The Gates of Hell Shall not Prevail against It.

Hackers, led by an outfit with the original tag "Anonymous" try and fail to attack the Vatican website on World Youth Day.

Hackers initially tried to take down a website set up by the church to promote the event, handle registrations and sell merchandise. Their goal — according to YouTube messages delivered by an Anonymous figure in a Guy Fawkes mask — was to disrupt the event and draw attention to child sexual abuse by priests, among other issues.

The videos, which have been viewed more than 77,000 times, include a verbal attack on the Pope and the young people who “have forgotten the abominations of the Catholic Church.” One calls on volunteers to “prepare your weapons, my dear brother, for this August 17th to Sunday August 21st, we will drop anger over the Vatican.”

No dice:

A core group of roughly a dozen skilled hackers spent three days poking around the church’s World Youth Day site looking for common security holes that could let them inside, the report says...

In this case, the scanning software failed to turn up any gaps. So the hackers turned to a brute-force approach — a so-called distributed denial-of-service, or DDoS, attack that involves clogging a site with data requests until it crashes. Even unskilled supporters could take part in this from their computers or smartphones...

On the first day, the denial-of-service attack resulted in 28 times the normal traffic to the church site, rising to 34 times the next day. Hackers involved in the attack, who did not identify themselves, said through a Twitter account associated with the campaign that the two-day effort succeeded in slowing the site’s performance and making the page unavailable “in several countries.” Imperva disputed that the site’s performance was affected and said its technologies had successfully siphoned the excess data away from the site.

Imperva executives say the Vatican’s defenses held up because, unlike Sony and other hacker targets, it invested in the infrastructure needed to repel both break-ins and full-scale assaults.

From the early days of radio onward, the Vatican's use of technology has shown remarkable sophistication.

Looking for the Fire Escape?

Fame-seeking atheist Richard Dawkins says he's now not sure God doesn't exist! I wonder if he's come down with a fatal illness.

Diary of a Papist Convert

I apologize to my readers (if there are any remaining!) for the prolonged radio silence. There have been no crises in my life, of faith or anything else; I simply have not felt an urge lately to put anything down in writing (though there have been several abandoned attempts) and the longer one goes not blogging the easier it is not to. Recently, however, there was a joyous occurrence for me that I, if you will indulge me, humbly believe ought be shared.

This past Friday I finally screwed up the courage and made my way to my first choir practice at the Church of the Holy Innocents in New York City. I had long ago been invited to do this but had lost heart at every attempt, often while on my way to the church. My notion (or "out," really, providing me wth the courage this time) was to sit in at rehearsals for the foreseeable future and simply follow along until I eventually gained enough facility and confidence to take part, I having little experience in plainchant and square notes. Alas, to my great horror, the choir leader promptly dismissed that wimpy notion and told me sing along right then and there. There was thus no out and no way out. I sang along, both at rehersal and in the Extraordinary Form Mass immediately following.

To my astonishment I didn't do too badly. I made more than a few flubs but none of them terribly disruptive and by Mass's end felt a sense of elation as never felt before. I had not realized how much I missed making music (your Bloviator is a frustrated musician) and doing it for the glory of God only heightened the experience. And while my voice is mediocre at best, just short of a caterwaul, God did kindly compensate for that by blessing me (although sometimes it seems like a curse) with perfect pitch, which is helpful when singing a cappella.

So I am now a proud member, two evenings a week for now, of the choir at the Church of the Holy Innocents in Manhattan, the only church in New York where the Extraordinary Form is celebrated seven days a week. Deo gratias.

Saint Cecilia pray for us.

Scenes from the Conversion of Mount Calvary Church in Baltimore

There Goes the Neighborhood

Roman and Anglo-Catholics in the Baltimore area may wish to attend Mass Sunday morning at Mount Calvary Church at 10:00 a.m. so they may, in addition to worshiping and receiving the sacraments--as well fulfill their obligation, pray for the clergy (rector above) and parishioners at that church as they are received into the Holy Catholic Church. The activities for the day are as follows.

