TO VEIL OR NOT TO VEIL; THAT IS THE QUESTION!

Does your parish veil all the statues and crucifixes beginning Passiontide, which is the 5th Sunday of Lent??????

And what colors are used if so? Holy Thursday's color is White, Good Friday is red or black. Are the veils changed?

The last two weeks of Lent are known as Passiontide. We are remembering Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem and the final days of His public ministry. It will culminate with His triumphal entry into Jerusalem (which we commemorate on Palm Sunday next weekend) which finally leads to His Passion, Death and Resurrection, what the Church calls “The Paschal Mystery. 

You might be wondering why we have covered the statues for Passiontide. Wonder no more!  I will explain it! 

It is a custom going back centuries but lost after Vatican II’s revision of the Mass and the Lectionary we use for Mass. 

In the Extraordinary Form of the Mass (the Traditional Latin Mass) there is only a one year cycle of readings repeated each Sunday every year. The Gospel for the 5^th Sunday of Lent in this form of the Mass and for centuries is from John 8:46-59. In this Gospel, Jesus is defending Himself from the crowds who want to convict Him and He tells them that they don’t want to hear the truth and because of this they do not belong to God. By the end of this argument, things get so heated, the Gospel tells us the following about the crowd:

“Then they picked up rocks to throw at Jesus, but He hid Himself and slipped out of the Temple Precincts”. 

The Gospel of John makes clear that at all times Jesus is in control. He will not allow Himself to be killed until the appointed time. The appointed time, of course, is Good Friday as the culmination of a trial brought on by the religious and civil authorities of the day. 

Thus the covering of the statues indicates that the Church in her liturgies awaits the right time, the appointed time for Jesus to be arrested, tried and condemned. But we await also the celebration of Jesus’ Resurrection and the Triumph of the Cross. God bless you.

CAN THE CHURCH IN TODAY'S "ME TOO" MOVEMENT BE SUED FOR ITS 1970'S ENCOURAGEMENT OF INVASION OF PEOPLE'S PERSONAL SPACE AT MASS DURING THE SIGN, KISS, HUG, MOLESTATION OF PEACE? I REPORT; YOU DECIDE

Poor Vice President Joe Biden. His 1970's Catholicism of touchy-feely, touchy kissy, touchy huggy Catholicism has caught up with him in 2019. Who would have thunk!

I can remember how the Sign of Peace in the 1970's became the "Liturgy of Peace" as congregants were encouraged by affection starved priests to go hug wild at this point. Often a song would accompany the protracted Sign of Peace, like Peace if flowing like a river.... Oh MY!

It was particularly awkward in the seminary when some guys seem just too eager to come and hug during the Sign of Peace. Oh MY!

Yes, the Catholic Church, thanks in large part to the Charismatic Movement, went hug wild in the 1970's as Holy Mother Church shrugged off stiff, rigid liturgies for the 1960's let it all hang out approach. WOW!

It is no accident that the greatest amount of abuse in the Church took place in the 1970's. How many perverts got their jollies at the Hug of Peace and poor old grandma and Aunt Susie had to endure it, and not only them but the kids too!

When I was first assigned to St. Joseph in Macon in 2004, the previous pastor encouraged everyone to hold hands at the Our Father. So everyone had to hold hands whether they liked it or not. I recommended that people not hold hands at the Our Father and if they did only with family members. You would have thought it was Satan's suggestion by the people who loved doing it. But others said, thank you Father, I don't like holding hands and I don't like shaking hands with strangers at Mass and I certainly don't like being hugged at Mass!

Is there going to be a Me Too movement as it concerns the Hug of Peace at Mass??????????

Let me just say, in order to balance this, that the Me Too movement of today strikes me as Jansenistic and puritanical. But isn't secular political religion precisely that and more dogmatic than the Catholic Church ever was and more inquisitorial ???????

FUNKY SANCTUARY REDUX

The post Vatican II problem is the tabernacle’s placement and the design of this church truly emphasizes this problem. When faux altars facing the congregation were installed after Vatican II, the altar was placed at the foot of the old altar. If the tabernacle stayed on the old altar it eclipsed the new lower altar and was thus given undue focus.

When the altar and tabernacle were one unit, both were prominent without competing.

In the EF Mass, the large altar card placed in front of the tabernacle along with the veiling of the tabernacle acted as a sort of blocking off of the tabernacle during Mass, so the focus was on the altar itself and the sacred actions of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass not adoration of the reserved Hosts.

