Olmstead still at work...

Bishop Olmstead continues to clean up the diocese, as we can see by this disaffected priest who's seeing the cozy, nonjudgmental ecclesiatical realm established by former Bishop Thomas O'Brien being disturbed by inconvenient and unfashionable Catholic moral teaching. Witness this article by Janet Napolitano's pro-death rag, the Arizona Republic:

Priest says bishop spurns gays
Michael Clancy
The Arizona Republic May. 3, 2006 12:00 AM
A Catholic priest who took a leave of absence in January, citing health-related and "other" easons, says in a letter to newspapers that Bishop Thomas Olmsted has turned his back on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered Catholics."I refuse to serve as a priest in a church environment that is increasingly sending a false and destructive message that my LGBT brothers and sisters and I are little more than immature, defective sex addicts," said the Rev. Chris Carpenter, former pastor of Christ the King parish in Mesa.

Perhaps Fr. Carpenter is playing this wrong? He could have simply kept his mouth shut and moved to LA, seeking to reincardinate in the Diocese of Orange or LA, where he's highly unlikely to be troubled by such things. But no, I suppose he wants to make himself a martyr for the pro-death, pro-buggery cause.

Another Affirmation (or two)?

Which is the daily thought from one of the New Age sects that meets in this part of town, and which is Thomas a Kempis?

• "I am entitled to every good thing I can imagine. I have the consciousness to accept all of it."
• "Even in good desires and inclinations it is expedient sometimes to use some restraint, lest by too much eagerness thou incur distraction of mind; lest thou cause scandal to others, by not keeping within discipline, or even lest by the exposition which thou mayst meet with from others thou be suddenly disturbed and fall."

Time's up!

Before and After in Peoria?

After boycotting The Wanderer for only a week (maybe it was two weeks), I picked the lastest issue up again today, and I flipped through it for a few minutes. Early in the issue, there's an article suggesting that the architectural disaster that Rochester Bishop Matthew Clark visited upon his Cathedral is having the predictable effect: Mass attendance is dropping, collections are shrinking, and expenses are rising. I'm almost inclined to believe the article, since it was written by Michael Brennan and Mary Strobino Giogi, rather than the news editor who's been so blatantly disengenuous regarding the SSPX side of the latest traditionalist reconciliation attempt, Paul Likoudis.

But anyways, near at the back of the Wanderer there was a note and two photographs of a rennovation performed on St. Mark's Church in Peoria, Illinois. Here's what they did, before and after:

OK I tricked you. Actually, it's not "before and after"; it's "after and before." The church had, at some point, been Cranmerized and turned into the ugly white ghost in the second photo immediately above, but they went back and fixed it.

Yes, the top picture is the "before," and that's a NEW high altar and murals ornamenting the sanctuary. And yes, that was all done just recently. And no, it's not unique; there's a similar project going on in Bishop Jenky's cathedral in Peoria right now.

The pictures above were used without permission from a company called Murals by Jericho which is a liturgical art firm in Peoria. Wow. They do nice work; CLICK HERE to check out their website.

Although I don't know much about art, it looks to me as though the firm's painting is in a Beuronese style, which some people object to because it was a minimalist baby-step towards the modernist disaster in liturgical art. However, why would one object to moving back towards that style, either as a worthy style in itself for our age, or as a big first step back to development of art from more traditional forms? Frankly, Philistine though I am, I do recognize that a new church, even a restoration of a traditional church that has been thoroughly Cranmerized, cannot and should not be an exact copy of a Baroque or Renaissance or Gothic form. The lavish detail and richness of the high point in those schools, while they're a good starting point, shouldn't be the end-all, be-all of today's ecclesiastical art or architecture. They should be carefully preserved where they exist, and lamented where they've been destroyed; and they should be the firm foundation for new art, but we can't simply build replica churches of 400 or even 100 years ago. Doing so is bad taste. The Beuronese style, to this fellow with almost no training in such things, seems to work well in avoiding the temptation to build replicas, while preserving something of the sacred.

Anyways, I've digressed. As for the folks at Murals by Jericho, wow! Three cheers for Bp. Jenky and his pastor at St. Marks, and the folks who are funding that work. I can't imagine they're having much trouble filling the pews in Peoria, like they are in Rochester.

Sacred Heart, Kansas City, Kansas

It looks as though Sacred Heart church, at South 34th Street and Shawnee (south of the Kaw, and south of the Argentine District) in Kansas City, Kansas, was built in the 1940s or early 1950s or so. I didn't see a cornerstone when I drove by it last week on my resumed tour of 'Dotte parishes (which, actually, doubled as an excuse to take the little Curmudgeons out for hamburgers at Fritz's Railroad Cafe--Wyandotte county's best dining experience for anyone under 10).

