So take off your snow boots and get a manicure

The Pope has the traditionalists spinning in a hissy fit by saying that the "foot washing" ceremony on Holy Thursday can include not only non catholics but women.

I've never been to a ceremony where this was done,  so who cares?

The reason for foot washing was the same idea behind the taking off shoes before you enter a mosque (or a home in Japan): To keep out the dirt/mud from the streets, which in the good old days included not just mud but garbage and doggie/camel/donkey dodoo...

The maids traditionally did this nasty job: so when Jesus performed the job, it was to emphasize that doing the least little job can be a way to serve the Lord, and so priests and bishops shouldn't get on their high horse and pretend they are too dignified to help the poor etc. if it means getting their hands dirty.

We see this in the Philippines, where upper and middle class folks often have their maids wait on them (yes, we have maids, part time, and a cook here).

But in the USA, folks are often descended from maids etc. so unless you are rich, you do these things for yourself. So the footwashing stuff on Holy Thursday sort of loses it's meaning.

Another reason it is meaningless: in northen climates, often it is still quite cold at easter, even with snow, so presumably this means taking off your dirty boots and your smelly socks to do the ceremony, and makes one wonder why we need to clean the feet, which are probably cleaner than the carpet or floor where we ditched our boots.

Ah, but PC Pope likes the ceremony, and instead of using it to teach caring for each other, and maybe patting moms and millions of caregivers on the back for being willing to clean up smelly stuff, saying that they are following Christ's example, he is instead changing the emphasis to be "inclusive".

And the conservative Catholic blogs, who only see another "innovation" to annoy them, are up in arms over this trivia.

Ah, but the best comment on the Pope is found at the Eye of the Tiber blog (via Father Z):

From the often amusing Eye of the Tiber (my emphases):

Women May Now Have Their Feet Washed And Pedicured At Holy Thursday Mass, Pope Says
Pope Francis has changed the rules for the Church’s Holy Thursday foot-washing ceremony, issuing a decree allowing women to not only participate in the ceremony, but to have anoptional pedicure for the low donation price of just $14.95. That’s right, just $14.95.
In a letter addressed to Cardinal Robert Sarah, the Pope said that 12 “lucky” people would be chosen to participate in the ritual of what is now being called the washing and pedicuring of the feet “from among all members of the People of God whose feet and toenails are in desperate need of superficial cosmetic treatment.”

duh.

Actually, I have done quite a lot of nail trimming in my day.

Why do doctors trim nails? Well, one major reason for a diabetic losing his foot is that he trims the nails and cuts his flesh (diabetics often have numb feet due to diabetic neuropathy).

Medicaid will pay for a podiatrist, but we had a lot more patients than our weekly podiatrist could trim when I worked in Northern Minnesota.

Another problem: Trimming nails is "intimate": i.e. like taking off your clothes for a doctor, it is something people don't want a stranger to do. The old ladies knew me, so I was allowed to do this.

To make things worse: Often the patients had toenail fungus from hell. You see, poor people wore plastic, not leather shoes, because good shoes were expensive. (we also had a program to buy well fitting leather shoes for our diabetics to prevent sores etc that could lead to amputations).

Well, the result was onchomycosis. toe nail fungus growing under the nail, leading to a thick, hard, ugly nail.

And no, I don't mean cosmetically ugly.

I mean like the photos HERE or HERE...

and if you don't take care of them, this is what will happen: LINK

nowadays, long term antibiotics and lazer treatment are being used, but in the good old days, we either trimmed down the thickened nails (using nail cutting pliars or better yet, a Dremel Motor tool), or sometimes in non diabetics we just removed the nail.

Here in the Philippines, women and men wear sandals, so we don't see a lot of it, but then I don't treat those forced to wear shoes for work either.

But Lolo's nails got so bad that he dug up his old dromel motor tool and every two months I'd grind away...

conspiracy musings

For later reading: why the Family synod missed the point.

