The Guitar has always been incompatible with the Faith

In the Winter issue of Drawing Magazine, there's an article on the Spanish Masters, of which Francisco de Goya is counted. The drawing above is titled "A Nun Frightened by a Ghost", c. 1812–20 The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Now, way back when this was produced, roughly 140 years before Vatican II, de Goya had no way of knowing what was down the road for the Church...or did he?

Either way, it's plainly obvious that the nun is more frightened by the guitar than she is by the musical directo- um, I mean ghost.

Should the Church throw her lot in with popular culture in order to gain "relevance"?

I've linked to an article by a religion writer for the Huffington Post. As you can imagine with anything from the HuffPo, it's decidedly anti-Church in it's outlook. The writer, a 23 year old who classifies himself as "...grew up Catholic" to avoid the impression that I would ever participate in such silliness...", puts forth the idea that if the Church could just get with the popular culture, his generation would find the Church on the way toward becoming "relevant".

I believe we've seen, since the 1960's, too many instances of the Church trying to be "relevant" to the popular culture. The effort to throw open the windows and let the World in has been a failure. Instead of evangelizing the world, the world and it's secular viewpoint has infected the Church, or more clearly, has infected the thinking of many inside the Church. We don't need a Church to "play down" to the popular culture, we need a Church to stand strong against it and call it out of it's darkness.

Pray that the Church continues on her road of Restoration, and that She resists the temptation to become "relevant" to the popular culture.

Read the article (and get a load of the comments)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tyler-mahoney/the-99-lost-sheep-20-some_b_823611.html#s240996&title=Fr_James_Martin

Missed Kiss

The March for Life is Monday, January 24.

http://www.marchforlife.org/

Bishop favor gun control? Who knew? (Everyone)

It's not a surprise that the USCCB would be in favor of banning all private gun ownership, considering that we're in a phase where pacifism is touted as the answer to evil in the world. One would think that they'd consider what's happened in England since private ownership of hanguns has been disallowed.

And of course, with the situation in Tucson, again, it's guns that kill people, not people that kill people.

Read about it (about halfway down) in the news brief from Catholic News Service :
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/briefs/cns/20110114.htm

And of course, the NCR (reporter, not Register), had an article about the Bishops and gun control:
http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/catholic-bishops-favor-gun-control-who-knows-it

Go to Mary...

Let's not jump to conclusions...

The same talking heads who fell all over themselves urging us to "not jump to conclusions" about the Ft. Hood shootings apparently have no problem doing so when a chance to smear anyone on the right appears.

The strange thing about this is that in straining to see "right wing sins" in Loughner's shooting, they ignore/downplay the fact that he is an atheist and a communist. I'm surprised they haven't come out to tell us not to jump to conclusions about atheists.

National Catholic Reporter picks their "Person of the Year"

Not much of a surprise here, they've picked Sr. Keehan, the "nun" who carried water for Obama's abortion-supporting "health-care" bill in 2010. I'm sure the Devil himself couldn't have found a more worthy recipient of the "award".

While we may chortle at their idiocy, the fact remains that there are still more of them (dissenting Catholics) than there are of us (Catholics). The Vineyard is still being devastated.

Some interesting comments after their editorial. A few brave souls actually attempt to defend the Faith: http://ncronline.org/news/people/ncrs-person-year-2010