Myles Keogh from the Glory of Rome to Little Bighorn

Posted on June 28, 2011 by Susan Kehoe

Captain Myles Keogh was from the little village of Leighlin Bridge, Co Carlow Ireland where my favorite deacon is from.  He may or may not be a distant relative.  Captain Keogh fought for the Papal Army and eventually he signed up with the Union Army. He fought with Custer and ended up dying in the battle of  Little Bighorn. The only survivor of the battle was the Captain’s horse Comanche.

The photo above is of the memorial to Myles Keogh in Leighlin Bridge.

Pat MaNamara has a post on the Irish Captain.  There are some nice photos of Leighlinbridge and some commentary on Myles Keogh here.

This post is in honor of my husband for his Birthday. Myles may or may not be a relative. But that didn’t stop my favorite deacon for insisting on taking a detour, on a trip in the early years of our marriage, to visit the site of Little Bighorn battle. He wanted to see the monument with the name of Keogh on it.

I was not impressed.

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St. Irenaeus Heretic Fighter.

Posted on June 28, 2011 by Susan Kehoe

Today is the feast day of St. Irenaeus of Lyons the second century Bishop, Father and Doctor of the Church, and tireless defender of the faith.  He was a student of the great St. Polycarp who was a disciple of the apostle John.

Pope Benedict spoke of him at a general audience on June 28, 2007. Excerpt:

Irenaeus was first and foremost a man of faith and a Pastor. Like a good Pastor, he had a good sense of proportion, a wealth of doctrine, and missionary enthusiasm. As a writer, he pursued a twofold aim: to defend true doctrine from the attacks of heretics, and to explain the truth of the faith clearly. His two extant works – the five books of The Detection and Overthrow of the False Gnosis and Demonstration of the Apostolic Teaching (which can also be called the oldest “catechism of Christian doctrine”) – exactly corresponded with these aims. In short, Irenaeus can be defined as the champion in the fight against heresies. The second-century Church was threatened by the so-called Gnosis, a doctrine which affirmed that the faith taught in the Church was merely a symbolism for the simple who were unable to grasp difficult concepts; instead, the initiates, the intellectuals – Gnostics, they were called – claimed to understand what was behind these symbols and thus formed an elitist and intellectualist Christianity. Obviously, this intellectual Christianity became increasingly fragmented, splitting into different currents with ideas that were often bizarre and extravagant, yet attractive to many. One element these different currents had in common was “dualism”: they denied faith in the one God and Father of all, Creator and Saviour of man and of the world. To explain evil in the world, they affirmed the existence, besides the Good God, of a negative principle. This negative principle was supposed to have produced material things, matter.Read more here.

You can read some of St. Irenaeus writings at the Crossroads Initiative.

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Happy Birthday!

Posted on June 28, 2011 by Susan Kehoe

To my favorite Deacon!

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Of Prudes and Libertines

Posted on June 23, 2011 by Susan Kehoe

Over at The Catholic Thing, Anthony Esolen has an interesting post up (H/T NEW ADVENT).  Excerpt:

Of the two, which is the worse? Another way to ask the question is, “Which of the two, the prude or the libertine, corrupts the more noble virtue, and to what degree does he corrupt it?” Then, it depends. Whenever spiritual pride is mingled into our vices – and there are libertines just as proud of their vice as some prudes are proud of theirs – then we are immediately in the realm of the diabolical. But short of that, I think we have to conclude that it is far worse to be the libertine. The prude errs in prudence – that is where the word comes from – while the libertine denies that there are any rules of prudence, or charity, or chastity, to be observed in sexual matters at all, so long as the sinners consent. 

We’re not talking here about people who fall prey to a temptation they recognize, but about people who have come to deny that there is anything to be tempted about in the first place. The difference is between someone who lies with a bad conscience, and someone who lies with no conscience; not the compromised, but the depraved. Change the object from sex to money, or political authority, or education, or military discipline. What kind of society could possibly be built upon the lawlessness of the libertine?

 It is one of the crowning achievements of the evil counselors in our time to make prudes look good.  Read the entire post here.
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There is no pit so deep that God’s love is not deeper still

Posted on June 23, 2011 by Susan Kehoe

The above headline is taken from Corrie Bloom a survivor of the Nazi death camps (H/T  Catherine of Sienna Institute)

The New York Times has a powerful story in the Health section.  (H/T Mark Shea)  Dr. Lineham was institutionalized at the age of 17 for severe mental illness. Now she is a psychiatrist who treats people who suffer as she once did.

