tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15470936227331892102012-01-27T07:42:25.270-08:00A Catholic priest responds to queries on faith, the Bible, religion, Catholic practice, etc. posed by readers. What he doesn't know, he makes up. A searchable archive of all articles can be found at http://www.rev-know-it-all.com/Rev. Know-it-allhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17268089562368228249noreply@blogger.comBlogger1301100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1547093622733189210.post-35997843002422210992012-01-27T07:42:00.000-08:002012-01-27T07:42:25.283-08:00

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Letter to Penny Quostal continued: (This is ultimately going to be a disquisition on the nature of sacraments and in particular, the relationship between the diaconate and priesthood. Why then, you may well ask, has he veered off into religious strangeness? Simply because about one out of ten Christians alive today has had some experience with Pentecostalism, Catholic, Protestant and

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So there you have it, Verne, a blow by blow attempt at explaining the meanings behind the changes of the congregational responses in the Mass. There is not time to go through all the changes, but the change in the parts the priest says are everywhere. It feels like I am saying a different Mass than I have said since I was ordained getting nigh unto forty years ago. It is maddening. I am an old

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Letter to Verne A. Kiular continued           We are coming into the home stretch. You will notice that “Let us proclaim the mystery of faith is now just “the mystery of faith.” And there is one whole Memorial Acclamation missing!    Perhaps this is an opportune moment to discuss the idea of “mystery.”  In modern English, mystery is, according to Webster (the dictionary, not the short,

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The Apostles Creed, of which I have already written about, has only a couple of changes. “He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit” becomes “who was conceived by the Holy Spirit.”  People conceive. The Holy Spirit is a person not a force.  I remember hearing of a Pentecostal pastor whose ministry had stagnated. He was praying and, as I often do, began to pray the prayer of St.

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Before I continue with my fulminations about translation, I must make a correction. A few weeks ago I spoke of “God the creator of heaven and earth” That, as I am sure you noticed, comes from the Apostles’ Creed, or “Symbolum Apsotolorum”. I suspect that the use of the word “creator” in Latin is of greater antiquity than the word “maker”, which is used in the Nicene Creed. Perhaps this is an

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WARNING: This is even more obscure than most of this crackpot’s ideas!!! There is probably no reputable scholar that has ever written the following and it is pure speculation on the part of Rev. Know-it-all. Still, it’s kind of interesting if you can wade through it. Remember to take everything the Rev. Know-it-all says with a grain of salt.(Letter to Verne A. Kiular, continued) “On the third day

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(Letter to Verne A. Kiular, continued)Continuing with the Creed, “By the power of the Holy Spirit, He was born of the Virgin Mary” becomes “By the Holy Spirit, was incarnate of the Virgin Mary.” So what’s the difference between born and incarnate? Aren’t you following the news these days? Jesus didn’t become man on the day he was born, (man being the usual inclusive word for human). He became man

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(Letter to Verne A. Kiular, continued)When last I wrote I was trying to define worship in understandable terms. God wants us to fall crazy-head-over-heels in love with Him because He is crazy-head-over-heels in love with us. In fact He is so in love with us that He wants to adopt us as his children. This brings us to the next casual mistake in the American translation of the text. In the poorly

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CAUTION! These are easily the most insulting series of Articles the Rev. Know-it-all has yet written.) The Rev. Know-it-all’s guide to how to behave in Church Part 6 And a few more issues..... “Worship the Lord in holy attire. Tremble before Him, all the earth.” (Psalm 96:9) This doesn’t mean clothes that are full of holes, even designer ripped blue jeans. Clothing is important. It says

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(CAUTION! These are easily the most insulting series of Articles the Rev. Know-it-all has yet written.) More talk about shutting up. Perhaps you are thinking, “I have always realized that this guy wants to take the church back to the stone age. Doesn’t he realize that since Vatican II we are a resurrection people and the church is the place of gathering for

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Dear Rev. Know it all I am tired of all those people who come late for Mass and cause a ruckus as they walk up and down looking for a place to sit. I always arrive early and sit in my usual spot three rows from the back door. I have to endure the late comers and the distractions they cause. Can't you do something about it? Sincerely, Ed T. Kette. No, I can't. But

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The thirteen part series of the Rev. Know-it-all's Guide to Reading the Bible is now complied in a single .pdf document for those who may be interested.

