Throwing the Cat

In the tumultuous days of the early nineteenth century, when Reform and Riot were in the air of England and the French Revolution loomed large across the Channel, Archbishop Howley sat on the throne of Augustine in Canterbury.

Howley was an old-fashioned High-Churchman and an opponent of Reform, which prompted an angry mob to attack his carriage on the rough streets of Canterbury. Howley's Chaplain exclaimed:

"Your Grace, they have thrown a dead cat at me!" To which the prelate replied, "You may thank God, sir, it was not a live one."

There's a moral in that, if you care to draw it, for today's Church.

LSP

Starchild Space Alien?

Ground-breaking scientific research has revealed that a mysterious skull, discovered in a Mexican tunnel, may not be human.

After extensive DNA testing, the outsize cranium, popularly known as "Starchild", was shown to have different mtDNA than normal humans, with a much larger number of nucleotides than a usual person.

This has lead some experts to speculate that the Starchild is a space alien, “foreign to normal human genetics within the framework of that subject as it is currently understood... definitely not from planet Earth."

ACoC Bishop

Others disagree. "The Starchild isn't a space alien, it's a hybrid," said one source, "It's probably just the swollen skull of an ACoC bishop. Part human, part something else."

Human, hybrid or alien, Starchild remains a mystery. ACoC continues its journey into the far reaches of the stellar void.

LSP

Children of the Sun

Sunday morning sunrise. Roosters.

If anyone had suggested that a couple of years ago I would've laughed. "Don't be ridiculous," I would've said. But you know, God can build up as well as cut you down.

Just sayin'.

Shoot straight.

LSP

Drive a Stake Through its Black Heart

Old news I know, but MERS is dead, thanks to Judge Grossman, which is a good result if you're looking down the barrel of foreclosure in Florida and elsewhere.

For some reason bankers are resigning by the bucketful. 116 of them as of today, apparently.

Now why would that be?

Stay on the horse,

LSP

Dog Gun Cash

Jeb

I enjoyed Sunday's shoot so much that I had to do it all over again on Monday. Slight change of firearms -- .45 ACP got into the mix and we spent a little time dialing in GWB's scope to x ring standard. I like that Featherweight. Jeb had fun too.

Get rid of the recoil pad - GWB.

But I couldn't help but notice that the Market has surged, perhaps due to the trillions of dollars liquidity pumped into the beast lately.

no-one gets out of here alive

ZeroHedge guest Tim Price had this to say:

"The modern, debt-based economy requires constant economic expansion if only to service all that debt. So what happens when the modern economy goes ex-growth and stops expanding? Iceland already found out. Greece is in the process of discovering. But we will all get a chance to participate in this lesson. Runaway fiscal and monetary stimulus throughout the western economies is in the process of destroying the concept of creditworthiness at the centre of the modern monetary system."

Cash your paychecks, chaps.

LSP

Just Get Out And Shoot Something

Seeing as 2012 is the Year of the Gun, I thought I'd better go out to a parishioner's range and shoot after Mass on Sunday. I like it there -- just you, the guns and, in this case, my linguistic philosopher friend GWB and his dog Jeb. he's training Jeb for a bird dog.

Jeb

I was pleased with the new Lee and shot moderately well with it, far easier to handle than my friend's Winchester Featherweight. Beautiful gun with a crisp and clear Burris scope but full of sound and fury, which took a little getting used to.

The AR performed like a right little heater; neat to see the muzzle flash in the twilight, though my "walk and shoot" performance against metal plates and a silhouette was fairly dismal. Practice, LSP! Practice.

Then it was back to HQ for curry.

Result.

Shoot straight,

LSP

Obamacare versus the Catholic Church

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops was surely blindsided by the HSS requirement that Catholic institutions such as hospitals and schools provide contraception, sterilization and abortifacients to employees.

For goodness sake, the Church has supported a program of universal health care and regards it as a basic human "right"; so what's with the knife in the face? Why is the hierarchy in the US Church being attacked, blatantly, by their leftist friends in the current administration?

Because, surely, team Obama really believes that providing contraception and abortion is good and that religious beliefs, whatever they may be, should be no obstacle in the path of something that is fundamentally right. 

And there we have it, it's all about rights. The Church, with doubtless the best of intentions, has for decades adopted the language of its secular counterparts; for example, Pacem in Terris (John XXIII's oddly Kantian pacifist encyclical) enumerates some 53 basic human rights, from employment to health.

the government loves you

But who is going to enforce these rights? In the absence of temporal power it's not going to be the Church, which leaves the State. 