This Church copies the mistakes of the free standing altar. It should be on the same level as the tabernacle. If the free standing altar was removed, steps placed around the “platform” and a true altar railing on an extended first step, it would be greatly enhanced and less confused looking and creating not a stage for a performance. The fence acts as a fence, not an altar railing. It not only keeps the actors from falling off the stage, but truly tells the laity that there is a fencing them off from the platform.

IT’S OFFICIAL! BUT WHO CARES ABOUT WASHINGTON WHEN ATLANTA IS MORE IMPORTANT! WHO WILL BE MY NEW METROPOLITAN? MY CLAIRVOYANCE TELLS ME IT WILL BE......

A robber baron?

Pope names Gregory, designer of US bishops' abuse procedures, as Washington archbishop

CARDINAL SARAH ON THE LITURGY WITH A SHOUT OUT TO POPE BENEDICT

I am convinced that the primary responsibility for this collapse of faith must be assumed by the priests. In Catholic seminaries or universities, we have not always taught doctrine. We taught what we liked! The catechism to the children has been abandoned. Confession was despised. Besides, there were no more priests in the confessionals! We are therefore partially responsible for this collapse. In the 70s and 80s in particular, each priest did what he wanted at Mass. There were no two Masses that looked alike; that is what discouraged so many faithful from coming there. Pope Benedict XVI says that the crisis of the liturgy has provoked the crisis of the Church. Lex orandi, lex credendi: as we pray, we believe. If there is no more faith, the liturgy is reduced to a show, to a folklore, and the faithful turn away. We were probably guilty of negligence. The desacralization of the liturgy always has serious consequences. We wanted to humanize the Mass, to make it understandable, but it remains a mystery that is beyond comprehension.

AN EF MASS IN A FUNKY SANCTUARY

This is the most peculiar sanctuary, no?

Discuss.

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE HOLY FATHER’S SUGGESTION TO YOUTH?

It leaves me scratching my head!

On the topic of child sex abuse and cover-ups in the church, the pope called for the “eradication” of traditions that allowed child sex abuse to take place and for a challenge to how church leaders handled cases with “irresponsibility and lack of transparency.”

He urged young people to call out a priest who seems at risk of seeking affection from children and youth, “and remind him of his commitment to God and his people.”

Asked if that message wasn’t putting young people in potentially dangerous positions with potential predators, another synod organizer, Monsignor Fabio Fabene, said it was the contrary.

ROCCO PALMA CONFIRMS IT, ALTHOUGH LIKE MY ENGLISH, HIS ITALIAN INFLUNCED ENGLISH MAKES NO SENSE!

ARCHBISHOP WILTON GREGORY WILL BECOME THE NEW ARCHBISHOP OF WASHINGTON, DC.

THE QUESTION IS, WHO WILL GO TO ATLANTA, LACROSSE AND ALEXANDRIA AND MAYBE SAVANNAH????????

Rocco’s nonsensical tweets:

Set to be launched to Washington on Dr King’s anniversary – the US’ first Black Metropolitan ever outside Atlanta, let alone in a Cardinalatial See – from the +Wilt Archives, Pope’s reported DC pick on the similar “trauma” of 1968 & American society today

And this doozy:

51 years exactly from Dr King’s last word, Consummatum Est. At Last. 13 days after The Bracket, 6 from

@cnalive

tip, Whipers ops confirm Pope’s pick of Atlanta’s +Wilton Gregory, 71, as Archbishop of Washington on Thurs, setting the stage for US’ 1st African-American Cardinal.

YES HOLY FATHER AND PROGRESSIVE CARDINALS AND BISHOPS, THE ONLY EXPLANATION FOR THIS IS CLERICALISM

NOT!

You’ll have to read this too risqué for me to print article, uber scandalous actually, at Crux.

At least his bishop finally acted in the uber heterodox Dutch Church, but what took so long and why isn’t this priest publicly even excommunicated?

And no clericalism is not the reason for this, rather homosexual perversion, but the inability of the pope and others aligned with him to admit this is a virulent form of homoclericalism, which by the way, no one accepts anymore.

Dutch bishop suspends gay priest after he refuses to live celibate lifestyle

• Katholiek Nieuwsblad
  Apr 2, 2019
  SPECIAL TO CRUX

An undated photo of Amsterdam's annual gay pride parade. (Credit: Pixabay.)

YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE A CHOSEN APOSTLE TO BETRAY JESUS! CATHOLIC AYLSSA MILANO RANKS UP THERE WITH JUDAS AND SHE IS IN GOOD COMPANY WITH OTHER CELEBERITY "CATHOLICS"

Alyssa Milano would face martyrdom in Hollywood if she were a believing, proselytizing and active Catholic. How could she make money? What is more important to her, the true faith or true money from being a celebrity?

Pray for her; proselytize her, reconvert her, she needs it!

I take it, from reading this, that her upbringing in Catholicism was rooted in the pope's new document on youth before it ever came out, since it is of her hippie parent's generation:

The Hollowverse

The religions and political views of the influentials.

Alyssa Milano was born in Brooklyn, New York and grew up in Staten Island, New York.
Milano was raised a Roman Catholic, but with a bit of flair. Apparently her parents were Woodstock-attending hippies, but their traditional, institutional faith was still very important to them.¹

It’s difficult to tell if Milano is a devout Catholic in adulthood, but she’s certainly still a person who values faith. She said:

For me, there is no hope without faith. Faith is a higher good. Faith in our divinity.²

And when she was excited about her pregnancy, she tweeted:

I love feeling my baby move in my belly. I kind of feel like it’s proof that there is a God. Beautiful!³

But it’s not all Mass, Communion and Confession, stone-faced ministers and giant cathedrals for Milano, who seems to hold mystical, fairy tale creatures in high regard. She once said:

I’ve always believed in experiencing everything in life. When you walk out with blinders on, you cut yourself off from the angels and the fairies.⁴

I suppose that’s the hippie side of her upbringing coming out.

KUDOS TO POPE FRANCIS AND HIS HOLINESS' CLARITY ON ABORTION--ALYSSA MILANO WILL WANT TO BOYCOTT THE CATHOLIC CHURCH OVER THIS!

Pope Francis rejects abortion in cases of rape: It’s never okay to hire ‘assassin’ to solve ‘problem’

Left-wing journalist Jordi Évole posed an extreme theoretical case (to Pope Francis) of a girl victim of trafficking who is impregnated as a result of rape. When the journalist asked if the Pope could understand the girl’s choice to end her child’s life, the Pope said, “I would understand her desperation, but I also know that it is not licit to eliminate a human life in order to solve a problem.”

When Évole countered, “And in one of those extreme cases?” the Pope asked, “Is it licit to eliminate a human life to solve a problem? Is it licit to hire someone to eliminate [the baby]? The answer is yours, not mine.” Évole refused to answer, saying, “No, I have not come to answer. I am going to try to get as many answers from you that I can.” 

The Pope went on to say, “But you can’t leave her in the street,” adding, “Thank God, in the last 10 years, 15 years, there has been much attention paid to these cases, of girls who are by themselves who are becoming mothers, and there has been undertaken a great work of accompaniment, of giving them dignity.”

When Évole countered by saying that in some countries there are women who have been imprisoned for participating in the abortion of their children, the Pope said, “I won’t argue about the civil law of each country. My question comes before civil law, before Church law, to the human: Is it just to eliminate a human being to solve a problem? Is it just to hire an assassin to solve a problem? Everything else stems from that. That is the basic question.” 

BRAVO POPE FRANCIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 However, the Holy Father could have countered that in most civilized countries, priests who have abused children are in prison. Does Evole think this bad too? Shouldn't those who commit the felony of murder be tried and sentence just as a priest who commits the felony of sexual abuse is?????????

THE AMBIGUOUS, BEFUDDLED ALYSSA MILANO, PRAY FOR HER IMMORTAL SOUL AND FOR HER CONVERSION, PROSELYTIZE IF NECESSARY!

Georgia produces more movies and television shows than California. There are major movie studios in the Atlanta area. African-American Tyler Perry purchased the shuttered Fort MacPherson and is turning it into a mega movie studio. In fact many scenes of The Walking Dead are shot around the old Post Theater there and even interior shots of the theater have been used as recently as this past Sunday! I went to the movies there in the late 1950's with my mom never dreaming that the last time I went there around 1960 and the next time I would see the inside of it would be on the Walking Dead in 2018/19! But I digress.

