Driving Adolescent Brains in the Right Direction

This one was too good to pass up.

When the kids were in school in Valdez AK, the schools had a “swat” policy. Students who deliberately broke the schools’ rules were given a “swat” with a large paddle on prominent display in the Principal’s office. The worst part of the punishment, as any of the recipients could tell you, was what happened to them after they got home, since the large majority of parents in Valdez at the time were strong supporters of the schools’ right to enforce and illustrate discipline. I can only remember one swat being reported, and it had the desired salubrious effect on the hapless miscreant whose misfortune was to be the child of his parents, who were also firm believers in not sparing the “rod.” The reason was that as soon as the swat was administered, the school called the parents and reported the incident. Generally, one swat was sufficient to break a student of a particular habit. A student could get more than one swat, but subsequent swats would be for different infractions.

Take a look at the discipline (or obvious lack of same) in most middle/high schools today, and see the consequences of sparing the rod. “Spare the rod and spoil the child,” the Bible says in the book of Proverbs. It also says, “If you hit him with a stick, he will not die.” Driving a kid’s brains in the right direction by the vigorous application of the Board of Education to the Seat of Learning has fallen out of fashion, but it will never lose its effectiveness. Schools that no longer use “serious” punishment (as opposed to timeouts, suspensions (what kid doesn’t want to get suspended??), or demerits) do themselves a serious disservice, and cheat the students of important life lessons–lessons about the consequences of anti-social behavior, deliberate rule-breaking, or defiance of authority.

It’s no wonder people don’t respect the law and its representatives any more. Such respect apparently has to be inculcated through the seat of the pants. The Gluteus Maximus muscles at the base of the spine are the largest, best-padded places on the human body, truly the “Place that Nature Provided,” in the words of a sweet little gray-haired mom who has my undying respect to this day because she was never afraid to take a swat at a hulking rule-breaker (I outweighed her and topped her out by the time I was twelve, but she was never intimidated by any of us great big dolts, and five of us were big enough to fold her up like an origami stork). Thanks again, Mom.

Well, DUH (Part II)

“Simply put, liberals have a big baby problem: They’re not having enough of them, they haven’t for a long time, and their pool of potential new voters is suffering as a result. According to the 2004 General Social Survey, if you picked 100 unrelated politically liberal adults at random, you would find that they had, between them, 147 children. If you picked 100 conservatives, you would find 208 kids. That’s a ‘fertility gap’ of 41%… A state that was split 50-50 between left and right in 2004 will tilt right by 2012, 54% to 46%. By 2020, it will be certifiably right-wing, 59% to 41%. A state that is currently 55-45 in favor of liberals (like California) will be 54-46 in favor of conservatives by 2020—and all for no other reason than babies.”

—Dr. Arthur Brooks, Syracuse University

Life Is Cheap

Over the several years of my internet writing, I’ve attempted occasionally to express my concern regarding the cheapening of life in the United States since the passage of the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973. Each time, readers have pounced on me in some fashion to take me to task for choosing such an incendiary topic. Of all the things that are written about in America today, none–not even the Presidency of George W. Bush–brings out the worst in people like the rhetoric surrounding the right of the unborn to live.

Nothing else has cheapened life like the legalized ability to snuff it out at will at any point before it draws breath. Even murders are committed with impunity, since it is a virtual certainty that the murderers will be out in society again in less than twenty years. Invalids and elderly ill are routinely put to death for the sake of convenience and financial gain. Like today’s penny coins, lives are almost worth more dead than alive.

The Archbishop of Rockford, IL wrote a short article for the diocesan paper last week in which he simply told people that such things as abortion, euthanasia, homosexual sexual behavior, and sexual mutilations were sinful acts. Since the article was brief, the Bishop minced no words, and came to his point quickly, made it forcefully, and closed it decisively.

Naturally, the spate of hate mail poured in, accusing him of all sorts of malfeasances, ignorance, cruelties, racism (yes, even that), and assorted and sundry other negative judgments. His supporters were just as vehement as his detractors, and the acrimony still flows in the comments on the website.