LINK

The bottom line is: Catholics in the United States have a right to ask: “Does the present USCCB agree with all the pronouncements made by the USCCB in 1968, namely, that ‘licit dissent’ from papal teaching is compatible with being a ‘good Catholic’”? Unless the USCCB is willing to correct the concept of “licit dissent,” it will continue to encourage—even if inadvertently—a concept of dissent which is not permitted by core Church teachings.

yeah. and in those days the bishops were too busy promoting unilateral disarmament of the west and other PC type stuff to bother to worry about ordinary folks.

I just relistened to one of Malachi Martin's interviews with Art Bell (The last one...go to Archives.org and google Bell or martin)

A lot of his predictions are right on: Predicting the pedophilia and other problems before they occured.

A lot of controversy about the old guy, but although he comes on rational in Bell interviews, which are worth listening to, he gets a bit paranoid and talks with great speed (pressured speech is the psychiatric term) in some of the lesser type talk show interviews. Some of this comes out in his over wordy non fiction books.

I suspect he was bipolar, and this made him unstable.

As for the adultery: I have to laugh. Unstable women throw themselves at men who are priests or doctors or psychiatrists all the time, so what else is new? Or maybe he got overly involved in helping a woman in a trouble marriage to get out of it.

Who knows.

As for "murder": he died after a fall, as did Andrew Greeley. Conspiracy? Well, I had two aunts who had brain bleeds after a fall...as did Hillary Clinton. The difference is that we now can do CT/MRI scans and diagnose that it was a bleed from a fall and not a simple stroke that preceeded the fall.

as for pedophilia: too many cases to deny something was wrong, and too many US catholics know their bishops didn't care or were bamboozled by the "experts" who insisted these guys were cured.

One of the guys reviewing movies at AICN noted the new movie on pedophilia in Boston didn't condemn the whole church, just the institution. Well, I lived in Boston before it broke, and the church was pretty well dead, and my son was told masturbation was okay in 8th grade catholic school by a priest. And when we wrote a "headsup" to the Cardinal that euthanasia was being pushed in the local medical schools, nothing happened except a nuanced article full of vagueness in the back page of the catholic newspaper that even I couldn't figure out what they were saying.

If I stay in the church, maybe it is because although I know about cases of pedophilia, I also know a lot of good priests, including priests who were martyred for defending their people.

In the 1950's my mom and friends said a weekly rosary for the conversion of Russia (silly? Well it worked didn't it?) but my mom was always puzzled why Our Lady said to pray for priests. To my mom, priests were holy (the worst was that one of our priests always drove an expensive car, given to him from his family, and well used in those day when the priests still made house calls).

Sigh. I have enough sins of my own to repent, so I shouldn't point fingers...

conspiracy theory of the day

Is there a "gay cabal" in the Vatican?

Well, maybe...

One has heard this for years, but this report isn't from Jack Chick but from the more staid National Catholic reporter. via Father Z

Father Greeley, in his book a parish priest, noted that men with same sex attraction were allowed in the seminaries, because it was assumed they wouldn't give in to their temptations.

Then what happened is that when discipline got lax, some gave it. In the meanwhile, a lot of those who openly were gay were tolerated or ignored by their friends who tended to go into the bureaucracy. And many who were repeat pedophiles were treated as if this was merely a lapse, and reassigned after they repented or got treatment. Some were sociopaths and could fool the psychiatrists.

I am reminded of how our diocesan newspaper rejoiced at the gay friendly atmosphere in Penn State's Catholic groups.

Uh, Sandusky anyone?

Sigh. In our prayers.

and it explains this:

A homosexual lobby was also suspected to have been influential on both Synods on the Family when controversial passages relating to homosexuals made their way into the interim report during the 2014 meeting despite being hardly discussed, and external lobby groups sought to pressure the participants.There was also a common perception that the Communion for remarried divorcees issue, which dominated both synods, was a “Trojan horse” to allow Church recognition of same-sex relationships and other extra-marital unions.

am I "homophobic"?