Solemn High Mass on Sunday, January 22, 2012, at 10:00 am, the parishioners and clergymen of Mount Calvary Church will make their profession of faith and be confirmed as Roman Catholics and members of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter by the first Anglican Use Ordinary of the United States, Father Jeffrey Steenson.

Solemn Evensong at 4:30 pm, with Father Dwight Longenecker preaching.

Gala receptions will follow both liturgies.

Given that this is an Anglo-Catholic parish going over to Rome, we can only believe both liturgy and receptions to follow will be nothing short of spectacular. Come and pray, worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness and have a rollicking good time. Deo Gratias!

Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine,
There’s always laughter and good red wine.
At least I’ve always found it so.
Benedicamus Domino!
― Hilaire Belloc

h/t Daniel Page

Behaving Like Christians

The Episcopal Diocese of Maryland has released a statement outlining the terms of agreement reached with the parishioners of Mount Calvary Church of Baltimore as they part from the Episcopal Church and join the Holy Catholic Church via Anglicanorum Coetibus. Given the rancor and litigation other parishes have suffered when attempting to leave the Episcopal Church, the parishioners of Mount Calvary could scarcely have done better. They will keep most of their property (paying an undisclosed sum) and the diocese will have right of first refusal should they wish to dispose of it in the future. Seems fair to me.

Most important, the statement is a model of grace and decorum and ought serve as a paradigm for the Episcopal Church in her future dealings with parishes that wish to depart. From the statement's closing paragraph:

The Rev. Canon Scott Slater, on the bishops’ staff and part of the mediation team representing the Episcopal diocese, said, "This has been a thoughtful, prayerful, and respectful process by all three entities, and I am pleased that we have reached a solution that meets the needs of all three groups."

Amen, Amen.

Thanks to Augustine.

Diary of a Papist Convert: the Anglican Way

Thanks to Father Rutler for alerting me to this splendid (and brief) piece by George Weigel: Converts and the Symphony of Truth, in which the author celebrates the varieties of religious experiences of Catholic converts. It seems the experiences of those converting, not surprisingly, nearly equal their number. Coming as I did, however, from a quasi-WASPy Anglican background, I had most empathy with Evelyn Waugh, who, as Weigel relates, "became a Catholic with, by his own admission, 'little emotion but clear conviction': this was the truth; one ought to adhere to it." Quite so. While I will confess for years having a bit of envy for those who had some dramatic experience, an epiphany of sorts, that suddenly infused them with a true and lively faith, mine was undramatic: a years-long process of discernment consisting of questioning, reasoning, reading, consultation and prayer, eventually leading me to the Catholic Church, with no fireworks. So be it and thanks be to God.

Even more gratifying, though, in Weigel's essay is his description of a common thread running through the diverse tales of conversion:

that men and women of intellect, culture and accomplishment have found in Catholicism what Blessed John Paul II called the “symphony of truth.” That rich and complex symphony, and the harmonies it offers, is an attractive, compelling and persuasive alternative to the fragmentation of modern and post-modern intellectual and cultural life, where little fits together and much is cacophony.

There is no doubt of that. The times we live in are as corrupt, superficial and shallow as they were before my conversion but I find them now just a bit more bearable, armed as I am with the full Catholic faith and the promise of salvation to those who live by Church teachings (not always easy, of course).

Next weekend, I will have the great pleasure of witnessing the reception of an entire Episcopal parish, Mount Calvary Church in Baltimore, and its rector Fr. Catania, an old friend, into the Holy Catholic Church by the newly appointed American Anglican Ordinary, Msgr. Steenson. Priest and parishioners have gone through a period of discernment similar to mine, reasoned and deliberate (it's the Anglican way--I give you Cardinal Newman). Holy Church will be richer than she already is by this happy occurrence and I pray those good people will find themselves enriched as well.

They Must be Nuts--They Enlisted, Right?