It is always a surprise to me to discover that there are apparently-rational people in this country who believe that a baby is no more valuable than a wart,a mole, or a parasitic worm, or that unborn babies are less worthy of life than convicted murderers on death row. In the one case, the child is not only incapable of murder, but is the most innocent of all victims. In the other, the life the killer is expected to give up has been wasted on evil choices. I cannot judge the condition of another person’s soul, but I am at least as competent as the next person to judge whether or not the life of any individual is worthy of the protection of the law. And, the law of the land still places “Life” as the first right innate in human beings.

How interesting it is that subsequent laws are in place everywhere to wipe out the innocent lives of the unborn, at the same time as other laws are in place at the same time to protect the chosen life of evil of a convicted torturer/murderer. I really pray that no person I love ever tries to convince me of the equal value of the two.

Below, I present the text of the Archbishop’s article. The link to the source can be found below the text. Please note that if you are not Catholic (or, not Christian) none of this applies to you. My advice would be to simply read no further. As for the Catholics who might be among you, remember that the Church holds all life sacred from conception to natural death (yes, including the life of a torturer/murderer), and that the death penalty must only be used in the case of absolute last resort.

Bishop Doran’s Aug. 11 column “Reaping the whirlwind of abortion”
(8/24/2006)

Bishop Thomas G. Doran’s column appeared in the August 11th issue of The Observer, the Official Newspaper of the Catholic Diocese of Rockford.
This column may not be reproduced without approval from The Observer, P.O. Box 7044,Rockford, IL 61125. Phone:815-399-4300. Fax: 815-399-6225. Email: observer@rockforddiocese.org

I want to touch on this matter before we get too close to the November madness. As human beings, as citizens of a “first world country,” as Americans, and as Catholics, most importantly, we have to take count of the circumstances in which we live. We know that the only creatures of God that outlast time are those created having intellect and will. All other things, with the passage of time, break up or break down.

Many of the issues that confront us are serious, and we know by now that the political parties in our country are at loggerheads as to how to solve them. We know, for instance, that adherents of one political party would place us squarely on the road to suicide as a people.

The seven “sacraments” of their secular culture are abortion, buggery, contraception, divorce, euthanasia, feminism of the radical type, and genetic experimentation and mutilation. These things they unabashedly espouse, profess and promote. Their continuance in public office is a clear and present danger to our survival as a nation.

Since the mid-1940s we have been accustomed to look askance at Germans. They were protagonists of the Second World War and so responsible for fifty million deaths. We say, “How awful,” and yet in our country we have, for the most part, allowed the party of death and the court system it has produced to eliminate, since 1973, upwards of forty million of our fellow citizens without allowing them to see the light of day.

They have done their best to make ours a true culture of death. No doubt, we shall soon outstrip the Nazis in doing human beings to death.

I do not think that we should spend a great deal of time in lamentation over the children whose lives have been snuffed out by the barbaric practice of therapeutic abortion. They passed from their lives quickly in this world and have gone into the hands of the Lord of Life and Mercy for all eternity. We must make it clear too, that many who have sought to have practiced on themselves therapeutic abortion are in many instances driven to it by persons heedless of their welfare, or by well- meaning but inept parents or guardians who regard abortion as a solution and not as what it is — an immense problem. There are some, I think few, largely given over to immoral lives who regard abortion as a good, but their number is not great.

What we have to remember is that violence breeds violence. When we tolerate unjust attacks upon the tiniest innocents among us, we habituate ourselves to violence. And so we have allowed these barbaric practices to corrupt our laws, our medical practice, and even our ordinary lives. How accustomed we have become to the immense loss of life in our wars throughout the world! Those who have killed millions under their mother’s hearts cannot be expected to balk at a mere few thousand killed in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Somalia, in Darfur, in Bosnia, in Madrid, in London, in Baghdad, in Beirut, in Washington, in New York. The violence of abortion coarsens the lives of all of us.

