Anne Rice, famous author of vampire stores and even a few on Jesus, evidently posted the following on her Facebook page
“In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian” saying that she regarded Christians as “quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous.” Rice also added she refuses to be “anti-gay, anti-feminist and anti-Democrat.”
It appears many in the Catholic faith that many in the not so distant future will also fall to this false notion that the Catholic Church is “anti-gay”. The Church isn’t “anti-gay”, the Church is “anti-sin” Something that is obviously weighing on Ms. Rice’s mind is that her son is homosexually disordered, yes I said disorder, because that is what homosexuality is, and it’s what the Catholic Church teaches, although you may not hear that in a Sunday homily anytime soon. See you can’t change what the Bible says about homosexuality and you can’t change what Christ say’s about sin. Love thy neighbor does not mean to affirm their sinfulness.
Homosexuality is a disordered, disordered-ness does not send you to Hell, actions do. Participating in a homosexual act is what is sinful, not having the disorder. I’m sure it’s difficult for Ms. Rice to imagine her son possibly ending up in Hell because of a disorder, but disorders don’t put you in Hell, sins do, and even then, if one is truly repentant of their sin Christ is there to forgive us in the sacrament of Reconciliation. Truth is truth and affirming someone in their sin does not change the truth or cause a sinful action to be no longer sinful. Just because you can’t understand something doesn’t change the truth of it. Just because person can’t wrap their head around the law of gravity doesn’t make gravity go away. We should pray for Ms. Rice and her son. May we all repent of our sins love one another as Christ loves us.
I have posted few of my own words lately, as I’ve been working on a website for www.LifeFrontKC.org which should be complete here in the very near future. But basically there really is no need for me to speak when I’ve found someone who basically says exactly what I’m thinking, and he does so with regularity. I’ll gladly let him speak for me.
The currently plan the Bishops are using is not working and has not worked for the past 4 decades. Things ”within” the church are getting worse not better, and if things in the church are getting worse then it probably explains why things outside the church are in completely chaos. It’s time for the rubber to start meeting the road. Nothing is going to change, and America is not going to wake up until a few bad apples get smashed. Bishops we are waiting, start using your authority.
For someone who proclaims the Buddhist faith I found it odd when Tiger Woods cried out “God! Tiger… Jesus…. Christ” after a bad tee shot on the 13th hole just a few moments ago at the Masters. So who’s God? Tiger or Jesus Christ?
I think professed Christians should request an apology after his round and let Mr. Woods know just how offensive it was to hear him take the Lords name in vain. Even Tiger referred to Jesus Christ as God. Some might says it’s a prophetic slip of the tongue even if it was in vain.
I’d be interested from those who read this blog how many parishes out there actually follow the rules put in place by Catholic Church. The following can be found on the USCCB’s website. My parish openly breaks this rule unfortunately. Although I hope to be surprised this coming Thursday evening. I’ve sent a letter in with the reminder but I probably should have sent it in a month ago before they start planning the feet washing and asking people.
If the church cares to change the rules to allow women they are well within their ability to bind and loose. But until they do shouldn’t we respect the rules that were put in place and come to understand why men are specified in the first place? I do not think Jesus was incapable of washing the feet of women but at Holy Thursday he didn’t and there is a reason why the Church specify’s men are to be selected. We do not select women for the Priesthood, which relates to why men should be selected for the Holy Thursday Mandatum.
Holy Thursday Mandatum
My parish liturgy committee has decided to allow both men and women to take part in the washing of the feet at the liturgy on Holy Thursday. I have always heard that only men may have their feet washed. Which does the Church allow?
The rubric for Holy Thursday, under the title WASHING OF FEET, reads:
“Depending on pastoral circumstance, the washing of feet follows the homily. The men who have been chosen (viri selecti) are led by the ministers to chairs prepared at a suitable place. Then the priest (removing his chasuble if necessary) goes to each man. With the help of the ministers he pours water over each one’s feet and dries them.”Regarding the phrase viri selecti, the Chairman of the Bishops Committee on the Liturgy, after a review of the matter by the committee, authorized the following response which appeared in the BCL Newsletter of February 1987:
Question: What is the significance of the Holy Thursday foot washing rite?
Response:
The Lord Jesus washed the feet of his disciples at the Last Supper as a sign of the new commandment that Christians should love one another: “Such as my love has been for you, so must your love be for each other. This is how all will know you for my disciples: by your love for one another” (see John 13, 34-35). For centuries the Church has imitated the Lord through the ritual enactment of the new commandment of Jesus Christ in the washing of feet on Holy Thursday.
