Promoting a Return to Reverence

Please Watch EWTN's On Assignment, This Wednesday, July 31st

This week, Cardinal Burke spoke in an interview about the connection between liturgical abuses and moral corruption.  My son was involved in the Totus Tuus program at a parish with a modern church.  I attended adoration.  I could not find the tabernacle.  However, there was a chair for the priest in the center of the sanctuary.  I was struck by how completely this design choice put man front and center, and left Jesus hiding in the shadows.

I'm asking all who read this to assist in restoring the sacred to our liturgies.  This doesn't have to be a TLM Mass.  We use the Novus Ordo, but it is profoundly different than the 4-hymn-sandwich at so many parishes.  One simple way you can support bringing the sacred back to liturgy is by following the examples documented below.  May God bless our efforts.

Try sending this link to your pastors: http://www.storytel.org/screening/ then watch
Where Heaven Meets Earth: Restoring the Sacred at St. Peter Church
or
St. John Cantius: Restoring the Sacred.

This little film company has this mission:

Despite the amorality of our day, people are seeking intelligent, honest, spiritual and moral leadership. This desire has led many to begin restoring the sacred traditions that have been all but abandoned by society; but these efforts, and their amazing results, are rarely documented and portrayed on television or in other media.

StoryTel is working to fill this void by telling these stories in high quality media productions that present heroes of the past and present in powerful and entertaining ways. Through these godly role models, we inspire our viewers to pursue opportunities and solve problems that require a vision bigger than themselves.

If you prefer, you can watch on EWTN International. Click here to find the schedule for On Assignment: Where Heaven Meets Earth. The Times should sync to your computer for your local times.

St. Peter's is my parish. We are in a temporary chapel, set up in the parish hall. Even so, look at how we strive for keeping the space holy:

Open Letter to Hollywood

I'm tired of Hollywood taking every otherwise fun story and screwing it up with sex and violence. And when you don't do that, you have to throw in the better-than-any-other-character-in-every-way  LGTBQ person.  Or maybe you can use a Catholic priest in a confessional as the man to talk to if you want someone killed, or if a child is showing evidence of sexual abuse.  Never mind that your family of characters never goes to a church of any kind, unless they are the Flanders.

I have been happily watching episodes of White Collar on Netflix.  It's a crime show about art theft and forgeries, fun and quite clean... for a while.  Then just as I finish recommending it to my older nieces and nephews, the hook-ups start.  Then the violence increases.  I'm sending out a mass email to retract all endorsements.

It's a shame too.  The characters were fun.  The dashing young criminal was desperately in love with ONE WOMAN.  The g-man who was responsible for him was happily married to ONE WOMAN.  (Of course, they have no children, just a dog, because that's the only way to stay happy, right?)  Then the female FBI agent is outed in a conversation, but nothing more happens.  I'm still okay with where this is going.  The virtues of each of the main characters become the bonds of friendship.  Moral decision making is central to each story.  Then the quirky conspiracy theorist winds up in bed with someone way out of his league. AAAAARGH!

None of this nodding to secular culture was necessary to do anything more than promote the atheistic secular dominion of our morally toxic culture.  Divorce, childlessness, homosexuality, and anonymous sex partners have destroyed the happiness of more families and individuals than anything else in our culture today.  But that's not what you, Hollywood, want us to believe.

We are on to you.  Just check your latest box office numbers.  We are not going to pay for the same lies anymore.  Especially if you are trying to slip it into family programming.