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THE REV. KNOW IT ALL’S “GUIDE TO READING THE BIBLE, THAT BIG BOOK ON THE COFFEE TABLE.” Part 13 WHOSE YOUR DADDY? MORE PROBLEMS WITH SCROLLS When we read a modern book, we never worry that it’s not an exact copy of the original. The original may have typos, but who asks, “Is this an exact copy of the original?” Not so with books before 1450, when Johannes Gutenberg invented the

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THE REV. KNOW IT ALL’S “GUIDE TO READING THE BIBLE, THAT BIG BOOK ON THE COFFEE TABLE.” Part 12 ROLL OUT THE BIBLE, or THE SOLA SCRIPTURA POLKA I have been saying for months now that the Bible isn’t a book. It’s a library. When someone asks me for the best translation of the Bible, the assumption behind the question is that there is an original Bible somewhere that can be translated.

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THE PERENNIAL QUESTION: WHY DID CATHOLICS ADD 7 BOOKS TO THE BIBLE? Part 11 Simple answer: the CATHOLICS added nothing ­─ the truth is that the Protestants took seven books away. Complicated answer: Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus, whom you might know as St. Jerome was born in 347 AD in Slovenia (then called Dalmatia, in the future, now former Yugoslavia. Figure that out.) In 378 he

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THE REV. KNOW IT ALL’S “GUIDE TO READING THE BIBLE, THAT BIG BOOK ON THE COFFEE TABLE.” Part 10 BEWARE OF GREEKS BEARING GIFTS (unless of course they remember to include the gift return receipt) Once I heard a preacher loudly denouncing party spirit. He was quoting St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians, the fifth chapter “Now the works of the flesh are plain: fornication, impurity,

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THE REV. KNOW IT ALL’S “GUIDE TO READING THE BIBLE, THAT BIG BOOK ON THE COFFEE TABLE.” Part 9 THE HOUSE OF DAVID, or FAMILIES; EVERYBODY’S GOT ONE Back in episode 7, I mentioned the brothers of the Lord and who they might have been. Whoever they were, they seem to have been very important in the early Church and rather difficult. Five hundred years before the birth of Christ, the

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THE REV. KNOW IT ALL’S “GUIDE TO READING THE BIBLE, THAT BIG BOOK ON THE COFFEE TABLE.” Part 7 It’s not meant to confuse you, but it’s very confusing…. CAN’T TELL YOUR PLAYERS WITHOUT A SCORE CARD In reading the New Testament one might get the impression that Mary and Joseph were just the couple next door with a lot of kids and that Paul was having a feud with James, and the other

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THE REV. KNOW IT ALL’S “GUIDE TO READING THE BIBLE, THAT BIG BOOK ON THE COFFEE TABLE.” Part 5“KEEPING IT ALL IN THE FAMILY or CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME”So now I come to the moment, dear Eve, of actually answering your question. Whom did the children of Adam and Eve marry? There are a number of theories.(Genesis 5:4) “The days of Adam after he fathered Seth were 800 years; and he had other sons and

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First a note to my dear friends in cyberspace. Until very recently, I was working with goose quill pens and carrier pigeons. Until recently, I didn’t even know how to turn on a computer. I write these fulminations for the parish bulletin. I really have nothing to do with my blog spot and not a lot to do with my website. Some very unbalanced people, who actually read what I write, have taken it

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THE REV. KNOW IT ALL’S “GUIDE TO READING THE BIBLE, THAT BIG BOOK ON THE COFFEE TABLE.” Part 3COULDN’T ST. MATTHEW ADD? I THOUGHT HE WORKED FOR THE INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE BEFORE JESUS RECRUITED HIM.In the Gospel of Matthew 1st chapter, 17th verse we read: “Thus there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile

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YOU SHOULDN’T JUDGE A BIBLE BY ITS COVER!Many years ago my mother, one of the finest, kindest and wisest people I have ever known, decided to read the Bible cover to cover. Somewhere around the story of Lot and his daughters, she called me and asked, “Have you any idea what’s in this book!?!!” Never try to read the bible cover to cover. If you do, it will make less sense than before you started

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Dear Rev. Know it all,Who did the sons of Adam and Eve marry?Patiently yours, Eve Anne Gellikal Dear Eve,They married their wives.Sincerely, the Rev. Know it allPS I imagine you would like a more detailed answer than that. This will take some time, and so I have to decide to answer your question with a long harangue of which this is the first installment.THE REV. KNOW IT ALL’S GUIDE TO READING

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Dear Rev. Know it all,Who is John Galt?Sincerely, Al TruhyzmDear Al,John Galt is Alisa Rosenblum’s imaginary boyfriend.Yours, the Rev. Know it all.P.S. You may have heard of Alisa Rosenblum by a name she made up for herself, Ayn Rand. A lot of people are talking about her these days. Her book, Atlas Shrugged of which John Galt is the fictional hero, is finally being made into a movie. John Galt

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Letter to Harold “Hoot” and Annie Gibson cont. part 27THE CAPTAIN HAS TURNED ON THE FASTEN SEAT BELT SIGN AND REQUESTS THAT YOU PUT YOUR TRAYS AND SEATS IN THE UPRIGHT POSITION IN PREPARATION FOR LANDING.So what do we do now? First a word to the Catholicism-lite crowd -- be who you claim to be. Tolerate diversity. If there’s a group who wants to have Mass by the book, do a Mass for them without

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Letter to Harold “Hoot” and Annie Gibson cont. part 26 As I told you the last time you were foolish enough to read up this column, the solution to the current liturgical mess is to implement the liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council. The reforms mentioned nothing, as far as I can tell about moving the tabernacles, whitewashing the churches, breaking the images and stained glass,

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Letter to Harold “Hoot” and Annie Gibson cont. part 25I have always enjoyed the song that says “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. They paved paradise and put in a parking lot.” The Scriptures say it differently: “Do not move your neighbor's boundary stone set up by your predecessors in the inheritance you receive in the land the LORD your God is

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Letter to Harold “Hoot” and Annie Gibson cont. part 24THE DAY THE MUSIC DIEDThis morning I was at the gym going about in circles like a mind-numbed hamster, (Yes, the Rev. Know-it-all goes to the gym, even in his advanced age. When I was young we practiced harsh penances for the sake of eternal life. Now we go to the gym and submit ourselves to instruments of torture so that we won’t look so much

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Letter to Harold “Hoot” and Annie Gibson cont. part 23OLD KING LOG “Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out.” Continued…….There are two dimensions of church craft I think caused real trouble. First, remember in the Church of the 40's and 50's, there was a strange kind of legalism that asked how little was necessary rather than how much was possible. I remember great discussions of

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Letter to Harold “Hoot” and Annie Gibson cont. part 22OLD KING LOG “Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out.” The frogs were tired of their government. It was too old-fashioned, and so the cranes suggested they nominate a large log in the middle of the swamp to be their king. They would dress the log in royal robes so it could entertain them with the pomp and display

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Letter to Harold “Hoot” and Annie Gibson cont. part 21 IT’S ME, O LORD, STANDING IN THE NEED OF PRAYER You have doubtlessly heard the saying that growing old is not for the timid. As I plunge into senescence (old age-hood) I can never remember whom I’ve told what. I’m sure you have heard me tell this story. One Sunday, many years ago, when I was still young and the Tridentine Mass was a rare

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Letter to Harold “Hoot” and Annie Gibson cont. part 20LIGHTS, ACTION, LITURGY!So why is it that we are beset by Pascal Turkeys and stage dramas? St. John the Dwarf wrote in his spiritual classic The Dyspeptikon that “Only those remain in the priesthood who have deep faith in and love for the real presence of our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, or those who are hoping for a corner office down at

