Patient: "Doctor. Doctor. It hurts when I do this."

Doctor: "Then don't do that."

Pope Ben has named a new doctor of the church, 16th century Spanish priest St. John of Avila. The title of ‘Doctor of the Church’ is bestowed upon a saint whose writings are deemed to be of universal importance to the Church. The Pope must also declare the individual to be of “eminent learning” and “great sanctity.” Other Doctors of the Church include St. Augustine, St. John Chryosostom, St. Francis de Sales, and St. Catherine of Siena and, our bestest little girl, Therese of Lisieux.

They also released a short list of those to be considered as doctors which include John Bosco and Louis-Marie de Montfort - two of my favorite Saints.

An historical clerihew

Titus Oates

liked wearing heavy overcoats.

When it simply got too hot

he alleged a papist plot.

Do Not Try This at Home

one for the good guys

One of the really great things about being a Christian is we know how the war ends. Sure, sure, we are going to lose a few battles and there will be the wounded and sometimes we feel that we lose every battle. So when we do win one we should share it like the widow who lost her coin ‘Rejoice with me because I have found the coin that I lost.’

Here is a good win - a coin almost lost.

“America,” Chesterton says, “ is the only nation in the world founded on a creed. The creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence, perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is theoretical politics and also great literature.”

Bishop of Toledo Bans Parishes from Raising Funds for the Susan G. Komen Foundation

Dear Friends in Christ,

Few of us remain untouched by the scourge of breast cancer. Whether among our families, friends or neighbors, there are a great many women in our country who confront this disease every day with tremendous faith and courage.

Researchers, physicians and medical personnel, using their God-given intelligence and skill, work very hard not only to provide healing of those who are afflicted, but also to find a cure. We are all familiar with the mobilization of effort in our country on behalf of this worthy goal.

One of the most widely known initiatives is that of the Susan G. Komen Foundation. Many people participate in efforts to raise funds for this cause, including some of our Catholic institutions and schools.

While we want to do everything possible to support the search for a cure, sadly the landscape of medical research today is sometimes marred by the erroneous belief that research is not bound by moral norms rooted in faith and reason, as reflected in the teaching of the Church. That teaching holds, for example, that it is not morally acceptable to destroy one human life, even in its embryonic stage, in order to save another human life.

For some time, moral questions have been raised from various quarters about the research funded by the Komen Foundation. The Bishops of Ohio have discussed this and have looked into the matter. As best we can determine, at present the Komen Foundation does not fund cancer research that employs embryonic stem cells. However, their policy does not exclude that possibility. They are open to embryonic stem cell research, and may very well fund such research in the future. They are also contributors to Planned Parenthood, which, though it may claim to provide needed medical services to poor women, is also the largest provider of abortions in our country.

In order to avoid even the possibility of cooperation in morally unacceptable activities, the other Bishops and I believe that it would be wise to find alternatives to Komen for Catholic fundraising efforts.

For that reason, I am directing that in the fight against breast cancer, fundraising carried out under Catholic auspices, including our schools, should be channeled to our locally known Mercy Cancer Centers instead of Komen.

Through Mercy, we can help local women who are without financial means to receive specialized care which includes treatment, detection and support in their fight against breast cancer. We can be assured that at Mercy, these women will receive a high level of compassionate care that respects their human dignity.

More information will be coming to you from Mercy regarding this opportunity. I thank you for your cooperation and support. Together let us pray for all cancer sufferers, especially those in the greatest physical, spiritual and emotional need.

Sincerely yours in Christ,

Most Reverend Leonard P. Blair
Bishop of Toledo

Obama Clerihew

For his birthday Barack Obama

received a llama.

Alas, this camel-like pet

made him long for a cigarette.

A group of gay-rights activists has set up an online petition to encourage Sesame Street producers to make a social statement on the show. To wit, they want longtime roommates (and long-rumored gay couple) Bert and Ernie to get married. Predictably, supporters and opponents are lining up on either side of the issue, even though Sesame Workshop has stated that neither character is gay.

While the Bert and Ernie petition is interesting, it doesn't seem like a priority in terms of Sesame Street social issues. First things first - let's get Oscar off the streets and Cookie Monster into rehab.

Religion as Weapon

Just another example of how the MSM is woefully ignorant on religion - any religion.

When a Dem says he/she is a Christian the press says he/she is a good guy/gal. When a Repub says the same the press says he/she is a bad guy/gal.