Once it was said, “… for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.” (Matthew 26:52) So we see the rise in the number of predations among youth, even among the youngest, the rise of domestic violence. We speak of road rage as a common thing. It is true what the theologians have said, that sin darkens the intellect, and weakens the will. Having sown the wind of abortion we now reap the whirlwind. This appears in every quarter of our culture and on every day. And that just from the first of the “sacraments of death” of our secular human culture.

The toleration of sexual perversions among inverts, widespread contraception, easy access to “no fault” divorce, the killing of the elderly, radical feminism, embryonic stem cell research — all of these things defile and debase our human nature and our human destiny. Should we cry out with the prophet “To the mountains, ‘Cover us,’ and to the hills, ‘Fall on us’” (Hosea: 10:8), lest other peoples see and, God forbid, imitate us?
I ran across, in one parish, prayers of the faithful with the intention that “we pray for those who work and demonstrate for the cause of life and the unborn, the aged and the defected, that they may persevere in spite of the ridicule they receive sometimes, even from pastors and priests.” I shudder to think that might be true. We know from the sad experience of recent years that some Catholics (even among priests) are so warped and perverted from their Catholic vocation, that they are capable of enormities. But, they should know that it was no prelate or bishop or pope that said, “Suffer the little children to come to me and do not hinder them” (Matthew 19:14). The Invisible Head of the Church will one day come to judge the living and the dead and the world by fire, particularly those who have either by acts of omission or commission, destroyed innocent human life.

It is the duty of every Catholic to support the work of the parish Pro-Life directors and commissions and to work for the extirpation from our society of all those who in any way foster or promote these things. I wholeheartedly endorse the activities of our Pro-Life Office in the sure and certain knowledge that divine justice will not allow those who act against human life to prosper. These unholy sacraments of our secular culture are the seeds of the destruction of our nation.

Think for yourself: what nation that kills its young, perverts marriage, prevents new life, and destroys the family, kills those deemed useless, makes the war of the sexes into a real war, and manipulates the genetic basis of human nature, can long endure?

Bishop’s letter

Sensory Deprivation

I remember my parents as affectionate, loving people. They weren’t effusive or overly demonstrative, but kind touches, loving hugs, and affectionate words and names were more common than not. We were taught never to call each other names, to respect each other’s persons and property, and to always and invariably respect our parents, simply for who they were. We could never have been considered “deprived” of attention or affection.

I remember being fascinated by a chapter I found in a science book regarding the psychological effect of a lack of softness or friendly contact on baby monkeys. They were given two choices: a “mother” made of wire, with a bottle sticking out of it, and another “mother” wrapped in soft fabric, with a “face” made of odd, hard, but faintly-recognizable features. The test was to see which “mother” the baby monkeys would choose if given the chance, and it was obvious that the babies preferred the padded “mom” over the wire appliance. When the test went further and the babies were placed with only the wire contrivance, the babies soon died, but the little critters with the padded moms survived and were able to be placed into the general population of monkeys.

The babies that died did so because they lacked a kind, comforting touch.

Somehow, children seem to have a sense for the authenticity of the touches they receive. I had no problem as a child discerning the difference between a “good” touch and a “bad” one. I knew instinctively which adults I could trust, and which ones to avoid.

We are raising another generation of untouched-by-loving-kindness kids. All touches are rated as “good” or “bad,” and the choice is often not made by the child, or even someone who has the child’s best interest at heart, but a disinterested but meddling official or teacher, who is convinced that any affectionate touching of any child by anyone is to be considered “bad” touching. At home, parents are often preoccupied, and the children are frequently left to fend for themselves and to find their own form of affectionate contact. Is it any wonder there are so many lonely teenagers milling through the malls and loitering on street corners? In the child’s search for the kind of sensory satisfaction that they crave and require, they become sexually active at early ages, exchanging the real love of a parent’s caring embrace for a quick grope in the back seat of a car or experimenting with different sexual relationships.