Interesting that so many in the media, when reporting on the recent fatal shooting of a Mount Ranier park ranger, find it newsworthy that the deranged suspect was (his body was found earlier today) an "Iraqi War Veteran." What is the relevance of his military past? Do you recall it being reported of crime suspects they were veterans of the Second World War or the Korean War? No, the military background of perps only began attaining relevance at the time the media turned against the military and, more pertinently, the draft, and has become a vital fact now that the nation's conflicts (especially those for which presidents named Bush may be blamed) are fought by an all-volunteer army. What a stunning coincidence.

Imagine That

An entertainer by the name of Cee Lo Green, engaged by NBC to entertain the assembled throng in New York's Times Square this New Year's Eve, got himself into a bit of trouble for altering the lyric of one of the ditties he crooned, John Lennon's, "Imagine." It seems he changed a stanza in this treacly ode to atheism from "nothing to kill or die for / and no religion too" to "nothing to kill or die for / and all religion's true." Lennon fans are crying blasphemy.

I doubt, however, Mr. Lennon, who was a cynic but no dummy, would have been terribly ruffled over this controversy (certainly his estate receives a nice royalty check whatever the words sung). Lennon would have known, even if Mr. Green does not, the multi-culti substitution of "all religion" for "no religion" changes the meaning not one wit, as an idiot quoted in the Rolling Stone account (and are you as astonished as I to learn that tired old relic of the 'sixties is still extant?) nicely, if entirely inadvertently, confirms:

"The whole point of that lyric is that religion causes harm," tweeted someone with the handle @geekysteven. "If 'all religion's true' it would be a pretty bleak place.

Sing it, brother!

On the Other Hand...

The estimable Fr. Dwight Longnecker (an Episcopalian convert himself) writes, concerning the Anglican Ordinariate:

The establishment of the Ordinariate has clarified matters between the two churches. Benedict XVI has, if you like, called the bluff of all those Anglicans who kept on saying, "We are Catholics too you know...just not Roman Catholics." Then they would go on in pious phrases, "We do long to become Catholics and to achieve unity, but we do not want to give up our distinct patrimony."

OK. It's all possible now. Anglicans can come into full communion with Rome. They can keep their distinct patrimony. They have their own hierarchy. Their married men may be ordained. They can have their own religious orders, their own seminary and their own churches and their own form of church government. What else do they want? The numbers who take up the Pope's offer will be small, because they will have to launch out in faith.

There is no question there are those in the Catholic Church, some of them well placed, who want no part of the Anglican Ordinariate and will seemingly do whatever they can to derail it. Curious, that, since it is obvious the will of the Holy Father is this thing be done; how do they reconcile their behavior with Catholic obedience?

On the other hand, as Fr. Longnecker points out, the time has come for those Anglicans who profess and practice "Catholicity" to put up or shut up. The Holy Catholic Church has extended an unprecedented and generous offer to them to become one with the one true Church while maintaining their worship practices, which in the case of Anglo-Catholics, is not only pre-Vatican II but pre-Pius XII as well: essentially 19th century Catholic worship while using the Book of Common Prayer (and no doubt at the root of the angst and nay-saying among liberal Catholic bishops and priests).

Anglicans, particularly those calling themselves Anglo-Catholic, who decline the invitation from Rome are, in effect, declaring their lot with the Protestants (one commenter on Longnecker's post proclaims he will not budge until the Vatican allows use of the 1662 Prayer book and the 39 Articles!--good luck with that, fella). With the establishment of the Anglican Ordinariate, Anglicans who insists on defining themselves as "Catholic" will, over time, appear increasingly anomalous and, as the Anglican Church (and the Episcopal Church, especially) march further and further from orthodoxy, downright ridiculous. As Fr. George Rutler once wrote: "It must also be remembered that the continued existence of Catholic forms within Anglicanism does a disservice by confusing many." Indeed.