From a post over at Public Vigil: The press has discovered that Protestants are not Catholic.

"When did being a mainstream Protestant even become an issue in American politics? When that Protestant actually takes her faith seriously and formulates her political campaign on Christian principles.

If Michele (Bachmann) were a faithful Catholic, then we would be warned about her allegiance to the Pope. That's always been standard procedure for the secular press. Now it seems like any Christian presidential candidate is going to come under attack from the secular press one way or the other."

"Amazing how humanists care nothing about religion unless they can use it to justify one of their "human rights" campaigns. Homosexuals suddenly wanting the blessing of the Church for their orgies comes to mind.
Suddenly, the secular humanists are the latest and greatest defenders of the papacy against the attacks of the Lutherans."

It's Official-Pregnancy is now a Disease

In the new Health and Human Services (HHS) guidelines for health insurance plans, HHS took the extraordinary step of putting the guidelines into effect immediately so that college students could have free contraceptives, sterilizations and abortifacients by the 2012-2013 school year.

“The Obama Administration apparently believes that ensuring contraceptives for students’ premarital exploits is reason enough to forego public comment before making these rules effective,” said Patrick J. Reilly, President of The Cardinal Newman Society. “That is social engineering at its worst.”

According to the proposed rule submitted to the Office of the Federal Register:

“The July 19, 2010 interim final rules indicated that HRSA expected to issue guidelines by August 1, 2011. After considering public comments raising the issue addressed in these amendments, however, the Departments determined that HRSA should be granted the discretion to address the commenter concerns at issue prior to issuing guidelines under section 2713(a)(4). Many college student policy years begin in August and an estimated 1.5 million young adults are estimated to be covered by such policies.5 Providing an opportunity for public comment as described above would mean that the guidelines could not be issued until after August of 2011. This delay would mean that many students could not benefit from the new prevention coverage without cost-sharing following from the issuance of the guidelines until the 2013-14 school year, as opposed to the 2012-13 school year. Similarly, 2008 data from the Department of Labor indicate that over 4 million Americans have ERISA group health plan coverage that starts in August or September; they too would experience over a year’s delay in the receipt of the new benefit if the public comment period delayed the issuance of the guidance for over a month. The Departments have determined that such a delay in implementation of the statutory requirement that women receive vital preventive services without cost-sharing would be contrary to the public interest because it could result in adverse health consequences that may not otherwise have occurred.”(emphasis added)

Yes pregnancy has to be prevented because it could result in adverse health consequences - you know, like a baby.

Mark Your Calendars

In a breakthrough agreement, public television executives in Chicago have committed to prime-time broadcasts and nationwide distribution of Fr. Robert Barron's new CATHOLICISM documentary series this fall.

A show broadcast on PBS that shows Catholics in a positive light, as something good?!? Whod a thunk it? This is major. Really when was the last time you saw Christianity let alone Catholicism shown, on public TV as anything but harmful or at best quaint.

As Father Barron said, "The Catholic story is being told, but being told by the wrong people in the wrong way. We need to tell our own story." And brothers and sisters he tells it well.

When I saw the trailer two words kept leaping in my head: "Holy Crap"

Show starts this fall check your local listings.

The current occupant has lost 'the appreciation of primary things and therefore all sense of proportion about the world'.

"If [my daughters] make a mistake I don't want them punished with a baby".

Senator Barack Obama

"Now a child is the very sign and sacrament of personal freedom. He is a fresh free will added to the wills of the world; he is something that his parents have freely chosen to produce and which they freely agree to protect. They can feel that any amusement he gives (which is often considerable) really comes from him and from them and from nobody else. He has been born without the intervention of any master or lord. He is a creation and a contribution; he is their own creative contribution to creation. He is also a much more beautiful, wonderful, amusing and astonishing thing than any of the stale stories or jingling jazz tunes turned out by the machines. When men no longer feel that he is so, they have lost the appreciation of primary things, and therefore all sense of proportion about the world. People who prefer the mechanical pleasures, to such a miracle, are jaded and enslaved. They are preferring the very dregs of life to the first fountains of life. They are preferring the last, crooked, indirect, borrowed, repeated and exhausted things of our dying Capitalist civilisation, to the reality which is the only rejuvenation of all civilisation. It is they who are hugging the chains of their old slavery; it is the child who is ready for the new world." GKC