So far in my tour, it's the newest of the Wyandotte County churches that is potentially on the chopping block. From the outside, it looks a lot like a gym. I didn't get a look inside, however. I don't have any history on Sacred Heart. I wonder if it was the original church, but I really doubt it. The neighborhood seems a fair bit older than the church, and It's hard to tell whether, in looking at the building, the church was intended to serve for a while as a church and then be converted into a gymnasium at a later time when they raised money for a church, or whether the church was originally a gymnasium and converted into the church when the old one was deemed to be inadequate.

Anyways, architecturally, Sacred Heart would be little loss to the diocese; however, it does seem to be some distance from its two neighboring parish churches, Holy Name (in the Turkey Creek bottoms along Southwest Boulevard) and St. John the Evangelist (in the Argentine neighborhood), so it would certainly be hard on the folks in that neighborhood to lose their parish.

Again, I renew my call for more information. If you know a little history of Sacred Heart, please fill us in!

Wyandotte County Church Closing "Listening Session" Schedule

The schedule of "listening sessions," that will precede the Wyandotte County church closings, as I understand it, has been passed on to me by a correspondent, and I've posted it on the Kansas City Church Closings blog. Get a box of tissues and join the committee, beginning a week from today, Monday, May 8, at St. John the Baptist.

Closing time is coming soon!

St. John the Evangelist

In the Argentine neighborhood of Kansas City, Kansas, at 2910 Strong, on the south bank of the Kaw River across from the closed St. Thomas is St. John the Evangelist.

I do have the following history from the 1911 history of Wyandotte County:

ST. JOHN'S CHURCH, ARGENTINE.
St. John's Roman Catholic church in Argentine was dedicated in September, 1907. The new church was built with money from the earnings of the laboring men of the parish, the old edifice having been destroyed by the flood of 1903. The new building is of native stone, quarried from the hills near Argentine, and cost $30,000. The dedicatory services were conducted by the Right Rev. Thomas F. Lillis, Bishop of the Leavenworth diocese.

The Rev. Father L. J. Beck, who had charge of the parish, does not believe in building churches unless the money is given by the members of the parish. When the flood waters receded from Argentine the little church in which St. John's congregation had worshiped was a wreck, the roof of the church had fallen and the altar had been destroyed. The homes of more than half of the members of the congregation were also swept away. The congregation has held its services in the school building since the flood.

Anyways, up on the facade of the "new" church, at least 20 feet above ground level, there is a marker showing the 1903 water level. After 1911, I have little history. I did find an internet reference to Mexican children attending St. John's school between 1915 and 1923, which would have been the time of the mass immigration in the face of the Masonic revolutions down there. Based on what I could find out in my research on St. Thomas, St. John absorbed most of the remaining parishioners once St. Thomas was closed after the later floods in the 1950s.

It was a Thursday evening when I went by, and so once again, I was unable to get interior pictures. If you have interior pictures of St. John the Evangelist, or some post 1911 history, please pass them along.

This was yesterday's affirmation....

Yesterday, I logged onto the website of the bizarre New Age center (mentioned in my post New Age Graffiti below) to see what they were up to, and to see if they had a post about the graffiti in their "what's new" section, and I saw their daily affirmation:

I do not glamorize the past because I know my best days are always ahead of me. My life improves every day I am alive.

Hmm. Not sure I'd fit in there, even if I were an apostate. It's doesn't sound like they're part of the traditionalist branch of the New Age movement.

I started to read this...

I still haven't looked at either the latest Catholic Key or the last two issues now of the Wanderer. Just can't bring myself to. I am concerned that one of my fellow Evil Trads made a reference to the latest Latin Mass, and I don't have that in my mailbox yet. Or maybe Mrs. Curmudgeon has hidden it from me because she know I'll disappear for a couple of evenings once I see it.

However, I was online tonight, and I started to read this, but I simply didn't get any further, since Fr. Forsen (I'm sure he prefers "Fr. Jimmy") answered the question before he posed it:

Priestly vocations in the archdiocese today
By Rev. James Forsen
With so many Catholics coming to Mass each week, with so many enthusiastic young people in our schools, religious education classes and confirmation programs, with so much vitality evident in every corner of our Church of Los Angeles (witness the thousands participating in the recent Religious Education Congress), why is there such a precipitous decline in the number of priests to serve our Church?

Not quite like licking the brownie batter spatula?

Inquireth the eldest Curmudgeon, who is going through another oral fixation, while I'm cleaning up from dinner: "Daddy can I lick this off?"

[She's holding our unwashed garlic press to my face]

Respondeth I: "Well, actually I don . . . well . . . yes, I supposed you could . . . if you really want to . . . go ahead."

You can guess the rest.

