Letter of Recommendation

Last November, while on the campaign trail for Democratic hopeful Barack Obama, Laurence Tribe called Obama the "best student I ever had." Not bad coming from a one-time potential Supreme Court nominee and professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School.

But wait a minute. I thought that honor had already been awarded to someone else?

Kathleen Marie Sullivan (born August 20, 1955), one of America's leading scholars in constitutional law, is a professor at the Stanford Law School and currently practices appellate litigation at Quinn Emanuel Urquart Oliver & Hedges, LLP, a law firm in California.

Born in Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan, Sullivan was the dean of Stanford Law School from 1999 to 2004. She was a professor of law at Harvard Law School from 1984 to 1993. She graduated from Cornell University in 1976, graduated as a Marshall Scholar from Oxford in 1978 and graduated from Harvard Law School in 1981, where her mentor Laurence Tribe called her "the most extraordinary student I had ever had."

Quote of the day

In response to the Church of England's approval of artificial birth control, Pope Pius XI issued his encyclical "Casti Connubii" on December 31, 1930, stating

"Since, therefore, openly departing from the uninterrupted Christian tradition some recently have judged it possible solemnly to declare another doctrine regarding this question, the Catholic Church, to whom God has entrusted the defense of the integrity and purity of morals, standing erect in the midst of the moral ruin which surrounds her, in order that she may preserve the chastity of the nuptial union from being defiled by this foul stain, raises her voice in token of her divine ambassadorship and through our mouth proclaims anew: any use whatsoever of matrimony exercised in such away that the act is deliberately frustrated in its natural power to generate life is an offense against the law of God and of nature, and those who indulge in such are branded with the guilt of a grave sin."

Papal Mass

..In other news, we managed to put together an embarassing and downright shameful liturgy at our nation's capital for our Holy Father today. If you had the good fortune to miss it, let me bring you up to speed.

With music a la Marty Haugen's 'Mass of Creation,' worship and conscious participation in the Sacred Mysteries was made that much more difficult. There was a misplaced and awkward sort of bounce to the organ music(I suppose we should be grateful an organ was used at all), and of course everything was sung in minor keys.

Then there was the first reading. In Spanish, naturally. After all, this is the United States of Mexico.

The Spanish reading was done by a lay woman, and she was followed by another woman who cantored a particularly painful rendition of the Responsorial Psalm. And it was a third lay woman who read for us the second reading.

Pure happenstance, you see. Three for three; what were the odds?

I half expected to see a nun in plain clothes come up to read the Gospel.

I'm sure whoever orchestrated this shindig is quite pleased and felt they did a marvelous job. But it really is time we do us all a favor and let them go, so we can recover a true Spirit of the Liturgy.

Uh huh

Three kinds of people

There are really only three kinds of people in this world. The haves. The have-nots. And the haven't-paid-for-what-we-haves.

I'm a fellow Dave Ramsey-ite. You gotta find this guy on your radio; he's great.

Fr. Joe

Alter Christus

It is difficult to imagine the full extent of public scandal caused by a priest who, speaking in the name of Christ himself, guides and instructs the flock away from Church teaching.

Saint Faustina experienced some of this betrayal felt by Our Lord.

Thursday, Nocturnal Adoration.

When I came for adoration, an inner recollection took hold of me immediately, and I saw the Lord Jesus tied to a pillar, stripped of His clothes, and the scourging began immediately. I saw four men who took it in turns at striking the Lord with scourges. My heart almost stopped at the sight of these tortures...Oh, how dreadful was Jesus' moral suffering during the scourging!

Then Jesus said to me, "Look and see the human race in its present condition." In an instant, I saw horrible things: the executioners left Jesus, and other people started scourging Him; they seized the scourges and struck the Lord mercilessly. These were priests, religious men and women, and high dignitaries of the Church, which surprised me greatly...Seeing this, my heart fell as if into a mortal agony.

Enter Fr. Michael Pfleger, Roman Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago, ardent defender of Reverend Jeremiah 'God damn America' Wright and longtime vocal (not to mention financial) supporter of pro-abortion presidential hopeful, Barack Obama.



The Rev. Wright knows he always has a home (and a place of honor) in Saint Sabrina's.

Anyone have Cardinal George's email?