want, and to keep telling them, until they get the message.

A Happy & Holy Advent...

I like the season of Advent. If observed properly, it makes a wonderful antidote to the relentless secularisation of "Christmas." It's a time of preparation, hence the purple vestments at Mass.

The Curt Jester has come up trumps yet again with his animated Advent Wreath, which is available free, gratis and for nothing from his blog - the JavaScript code is easy to insert, and the animation will be updated each week, so more and more candles get lit.

Arise Once More...

This evening we had a screening of Arise Once More at Our Lady of the Rosary, Blackfen. Produced by Christian Holden of St. Anthony Communications, it begins with the early arrivals of Christianity in Britain, and takes you on a tour of Catholic history, through the Medieval period and the Reformation, the Second Spring, the Modern Crisis. It ends with "The Revival" which sets forth the necessary steps for an authentic revival of Catholicism in Britain.

I was wielding my trusty camera, so managed to persuade the clergy to pose for a photo... Fr. Marcus Holden is on the left, with Fr. Charles Briggs (Parish Priest of Chislehurst, who came with a few of his parishioners) and Fr. Timothy Finigan.

Refreshments were available before the presentation - very necessary, given the vile weather outside...

It was an excellent DVD: though personally I think that a lot of the commentary could have been played while looking at the pictures of churches, statues, paintings, and so on... Fr. Marcus Holden told me that the budget for this first production was seriously limited (which you wouldn't guess from the quality of the DVD) which meant that there was a restriction on how many different images they could use.

This was a bit of a trip down memory lane for me: I remember when Christian Holden and his brother, now Fr. Marcus, first started St. Anthony Communications fourteen years ago, and, as the Advertising Manager for the Faith Magazine, I persuaded them to advertise with us...

Their next project, which promises to be even better, will be on the Sacrament of Confession. If you wish to buy a copy of Arise Once More, you can order it (and many other excellent books, DVDs and CDs) from the St. Anthony Communications website.

Here's the trailer for the DVD...

Cure For Blondness...

I love Google Mail. It now has a remedy for those particularly frustrating blonde moments - you know, the ones where you remember you need to attach a file after you have clicked the "send" button...

There is an application in Google Mail which allows you to "undo send" for 10 seconds (you can choose 10 or 5 seconds) before sending your missive off into the dark void of cyberpace.

Google must have several blondes in its employ... I mean, how else would they know...?

Christmas Cards...

Christmas cards are becoming more and more difficult.

First, there is the difficulty of finding good quality cards which actually celebrate Christmas: that is, cards with religious pictures - and I don't count pictures of a dove with an olive branch as "religious." The whole point about Christmas is the celebration of Christ's birth. Stars just about cut it. Traditional pictures of singing (or instrument-playing) angels, by virtue of their artistic merit and the theological implications are ok. Santa Claus, robins, snowy village scenes and carol singers are definitely out.

Then there is the whole "charity" thing. I like the idea of sending cards which help to support a charity. I don't, however, want to support any charity with anti-life policies such as abortion, embryo experimentation, euthanasia, population control and pre-natal screening/diagnosis. Many of the charity Christmas cards on sale in the supermarkets support a variety of charities... and quite a few of them are involved in these anti-life areas.

It is a minefield: for example, charities like the Parkinson's Disease Society, which would otherwise be very good causes, are now off limits because they advocate embryonic stem cell research.

If you want to check out a particular charity, then the SPUC Charities page is an excellent resource.

The Manhattan Declaration

A CALL OF CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE

Christians, when they have lived up to the highest ideals of their faith, have defended the weak and vulnerable and worked tirelessly to protect and strengthen vital institutions of civil society, beginning with the family.

We are Orthodox, Catholic, and evangelical Christians who have united at this hour to reaffirm fundamental truths about justice and the common good, and to call upon our fellow citizens, believers and non-believers alike, to join us in defending them. These truths are:

1. the sanctity of human life
2. the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife
3. the rights of conscience and religious liberty.

