My questions, Dear Abby, are: Is this a one person at a time bathroom? Or is it a large public bathroom with multiple stalls, urinals, sinks, and vending machines?
I am a priest and our church buildings have single bathrooms that allow one person at a time to enter, male or female, handicapped or not.
Confused on Hilton Head.
Several years ago, a family of my parishioners from Saint Anne Church in Richmond Hill, Georgia dressed up as the now Venerable Georgia Martyrs. Their tonsures are not fake! They tried to be as accurate as possible in depicting the Venerables. The two tallest, father and son, reprise their role in the video at the end of this post which is professionally produced.
The Georgia martyrs were martyred between September 14th and September 17th, 1597 on Saint Catherine Island which is a barrier island off of Richmond Hill, Georgia. There is good news concerning their canonization process which the Diocese of Savannah has been seeking for many years:
On behalf of Bishop Stephen D. Parkes, the Diocese of Savannah is grateful to announce that on January 27, 2025, Pope Francis authorized the promulgation of the Decree concerning the martyrdom of the Servants of God Pedro de Corpa and Companions, of the Order of Friars Minor, killed in odium fidei (“hatred of the faith”) in September 1597.
The publication of the Decree – declaring that the friars were true martyrs for Christ – is an official act that paves the way for the celebration of the rite of beatification. From this day forward and until beatification, Friar Pedro de Corpa, Friar Blas Rodríguez, Friar Miguel de Añon, Friar Antonio de Badajóz, and Friar Francisco de Veráscola are entitled to the title of “Venerables.”
Details regarding the rite of beatification will be forthcoming.
Bishop Parkes would like to thank the Holy Father; His Eminence Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints; the Order of Friars Minor of the Our Lady of Guadalupe Province; and all of those who have worked to promote the Cause of the Georgia Martyrs for over four decades. May Venerable Friar Pedro de Corpa and Companions intercede for families everywhere, and inspire husbands and wives around the world to live out the sacrament of marriage with love, truth, and fidelity.
I just asked the brand new Chinese AI “DEEPSEEK”, about the priest’s posture during the consecration in the Traditional Latin Mass—
It’s Reply…..
Leaning over the elements and speaking the words of consecration—carries deep symbolic and theological significance. This posture can be understood as a profound reflection of divine action, particularly when compared to God the Father breathing life into Adam in Genesis 2:7. Here’s how the two are connected:
1. **Divine Humility and Intimacy**: In Genesis, God stoops down to breathe life into Adam, demonstrating His intimate involvement in creation and His desire to share His life with humanity. Similarly, the priest, leaning over the bread and wine, embodies a posture of humility and reverence, reflecting Christ’s own humility in the Incarnation and His willingness to offer Himself for humanity. This leaning posture signifies the priest’s role as an instrument of Christ, bringing divine life to the faithful through the Eucharist.
2. **The Breath of Life and the Words of Consecration**: Just as God’s breath in Genesis imparts physical and spiritual life to Adam, the priest’s words of consecration—”This is My Body” and “This is My Blood”—bring about the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. The act of speaking these words while leaning over the elements can be seen as a symbolic reenactment of God’s life-giving breath. The words themselves, like the divine breath, are transformative, changing the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ.
3. **Creation and New Creation**: The priest’s posture and actions during the consecration also evoke the themes of creation and new creation. In Genesis, God’s breath initiates the first creation, while in the Eucharist, the priest’s words, through the power of the Holy Spirit, participate in the new creation brought about by Christ’s sacrifice. The leaning posture signifies the priest’s role in mediating this new creation, bringing the life of Christ to the Church.
4. **Sacrificial Offering**: The priest’s leaning over the elements also reflects the sacrificial nature of the Eucharist. Just as Christ offered Himself on the Cross, the priest, in persona Christi, offers the Eucharistic sacrifice to the Father. This posture of leaning over the altar can be seen as a gesture of offering, presenting the gifts of bread and wine to be transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ.
5. **Mystery and Reverence**: The posture of leaning over the elements underscores the mystery and reverence of the moment. The priest’s physical closeness to the bread and wine signifies the profound mystery of the Real Presence and the sacredness of the act being performed. It is a moment of deep communion between heaven and earth, where the divine life is made present in the midst of the congregation.
