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St. Joseph Stairs & Polyamorous Relationships
The Stations of the Cross All Year Long
A few years ago I started praying the Stations on Tuesday and Friday after I finished the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary. It dawned on me that Our Lady might be very pleased if I did this. On Tuesdays, I pray the first 7 Stations, omitting the Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be since I had just prayed the Rosary.
I use the booklet of St. Alphonsus Liguori and read the 2 prayers of the priest and the people. I finish the remaining Stations, 8 through 14, on Fridays. I do not do this during Lent, since we pray the Stations formally at Church with our pastor leading us.
It keeps me attached to this great method of remembering Our Lord in His Passion all year long and not just during Lent. Perhaps you will find it as worthwhile as I have.
S.S.S.
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Easter Celebrations Cancelled in Germany
Well, another victorious year for the Secret Forces - as they successfully close down the Easter services in Germany, denying Catholics the opportunity to celebrate our most important feast day. The children of the future will have no idea of the solemnity of this feast or the cycle of the liturgical year. It is disgusting.
G.G.
Etienne Bianchi, Germany
March 24, 2021 - Germany is placing further restrictions on public gatherings to stop the spread of COVID-19, including a ban on in-person worship services.
This means that the country's Catholic and Protestant communities will not be able to have church services during Holy Week and on Easter.
Chancellor Angela Merkel's government announced the restrictions after lengthy negotiations with leaders of the country's 16 states, constitutively known as the Länder.
To deal with a "very, very serious situation", as the chancellor put it, places of worship will be closed to prevent gatherings. ...
Chancellor Merkel's government had initially planned to impose an Easter weekend "stay at home" order on Friday, April 2.
But that has been moved forward by one day, meaning that from April 1-5 Germans will not be able to have gatherings of more than five people belonging to two different households.
Virtual Mass
Outdoor gatherings are also prohibited in order to prevent Churches from organizing open air religious celebrations.
Instead, the government is urging religious leaders to organize online services and Masses, as was already the case during the Easter 2020 celebrations.
The Catholic bishops of Germany said they were "surprised" by the decision and had not been notified beforehand by the government. ..
Both Catholics and Protestants had planned on celebrating Easter under strict health protocols. But a third wave of coronavirus infections has swept those plans away.
"The situation is serious," said Chancellor Merkel at a press conference that followed nearly 12 hours of negotiations with the state leaders.
"The number of cases is increasing exponentially and the intensive care beds are filling up again," she noted somberly.
Original here.
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New Moral Abyss
Because of our arrogance and, consequently, no fear of God, America keeps sliding into the pit of Hell…
T.H.
March 20, 2021 - Cambridge, Massachusetts has redefined domestic partnerships to give relationships involving more than two people the same rights as a married couple.
Home to Harvard University, Cambridge is the second city in the state, after its neighbor Somerville, legally to recognize polyamory.
During a March 8 meeting, the Cambridge city council voted to redefine “domestic partnerships,” which previously had been defined as two unmarried people living together.
The new definition broadens the definition to “two or more persons” not related by blood who “are in a relationship of mutual support, caring and commitment and intend to remain in such a relationship” and “consider themselves to be a family.”
The council also removed a requirement that those in a domestic partnership must live together, as well as a provision that those in a domestic partnership must submit evidence to the city of their relationship as a family.
Somerville, which borders Cambridge, broadened its definition of domestic partnership to include polyamorous relationships during July 2020, the first in the nation to do so. Both cities are close to Boston.
Catholic scholars, including Professor Robert George of Princeton University, have said in recent years that redefining marriage could lead to a collapse of the term altogether, with people questioning why marriage requires exclusivity, permanence, and sexual fidelity. George has also noted that in a society that has rejected the idea of sexual complementarity, there is no rational basis for rejecting polyamory.
Ryan Anderson, currently president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, told CNA last year that he was not surprised by the latest efforts to redefine marriage to include multiple people.
“Of course it was never going to stop with same-sex couples,” Anderson told CNA. “Once you redefine marriage to eliminate the male-female component, what principle requires monogamy?” The former cultural norm of marriage between one man and one woman, Anderson said, “was that only one man and one woman could unite as one flesh as husband and wife in the very same act that could produce new life, and then connect that new life with his or her own mother and father.”
“Once the law and culture says the male-female aspect of marriage violates justice and equality, we haven’t ‘expanded’ marriage, we’ve fundamentally redefined what it is. And those redefinitions have no principled stopping point,” he said.
The Cambridge legal change was drafted with the help of the Polyamory Legal Advocacy Coalition. The group is an outgrowth of the Harvard Law School LGBTQ+ Advocacy Clinic and is supported by the American Psychological Association.
Original here.
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Schismatic ‘Saint’ on the Roman Calendar
This is old news that went under my radar… The new ecumenical martyrology started.
This is what was predicted would happen in the year 2000. Now it became reality.
First a schismatic 'saint,' then probably a 'Lutheran,' then Ghandi, it won't stop unless Our Lady intervenes and ends this ecumenical nonsense.
M.G.
Gregory Shokhikvan
Pope Francis on February 21, 2015 named St. Gregory of Narek a "Doctor of the Church", one of the highest distinctions in Roman Catholicism.
This 10th century Armenian mystic and theologian was recently given his own liturgical feast day on the Roman calendar. And now Catholics will keep his memory each year on February 27.
It is quite extraordinary for a saint who was not a Latin, but an Armenian -- a member of a Church that dates back to apostolic times.
The formal relationship between the Armenian Church and the Latin Church started only in the 12thcentury.
Though the Armenians had much more contact with the Byzantines, the Crusades brought Latin Catholics back into contact with the Armenians.
Read more here.
Posted April 8, 2021
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The opinions expressed in this section - What People Are Commenting - do not necessarily express those of TIA
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Regarding the St. Joseph Staircase in Santa Fe, New Mexico: You can watch a movie about it called The Staircase, available in full here.
A Poem Inspired by St. Joseph's Staircase
“As Joseph rode his lonely mule he lingered in the past
and conjured from his memory the role that now was cast.
A king had sent him far away upon this distant mission.
He prayed himself to sleep at night while dreaming of his vision,
Waiting on the rising sun for night to soon expire.
St. Joseph’s miraculous staircase
and in the wind came murmurings and sounds of falling seeds,
Whispers in the sage brush,
A rustle in the trees.
“Nine days the sounds had come and gone
and louder did they call,
While riding fast across the sky
Saint Joseph heard them all.
His spirit was enkindled
his heart was set on fire
He rode his mule into the wind
and never did he tire.”
P.F.