All too often, mothers place their infant children in the care of disintered others who only provide physical care and attention, but little or no affection or love. The little ones grow up turning to the caregiver for attention and affection, while the mothers withdraw even further. If the child is safe, out of trouble, and not starving, the parents considers their work to be satisfactorily done, and do little to enhance the child’s experience with loving words and touches.

We have become a nation of sensory-deprived people who distrust everyone they meet, avoid any touching that might be considered genuine, and fall back on the phony affection of the “air-kiss” or the slap on the shoulder, if we touch others at all. We exchange normal relationships with friends for the vicarious romance we find in fan magazines and supermarket tabloids, MTV videos, and sexed-up soap operas. In churches, we spend a lot of time hugging members of our congregations, but go home and gossip about the very people we embraced just moments ago. Can the phony affection and misplaced romance be a satisfactory replacement for the genuine touches of kindness and love? Obviously not, and we are finally beginning to realize it. But it might be too late.

Multiculturalism has blurred a lot of the lines of discernment we used in the past to distinguish between individuals with our best interests at heart and those bent on our destruction. But today’s politically correct world leaves us with a lot of times that demand false friendship or phony acceptance in the place of a well-placed skepticism about strangers and their motives. We believe foolishly that if that individual isn’t actively attacking us physically, he is on our side. This leads to problems when the enemy is terrorism, since the terrorist’s stock in trade is to blend in, to appear friendly, to gain our trust, then to attack murderously, killing as many of us as he can take out, women and children, the very ones who need our most loving touches and caring attention, being prized as especially desirable targets.

We have victimized ourselves by becoming suspicious of the good people around us and allowed the sinister and falsely kind actions of terrorists substitute for kindness and friendship. The chance that we will ever return to a culture that encourages friendly gestures and affectionate behavior is slim, at best. A burned child fears the fire, and we have short-circuited our instinctive sense of the difference between the “good” touch of friend, teacher, and parent, and substituted for it the politically correct willingness to refuse to “distinguish” or “profile” the possible enemies in our midst, for fear of “offending” them.

To our own detriment, we have distorted our relationships to the point where normal, natural, familial tenderness and loving embraces are counterfeited by pseudo-kindness toward someone we hope won’t hurt us if we bow and scrape and offer them the backs of our necks.

Revenge of the Valley Trash

Most people in the South 48 don’t even know that we had a primary election yesterday. And, even if they knew, they probably wouldn’t care in the slightest. But Alaskan politics were interesting in this election for a couple of reasons. One was that the incumbent Governor is not very popular, in spite of the fact that he has represented Alaska in Washington D.C. for many years, was up for re-election. But he did a couple of things during his tenure in office that brassed off the Alaskan voters, the worst of which was to appoint his daughter to the U.S. Senate seat he vacated in order to become Governor. Another was to do away with the Longevity Bonus, a sort of state-level Social Security payment (a pittance, in fact, but looked forward to by its elderly recipients). Neither of these moves was wise politically, and Murkowsky was due to be shown the error of his ways.

So when yesterday’s election rolled around there were a lot of things in play, and the most interesting one was the candidacy for Governor of the Mayor of Wasilla. Now, Wasilla is listed on the books as a city containing roughly 6,000 people, and that is what most of the snooty political types in Anchorage think of when they think of the candidacy of the Mayor for the top job in the state. But the Mayor oversees a lot of the surrounding area, as well, and that brings the size of the city up to around 20,000 souls, and the Democrats were convinced they had nothing to worry about from this upstart. They’d just run the handsome, charismatic Tony Knowles (former Anchorage Mayor), and sweep all the rest of the offices before their political nanny-statist juggernaut.