In summary, the priest’s posture of leaning over the elements and speaking the words of consecration during the Traditional Latin Mass is rich with symbolic meaning. It reflects the humility, intimacy, and life-giving action of God in creation and redemption, drawing a parallel between the breath of life given to Adam and the transformative words of consecration that bring Christ’s presence into the Eucharist. This posture highlights the priest’s role as a mediator of divine life and the Eucharist as the source and summit of Christian life.
Those who did not vote for Trump are unhinged by what he is doing which is what he promised to do, good, bad, ugly or indifferent.
He won the majority of voting Americans and by a goodly number. But the electoral college was a landslide victory for him and that is what counts in our democracy.
We know that part of the strategy of the Democrats this election season, based upon Trump Derangement Syndrome was to shame and marginalize those who would vote for him. In 2016 there was some of that but on steroids in 2024! In fact, because of this shaming of Trump voters in 2016, most did not come out of the closet to say they voted for him.
But the Democrat strategy in 2024 backfired because it was a steroids. President Biden, Vice President Harris and others, especially the celebrity cult culture called those who would vote for President Trump garbage, Fascists Nazis, and even worse.
Coupled with the two who ran for president, President Biden suffering from severe progressive dementia and VP Harris suffering from a lack of skills or merit to be the president, and their shaming language of the electorate, we understand now why they lost in a landslide electoral college victory for the President.
But today, the real derangement and becoming unhinged is Democracy Derangement Syndrome. The voters spoke and in our system the voters who are in the majority, or at least, the electoral college’s majority, wins and the newly elected is given a mandate to follow through on his/her promises.
President Trump also suffered fron Democracy Derangement Syndrome in 2020 as did some of his most ardent supporters.
This derangement syndrome and the unhinging that then occurs is an equal opportunity pathology!
One commenter here laments the lies of Vice President Vance in an interview he gave to CBS’s Face the Nation, raising the level of lies, compared to Biden-Harris administration to a new level of pathology.
Well, my dear friends, immorality and amorality are the new norm in the world in general and the USA in particular.
How did this happen? By the sidelining of religion and its call for morality in the world and censoring immorality.
Our democratic processes as well as court decisions have led to this miserable state of affairs. Canceling our Judeo-Christian culture by voters and court decisions led to the elimination of God and prayer in public schools in order not to offend other religions and those of no religion. Teaching of Judeo-Christian morals within the context of its Biblical norms was and is canceled too.
We can thank voters and court decisions for all of this and in particular we can thank the Democrat Party which supports all of this immorality based upon their voters’ base and what they want. Democrats have done more to eliminate morality in America than any other political party to the point of praising the murder of unborn children and calling it health care! That is the biggest pathological lie which had led to other assaults on the dignity of human life by both Republicans and Democrats.
Previously to this, the Catholic Church as well as Protestantism and Judaism had great influence on our government and the motions picture industry and voters. A Jesuit Catholic priest brought together an ecumenical and interfaith coalition of people to help censor Hollywood in the 1920’s as motion pictures were taking the country down the road of immorality and amorality, which they have eventually succeeded to do in a way no one ever thought could be done. What he accomplished led to the Hayes Code which slowed down the concupiscence of humanity which leads to what we are experiencing today as religion get no respect but immorality and lies do. Hollywood and others canceled the Hayes code by 1968 and today any and everything goes supported by the general population who wants the glorification of evil, amorality and immorality. Evil is presented as good. And government and judicial entities allow it.
This is what religion instigated by a Jesuit Catholic priest was able to do in the long gone past. This will not be possible again except for some sort of apocalyptic disaster, such as the Second Coming of Christ, until then we will have to live in a depraved, perverted, immoral and amoral world that hates religion involved in the public square supported by governmental and judicial policies of any given country, like the USA:
The Excerpt:
If you’re wondering what the Hays Code is, it was a set of guidelines created by Hollywood’s Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) in 1930 to regulate the content of films. The code was named after Will H. Hays, who was the president of the MPPDA at the time.
The main purpose of the Hays Code was to ensure that films were morally acceptable and did not offend the sensibilities of the audience.
The Hays Code had a long list of “don’ts and be carefuls” that filmmakers had to follow. Some of the Hays Code rules included:
These were just some of the guidelines that filmmakers had to follow. The Hays Code was strict, and filmmakers had to submit their scripts to the Production Code Administration for approval. If a film did not follow the guidelines, it would not receive a seal of approval from the PCA, which meant that it could not be shown in theaters.
