TO ELEVATE OR TO SHOW? THAT IS THE QUESTION

My recollection of the pre-Vatican II Mass as a child when it was the Ordinary Form, so to speak, was that the two major elevations of the consecrated Host and Precious Blood in the chalice was the high point, so to speak, of the Mass, that magic moment of the laity's profound devotion to our Lord, adoration and worship of the newly consecrated "Accidents."

Of course the high elevations were necessary for the "showing" of the  "Accidents" as the priest was facing the same direction as the laity, not in the clericalism of confrontation as we have when he faces the congregation. Thus the elevations had to be high in order to be seen above the priest's big head, such as mine, as you will note in the two Cathedral photos above.

Most priests immediately following the change from ad orientem to facing the congregation in the 1960's continued the high elevations.

It wasn't until the 1970's that academic liturgists at their workshops for priests told them that they should only show the "accidents" without elevating since there was no need to elevate since the Host and Chalice could be seen even at the chest level of the priest.

And God forbid if there were lengthy elevations as these turned the elevations into "magic moments of visual adoration" when of course the Bread and Wine are food and drink to eat and drink not gaze upon. Those damn liturgists need to be condemned to the darkest corner of hell with all the unconsecrated hosts and wine they want, mold covered and sour!  What dictators, what bullies what academic idiots!

Of course, I elevate high when facing the congregation, but not quite as high as when I offer Mass ad orientem.

Your thoughts?

BREAKING POLITICALLY CORRECT RHETORIC IN ORDER TO TEACH ABOUT CATHOLIC MORALITY AND OUR DOCTRINES, WILL IT FURTHER MARGINALIZE THE CHURCH IN THE EYES OF THE WORLD TRY AS WE MAY TO DIALOGUE WITH THEM?

Given the fact that Pope Francis has finally stated the obvious about the elephant in the room in terms of the lack of sexual and human maturity of homosexual priests who harm and abuse young people and have brought the Catholic Church to the brink of Armageddon, (a punishment from God?) I think it is wise to read the John Allen of Crux article on Cardinal Mueller's courage statements:

Ex-Vatican doctrine czar calls homophobia a ‘hoax’, ‘psycho-terrorism’

• John L. Allen Jr.
  May 22, 2018

In the wake of the May 17 World Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia, the Vatican’s former top doctrinal official, German Cardinal Gerhard Müller, has declared that homophobia “simply doesn’t exist” and is “an invention, an instrument of totalitarian dominion over the minds of others.”

“The homosexual movement doesn’t have scientific arguments, so it’s constructed an ideology that wants to dominate, seeking to construct its own reality. It’s the Marxist scheme, according to which it’s not reality that builds thought, it’s thought that builds reality,” Müller said.

“Whoever doesn’t accept this thought is considered sick, as if, among other things, illness could be treated with police and courts,” the 70-year-old cardinal said.

“In the Soviet Union, Christians were put into insane asylums, which are the means of totalitarian regimes such as National Socialism and Communism,” Müller said. “Today in North Korea, the same fate awaits anyone who doesn’t accept the dominant thinking.”

Müller’s comments came in a conversation with Italian blogger Costanza Miriano.

Müller served as the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith from 2012 until June 2017, when he stepped down and was replaced by Spanish Archbishop, now Cardinal-designate, Luis Ladaria, who belongs to Pope Francis’s own Jesuit order.

Though Müller never openly broke with Francis, nevertheless his ambivalence over some of the pontiff’s moves, including his cautious opening to Communion for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics in Amoris Laetitia, was always clear.

In the interview, Miriano asked Müller for his reaction to bishops who promote prayer vigils or other events around the World Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia.

“Some bishops today don’t have the courage to speak the truth, and allow themselves to be intimidated,” he said. “They don’t understand that homophobia is a hoax that serves to threaten people.”

“Today, people are being scared by psycho-terrorism, taking advantage of their ignorance,” Müller said.

Müller acknowledged that Christians are called to love all persons, including those with a same-sex attraction, but added, “It has to be clear that loving someone doesn’t mean obedience to gender ideology.”

“The reality is, there’s just man and woman,” he said. “There are two sexes, that’s the reality, and everything else is an interpretation.”

Inevitably, Müller addressed Francis’s reputation for being open and accepting of gay persons, famously expressed in the 2013 sound bite, “Who am I to judge?”

“The pope just said the same thing that’s in the Catechism: Every person merits respect because he or she is made in the image of God, and we can’t use a person for any reason,” he said.

“Yet in the same moment, Francis also spoke of a ‘gay lobby,’ and unfortunately that’s true,” he said. 

Müller cited the case of Father Krzysztof Charamsa, a Polish theologian and former official of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith who “came out” in October 2015 just as the pope’s second Synod of Bishops on the family was set to open.

“He never requested either help or accompaniment,” Müller said of Charamsa.

In the interview, Müller also addressed rumors about a possible “revisiting” of Humanae Vitae, the landmark 1968 encyclical by Blessed Pope Paul VI that reaffirmed the Church’s traditional ban on artificial birth control.

“I compare those who want to revisit Humanae Vitae in order to please the masses with those who made compromises during the totalitarian regimes,” he said.

“You can’t make compromises with wolves, even for the sake of saving a few sheep,” he said. “It’s an illusion to think you can save a few sheep, when you’ll lose the whole flock.”

“That’s not the logic of Jesus,” Müller said. “In order to not lose even a single sheep, he sacrificed himself, not the sheep.”

Müller suggested that those who want to see Humanae Vitae weakened often begin with the hardest cases, in order to play on emotions.

“The trick of theologians and bishops who attack doctrine is to play on emotions,” he said. “For instance, they start to talk about a father with four kids who’s lost his job and a mother who’s sick … and they end up with a discussion riding a wave of emotion based on a single case.”

“That’s not a serious way to face the question,” he said.

FINALLY THE POPE IS SAYING WHAT WE ALL KNOW ABOUT THE SEXUAL ABUSE CRISIS IN THE PRIESTHOOD OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND THE ENABLING BISHOPS WHO ARE ULTIMATELY RESPONSIBLE FOR THOSE THEY ADMIT TO THE SEMINARY, ORDAIN AND SUPPOSEDLY SUPERVISE AND TRANSFER OR DISCIPLINE

UPDATE! UPDATE! UPDATE! I HAVE REPLACED THE FR. Z STORY ON THIS WITH THE ACTUAL VATICAN INSIDER ARTICLE WHICH THEY TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL ITALIAN INTO ENGLISH

During the height of the sex abuse crisis in the USA, there were those in the Church and secular society who took great offense when others in the Church and outside would say that in the Catholic priesthood version of sexual abuse of minors its root cause, as the priest is concerned, is homosexuality and arrested sexual maturity and morality.

