Solstice Hippy Witch

June 13 marks the summer solstice and with it the chance for roving gangs of hippies to get together, do a little thieving, goof-off, maybe dance around, get all pagan and trash someone's land. Pretty harmless, right? Like what went on at America's replica Stonehenge today.

Hippies

According to the Sacramento Bee, 12 hippies managed to get up in time to worship the sun as it rose above Washington State's Columbia Gorge at 5.30 am. Elise Mesnard called the site a "beautiful, meditative area." Another sun worshiper, Egypt Rose, was more proactive. She lit a fire and dropped wax figurines in a cauldron, where they presumably melted.

Just a Few Totally Harmless Wax Figurines

She lit a fire and dropped wax figurines in a cauldron. Well that's as harmless as witchcraft itself, isn't it.

To the best of my knowledge, Egypt Rose is not yet an Episcopal priestess.

LSP

Alright There, Ye Guns

In a big effort to cheat the stereotype, I went for a shoot; nothing fancy, just an AR, a sporter Lee and a .45. I was curious to see if I was still able to use a gun and hit anything smaller than a barn door, like the silhouette of a green terrorist.

Typical Texas Range

Sure enough, the green "terr" took a beating, mostly with the AR, and I was pleased to see decent off-hand groups at 30, 50 and 75 yards. Not so good at 100, annoyingly, and I had to compensate a bit for an ironic tendency to shoot left. Some sort of trigger issue, probably -- don't pull left, LSP! The Lee shot well for an ancient rifle that I'd porch project 'smithed; it was especially good to note that the $50 2nd hand Burris Fullfield scope hadn't drifted. Well done Burris, well done Lee.

Shoot straight,

LSP

Way To Go, Welby

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has been in Rome recently, where he met with Pope Francis to talk about slavery and church unity. Famous for his negotiating skills, Welby brought a couple of priestesses to his meeting with the Holy Father. Smooth move, Justin.

The Pope spoke movingly about the need to end what he referred to as the "scandal" of a divided church. "Beneath his merciful gaze, we cannot claim that our division is anything less than a scandal and an obstacle to our proclaiming the Gospel of salvation to the world," stated Francis to Welby.

Canon Mann

The Roman Catholic Church does not allow women to be priests, unlike the Church of England which enthusiastically does. Some of these priestesses were men who became women, like Rachel Mann, who is now a Canon of Manchester Cathedral. 

Rock On, Rachel

The curiously named Mann apparently describes herself as "a trans woman, a lesbian, a priest in the Church of England and a feminist."

Perhaps you think I've just made that up, you know, for fun. You would be wrong in thinking that.

Carry on,

LSP

Hillary Clinton Book Flop

For some reason no one seems to be buying Hillary Clinton's awesome book, Hard Choices, in which she details her husband's randy romps through the Oval Office of the most powerful country in the world. Despite that, Hard Choices is tanking and can be found in sale bins across America at a whopping 40% discount off sticker price. 

No Money

Hillary, who is popularly known as The Witch, claims that she was "dead broke" when she left the White House with her polyamorous husband, Bill. Maybe that's why the Clintons made an $855,000 cash downpayment on a $1.995 million mortgage a few weeks before they left power.

No Money At All

The Witch is paid somewhere in the region of $200,000 for her numerous speaking engagements and wants to become President so that she can make enough money to cover her catastrophic book losses.

Dead Broke

Go on, give her your vote, she needs the cash!

LSP

Happy Father's Day!

I hope you've all had a great Father's Day and a blessed Feast of the Holy Trinity. I have a good mind to fire up the grill in honor of both.

Baptized a baby this morning. Beautiful.

LSP

St. Michael's Conference Southwest

One of the best things I get to do is help staff the St. Michael's Conference Southwest, which is a week long Anglo-Catholic event for young people held at Camp Crucis, in the Diocese of Fort Worth. 

Say the Mass the Right Way 'Round

Our primary focus is worship, and not the useless kind either, with goofy clowns, dancers and a sappy crew of frustrated pop musicians banging their amplified way through the "Yewkrist." No, none of that, just the power of the ancient Western Rite, as seen through the lens of Anglicanism. To help us do that, we have to fix up the chapel a bit, from this:

Before

To this:

And After

A marked improvement. We have incense too and it's strange to see that no one's weirdly allergic to it; odd, eh?

Kindly Old LSP

I was MC this year, which meant I had to coordinate the worship, and I enjoyed that. Quite hard work though, as there's a Solemn High Mass every day, along with the Offices (Morning Prayer, Solemn Evensong, Compline) and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament and Exposition on Wednesday and Thursday. You can see photos on Facebook here.

The Last Gospel

Almost all faculty and students make their Confession and Christ moves with great converting power during the week. It gives a huge boost to my vocation and the faith of all who go; a testament to catholic Christianity practiced unashamedly and without compromise. 

More of that, please.

God bless,

LSP

Lavinia Byrne, Devil's Disciple?

Devil's Disciple

Lavinia Byrne is a former nun who was kicked out of the religious life by the Vatican for obstinate, persistent heresy, notably advocating for priestesses. She used to be a panentheist, maybe she still is. 

