21 Comments

If there is baseball in heaven, then finally we will have the abomination that is the designated hitter expunged from the game.

Expand full comment

Sorry, but if you are looking for the MOST Catholic city in the nation, you have to come to Lafayette, Louisiana. Cajun Country. We can hook you up with gumbo, cigars, and a beautiful Latin Mass. Come on down, y'all!

Expand full comment

If there is baseball in heaven I personally want to see the matchup of Satchell Paige versus Babe Ruth and Walter Johnson versus Josh Gibson. I'll be happy to buy you some peanuts and Cracker Jacks!

Expand full comment

"If bishops aren’t willing to go to the margins to comfort those members of their flock who are clearly wounded, it’s probably inevitable that they will conclude that words like “pastoral” and “unity” are just words, and that driving them out was the real point all along."

Indeed!

Expand full comment

I write with a genuine question. Why does virtually no one say the missa normativa? It’s in Latin, it’s dignified (there’s probably an element of self-selection involved amongst those priests comfortable in Latin) and it’s legal. The Extraordinary Rite is a wholly different matter and seems to attract many for all the wrong reasons. (And I’m old enough to have been brought up in it, unlike many of its adherents.) I’d love to see more Latin in the church - the office could be celebrated much more widely and doesn’t really need clerical supervision (or should that be enforcement?). Fides quaerens intellectum.

Expand full comment

I read read through the letter to the World Council of Churches (WCC). Most of the signatories are Catholics, and some appear to be religiously unaffiliated. Since the Catholic Church is not part of the WCC, it is essentially a group of outsiders telling an organisation how to run themselves and with whom they can accept as members. This strikes be a being somewhat inappropriate: it would rankle us if outsiders decided to lecture the Catholic church about our associations. For example, they may object to the Church being associated with labour unions and demand that the Church no longer support them.

That the WCC is still a going concern does surprise me. It was thoroughly infiltrated by the KGB, which ensured that it was shockingly silent during the 1968 crushing of the Prague Spring. One of its presidents, Metropolitan Nikidim, was a KGB officer. And there are numerous other examples.

If the non-Catholics on the letter want to change, they should demand that their own church/ecclesial communion withdraw from the WCC unless they expel the Russian Orthodox Church. But for Catholics, this is not our concern, and we should show some respect.

Expand full comment