Although the practice had fallen into disuse for a long time in parish celebrations, it was restored in 1955 by Pope Pius XII as a part of the general reform of Holy Week. At that time the traditional significance of the rite of foot washing was stated by the Sacred Congregation of Rites in the following words: “Where the washing of feet, to show the Lord’s commandment about fraternal charity, is performed in a Church according to the rubrics of the restored Ordo of Holy Week, the faithful should be instructed on the profound meaning of this sacred rite and should be taught that it is only proper that they should abound in works of Christian charity on this day.”1
The principal and traditional meaning of the Holy Thursday mandatum, as underscored by the decree of the Congregation, is the biblical injunction of Christian charity: Christ’s disciples are to love one another. For this reason, the priest who presides at the Holy Thursday liturgy portrays the biblical scene of the gospel by washing the feet of some of the faithful.
Because the gospel of the mandatum read on Holy Thursday also depicts Jesus as the “Teacher and Lord” who humbly serves his disciples by performing this extraordinary gesture which goes beyond the laws of hospitality,2 the element of humble service has accentuated the celebration of the foot washing rite in the United States over the last decade or more. In this regard, it has become customary in many places to invite both men and women to be participants in this rite in recognition of the service that should be given by all the faithful to the Church and to the world. Thus, in the United States, a variation in the rite developed in which not only charity is signified but also humble service.
While this variation may differ from the rubric of the Sacramentary which mentions only men (“viri selecti”), it may nevertheless be said that the intention to emphasize service along with charity in the celebration of the rite is an understandable way of accentuating the evangelical command of the Lord, “who came to serve and not to be served,” that all members of the Church must serve one another in love.
The liturgy is always an act of ecclesial unity and Christian charity, of which the Holy Thursday foot washing rite is an eminent sign. All should obey the Lord’s new commandment to love one another with an abundance of love, especially at this most sacred time of the liturgical year when the Lord’s passion, death, and resurrection are remembered and celebrated in the powerful rites of the Triduum.3
Notes
Sacred Congregation of Rites, Instruction on the Correct Use of the Restored Ordo of Holy Week, November 16, 1955 (Washington, DC: National Catholic Welfare Conference Publications Office, 1955), page 6.
In biblical times it was prescribed that the host of a banquet was to provide water (and a basin) so that his guests could wash their hands before sitting down to table. Although a host might also provide water for travelers to wash their own feet before entering the house, the host himself would not wash the feet of his guests. According to the Talmud the washing of feet was forbidden to any Jew except those in slavery.In the controversies between Hillel and Shammai (cf. Shabbat 14a-b) Shammai ruled that guests were to wash their hands to correct “tumat yadayim” or “impurity of hands” (cf. Ex 30, 17 and Lv 15, 11). Priests were always to wash their hands before eating consecrated meals. The Pharisees held that all meals were in a certain sense “consecrated” because of table fellowship.Jesus’ action of washing the feet of his disciples was unusual for his gesture went beyond the required laws of hospitality (washing of hands) to what was, in appearance, a menial task. The Lord’s action was probably unrelated to matters of ritual purity according to the Law.
For a brief overview of the restoration of the foot washing rite in 1955, see W. J. O’Shea, “Mandatum,” New Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume IX, 146, and W. J. O’Shea, “Holy Thursday,” New Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VII, 105-107; Walter D. Miller, Revised Ceremonial of Holy Week (New York: Catholic Book Publishing Company, 1971), p. 43. See also Prosper Gueranger, OSB, The Liturgical Year, Volume VI, Passiontide and Holy Week (Westminster, Maryland: Newman Press, 1949), pp. 395-401. For the historical background of the many forms of this rite, see the following studies: Pier Franco Beatrice, La lavanda dei piedi: Contributo alla storia delle antiche liturgie cristiane (Rome: C.L.V. Edizioni Liturgiche, 1983); “Lotio pedum” in Hermann Schmidt, Hebdomada Sancta, Volume II (Rome: Herder, 1956-1957); Annibale Bugnini, CM, and C. Braga, CM, Ordo Hebdomadae Sanctae Instauratus in Biblioteca “Ephemerides Liturgicae” Sectio Historica 25 (Rome: Edizioni Liturgiche, 1956), pp. 73-75; Theodor Klauser, A Short History of the Western Liturgy: An Account and Some Reflections, second edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 81.
This is the latest statement of this Secretariat on the question. No subsequent legislation or instructions have necessitated a modification in the statement.Holy Thursday Mandatum
You have got to be kidding me, a Catholic Bishop was embarrassed by the protocol of kissing the Pope’s ring? Our Bishops need much prayer. I remember for my wedding blessing in front of John Paul II, at his second to last general audience, a whole slew of people went before us and kissed his ring. When it came time for the newlyweds, who went last, to approach to Pope the attendants brought out kneelers. All I could think about at first was that I wouldn’t get to kiss his ring and this ”Bishop” is embarrassed by having the privelage and the request to doing do so, he is too modern for his own good. Does he consider himself above the Pope? Lord have mercy.