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Letter to Harold “Hoot” and Annie Gibson cont. part 19IF I WERE KING OF THE FOREST. MY LIFE AT OUR LADY OF THE LOONS(Another disclaimer: I wish I were making all of this up.)In 1986, after I had served as a curate in three parishes, I was asked to be the pastor of Our Lady of the Loons, a poor parish in the heart of Frostbite Falls. The parish had a large Asian population as well as Mass in

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Letter to Harold “Hoot” and Annie Gibson cont. part 18(Note to the squeamish: I am not making a word of this up. I have fogged the identities of some people. I have no desire to be sued.)INTO THE ABYSS: THE ERA OF LITURGY COMMITTEESDo whatever steps you want ifYou have cleared them with the PontiffEverybody say his own Kyrie EleisonDoin' the Vatican RagMake a cross on your abdomenWhen in Rome do

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Letter to Harold “Hoot” and Annie Gibson cont. part 17START THE BUBBLE MACHINE! We are in the home stretch. Now we begin the rapid descent into liturgical silliness. The Benedictine abbey of Solesmes was destroyed during the French Revolution, only to be re-founded in 1832. There began a movement to restore classical Catholic practices, and to return to the style of worship common the Middle Ages

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Letter to Harold “Hoot” and Annie Gibson cont. part 16A FELLOW NAMED HANNIBAL RUNS OFF WITH BETTY CANTUA man whose first language was Spanish attended a lecture about the Second Vatican Council, usually called “Vatican Two”. After the talk he asked “Who is this Betty Cantu and why did she write all those documents?” True story.In recent thrilling episodes we learned all about American

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Letter to Harold “Hoot” and Annie Gibson cont. part 15SHALL WE EAT OUR COOKIES INSIDE THE HOUSE OR OUTSIDE THE HOUSE? Why, pray tell, are you digging up this ancient history about a war fought more than a century ago? What can this possibly have to do with the Hootenanny Mass? Well, it isn’t as ancient as you might think! When I was a boy, in the groovy sixties and early seventies, an

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Letter to Harold “Hoot” and Annie Gibson cont. part 14BOSTON BAKED BEANS MEET IRISH STEWThere was a battle royal in America during the 19th Century, and I don’t mean the Civil War. It was fought between the German Catholic clergy and the Irish Catholic Clergy. Germans had been emigrating to the Americas since the 1680's, but the great immigration started in earnest after the American revolution.

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Letter to Harold “Hoot” and Annie Gibson cont. part 13“THE POT OF BEANS AT THE END OF THE RAINBOW.”Let us summarize. The English Puritans came to America with a lot of baggage:Henry VIII opened the English Door to Calvin and Luther and their Puritan followers. Luther taught the Puritans, “Bible alone, Faith alone, Grace without works, predestination, or once saved always saved. Mass is not a

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Letter to Harold “Hoot” and Annie Gibson cont. part 12THE MAYFLOWER GOES TO SEED; THE PILGRIMS AND THEIR DESCENDANTSIn our last exciting episode, we read how around 50 English separatists established the Plymouth plantation in 1620. They were Calvinist and, in the religious sense, non-conformists for whom the Church of England was still too “popish” and for whom Holland was just too, well, Dutch.

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Letter to Harold “Hoot” and Annie Gibson cont. part 11THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD. A PROBLEM WITH UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANTSLet us pause to look at some dates, not the edible kind. Queen Elizabeth I (Tudor) ruled England from 1558 to1603. King James ruled England from 1603 to 1625 and his son, Charles Stuart, a.k.a. King Charles I of England, ruled from 1625 to 1649. So, you have 100 years of the

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A SHORT HISTORY OF THE HOOTENANNY MASS&OTHER ABSURDITIES Letter to Harold “Hoot” and Annie Gibson cont. part 10KISSING COUSINS AND THE KING JAMES BIBLELet us move on to the next branch of the Tudor family, the Stuarts. They were descended from Henry VIII’s sister Margaret who had been married off to James IV, King of Scotland. (Family name: Stuart). Her granddaughter was Mary, the same “Mary,