I suppose I am un-American

I rather liked this post from Stephen Heiner, which was on Traditio in Radice. I could quibble with details, of course, but the general anti-jingoist gist of it rings true.

I just can't look...

Got both a Wanderer and a Catholic Key in the mail today. I just can't bring myself to look at either one of them.

Is this one of the Churches the Archbishop will keep open?

Perhaps?

Actually, this is the building of some sort of heretical sect. At least they've done a reality check, though: they actually call the thing the "Glory Barn" Faith Temple Family Worship Center. It's across the street from Sacred Heart in Kansas City, Kansas, which we'll look at very soon.

Of course, this sect has some thing to look forward too. There will be some prime church property available soon in Wyandotte County--it will be possible to upgrade their space to something that looks like a church, while the Catholics out in the burbs will have to put up new Glory Barns of their own.

Updated Church Closings Blog

Some time ago I set up a blog to deal strictly with the church closings that are coming in Wyandotte County and other parts of the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas. At that time, I asked for volunteers to help me keep it up.

Since then (late March), I've received exactly zero indiccations in interest in the blog. I don't have a site meter on it right now, so I don't even know if anybody has bothered to look at it. Likewise, I've received exactly zero offers to be a co-contributor. Zero.

Nothwithstanding the foregoing, I've put a few updates into that blog (mostly just repeating stuff I've already done here in the Cave. Check it out, and let me know if you have information about this situation that you can share.

The Helmsing Institute?

We learn in this week's Key that the Chancellor of the KC-SJ Diocese, Claude Sasso, has announced that Bishop Finn, at the end of his year-long study, has established the Helmsing Institute in place of the Center for Pastoral Whatchamacallits and the New Whine Program.

Hmm. Well, it's baseball season, and even good hitters don't bat .1000, do they? Why on earth would Finn name a new program after the man who, whatever his personal spiritual life was, governed the local Church through the disaster of the Sixties and Seventies? A better choice would have been to name it after a great missionary--Fr. DeSmet, perhaps, who brought Catholicism to this part of the world. One of them would have been a much better model, considering the state of our city these days and the task that is before Bp. Finn.

Wuerl proposed to succeed McCarrick?

The nice thing about rumors on episcopal appointments is that they're almost never true.

Especially comforting with regards to the latest one.

You remember him, don't you? If not, click here.

Were this rumor true, it would be a good indicator that Benedict XVI's reign will be an unhappy one and he can't gain control of the curia that has been more-or-less doing its own bidding since before the beginning of his predecessor's reign.

Where did my sidebar go?

This is exactly why I shouldn't be messing with the guts of my blog. I just wiped out my sidebar. I don't know if I'll ever get it back.

Two mediocre Church updates

I've updated Ss. Cyril and Methodius and St. Joseph (now St. Joseph-St. Benedict) with a couple of interior photos for each. The shots of the former are mediocre; the shot of the latter is just plain awful. It's a lesson learned. I'll do a better job of photographing the rest of the interiors, and perhaps I'll go back and do St. Joseph's right.
Sad to say that the best picture I took of the whole outing was this self-portriat. I will do better next time.

Social Justice or Divine Mercy and Christian Charity?

Well, I don't have time to blather on, but over the last day, in thinking about the upcoming Divine Mercy Sunday, I've been thinking again about the difference between "Social Justice" and Christian charity.

Precisely, I've been thinking about just how substantively inferior the former is to the later.

More precisely, I'm thinking about how fearful the notion of God's justice is, and how, if we really thought much about social "justice" and what that word really mean (and not what the USCCB says they mean), how we wouldn't hear these words being screamed from every chancery and RSM house, and we wouldn't see miles and miles of newsprint filled with them.

Social "justice" is something we shouldn't wish for. If justice were the order of the day for society, we'd all be suffering much, much more. I think I'll stick to Divine Mercy and Christian charity.

Kansas City, Kansas, photos coming soon

I took advantage of the Triduum, and the absence of the Blessed Sacrament, to take a couple of interior photographs at St. Joseph's Church and SS. Cyril and Methodius Church I'm about to post shots of them as updates below. If you have any history, particularly on Ss Cyril and Methodius, do pass it along so I can incorporate.

The shots aren't great, but they'll be up in a few days when I get some time to doctor them.

Why aren't the Curmudgeons "Easter People"?

I just learned that every year during Holy Week, the diocesan newspaper, The Catholic Key, features several individuals or groups who are living the Catholic dream, at least as dreamt by the editor of the Catholic Key. I didn't know about it until my friend Orville Dishwater called me yesterday. This is my first year to take the Key, and I hadn't bothered to look at this week's issue yet. (I only just yesterday opened last week's issue, but solely for the purpose of spreading a few sheets of it under a door I was painting).