Well, “sur-prahs, sur-prahs, sur-prahs,” as it was so well put by Gomer Pyle. Things did NOT go according to the plans of the political movers and shakers in Alaska’s lively political dustup. Pouring rain did not daunt voters who were ripe for change. Not only was the incumbent, Murkowsky, defeated so soundly by the Republican front-runner that there was no doubt in anybody’s mind that the Alaskan voters were bent on cleaning house; but the Democrat’s golden boy, Tony Knowles, was also clobbered upside the head by this upstart Republican from out in the Valley (denizens of the Matanuska Valley are called “Valley Trash” by upper-crust Anchorageites).

Who IS this mystery candidate, you ask? Just a cute little Wasilla housewife named Sarah Palin. She swept the election with over 50% of the vote for the Gubernatorial office, leaving Murkowsky nursing his bruises with only a little over 18%, and conked Phony Tony on the bean by a margin of nearly 2-to-1.

Alaska is DIFFERENT from the rest of the U.S. in so many ways that the outcome of this election only serves to illustrate the day-by-day individuality of its people. It has always been strongly conservative, and Libertarians are often popular candidates. Oil is a big issue, obviously. Commercial fishing is another issue that can sway voters widely. And the lucrative tourist industry (about to be hamstrung by a stupid ballot inititative that demands an extra $50 from each tour-ship visitor), all add to the State’s ability to stay at the top of the “no State income tax” list and keep the free-wheeling, feisty, frontiersman-type voters interested and informed.

The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, as Palin’s victory yesterday shows. The mighty political machine appears to have had a monkey-wrench dropped into it by a little lady Mayor of a small Alaskan city.

Go, TEAM!!

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These guys are SOOO good! Thank you for serving!

Termination Dusted

It’s official: The mountains around Wasilla were all sporting bright, new white caps yesterday afternoon. Official overnight temperatures were in the low forties. “Termination Dust,” the first snowfall is called. Old-timers used to use it as their gauge for departure. When it snowed on the peaks, they gave themselves about six weeks to pack up their gear and their ore and head for civilization to cash out. Terminate their jobs, as it were, and hie themselves Southward.

I guess global warming caused this little glitch…Well, the enviroweenies are saying that it caused the monstrous typhoon that struck China’s mainland with a Force 5 storm last week, so I guess it’s within the realm of possibility.

It’s been raining for the last two weeks. For Old-Timers, that’s nothing. We just dig out the X-TraTuffs and the wool clothes and go on about our business. My belief is that it is the shreds of the typhoon. We had weather similar to this in Valdez in 1977, from another large and destructive Pacific storm that was powerful enough to pour water on Alaska’s southern coast. News reports last night showed town after town with flooded streets and gushing water everywhere. Fortunately, I live on top of a little hill at the top of a big hill. If MY place floods, the whole world is in trouble!

Alaskans take heavy weather in stride, but I know it is disappointing for tourists to save their money for five years, pay exorbitant gas prices driving up here, only to have the mountains and distant beauty obscured, to be wet and miserable morning, noon, and night, and to have to leave without having seen “The Mountain.” “The Mountain,” of course, being McKinley, sometimes called “The Weathermaker.” Which brings us back to the topic at hand.

Talking about the weather is a legitimate topic in Alaskan chitchat. Most people are unaware, for instance, that the state can have a half-dozen weather systems in operation at any one time, and have snow in one place while heat and sunshine torment another. (Doesn’t happen very often; just often enough so we can say it without lying…) I can remember sunny days in Juneau when the Governor would grant what we called “Sunshine Leave.” Anyone with leave time accumulated could take it, in order to get out into the nice weather. Barflies would take one look at the lack of rain and the blue sky above and head for the nearest bar to talk about the nice weather.

There used to be an old saying, “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” To hear the envirowackos tell it, everybody is doing something about it, and everything they are doing is all wrong. It’s nice that someone thinks us puny humans can actually have some effect on something as huge as weather on earth, but they are convinced that all of us nasty consumers are deliberately going about the murder of Mother Gaia.

What Went Wrong With Vatican II?

Some years ago, Ralph McInerny wrote a little book that literally uncovered the truth about the loss of holiness in American Catholic churches, and exposed the arrogant, “I will not serve” attitude of a number of Leftist “theologians” who, throughout the country, were in positions that would allow them to literally mold Catholic thought and practice.

