Naughty, naughty!

Nick Williams- tattooed, chain-smoking former lead singer of the Anteaters, recently hosted "The NY Pin Up Club: A Night of Burlesque" at The Full Cup in Stapleton. The NY Pin Up Club has been producing retro-themed photo shoots and performances for five years, "celebrating the classic charm" of old time strippers and porn models like Lily St. Cyr and Bettie Page. For $10 admission, the event promises "Fancy cocktails! DJs! Nick's body art! Semi-nudie networking!" Oh, by the way, the erotic evening's impresario, Mr. Williams, is also the "long-time music minister for Our Lady Star of the Sea"!

Rest in peace, Brother Jordan

Although I didn't know this priest, I just wanted to link to his obituary, which describes an extraordinary life in service to the Church. After teaching in high schools for many years, he suddenly up and moved to teach in Kenya where he served impoverished children from the streets of Nyeri. Our Church has so many heroic priests and nuns like this whose deeds go untold and mostly unnoticed, except by the Heavenly Father and the countless lives they touch.

Grim prospects

I recently wrote a letter (well, filled out an online petition) to Congressman Michael Grimm, protesting the President's recent birth control mandate. I just received a response from the Congressman, detailing his disapproval of the Administration's new rules, and describing his actions in opposition. To wit, he and other pro-life members of Congress got together and came up with the pathetically futile idea of writing a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius urging her to "reconsider" the rule and "respectfully" requesting that she suspend the mandate. What a bold and resolute pro-life warrior we have in Congress!

Local priest put in jail by the aspiring Diocletian in the White House.

The Rev. Denis Wilde, Associate Director of our local Priests for Life, has been arrested for praying in front of the White House, in a protest against the Obama Administration's unconstitutional birth control diktat.God! What heroes walk among us! I encourage all to listen to the Rev. Wilde's sermons and interviews, which are available on the Priests for Life website.

Buddhist-Catholic or Catholic Buddhist

There was an interesting obituary in the Advance recently, which exemplifies the utter lack of strength and fidelity in our local Catholic church. An old woman died who, although a graduate of a Catholic high school and Catholic college, is described as "a member of Manhattan’s Jewel Heart Buddhist Center and the Gurdjieff Foundation, where she taught classes in meditation." She was not described as belonging to any parish, yet she was given a funeral Mass at St. Peters church, with burial at St. Peter's cemetery. It is possible that on her deathbed she could have disavowed her heathen and New Age beliefs, but if that were the case then why would those affiliations be trumpeted in her obituary? I guess the message that Monsignor Dorney is sending is that one can be a Buddhist and Catholic at the same time. Does our church stand for anything anymore? Why do these hollow men who lead us seem to be desperately attempting to remake our Church into a syncretic and universalist sect? Why are our priests so scared of being Catholic?

Reconciliation Monday

The Monday before Christmas was designated Reconciliation Monday by the Archdiocese. The Archbishop requested that every parish offer the Sacrament from 2 to 8pm that day. The Advance reported as a fact that every parish would do so on that day. I went looking to partake of Confession that evening after work but encountered at least 3 dark, locked-up parishes before finally finding one that was interested in saving souls. Are Staten Island priests too lazy to cooperate with the Archbishop's initiative? I just don't get it. Even the one parish I found that was open made no mention of the fact on their outdoor bulletin board. I guess it's yet another Catholic event open only to those "in the know".

Assorted news items

Jesuit retreat house Mt. Manresa celebrated its 100th anniversary with a gala ball at Snug Harbor. Neither the word "Jesus" nor "Catholic" or even "Christian" appear anywhere in the article. Instead, the retreat house's own executive director, Fred Herron, lauded Mt. Manresa for being a "spirituality center" that "the community has turned to during critical moments." The Chairman of the Board, Rich Nolan, proudly pointed out how Mt. Manresa suspended its normal operations after 9/11 and became a haven for rescue workers. He emphasized the spirituality center's dedication to "the community." The article described Mt. Manresa as a place that offers "retreats" for all classes of people, including the divorced, alcoholics and drug addicts. The attendees were quoted several more times in this small article pledging their undying dedication to the sacrosanct, but vaguely delineated "community." One unnamed person summed up Mt. Manresa's mission by saying that it offered the community the opportunity to "look within to see the direction your life has taken and the choices you face in the future." I've never read such mealy-mouthed drivel in my life. If this were an Evangelical Protestant celebration, I'm sure they would have taken the opportunity to praise Jesus Christ or promote their own church. In this case, these professional Catholics were either too embarrassed by their nominal faith to mention it, or too inexperienced in evangelization to know how to bring it up.

The Archdiocese of New York partnered with Radio City Music Hall in sponsoring an essay contest on the theme "What the Blessings of Christmas Mean to Me." An eighth-grader at Sacred Heart won the contest with a (to me) maudlin list of nice things that happen to him throughout the year. The pastor of the school proudly pointed out how it "... just shows the kind of education that children get in Catholic schools." I'm not sure if he meant that a Catholic education enabled him to write an essay of this quality (Good Lord, how bad must the public schools be!) or if we should be impressed by the sentiment expressed in the essay, which seems devoid of Christian content (although I concede that the Advance may have left that part out). In either case, the student body of Sacred Heart certainly got an education when a scantily-clad Rockette showgirl came to the school to present the prize to the boy, which doesn't seem all that appropriate to me. I hate to seem like I'm picking on a kid, but I wonder what he's being taught in school and at church when the the only thing he can express about the birth of our Savior is this "raindrops on roses, whiskers on kittens" kind of sentimentality.

St. Theresa's and St. Peter's churches are participating in an interfaith Thanksgiving celebration this week at the Victory Blvd. mosque. Who will they be thanking ? The Triune Christian God? Allah? Jehovah? Krishna? Also, the annual interfaith seder at St. Theresa's is already scheduled for next year! I'm still advocating for that interfaith Good Friday service so the Jews can hear about how Jesus died to save mankind. They tell us that the whole point of these dramas is mutual understanding, yet it seems all we do is go to Passover seders and listen to rabbis lecture us. Well, maybe one of these years they'll consider my suggestion!

Wagner College, a Lutheran school, recently put on a production of "“Catholic School Girls”, an offensive portrayal of nuns in the 1960s. The play prompted a minor kerfuffle in the letters section of the Advance. One lady, who claimed she is a "certified Catechist with the Catholic Church", wholeheartedly supported the play which, she claimed, accurately portrayed the Church during a time of "change in Church doctrine". The assertion by this "certified Catechist" that the Church changes its doctrines was refuted in a subsequent letter by a very well-informed and intelligent Catholic lady.