I believe you can split the credit amongst us.
Gus is the Man!! I spent all today ripping out baseboards and installing ceramic tile in my laundry room. I'm relieved you finally have the problem fixed. 300 bucks, half a subway sandwhich, and a few beers beats paying 1500 bucks any day of the week and twice on Sunday.
YAYYY!!! (cheers, balloons, confetti)
256.52 ??!!
Woa. Major G-R-A-C-E.
PTL.
blah blah blah...homosexuality...blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah...gay rights... blah blah blah blah blah...gay marriage... blah blah ... because this comment has to do with plumbing!
Needless to say I am not the author of the post above -- would the real author own up?
Congrats, pb, on solving that plumbing nightmare.
That's hilarious.
Great news, Dr. Blosser!
Kathy
Needless to say, my name's not really Joseph O'Leary. teeheehee. lalala. Would the real Spirit of Vatican II please stand up? blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah more homosex, please. blah blah blah blah blah 
blah blah hmm... it seems to me that because you're plumbing got fixed, everyone must dissent from Church teaching. Especially on such a stupid issue like usury. blah blah blah
Those ideas seriously go together. Really, they do. 
blah blah blah
Remember, my children, homosexual families do GREAT violence to those children raised in them. The Church must do all it can to promote the traditional family, which is the basic unit of society. I'm sorry Father O'Leary, but you're wrong to dissent. You'll go to Hell for it you know.
What? I'm the Spirit of Vatican II. The Church is progressive now. I don't understand. blah blah blah.
I'm gonna pout and dissent. 
blah
Vell then, you are hereby put under interdict. And you don't have a Get-outa-jail-for-free card either. If zoo don't believe in vhat zhe Church believes, zen get out. And don't let zhe door hit your beehind on zhe vay out! Und Aufenthalt heraus!
Bwah bwah bwah. BWAH BWAH ... BWAH!
Remember da rulz Your Infallibleness!
I am the Pope you fool!
Glad to hear it, Pop -- way to go, Gus!!! =)
Homosexuality is a troubling moral and social phenomenon. There are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God's plan for marriage. Marriage is holy, homosexual acts go against the natural moral law. Homosexual acts close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. They are a serious depravity. This judgment of Scripture does not of course permit us to conclude that all those who suffer from this anomaly are personally responsible for it. Avoid exposing young people to erroneous ideas about sexuality and marriage that would deprive them of their necessary defences and contribute to the spread of the phenomenon. Clear and emphatic opposition is a duty. One must refrain from any kind of formal cooperation in the enactment or application of such gravely unjust laws. Laws in favour of homosexual unions are contrary to right reason because they confer legal guarantees, analogous to those granted to marriage, to unions between persons of the same sex. Homosexual unions are totally lacking in the biological and anthropological elements of marriage and family which would be the basis, on the level of reason, for granting them legal recognition. Homosexual unions are also totally lacking in the conjugal dimension, which represents the human and ordered form of sexuality. The absence of sexual complementarity in these unions creates obstacles in the normal development of children who would be placed in the care of such persons. Allowing children to be adopted by persons living in such unions would actually mean doing violence to these children. Differentiating between persons or refusing social recognition or benefits is unacceptable only when it is contrary to justice. The denial of the social and legal status of marriage to forms of cohabitation that are not and cannot be marital is not opposed to justice; on the contrary, justice requires it. It is one thing to maintain that individual citizens may freely engage in those activities that interest them and that this falls within the common civil right to freedom; it is something quite different to hold that activities which do not represent a significant or positive contribution to the development of the human person in society can receive specific and categorical legal recognition by the State. Not even in a remote analogous sense do homosexual unions fulfil the purpose for which marriage and family deserve specific categorical recognition. Such unions are harmful to the proper development of human society, especially if their impact on society were to increase. Homosexual unions do not need specific attention from the legal standpoint since they do not exercise this function for the common good.
Sounds like a bit of dialogue is still needed on this issue, guys. When you're ready.
To correct Chris Garton-Zavesky yet again (it's a bit like trying to solve your plumbing problem): Grega:
"Father O'Leary, doesn't accept the identification of the Roman Catholic Church with the Church which Christ Himself founded." Yes I do, in the same sense as Lumen Gentium 25.
"Love, you see, is grounded in truth, but you simply refuse to accept that such a thing can be determined by anyone other than modern theologians with whom you agree." No, truth -- in the sense of Christian teaching -- is determined primarily by Scripture as spiritually interpreted by the Christian community throughout the ages, with the determining voice of the Teaching Office to offer guidance on key points.
"Humanae Vitae (and for that matter Casti Conubii before that) the unchanging truth being taught infallibly by Holy Mother Church." Infallibility is a technical term incorrectly used here. "Authoritatively" better covers the case.
"The Catholic Church always taught the evil of contraception and abortion". Things are not quite so clear in fact. Leading Catholic theologians such as St Alphonsus Liguori had very liberal views on abortion. But you can study that for yourself!
signed
See also http://
josephsoleary.typepad.com...r_church_a.html
I'm Spartacus! No, I'm Spartacus!!