One of the side effects of the Arab Spring

Breaking News on the Heat Wave

Windows Opened On Both Coasts In Effort To Create Transcontinental Cross-Breeze

WASHINGTON—In a move to combat record-high temperatures and facilitate some much-needed cross-country ventilation, the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced Friday it had ordered the opening of two windows, one in San Francisco, CA and another in Virginia Beach, VA. “As we speak, a cool cross-breeze is sweeping eastward to bring relief throughout our stuffy 3.79 million square miles of interior,” said HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan, adding that those with air-conditioning should turn it off now to avoid wasting electricity. “While we’ve heard reports of more flies coming into the central states at night, we feel that’s a price worth paying to prevent people from having to sleep on top of the sheets.” As of press time, the transcontinental breeze had decreased considerably after the window in San Francisco was shut to keep out street noise. (Onion)

A Presidential Clerihew (in Gilbert)

I received the May/June issue of Gilbert Magazine in the mail today (yeah, I know: It's August 3rd), and to my surprise, one of my clerihews was in it.

President James Polk

would rarely crack a joke.

But his friends say he was quick

with a limerick.

Debt Cieling Absurdism

In the latest Distributionist review Kevin O’Brien outlines the problem with usury and our government debt.

"Somewhere Hilaire Belloc says that an economic system based on usury must always by its nature collapse.

In Economics for Helen Hilaire Belloc outlines in his admirably lucid manner the following principles of usury.

Belloc writes:

1. Usury is both wrong morally and bad for society because it is the claim for an increase of wealth which is not really present at all. It is trying to get something where there is nothing out of which that something can be paid.

2. This action must therefore progressively and increasingly soak up the wealth which men produce into the hands of those who lend money, until at last all the wealth is so soaked up and the process comes to an end.

3. That is what has happened in the case of the modern world, largely through unproductive expenditure on war, which expenditure has been met by borrowing money and promising interest upon it although the money was not producing any further wealth.

4. The modern world has therefore reached a limit in this process and the future of usurious investment is in doubt."

read whole article here

It's Punday

Yea I know "Coincidences are spiritual puns" but these are fun to tell at parties:

1. The fattest knight at King Arthur’s round table was Sir Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi.

2. I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian .

3. She was only a whiskey maker, but he loved her still.

4. A rubber band pistol was confiscated from algebra class, because it was a weapon of math disruption.

5. No matter how much you push the envelope, it’ll still be stationery.

6. A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering.

7. A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart.

8. Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.

9. A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking into it.

10. Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

11. Atheism is a non-prophet organization.

12. Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. One hat said to the other: ‘You stay here; I’ll go on a head.’

13. I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.

14. A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said: ‘Keep off the Grass.’

15. The midget fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.

16. The soldier who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran.

17. A backward poet writes inverse.

18. In a democracy it’s your vote that counts. In feudalism it’s your count
that votes.

19. When cannibals ate a missionary, they got a taste of religion.

20. If you jumped off the bridge in Paris , you’d be in Seine .

21. A vulture boards an airplane, carrying two dead raccoons. The stewardess looks at him and says, ‘I’m sorry, sir, only one carrion allowed per passenger.’

22. Two fish swim into a concrete wall. One turns to the other and says ‘Dam!’

23. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the craft. Unsurprisingly it sank, proving once again that you can’t have your kayak and heat it too.

24. Two hydrogen atoms meet. One says, ‘I’ve lost my electron.’ The other says ‘Are you sure?’ The first replies, ‘Yes, I’m positive.’

25. Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocain during a root canal? His goal: transcend dental medication.

26. There was the person who sent ten puns to friends, with the hope that at least one of the puns would make them laugh. No pun in ten did.

Head in the Clouds

If you are looking for a cool dissertation paper for your masters work in theology do a study on clouds in the bible. From today’s mass reading:

Ex 40:16-21, 34-38

Then the cloud covered the meeting tent,

and the glory of the LORD filled the Dwelling.

Moses could not enter the meeting tent,

because the cloud settled down upon it

and the glory of the LORD filled the Dwelling.

Whenever the cloud rose from the Dwelling,

the children of Israel would set out on their journey.

But if the cloud did not lift, they would not go forward;

only when it lifted did they go forward.

In the daytime the cloud of the LORD was seen over the Dwelling;

whereas at night, fire was seen in the cloud

by the whole house of Israel

in all the stages of their journey.

In both the old and new testaments clouds abound and are usually mentioned as God’s mode of transportation-His hover craft if you will or as the place where He best liked to play peek-a-boo when talking with humans.

