Category: Year

From my blog, Old World Swine;

Remember, January 25th is Burns Night!

I pray our government will lift this ban
on Haggis before a corrupt and violent black market has a chance to
develop. Haggis smuggling would have to be a dirty business.

MERRY CHRISTMAS, ALL!

No blogging today, but I hope you and yours have a great Thanksgiving day.

Also,

HERE’S A FASCINATING ARTICLE ON THE TOPIC.

Note for those in other countries and others who are curious: HERE’S INFO ON THE THANKSGIVING HOLIDAY.

WATCH THE VIDEO.
(CHT: Instapundit)

NOTE: This is basically a TV show devoted to the subject, not a three minute video.)

A reader writes:

I thought this question would have a nice spooky element for Halloween. In St. Liguori’s Glories of Mary, the author relates some fantastic stories:

Moreover, Pelbart says that in his time, when the emperor Sigismund was crossing the Alps with his army, a voice was heard coming from a skeleton asking for a confessor and declaring that the Mother of God, for whom he had a great devotion when a soldier, had obtained permission for him to live on in those bones until he had been able to confess his sins. The man made his confession and then died.

And:

…in the town of Aragorn there lived a young lady named Alexandra. She belonged to the nobility and, being very beautiful, was loved very much by two young men. One day, out of jealousy over Alexandra, the two youths quarreled and killed each other in a duel. Their parents were very much angered by this and, considering that the poor young girl was the cause of so much harm, they killed her too. They cut off her head and threw her into a well. A few days later, when Saint Dominic happened to be passing by the spot, he was inspired by the Lord to go to the well and call down: "Alexandra, come up!" With that, the head of the dead girl appeared, settled on the edge of the well, and begged Saint Dominic to hear her confession…the saint heard her confession and gave her Holy Communion.

My instinct is that these stories fall under pious legend. Can they really square with Church teachings regarding last things and death being the cut off point for repentence? Also, should a head, absent a digestive system, really receive Holy Communion?

While nice for Halloween, such stories are best regarded as the pious legends, at least absent further evidence for them. Stories of this type reflect the way the Christian imagination has shaped the folklore of Europe and infused it with Christian values.

That being said, God is omnipotent, and if he wants to do miracles like the ones reported in these stories, he certainly can.

As to how such events, if they really occurred, would square with Catholic teaching, the following things occur to me:

1) While the rule that death is the closure of our time to repent is one that we must regard as absolute, not promising ourselves a chance to repent afterwards, God might nevertheless make exceptions to it. It is hard to see how this would happen if, as is commonly taught, our wills become fixed on good or evil at the moment of death, but perhaps God can preserve the fluidity of the will even after death. We don’t have a clear idea about why our wills become fixed–why being discarnate would cause that to happen and why they don’t become re-fluid once we are resurrected–so it may be possible for God to preserve this kind of free will in a person who has died.

2) It is also possible that the individuals in question might not really be dead . . . just mostly dead. There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there’s usually only one thing you can do.

But with mostly dead you might, for example, be able to get in a quick confession. So, it not being logically impossible (so far as I can tell) to have what appears to be a skeleton still having a bit of life or (even more clealry) a detached head that’s still alive (just watch The Brain That Woudn’t Die if you don’t believe me!), God could presumably allow these individuals to stay alive long enough to receive the sacraments.

3) As to receiving Communion with no digestive system–well, we’re already pretty far into the miraculous here. I mean, not only does the severed head have no digestive system, it doesn’t have the key parts of its circulatory and respiratory system either. In other words: No heart. No lungs. So what’s pumping and oxygenating the blood? And where are the vocal cords getting the air needed for speech to make the confession? If God is able to miraculously compensate for the absence of these bodily systems, I’m sure he can miraculously compensate for the absence of the digestive system, too.

Therefore, if I were St. Dominic and a severed head wanted me to hear its confession and give it Communion, I would seriously entertain the request.

4) BTW, in addition to the possibility that these people were somehow still alive, the possibility also should be considered that we’re dealing with some kind of spiritual echo or snakeskin phenomenon, where what is producing the phenomenon is not actually the person in question but a remnant of the person.

THAT’S SOMETHING WE’VE CONSIDERED HERE BEFORE ON THE BLOG.

AND THAT FOLKS HAVE COMMENTED ON.

Today is June 1st, which means that it is a special day for me.

Not because it’s the day that the first Superman comic was published back in 1938. (Well, okay, it is.)

But because it’s the feast day of St. Justin Martyr!

YEE-HAW!!!

Justin Martyr is patron saint of apologists, so you can imagine why it’s special to me.

Also, by a strange coincidence that I was unaware of at the time, it is also my report-to-work date from when I started work at Catholic Answers, lo those many years ago.

I’ve always regarded that as providential and consider St. Justin Martyr a special patron of mine as a result. I hope he’s looking out for my apologetic efforts (as well as the personal challenges apologists can face).

So I try to commemorate the day in a special way each year.