The road to hell is paved with the skulls of erring priests, with bishops as their signposts.--St. John Chrysostom

Among the many thoughtful comments (and thank you one and all) on my post concerning the soon-to-be announced ordinary of the American Anglican Ordinariate was this one from commenter Anthony:

One very telling comment which has stuck in my mind so clearly, was asked by a Catholic Bishop at the U.S. Bishops' Conference back in June. When speaking of future parish communities in the Ordinariate, he asked Cardinal Wuerl, "What if one of my people stumbles into one of these parishes, and likes it?" To which Cardinal Wuerl replied "It hasn't been a problem up until now." This sums up both the stupidity and non-pastoral nature of some of these characters with whom we have to do.

The establishment of the ordinariate will just be the beginning. Whoever the ordinary turns out to be, the estimable Fr. Steenson or one of the other worthy candidates, he will have his work cut out for him, as will all the brave souls planting Anglican Use churches within dioceses headed by the many deeply suspicious, sometimes downright hostile, bishops in the U.S.C.C.B. They might take at least some solace, however, knowing they will be having a better time of it than their counterparts in England.

Ordinariate Buzz

It is being noised Jeffrey Steenson, the former Bishop of the Diocese of the Rio Grande in the Episcopal Church, who was received into the Catholic Church in 2007 and is now a priest, will be named Ordinary of the American Anglican Ordinariate on January 1, 2012.

Should the buzzings be true, Fr. Steenson would make an excellent choice; his credentials are solid.

The Death of Another Leader

It's sad the death of the despotic Kim Jong-il generates headlines, think-pieces and thumbsuckers in media around the world while news of the contemporaneous death of a genuine hero, Vaclav Havel, is more or less buried. It was Havel (along with Lech Walesa and, of course, Pope John Paul II), who at considerable risk and cost to his own welfare, stood up to the lie that is communism and successfully urged his compatriots to do same, eventually leading to the collapse of the Soviet Bloc. I can't help wonder if many of those in today's media, upon hearing of Havel's death and Googling his name to learn about him, found those activities so disquieting they chose instead to lavish their attention on Kim, who though a murderous clown thug, was possessed at least of a more palatable ideology.

Vaclav Havel, 1936-2011.

At Long Last

The Reverend Jason Catania, Rector of Mount Calvary Church (Episcopal) announced this morning at Mass that the parishioners of that church will be received into the Catholic Church and the U.S. Anglican Use Ordinariate on Sunday, January 22, 2012. This is most excellent news and a long time coming. Fr. Catania is a friend of your Bloviator going back nearly a decade, when he was stationed in another church. In fact it was he who virtually ordered me, after a period of slack attendance, to start attending Mass again regularly no matter what the state of the Episcopal Church. That was excellent counsel and the result of it was a few years later I up and left the Episcopal Church and embraced the full Catholic faith, waving to my priest friend from the opposite side of the Tiber. Now he will soon be joining me and the rest of us on this side of it and that is most pleasing indeed.

Welcome home, Father.

Thanks to Augustine.

Putting Allah into Christmas

Earlier I bloviated the multi-cultis, in their efforts to ecumenize Christmas to death, had little to offer when it came to injecting Islam into the mix, i.e., "some sort of Islamic equivalent even though there is none..." Oh, how glibly wrong that was. Thanks are owed to a long-time blogging colleague of your Bloviator (one who has linked to this humble effort almost from its inception), Archbishop Cranmer, and his fairly astonishing report of an "inclusive" Lessons and Carols ceremony (one of the Anglican Church's great gifts to Christianity) celebrated recently at a chapel at the University of London, at which traditional scripture was dispensed with in favor of readings from the Qur'an, the part about Mary, as you might have expected. One of the celebrants was, not surprisingly, an Anglican priestess, the other a Catholic priest, also not surprisingly but sadly indicative of the state of Holy Church in England.

It behooves you to read His Grace's entire account of the debacle but this short excerpt from it will serve to close this posting.

When you compromise on the intellectual, political, and imaginative foundations of Western culture, you create a spiritual vacuum which needs to be filled. The people cry out for meat, and all they can get is the milk of dumbed-down Anglicanism followed by a mouthful of Islam.