I challenged a nationally known priest who kept saying at a conference many years ago that we should not blame homosexuality.

Now the highest authority in the Church has overcome this nasty political correctness concerning homosexuality and  is saying precisely what anyone with a bit of common sense and an ability to discern has been saying for decades now. I am glad that Pope Francis isn't comforting abusive priests by saying God loves them and made them that way! 

FROM THE VATICAN INSIDER, ENGLISH EDITION: 

“If there is any doubt about homosexuality, it is better not to let them enter the seminary”

The Pope’s words in a conversation behind closed doors with the Italian bishops: “discernment is needed”. Along the lines of the 2005 and 2016 Vatican documents

 

salvatore cernuzio

vatican city

 

“If in doubt, better not let them enter”. With the bishops of the Italian Episcopal Conference, with whom he held a three-hour dialogue behind closed doors on the occasion of the 71st General Assembly, Francis addressed the extremely delicate issue of the admission of homosexual to seminaries. Pope Bergoglio expressed his opinion on the question, repeating de facto what he had already said a few years ago, albeit in a more implicit way: “Keep an eye on the admissions to seminaries, keep your eyes open”, he said in an audience with the Congregation for the Clergy.

 

Speaking of the fall in vocations with the pastors of the Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI) - Vatican Insider learns – Francis - in telling one of his “three concerns” for the Italian Church - was instead franker as he invited the bishops to focus more on the quality, rather than quantity of future priests, explicitly mentioning the cases of homosexual persons who wish, for various reasons, to enter the seminary. He then invited the bishops to “careful discern,” adding: “If you have even the slightest doubt, it is better not to let them in”.  

An indication, this one of the Pope, that expresses his deep concern: these tendencies, when they are “deeply rooted”, and the practice of “homosexual acts”, can compromise the life of the seminary as well as that of the boy himself and his possible future priesthood. And they can generate those “scandals” of which the Pope had spoken in his opening speech to the CEI assembly in the New Hall of the Synod - which disfigure the face of the Church.  

Between the lines one can read what Pope Francis had already written in the letter personally handed to the Chilean bishops during their meeting in the Vatican. In an additional note, the Pontiff denounced the problems that had arisen in the seminaries where - he wrote - bishops and religious superiors had entrusted the guide to “priests suspected of practicing homosexuality”.

Of course, any comparison is inappropriate, cases are different and any generalization must be avoided. The Pope’s note to the CEI bishops can be traced back to the Ratio Fundamentalis published in December 2016 by the Congregation for the Clergy: a substantial document, entitled “The Gift of the Priestly Vocation”, with which the dicastery updated the norms, customs and habits to access the seminary, providing practical advises also on health, nutrition and physical activity among others.

Point 199 of the Ratio states that: “In relation to persons with homosexual tendencies who seeks admission to Seminary, or discover such a situation in the course of formation, consistent with her own magisterium, the Church, while profoundly respecting the persons in question, cannot admit to the seminary and to holy orders those who practice homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies, or support the so-called gay culture”.

These are the indications of the 2016 “Ratio”, which in fact reiterate what was established in the Instruction published by the Congregation for Catholic Education in August 2005 on the theme “Criteria for vocational discernment regarding persons with homosexual tendencies in view of their admission to the seminary and to sacred orders”.

In nine pages and about twenty notes, the document, approved by the then Pope Benedict XVI, reiterated the Holy See’s “no” to the entry into seminaries and religious orders of priests who “practice” homosexuality, have “present deep-seated homosexual tendencies” or even support “so-called gay culture”.  

First of all, a distinction was made between “homosexual acts” and “homosexual tendencies”: on the former, the Church reaffirmed the definition of “grave sins”, “intrinsically immoral and contrary to the natural law”; while it demanded to those who manifest tendencies, defined as “objectively disordered”, an acceptance marked by “respect and sensitivity”, and that “Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided”.

In any case, even a mere doubt about the homosexual orientation of the candidate to the priesthood - according to the indications given in the Instruction - could be an obstacle on his way to ordination. “If a candidate practices homosexuality or presents deep-seated homosexual tendencies, his spiritual director as well as his confessor have the duty to dissuade him in conscience from proceeding towards ordination” says a paragraph.  

And in another paragraph of the same text, aspiring seminarians (with a homosexual orientation) were invited not to lie to their superiors in order to enter the seminary. “ It goes without saying that the candidate himself has the primary responsibility for his own formation”, the Vatican text reads. It would be “gravely dishonest for a candidate to hide his own homosexuality in order to proceed, despite everything, towards ordination. Such a deceitful attitude does not correspond to the spirit of truth, loyalty and openness that must characterize the personality of him who believes he is called to serve Christ and his Church in the ministerial priesthood”.

Finally, we must not forget another risk pointed out by Pope Francis in his speech to the Congregation for the Clergy, and that is that often “there are children who are mentally ill and are looking for strong structures to defend them”.
 

MYSTERY PHOTO SOLVED--A CONCELEBRATED EXTRAORDINARY FORM MASS!!!!!!!

CLICK ON THE PHOTO BELOW AND ALL OF THEM CAN BE VIEWED, AND THIS IN A CHURCH WITH SEATING ON THREE SIDES LIKE THE NEW ST. ANNE CHURCH HERE IN RICHMOND HILL:

LORD HAVE MERCY! KYRIE ELEISON!

22 mag 

Vatican Mysteries. The Mutiny of the Chilean Bishops and the Pope's Self-censorship on Venezuela

The glitches, the silences, the inconsistencies of the Vatican communications media often reveal serious divisions at the highest levels of the hierarchy. This is what has happened in recent days, in at least two pressing cases.

One of these concerns Venezuela. Against the background of the disaster into which the country has plunged and in the run-up to the false elections for reconfirming in power the heir of Hugo Chávez, Nicolás Maduro, there erupted last week a revolt - which was harshly repressed - in the El Helicoide prison in Caracas, a place of detention and torture for political prisoners who crime is that of having opposed the regime.