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Letter to Harold “Hoot” and Annie Gibson cont. part 9THE TUDOR KIDS, CHIPS OFF THE OLD CHOPPING BLOCKHenry gave it one more college try in his attempt to conquer France by besieging Boulogne in 1544. After failing one more time at his second favorite hobby (the first was certainly not palace building) he went home to England and died in 1547. He was succeeded on the throne by little Edward, his

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Letter to Harold “Hoot” and Annie Gibson cont. part 8A DISCLAIMER AND A SLIGHT DIGRESSION: HENRY VIII, INVENTOR OF THE REALLY SHORT HAIR CUT.At this point I have to make a slight disclaimer. I have been rather hard on the founders of Protestantism, Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, Cranmer, Henry VIII and that crowd. From the perspective of five centuries it is easy to be harsh. One must take a look

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Letter to Harold “Hoot” and Annie Gibson cont. part 7HENRY VIII, A MONARCH WHO KNEW HOW TO TURN HEADSHenry VIII (1491-1547), King of England from 1509. Remember Luther? He tacked up his 95 Theses and started the whole ball rolling around 1517. Henry was staunchly Catholic, but un-staunched as the Reformation unfolded. (Staunch: firm and steadfast; true. One often hears of staunch Republicans,

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Letter to Harold “Hoot” and Annie Gibson cont. part 6“JEAN CAUVIN et SON AMI FLAMBEE“ (That’s French for John Calvin and his toasted friend.)Luther lost control of “his” reformation and pretty much everybody in Europe lost control of everything. The peasants of Germany decided to celebrate their new found Christian freedom by slaughtering the landowners to whom they had owed a feudal obligation.

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Letter to Harold “Hoot” and Annie Gibson cont. part 4DR. MARTIN LUTHER, AND HIS LOVELY WIFE, SISTER KATHERINEAfter the Parliament at Worms, Luther spent the next ten months hiding out. Duke Frederick III, Elector of Saxony “kidnapped” him on his way back home to Wittenberg and took him to the Wartburg Castle at Eisenach in a kind of protective custody, thus saving him from the emperor who was

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Letter to Harold “Hoot” and Annie Gibson cont. part 4 FR. MARTIN LUTHER, SOMEONE YOU SHOULD KNOW. I hope by now I’ve convinced you that things were a mess in Christendom by around 1500. People knew that reform and renewal were necessary if Europe and Christianity were going to continue, but what form would the renewal of the Church take?  Would it be inspired by people like Saint Ignatius of

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Letter to Harold “Hoot” and Annie Gibson cont. part 3(THE BIRTH OF JUNK MAIL & RELIGIOUS ADVERTISING!)Well, by 1500 things in Christendom were in quite a pickle. Constantinople, the capital of the Roman Empire, and the greatest of Christian cities fell to the Muslim Turks in 1453, and the Turks seemed destined to swallow up the rest of Europe, and Christendom with it. The Popes had returned to

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Letter to Harold “Hoot” and Annie Gibson cont. There is no denying that in the 1400's there were problems in the Church in Europe. The concept of the nation-state was developing as well as the concept of the divine right of kings. These are important ideas. In the middle ages, there were no “countries” as such, in Europe. There was CHRISTENDOM. The German barbarians (my ancestors) had swept into

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Dear Rev. Know it all,Can you explain why all of a sudden we stopped singing Gregorian chant and started singing Kumbaya at Mass and now we have stopped singing Kumbaya and now we are singing dreary Gregorian chant again. I miss those old, traditional hymns with stirring music and lyrics that we could all sing and understand, words like “eat His body, drink His blood, and we’ll sing a song of

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Instead of the usual “Rev. Know it all” this week, I would like to share some reflections on a recent experience. At the end of a conference on the Church Fathers, I said the ordinary form of the Mass, the so called Novus Ordo, in the English language. It was no different from any other Novus Ordo Mass, with one exception. For the Offertory, Canon and Our Father I faced the altar, not the

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Letter to Fleming N. Ferneau continued: HeavenYes, dear Fleming, we still believe in Heaven. May I direct you to the catechism of the Catholic Church? Paragraphs 1023 and 1024 “Those who die in God's grace and friendship and are perfectly purified live for ever with Christ. They are like God for ever, for they "see Him as He is," face to face.” This perfect life with the Most Holy Trinity - this