“When it came to my turn, the person before me did it and I kissed his [the Pope's] ring as well — even though I was rather embarrassed by it,” Bishop Murphy said.
I am not a member of the SSPX but I do have a brother who is. We have gone round and round on issues concerning the Catholic church and ultimately I don’t think either one of us has budge much from our initial positions. I think we have both left things up to prayer and the Holy Spirit. I believe my brother to be a poor apologist for the SSPX although that doesn’t mean he’s not willing to have a spirited debate, his arguments just haven’t moved me nor have mine really moved him. I’d say for more than the past year we have both dropped the “debating”, which my wife probably more accurately describes as arguing. My best get under his skin line was telling him to “stop following excommunicated Bishops”. Well eventually he did that since Pope Benedict XVI removed their excommunication’s. How ever they are still not in full communion with the Pope from Rome’s standpoint.
I’m not through reading it yet but I would say they have a pretty decent beef with how things were handled back in the 1960s. The book is at the theologically deep end of the pool. But I think any reader familiar with the Catholic Mass can pick up a few things and learn a thing or two about the prayers of the Mass prior to the Vatican II Council.
In the end I’m pretty sure the book is not going to change where I stand, but I will have an additional lens to look at my faith with and without stressing the relationship with my brother. I feel I am sympathetic to those who want to worship in what is now called the Extraordinary form of the Mass. I buy the line that the core worship of the Catholic Church for more than 500 years couldn’t be a bad thing, which is how it seems some priests and bishops today view the Extraordinary form of the Mass. I believe Pope Benedict XVI did the right thing to allow priests publicly to say that Mass without the approval of their Bishops. I believe the greater use of the old Mass will only have positive effects on our Catholic faith.
But from what I’ve ready so far I believe the SSPX’s beef goes beyond the issue of the allowing the old Mass to be said freely. Their beef is with the theology of the new Mass. They’re not buying into the “Paschal Mystery”, as the “Paschal Mystery” is not what was used to create the old Mass. The theology of the “Paschal Mystery” is basically in it’s infancy if you look at the history of the Catholic Church as a whole. This is very weighty stuff but then shouldn’t we know some of this anyway? This is our faith after all, we are talking about our eternal salvation.
So when things get deep or heavy, I think thats a sign we should pray. May we pray to the Holy Spirit for unity among all Christians while remaining true to the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen
Today I was at Men Under Construction 14 here in KC. Once again it was another great event with great speakers. I highly suggest if you get the chance to hear Richard Lane Jr. and Michael Franzese. Their bio’s can be read here http://www.ksmuc.org/Speaker.html.
To all men and women out there who read this blog I think it wise to fine at least one yearly event to go to. As Richard Lane said don’t be part of the “frozen chosen” on Sunday. We need to take our faith out into the world and live it seven days a week. Something I found very interesting as part of one of the breakout sessions on Evangelism was that Richard took the first half of the session having us focus on ourselves. Encouraging us to regularly receiving the sacraments, especially confession, praying, meditating on scripture and constantly learning about our faith, because if aren’t in a state of grace, and have a first hand knowledge of our faith, how can we expect to be succesful evangelizing.
We’ll we are 4 days into Lent so I thought I’d give an update on my Lenten Penance. First let me say that the Gospel on Ash Wednesday humbled me a bit for posting my list of items in the first place.
Mt 6:1-6, 16-18
Jesus said to his disciples: “Take care not to perform righteous deeds in order that people may see them; otherwise, you will have no recompense from your heavenly Father. When you give alms, do not blow a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets to win the praise of others. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right is doing, so that your almsgiving may be secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you.
“When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, who love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on street corners so that others may see them. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you.
“When you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites. They neglect their appearance, so that they may appear to others to be fasting. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that you may not appear to be fasting, except to your Father who is hidden. And your Father who sees what is hidden will repay you.”
So since I’ve already received my reward I figured I might as well give an update on the list.
1. 1 hour of TV per Week
This hasn’t been an issue, but I did catch myself Thursday morning grabbing for the remote.
2. No Coke I’ve been in meetings all week with free Coke sitting on the table so the temptation is there but I’ve held strong.
3. Coffee only 1 day per Week
Had my coffee this morning, I’ve been a bit tired and aggitated until today. It appears that between coke & coffee, I was a bit more tied to caffine than I thought.
4. No reading news articles on my Blackberry
This was tough on Wednesday but I’ve been able to settle into a groove of not looking to my Blackberry. Changing my home page helped too.
