Author: Pete Vere

Dumbocrats and the Media

Is it just me, or are we seeing more headlines among the secular print media stating “Democrats Lose” than “Republicans Win”? So much for objective reporting.

And the winner of the Schism contest is….

Drum roll please….. as mentioned earlier, having judged all the entries, the ladies chose….. Jeff Miller “Screams of Conscious”. Congratulations Jeff! You will be receiving a free copy of my ebook Schism via email during the next couple of days. And a sincere thank-you to everyone who participated. There were a lot of great entries, which is why I let the ladies decide…

We have a Sweetheart of a winner in the Horror competition!

With regards to the name the title of my next work of Catholic horror fiction contest below, there were so many good entries that I…er…passed the buck. So I asked two people whose literary taste I trust to pick the winner. Anyway, my wife (who was my college sweetheart) got together with my former girlfriend (who was my high-school sweetheart) via the ‘net this evening and each narrowed down the field to three entries. From there they picked the winner, but wont allow me to announce it until tommorrow. I know better than to argue.

When Morality Censors Liturgical Latin
Some days you just can’t win…

When I was still a struggling young canonist within the Ecclesia Dei movement, a certain older priest and respected canonist sympathetic toward the Latin liturgy took me under his wing. He believed in the importance of educating young people in the official language of the Church, especially as it concerns the sacred sciences. So I trusted him to help me work through the canonical baggage I had brought back into the Church with me when I left the SSPX. We became good friends and have kept up regular correspondence through which we always exchange the customary Latin greeting from the liturgy of the Mass. Usually we correspond via our private email accounts, but something came up at work last Friday, so he contacted me from his diocesan email account.

Well I replied to his email over the weekend and thought all was well. When I got into the office this morning, I quickly discovered that his diocese’s anti-porn and anti-spam software had intercepted my email for objectionable content. Needless to say, I found this quite strange, but figured my free webmail provider had just tagged some objectionable spamvertisement, as is sometime the case. I was going to reply from a private email account tommorrow, however, I just got an apology from the diocese in question. It was quickly followed by a furious email from my friend (not at me, but at the diocese’s computer department.) It turns out the automatic anti-porn filter won’t allow the traditional response in the Latin liturgy to “Dominus Vobiscum” to get through. Sigh! Some days a Catholic faithful to Church Tradition just cannot seem to win…

Beer and Benedictines

In my response to Kevin Fogarty’s proposed monastic beer pilgrimage, Shawn McElhinney asks: “I mean, is there a theological argument for beer???”

My dear Shawn, the answer is yes. Beer and Benedictines have long had an association second only to the Benedictine association with prayer. In fact, throughout the ages the Benedictines were often jokingly refered to as the Order of Saintly Brewers. That being said, I won’t say more since the real expert in this area is Kevin Fogarty, and I’m hoping to coax him into sharing his wisdom with our readers.