Seen and Unseen - Catholicus

I hear that The Priests will be singing for the Pope during his visit to Great Britain.

Or singing for God, as the Pope would prefer.

Hopefully there won't be any repitition of the disgraceful scenes that marred the First Communion in Bangor recently when members of the congregation stood up to disagree with the celbrant's plea not to clap during the Mass.

Do check out the link above - it's fan site for the Priests - including a quiz with hundreds of questions that only the die-hard stalker will know.

Speaking of best selling priests, I hear that Fr Martin Kelly is flogging CDs of his poems.  One wag said "at least it's not tapes of his famous sex talks from the seventies".  Clearly she's never heard the poetry.

Sybill Trelawney is the Divination Teacher at Hogwarts.  She's a bit of a disaster really, with her classes a bit of a joke and her predictions usually awry.  She has a critical importance, however, because she made one important prophetic utterance early in her career.



Pope Paul VI wrote Humanae Vitae.

You know the way it's annoying when the secular media get basic Catholic terminology wrong - for example, most journalists don't seem to know what verb to use to describe what a priest does with the Mass.  You can have "say", "celebrate" or "offer".  What we often get now are "take" or "give".

But you really would expect the so called religious press to know better.

Take tomorrow's Irish Catholic.  Headline: "Ordinations give 'great hope':  two religious communities have been celebrating several ordinations at recent ceremonies in Counties Limerick and Dublin".

Except two of the "ordinations" are actually Solemn Professions. 

I suspect the journo, Aoife Hegarty, doesn't know the difference.

I was chatting to someone the other day and the subject of Chelsea Clinton's (then) upcoming nuptials arose.  As a throwaway remark I said it was a "real NAP" (Niall Ahern Production) - you either know from experience or you can't possibly imagine what I mean.

Well, I literally fell off my chair when I discovered that the vows had included the poem, "The Life That I Have", favourite poem of said Niall Ahern.

Real Twilight Zone territory.

And for all the money, well, Chelsea aint exactly soft on the eye, is she?  Now the Bush wedding on the other hand...

...I realise that, as a number of readers seem to think, it might look like I was talking about a particular priest about whom I may have blogged before.

Well it's not him and the clue should be in the last line.  The reference to Poleglass is a reference that will be understood by maybe three people - you know who you are.

For most, cracking open the champagne is the start of a raucously good time. For others, it is the final few seconds of healthy eyesight.  Incorrect popping of champagne corks is one of the most common holiday-related eye hazards, according to the American Academy of Ophthalmology, the Eye M.D. Association.  "It's a sobering thought, but many revelers forget that popping the cork on a bottle of champagne is a dangerous activity if done incorrectly," said Andrew Iwach, M.D., Academy spokesperson. "Every year, warm bottles of champagne, coupled with bad cork-removal technique, are responsible for causing serious, blinding injuries."

For one Parish Priest in Belfast, sorry curate, the danger is more one of repetitive strain injury.  One hears he's popped so many corks recently that he's hardly able to use his iPhone. 

Perhaps he's just over the hill.

Dennis Taylor- I'm gonna tell you something. Somebody messes with me, I'm gonna mess with with him. Somebody steals from me, I'm gonna say you stole.  One more thing, you have an all out prize fight, you wait until the fight is over, one guy is left standing. And that's how you know who won.

Cliff Thorburn:  Well he's still not borrowing my cue extension again.

Wrigley's:  We were very proud to be one of the principal sponsors at today's funeral.  St Anne's is a great venue and having Stephen Hendry and a host of others mourners chew gum throughout the ceremony is a perfect marketing opportunity.

VATICAN CITY, 30 JUL 2010 (VIS) - We remind our readers that the Vatican Information Service will remain closed during the entire month of August. Service will resume on Wednesday 1 September.

Because, you know, those guys in the media don't bother with the news in August - that's why all the wars start then.

I have a certain fondness for developing laws - before I add some new one's it might be an idea to codify the existing laws for those who can't remember that far back. So the existing three:

Mc Camley's First Law:  The size of the celbration is in inverse proportion to the faith of the participants.

Mc Camley's Second Law:  When the door of a microwave oven, in which has been placed a cup, jug or bowl with a handle, is opened, the propability that the handle will be facing the back of the oven is 1.

Mc Camley's Third Law:  When people say 'it's not about the money' (or power), it is.

I recently developed the Fourth Law during internet discussions with crazy liberal Catholics (I know it's a tautology).  It's a follow on from Godwin's Law.  It's particularly obvious in Will and Testament.

Mc Camley's Fourth Law:  As an online discussion on religion or the Church grows longer, the probability of a reference to "the silence" of Venerable Pope Pius XII approaches 1.  An alternate version has a reference to Pope Benedict XVI's membership of Hitler Youth.

Mc Camley's Fifth Law - I've a few names for this one - the Law of Subjective Objectivity or the Frigid/Slapper Law or the Moron/Maniac Law.  I developed it after some discussions with people about Mark Dooley's articles in the Irish Daily Mail about the situation in St Patrick's College, Maynooth.  It's very hard to get Daily Mail material online but one of the articles is here.  I was making the point that while agree with some of his arguments, I felt he was overstating what was happening with lecturers, that it's not true to declare that none of them believe in transubstantiation and there is a danger that only the most conservative students are speaking to Dooley and he's getting an incomplete picture - and, after all, he doesn't actually work in either the National Seminary or the Pontifical University and his information is second hand.

Mc Camley's Fifth Law:  Everyone thinks their belief, opinion, view, behaviour is objectively, rationally, moderate.

The two classic examples (that provide the subtitles - girls think other girls who are less promiscuous than they are frigid;  girls who are more promiscuous are slappers.  People who drive slower than you are morons;  people who drive faster are maniacs.

And Dooley?   I think he's a slightly off conservative Catholic.

My friend, L, thinks this particular law is stupid and a waste of time.  I think her opinion proves my law nicely.

Have you been following the, sometimes, nasty debate on the Theology of the Body that has been exercising the Catholic ether for the last year?   Chistopher West has been delivering a popular course of lectures for some time but was attacked for his views by Alice von Hildebrand, who seems to have taken his arguments as a personal attack on her husband.  My wife has links to the main elements of the argument here.

If you want a quick summary - well:

Venerable Pope John Paul:  Sex is good.

Alice von Hildebrand:  Sex is dirty.

Christopher West:  Only if you're doing it right.

Woody Allen:

Him: Come to my quarters tomorrow at three.
Sonja: I can't.
Him: Please!
Sonja: It's immoral. What time?
Him: Who is to say what is moral?
Sonja: Morality is subjective.
Him: Subjectivity is objective.
Sonja: Moral notions imply attributes to substances which exist only in relational duality.
Him: Not as an essential extension of ontological existence.
Sonja: Can we not talk about sex so much?