Alyssa Milano wants movie stars to boycott the movie industry in Georgia and put it out of business because our new Governor is about to sign the Baby Heartbeat Bill that would prevent legal abortions once a heartbeat is detected. She says this bill is evil and that her twisted/godless religious belief that abortion is sacrosanct and a "sacrament" should not be called into question or made illegal.

She cares little about those in this industry in Georgia, most of whom work behind the scenes, would have their livelihood destroyed and minorities, like Tyler Perry, would be bankrupt over her silly boycott.

It is sad, because in one way, Alyssa gets it about saving the lives of children, but is all in favor of murdering babies in the womb. I would suspect she would also agree with infanticide if the mother and her midwife agree to kill a baby who survives a full term abortion or any abortion.

Is there a disconnect here?

CLEAR EVIDENCE OF POPE FRANCIS' POLARIZING PAPACY THAT SHOWS FORTH A CLEAR VIRTUAL SCHISM IN THE HIERARCHY

Family congress in Verona shows tensions between Vatican and populist Catholics

ROME - A northern Italian town became a battlefield in the culture wars this weekend during a three-day international congress on traditional family values. While populist leaders and conservative Catholics defended the event from the inside, progressive and liberal factions tagged the meeting as “medieval.”

The Vatican took a step back, with high-ranking officials deciding not to formally attend the event.

“We agree on the substance but not on the methodology,” said the Vatican Secretary of State, Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin, after an event marking the 150^th anniversary of the Vatican-owned Bambino Gesu children’s hospital last week.

The Catholic Church agrees with the traditional family values based on the marriage between a man and woman and founded on the respect for human life from conception to natural death on display at the World Congress of Families that took place in Verona, Italy, March 29-31.

What the Vatican doesn’t agree with is the rhetoric and approach that the congress promoted. Religious sisters could be seen on local television calling homosexuality an “abomination” and a “sin against God.” Bishops condemned abortion with strong language, and life-sized puppets of fetuses were handed out to attendees.

The bishop of Verona Giuseppe Zenti attended the event along with many other Catholic bishops from other parts of the world, including Archbishop-Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco.and papal critics Cardinal Raymond Burke and Cardinal Walter Brandmüller.

Organizers included pro-life and conservative factions not only from Italy, but also Russia and the United States. Brian Brown, president of the International Organization for the Family and close friend of U.S. President Donald Trump, attended the event.

“We are in favor of a positive vision of the family,” he told local media, “understood as the union between a man and a woman in marriage.”

“Let’s get up, let’s fight for the family, we are here to tell you that you are not alone!” Brown added.

Individual bishops and clergy were present at the event, but the Vatican kept its distance.

READ THE REST AT CRUX BY PRESSING TITLE ABOVE. 

AMBIGUITY, LEADING TO SCRATCHING ONE'S HEAD AND ORTHODOX AND HETERODOX DOING THE SAME THING, SCRATCHING THEIR HEADS

For a “fresh” liturgy: When it comes to worship and prayer, “in many settings, young Catholics are asking for prayer opportunities and sacramental celebrations capable of speaking to their daily lives through a fresh, authentic and joyful liturgy”  (224)

There are two different takes on Pope Francis' youth document. Does it bring us back to 1960's feel good, coloring book Catholic Lite or is it just a bunch of gibberish? I report; you decide.

Francis' youth exhortation says Catholic Church must change but offers few proposals

BY JOSHUA J. MCELWEE

APR 2, 2019

In new exhortation, Pope Francis suggests ‘concrete…change’ in Church needed to appease youth

The Pope hopes for youth to be 'protagonists of change.'

SAINT ANNE'S IS TRANSFORMED BY THE EXTRAORDINARY FORM,; IS IT THE WAVE OF THE FUTURE

The is not an April Fools Story about St. Anne's Church:

POPE FRANCIS OFFERS TRADITIONAL TEACHING ON HOMOSEXUALITY WITH PASTORAL EMPHASIS

From Crux:

Pope Francis says homosexual tendencies are ‘not a sin’

• Inés San Martín
  Apr 1, 2019
  ROME BUREAU CHIEF

Pope Francis smiles during a meeting with Catholic priests and other Christian representatives in the cathedral of the capital, Rabat, Morocco, Sunday, March 31, 2019. Pope Francis is in Morocco for a two-day trip aimed at highlighting the North African nation's Christian-Muslim ties, while also showing solidarity with migrants at Europe's door and tending to a tiny Catholic flock. (Credit: AP Photo/Mosa'ab Elshamy.)