So how did she escape the hell that she was trapped in?  It all began with prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. Excerpt:

It was 1967, several years after she left the institute as a desperate 20-year-old whom doctors gave little chance of surviving outside the hospital. Survive she did, barely: there was at least one suicide attempt in Tulsa, when she first arrived home; and another episode after she moved to a Y.M.C.A. in Chicago to start over.

She was hospitalized again and emerged confused, lonely and more committed than ever to her Catholic faith. She moved into another Y, found a job as a clerk in an insurance company, started taking night classes at Loyola University — and prayed, often, at a chapel in the Cenacle Retreat Center.

“One night I was kneeling in there, looking up at the cross, and the whole place became gold — and suddenly I felt something coming toward me,” she said. “It was this shimmering experience, and I just ran back to my room and said, ‘I love myself.’ It was the first time I remember talking to myself in the first person. I felt transformed.”

The high lasted about a year, before the feelings of devastation returned in the wake of a romance that ended. But something was different. She could now weather her emotional storms without cutting or harming herself.  Read more here.

There is no pit so deep that God’s love is not deeper still.

Posted in Catholic Church, Miracles, Uncategorized | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Fake Woman Priest: Iowa Edition

Posted on June 22, 2011 by Susan Kehoe

This was in yesterday’s Des Moines Register: 

Kusner says a sense of social justice drove her to become Iowa’s first “womanpriest.”

She is a priest in the Roman Catholic tradition, but the church forbids female clergy, so she has been excommunicated from the church.

Kusner said there was another consequence to her ordination: “I had never planned to grow a church,” she said.

A year later, the 51-year-old Iowa City woman is doing just that. Kusner, a married mother of four, marked the first anniversary after her controversial ordination by leading Mass for about 20 people Sunday afternoon in Coralville.

Oh vey Maria!

Okay this article is better than most.  At least it acknowledges that she has been automatically excommunicated from the REAL Catholic Church.

But what the heck is ” a church in the Roman Catholic tradition”?  You are either in communion with the Roman Catholic Church ( Latin Rite, or the Eastern Rite), or you are not. Period.

The article also quotes a spokesperson in the women priest’s movement claiming that these fake ordinations of women are legitimate because they follow apostolic succession. Umm. No.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church is quite clear:

1577 “Only a baptized man (vir) validly receives sacred ordination.” 66 The Lord Jesus chose men (viri) to form the college of the twelve apostles, and the apostles did the same when they chose collaborators to succeed them in their ministry. 67 The college of bishops, with whom the priests are united in the priesthood, makes the college of the twelve an ever-present and ever-active reality until Christ’s return. The Church recognizes herself to be bound by this choice made by the Lord himself. For this reason the ordination of women is not possible.

Case closed. Oh and did I mention that she is gay and living with a partner?  Sigh.

The headline makes the claim that Iowa Catholics are ready for women priests. If that is true, then Catholics must be flocking to this church in the roman catholic tradition. Oh wait her core flock number is 25-30 people.

At the age of 51 she is  probably the youngest member of her made up church.  Women Priests. A real growing (old) movement.

But we really should be praying for these misguided people.  The poor Catechesis of the past 40 years as lead so many souls astray. Lord have mercy.

Posted in Catholic Church, Clergy, Heresey and Dissent | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Pope John Paul II: The Musical

Posted on June 22, 2011 by Susan Kehoe

If you live in or near Des Moines Iowa, you are invited to:     

ANNOUNCING:

The Album Release Party for The Pope of the People.
DIVINE TREASURES BOOKSTORE – 5701 Hickman Rd. in Des Moines
Saturday, June 25th from 10 – 2 pm
Pre-orders available for pickup.

JPII’s favorite Polish treats will be served!

ORDER HERE

Note: If you are out of state or can’t make it to the event, you can purchase a copy of the CD or DVD at the web site.  

This musical was performed at our Parish. While I was unable to attend, my favorite deacon did. He thought that is was wonderful.

Tom Quiner is a faithful Catholic and an all around nice guy. Please support his efforts to evangelize by using his musical gifts.  You can order on his website, The Pope of the People.

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Maureen Dowd On the Rant Again

Posted on June 18, 2011 by Susan Kehoe

Ok. I get it. The New York times and Maureen Dowd really, really hate all things Catholic. Well all things that are orthodox Catholic.  The aging baby boomer dissenters they just  adore.