So anyways, Orville (who knows my true identity, but keeps it in confidence under threat of catapult) calls and starts complaining to me about the fact that I'm not one of Albert de Zutter's "Easter People." Orville says if some high school kids who sit around drinking fair-trade coffee and repeating "human rights" propaganda generated by leftist organizations that do NOT have a Catholic worldview...if they can be "Easter People," we Curmudgeons ought to be Easter People too!

Perhaps we should. But then again we lack the sort of "passion" that these kids have:

This is about activism in everyday life," Levitt said. "We can't really go around the country and take part in demonstrations, but we can write letters and research issues and communicate what we learned to others. We can share our passion for human rights with others."

All I manage to do is bring home a paycheck, raise kids, stay up too late reading online articles that reinforce my narrow worldview, and blog. Okay. So do a lot of people (except they're watching TV or, perhaps, reading good books instead of surfing and blogging). Perhaps I'm just not emotional enough. Perhaps I'm too busy recognizing distinctions and differences between people:

Brian Noland added that there was also an emotional component to activism. "We associate emotions with humanity," he said. "We should treat everybody the same. I think the prime motivation of human rights activism is to see all people in the same light of love and caring."

Or, most likely, I'm just not open-minded enough, and I'm inclined to take one side of the issue, and advocate it a bit too firmly. I've mentioned secession and the potential of a "hot" culture war erupting from our current losing "cold" war too many times. I haven't opened myself up to the world. I haven't answered God's call to be easygoing and fair (you know, like Pius X called for in his encyclical--I forget the Latin title--on the reconciliation with and implementation of the principles of modernity--what was it called?).

We all come from Catholic high schools and Christian backgrounds," Martin said. "Our protesting is not screaming, cursing and horn honking. Violence in activism depletes its influence. Ours is respectful activism. We listen to both sides of an issue and weigh what we've learned before coming to a decision on our beliefs."

Or maybe I'm just ordering the wrong thing at Starbucks:

She recalled that after the first meeting, the group went to a nearby Starbucks and purchased cups of fair trade coffee. "That's one way of action," she said.

Oh well, on second thought, perhaps they deserved to be Easter People more than me. Perhaps too the baton twirler.

Seriously, I do not bring all this up to make fun of a little girl who twirls her baton better than most, or the poor kids from Rockhurst and Sion who were never taught that there's a difference between the French Enlightenment's "Rights of Man" and Christian charity. It's not their fault that they've grown up in a culture, and in a Church, wherein the priority is first to find something in this world--a hobby, a sport, a person, a cause--that makes oneself happy, and then, second, to find God in it, or impose a generalized air of piety over it. They didn't learn that one is first to know, love and serve God, and second to do his commandment by acting in charity to one's neighbor.

I can't fault them for that, because I grew up in...generally...the same sort of Church and the same sort of culture, wherein the Bishop of my hometown was more interested in protesting a local weapons plant than he was in teaching, sanctifying and governing us as a successor of the Apostles (while many of his priests were....well....nevermind). But for God's Grace in putting the right people in my path at various stages of my life, I might not know any different myself.

But that doesn't mean we can't fault people on the payrolls of diocesan newspapers and supposedly Catholic schools for letting kids get these confused ideas, and for nuturing them, and for reinforcing them by putting them in the paper. And I do. Getting Fair Trade Coffee at Starbucks does nothing in furtherance of Christian charity. NOTHING. Twirling a baton may be a pleasant leisure activity and (depending how one is dressed when doing it) harmless, but it's not an act of piety worthy of newprint--even diocesan newsprint.

C'mon chancery people! Even if blogging into the wee hours doesn't qualify me to be among the "Easter People," I know of a couple who started a Catholic radio station. Why aren't they Easter People? I'm told of another family that hosts scores of people every year for stations of the cross on Good Friday. Why aren't they Easter People? I know of a couple whose efforts and support of a good old priest have kept him in active ministry for more than a decade longer than his peers, and have, indirectly, turned a once-moribund parish on the closing list into a vibrant one in the process. Why aren't they Easter People? There are a few key families that suffered Sullivan's destruction of Christ the King and, instead of writing off the diocese and going over to St. Vincents (as many understandably did), persevered inside the regular structure of the church and held together the indult Latin Mass community on the Missouri side in the face of hostility from bishops and disrespect from their pastors for well over a decade. Why aren't they Easter people? I met a guy who had a high-paying job at a big-shot law firm but he gave it up to work at a non-profit defending religious freedom (you know what I mean--for our side). Why isn't he among the Easter People? What does a coffee-drinking Sion girl and her Rockhurst buddies got over them? What does a baton twirler got over them?

So, Mr. de Zutter, if you're not going to place me among the Easter People, at least look a little harder next year--there are people out there doing some unambiguously Catholic stuff out there who ought to be the sort of folks you want so feature as Easter People.