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 “But.” you may say, “in grade school, I was taught that purgatory was like hell, but with a get out of jail free card. And then we got a new nun who wore a polyester pants suit instead of a habit who told us that the Catholic church didn’t believe in purgatory anymore.”I wonder if you heard either nun clearly. Just consider the impossible task that  these poor young women faced. They tried to

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Dear Rev. Know it all, The priest in my parish, Fr. Besserwurst, is going into the grade school, terrifying the children by telling them about hell. I think this is entirely inappropriate since the Vatican Council did away with both Hell and Purgatory. Should I call the Bishop and report Fr. Besserwurst? Yours, Fleming N. Ferneau Dear Fleming,By all means, call the Bishop. I’m sure he will be

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Dear Rev. Know it all,A neighboring pastor, Fr. Harris C. Nouveau, and six hundred of his parishioners have signed a petition for women’s ordination and for married clergy. My pastor, Fr. Brickman, says it’s heresy. What do you think?Yours,  Frieda De Sente Dear Frieda, I know both priests quite well. Fr Nouveau is a gentleman, very soft spoken and self possessed. Fr. Brickman is an ornery old

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Dear Rev. Know it all, Our pastor says it is a serious sin to miss Sunday Mass without a good reason. Is this true? Why is Sunday so important? What’s so special about the number 7? Isn’t it just an arbitrary number made up by human beings? Why can’t I pray just as well at home? God is everywhere, isn’t He? Why should I get up early, fight traffic, spend an hour with crying babies, strange people

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Dear Rev. Know it all, I read in your column that we are a society built on the sacredness of oaths. I thought Jesus said we shouldn’t swear oaths. My Aunt Brandeen belongs to the Quaking Separate Brethren and she won’t even take an oath when  they haul her up into court for being rowdy because, she says the Bible the forbids oaths.Yours, Mrs. Tess T. Fye Dear Mrs. Fye, I suspect you are

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NOTICE TO THE HUMOR IMPAIRED: THERE IS NOST. FIDGETTA AND THERE ARE NO FIDGETTINE MONKS, AND TO THE BEST OF MY KNOWLEDGE THERE IS NO SUCH PLACE AS BUGTUSSLE ARKANSAS.Dear Rev. Know it all,Have you heard of the 18 promises of St. Fidgetta? She had a vision in which the Archangel Meshugas revealed amazing things. Among them are that the stock market would spike in June of 2012. This would be

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Dear Rev. Know it all.The Bible is clear. NO GRAVEN IMAGES. (Exodus 20:2-17) "You shall not make for yourself an idol.... You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God." And Deuteronomy 5:6-21 says exactly the same thing. The Catholic have neatly tucked this second commandment into the first so people won't notice it. What do you have to say about that?

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Dear Rev Know it all,If devotion to the Blessed Mother is authentically Christian and comes to us as part of the faith that we received from the Apostles, why doesn’t it seem to be reflected in the Scriptures? Yours, Marian D. VoshunDear Marian, Devotion to our Blessed Mother is most certainly reflected in the Scriptures. In order to point out where and how it is let me do a little speculating.

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Dear Rev. Know it all, Do you think that they should be able to build a mosque at ground zero?Yours, Sherry A. Law Dear Sherry,Whom do you mean when you say they? If you mean members of the Muslim religion, of course they should be allowed to build anywhere the law allows. If you mean adherents of the Islamic State called the Caliphate, by all means no. That would be like building a Nazi

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Dear Rev. Know it all, I took great umbrage at your suggestion that a heroic bishop who confronted papal tyranny should be subjected to the rack and thumbscrews. I would expect nothing less of a cave dweller like yourself.                                           Yours, Mr. N. Leitend  Dear Mr. Leitend,   I should always put a disclaimer in my remarks for the humor impaired. I didn’t really

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Dear Rev. Know it all,I have friends who are not Christians and they are challenging me about my religion. They ask, “how can I believe in a religion that has talking donkeys and talking bushes that burn and prophets popping out of fish and giant boats full of animals?”  Can you explain all this? Yours,Albert “Al” Bondigas Dear Al,Of course I can explain it. I am, after all, the Rev. Know it all.

