A FB friend writes:

Totally Serious with this question. With all the Dustup going on with HHS etc. and living in a “Liberal” diocese with it’s own collections of “Liberals” (or Insert Loons if you’d Like), We’ve gotten the Bishop’s Response, but where does one find the Highest Ranking HUMAN Female of the Church? I do realize who our Highest Ranking Female is, and I have prayed to her for helping me in my unbelief and confusion, but this is one of those questions when I heard it Really made me go Hmmmmmmm.

Unless someone has been baptizing female aliens, all females who are members of the Church are human females.

The highest ranking female is thus the highest ranking human female, who is the Virgin Mary, who I am assuming is the one the reader has prayed to. Rank, in her case, is assessed based on her relationship with King Jesus, her son.

At the present moment, however, the Virgin Mary is in heaven and thus is not active except through her intercession in the Church Militant (i.e., the Church here on Earth).

If the reader means, “Who is the highest ranking female in the earthly Church” then the answer will depend on how one interprets the concept of rank. This can be assessed by different criteria, including honor, power, and authority, both secular and religious.

KEEP READING.

Did you know? In Ezekiel 9:4 the prophet is told: “Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a Tau upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof.” Tau–the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet–was written as a cross or X. LEARN MORE.

Today is Ash Wednesday The liturgical color is violet.

Saints & Celebrations:

On February 22, in both the Ordinary and the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate the Chair of St. Peter the apostle. In the Ordinary Form, it is a feast, and in the Extraordinary Form, it is a Class II day.

In the Extraordinary Form, we also celebrate St. Paul, apostle. This celebration is a commemoration.

If you’d like to learn more about the Chair of St. Peter, you can click here.

If you’d like to learn more about St. Paul, you can click here.

If you’d like to learn more about St. Peter’s Chair, you can click here.

For information about other saints, blesseds, and feasts celebrated today, you can click here.

Readings:

To see today’s readings in the Ordinary Form, you can click here.

Or you can click play to listen to them:

Devotional Information:

According to the Holy See’s Directory on Popular Piety:

125. In the Roman Rite, the beginning of the forty days of penance is marked with the austere symbol of ashes, which are used in the Liturgy of Ash Wednesday. The use of ashes is a survival from an ancient rite according to which converted sinners submitted themselves to canonical penance. The act of putting on ashes symbolizes fragility and mortality, and the need to be redeemed by the mercy of God. Far from being a merely external act, the Church has retained the use of ashes to symbolize that attitude of internal penance to which all the baptized are called during Lent. The faithful who come to receive ashes should be assisted in perceiving the implicit internal significance of this act, which disposes them towards conversion and renewed Easter commitment.

Did you know? The initial flight of the first successful flying car, Waldo Waterman’s Arrowbile, on Feb. 21, 1937. FORGET the Segway. I WANT MY FLYING CAR! LEARN MORE.

Today is Tuesday of the 7th week in Ordinary Time. The liturgical color is green.

In the Extraordinary Form, this is the season after Septuagesima, and the liturgical color for today is violet.

Today is Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday).

Saints & Celebrations:

On February 21, in the Ordinary Form, we celebrate St. Peter Damian, bishop and doctor of the Church. It is an optional memorial.

There is no special fixed liturgical day in the Extraordinary Form.

If you’d like to learn more about St. Peter Damian, you can click here.

For information about other saints, blesseds, and feasts celebrated today, you can click here.

Readings:

To see today’s readings in the Ordinary Form, you can click here.

Or you can click play to listen to them:

Devotional Information:

According to the Holy See’s Directory on Popular Piety:

63. That harmonious fusion or the Gospel message with a particular culture, which is often found in popular piety, is a further reason for the Magisterium’s esteem of popular piety. In genuine forms of popular piety, the Gospel message assimilates expressive forms particular to a given culture while also permeating the consciousness of that culture with the content of the Gospel, and its idea of life and death, and of man’s freedom, mission and destiny.

The transmission of this cultural heritage from father to son, from generation to generation, also implies the transmission of Christian principles. In some cases, this fusion goes so deep that elements proper to the Christian faith become integral elements of the cultural identity of particular nations. Devotion to the Mother of the God would be an example of this.

Did you know? The planet Mars is red because it has rusted–literally! The redness comes from iron oxide (rust) in its soil. LEARN MORE.

In 1929, Our Lady of Fatima appeared to Sr. Lucia and asked that a special consecration be performed by the pope. Much hinged on this.