At the news of the revolt the archbishop of Caracas, Cardinal Jorge Urosa Savino, and then the Venezuelan episcopal conference appealed “to the state, to its responsibility for the life and well-being of all persons imprisoned.” And at the Vatican, the secretariat of state judged it opportune for Pope Francis to speak out as well, at the end of the Regina Caeli on May 20, the Sunday of Pentecost.

In fact, here is the text of the appeal as provided for the journalists accredited to the Holy See one hour before the pope spoke, naturally under embargo until the moment when the text was spoken and with the obligation of comparing it with the words actually said:

“I would like to dedicate once again a special consideration to beloved Venezuela. With the help of the Holy Spirit, may all work to find just, effective, and peaceful solutions for the grave humanitarian, political, economic, and social crisis that is exhausting the population, and avoid the temptation of resorting to any kind of violence. I encourage the authorities of the country to guarantee respect for the life and well-being of every person, especially those who, like the imprisoned, are under their responsibility.”

But then, when he addressed the crowd present in Saint Peter’s Square, Francis did not read the text he was holding in his hands. He looked up and improvised these words:

“I would like to dedicate a special consideration to beloved Venezuela. I ask that the Holy Spirit give the whole Venezuelan people - all, leaders, people - the wisdom to find the path of peace and unity. I also pray for the prisoners who died yesterday.”

Very disappointing words for Venezuelans, precisely because they are so indulgent - like other times in the past - toward the regime of Maduro, for which the pope avoided any direct call to responsibility, which instead was explicit in the severe words that the secretariat of state provided and that he set aside.

*

The other case concerns Chile and the convocation in Rome of the 34 bishops of that country to answer before the pope for the sexual abuse committed for years by dozens of consecrated ministers against numerous victims, with the complicity of not a few bishops who in turn were publicly defended by other bishops, cardinals, and, until a few months ago, by Francis himself, before his U-turn, the in-depth investigation he had carried out in Chile, the 2400 pages of the accusatory report that came out of that investigation, his personal meeting in Rome to listen to three of the main victims, and, in short, his aligning himself with the “santo pueblo fiel de Dios” against the sins of the ecclesiastical apparatus.

The hearing in Rome, although it was carried out behind closed doors, was followed with dogged determination by the media all over the world and had its key moments in the 10-page “j’accuse” that Francis delivered to the Chilean bishops on May 15 and in the final decision of almost all of them to place their mandates back in the hands of the pope so that he could decide whether to confirm or remove each one.

There were 34 bishops in all, 3 of them emeritus, and 29 of them submitted a letter of resignation to the pope. Two of them thought they should not write, one because of his special ties to the armed forces of Chile, military ordinary and president of the episcopal conference Santiago Silva, and the other, Luigi Infanti della Mora, to Propaganda Fide, which is in charge of the apostolic vicariate of Aysén of which he is bishop. Among the three emeritus only one of them, Juan Luis Ysern, wrote a letter of resignation, for the sake of solidarity with his confreres, while the other two did not, including Cardinal Francisco Javier Errázuriz Ossa.

So then, what is striking is that “L'Osservatore Romano” not only did not publish the text that Francis delivered to the Chilean bishops, nor the statement with which these virtually resigned, but it did not even provide news on the one or the other.

Over the span of seven days from May 12 to 19 the press office of the Holy See published, on the meetings between Francis and the Chilean bishops, only three meager bulletins.

The first and third were also reproduced - in shortened form - by “L'Osservatore Romano.” Not, however, the second, a very brief bulletin dated May 15 and the only one that gave news of “a text with a few issues on which to meditate” that Francis delivered to the bishops, without saying anything about the contents of that text.

As for the final statement with which the Chilean bishops surrendered their mandates to Francis, this was not covered by the press office and much less by “L'Osservatore Romano.”

Almost all of the worldwide media judged the “resignation” of the Chilean bishops as an act of pained but docile submission to the pope.

One exception to this, however, was a very special observer, Luis Badilla,  a Chilean journalist who worked for years at Vatican Radio, has an excellent rapport with Fr. Federico Lombardi, and today is the director of a news and commentary website, “Il Sismografo,” which still gravitates in the Vatican orbit, in para-official guise.

After publishing in their entirety, on May 18, the ten pages of the “j’accuse” delivered three days earlier by the pope to the Chilean bishops, Badilla commented in no uncertain terms:

“This document blew apart a sort of nonsensical showdown that part of the Chilean episcopate, under the leadership of Cardinal Francisco Javier Errázuriz and the Opus Dei bishop of San Bernardo, Juan Ignacio González [on the right in the photo by Daniel Ibañez/CNA, after the announcement of the resignations - editor’s note], were hoping for with an arrogant and aggressive attitude, as was seen in the various statements by the two prelates to the international media while they were in Rome.

“The majority of Chilean bishops arrived at the Vatican just as they had been behaving in Chile for a number of years: divided and organized into cliques, arrogant and puffed up with sentiments of superiority, convinced that they were more clever than everybody else, and above all convinced that they would get the better of the pope, whom they treated in public with great deference and respect but in private called an exaggerated and melodramatic person, like someone who is using this situation to blow it out of proportion and cover up other crises of his pontificate.”

The brief letter - made public by official Vatican sources - with which Francis took his leave of the Chilean bishops at the end of the encounter was instead judged by Badilla as resolute on the whole, but also “apparently” too “cautious and meek” and “according to some not up to the gravity of the question,” meaning “all the changes” that the pope himself says would have to be brought to completion “in the short, medium, and long term.”

They are comments and silences, these of Badilla and of “L'Osservatore Romano,” that lead one to think that Pope Francis was deeply dissatisfied with how the Chilean bishops concluded their stay in Rome, foisting onto him the burden of deciding about each one of them, in a sort of “mutiny.”

