Father Palka's Blog: Too Much Going On To Post Bird Photos!

Too Much Going On!

Another week goes by without an article. Sigh.

I told you that I would send photos of the birds coming to the feeders. That should have been a pretty quick and easy article. Copy photo. Paste photo. Repeat. I should have had it done a long time ago. But sometimes things just don’t work out as planned. Not that I am complaining, mind you, just explaining. And I’m not able to do a good job at that, either, for I can’t really think of anything all too important that has been keeping me busy.

Other than the usual Convent routine of praying the 8 canonical hours of the old Breviary, daily Mass, a minimum of 1 1/2 hours of silent meditative prayer before Our Lord in either the Tabernacle or Monstrance, confessions for the Sisters, watching the birds, playing with the goats, writing an occasional letter or two (dozen), and things like that, I really didn’t do much.

Fr. Pillari had a retreat here last weekend. I helped by hearing confessions. It was a silent retreat, so I told the penitents that they had to pantomime their sins. I don’t know how well they did, since they were behind the screen, but.. No, wait, this was a real retreat, not a New Rite crazy thing.

Before you start castigating me for throwing aspersions on the New Rite way of doing things, I do remember that this week brought a video of a Pentecost Novus Ordo Mass in Argentina wherein the priest was dressed with both Mass vestments and a Minion “helmet” thingy, where costumed female fruits danced around the church, including in the sanctuary, and where bowls of fruit were placed on a table up front so that Father Minion could mix them up and dish them out for the people to eat and enjoy while at Mass, in the church. A bit later in the Mass the Consecrated Hosts were placed in plastic bowls before being given to teens to distribute. The least of my wonders is if those eating the fruit observed the mandatory one-hour fast before receiving Holy Communion. That does assume, obviously, that a consecration actually took place. Which might be doubtful.

Of course, all that nonsense actually made sense once it was explained that he was teaching the people about the Fruits of the Holy Spirit. Whew! I thought he was just another wacko Argentine cleric, but I was glad to find out he was really a good teacher and preacher and theologian and, perhaps, future pope. And, even after international outrage from Catholics who are, well, Catholic, no indication has been given from his bishop that he did anything wrong. But somehow a reverently celebrated TLM will harm the faith of the people and must be stopped.

What’s that? You want photos to back this up? Natch!

That being said, although I was tempted to do the mime thing in the confessional, without the “audience” to hoot, whistle, and clap for me, it wouldn’t have been much of a show, so I thought better of it.

But that’s not why you read this column. You want real life stories, or even fake life stories, of my chaplaincy. So let’s get back on track. I can’t believe you let me wander that far astray. What else happened recently? I got my car back from the mechanic. It has been in the shop for a month or more. That should have made me write more, since I couldn’t go anywhere! Yet it somehow worked in reverse. But now my Pilot is ready for its next 300,000 miles! I hope.

I drove it back to the convent but didn’t have time to take it for a spin for a couple of days. The Sisters are busily preparing for Cardinal Burke to arrive, plus about 15 Discalced Traditional Carmelites, plus a bunch of other random priests who are friends of two FLM sisters making their Perpetual Vows this Tuesday. It is also the 9th anniversary of the founding of the Filiae and the feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of Divine Grace. The Sisters wore me out as I watched them work.

After a few days of that, and not wanting to strain myself too much from my lounge chair, I finally took the car out for a test drive. I didn’t need anything from Home Depot, but a 50-minute drive and an hour wandering around this men’s playground was just what I needed to build up my sense of masculinity, which had been waning as the Sisters did so much manual labor while I propped my feet up and ate bonbons. It is a fake masculinity, of course, but it is a more real masculinity than that Mass pictured above is real Catholicity. Darn it! I’m back off topic.

Back to what brought you here in the first place. Bird photos! I have no doubt that this won’t be as much of a draw as the Cute Kitty photos, but the cats are all adopted out so this is what you get. Sparrows rule the feeder, but there are also blue jays, house finches, orioles, goldfinches, goose-breasted gosbeak, and hummingbirds. Maybe more, but without staying around for photos, they left no proof.