Overall, the Hays Code was an attempt to regulate the moral content of films. While it was in effect, it had a significant impact on the films that were produced in Hollywood.
Inspired by the exaggerated gestures that liturgists tried to impose on the Modern Mass, many TLM Masses have the exaggerated lifting of the priest’s chasuable.
But I have tried to teach servers to maintain the noble sobriety of the TLM even with the lifting of the chasuble. I think they heard me!
Getting incensed at Mass and bib chasubles, not my favorite, bib chasubles, not getting incensed at Mass, and note no lace on me but I dig that rigid crazy, lacy altar cloth, so unlike me who is flexible and not disordered since I wear no lace:
This orientation helps maintain the youthful integrity of the celebrant who is forever young in the Lord!
Thanks be to God that the Mass is ended and we go!
This is Vice President JD Vance’s Face the Nation interview on Sunday, January 26. Go to minute 9:30 for the Catholic debate when the reporter asked about immigration and Catholic teaching. He makes a couple of major accusations about the misuse of government funds for immigration and the bishops not calling out the sex trafficking of young children, he says 300,000, who have entered the country via sex traffickers.
This public debate with insinuations not always backed up with facts and religious leaders going after sinners by name isn’t the way to go.
I would suggest that bishops deal with politicians who are in their dioceses privately and if they persist in leading people astray politically and otherwise to publicly excommunicate them. But I guess that is a form of deportation too!
Will the influence of Catholic ‘natural law’ on Trump officials make America medieval?
In 2018, Vox commissioned me to write a story about medieval Catholic ideas and the radical transformation of American politics that had vaulted Donald Trump to the presidency. I thought it would be provocative to include some call-out boxes at the top that named names.
Exploring the vectors to these Catholic ideas invariably led to places such as Fox News, the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society, the Supreme Court and the more creepy Trump-infested parts of the federal government. Think Fox News host Sean Hannity, Federalist Society Chair Leonard Leo, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and Trump strategist Steve Bannon.
Unfortunately, Vox did not approve, and my editor offered me a kill fee to go away. I subsequently published a list-free version of the story in The New Republic.
At the time, I associated this reluctance to name names with the inability of people who are not Catholic to grasp the central role of the Catholic natural-law tradition in shaping the ideology, institutions, policies and behaviors of this radical right.
Catholic natural law operates on the premise that humans are created in God’s image, and social order and domestic tranquility require that humans understand, accept and honor the qualities ordained by nature, especially the distinction between male and female.
Catholicism teaches that natural law is “written and engraved in the soul of each and every man.” It is the basis for the capacity of individuals to discern good from evil. It is central to the catechism.
Natural law has been the foundation for Catholic right- wingers’ assault upon Enlightenment liberalism. It is the basis of their “post-liberal” vision for the future, which is largely about restoring the natural order of things on behalf of the “common good.”
Following the elevation of U.S. Sen. JD Vance, a Catholic convert and zealot, to copilot the Trump presidency, everyone is now coming out of the Catholic closet. Where, in truth, they’d never been hiding.
I’ll give you a few examples.
Vance opened a lot of eyes to the reality that there are many Catholics who are less the charitable, loving kind and more the censorious, hating kind. During his conversion experience, he was deeply influenced by Catholic natural law principles. An article of faith for him is that human beings are fundamentally prone to evil, which he attributes to “a society oriented entirely towards consumption and pleasure, spurning duty and virtue.”
There’s also Sean Cooksey, who is in his early 30s. He was nominated by Trump and confirmed by the Senate in 2020 to be the youngest-ever commissioner of the Federal Election Commission.
Cooksey brings into the elections arena the pugilistic temperament of a practicing Catholic with a University of Chicago law degree. Whereas Democrats prefer institutionalist rules of engagement — shake hands, no rough stuff, wear your helmets and mouth guards — Cooksey sees federal elections as bare-knuckle brawls in which contenders take it to the bitter end.
And then there’s Karoline Leavitt, who at the age of 27 is the spitfire, never-back-down White House press secretary for Trump.
In the current Trump regime, of 36 people elected or appointed to key Cabinet, agency and White House staff positions for which information on religious affiliation is available, 16 are Catholic, representing nearly half of the group. (Catholics have fallen to about 20% of the U.S. population.)