It is the word that only the vaticanista Franca Giansoldati set down in black and white, in the May 19 issue of the newspaper “Il Messaggero,” explaining it as follows:

“In a surprise move - for the first time in the history of the Church - an entire episcopate has announced its intention to resign en bloc, from the first bishop to the last, placing their mandates in the hands of the pontiff. It was in a certain way a slap in the face for Francis, almost as if it were a response to the unusual methods that he has used […] by convoking all of them in Rome, in a sort of lineup that risks delegitimizing, reflexively, the entire body of bishops, as if all 34 of them were conspirators, whitewashers, and liars. […] In the face of this the Chilean bishops stood up for themselves. Responsibilities are individual, not collective. So all of them gave up their positions ‘so that the pope may decide freely for each one.’ […] Certainly many Chilean bishops do not want to be taken as those who have covered up such grave crimes.”

On the evening of Tuesday, May 22, the Vatican press office gave word that Pope Francis will meet in Rome from June 1 to 3 with a new group of victims of sexual abuse in Chile, without ruling out other “similar initiatives in the future.”

----------

In the ten pages of the “j’accuse” delivered on May 15 by Pope Francis to the bishops of Chile, two of the passages stand out.

The first is the one in which the pope states that he has set to work a “special commission” of investigation and analysis on the crisis of the Chilean Church:

“In this area, hearing the opinions of various persons and after noting the persistence of the wound, I have created a special commission so that, with freedom of spirit, in a juridical and technical way, it may offer a diagnosis as independent as possible, as well as a clear view on past events but above all on the state of the current situation.”

The second is in the 25th of the 27 notes that accompany the ten pages of the text.

In it, Francis cites three accusations from the final report of the “Misión especial” - made up of Maltese archbishop Charles Scicluna and Vatican official Jordi Bertomeu - that he sent to Chile in February to interview the victims of sexual abuse committed by consecrated ministers with the complicity and coverups of bishops and cardinals.

Here is the complete text of the note:

“Once again, in this sense, I would like to dwell on three situations that emerge from the report of the ‘Special Mission’:

“1. The investigation demonstrates that there are grave defects in the way of managing the cases of ‘delicta graviora’ that corroborate some disturbing information that began to become known in some Roman dicasteries. Above all in the way of receiving the complaints or ‘notitiae criminis,’ because in many cases they have been superficially classified as implausible, but were instead serious indications of an actual crime. In the course of the visit it was also noted that there were presumed crimes that had been investigated late or not at all, with the resulting scandal for the complainants and for all those who knew the presumed victims - families, friends, parish communities. In other cases, it was noted that there had been very grave negligence in the protection of vulnerable boys and girls, on the part of bishops and religious superiors, who have a special responsibility in the task of protecting the people of God.

“2. Other similar circumstances that caused perplexity and embarrassment for me was reading statements that attest to the pressure exerted on those who were supposed to carry out the evidentiary portion of the criminal proceeding, or the destruction of compromising documents by persons entrusted with the ecclesiastical archives, demonstrating in this way an absolute lack of respect for canonical procedure as well as the existence of reprehensible practices that should be avoided in the future.

“3. In the same direction and as confirmation that the problem does not belong to only one group of persons, in the case of many abusers it has been shown that there were already serious problems in the phase of their formation at the seminary or in the novitiate. In fact, the proceedings of the ‘Special Mission’ record serious accusations against some bishops or superiors who are believed to have entrusted these educational institutions to priests suspected of active homosexuality.”

(English translation by Matthew Sherry, Ballwin, Missouri, U.S.A.)

ISN'T IT TIME FOR POPE FRANCIS TO ELIMINATE THE GOOD, BAD AND THE UGLEY OF THE G-9???????

Watch Honduras burn while the Cardinal plays the sax

For the life of me, I don't know why Pope Francis created another layer of bureaucracy that appears to be more corrupt than the bureaucracy of the long existing Curia. Why not just place good, orthodox and ethically minded cardinals as prefects of the various Roman dicasteries and then meet with them regularly?

There appears  to be at least three corrupt cardinals on the G-9, two South Americans and one German and they remain unlike Cardinals Mueller and Burke who were given walking papers and no real alternative assignment.

This article by Edward Pentin would seem to indicate that this Cardinal is a candidate for removal not just for this but much more:

Former Honduran Ambassador's Wife Speaks of Cardinal's Alleged Role in Mismanaged Fund

The widow of the former Honduran ambassador to the Holy See says her motive for going public is simply to seek “justice”

Edward Pentin

The widow of a former dean of the Vatican diplomatic corps has called on Pope Francis to intervene after she lost her life savings with a fund manager recommended to her by one of the Pope’s chief advisers.

Martha Alegria Reichmann, the widow of Alejandro Valladares who was Honduran ambassador to the Holy
See for 22 years, alleges she and her husband were advised in 2012 by Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, archbishop of Tegucigalpa, to make the investment with London-based investor Youssry Henien. 

But Henien then disappeared with all their life savings.

In this May 14 email interview with the Register, Reichmann says Cardinal Rodriguez Maradiaga, who is coordinator of the C9 Group of Cardinals advising the Pope on curial reform, assured them that the investment was safe and that he too had invested archdiocesan money through Henien.

READ THE REST HERE 

BOMBSHELL! THE TRUTH COMES OUT!

One of my commenters smelled something snakey about the rattlesnake falling from a tree and into a kayak and biting a man three times in the hand:

Snake that attacked SC man in kayak didn't fall from a tree. He picked it up, family says

NOAH FEIT| NFEIT@THESTATE.COM

Yesterday

The family of the South Carolina man who was bitten by a rattlesnake while kayakinghas admitted that their original story was not accurate.
What remains a fact is that Michael Adams was in his kayak on the Edisto River in Colleton County Sunday when he was bitten by a rattlesnake multiple times.

It is also a fact that the Anderson man was rushed from a boat landing to an area hospital, where he was treated before being flown to a Charleston hospital, where he remains a patient.
It is the story of how the 28-year-old Army vet was bitten by the venomous snake that his family has admitted was not true.
Adams' family members originally told Colleton County Fire and Rescue emergency responders that the rattlesnake had fallen out of a tree into the kayak and bit Adams on the hand.
On Tuesday, family members said Adams actually picked up the snake with his bare hands, foxcarolina.com reported.
Adams's cousin, Kyle Colquitt, said Adams paddled over to what he thought was an alligator in the water, but when he discovered it was a snake he yanked it into the air, according to abcnews4.com.
That is when the 18- to 36-inch long rattler bit Adams — three times.

PHOTOPLAY:WHAT IS SO PECULIAR ABOUT THIS PHOTO?

