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looks like a cranky grammarian has joined our parish. I know I am inviting scrupulous scrutiny from our unnamed orthographer, but for the love of all things holy will you take something to remove the blockage in your lower intestine?

in cases involving the sexual abuse of minors.

is a wonderful place to pray. I was there yesterday afternoon for a few hours. I came away with a pile of books, a wood and string rosary that won’t be confiscated by airport security, and a Miraculous Medal on a chain that is way too small to fit over my fat head. The problem is you can’t try them on when you are in the giftshop. I guess I will give it to my niece who is eight and has a small head. I got in a conversation with a very nice security guard named Don. He’s an army vet who retired and was sitting around the house for a few weeks before his wife told him to “Get a life!” He got a job at the shrine seven years ago and he says Mary has been his boss ever since. What a powerful witness he is!

Look at the pictures on this site – they are stunning. I might just drop the music director a line and ask if a guitar has ever been played at a Mass there.

More from the same reader who used to attend St. Anthony’s Parish.

[regarding] The schismatic DRE: Her comment to me just gives a tiny flavor of it. I watched her coldly and systematically destroy a young woman’s faith during an RCIA class; then she boasted of it. A year or two later, the girl turned up in a Washington Post article about a “WomanChurch” group in the diocese. She was photographed standing at an “altar” and quoted about consecrating in this (fake) eucharist as part of a community that welcomed women’s experiences. (I believe the DRE was also quoted, but she had the canniness to say something relatively bland about women needing a greater role in the church, etc., etc. And she stayed out of camera range.)
Currently I go to St. Philip’s; Fr. Spychala is the greatest! I still go to St. Anthony sometimes, because they have more Mass times that St. Philip does. And you’re right about the African priests at St. Anthony’s — they preach from the heart. Sometimes I think JPII should turn us back into a missionary country. It might be a salutary surprise for those who think America is the Most Important Church in the World!

Rome, we have problem. Please send reinforcements!

I recommend it for anyone who has read or been exposed to the “Left Behind” series of books. I think just about everyone who is in the mere Christian Bible study I participate in believes in the rapture. When we finished the Gospel of Matthew there was even a suggestion we read one of those books. Not as Scripture, of course, but as something we could all discuss. Thank goodness that got squashed and we’re doing Acts.

The modern idea of the rapture came from bad theology in the mid 1800’s and has been zealously preached in recent decades. Whatever Tim Lahaye and Jerry B. Jenkins motives were in writing the “Left Behind” series it’s clear they have made piles of greenbacks while scaring the bejesus out of people. I saw once a woman in church with one of the books. Another time I noticed the whole series of books displayed across the top shelf of the “Religion” section in a bookstore. I thought that was odd since right next to the “Religion” section was the “Inspirational Fiction” section. I should have told manager those books belonged in the “Fiction” section, not even in the “Inspirational Fiction” section, but I just purchased some Chesterton and walked out. The problem, I suppose, besides bad theology being easy for people to buy into, is that Jesus sells. Not in all markets but in predominantly Christian and consumeristic countries the topic of Jesus, however flawed the theology, the writing, the movie-making, sells. Now if Tim Lahaye and Jerry B. Jenkins wrote instead about a galaxy far, far away in which the people believed what the humans do in the Left Behind series, only about another diety and religion, they would have used their original manuscript to wrap fish. Give it a Christian context and it’s a different ball game.

Here’s an interesting article from Catholic.net about the books. I had no idea 30 million copies of these books have been sold. It stinks that some people can’t separate fiction from theology. This, from the article on Catholic.net, is quite amusing:

The most successful end-times movie franchise may be the series produced by Peter Lalonde and his brother Paul. It got off to a shaky start with the shabby Apocalypse (1998) but picked up with Revelation (1999), which hatched a plan by the Antichrist to steal souls through virtual-reality helmets, and Tribulation (2000), in which Gary Busey comes out of a coma to find himself stranded in the tribulation. Judgment (2001) stars Corbin Bernsen, along with Mr. T who plays an underground believer who has had enough of that turn-the-other-cheek stuff. The Lalondes also produced a spin-off video, Vanished (1999) meant to be seen by non-Christians after the rapture.

I can see it now. Mr. T says, “Don’t give me any of that Jesus was just a dude jibbah-jabbah – accept Christ as your personal Lord and Savior!”