I read the book a couple of times, and finally wrote a review of it for my other website. I have brought it back here because I believe it is information that we must not allow to disappear even though things appear to be looking up with the reign of Pope Benedict XVI.

Herewith, my little review:

What Went Wrong With Vatican II

by Ralph McInerny

Sophia Institute Press

This is a small book, about 160 widely-spaced, wide-margined, heavy-stock pages. I’ve read it twice, and both times, it blew my socks off. But small does not mean insignificant, and this is one of the most important books published in the last ten years concerning the condition of the Catholic Church in America.

McInerny has been paying attention, and he has noticed a few things:

Dissent Had Become Institutionalized
In 1968, Humanae Vitae was met with defiance. After that, since it had encountered few obstacles, defiance became the standard theological response to magisterial documents. Dissenting theologians could be counted on to question, criticize, and even dismiss papal encyclicals and statements by Vatican officials.* One favorite tactic was simply to predict that a document would be ignored.

The confusion that began in the wake of Humanae Vitae came to characterize the Church. On every significant question, there came to be two opposed schools: The liberal and the conservative. The fact that the so-called conservative side was all but identified with the Pope and the bishops posed little problem for those who saw themselves as a counter-Magisterium and had elevated to the level of doctrine the notion that anything short of a solemn infallible pronouncement could be safely challenged.

For twenty years thereafter, dissent was allowed to continue unabated. It became institutionalized. Catholic universities became the usual habitat of dissenting theologians, and many Catholic universities, in Msgr. Kelly’s phrase, essentially declared independence from the Catholic Church. They adopted the view that the teaching Church was an alien, off-campus force, and that to permit it to play any role on campus would be to compromise academic freedom. Dissenting theologians were offered sanctuary in theology departments of Catholic universities, where, from tenured posts, they dismissed and even scoffed at magisterial pronouncements, even teaching their students to do so, all without interference from the divinely appointed teachers of the Catholic Church.

These universities trained future teachers for universities, colleges, and high schools, they trained directors of religious education. For years, students of these dissenting theologians continued to fan out into positions in the Church, taking with them the curious notion that they operated in independence of the Magisterium. They promulgated the doctrines of dissenters, not of the Magisterium.

It’s no surprise that American Catholics today have not the slightest notion that anything is wrong in the Church. Thanks to the inroads these dissenters have made into the teachings of the American Church for the last forty years, is it any wonder that American Catholics are so ill-informed, so poorly-prepared, and simply so lackadasical and unconcerned about the sin in their lives? The miracle is that any are left who still really believe in the Roman Catholic Church.

This book should be required reading in every parish. Another quote, one which does not shock me:

Today, it is the rare bishop who is in charge of the bureaucracy that has metastasized around him. Earlier, Thomas Sheehan had boasted that anti-papal Catholics dominated seminary faculties and university departments of theology: now they are often in control of chanceries. Too many bishops are surrounded by bureaucracies that bear the stamp of dissident theology.

To be sure, here and there, one finds a courageous prelate, a good seminary, or a theologian deserving of the name, but in the parishes, all too often there is the mark of the dissenters rather than of the Magisterium.

As the dissenters might have said, “We are legion.”

*For instance, the Papal Document, DIRECTIVES ON FORMATION IN RELIGIOUS INSTITUTES, was released in 1961. It dealt directly with the problem of homosexual priestly candidates, and stated categorically that these people were not allowed to be ordained, lest it become a cause for scandal for the Church, and cause the men involved too great a temptation.

It was never released in America. That means that for more than forty years, a direct order from the Vatican has not only been ignored, but deliberately hidden, and about 99% of parish priests have never even known it existed. It was hidden from all American bishops and never released. It can be found and read in its entirety on the Vatican’s website, here. Needless to say, numerous priests and bishops now have the document in their hands, and finally know the extent of the deceit.