Job Well Done

I do believe the transformation is complete: so far this season I have not once heard the dreaded word "Christmas" in any radio or television commercial, nor seen it in any print ads. In fact, the only use of the word at all I have seen in media intended for mass distribution was this morning (and boy was I taken aback), in the monthly handout for commuters published by Metro North Railroad (a gummint institution, no less), wherein their Christmas Day schedule was announced (I guess there was no easy way to get around the word). Atheists will be relieved to know, however, Metro North atoned for that sin elsewhere in the bulletin where, in a list of suggested seasonal activities, a visit to the "Holiday Tree" in Rockefeller Center was recommended.

All in all, however, it's probably for the best this de-Christianization of Christmas, for in these times the moment anyone suggests some sort of public observance of the feast, self-appointed advocates of "fairness" will leap up and demand equal time for the other religions and so begins the trotting out of the menorahs (and since "Christmas" trees are no longer allowed shouldn't menorahs be called "Holiday candelabra" or some-such?), Kwanza decorations (how odd that a manufactured holiday celebrates the harvest at the onset of winter) and, of course, some sort of Islamic equivalent even though there is none (never mind that, we'll just put up a great big crescent, preferably right over the crèche the Catholics put up earlier, right next to the angels and Frosty the Snowman).

In a similar vein, your crabby old Bloviator vigorously eschews "ecumenism" of any sort, for in the end it is only a declaration of the tepidity of one's own faith. One will never find, and rightly so, any nod to or borrowings from Christianity in orthodox Jewish services, likewise for Islamic, Hindu, Zoroastrian and other faiths' observances. I will never forget a community service I attended years ago in the well-to-do Connecticut suburb in which I grew up, in an Episcopal church (naturally), that concluded with the soprano soloist, accompanied by large chorus and orchestra, recessing down the aisle bellowing Hava Nagila at the top of her lungs. In the audience was my childhood piano teacher and when I saw her later she was in high dudgeon: "They're apologizing for being Christian," she said angrily and loudly and she was absolutely right. This Christmas, don't apologize for being Christian. Atheists and non-believing members of other faiths are the only ones who might take offense and quite frankly, they need to be offended.

One non-Christian who never took offense at the celebration of Christmas was a former neighbor of mine, an observant orthodox Jew (he attended schul daily at 7:00 a.m.) and a Holocaust survivor. Every year, on Christmas day, he would bang on the door of my apartment, boom out a "Merry Christmas" and invite me over to his and his wife's apartment next door to sample some of his fine single-malt scotches. He was a godly man.

A Solution to a Common Nuisance

Sign in a coffee shop in Ojai, California.

Thanks to Mimi.

Heiliger Dankgesang

For reasons I have never been able to fathom I always associate Thanksgiving with the music of Beethoven. I was therefore most pleased to hear on the car radio, while driving to the family Thanksgiving gathering, that the program director at radio station WQXR, New York's only(!) full-time classical station, had felt likewise and scheduled an all-Beethoven play-list. Particularly appropriate, I thought, was the airing of String Quartet No. 15, Op. 132, which Beethoven composed after recovering from a a serious illness. The ethereal (like so much of late Beethoven) third movement is entitled: "Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit, in der lydischen Tonart" ("A Convalescent's Holy Song of Thanksgiving to the Divinity, in the Lydian Mode"). More transcendent and eerily beautiful music simply does not exist; the master was surely hearing the voice of God as he penned his thanks to Him in music.

Now home from a most splendid repast, I thought it appropriate to cap off the day by listening to the grandest Beethoven work of them all, the Ninth Symphony, via an historic recording (Furtwängler, Philharmonia Orchestra, Lucerne, 1954, for you enthusiasts out there). Sitting here, sipping from a small glass of decent scotch (with a splash), I feel particularly cognizant of the rich blessings bestowed upon me by an ever-loving God. Your Bloviator has had his share of adversity over the years (the early to mid-nineties were particularly brutal) but always managed to land on his feet, thanks be to God. And while my life can hardly be described as all bliss all the time, I nonetheless have much to be thankful for: a nice place to live, family and friends, a job I actually enjoy and, most of all, since 2008, the joy of having embraced the full Catholic faith.

