BRAINS

A drive-in, no less.

From Lapin.

THE ORDINARIATE PRELATES LINE-UP

From the Catholic Herald:

The Pope has honoured three former Anglican bishops, the first members of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, with the title of monsignor.

Fr Keith Newton, the leader of the Ordinariate who has most of the functions of a bishop, has been granted the papal award of Apostolic Pronotary, the highest ecclesial title for non-bishops. Fr Andrew Burnham, the former Bishop of Ebbsfleet, and Fr John Broadhurst, the former Bishop of Fulham, have been granted the papal award of Prelate of Honour, and are therefore also monsignori.

The three former bishops receive honor upon honor from their new leader, Pope Benedict. One is even an Apostlic Pronotary. Imagine being a pronotary! But they're still not bishops.

These high papal officials are the highest class of Monsignor, are often raised directly to the cardinalate, and hold distinctive privileges in address and attire....They are addressed formally as "most reverend monsignor," and they wear the mantelletta, the purple choir cassock, the biretta with red tuft, and rochet for liturgical services, the black cassock with red piping and purple sash at other times, and may add the purple ferraiuolo to the black cassock for formal ceremonies of a non-liturgical nature, e.g., a graduation.

From Wikipedia.

I hope the lower classes of the ordinariate take note of the proper manner of address for their newly-named pronotory. How likely is it that that the Most Rev Monsignor Keith Newton will be raised to the cardinalate? Not very, in my humble opinion. And a biretta with a red tuft is not a mitre.

And what about the Roman Catholic priests who must serve for years before being named monsignors?

Thanks to Ann V. for the link.

PRIORITIES!

From TVNEWSER:

The Royal Wedding between Prince William and Kate Middleton is expected to be a huge television draw next month, so all news organizations are spending significant resources on covering the event.

We already reported that MSNBC was sending Martin Bashir and Chris Jansing and that BBC America would be simulcasting BBC One’s coverage, but in this morning’s Wall Street Journal, some other interesting details were uncovered.

Among them: CNN will have 400 staffers covering the wedding, including cameramen, reporters and producers.

Which, of course, makes perfect sense, because there is nothing much happening in the rest of the world.

O wait!

By comparison, the Journal compares that to the number of staffers CNN has in Japan at the moment: 50.

Image from Ivy Press.

INNER PEACE

If you can start the day without caffeine,

If you can always be cheerful, ignoring aches and pains,

If you can resist complaining and boring people with your troubles,

If you can eat plain food every day and be grateful for it,

If you can understand when your loved ones are too busy to give you any time,

If you can take criticism and blame without resentment,

If you can conquer tension without medical help,

If you can relax without liquor,

If you can sleep without the aid of drugs,

 

...Then You Are Probably The Family Dog!

 

Doug strikes again. I may have done this one before, but I didn't have the wonderful picture of the dog.

AN IRISH POPE?!

There were two Catholic boys, Timothy Murphy and Antonio Secola, whose lives parallel each other in amazing ways. In the same yearTimothy was born in Ireland , Antonio was born in Italy .

Faithfully they attended parochial School from kindergarten through their senior year in high school. They took their vows to enter the priesthood early in college, and upon graduation, became priests.

Their careers had come to amaze the world, but it was generally acknowledged that Antonio Secola was just a wee cut above Timothy Murphy in all respects.

Their rise through the ranks of Bishop, Archbishop and finally Cardinal was swift to say the least, and the Catholic world knew that when the present Pope died, it would be one of the two who would become the next Pope.

In time the Pope did die, and the College of Cardinals went to work. In less time than anyone had expected, white smoke rose from the chimney and the world waited to see whom they had chosen.

The world, Catholic, Protestant and secular, was surprised to learn that Timothy Murphy had been elected Pope!

Antonio Secola was beyond surprise. He was devastated, because even with all of Timothy's gifts, Antonio knew he was just a bit better qualified.

With gall that shocked the Cardinals, Antonio Secola asked for a private session with them in which he candidly asked, "Why Timothy?"

After a long silence, an old Cardinal took pity on the bewildered man and rose to reply.

"We knew you were the better of the two, but we just could not bear the thought of the leader of the Roman Catholic Church being called POPE SE-COLA!

*No groaning now! You know you're going to share it with Catholic and non-Catholic friends alike!*

I've already asked Doug to leave the stage. :-)

ST PATRICK'S DAY SPECIALS

Since I'm pretty busy today, I'll refer you to two St Patrick's Day posts at other blog sites to keep YOU busy and out of mischief.

