The Pope, Oberon, Titania, etc.

…A limerick that may or not have been written by Cardinal McIntyre in St. Peter’s, during one of the sessions of the Second Vatican Council:

We are two thousand Patres in Session
Who feel a great weight of oppression
What with Cardinals talking
And lesser lights squawking,
Thank goodness, the bar’s so refreshing.

…The idea that ill deeds can wreak havoc with ‘the environment’ has been around awhile:

Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,
As in revenge, have suck’d up from the sea
Contagious fogs; which falling in the land
Have every pelting river made so proud
That they have overborne their continents:
The ox hath therefore stretch’d his yoke in vain,
The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn
Hath rotted ere his youth attain’d a beard;
The fold stands empty in the drowned field,
And crows are fatted with the murrion* flock; [killed by disease]
The nine men’s morris* is fill’d up with mud, [a board game]
And the quaint mazes in the wanton green
For lack of tread are undistinguishable:
The human mortals want their winter here;
No night is now with hymn or carol blest:
Therefore the moon, the governess of floods,
Pale in her anger, washes all the air,
That rheumatic diseases do abound:
And thorough this distemperature we see
The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts
Far in the fresh lap of the crimson rose,
And on old Hiems’* thin and icy crown [winter]
An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds
Is, as in mockery, set: the spring, the summer,
The childing autumn, angry winter, change
Their wonted liveries, and the mazed world,
By their increase, now knows not which is which:
And this same progeny of evils comes
From our debate, from our dissension;
We are their parents and original.

(A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act II, Scene 1)

Last week our Holy Father spoke to the German parliament.

He gave the “green movement” credit for re-discovering the natural law:

Positivist reason which recognizes nothing beyond mere functionality resembles a concrete bunker with no windows, being no longer willing to obtain light and air from God’s wide world…The windows must be flung open again; we must see the wide world, the sky and the earth once more and learn to make proper use of all this…The ecological movement realized that something is wrong in our relationship with nature, that matter is not just raw material for us to shape at will, but that the earth has a dignity of it own and that we must follow its directives.

The Pope went on to add:

The importance of ecology is no longer disputed…Yet I would like to underline a point that seems to me to be neglected, today as in the past: there is also an ecology of man. Man too has a nature that he must respect and that he cannot manipulate at will…Man does not create himself.

At this point in the Pope’s speech, the Parliament burst into applause.

…Pass the Rebel Yell, please.

This evening, I intend to suspend my ferocious contempt of ACC football and root like mad for the HOKIES!!!

Holy Family Sunday

1) San Fran weather update

2) Environmentalist Pope Benedict says no to “gender ideology”:

The Creator helps Christians to understand our responsibility toward the earth. It is not simply our property to be exploited according to our interests and desires. Rather, it is a gift of the Creator.

However, concern for God’s creation cannot be limited to care for the natural environment– although that is certainly a part of it. Far more important is the Church’s mission to preserve the ecology of the human being, understood in the proper manner. The Church must teach clearly about the nature of the human person, to counteract the influence of secular ideologies that confuse and diminish human dignity. God created man and woman as complementary, and the Church demands that this order of creation be respected by promotion of marriage and family life.

3) Your servant’s Holy Family Sunday homily:

In the beginning, God created mankind. Then, in the fullness of time, He became man. In the beginning, He made man and woman to be a family. In the fullness of time, He became a member of a family.