UPDATE! UPDATE! UPDATE! MYSTERY SOLVED! SEE SPECTACULAR PHOTOGRAPHS OF AN ORDINATION MASS IN THE EXTRAORDINARY FORM BY PRESSING HERE!

DESPITE HUMILIATIONS AND BULLYING BY THE PROGRESSIVE WING OF THE CHURCH AND ITS LEADERS, CARDINAL SARAH CARRIES ON IN A MOST DIGNIFIED WAY

The New Liturgical Movement prints a stunning homily by Robert Cardinal Sarah, who doubles down on His Eminence's views about being a Catholic and the proper orientation for worship, which isn't self-referential by the way or just a convivial meal:

(My emphasis in blue)

Dear Chartres pilgrims,

“The light has come into the world,” Jesus tells us today in the Gospel (John 3, 16-21), “and men have preferred darkness.”

And you, dear pilgrims, have you welcomed the only light that does not deceive: that of God? You walked for three days, prayed, sang, suffered under the sun and in the rain: did you welcome the light in your hearts? Have you really given up darkness? Have you chosen to pursue the Way by following Jesus, who is the Light of the world? Dear friends, allow me to ask you this radical question, because if God is not our light, all the rest becomes useless. Without God all is darkness!

God came to us, he became man. He has revealed to us the only truth that saves, he died to redeem us from sin, and at Pentecost he gave us the Holy Spirit, he gave us the light of faith ... but we prefer darkness!

Let’s look around us! Western society has chosen to establish itself without God. Witness how it is now delivered to the flashy and deceptive lights of a consumer society: to profit at all costs, and frenzied individualism.

A world without God is a world of darkness, of lies and of selfishness!

Without the light of God, Western society has become like a drunken boat in the night! She does not have enough love to take in children, to protect them beginning from their mother’s womb, to protect them from the aggression of pornography.

Deprived of the light of God, Western society no longer knows how to respect its elderly, accompany unto death its sick, make room for the poorest and the weakest.

Society is abandoned to the darkness of fear, sadness and isolation. She has nothing to offer but emptiness and nothingness. It allows the proliferation of the maddest ideologies.

A Western society without God can become the cradle of an ethical and moral terrorism more virulent and more destructive than Islamist terrorism. Remember that Jesus told us, “And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matt. 10, 28).

Dear friends, forgive me this portrayal. But one must be clear and realistic.

If I speak to you in this way, it is because, in my priestly, pastoral heart, I feel compassion for so many wayward souls, lost, sad, worried and lonely! Who will lead them to the light? Who will show them the way to the truth, the only true path of freedom which is that of the Cross? Are we going to leave them to be delivered to error, to hopeless nihilism, or to aggressive Islamism?

We must proclaim to the world that our hope has a name: Jesus Christ, the only Savior of the world and of humanity! We can no longer be silent!

Dear Pilgrims of France, look upon this cathedral! Your ancestors built it to proclaim their faith! Everything, in its architecture, its sculpture, its windows, proclaims the joy of being saved and loved by God. Your ancestors were not perfect, they were not without sins. But they wanted to let the light of faith illuminate their darkness!

Today, you too, People of France, wake up! Choose the light! Renounce the darkness!

How can this be done? The Gospel tells us: “He who acts according to the truth comes to the light.” Let the light of the Holy Spirit illuminate our lives concretely, simply, and even in the most intimate parts of our deepest being. To act according to the truth is first to put God at the center of our lives, as the Cross is the center of this cathedral.

My brothers, choose to turn to Him every day! At this moment, make the commitment to keep a few minutes of silence every day in order to turn to God, to tell him “Lord reign in me! I give you all my life!”

Dear pilgrims, without silence, there is no light. Darkness feeds on the incessant noise of this world, which prevents us from turning to God.

Take the example of the liturgy of the Mass today. It brings us to adoration, filial fear and love in the presence of God’s greatness. It culminates in the Consecration where together, facing the altar, our gaze directed to the host, to the cross, we commune in silence in recollection and in adoration.

Dear friends, let us love these liturgies that enable us to taste the silent and transcendent presence of God, and turn us towards the Lord.

Dear brother priests, I want to address you specifically. The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is the place where you will find the light for your ministry. The world we live in is constantly petitioning us. We are constantly in motion, without taking care to stop and take the time to go to a deserted place to rest a little, in solitude and silence, in the company of the Lord. There is the danger that we regard ourselves as “social workers”. Then, we would not bring the Light of God to the world, but our own light, which is not that which men expect from us. What the world expects of the priest is God and the Light of his Word proclaimed without ambiguity or falsification.

Let us know how to turn to God in a liturgical celebration, full of respect, silence and sacredness. Do not invent anything in the liturgy. Let us receive everything from God and from the Church. Do not look for show or success. The liturgy teaches us: To be a priest is not above all to do many things. It is to be with the Lord, on the Cross! The liturgy is the place where man meets God face to face. The liturgy is the most sublime moment when God teaches us to “ to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the first-born among many brethren” (Rom. 8, 29). Liturgy is not and should not be an occasion for grief, struggle or strife. In the ordinary form, just as in the extraordinary form of the Roman rite, the essential thing is to turn to the Cross, to Christ, our East, our Everything and our only Horizon! Whether in the ordinary form or the extraordinary form, let us always celebrate, as on this day, according to what the Second Vatican Council teaches: with a noble simplicity, without useless additions, without factitious and theatrical aesthetic, but with the sense of the sacred, with the primary concern for the Glory of God, and with a true spirit of a son of the Church of today and of always!

Dear fellow priests, always keep this certainty: to be with Christ on the Cross is what priestly celibacy proclaims to the world! The plan, again advanced by some, to detach celibacy from the priesthood by conferring the sacrament of the Order on married men (“viri probati”) for, they say, “pastoral reasons or necessities”, would have serious consequences, in fact, to definitively break with the Apostolic Tradition. We would to manufacture a priesthood according to our human dimension, but without perpetuating, without extending the priesthood of Christ, obedient, poor and chaste. Indeed, the priest is not only an “alter Christus”, but he is truly “ipse Christus”, he is Christ himself! And that is why, following Christ and the Church, the priest will always be a sign of contradiction! ~ To you, dear Christians, lay people engaged in the life of the City, I want to say with force: “do not be afraid! Do not be afraid to bring the light of Christ to this world!