I have three exclamation points ... I'M Spartacus!!!
Re. whose prayers are responsible ... it couldn't be me. I pray for mouthwash and bad breath becomes popular.
Spirit, are you for real? Sometimes I think you are trying to be a parody of people who say "we need to have dialogue when you're ready." Which means, "we should talk later when you are willing to agree with my egregious error."
Spirit, if you want "dialogue," consider answering "Pope Benedict's" comment beginning Homosexuality is a troubling moral and social phenomenon. Answer it point by point, not by reframing it or changing the subject.
In other words, show that YOU are "ready for dialogue."
I didn't write it, by the way, but you could consider those my views.
Gay sex in the morning,
Gay sex in the evening,
Gay sex at suppertime,
Love to yak about gay sex,
I bore folks all the time!
Putting the style and verve into sodomy,
Putting the a-n-a-l into analysis,
Your one and only,
Spritz!
One of my favorite annual events is the Common Ground Initiative lecture. What a hoot. Common Ground was instituted by the late Cardinal Bernardin as a forum in which liberals and conservatives could "dialogue." As you might imagine, the lecture brings a lot of NCR types out of the woodwork to talk about "the spirit of Vatican II." It's really funny how much they all stand around agreeing with one another. I have a standing competition with a Benedictine priest--we try to ask the most outrageous question of the evening. Anyways, last year my question was "What do you think the relationship is between the spirit of Vatican II and the documents of Vatican II?"
(Hi, Ralph!)
Hi, Kathy!
My question would be, is there a qualitative difference in the promptings of the Holy Spirit, ie, are His post-1958 promptings somehow better or more rarefied and granular than those prior to 1958?
Why should this be? Did the Holy Spirit need a period of apprenticeship to refine His art, or is it that in those laughably literal early days He did not have Martin Heidegger to edit His declarations?
Ok, more than one question.
Der Panzerschpritzen.
Did the Holy Spirit know something about the Blessed Virgin Mary in 1854 that He didn't know in 1853? How about 1950--was that another year when the Holy Spirit learned something new?
Does the Church learn the mind of God in time and over time? Yes.
Vell I have zee power to declare dogma. Maybe I vill make Mary Queen of Heaven sometime zoon. Until then, I vill leave this combox. I have to free zhe TLM. Lots of papervork, you know?
Holy cow, Kathy! Did Christ bungle His transmission of the fullness of Divine Truth somehow? Did He forget to tell us something? Is the mission of the Holy Spirit to confirm and strengthen men in their preservation of these truths, which the Church already holds, or is He more of an evolutionary principle, a Holy Spirit of Innovation, who guides The Brilliant amongst us to inerrancy in their newest and deepest and grooviest insights? Here I thought the Holy Spirit's guiding mentor was Heidegger -- maybe it's Schelling?
Spritz, as you well know Divine Truth is Christ Jesus, and He, Who cannot lie, told us that we could not bear all that He had to tell us, but that we would receive power from on high, the Holy Spirit.
Christ never bungles anything. He is entirely smooth. But-He reveals Himself in time.
This takes the cake -- the most insane combox I've read to-date. What with all the spritzin' and a fritzin' with guest appearances by Benedict XVI -- and all on a post about a completed flippin' PLUMBING problem. Go figure. Maybe we should drag ol' Dutch Gus into our theology colloquium more frequently?
Kathy,
What was the response to your inquiry about the relationship between the "spirit" and the letter of Vatican II?
Just curious.
To which saint, for his intercession, did you pray?
I am glad to hear the plumbing is operational once again at your home. I am happy for you.
Can I come over and try flushing 'Mahony Fest 06'? Now 'there' is a "flippin' PLUMBING problem"! Yuck.
http://www.recongress.org/2006/p...it/
DSC_0404.htm
http://www.recongress.org/2006/p...it/
DSC_0441.htm
http://www.recongress.org/2006/p...it/
DSC_0424.htm
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Kinda creepy. May I ask what they are doing?
http://www.recongress.org/2006/p...it/
DSC_0438.htm
http://www.recongress.org/2006/p...it/
DSC_0439.htm
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Ekkehard--There were two panelists. The first, a Canadian archbishop, did not answer. Afterwards he told a friend of mine that he didn't understand the question. The other speaker, the head of the national Voice of the Faithful, told a long (ostensibly amusing) story to the effect that he considers Lumen Gentium to be a work of Italian fiction.
Kathy,
The Canadian archbishop's cowardice reminds me of Cardinal Mahony's response when someone asked him why the tabernacle was located in a hard-to-find place in their ultra-modernist cathedral: "I don't know what he's talking about."
You may be right. But my questions are often unclear at such venues. The other guy, though, was proud of his story and put it on the VOTF website for a while. He's not there anymore--Jim Post.
Chris,
Well, I always start each day petitioning for the intercession of the Venerable Cardinal Newman, who isn't quite a canonized Saint, yet, but whom I consider my patron nonetheless. I don't recall having sought out a patron of plumbers for this special occasion, though it might not have been a bad idea. Whether it was Newman or someone else, the Lord gifted me with a jolly old Dutchman who loves beer and story-telling.
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