She is outraged by the blogging Archbishop of New York,  But she does not offer reasoned debate. Instead she rants:

With his cigars, blogs, Jameson’s and Irish affability, New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan prides himself on his gumption.

Certainly his effort to kill the gay marriage bill, just one vote away from passing in Albany, shows a lot of gall.

The archbishop has been ferocious in fighting against marriage between same-sex couples, painting it as a perversity against nature.

If only his church had been as ferocious in fighting against the true perversity against nature: the unending horror of pedophile priests and the children who trusted them.

In the second-generation round of the Church vs. Cuomo, Archbishop Dolan is pitted against Andrew Cuomo, the Catholic governor who is fiercely pushing for New York to become the sixth and most populous state to approve gay marriage.

Governor Cuomo was already on the wrong side of the church for his support of abortion rights, his divorce and his living in “sin” with the Food Network star Sandra Lee. He was accused by the Vatican adviser Edward Peters of “public concubinage,” as it’s known in canon law, and Peters recommended that Cuomo be denied communion until he resolved “the scandal” by ceasing this “cohabiting.”   If you must, you can continue reading here.

I guess that it is too much to hope that Ms. Dowd and her crowd would even entertain learning why the Church teaches what she does.

Man this is bad even for her. Priest are gay! Priests are perverts! Hypocrites! Homosexuals just want the chance to live in fidelity.

Her ignorance is unbelievable. For example, she writes:

Dolan insists that marriage between a man and a woman is “hard-wired” by God and nature. But the church refuses to acknowledge that homosexuality may be hard-wired by God and nature as well, and is not a lifestyle choice.

Sigh. First the Church makes no claim on whether or not homosexuality is a result of nature or nurture. She leaves that to science. But even if science determined that homosexuality is something one is born with, the Church rejects the idea that it is  God who hard wired people with the tendency.

Instead, homosexual inclinations would be seen as a result of the disorder brought into the world by the fall. All disease and suffering is a result of original sin. We live in a broken world.

The Church cannot change her teaching on marriage. She simply does not have the authority from Jesus Christ.

The Church calls on homosexuals to live a life of chastity and to cultivate holy friendships. It is a great trial, and such persons should be accepted with respect and compassion. We all have our crosses, some of us have heavier ones than other. But in Christ we can endure all things.

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A Fisher of Men Catches A Really Big Fish

Posted on June 18, 2011 by Susan Kehoe

This is tre cool! H/T New Advent

It may not have been the Deadliest Catch, but Bishop Edward Burns, the Pittsburgher at the helm of the Diocese of Juneau, Alaska, certainly had an impressive one. He went fishing with a parishioner from the Knights of Columbus and snagged a 165 pound halibut.
“It took a half hour to pull it up. It was exhilarating. I thought for sure I would find Jonah in there,” said Bishop Burns, 53.

Continue reading here.

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Father Z on Fr. John Corapi

Posted on June 18, 2011 by Susan Kehoe

 

Fr. Z has some wise and sober words for all of us. I will give him the final word on the matter.

Excerpt:

Given what I have been seeing and experiencing, I believe the verse many priests pray every night during Compline in the older form of the Office (Tuesday in the Liturgy of the Hours) is being realized in a particularly intense way right now:

“Be sober and vigilant: because your enemy the devil, like a roaring lion, is roaming around seeking whom he might devour.  Strong in faith, resist him knowing that the same affliction befalls your brethren who are in the world. ” 1 Peter 5:8-9.

This is certainly the case in my life right now and I think it is also going on in the life of many priests and bishops who are on the more conservative side of things.  The attack is on.

This is one reason why I have been earnestly asking the support of your prayers.

The enemy hates priests and bishops.  Let me say that again.  The enemy hates priests and bishops.  When priests and bishops start making inroads, they will be attacked with intensity.

But priests and bishops remain men and remain sinners.  We need the support of prayers especially regarding the primary goal of saving our souls.  We must, for the love of God, help each other.

I will keep Fr. Corapi on my prayer list, and will remember him in a special way, hoping that through the help of the Holy Spirit, who bends the rigid and heals the broken and consoles those who are in pain, he will have some peace whether he is able to return to active ministry or not, whether he wants to or not.   He is a priest forever and he is my brother in that indelible mark received from Christ the High priest.  And because he is a priest forever, the devil will not relent in attacking him until he dies.  Nor will the devil relent in attacking anyone who has authority over him.

It is what we signed up for, but sometimes it can be very hard.

And all the people said amen.

Posted in Catholic Church, Clergy | Tagged | 3 Comments