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Dear Rev. Know it all, I just read the most wonderful speech by a very brave bishop from South Africa. He was so brave, the way he defied the pope. Have you seen the speech?Yours, Ann T. Smelzenbels  Dear Ann, Yes, I have read the speech and would like to respond, inasmuch as someone I consider a friend has been mocked and slandered. You can find the whole speech simply by doing a web search

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Dear Rev. Know it all,Did I hear you correctly? The Church is the mother of the Bible?  I feel compelled to write. Your statement implies that the Church has more authority than scripture. To say that the Roman Catholic Church is the only institution that can interpret the Bible because they were the “compilers..., editors..., authors... and guardians of the Bible" is false and misleading. 

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Letter to B. Racrasy, continued. "Jesuits! When will you get to the Jesuits?"First let us review. First you have the diocesan hierarchy; bishop, priest, deacon, laity. You have the diocesan hierarchy of the diocese of Rome; popes, cardinals and so forth, but still essentially bishop, priest, deacon. Then you have the monastic orders. Men and/or women who live in cloisters and take solemn vows.

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Letter to B. Racrasy, continuedWell, what about things like Franciscans and nuns and third order Carmelites? Also simple. These groups aren’t part of the hierarchical structure of the Church. They began as popular movements. It seems that from the earliest days of the Church, women would sometimes live communally, especially widows and young unmarried women who had decided to forego marriage

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( Letter to B. Racrasy, continued) Well then, what are auxiliary bishops? Just what the name implies: They help the ordinary bishop in large dioceses. They obey him, because they are not they ordinary bishop of the diocese but they are fully ordained bishops in that they can ordain other clergy. They would only do this at the request of the main or “ordinary bishop.”What, pray tell are cardinals?

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(Letter to B. Racrasy on Titles in the Church - continued) Dear “B”,As I was telling you last week, the hierarchy has a different meaning for Catholics than it does for most people. Hierarchy is usually taken to mean “chain of command.” Though obedience is at the heart of any Christian life, the manner of, and, motive for obedience in the Church is different than, for instance in the army. The

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Dear Rev. Know it all,I get very confused by all the titles and names used by Catholics. What is the difference between Cardinals and bishops or archbishops. You’ve got monsignors and pastors and archdeacons and mitred abbesses and protonotaries apostolic. Can you explain?Thank you,B. RacrasyDear B,It’s really not that complicated, but, as with most things a little history is important. First let

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Dear Rev. Know it all,A question came up at Bible Study last night. One of the group insisted that the Bible says Mary had other children than Jesus, and that, though Jesus was miraculously conceived, Mary and Joseph were just like any other married couple. Also, I noticed that there is no genealogy of Mary in the Bible, and that the genealogies of Joseph in Matthew and Luke seem to contradict

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Dear Rev. Know it all, Who wrote the Bible?Sincerely, Solomon “Sol” A. ScripturaDear Sol,          First, the simple answer. A lot of people wrote the Bible, because the Bible is not a book. It’s a library. The word Bible comes from a Greek word (of course) “biblia.”  Biblia is plural. It means “books.”  (Biblion = one book, biblia =2 or more books) There are seventy-three books in the Bible,

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Dear Rev. Know it all,A friend of mine told me that Sunday Mass proves that the Catholic Church is not the church that Jesus founded because Jesus was a practicing Jew and St. Paul and St. Peter were practicing Jews and all the first Christians were practicing Jews and they would certainly have worshiped on Saturday because Saturday, the seventh day of the week is the Sabbath, not Sunday which is

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Dear Rev. Know-it-all,In your previous column you remarked that there are three forces in the modern world that want to eliminate Christianity. You mentioned Marxism and Islam. What is the third?Yours once again, Isabela Giornata Dear Isabela,I’m getting to that. Lenin said that in the West there would always be useful idiots. The most useful idiots available today are found in the Mediacracy. 