Your first witness must be your own example: act according to the Truth! In your family, in your profession, in your social, economic, political relations, may Christ be your Light! Do not be afraid to testify that your joy comes from Christ!

Please, do not hide the source of your hope! On the contrary, proclaim it! Testify to it! Evangelize! The Church needs you! Remind all that only “the crucified Christ reveals the true meaning of freedom! “ (Veritatis Splendor 85) with Christ, set free liberty that is today chained by false human rights, all oriented towards the self-destruction of man.

To you, dear parents, I want to send a special message. Being a father and mother in today’s world is an adventure full of suffering, obstacles and worries. The Church says to you: “Thank you”! Yes, thank you for the generous gift of yourselves! Have the courage to raise your children in the light of Christ. You will sometimes have to fight against the prevailing wind and endure the mockery and contempt of the world. But we are not here to please the world! “We proclaim a crucified Christ, scandal for the Jews and folly for the Gentiles” (1 Cor. 1, 23-24) Do not be afraid! Do not give up! The Church, through the voice of the Popes - especially since the encyclical Humanae Vitae - entrusts to you a prophetic mission: to testify before all of our joyful trust in God, who has made us intelligent guardians of the natural order. You announce what Jesus has revealed to us through his very life: “Freedom is accomplished in love, that is to say, the gift of oneself.” (Veritatis Splendor 87)

Dear Fathers and Mothers, the Church loves you! Love the Church! She is your Mother. Do not join those who laugh at her, because they only see the wrinkles of her face aged by centuries of suffering and hardship. Even today, she is beautiful and radiates holiness.

Finally, I want to address you, you the younger people who are numerous here!

However, I beg you first to listen to an “elder” who has more authority than me. This is the Evangelist St. John. Beyond the example of his life, St. John also left a written message to young people. In his First Letter, we read these moving words of an elder to the young people of the churches he had founded. Listen to his voice full of vigor, wisdom and warmth: “ I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one. Do not love the world or the things in the world”(1 John 2, 14-15).

The world we must not love, as Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa commented in his homily on Good Friday 2018, to which we do not have to comply, is not, as we all know, the world created and loved by God, it is not the people of the world to whom, on the contrary, we must always go to, especially the poor and the poor of the poor, to love them and serve them humbly ... No! The world not to love is another world; it is the world as it became under the rule of Satan and sin. The world of ideologies that deny human nature and destroy the family ... structures from the UN, which impose a new global ethic, play a decisive role and have today become an overwhelming power, spreading through the airwaves through the unlimited possibilities of technology. In many Western countries, it is a crime today to refuse to submit to these horrible ideologies. This is what we call adaptation to the spirit of the times, conformism. A great British believer and poet of the last century, Thomas Stearns Eliot wrote a few verses that say more than whole books: “In a world of fugitives, the person taking the opposite direction will appear to run away”.

Dear young Christians, if it is permissible for an “elder,” as St. John, to speak directly to you, I also exhort you, and I say to you, you have overcome the Evil One! Fight any law against nature that would be imposed upon on you, oppose any law against life, against the family. Be of those who take the opposite direction! Dare to go against the grain! For us, Christians, the opposite direction is not a place, it is a Person, it is Jesus Christ, our Friend and our Redeemer. A task is especially entrusted to you: to save human love from the tragic drift into which it has fallen: love, which is no longer the gift of oneself, but only the possession of the other - a possession often violently tyrannical. On the Cross, God revealed himself as “agape”, that is to say as a love that is given to death. To really love is to die for the other. Like the young gendarme, Colonel Arnaud Beltrame!

Dear young people, you often, without doubt, suffer in your soul the struggle of darkness and light. You are sometimes seduced by the easy pleasures of the world. With all my heart of a priest, I say to you: do not hesitate! Jesus will give you everything! By following him to be Saints, you will not lose anything! You will win the only joy that never disappoints!

Dear young people, if today Christ calls you to follow him as a priest, as a religious, do not hesitate! Say to him: “fiat”, an enthusiastic and unconditional yes!

God wants you to have need of you, what grace! What a joy! The West has been evangelized by the Saints and the Martyrs. You, young people of today, will be the saints and the martyrs that the nations are waiting for in a New Evangelization! Your homelands are thirsty for Christ! Do not disappoint them! The Church trusts you!

I pray that many of you will answer today, during this Mass, the call of God to follow him, to leave everything for him, for his light. Dear young people, do not be afraid. God is the only friend who will never disappoint you! When God calls, he is radical. It means He goes all the way to the root. Dear friends, we are not called to be mediocre Christians! No, God calls us all to the total gift, to the martyrdom of the body or the heart!

Dear people of France, it is the monasteries that made the civilization of your country! It is men and women who have accepted to follow Jesus to the end, radically, who have built Christian Europe. Because they have sought God alone, they have built a beautiful and peaceful civilization, like this cathedral.

People of France, peoples of the West, you will find peace and joy only by seeking God alone! Return to the Source! Return to the monasteries! Yes, all of you, dare to spend a few days in a monastery! In this world of tumult, ugliness and sadness, monasteries are oases of beauty and joy. You will experience that it is possible to put concretely God in the center of his whole life. You will experience the only joy that will not pass.

Dear pilgrims, let us give up the darkness. Let’s choose the light! Let us ask the Blessed Virgin Mary to know how to say “fiat”, that is, yes, fully, like her, to know how to welcome the light of the Holy Spirit like she did. On this day when, thanks to the solicitude of the Holy Father Pope Francis, we celebrate Mary, Mother of the Church, let us ask this Most Holy Mother to have a heart like hers, a heart that refuses nothing to God, a heart burning with love for the glory of God, a heart ardent to announce to men the Good News, a generous heart, a heart as profuse as the heart of Mary, as abundant as that of the Church, and as rich as that of the Heart of Jesus ! So be it!

POPE FRANCIS SPEAKS......

It appears also that the pope has heard word from cardinals and bishops that His Holiness is hyper critical himself, judgemental and arrogant in pointing out others faults: Francis told the bishops he wasn’t sharing these concerns to “beat you up,” but rather as points for further “dialogue and reflection.” He also said he wanted to hear their questions, even their criticisms, because “it’s not bad to criticize the pope, it’s useful.”