Whatever your faith, or even if you have none at all, I wish every one of you a happy Thanksgiving.

Good Multi-Culti

From the Wall Street Journal:

An English Thanksgiving, 1942

American soldiers followed in the footsteps of 17th-century Pilgrims and sat in the pew of Miles Standish. 

...In those dark days, Americans took special pleasure in displaying their homegrown holiday to the Mother Country. The English were dubious at first but slowly realized they were being invited to share in something very special.

U.S. Army Cpl. Heinz Arnold warms up the pipes in London's Westminster Abbey. Getty Images

Read it all, truly inspiring.

This is the Last Straw...

Enough, I hope, to drive even the effete progressives from New York's credentialed class into the arms of the Libertarians. The New York Times (credit where credit is due!) reports on the latest outrage of the bloated public sector, directed at a venerable New York institution:

Inspector Visits Sardi’s. Free Cheese Ends.

By JAMES BARRON

Published: November 17, 2011

It was a tradition at bars like the ones in Sardi’s in the theater district: a communal cheese pot with a knife sticking out, and some crackers. First-nighters or late-nighters grabbed the knife and a cracker, spread the cheese — cheddar — and ate. Some called it dinner [all-too-true!--ed.].

Now, after a health department inspection that complained about “food not protected from potential source of contamination,” the communal pot is gone.

Other bar-food staples like peanuts and pretzels in little bowls? Sardi’s has taken them off the bar, too.

Anyone who wants cheese and crackers has to order them, and will be served his or her own pot of cheese and a couple of crackers wrapped in plastic. And now there is a price: Unlike the communal cheese pot, which was free, Sardi’s is charging $3 for a small pot of cheese and a couple of crackers and $5 for a large pot.

######

“It has to do with the health department,” said V. Max Klimavicius, the president of Sardi’s. “It’s gotten to the point that the way they’re applying the health code is so rigid, we can no longer have what we always had. The way it is now with the health department, as they say, a good inspector has to find violations. They come with flashlights and look in every corner.”

“It’s just mind-boggling,” he said. “Nobody’s happy.”

Of course nobody's happy, save for zealous and overpaid unionized government workers who relish the opportunity showing we-the-people who really is in charge. Those cheese pots were the perfect accompaniment to a gin martini (straight up with olives)...or two...or three; they really laid a nice base. The hope expressed above this egregious act might lessen New York elites' support of overwhelming and overweening government is, of course, in vain. What's more likely to occur is should they find themselves in Sardi's for a drink (one doesn't go there for the food, of course) and learn that the friendly earthenware pots stuffed with Wispride® have been banished by the germ police, they will shake their heads slightly, make a sad utterance how it must be for the best, followed by--more loudly so everyone will hear--a snarky comment how awful American cheese is, then flag down the waiter and order du fromage Selles-sur-cher (tres cher!) that is much more in keeping with people of their education and intellectual pretensions.

Really, this is so prole.

Breaking News on the Ordinariate

Cardinal Wuerl: the Anglican Ordinariate in the United States will be established on New Year's Day, 2012; the Pope has approved.

Now that that has been settled, the next item up for speculation is who will be the ordinary? I received an interesting tip who that might be back in June but nothing has come of it, yet. We shall know soon enough now.

Also something to ponder here in New York City: which, if any, Episcopal parish here will join the ordinariate? I don't see any obvious candidates. It would be my and many others' fondest wish the parishioners of glorious St. Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue might embrace the full Catholic faith but the chances of that happy event occurring are just about nil (although there might be a small number of parishioners at St. Thomas who would be in favor). Friends have suggested a few smaller Anglo-Catholic parishes here as possibilities but their demographics (to put it as tactfully as possible) make it extremely unlikely they would elect to become Roman Catholics.

h/t Anglican Patrimony, by way of Augustine.