Members of Congress also are increasingly Catholic, especially in the Republican Party. In the past 16 years, Catholic representation among House Republicans has increased, while dropping for House Democrats, reflecting the hard turn to the right of political Catholicism, generally.
The same trend applies to the federal courts. Six of the nine Supreme Court justices are Catholic, and another was raised Catholic; only one is liberal. Prior to the appointment of Antonin Scalia, a devout Catholic, to the Supreme Court in 1986, only six of the previous 102 justices in the court’s history had been Catholic.
We cannot understand the looming jackboot upon the neck of the nation without focusing on traditionalist Catholic influences that for decades have been invisible to the liberal imagination, leaving it defenseless against the intellectual and emotional assaults upon its foundations.
Catholic natural-law fantasies about the proper ordering of sexuality, reproductive rights, gender roles, the natural family and religious freedom now command the heights of American law and politics.
What’s important here is not that a high percentage of Trump loyalists practice and worship as Catholics in their private lives. It’s that the cultural and intellectual foundations of their illiberal, authoritarian political commitments emerge from reactionary Catholic traditions dating back 800 years.
The Republican creed is MAGA — “Make America Great Again.” The more appropriate creed might be MAMA — “Make America Medieval Again.”
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Peter H. Schwartz writes at the broad intersection of philosophy, politics, history and religion. He publishes the Wikid World newsletter on Substack.
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Copyright (C) 2024, Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
This photo was taken last week, January 15th. It’s interesting on many levels. Do you note what is off-putting?
They finally told the truth, now that deporting those who have illegally entered the USA helped Trump to win the election, by saying that President Biden deported more than 62,000 illegals in 2024.
The difference was that Biden used civilian aircraft, not government planes. IT WAS DONE BY STEALTH!
Did you get that? President Biden, or whoever was running the country in his name, did not want people to know he was doing this.
And please remember, President Obama had quite the record of deporting that the press at the time did cover as he made it no secret.
HARPER VALLEY PTA DEMOCRATS—WHAT A CROWD!
I am starting this interview from four years ago five minutes into about an 11 minute segment. Watch where Bishop Budde flat out says she believes in a woman’s right to deport her unborn child by hiring a hitman to take her/him out through murder. Bishop Budde isn’t the one to lecture Donald Trump on any moral issue. Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta and Pope Francis could do it, Cardinal Gregory could also, but not Bishop Budde. Let her know!
I don’t advise doing anything which resembles a Nazi salute and Musk should have known better. But he may be compromised on making appropriate social manners’ judgments.
I hate when bishops and priests raise their hand to offer a blessing and the raised hand looks like a Nazi salute. Anti-Catholics with their hair on fire, like those progressives hysterical and with hair on fire over Musk, make a lot of fake noise over appearances without an honest appraisal.
And if that wasn't enough to get President Trump elected, they chose a complete "airhead" to run against him, the "word salad speaking" Vice President Harris.
You can't make this stuff up. The Democrats got their archenemy elected. They have no one to blame but themselves.
But back to Bishop Budde.
Apart from an inappropriate setting to castigate the president, where he could not respond directly, and make no mistake, she was speaking to him directly, high aloft in a pulpit to protect her and elevate her words, what she said, in general terms, is Catholic Social Teaching. Pope Francis would well have said the generalities in the same way.
I don't think, though, that Pope Francis would have done so speaking high aloft from that same pulpit looking down on President Trump. I might be wrong, but not even Pope Francis would have done that even though he might agree with Bishop Budde.
I agree with Bishop Budde on many points that are religious but separated from political ideologies and laws promoted by that ideology. She clearly is anti-Catholic when it comes to sexual morality, abortion, and LGBTQ+++ Ideologies. No Catholic clergy were asked to pray at the service in which she castigated President Trump while other religions were included. So much for inclusivity.
I have read some commentaries by Episcopalians. They say Bishop Budde and the Anglican Communion have no moral authority to speak to anyone and that there are more clergy prancing around their sanctuaries/church buildings, than laity, as most laity have emptied the pews of the Anglican Communion, especially the super rich, upper class, nose looking down Protestant Episcopal Church USA.