Unfortunately the Holy Father doesn't see the plank in his own eye in not living up to his lofty desire above when it comes to the Dubia cardinals and their questions, concerns and criticism!

Pope Francis: it is not a sin to criticize the Pope

by Staff Reporter

posted Tuesday, 22 May 2018

Pope Francis attends the general assembly of the Italian Bishops Conference (Getty Images)

The Pope told Italy's bishops to speak openly about their concerns

Pope Francis has told the Italian bishops that it is “not a sin to criticise the Pope here” as he opened their General Assembly.

The Pope revealed three “worries” during his speech: the decline in vocations, financial scandals, and the reduction and merging of dioceses.

He encouraged the bishops to “speak openly”, urging them to tell him “all the words, your concerns, criticisms – it is not a sin to criticise the Pope here, yes, not a sin – and inspirations that you carry in your hearts.”

INCULTURATION--WHERE DOES IT BELONG IN CATHOLIC SPIRITUALITY AND DEVOTIONS? HINT: IT DOESN'T BELONG IN THE SACRAMENTS, ESEPCIALLY THE MASS

I would not be adverse to the exclusive return of the EF Mass with some vernacular allowed for the changing parts of the Mass and I am not hateful of the revised three-year lectionary as some are. I don't hate, either, the one year cycle for Sundays of the EF Mass, but its daily cycle is miserable, absolutely miserable compared to the OF.

And I am not adverse to mandating that the Mass and other Sacraments be celebrated uniformly around the world as it was in pre-Vatican II times--to hell with inculturation in the Official Prayers of the Church: Sacraments and Liturgy of the Hours.

HOWEVER:

Inculturation with popular devotions is wonderful and the vernacular for these is great. It would be wonderful in multi-cultural parishes and you don't need a priest or deacon to lead a popular devotion--you can have at it as long as Catholic sensibilities are not offended. For example in the Philippines, on Good Friday, laity actually get nailed to crosses--that should always be forbidden, that kind of inculturation, even in devotions.

A BRIT AGREES WITH ME ABOUT THE AMERICAN-STYLE CELEBRITY "ROYAL" WEDDING

I am not as harsh in my critique of the Episcopal Black bishop's sermon. His style of preaching is the "black Protestant" style that many white preachers, even Catholic priests, in the USA at least, try to imitate. It is a cultural thing and I wouldn't slam it in the Black Community, although I know for a fact that African American converts to Catholicism from the strong black Catholic schools we had back then and with their experience almost daily of the Latin Mass of the pre-Vatican II Church usually converted to Catholicism to get away from the acting, screaming and hollering associated with black pentecostals or the black protestant Church. They saw that flamboyance for what it is.

I also thought the content of the sermon was very good.

Acting is the problem with this style of preaching, though, and can lead to celebrity preachers especially when they have 13 minutes of fame and celebrity at an internationally televised event.

But this is Fr. Hunwicke's take on that Royal Wedding:

The Royal Wedding ...

... just carries on and on in the Meeja.

I can only say that I find aspects of it puzzling and alienating.

Some things I just don't even begin to understand: such as why Ms M keeps describing herself daily as a Feminist while apparently happy to be called a Duchess simply because she has married a Duke.

Alienating? The host of  'celebrities' invited to the party alienates me. I suppose in a different age the 'invitees' might have been from other Royal Families, from the Bitish Aristocracy, and from people in our public or political life. Like most ordinary Englishmen, I could discover members of aristocratic families among relations by marriage, or Oxford acquaintances, or former pupils. Foreign Royalty? I met on comfortable terms the late King of Romania; and a Duke of the House of Bourbon. I have mingled socially and bibulously with Members of Parliament. Being quite a small nation, we are comfortably integrated and surprisingly egalitarian.

But all these International Celebrities ... I think they are known technically as "A-list" ... Sir Elton John ... Clooneys ... Serena Williams ... Ophra Winfrey ... Batman, probably ... etc. etc. ... there is not a snowball's chance in Infernis that I have or ever could run into any of them, such is their inaccessible greatness. They are of a mighty altitudo far, far above my humiliated reach. I imagine they are the sort of people whose doings are related in the glossy Celebrity magazines one sees adolescent girls devouring in omnibuses. Looking at the TV clips of those confident lordlings striding into Windsor Castle, I knew how the French must have felt when Herr Hitler visited Paris in 1940 and was photographed in front of the Eiffel Tower.

                     *               *               *               *               *               *

Incidentally, according to the Times, the music played included Greensleeves ... and the wedding took place on the anniversary of the day Anne Boleyn lost her head. And there was a Henry with Welsh connections involved in all that, too ... perhaps I should take more interest in the blacker implications of last Saturday's events ...

What a cheap fool that American 'bishop' is ... it would be fun to see him taking part in a 'historical  reenactment' in the road outside the front door of the Master of Balliol.

HOLY FATHER YOUR DIAGNOSIS ABOUT THE LACK OF VOCATIONS IS CORRECT BUT YOU DO NOT TOUCH ON THE FOUNDATIONAL REASONS, THE 1960'S AND '70'S MENTALITY ABOUT THE CHURCH, THE PRIESTHOOD AND THE SACRAMENTS

Press for complete Crux article on: Pope laments vocations ‘hemorrhage’ 

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Pope Francis arrives at the annual Italian Bishops' Conference in the Synod hall at the Vatican, Monday, May 21, 2018. (Credit: AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia.)

Pope Francis said this about the lack of vocations in Italy (and everywhere else):

On vocations, the pontiff didn’t mince words.

“How many churches and convents have been closed in recent years for a lack of vocations, only God knows,” he said.

Francis blamed the crisis in vocations on many factors, including “a culture of the provisional,” a “culture of relativism,” the “dictatorship of money”, a “demographic inversion” in which families are having fewer children, the impact of Church scandals, and the “tepid witness” given by some priests and bishops.

In any event, the pontiff said frankly, “we’re not succeeding” at generating a sufficient number of new vocations.

“What we need is a fidei donum [system] from one diocese to the other,” he said.

The term fidei donum comes from a 1957 encyclical of Pope Pius XII, which encouraged dioceses with substantial numbers of priests to release some of them for service in mission countries which didn’t have enough priests. Today, it’s most often employed in a reverse sense, as countries in the developing world are sending some of their priests to the West to compensate for priest shortages.