Well, those with temptations but who try to follow Christ are welcome, but when our business has become so gay (and so much sexual preying on employees) that no decent farmer will work for us, even in the Philippines, where being gay is not a big thing, then I say maybe someone should not pretend adultary or sleeping with employees are victimless crimes.

cultural confusion?

I downloaded a radio interview with Ralph Sarchie from one of the many conspiracy radio programs awhile back and finally got around to listen to it (alas no link).

He is an ex cop who got "famous" after some of his stories of working with the demonic got made into a horror movie. I saw the movie, and it was routine horror so I fast forwarded it until the end, which indeed, was different: The terrible evil guy was released from his demons and smiled angelically. Heh. Good acting. But the movie was too violent for me so I don't know if it was any good.

Well, anyway, Sarchie has replaced the late Malachi Martin for half decent interviews about exorcism: meaning they are catholic and present the story as a fight between good and evil, and not a new age or paranoid distortion.

Ironically, both are associated with a Catholic group that is actually a bit outside the church, but is acknowledged to have the sacraments etc.

I would consider this a sign to keep alert for heresy, but I give them a small pass since the heresies, gay lobby, and modernist bias of the church of NYCity area is well known. In other words, given a choice between a church whose leaders permit evil and heresy and have Kumbaya masses, and a church where they worship Jesus, but might not be completely "kosher", who do you chose?

There is a big scandal in the US about ex catholics being the second largest church group in the USA, but what they often ignore is that not all of these are secular Democrats worshipping at the altar of Obama: Many are now going to Pentecostal or other churches, where they can hear the word of God.

I know how they feel: When I lived in PC Minnesota, I was often tempted to go to the PiusX chapel, and probably would have if it hadn't been 100 miles away.

Sigh.

Well, anyway after the interview with Sarchie, the hosts discussed they had a problem with him: That he saw this only through Catholic dogma (not the  new agey type they usually interviewed), and the other problem is that he saw this as good vs evil.

Figures.

However, the female h ost said the reason she had a lot of problems with this is that she was "native american" and/or her spirituality was "Native American", so his Catholic worldview was too narrow to encompass what she believed with her spirituality..

This immediately raised my ire.

You see, a lot of people raised in white society have some Native American blood (and African blood) but can't prove it, or if they can prove it, their "proof" is too small or too obscure to get a CDIB card.

In other words, they are not raised in the Native American culture.

Ah, but they think it is "cool" to claim the heritage, so they often mix a little new agey versions of various tribal beliefs, and voila, they can claim to be "authentic".

Why do I say this?

Cattle crappie.

You see, few AmerIndians claim to be "Native American": They identify themselves by their tribe.

So if a mostly white person claims their "grandmother" was Cherokee (and probably a lot of Okies and hillbillies from Tennesee indeed have Cherokee or Creek etc in their ancestry), these folks are probably correct,( although I suspect Elizabeth Warren might be pushing it a bit).

Why is tribal connection important?

Because there is no one "native American" cuture.

Right now, I am re reading my Tony Hillerman mysteries. (When I went to work with the Navajos, the nurses said his works would give me a better insight into how our patients thought than most of the anthropology stuff).

Well, if you read Hillerman, you realize that the Navajo and the Hopi/Pueblos have entirely different cultures, and indeed, the Navajo have more ties with Alaskan Indians than with the local Pueblo Indians.

One of my friends, who practiced her Mohawk traditions, was told by her medicine man not to attend the peyote ceremonies, although he did permit her to attend the Sioux ceremonies since her husbanod was Lakota.

No, I didn't get into it deeply, but was aware when our patients asked for leave to attend a sing, or to have a ceremony.

Often they do both: The Pueblos especially have melded their theology with the local Christianity, after years of opposition from the more PC Spanish priests, someone recognized the ceremonies were about their ancestors, not demonic spirits.

Thanks to St Kateri, a lot of Native Americans became Christian because they saw it did not clash with their own belief system.

The Navajo however have less in common with the Christian worldview, so I am not sure how the Franciscans working there teach Jesus

The Apaches, however, see Jesus as the chief who will give his life to defend women and children, and their puberty ceremony with the "moutain gods" is now recognized to be with ancestral spirits, not demons.