LEARN MORE ABOUT JUSTIN MARTYR

AND MORE.

AND READ HIS WRITINGS.

Just a quick post to wish everyone at JA.O a Blessed and Merry Christmas.

Thanks to Jimmy for all the work and thought he puts into his ‘blog, and for inviting me to participate.

Thanks to everyone who reads and posts here, for your patient indulgence.

And THANKS BE TO GOD for all He is, and all He has done, especially for the gift of His Son, through the Holy Spirit, and our Blessed Mother.

Peace to all your houses!

Today–November 26th–back in 1922, archaeologist Howard Carter and his employer Lord Canarvan entered the tomb of King Tutankhamun, becoming the first people to enter it in 3000 years since it had been overlooked by graverobbers.

Precisely because of its overlooking, it contained a wealth of aristic treasures (and junk) that had been stripped from every other pharonic tomb we’ve unearthed.

Precisely because of these treasures, the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb became a media sensation, with people standing in line to see the boy king.

Mystery also surrounded his death at the unusually young age of 19. Had he been murdered? (No, it seems he died from gangrene after breaking his leg.)

Mystery also surrounded the deaths of some of his discoverers. Was there a curse on his tomb? (No, it seems that there is no statistically unusual death rate among those who visited the tomb.)

Tutankhamun’s role in Egyptian history is somewhat interesting. Though undoubtedly due to his advisors since he was only a boy at the time, his reign saw the undoing of his predecessor’s monotheistic reforms.

The Pharaoh Akhenaten banned the previous Egyptian polytheistic cult and instituted his own monotheistic worship of the deity Aten (note the last part of his name; it’s theophoric). Consequently, Tutankhamun’s birthname wsa Tutankhaten.

But when he became pharaoh, he undid his predecessor’s religious reforms, meaning that Akhenaten is now remembered as Egypt’s "heretic king" instead of as a great religious reformer. This makes Tutankhamun a kind of Egyptian "Julian the Apostate"–only a successful one.

He was able to turn Egypt back to its polytheistic roots (which it was all too willing to do since Akhenaten’s reforms were so short lived) and he changed his name to Tutankhamun after the god Amun.

His name means "Living Image of Amun" (ankh = life; tut = image), but for non-specialists the discovery of his artifacts has provided the most important living image of ancient Egypt that the modern world has seen.

As a result, he is now the most famous of the pharaohs, outshining many more historically important ones (like Rameses II or Seti I or Khufu) and the only one to have a popular nickname: King Tut.

Image King indeed!

With his P.R. skills, he could have won a Grammy.

Easy.

LEARN MORE.

Just remember to make sure the T stands for "thanks" rather than "turkey"!

Today–November 22–back in 1963 President John F. Kennedy was fatally shot while riding in a motorcade through Dealey Plaza in the city of Dallas.

To the left is a picture of me standing at the spot where he was struck by the fatal head shot that ended his life.

(Sorry for the poor picture quality, but it was taken a couple of years ago and all I had was a really dinky camera phone.)

The Kennedy assassination is one of the most enduring mysteries of recent American political life. Who killed Kennedy and why has been endlessly debated and rivers of ink have flowed on the subject.

According to the Warren Commision (lead by horrible Chief Justice Earl Warren and involving such notables as future President Gerald R. Ford, future Senator Arlen Spectere, and former CIA Director Allen Dulles–the uncle of now Cardinal Avery Dulles) there was no conspiracy to kill Kennedy, only a lone nut named Lee Harvey Oswald.

Oswald is a very odd figure. He was a former Marine who defected to the Soviet Union in the midst of the Cold War and then was repatriated to the United States. There are many claims that Oswald had ties to the U.S. intelligence community and many have thought that he was actually working as a spy for the U.S. during his time in Russia.

However that may be, he just happened to have strated work at the Texas School Book Depository in Dealey Plaza shortly before the President made a trip to the city (to mend fences with Southern Democrats in preparation for the 1964 presidential election). According to the Warren Commission he then shot President Kennedy from the sixth floor of that building–an event captured on the famed Zapruder Film.

Unlike prior presidential assassins–such as John Wilkes Booth (who himself was part of an anti-Lincoln conspiracy) was proud of the fact that he had shot Abraham Lincoln–Oswald denied shooting the president after he was apprehended and claimed that he was being used as a "patsy" (i.e., someone set up by the real killer or killers to take the fall for the crime).

In the 1970s, the House Select Committee on Assassinations looked into the matter again and concluded that there had been a conspiracy, though it did not establish what role Oswald may have played in it.

There are thus two official and opposite government findings: The Warren Commission, which found that there was no conspiracy, and the House Select Committee report, which found that there was a conspiracy.

According to polls, most Americans agree with the House Select Committee over the Warren Commission, though opinion polls are not a good way of determining what happened on that day in 1963.

The thing to do is look at the evidence.

Which happens to be something that I’ve done to a considerable extent.

Continue reading “Unhappy Kennedy Assassination Day”