Out They Go

The NYPD has cleared the protesters out of Zucotti Park, which is, sort of, the mecca of the "Occupiers." This will probably mean the end to this whole sorry business.

UPDATE: I spoke too soon! A judge has ordered the City to let 'em back in, tents and all, pending a hearing at 11:30 a.m.

UPDATE 2: The judge ordered they can go back but without their tents and stuff; rather like being told you can move into a house but not with no furniture. Also, this item:

After the camp in Zuccotti Park was cleared Tuesday, police and protesters again faced off across Lower Manhattan. Some demonstrators tried to set up a new campsite on land owned by an Episcopal church, but police ordered them to disperse and arrested those who didn't comply.

Goodness, that doesn't reflect well at all on the well-off liberals at Trinity Wall Street, which Episcopal church it surely must be; and since that parish owns a good portion of the real estate in the Financial District (courtesy a 19th century parishioner named John Jacob Astor), the Occupiers may have to roam a bit to find a new home. Perhaps the Methodists on nearby John Street will allow them to encamp on their stoop.

Nobody Said This was Going to be Easy

Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory:

Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted of Phoenix has backed away from his ban on using consecrated wine for Communion at most Masses, a decision that was originally met with widespread outcry.

In an explanation of his decision in a letter to the priests of the diocese, Olmsted apologized for his own misunderstanding of church documents, including new guidelines and translations for the Catholic Mass, and for any confusion arising from his previous statement made at a priests' meeting in September.

Father Anthony Ruff, an expert on new translations for the Mass, who criticized the bishop's previous position as a "step backward," said he had never heard of a bishop "retracting so quickly."

"Anything I say could sound like gloating," Ruff said. "I think it's for local clergy and liturgical ministers to find the right way to express their goodwill and happiness with this. 

Actually, it is gloating. When Fr. Ruff states he has never heard of a bishop "retracting so quickly," the word "gloating" fairly springs to one's mind. More important, however, than triumphalism from a fan of bad liturgical English is that the reporter for the the Arizona Republic (whence this story comes) missed the lede. The underlying cause for temper tantrums thrown by the innovators has less to do with the limiting of communion sub utraque specie (under both kinds) than the limiting of civilians, otherwise known as Eucharistic ministers, the opportunity to do so (I'll wager the squawking would have been just as loud had the bishop ruled only clergy celebrants could administer the chalice). Post-Vatican II reformers were hellbent in reshaping Holy Church to resemble that of the groovier and far cooler (not to mention the higher-up-the-social ladder) Anglicans and greater involvement in the mass by the laity, whether they wanted it or not, was essential to that end (ironically, the Anglicans never went so far as to allow civilians to administer the elements, at least no Anglican church I ever attended did).

Bishop Olmsted deserves credit attempting to contain one of the more egregious liturgical reforms of post-Vatican II, one for which there was no crying need other than that the protestants did it, and one deplored by our present Pope. The bishop has shown spine in the past. What a pity he felt it necessary to cave following the inevitable shrill complaints from innovators concerning the chalice (it is uncanny how fiercely Eucharistic ministers guard their turf--like lionesses watching over their cubs). Holy Church will never recover from her Procrustean protestantization in the1970s with feckless actions like this one from the Bishop of Arizona.

h/t Angelqueen.org

From One Oracle to Another

The Christian Science Monitor (a fine newspaper indeed, even if I have certain difficulties with the rather peculiar theology of its owners) poses an interesting question:

The Reformed Broker

Berkshire Hathaway doubles stock purchases. Does Buffett see something big?

Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. invested $23.9 billion in the third-quarter, the most in at least 15 years. Is Berkshire Hathaway seeing something on the horizon?

I think I can answer that. I asked another oracle, which has never let me down, the following question: "Will Barack Obama be re-elected president?" and the answer was

Great minds think alike.

Showing Them How

Another person has crawled out of the woodwork to allege Herman Cain made unwanted advances to her, this one represented by the notorious (and downright bizarre) lefty ambulance chaser, Gloria Allred. One of the three or four conservatives in Hollywood, screenwriter Andrew Klavan, explains why we should let this matter proceed, unfair as it may seem.