Church Builder

Panentheism is a Hindu doctrine that says God evolves with the universe but is somehow beyond it. It was big in the '80s and '90s, making for good academic book fodder: Oh! you're a Professor who teaches philosophy of religion and you're a Christian, but you're also a Hindu! Whoa. Here, sign this publishing contract. 

Whatever, Lavinia was into it. I know, she told me.

She also argued, like they always do, that unless the church ordains women, it'll shrink and die, because no one will go to church. She champions the Anglican experiment. George Weigel has this to say, via Let Nothing You Dismay:

Hard experience should have taught us by now that there is an iron law built into the relationship between Christianity and modernity. Christian communities that know and defend their doctrinal and moral boundaries (while extending the compassion of Christ when we fail to live within those boundaries, as we all do) survive in modernity; some actually flourish and become robustly evangelical. Conversely, Christian communities whose doctrinal and moral boundaries are eroded by the new orthodoxy of political correctness, and become so porous that it becomes impossible to know if one is “in” or “out,” wither and die.

But Where Are The Women?

That is the sad state of Anglicanism in the North Atlantic world today: even splendid liturgical smells-and-bells can’t save an Anglicanism hollowed out by the shibboleths of secular modernity. Why British Catholics like Lavinia Byrne can’t see this is one of the mysteries of the 21st-century Church."

Mystery? I don't think so. They see what they're proposing perfectly well and it isn't the advance of Christianity, or anything like it. Empty pews are precisely part of the plan; they're after an entirely new religion and the destruction of the church. They've nearly got it too, with Anglicanism.

Just. Say. No.

So what does that make Lavinia Byrne? The Devil's Disciple.

Just in case you wondered what I really think,

LSP

Just a Bit of Berdyaev

Sometimes, please don't laugh, I get to read books. I'm especially enjoying Berdyaev's The End Of Our Time. He was writing after World War I:

European man strode into modern history full of confidence in himself and his creative powers, in this dawn all seemed to depend on his own power of making, to which he put neither frontiers nor limits; today he leaves it to pass into an unknown epoch, discouraged, his faith in shreds - that faith which he had in his own powers and the strength of his own skill - threatened with the loss for ever of the core of his personality. No, this man does not shine.

And again:

In the present century, the apex of the humanist era, European man stands amid a frightening emptiness. He no longer knows where the key-stone of his life may be found, beneath his feet he feels no depth of solidity. He gives himself up to a surface existence and lives in two dimensions as if he occupied exactly the surface of the earth, ignorant of what is above him and what below. 

Prescient words, unless you think everything's fine with the collapsing modern age. Interestingly, Belloc, and perhaps Berdyaev too, argue that the end of the secularist experiment leads inevitably and paradoxically to slavery.

I stand against that and for the Faith.

LSP

Mass on the Beach

A catholic Chaplain administering the Sacrament of the Altar on Omaha Beach, D Day. The real thing.

Respect.

LSP 

D Day

I once, more than a bit stupidly, asked a retired Wing Commander "what was it like?" We were having a pint in a pub in London at the time and he'd flown Mosquitos during the war, as a pathfinder. After a longish silence he replied, "We had to do things no one should ever have to do," though he added that he "enjoyed the tracer."

tracer

We must thank God for the success of the D Day landings and pray for those who gave their lives.

God bless,

LSP

Margaret Sanger. Devil Witch

When I'm not cleaning guns or polishing knives, I like to get on the highway and visit the sick in hospital. This often takes me to Providence, in Waco. To get there you have to exit Hwy 6 onto Sanger Ave. There it is, Sanger Ave., the road that takes you to a Christian hospital. Named after Margaret Sanger, obviously.

Margaret Sanger was an atheist leftist who married big money. She was also a devil witch eugenicist racist, an abortionist and the founder of Planned Parenthood. As a sexual libertine she had countless affairs, not least with sex-magician Havelock Ellis. Did she know Aleister "Mark of the Beast" Crowley? The Havelock Ellis connection suggests that she did.

Her war cry was "No Gods, No Masters!" No Gods? Are you sure?

The Episcopal Church and its allies are enthusiastic supporters of Sanger's multi-million dollar abortion industry. I'll leave you to figure out what divinity they worship.

God bless,

LSP

Liturgical Dance. How Very Awesome.

The best thing about liturgical dance is its awesomeness, you think. But not so fast! What does the Church say? Team LSP has been hard at work, bringing you the truth.

Oh Yeah.

Here's what the Vatican has to say, in Dance in the Liturgy:

For that reason it cannot be introduced into liturgical celebrations of any kind whatever: That would be to inject into the liturgy one of the most desacralized and desacralizing elements, and so it would be equivalent to creating an atmosphere of profaneness which would easily recall to those present and to the participants in the celebration worldly places and situations.

Tanking

And again, "psuedo-ballet" is also condemned, in case you wondered:

Neither can acceptance be had of the proposal to introduce into the liturgy the so-called artistic ballet because there would be presentation here also of a spectacle at which [only] one would assist, while in the liturgy one of the norms from which one cannot prescind is that of participation [by all].

Thanks, Congregation for Sacraments and Divine Worship.

Disaster

Now, let's see that enforced, please. Go on, don't be shy, you'll get some numbers back.

Carry on,

LSP