Unfortunately for the Church and for Christians everywhere in this country, the State's conception of right and wrong is by no means synonymous with the values of Christendom. The Catholic bishops and prominent Evangelicals appear to have woken up to this fact and we'll see how Obamacare versus The Church plays out in the Supreme Court next month.

In the meanwhile, the time for naive trust in the beneficence of the Secular Power should be, for catholic Christians at least, at an end.

We'll have to see how many stand up and are counted.

LSP

Good Horse!

I love Texas

After an exhausting round of back to back pancake suppers and Ash Wednesday Masses with Imposition of Ashes, I figured it was high time to get out in the field and ride JB.

She was looking a little skinny, which is odd because she's being fed well enough. I wondered if she was being run off her food by another horse, or possibly her teeth needed floating. Then again, some think that the soil in her pasture is mineral deficient. Maybe all these aspects are conspiring together to produce a potentially bad result. Maybe, and a process of elimination will bring us to the truth, Viz. Move pasture, change diet, get teeth checked. The first and second of these things should/will be sorted out next week, after a small ten acre fencing project. But more of that anon.

In the meanwhile, I was impressed with JB's performance -- she's beginning to get the hang of neck reining and managed decent bursts of walk, trot, canter, with fairly well controlled gaits and cadence.

There was a time when those simple things would have been major breakthroughs. Now they're pretty much expected. A testament to the horse's temper and learning ability (she put up with me) and more than a few miles in the saddle.

Well done, horse.

LSP

Ash Wednesday - And so it Begins

Lent has begun and with it our Holy Mother the Church's call to penance, prayer, fasting and self-denial, leading to ever greater union with Our Lord's Passion. There are several ways to go about this.

Liturgists

The wrong way.

B16

And the right way.

But while we're reflecting on that, here's some verse from Amma Jo, who is "the barefoot rev. Wandering barefoot and amazed through the stuff of mystery and wonder that is real theology." 

Here we go now:

"This is Lent. Smearing our faces with ashes that puff and run and smear and will wash away and stick to our fingers and refuse to stay put. This is Lent, the gentle reminder that to be but a breathe, a puff, a thing here one moment and gone the next is not fearsome but freeing."

Well now we know.

I wish you all a holy Lent.

LSP

Shrove Tuesday

As we're on the eve Lent it makes sense, perhaps, to leave the bracing air of Valentine's Day bears and Lee Enfield projects behind, if only for a time.

Here's some Farrer to get the penitential spirit moving -- from The Crown of the Year.

"CHRIST broke his mysterious body and gave it to his disciples at the Supper without explaining at that time what the breaking and giving would mean. There was no need, the facts would presently make it clear. What, then, was done to this body? It was stripped, scourged, and nailed to a cross: stripped of all dignity and all possession, scourged with the stroke of penal justice, and nailed up like a dead thing while it was still alive. The body you receive in this sacrament accomplished its purpose by nailing to a tree. You are to become this body, you are to be nailed: nailed to Christ’s sacrificial will. The nails that hold you are God’s commandments, your rules of life, prayers, confessions, communions regularly observed. Let us honour the nails for Christ’s sake, and pray that by the virtue of his passion they may hold fast."

Serious business. 

LSP

Deadly Force

shoot it

The other week a helpful person decorated the parish hall of one of the missions by putting Valentine's Day bears in red tin buckets on all the tables in the church hall. They sit there, as centerpieces.

After Wednesday's Mass I sat there, grimly staring at the bears.

"I should like to shoot that bear," I announced to no one in particular.

maniac

"I just shot my sheep," replied one of the faithful. "Why'd you do that?" I questioned. "Because he was a maniac," came the response.

And that, my friends, is just the way it is.

LSP

Chaplain General

Everyone knows that priests aren't supposed to go around shooting people, except in World War II when the French clergy were given a dispensation by the Pope, allowing them to join the military as combatants. Perhaps the most remarkable of these recruits was a Dominican priest, Fr. Bruckberger.

Bruckberger served in the French Commandos at the start of the war, was seriously wounded, captured, escaped and served with the Resistance, over which he was appointed Chaplain. A fierce patriot and cineast(!), he welcomed De Gualle into Notre Dame de Paris as sniper fire rang out within the Cathedral.

After the war his superiors transferred him to the Sahara, where he became Chaplain General of the French Foreign Legion. Bruckberger later went on to America and wrote a series of reflections, One Sky to Share.

Here's an excerpt, on the Land in America.

"Here, the land has not yet entered into communion with man, and man has not penetrated the mystery of the immense natural forces that shelter him. This land is terribly in need of blessing. The land is perhaps the promised bride of man, but she is not yet his. Most often she refuses to give herself or submits against her will. The land and man do not know each other in the flesh and in the spirit."

I love that.

LSP