Our Pueblo nurses however were more into Eucharistic adoration.

As a doctor, I see a lot of ways folks see the Lord and try to be good.

However, I sort of am leery of the fuzzy "Jesus loves me" and "we are all evolving to a higher power" and other superficial feel good religions.

I am especially sardonic when it comes to the "ME ME ME" generation who think that they deserve everything good, and therefore want a Great Fuzzy to love them and make them rich and successful and loved.

And so they decide they want their own version of (fill in religion here): Any thing they can pretend is religion without the nasty rules that might make them feel guilty.

The poster chid for this is a certain grandfather who is being pushed in the press for his bravery...

actually, no.

When I see Brucy Baby insisting he is an 19 year old beauty queen, I long to hit him with a statue of the Buddha and tell him that the way to heaven is by accepting things as they are, and getting rid of desires for material things.

We consider many things--clothes, food, good health, nice possessions, financial security, the higher rebirths--as true happiness. As a result, we are attached to them and create more causes for suffering in cyclic existence in order to gain them

Or maybe I should just hit him with a bust of St Servenius, aka Boethius, and tell him that real happiness is not in the fulfilment of your desires but in recognizing that all things, even suffering, are working to the good, because a good God is in charge.

This is not good

Note: I've beeinterrupted five times so this is not exactly a good essay, but since this blog is my personal thoughts that I am trying to figure out what I think, take it with a grain of salt.


 A nonjudgemental pope chastizing those who try their best to follow the ten commandments.

And this is not from a conservative Catholic blog but from Reuters.

So don't judge those who have same sex attraction and chose to follow the promiscuous "gay lifestyle". and don't judge the divorced.

but then there is this:

the Argentine pope, who has called for the Church to reach out more to people on the margins of society, the suffering and victims of injustice, has faced stiff resistance from conservatives in the Vatican who fear that he is undermining traditional teachings on moral issues.

presumably the millions whose lives are destroyed because of sex trafficking are not supposed to be mad or judgemental.

Children whose parents divorce, or never marry, who ignore or neglect their kids are not to be angry (yes, I know divorce is sometimes needed, but I am not sure that the easy divorce/living together of the USA with a generation of children growing up without fathers is an improvment over the unhappy families and frustrated wives of the 1950's).

as for the gay lifestyle:

Heather has two mommies? Well, the dirty little secret is that a lot of such marriages are hetero/bi women who were hurt by men, and prefer a marriage based on friendship.

and why were they hurt? the sexual revolution that made women a commodity, and sex a recreation, what's love have to do with it?

But how many male homosexuals are faithful? In the past, they were encouraged by society and all around them to self control. Often they were married and had few or no liasons, or they quietly lived together with their partner, and everyone pretended they were merely friends.

But now the worst of the subculture is open to all, and no one dares to point out that it is sick.

so do I judge, or do I point out to a certain person that serially using his employees for sexual gratification is not a victimless crime, not to mention the "fruits" of his liasons: the harm and shame to wife and child, and that no decent farmer will work for him so the farm and farming equipment is going downhill quickly.

for Catholics, this is the argument of the Jansenists (inspired by Calvin and other Protestant reformers) vs the Jesuits (who used the idea of Jesus as merciful, under the icon the Sacred Heart). Ah but the Jesuits hated the Protestants, persecuted the Jansenist Catholics, and winked at the corruption of the French court...

Jesus was countercultural against the hypocrites, but one doubts he would lamblast the ordinary folks like this Pope does.

so should I be merciful and not condemn/oppose the sexual exploitation that is going on here, in my own household because "who am I to judge"? HELLO.

HIV spread because people wanted pleasure over inconvenience, or because they chose to have promiscuous sex and/or get high on drugs.

we now have a generation who no longer sees sex as part of lovemaking, baby making and marriage. for young folks, it's chaos under the guise of "choice".

true, most men settle down and see having children as a job for real men, but you wouldn't know it from a culture which pushes sex as nothing more than shaking hands.