If you are Catholic and you love your Church, you’d better not waste any time getting and reading this book.

As Catholic as the Pope

The typical Alaska-coastal type of “not-rain” has been falling for days. “Not rain” since it falls for days at a time and produces about 1/8″ of wetness in the bottom of the rain gauge. About all it does is keep the dust down, cool things off a bit, and make one’s hair frizzy. One of these mornings, though, we will wake up and see that it has pulled a real prank on us, and turned white overnight. I don’t know whether I’m looking forward to it or not…

(((((((((((ooo))))))))))

Our little parish (officially a “mission” until it is bigger) is very new, and is named for a young Byzantine Catholic bishop who was murdered by the Communists in 1947. His name is Blessed Theodore Romzha, and he was only about 35 when he was poisoned.

Getting started as a religious “entity” can be a problematic endeavor. We are so small that it will be some time before we can even afford to build a building of our own. In the meantime, we worship in the old original (and small) building that first housed the big Sacred Heart Catholic parish. Their new building is a big, lovely thing, a worthy emblem of their dedication and love for the Faith. Our little building is the “multi-purpose” structure, housing the Boy Scout meetings and other peri-liturgical gatherings.

About a year ago, we were brand-new to Wasilla, having arrived on the 10th of August, but not new to Alaska. I’ve previously mentioned here that I’ve already put in my 30 years, necessary for membership in the Alaska Pioneers. Finding a church shouldn’t be a problem. There are 55 churches in this area. But only 3 are Catholic (4, if you count the Wasilla outreach of the Byzantine Catholic parish of St. Nicholas of Myra). So making the choice should have been a simple matter. After spending 14 years in the upper Midwest, amidst the old-time Catholics there, we had fallen into a mindset of somewhat complacent outlook. Out there, the Catholic churches are often magnificent turn-of-the-century edifices, all of which point the way to Heaven with their spires and bellfries, teach with colored-glass windows and hand-painted statuary surrounding gorgeous old Gothic altars brought over from the “Old Country.” In our area, the Old Country was Bohemia. Czechs are historically devout Catholics, and it showed in most of the old Bohemian parishes where we attended.

Here, the choices were a little more restricted. It boiled down to a sad travesty at one parish where the priest’s focus in all his homilies was on “peace and justice,” and where the music “ministry” consisted of an electronic flute; and a larger, more “traditional” parish with an even less orthodox pastor; and making the move “Eastward,” to the Byzantine tradition.

Byzantines are as Catholic as the Pope. They are Catholics who submit to the authority of the Holy Father in Rome. They believe the same things Roman Catholics do, but their ritual is different, and there are differences in their calendar of saints, days of obligation, and other externals.

The first experience was quite different. Byzantine Catholics not only STAND for virtually the entire service, but they ALL sing the whole liturgy, whether they can carry a tune or not. Smaller differences would include the frequent bowing and the fact that they make the Sign of the Cross from right to left, and make it many times during the course of a liturgy celebration. Watching and copying actions, following the chant from the booklet (simple) and adjusting to the Holy Communion in both Species every Sunday were basically all it took before I soon felt quite at home in the little gathering.

Eventually, the time came to make a decision: Was I going to be a permanent parishoner in the Byzantine outreach, or shift my allegiance to an unsatisfactory (but ROMAN) parish? The choice was easy. I proudly filled out the form and became a full-fledged member of the Byzantine parish in Wasilla. I wasn’t leaving the Church, I was just changing parishes. It felt just right.

When a long-time Roman Catholic looks Eastward, there are just enough differences to cause some hesitation. Most Catholics don’t realize that the Catholic Church has some 23 Rites, including Latin, Coptic, and Byzantine. The Latin rite happens to be the largest group by some orders of magnitude, but the other Rites are just as Catholic, and their sacraments are just as valid.

If you look in the phone book and see a listing for a Byzantine Catholic church, check it out. You may be very pleasantly surprised by what you find there.

GOTTA See This!

Bring a big hankie!

CAN

And read THIS.