Padre Mickey has a lovely post on the life of St Patrick at Padre Mickey's Dance Party.

Rmj at Adventus gives us the beautiful "Lorica" of St Patrick.


The lovely icon of St Patrick pictured above is "borrowed" from Padre Mickey's blog.

PLEASE JOIN US IN PRAYER

Starting today and for the next several days, members of the vestries and congregations of four churches in the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana will be interviewing and spending time with six candidates for rectors priests-in-charge for four churches in the diocese.

St. John's in Thibodaux
St. Margaret's in Baton Rouge
St. Mary's in Franklin
Christ Episcopal Church in Slidell.

Because I showed up for the meeting at St. John's which explained the process, I became involved. That's what I get for showing up. :-) Seriously, I am pleased to be part of the process. I'll be busy with my duties as a team member at St. John's for the next few days. The several congregations have been praying the prayer on my right sidebar for several weeks, which I repeat below. Please join your prayers with ours that God will guide the diocesan leadership, the members of the congregations, and the candidates.

Lord, look upon the congregations St. John's in Thibodaux, St. Margaret's in Baton Rouge, St. Mary's in Franklin, and Christ Episcopal Church in Slidell. So guide the hearts and minds of our leadership teams, Bishop Morris, Canon Mark, the participating candidates for Holy Orders, and all those participating in the Clergy and Congregational Development Program, so that we may come to prepare and strengthen each other in our respective ministries. Make us all thankful of Your many blessings, faithful to Your Holy Word, and mindful that we are working to your honor and glory. Amen.

Thank you.

UPDATE: From the comments:

susankay said...

...I ask your prayers for St Marks, Durango CO as we first try to find an Interim.

HAPPY ST PATRICK'S DAY

 

 

 

Thanks or blame to Doug.

BACK TO FIREFOX FROM CHROME

Tonight I switched browsers from Google Chrome back to Firefox. When I first downloaded Google Chrome, it was fast and easy to use. But recently it slowed down, and suddenly I was not able to view videos at all. I could see them on Internet Explorer, and now I can play them on Firefox.

I spent most of the day trying to fix the problem, even to uninstalling and reinstalling Chrome, and then decided I'd had enough. We shall see how it goes with Firefox. I was never really that dissatisfied with it, but I'd heard how great Google Chrome was, which it was for a while, but I want my videos.

LACED UP

You may recall that on several occasions I asked for prayers for my daughter who is looking for a job. She is a teacher, but she has not worked for a number of years and has had no luck finding a teaching job, but she is open to other positions. She's interviewed for several jobs in other fields, but the employers want a person with experience, and all of her experience is in teaching and in baby-sitting and selling snoballs when she was a teen-ager.

Anyway, Alison's found work as an extra in movie and TV films on a number of occasions. On her first job, an older woman who's worked as an extra for a good while, gave my daughter pointers on how to perform well so that she would be called for other jobs. Basically, the advice is, "Pay attention!" Don't be focused on your phone or other device, because when the boss calls, she/he expects a prompt response. As you can imagine, the extras do a lot of sitting around waiting, but Alison says she's met some interesting people, and she enjoys talking to them.

It's amazing how much filming is done in the New Orleans area. Alison has worked in several episodes of the TV series "Treme" and on a string of movies. She doesn't earn a great deal of money, about $100 a day or a little more, but a little money coming in is better than none, and she enjoys herself on the sets. She was a vagrant in her last film, and she will be a poor vendor in the next movie, which is "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter". It's a period movie (Surprise!), and all the women must wear lace-up corsets, even the poor vendor.

Before Alison went to be fitted for her costume, a friend she met through her time on the sets told her what would happen. The women must strip down to their panties and line up bare-breasted. She had to brace herself against the wall while the dresser laced her up tightly in the corset and then free her breasts from the contraption. I thought of the scene in "Gone With the Wind", in which Mammy pulls on the laces of Scarlett's corset to get her waist back to 17" after she gives birth to Bonnie Blue - without success, as we all know. Daughter said she didn't get near 17" or even 21", which was Scarlett's measurement after Mammy's efforts. She also wondered why a poor vendor had to be laced up in a corset.

Grandpère and I nearly died laughing as Alison gave us the account of her fitting, so I was quite pleased when she gave me permission to retell the story at Wounded Bird. On my side of the family we will do almost anything for a good story.

Image from Wikipedia.

Note: The corset pictured is not back-laced, but I could not find a picture that I could use of a back-laced corset.