So why isn't the pope pushing the idea of mature christianity as a good thing, instead of lambasting those who try to do the right thing?

And yes, I agree: Jesus had mercy for everyone.

But there is a difference between mercy/understanding and approval.

Jesus extends mercy to everyone, and will forgive your sins and welcome you home.

But if you notice, the Prodigal son got a welcome party, but the resentful and hardworking older brother inherited the farm.

And without the hardworking older brother, maybe the farm would have gone under and not been there for him to return to.

In other words, yes, mercy, but not in this way, a way that condemns those who try to do the right thing and are keeping the world going.

and this part of the report is just plain wrong:

The Argentine pope, who has called for the Church to reach out more to people on the margins of society, the suffering and victims of injustice, has faced stiff resistance from conservatives in the Vatican who fear that he is undermining traditional teachings on moral issues.In particular, he wants the Church to show more compassion for homosexuals as well as for Catholics who divorced and remarried outside the Church and are thus banned from receiving communion.

uh, there is a big difference between letting anyone come to church (the Catholic church doesn't count heads and anyone, from the homeless to the banker, can come in for mass).

And since often the priest might not know if the person is in the state of grace, the person will probably be given communion.

But most funerals etc. where strangers are there, the priest will remind you that communion is only for those who believe (no non Catholics who think it is just a piece of bread) and who do not have any major sins on their consciences.

Anyone is allowed to worship, but Paul was a bit nasty about sinners pretending they could receive. And one PC site sardonically said, hey Jesus gave the bread to Judas, so what's the big deal? Uh, no he didn't (Judas left before the communion part of the meal).

Am I the only one who knows what was going on in the gay bars and bathhouses? Or who knows that most men in gay marriages have open marriages?

Or the harm to feminism done by radical men hating lesbians, who go way beyond ordinary lesbians who marry their best friends, simply preferring a wife to a man for a spouse, but are seducing college women into paranoia and distortion of what making love is about?

One is reminded of what Camus wrote in The Plague:

“The evil in the world comes almost always from ignorance, and goodwill can cause as much damage as ill-will if it is not enlightened. People are more often good than bad, though in fact that is not the question. But they are more or less ignorant and this is what one calls vice or virtue, the most appalling vice being the ignorance that thinks it knows everything and which consequently authorizes itself to kill. The murderer's soul is blind, and there is no true goodness or fine love without the greatest possible degree of clear-sightedness.” 

The Pope is not clear sighted here. And that is the problem.

And because he is not clearsighted, he is being opposed by a lot of us who actually know the harm that comes from his actions.

... All I maintain is that on this earth there are pestilences and there are victims, and it's up to us, so far as possible, not to join forces with the pestilences.”

the talk of mercy is fine, but you are giving a green light to the behavior.

Wouldn't it be better to actually show mercy to the sociopath's victims?

sick stuff, poor guy /s

BBC ran an article about an Anglican bishop who was jailed years ago for abusing young men.

It seems that the (former) Archbishop of Canterbury wrote a letter to the cops in his support.

Ball was eventually told he would not be prosecuted but received a caution instead. He resigned as Bishop of Gloucester in 1993, a position that followed a previous period as Bishop of Lewes.
However in October 2015, following repeated claims of a church cover-up, Mr Ball pleaded guilty to abusing 18 young men in the 70s, 80s and 90s. He was jailed for two years and ten months.
One of his victims was Neil Todd, whose attempts to take his own life triggered the police investigation in 1993 which prompted hundreds of letters of support for the Bishop.
'Suffered terribly'
In his two letters Lord Carey said he had no wish to influence the legal process. He makes no reference to the allegations of sexual abuse or Mr Todd, who finally took his own life at the end of 2012.
The letters also include one to the police from a senior judge at the time, Lord Justice Lloyd, who said that Ball was "the most gentle, upright and saintly man" he had ever met.
"He has obviously suffered far more already than any of us can imagine... He tells me if it goes on much longer, he feels he may well go off his head," he said.

sounds about right...a manipulative sociopath.