5. Restart a Morning Rosary
Going Great
I hope your Lent is going well and I will say a prayer for all my readers today. God Bless.
You know what’s amazing about Ash Wednesday? Even though it’s not a holy day of obligation Ash Wednesday Masses always seems to be packed. I went at 6:30am Mass and the church was 70% full and the Masses after that were jam packed. This doesn’t seem to be the case for other weekday Masses even those on days where Catholics are required to attend.
Most Catholics in the United States have daily Mass available to them, they can receive the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ any day of the week but, as a whole, rarely do. Yet on Ash Wednesday a large number of Catholics come out of the wood work to get some dirt rubbed on their head. The whole thought of it is just something to ponder. I would love to hear peoples thoughts and comments on this.
Here’s something I got via email a few weeks back and found interesting. I’m assuming its true but I don’t know for sure. If it’s not true it’s at least a good story.
Why did Jesus fold the linen burial cloth after His resurrection?
The Gospel of John (20:7) tells us that the napkin, which was placed over the face of Jesus, was not just thrown aside like the grave clothes. The Bible takes an entire verse to tell us that the napkin was neatly folded, and was placed separate from the grave clothes. Early Sunday morning, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and found that the stone had been rolled away from the entrance. She ran and found Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved. She said, ‘They have taken the Lord’s body out of the tomb, and I don’t know where they have put him!’ Peter and the other disciple ran to the tomb to see. The other disciple outran Peter and got there first. He stooped and looked in and saw the linen cloth lying there, but he didn’t go in. Then Simon Peter arrived and went inside. He also noticed the linen wrappings lying there, while the cloth that had covered Jesus’ head was folded up and lying to the side.
Was that important? Absolutely!
Is it really significant? Yes!
In order to understand the significance of the folded napkin, you have to understand a little bit about Hebrew tradition of that day. The folded napkin had to do with the Master and Servant, and every Jewish boy knew this tradition. When the servant set the dinner table for the master, he made sure that it was exactly the way the master wanted it. The table was furnished perfectly, and then the servant would wait, just out of sight, until the master had finished eating, and the servant would not dare touch that table, until the master was finished.
Now if the master were done eating, he would rise from the table, wipe his fingers, his mouth, and clean his beard, and would wad up that napkin and toss it onto the table. The servant would then know to clear the table. For in those days, the wadded napkin meant, ‘I’m done’.
But if the master got up from the table, and folded his napkin, and laid it beside his plate, the servant would not dare touch the table,because……….
For someone who proclaims the Buddhist faith I found it odd when Tiger Woods cried out “God! Tiger… Jesus…. Christ” after a bad tee shot on the 13th hole just a few moments ago at the Masters. So who’s God? Tiger or Jesus Christ?
I’d be interested from those who read this blog how many parishes out there actually follow the rules put in place by Catholic Church. The following can be found on the 
I am not a member of the SSPX but I do have a brother who is. We have gone round and round on issues concerning the Catholic church and ultimately I don’t think either one of us has budge much from our initial positions. I think we have both left things up to prayer and the Holy Spirit. I believe my brother to be a poor apologist for the SSPX although that doesn’t mean he’s not willing to have a spirited debate, his arguments just haven’t moved me nor have mine really moved him. I’d say for more than the past year we have both dropped the “debating”, which my wife probably more accurately describes as arguing. My best get under his skin line was telling him to “stop following excommunicated Bishops”. Well eventually he did that since Pope Benedict XVI removed their excommunication’s. How ever they are still not in full communion with the Pope from Rome’s standpoint.
Today I was at Men Under Construction 14 here in KC. Once again it was another great event with great speakers. I highly suggest if you get the chance to hear Richard Lane Jr. and Michael Franzese. Their bio’s can be read here 
Why did Jesus fold the linen burial cloth after His resurrection?
Anne Rice Quits Christianity
Anne Rice, famous author of vampire stores and even a few on Jesus, evidently posted the following on her Facebook page
Homosexuality is a disordered, disordered-ness does not send you to Hell, actions do. Participating in a homosexual act is what is sinful, not having the disorder. I’m sure it’s difficult for Ms. Rice to imagine her son possibly ending up in Hell because of a disorder, but disorders don’t put you in Hell, sins do, and even then, if one is truly repentant of their sin Christ is there to forgive us in the sacrament of Reconciliation. Truth is truth and affirming someone in their sin does not change the truth or cause a sinful action to be no longer sinful. Just because you can’t understand something doesn’t change the truth of it. Just because person can’t wrap their head around the law of gravity doesn’t make gravity go away. We should pray for Ms. Rice and her son. May we all repent of our sins love one another as Christ loves us.