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Dear Rev. Know it all,I belong to a pontifical order called the Mystic Knights of the Holy See. Recently one of the leaders of the group decided to change the wording of our charter from “To defend the faith” to “to witness to the faith.” Are these the same thing?Yours, Dame Isabela Giornatta Dear Isabela, They most certainly are not! The word in the New Testament for

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Dear Rev. Know it all, Boy, am I glad you are not my pastor. You sound like a joyless puritan with all this stuff about Mass not being Catholic enough. What’s wrong with “the consolation and instruction of the people,” even if Luther said it? The Second Vatican Council gave us the new liturgy. Or wasn’t the Council Catholic enough for you? Yours, Kent Zingwell Dear Kent, I did hear

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Dear Rev. Know it all, What do you mean that Mass has become a kind of hybrid with American Protestantism? Will you ever cheer up? You’ve been listening to that dreary chant so long that it appears to have hardened your brains. Remember as St. Augustine said, “the Christian is an alleluia from head to foot.” The Mass is supposed to be joyful. The Christian is supposed to be joyful. I want

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Dear Rev. Know it all,My pastor is trying to introduce more Gregorian chant into the Mass. I hate it. It’s boring. I like music that makes me feel something. Chant is so dreary and depressing. One of the great things the Vatican Council did was that it did away with the old chant and encouraged people to use more expressive modern music like Ray Repp and the St. Louis Jesuits. Shouldn’t Mass be

Rev. Know-it-allhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17268089562368228249noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1547093622733189210.post-28996224040828044482010-04-18T08:13:00.000-07:002010-04-19T12:16:01.317-07:00

Dear Rev. Know-it-all;We heard some loon on the radio going on and on about something called the "Holy Fire" at the Church of the Resurrection (Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem) I had to google it to try and find more information on it. Absurd! What nonsense. Thank goodness not too many Catholic websites will acknowledge this phenomenon... could you comment? Is this a Greek Orthodox tradition

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Friends,This is an unusual article, but these are unusual times. I have shortened a fine article on our current difficulties. I am borrowing it, hopefully legally. It is “A Response to the New York Times” by Fr. Raymond J. de Souza, a chaplain at Queen's University in Ontario. It can be found in its entirety in the National Review Online. I urge you to go to the site to read the article in full.

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Dear Rev. Know it all,The Christian religion is so primitive. This myth of the dying and rising god permeates ancient religions and is only symbolic. Science has proven that dead bodies cannot be brought back to life. I celebrate Easter because it is a beautiful celebration of the power of nature, a celebration of the Goddess in all her power and splendor. Perhaps there is some kind of survival

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N.B. We are beginning Holy Week and I can think of nothing as penitential as a lecture on German history. Dear Readers, It is a very painful correspondence that I want to share with you today. It is also very personal and I am not making up a word of it. People come to me with family problems all the time. Well, your friend the Rev. Know-it-all is not immune from such difficulties. Some of my

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Dear Rev Know it all;I have just read the book The Shack. It was very interesting, but I’m not sure that it very Catholic. Could you please comment?Yours, Frieda Reid Dear FriedaI once heard the eminent Fr. Bob Barron say that The Shack was like watermelon; very sweet but one had to spit out the occasional seed. To his perspicacious comments I would like to add something said by the sagacious Dr.

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Dear Rev. Know it all,My neighbor, a member of the First Fire-Baptized Church of God in Christ with Signs and Wonders Following Inc., says that Catholics are in violation of the Holy Scriptures because they call their pastors “father” but the Bible says “Call no man father!” Can you explain this or should I join their church?Yours,Pat Ernity Dear Pat,When people hit me with this I always ask

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Dear Rev. Know it all,I was out in the suburbs this past Sunday and stopped at St. Vatsnu’s Church in Rolling Bluff Oak Terrace Vistas for Mass. I was a bit taken aback. First there was sand in the holy water fountain and then there was a glorious liturgical dance in which some nun in a diaphanous gown and a body stocking twirled up to the altar with what appeared to be a Mexican bean pot

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