Inasmuch as these truths are foundational to human dignity and the well-being of society, they are inviolable and non-negotiable. Because they are increasingly under assault from powerful forces in our culture, we are compelled today to speak out forcefully in their defense, and to commit ourselves to honoring them fully no matter what pressures are brought upon us and our institutions to abandon or compromise them. We make this commitment not as partisans of any political group but as followers of Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Lord, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

You can sign the declaration by following this link. Twitch of the mantilla to Bones for reminding me that they hope to get to a million signatures.

Happy Feast Day...

Zephyrinus reminded me that today is the Feast of St. Silvester (according to the 1962 calendar), and bade me wish the star of my blog a happy Name Day... I shall have to make sure he gets something nice to celebrate later...

Challenge Anti-Life Sex Education...

I received the following information from Anthony Ozimic of SPUC. We really need to make our views on this heard... after all, we cannot rely on the "Catholic" Education Service, which so rapidly sold out to the Government agenda, nor on the Bishops of England & Wales, who have been silent, and thus complicit.

Make no mistake - we are fighting for our children's very souls!

The government has introduced a bill which would make sex education compulsory in all state schools, including faith schools, from ages 5-16. This is part of the government's anti-life sexual health agenda. The approach to sex and relationships education (SRE) in the Children, Schools and Families bill has been framed by anti-life, anti-family groups. The government not only wants universal sex education, but also wants to use all state secondary schools, including Catholic ones, as centres for promoting access to contraception and abortion services. Not since the Abortion Act 1967 has there been such a determined effort to promote universal access to abortion.

Please act now to challenge the government's pro-abortion sexual health agenda in schools.

Please:

* read SPUC's new flyer, order a supply and distribute in your area;

* ask local clergy to include SPUC's notice in their next weekly bulletin and announcements, and work with them to distribute the flyer;

* read SPUC's critique Sexual Health in Schools 2009, which explains the government's pro-abortion sexual health agenda in schools;

* write to Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, opposing compulsory sex education. Send a copy of your message to your own MP. You can write to them at: House of Commons, London, SW1A 0AA or email them (SPUC has details of how to contact your MP);

* write to your local schools. Urge them to oppose the plans to make sex education compulsory. Also ask schools to write to Ed Balls MP (Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families), to the Prime Minister and to the local MP.

So Sweet !

I do enjoy teaching Year 7. They are still at the stage where they can be awed by simple science. Today I had fun with two small experiments.

In the first, marble chips reacted vigorously with acid, giving off carbon dioxide which could be collected in a little pipette and bubbled through limewater, turning it cloudy: the whispy patterns made in the limewater drew appreciative "ooohs" and "aahhhs".

The second experiment was even more fun: magnesium added to acid, giving off hydrogen gas... which made a satisfyingly squeaky bang when tested with a lit splint!

On A Lighter Note...

This note from a concerned parent to a teacher (not me!) made me chortle out loud, much to the consternation of Sylvester, who rapidly moved away from the vicinity of my ankles. The caption by The Crescat was brilliant: "If she home-schooled, this would never be an issue..."

Nightmare Time...

This story, courtesy of the Daily Mail is absolutely chilling, real nightmare stuff.

Rom Houben, trapped in his paralysed body after a car crash, described his real-life nightmare as he screamed to doctors that he could hear them - but could make no sound.
'I screamed, but there was nothing to hear,' said Mr Houben, now 46, who doctors thought was in a persistent vegetative state.

His case has only just been revealed in a scientific paper released by the man who 'saved' him, neurological expert Dr Steven Laureys.
'Medical advances caught up with him,' said Dr Laureys, who believes there may be many similar cases of false comas around the world.

He was so lucky that no-one thought it was in his best interests to die, and so stop feeding him"for his own good."

The claims that anyone is in a 'persistent vegetative state' always sends chills down my spine. As a teenager, I was knocked down by a car and was not expected to live through the night. The next day, the doctors told my mother that I would probably survive, but would be irreversibly brain-damaged. I heard this assessment of my chances, and was desperately trying to communicate with those around me, but couldn't do anything more than make moaning noises. I was terrified. Luckily, my experience was very short-lived. Rom Houben went through this hell for 23 years... all the while, he was able to hear what was happening around him.

Unfortunately, I doubt that this will give the "right to die" contingent any sleepless nights.

Twitch of the mantilla to Matthew Archbold of CMR.