North of the Shire

Check this out.  Just when you think you’ve seen it all.

A Nazi Italian Catholic priest who thinks Mussolini was a martyr?

Well, c’est la vie, say the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell.  We’ve seen our share of communist Jesuit priests in South America over the years, so I guess we shouldn’t be surprised there might be a few Nazis in Europe as well.  In either case, these men need to be disciplined at the very least, and likely some of them don’t belong in the priesthood.  They certainly don’t seem to understand that their vocation is supposed to be their life, not just their job, and they should have no time left over for radical politics.

The Supreme Court ruled against Fox and NBC in an FCC fine case and upheld fines that were levied for indecency going back to an incident in 2003 with Bono of U2 on NBC and in Fox’s case, although not fined, they sought a ruling on a couple of incidents with Cher and others in 2002 and 2003. 

I heard a report on this, praising the Supreme Court, from Teresa Tomeo on her broadcast, Catholic Connection this morning.  While I agree with her that this is a good thing, I find it difficult to get overly excited about it.  Why?

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This is a subject that I have pondered for some time, occasionally aloud, and one which came to mind once again during this time of reflection during the Triduum.

The first question I ask is this;

We express our realization that the Incarnation of the second person of the Holy Trinity, his life, ministry, death and resurrection were all done out of love for us, to redeem us from the situation that we are in because of the sin of Adam and Eve.

The Question:  If Adam and Eve had not sinned would Jesus have incarnated to become one of us? Continue Reading »

Holy Thursday.

I have always been a little fuzzy on the chronology of the Last Supper, the Garden of Gethsemane, the betrayal by Judas Iscariot and the trials of Jesus.

Listening to Steve Ray and others on Catholic radio I have been able to put it together because I heard a part of the puzzle that I had not known, or had been once taught and forgotten.  That is that Jesus, after being arrested and hauled before the Sanhedrin, was put into a pit, hung there in the darkness for what remained of the night, until he was pulled out early in the morning before dawn and taken to Pilate.  It seems that the Romans like to conduct business before noon because by the afternoon the cool of the morning was gone and it became unbearably hot. Continue Reading »

These are the Mass readings for Palm Sunday, April 5, 2009. They are quite long and the Gospel passages from Mark describe that dark Passover evening that we call Holy Thursday, the long night’s vigil when the disciples could not remain awake, the betrayal in the wee hours and the dawn as Peter denies the Lord and when the cock crows the second time, reminding Peter of the Lord’s prediction.

Ever since I was a child, Continue Reading »

There are a plethora of new Testament passages that refute the doctrine of Sola Fide but one that struck me in another recent e-mail from the Catholic Apologist, John Martignoni was this one in Matthew’s Gospel.  It follows the Lord’s prayer which begins in verse 9 and concludes in verse 13.

(NAB)

To paraphrase John Martignoni we might ask our brothers and sisters who adhere to Sola Fide whether they would believe that anyone can be saved if their sins are not forgiven.  (You can likely see already where this is going.) Continue Reading »