Multiple popes have performed acts similar to the one requested, but has any of them fulfilled what was requested in 1929?

If any have, how do we know?

What did John Paul II think? What about others at the Holy See? What about Sr. Lucia herself?

And–for non-Catholics and others not familiar with Fatima–what is all of this about, anyway?

These are among the questions we explore in this week’s episode of the Jimmy Akin Podcast!

Click Play to listen . . .

or you can . . .

CLICK HERE!

. . . or subscribe another way (one of many ways!) at JimmyAkinPodcast.Com.
SHOW NOTES:

JIMMY AKIN PODCAST EPISODE 030 (02/19/12)

In this episode Deacon Tom Fox of Catholic Vitamins asks how to respond to claims that the papal consecration requested by Our Lady of Fatima has not been made.

THE MESSAGE OF FATIMA: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20000626_message-fatima_en.html

THE LAST SECRET OF FATIMA: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00378L4T8?ie=UTF8&tag=jimmyakincom-20&creativeASIN=B00378L4T8

CROSSING THE THRESHOLD OF HOPE: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679765611/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=jimmyakincom-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0679765611

TWO LETTERS FROM SR. LUCIA: http://www.ewtn.com/expert/answers/Fatima1984.htm

Today’s Music: Ave Maria (JewelBeat.Com)

WHAT’S YOUR QUESTION? WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO ASK?

Call me at 512-222-3389!

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Today is Monday of the 7th week in Ordinary Time. The liturgical color is green.

In the Extraordinary Form, this is the season after Septuagesima, and the liturgical color for today is violet.

Saints & Celebrations:

On February 20, there is no special fixed liturgical day in the Ordinary Form.

There is no special fixed liturgical day in the Extraordinary Form.

For information about other saints, blesseds, and feasts celebrated today, you can click here.

Readings:

To see today’s readings in the Ordinary Form, you can click here.

Or you can click play to listen to them:

Devotional Information:

According to the Holy See’s Directory on Popular Piety:

62. Popular piety can easily direct its attention to the Son of God who, for love of mankind, became a poor, small child, born of a simple humble woman. Likewise, it has a particular sensibility for the mystery of Passion and death of Christ.

Contemplation of the mystery of the afterlife is an important feature of popular piety, as is its interest in communion with the Saints in Heaven, the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Angels, and suffrage for the souls of the dead.

Did you know? Emperor Constantius II issued a decree closing all pagan temples in the Roman Empire on Feb. 19, A.D. 356. LEARN MORE.

Today is the 7th Sunday of Ordinary Time. The liturgical color is green.

In the Extraordinary Form, this is the season after Septuagesima, and the liturgical color for today is violet.

In the Extraordinary Form, it is Quinquagesima Sunday.

Saints & Celebrations:

On February 19, there is no special fixed liturgical day in the Ordinary Form.

There is no special fixed liturgical day in the Extraordinary Form.

For information about other saints, blesseds, and feasts celebrated today, you can click here.

Readings:

To see today’s readings in the Ordinary Form, you can click here.

Or you can click play to listen to them:

Devotional Information:

According to the Holy See’s Directory on Popular Piety:

61. Popular piety, according to the Magisterium, is a living reality in and of the Church. Its source is the constant presence of the Spirit of God in the ecclesial community; the mystery of Christ Our Savior is its reference point, the glory of God and the salvation of man its object, its historical moment “the joyous encounter of the work of evangelisation and culture.” On several occasions, the Magisterium has expressed its esteem for popular piety and its various manifestations, admonishing those who ignore it, or overlook it, or even distain it, to adopt a more positive attitude towards it, taking due note of its many values. Indeed, the Magisterium sees popular piety as “a true treasure of the People of God.”

The Magisterium’s esteem for popular piety is principally motivated by the values which it incorporates.

Popular piety has an innate sense of the sacred and the transcendent, manifests a genuine thirst for God and “an acute sense of God’s deepest attributes: fatherhood, providence, constant and loving presence”, and mercy.

The documents of the Magisterium highlight certain interior dispositions and virtues particularly consonant with popular piety and which, in turn, are prompted and nourished by it: patience and “Christian resignation in the face of irremediable situations”; trusting abandonment to God; the capacity to bear sufferings and to perceive “the cross in every-day life”; a genuine desire to please the Lord and to do reparation and penance for the offences offered to Him; detachment from material things; solidarity with, and openness to, others; “a sense of friendliness, charity and family unity.”