ROME - Pope Francis has said that homosexual tendencies “are not a sin,” while encouraging parents who begin “seeing rare things” in their children to “please, consult, and go to a professional,” because “it could be that he [or she] is not homosexual.”

Asked about his famous soundbite “Who am I to judge?”, the pope said, “Tendencies are not sin. If you have a tendency to anger, it’s not a sin. Now, if you are angry and hurt people, the sin is there.”

“Sin is acting, of thought, word and deed, with freedom,” Francis said.

Asked by Spanish journalist Jordi Evole if he thinks it’s a “rarity” for parents to have a homosexual child, the pope answered that “in theory, no.”

“But I’m talking about a person who is developing, and parents start to see strange things … Please consult, and go to a professional, and there you will see what it is and may not be homosexual, that is due to something else,” he said.

Francis also said that in his opinion, it’s usually challenging for a family to have a homosexual child, as they can be “scandalized by something they don’t understand, something out of the ordinary … I’m not making a judgement of value, I’m doing a phenomenological analysis,” he said.

The pope’s words came in response to a question about comments he made last summer, when he said parents who detect their children have homosexual behaviors should take them to a psychiatrist.

In a new interview that aired Sunday with the Spanish news outlet La Sexta, the pope said he was “explaining that you never throw a homosexual person out of the house, but I made a distinction that when the person is very young and begins to show strange symptoms, it’s useful to go … I said to a psychiatrist, at that moment you say the word that comes out and, on top of that, in a language that is not yours.”

From his comments, Francis said, the media took away “‘the pope sends homosexuals to the psychiatrist,’ and they didn’t see the rest, and this is ill-intentioned.”

During the interview, the journalist alternates between the terms “homosexual” and “gay,” but the pope always uses the word “homosexual.” During his trip back from Brazil, in 2013, speaking with journalists, Francis famously became the first pope to use the word “gay.”

Once a homosexual identity is “set,” Francis said, a homosexual man or woman “has the right to a family, and that father and mother have the right to a son [or daughter], come as it may, and no son or daughter can be thrown out of the home.”

On abuse, it’s a process

The pope was also asked about his Feb. 21-24 summit on clerical sexual abuse, and he said that he understood some victims aren’t satisfied with the results.

“I understand them because one sometimes looks for results that are concrete facts of that moment,” he said. “For example, if I had hung 100 abusive priests in St. Peter Square, it’s a concrete fact, I would have occupied space.”

“But my interest is not to occupy spaces, but to start healing processes,” he said.

The concrete result of the summit, he argued, was to “start processes, and this takes time,” he said, but it’s the only way “for the cure to be irreversible.”

Francis compared the abuse crisis to the conquest of America by the Spanish, saying history has to be understood with the hermeneutics of the time. Prior to the explosion of the Boston scandals in 2002, he said, the “hermeneutics was it’s better to hide it, avoid future evils.”

But “when you hide, it propagates, once the culture of uncovering begins, things don’t propagate,” the pope said, encouraging survivors to come forth.

WAS IT A CATHOLIC FAKENEWS AGENCY EARLY APRIL FOOLS JOKE, IN MARCH?

There has been only one news agency, CNA, owned by EWTN/National Catholic Register, to report that credible sources indicate the 72 Year old Archbishop Wilton Gregory will be the next Archbishop of Washington, DC.

Every news agency that also reports this is drawing from the CNA report.

Rocco Palma, who is well connected, has tweeted NADA nor has the National Chismatic Reporter, who would be jubilant if true.

Was CNA yanking our chains to gather reactions???

Thus, I must break this bombshell news from my reliable incredible source this April First, the new Archbishop of Washington, DC soon to be acclaimed is Bishop Thomas A. Daly of Spokane, which is in Washington!

POPE FRANCIS WEARS ROSE; DID YOUR PRIEST WEAR ROSE?

SAINT ANNE'S PASTORAL COUNCIL DECIDES TO GO ALL EXTRAORDINARY FORM, DIOCESAN PASTORAL COUNCIL APPLAUDS DECISION AND SLAPS EACH OTHER ON THE BACK AND GIVES HIGH FIVES IN THE GREAT ADVANCEMENT OF LAY SYNODALITY!