But there’s a reason it’s unfair—a reason it should be unfair. There’s a reason we right wingers vet our candidates while the left adulates theirs, a reason we condemn our miscreants while the left elevates theirs, a reason our news outlets cover stories that the left covers up.

The reason is: we’re the good guys. We have to do what’s right. The left doesn’t. Sorry, but that’s the way it works. It’s the price you pay for defending what’s true and good, the price of holding yourself to a high moral standard. Our politicians have to be better than their politicians. Our journalists have to be more honest. Even our protesters have to behave with decorum and decency—and still suffer being slandered—while theirs can act like animals and commit acts of violence and lawlessness and spew anti-semitic filth and still find themselves excused and glorified.

We really have no choice.

Attorney Allred introduces Exhibit A at a press conference.

If Buckley were Still Alive

Neal B. Freeman speculates how the present republican candidates would fared with the late William F. Buckley, Jr.. Romney, for example:

First, he would have summoned the Republican stalwarts for catechismic instruction. Mitt Romney, invited to dinner at 73rd Street, would have been given a pass on gun control, abortion, immigration and universal health care. Bill believed that every human being is endowed by his Creator with the unalienable right to flip-flop, though Bill might have regretted, in Mr. Romney's case, that it had been exercised so vigorously.

Instead, Bill would have bored in on what he perceived to be a lacuna: namely, the widespread presumption that Mr. Romney can fix our broken economy with an economic plan that is manifestly inadequate to the challenge. Mr. Romney would have squirmed through the evening. Bill would have barely survived it. He hated to drink alone.

Read it all, an exemplar of drollity, as WFB, Jr. might have put it.

Social Justice in Zuccotti Park, One Tent at Time

Randy male Occupy Wall Streeters in Zuccotti Park have made things so bad for their filly counterparts separate quarters have had to be erected for them. From the New York Post:

It’s a safe house from the sex fiends.

Zuccotti Park has become so overrun by sexual predators attacking women in the night that organizers felt compelled to set up a female-only sleeping tent yesterday to keep the sickos away.

The large, metal-framed “safety tent” -- which will be guarded by an all-female patrol -- can accommodate as many as 18 people and will be used during the day for women-only meetings, said Occupy Wall Street organizers.

Sadly, the menfolk are displaying a cynical and shocking insensitivity to the poor gals' plight.

Some of the male OWS protesters remained in denial over the growing number of sex attacks.

“Sexual harassment gets called rape, and it’s not,” one scoffed when told of the women’s tent.

This poor thing, however, insists she's a victim.

The grope victims include Kara Demetropoulos, who told The Post she was fondled in a tent last Saturday night after accepting a man’s offer of a place to sleep.

Has our society become so depraved a respectable gal can no longer bed down with a stranger in a tent for fear of being molested? Alas, chivalry is dead after all.

Yet here's a lass who isn't at all pleased about OWS management's enlightened decision to provide separate but equal quarters for the fair sex.

One woman was also against the structure, saying the protesters who put it up took her tent down without notice to make room.

“I’m pissed! I pretty much just got evicted,” fumed Angelina Isfreed, 32, after returning to find her tent taken down. “I won’t be staying there.”

Angelina? Kitten? I know you and your comrades believe property is theft but one essential principle of property ownership and the laws enforcing it is to make it difficult to be deprived of your space just because others think they know better what to do with it. Consider this a learning experience.

Of course, when one protected group is accommodated, others will demand same.

More people may have to move. The protest organizers plan to put up seven more large tents, including ones for gay and transgender people, co-ed tents and a medical tent.

Soon to be followed, no doubt, by tents for people of color (one tent per hue, we'll assume), the handicapped, differently-abled, physically challenged and, if there's any social justice at all in Zuccotti Park, a tent for the least understood and most discriminated against minority group, sex offenders. Then all will be swell in Zuccotti Park and the protesters can get back to doing what they're paid for.