Monday 4 May 2009

A good weekend...

Ant, Charlie and Dom were away for the weekend, camping with some friends; Bernie opted to stay at home as she had some work to do for her Art GCSE coursework. So I had a fairly free Saturday, and was able to mend my bike and dig the garden.

I guess we'll never know what that old tease Voltaire meant at the end of Candide, but I always find gardening very therapeutic. Particularly in our case, where the garden we inherited had been neglected for years, then transformed into a building site while we had some work done; so it is now a matter of reclaiming yard after hard-fought yard. But we make progress.

On Sunday, after Mass (where our PP once again preached (on unity and loyalty) in a way that shows why he should be a traditionalist, if only he hadn't been brainwashed at seminary...) we went to our friends to help pack up the camp, have a picnic lunch, play rounders, mess about, chat, eat drink, and get home very late indeed.

The kids had (ours and theirs) had all survived th camping, despite the cold; and they all get on really well, so a good time was had by all.

2 comments:

the Feds said...

I was particularly interested in your comment about your parish priest having been brainwashed in seminary. I had spent 5 and one-half years having my gray matter scrubbed back in the mid eighties, and left midway through my 3rd year of Theology. Met my wife, and she was very patient with me while I spewed alot of the liberal drivel that I had been imbibing. Thankfully, we got Dish Network, specifically for EWTN. I know that I owe my reversion to the True Church to Mother Angelica and all there at EWTN. Maybe you could talk to your PP about getting EWTN in the Rectory? Or buy some of Raymond Arroyo's books about Mother Angelica and give them to him. BTW, I just started my first week of Aspirancy for the Permanent Deaconate. There's hope for your priest!

Ben Trovato said...

Yes, our PP was in the seminary in the 60s and was taught long and hard that active participation was in and ritual and Latin were out.

However, all his intellect and experience (and his inherent holiness and love of orthodoxy) teach him that ritual works, that people participate better when there is an aura of mystery, and so on.

So he frequently preaches in ways which sound as though he's about to institute some new traditional practice - but he is actually unable to make that last leap, and at the moment is hostile to, rather than sympathetic towards, traditional liturgy.