Take a break. I’ve been talking on FB lately, and to anyone willing to listen, about how much I want a donkey. No, that’s not slang or a euphemism for anything. I mean an actual donkey. There are lots of donkeys around here, where they’re popular with the mountain trekking people. I’ve been scouring websites about how to care for a pet donkey while I was supposed to be working on terribly terribly important and grown-up things.

Congratulations to our friend Frank in his new endeavour, the website, Canon 212, that is, effectively, the Catholic Drudge report. Remember when Pewsitter was interesting? And then suddenly a couple months back it got really boring? Turned towards American politics and away from things that matter? Well, Frank has solved that problem. Canon 212 Check it out. Can. 212 §1. Conscious of their own responsibility, the Christian faithful are bound to follow with Christian obedience those things which the sacred pastors, inasmuch as they represent Christ, declare as teachers of the faith or establish as rulers of the Church.

But…but…but… they’re wearing habits, so it’s got to be just great, right? Rock on, sisters! Right? I mean, right?   ~

I realize that this is the Queen-of-Spin Nicole Winfield saying this, but I think it’s a relevant point: “Italian Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, another leading conservative, has criticized [Amoris laetizia] as vague and confusing, and denied that it opened the door to Communion, since doing so would contradict previous church teaching on the indissolubility of marriage.” It might not be what Caffarra said or meant, (I happen to think that Caffarra really is one of the actual good ones) but this logic really can be seen coming from an increasing number of desperate novusordoist priests and laity, and of course, it’s self-refuting nonsense.

Here’s an interesting The Week thing about the Cardinal Sarah kerfuffle. This is the main virtue of the ad orientem posture. It says, loudly and clearly, “This is not about you.” The Mass is supposed to be about God — an act of worship of God. The priest does not have “his back to the people,” traditionalists say. He faces in the same direction as the rest of the people: toward God, to worship Him.

Yeah, sorry. It’s this conference thing happening in Norcia. It’s an annual theology thing that all kinds of people from the US come to, many of whom are readers and want to meet me and buy me lunch and whatnot, and find out what I really think. People always seem to want to meet me and hear what I really think… until they do, and then they often wish they hadn’t.

So, people seem to still be talking about the Cardinal Sarah ad orientem thing. For some of the bloggers still attached to the NO it has been taken as a teaching moment, which is a good thing… I guess… People who read some of the Novusordoist “conservative” clerical blogs are perhaps hearing this history for the first time. From this, maybe, some of these people will start further investigations and come to some valuable, salutary conclusions.

So, apparently Joseph Shaw – Latin Mass Society UK – is the only one among them who can claim the title “man”. Apart from that, I have few comments. Oh, except maybe this one. The Heat movie — Captain’s Balls scene — LOTM from Laters On The Menjay on Vimeo. This is me in the room with a bishop and a novusordoist conservative. ~

Business as usual. So, Cardinal Sarah, whom we like, said something the other day like, “Gee, wasn’t it great when priests faced God to lead the people to Him in the Mass…” I mostly ignored it. I realize that people in the Vatican are a few years behind everyone else, and thought, “Heh…That’s funny. He still thinks the Reform of the Reform is a thing.” As I said on Twitter the other day, Dude… I mean… Your Eminence!

I am SO not making this up. These are the fruitloops in charge.   ~