As Chesterton said “There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.” so maybe that’s why God hung out in them.

for the rest of us there is The Cloud Appreciation Society. Wonder around on thier site it is all very pleasant.

On the left coast the people voted against same-sex marriage and now the legislator is trying to overturn that vote. On the right coast the legislator said yes to same-sex marriage and the people are working to put a measure on the 2015 ballot to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman. This is why we will ultimately lose. It is a bad definition it is heavy on the what but lacks the why. With the given definition what difference does it make to replace the nouns or the numbers. And by waiting until 2015 there will be 4 years of same-sex marriage - enough time to make it look safe and not enough time to see the damage.

What if they added to the ballot definition, ' for the procreation, protection and education of children'.

We are now full into the time Chesterton called a place where we can talk about anything but can't talk about everything an age of "efficiency" or "politics for politics sake." I have yet to hear one politian explain to the people the why of traditional marriage or the PHILOSPHY of marriage. Stop and think for a moment, today when we use the word marriage we always need to use the qualifier traditional. That means there can be an untraditional marriage and still be a marriage. Just note the fact that many writers are putting the word marriage within quotation marks these days.

"For the Christian dogmatists were trying to establish a reign of holiness, and trying to get defined, first of all, what was really holy. But our modern educationists are trying to bring about a religious liberty without attempting to settle what is religion or what is liberty. If the old priests forced a statement on mankind, at least they previously took some trouble to make it lucid. It has been left for the modern mobs of Anglicans and Nonconformists to persecute for a doctrine without even stating it..." GKC (Heretics)

It begins with, "What could it hurt?" and ends with, "How were we to know?"

"...Suppose that a great commotion arises in the street about something, let us say a lamp-post, which many influential persons desire to pull down. A grey-clad monk, who is the spirit of the Middle Ages, is approached upon the matter, and begins to say, in the arid manner of the Schoolmen, "Let us first of all consider, my brethren, the value of Light. If Light be in itself good—" At this point he is somewhat excusably knocked down. All the people make a rush for the lamp-post, the lamp-post is down in ten minutes, and they go about congratulating each other on their unmediaeval practicality. But as things go on they do not work out so easily. Some people have pulled the lamp-post down because they wanted the electric light; some because they wanted old iron; some because they wanted darkness, because their deeds were evil. Some thought it not enough of a lamp-post, some too much; some acted because they wanted to smash municipal machinery; some because they wanted to smash something. And there is war in the night, no man knowing whom he strikes. So, gradually and inevitably, to-day, to-morrow, or the next day, there comes back the conviction that the monk was right after all, and that all depends on what is the philosophy of Light. Only what we might have discussed under the gas-lamp, we now must discuss in the dark." GKC (Heretics)

As Chuck Asay notes in his cartoon (above) same-sex “marriage” is a dead end. Same-sex “marriage” is not marriage; it is an exercise in frivolity. At best, a same-sex union can produce entertainment.

(and I have no idea why everything is underlined)

Happy Birthday, Hilaire Belloc

(Above: Shaw, Belloc, and Chesterton.)

Today is the birthday of Joseph Hilaire Pierre Belloc, born in 1870 to a French father and an English mother. He and GKC became such good friends and allies that they became known as the "Chesterbelloc."

As a young child he lived in France, but was sent to Cardinal John Henry's Newmany Oratory School in England, then studied at Balliol College, graduating in 1895 with a first class honors in history.

Belloc's first book, The Bad Child's Book of Beasts, was published in 1896, the same year he married Elodie Hogan. He wrote about a variety of topics which include French and British history, military strategy, satire, comic and serious verse, literary criticism, travel, and religious, political and social commentary. In 1902, Belloc wrote his most famous work, "Path to Rome", which described a one-man pilgrimage to the Holy City.

Belloc was also interested in politics and was elected to Parliament in 1906 and 1910. However, he left politics in order to start a new political review called Eye-Witness with G.K. and Cecil Chesteron. In the review the three of them attacked the English governmental system. Belloc, who revered Napoleon's efforts, worked to promote a unified Europe. He, along with GKC, also promoted Distributism

His life was filled with tragedy. Belloc's wife died in 1914 and his son Louis was killed in 1918 in World War I. His good friend Chesterton died in 1936. In 1941, Belloc's other son Peter died in World War II, and Belloc suffered a severe stroke in 1942 which ended his literary work. He died in 1953.

I leave with one of his sunny verses.

The Catholic Sun Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine There's always laughter and good red wine. At least I've always found it so. Benedicamus Domino!