“I think of some dioceses in the Piedmont, with its grand tradition [which today lacks
priests],” Francis said, referring to a region of northern Italy. “Yet in Puglia there’s an over-abundance,” he said, referring to a region of the comparatively under-developed Italian south.

My Comments:

I don't disagree with the Holy Father on what His Holiness includes as part of the problem of a lack of vocations but it blames society too much and the post Vatican II Church too little, especially the confusion that it caused in the 1960's and 70's and the renewed confusion of that period that Pope Francis has recovered or relishes.

Yes, Church scandals are part of the problem but these have been placed on steroids in the post-Vatican II loss of Catholic identity, especially priestly identity and the majesty of God's higher calling to a priestly vocation.

Confusion about the Church's ecclesiology, the priesthood of all believers to the watering down of priestly and religious identity, the removal of beauty from religious life (i.e. distinct habit and communal lifestyle and discipline); the removal of beauty, mystery, majesty and reverence from the banal post-Vatican II sacraments, Mass in particular, with its fragmentation into many languages and cultural expressions difficult for most priests to like or desire to celebrate.

The pedestrian approach to religious life and priesthood with emphasis on being a social worker.

The self-referential ecclesiology of the post Vatican II Church symbolized in dramatic fashion by the priest-celebrity facing the congregation for Mass, the heresy of univeralism which has resulted from ecumenical, interfaith and worldly dialouge that see all things as equal if we could just all get along and a strong desire to protestantize the Catholic Church and her liturgies to get along better with protestants and maybe have the same kind of unity they have under the protestant umbrella.

A removal of the monarchical trapping of the hierarchy which pointed to Christ the Risen King and the Kingdom of God.

SOUTHERN LIVING: ALLIGATORS AND RATTLESNAKES

UNTAMED LOWCOUNTRY 

10-foot alligator hanging out in parking lot surprises Lowcountry motel guest

BY LISA WILSON| LWILSON@ISLANDPACKET.COM

Yesterday

A nearly 10-foot alligator showed up at the Knights Inn Point South motel in Yemassee this week, but it didn’t get a room.
A motel guest discovered the alligator next to his vehicle early Tuesday morning, according to comments and photos posted on Facebook by Jasper County Sheriff’s Office deputy John Mitaly, a K9 handler.

'Did that just happen?' Hilton Head man records himself 'rescuing' massive alligator

(Logan Cambron | Ashley Jean Reese)

“When your K9 handler skills come in handy and you adopt a new partner. ... Ima need a bigger cage,” Mitaly’s caption reads.
Prakash Patel, the motel’s manager, said his guest was trying to get to his vehicle to go to work when he came back to the front desk. “There’s an alligator near my car!” Patel said the guest told him.
Patel said the animal was just under 10 feet long.
He suspects it came from one of the many ponds where he knows gators live in the area. The motel is located at 420 Campground Road and is a neighbor of the Point South KOA campground.

Jasper County Sheriff's Office deputy John Mitaly takes a photo with an alligator in the parking lot of the Knights Inn Point South motel in Yemassee on May 15, 2018. (John Mitaly | Submitted)

The men watched the alligator for a while, but it didn’t leave, so they called the Sheriff’s Office, Patel said.
David Lucas, regional public information coordinator for S.C. Department of Natural Resources, confirmed that DNR was contacted by the Sheriff's Office and dispatched Matt McDaniel to deal with the alligator.
Lucas said DNR’s initial report indicated only that the alligator was removed from the scene.
“It doesn’t say it was euthanized, but I would be surprised if it wasn’t,” Lucas said.
In the Lowcountry, roughly 100 alligators are ruled as "nuisance alligators" every year, Lucas previously told The Island Packet and The Beaufort Gazette. "Of all those calls, only about five alligators are relocated."

When asked via Facebook to talk about the alligator, McDaniel said he could not comment.
During mating season, which alligator experts say was kicked into high gear by the sudden onset of warm weather in late spring, males move around in order to find females.

READ MORE

• Hilton Head man charged for wrangling, relocating 10-ft gator. He likely saved its life

Lowcountry residents have reported a flood of alligator sightings within the last few weeks.
One of those alligators ended up on the school grounds at May River High School.
Another ended up trapped on the front porchof a family's home in the middle of the night.
In a tragic case, a family's vehicle hit an alligator crossing I-95, and a mother and two children were killed.

READ MORE

• 7-foot alligator that was 'ticked off' and hissing gets stuck on Lowcountry porch

Rattlesnake plunges from tree into kayak, then starts attacking the kayaker, SC fire chief says

BY NOAH FEIT| NFEIT@THESTATE.COM

Yesterday

A South Carolina man thought he was going to enjoy a day outdoors with friends Sunday, but things took a frightening turn.
The man, who was kayaking, was bitten multiple times by a rattlesnake and had to be rushed to an area hospital, according to Colleton County Fire Chief Barry McRoy.
The incident occurred when the 28-year-old Anderson man and friends were kayaking on the Edisto River.
The rattlesnake fell out of a tree and bit the man on his hand, twice, McRoy said.
McRoy said he did not know how long it took the kayakers to reach a boat landing at the intersection of SC-61 and US-15, but he said Colleton County Fire and Rescue received a call about the bite at 5:20, and it took them approximately 12 minutes to pick up the Anderson man.
The man was rushed to Colleton Medical Center, which had anti-venom waiting in the emergency room, according to McRoy.
During the ambulance ride, the man "was in bad shape, and greatly deteriorated," McCroy said, adding that the man's ailments included lots of swelling and airway problems.
The man was listed in critical condition, abcnews4.com reported.
While McRoy praised the work done in the ER, he said the man was flown by helicopter to MUSC Monday morning, saying typically that is not a good sign.
The rattlesnake was captured by friends of the man on the kayaking trip, live5news.comreported.
McRoy said the rattlesnake wasn't very big, estimating it was between 18 inches and 2-feet long.
This was the first reported rattlesnake bite in the county this year, McRoy said. He said there have been a number of copperhead snake bites reported, but typically in those cases the patients have been treated and released from hospitals.
In 2016, Wayne Grooms, a West Columbia naturalist, died after a snake bit him at Santee National Wildlife Refuge. Grooms’ death stunned many people in South Carolina because fatal snakebites are so rare. No more than a half dozen people die nationally each year from snakebites.