What the Holy Father says, though, says a lot about why one never hears him talking about sexual morality. He thinks too much has been said about it in past; it preoccupies people with morality below the belt and not other issues of morality that should be more emphasized as these, according to the Holy Father, are more hurtful and immoral.
That thinking, in a nutshell, is part and parcel of his backward 1960's papacy. He fails to recognized that in all issues concerning the Catholic Faith and Morals of the Church, as well as canon law, it isn't either/or but both/and.
When one issue of morality is de-emphasized in favor of another, both are de-emphasized and people are given one more reason to elevate situational ethics to a dogma.
The other danger implicit in Collins article below, also shows why the sex abuse scandal and tragedy exacerbated in the 1970's, with 1974 being its peak, according to the John Jay Study, is because of the thinking of bishops throughout the world inspired by the 1960's "new morality" of the Church that wanted to de-emphasize sex and sexual sins and elevate social sins to a new puritanical level of culpability and guilt.
Pope Francis is the best example of why 1974 was a year of disaster for the priesthood and the Church where innocent victims were made to suffer because of sex abuse mortal sins and crimes enabled by bishops and their neglect and/or ambivalence of below the belt crimes and mortal sins.
Press title for Collins' stunning appraisal from Crux:
You can get on your high horse and complain about deporting illegal and criminal aliens and stating that the biological truth is that there is only two sexes, male and female, and the truth hurts those who want to be something else and perhaps even a different race.
But it all starts with what Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta told the world and the sitting president in 1994. If you want abortion throughout the nine months of pregnancy and dare to call it health care, nothing else you say is worth hearing:
He is liberated from being lacephobic and anti-beautiful chasuable and certainly isn’t ad orientemphobic. And despite the lace and ornate vestments, the good cardinal seems to be normal and non-rigid and with no deep seated phobias. All this bodes well if His Eminence is elected the next pope! And when was the last time we’ve had a pope with facial hair? The God of suprizes!
As sanity and mental clarity returns to the USA, will the next pope also respond to the blowing winds of the Most Holy Spirit? Who might the next pope be to deal with the Church’s malaise since 2013? Who will be the redeemed Donald Trump to assume the papacy?
Just wondering? The Church can’t continue with the 1960’s progressive mentality, now or in the future!
I know that President Biden is suffering from severe dementia. Thus I wonder if it was Mrs. Joe Biden who wrote the pardon for Fauci, Milley and the January 6 Committee Members!
What Mrs. Biden forgets or disregards altogether is that in American Law, one is presumed innocent until proven guilty.
Thus her pardon through her husband the president, presumes that these characters are in fact guilty, guilty, guilty and need to be pardoned, pardoned, pardoned!
I wonder how these characters Fauci, Milley and the January 6 Committee Members feel that the president or shadow president presumed they are guilty and need a presidential pardon!
This might need to be fact-checked, but just as Pope Francis called out President Joe Biden’s genocide as it concerns the promotion of abortion throughout a woman’s pregnancy, a disgrace, so too does Pope Francis call President Trump’s desire to deport illegal aliens and alien criminals a disgrace. Pope Francis is clearly an equal opportunity condemner of disgraces. Nonetheless, Pope Francis calls down God’s Divine Blessings upon President Trump, President Biden and the USA within the spirit of Fiducia Supplicans!
"I ask God to guide your efforts in promoting peace and reconciliation among peoples."
Pope Francis expressed this prayer in a message he sent on Monday to the President of the United States of America, Donald J. Trump, on the occasion of his inauguration as 47th President in the nation's history.
"On the occasion of your inauguration as the forty-seventh President of the United States of America," the Pope began, "I offer cordial greetings and the assurance of my prayers that Almighty God will grant you wisdom, strength, and protection in the exercise of your high duties."
"Inspired by your nation’s ideals of being a land of opportunity and welcome for all, it is my hope that under your leadership the American people will prosper and always strive to build a more just society, where there is no room for hatred, discrimination or exclusion."
"At the same time," the Pope noted, "as our human family faces numerous challenges, not to mention the scourge of war, I also ask God to guide your efforts in promoting peace and reconciliation among peoples."
"With these sentiments," the Holy Father concluded, "I invoke upon you, your family, and the beloved American people an abundance of divine blessings."
Especially the rectangular altar!
I wonder if the Gathering Song was “On Jordan’s Bank”?
