TAFFY

 

I wanted a puppy.  I was 13, living in the tiny, unincorporated town of Allen, Washington, and I wanted a puppy to raise as my friend and companion.  So my father went to the dog pound to get a puppy for me, and came home with Taffy.

Taffy was not a puppy, but an old dog, and I was upset.  She was not what I dreamed of, and in my selfishness I complained, and probably threw a tantrum.  Dad explained that while at the pound, he learned that this poor Cocker Spaniel was scheduled to be put to sleep the following day.  Dad saved her life and brought her home, hoping I would accept her.  I didn't.

Taffy showed no training.  She jumped on us with joy and muddy feet.  We didn't even take the chance to find out if she were housebroken, but chained her up beside the doghouse by the garage, where she would always be dirty and never be allowed to jump on us.

She loved us dearly, but I didn't show her love, other than bringing her food and water.  Beside the doghouse was a woodpile leaning against the garage, and rats were using it for their home.  Taffy was so lonely and depressed that she would sit in the doghouse with her head lying in the doorway, watching the rats come and eat her food from her bowl.  I was grossed out by the rats, and so Taffy got even fewer visits from me.

After a few weeks, Dad sadly took Taffy back to the pound, and she was euthanized.

Because of my selfishness, this dog was abandoned and put to death.  This has haunted me all my life.  Whenever I'm proud of myself and think I'm so good, I can look at this picture of Taffy and be very humbled.  God has used this innocent, loving dog for a lifelong lesson.  He knows what it's like to be betrayed and abandoned and to die loving those who never returned His love.

O how I would love and hug that dog now!

_____

For the complete contents of the Butter Rum Cartoon, click here.

The ROSARY

 

From "The Sacramentals of the Holy Catholic Church, or Flowers from the Garden of the Liturgy," by Rev. William J. Barry ~ 1858

THE ROSARY

The word Rosary means a garden of roses.  The Paters and Aves composing it are so many flowers twined into a wreath of prayer, the fragrance of which ascends in an odor of sweetness up to the throne of the Queen of Heaven.  There are one hundred and fifty Hail Marys in the devotion, divided off into fifteen decades or tens, before each of which there is one Our Father and a Glory be to the Father, &c.  One third of the Rosary, containing five decades, is called a chaplet, and it is this which pious Catholics say every day.  The entire Rosary is called also the Psalter or Psalmody of our Lady, because, as the Psalter of King David contains one hundred and fifty psalms, so the Rosary contains one hundred and fifty Angelical salutations.

The practice of using pebbles or beads for numbering prayers is as old as the third or fourth century.  Palladius, an ecclesiastical writer of the 5th age, relates, in his Historia Lausiaca, that Abbot Paul made three hundred prayers daily which he reckoned by means of little stones.  A canon of the Council of Celchyth, held in England in 816, commands that, on the death of a bishop, seven belts of Our Fathers should be said by the clergy every day, for the space of thirty days, for the repose of his soul; and William of Malmesbury says that a Saxon Countess, named Godiva, desired, when on the point of death, that a string of gems on which she used to count her prayers, should be suspended round the neck of the statue of the Blessed Virgin, in a Church of Coventry.  In fact the very name beads, which we apply to the Rosary or Chaplet, proves that a similar devotion was in use among the Catholic Anglo-Saxons, for, in their language it signifies not globules or pebbles, but prayers, being from the same root as the present German word beten.

But these forms of prayer were not the Rosary.  Some have ascribed the origin of the devotion, as it now exists, to St. Benedict, the Patriarch of the Monastic life in the West, who flourished in the 6th century; others to Peter the Hermit, the originator, under God, of the Crusades, in the end of the 11th century.  The claims of these venerable persons cannot, however, be substantiated.  Though both were devoted heart and sold to Mary, it did not please God to make use of them as his instruments in the establishment or propagation of the Rosary of His Blessed Mother.  The time for the devotion had not yet come.  It remained hidden in the coffers of heavenly benediction, to be opened at the prayers of Mary, when the urging wants of the Church should call for the special interposition of the Heavenly Mediatrix.

That time came at last.  The Albigensian heresy, only another name for the absurd and impious Manicheism of the third and fourth centuries, began, about the year 1200, to make dreadful ravages in the South of France.  Pillage, sacrilege and murder were the instruments which the sectaries used for the propagation of their system, and the enormities which they practiced at last forced the secular arm to interpose for the defense of the property and lives of the children of the Church.  Apostolic men went amongst them to win them back by charity and mildness to the obedience of reason and faith, but their labors were repaid with insult, ill-treatment, and assassination.  The heart of the great St. Dominic, a Spaniard by birth, and founder of the order of Dominicans or Friars Preachers, who was laboring, by permission of Pope Innocent III., on this barren and ungrateful mission, bled with anguish at the sad prospect of spiritual ruin, which met his gaze.  He turned to her to whom no one ever turned in vain.  He begged her by the Blood of her Divine Son shed for sinners, and by the sword of sorrow, which pierced her own Immaculate Heart, to intercede for the perishing souls for whom he preached and prayed and suffered.  Need it be said that such a petition was heard?  Oh!  Mother Mary! Refuge of sinners! Consoler of the afflicted! indeed it would have been a miracle, such as never before occurred, had it been rejected!  Dominic prayed, and Mary heard his prayer, and revealed to him the Holy Rosary.  What the sword of the stern old soldier, Simon de Montfort, could not do, what even the previous labors of St. Dominic and his saintly co-operators failed to accomplish, Mary's Crown of Roses did.  The meditation of the fifteen mysteries of our Lord and Lady's life and death, accompanying each decade, instructed the ignorant in the articles of faith, whilst the recitation of the Our Father and Hail Mary filled the hearts of sinners with contrition and love, and drew down the blessings of Heaven.  The work of conversion went bravely on:  Dominic reaped a harvest of souls, and our sweet Mother a harvest of glory.

From that day to this, the devotion of the Rosary has never lost its hold on the affections of the faithful.  To recount the wonders that it has wrought and will continue to work until the day of doom in heaven, on earth, and in purgatory, would require an inspired tongue, and the vision of prophecy.  The glory that surrounded it at its birth went on increasing, until it culminated with dazzling radiance on the meridian of the Mary-protected Church, towards the close of the 16th age.  The battle of Lepanto, gained on the 7th of October, 1571, by the Christian fleet, under the command of Don John of Austria, over the formidable armament of the Turks, at the time that the sodality of the Rosary in Rome was walking in solemn procession addressing fervent prayers to the Throne of Mercy, proclaimed to the Catholic world the power of Mary, and the motherly care that she ever exercises over her servants.  The prayers of the Confraternity of the Rosary, as they arose from the Eternal City, on that first Sunday of October, rent on their way to Heaven, the dark thunder-cloud of Turkish invasion, that had hung, for centuries, lowering o'er the eastern horizon of Europe.

The holy Pope, St. Pius V., who then occupied the chair of St. Peter, was informed, by revelation, from heaven, of the victory at the very moment that it was won.  In gratitude to the Divine Mother and her Son, he commanded that a yearly commemoration should be made, on the first Sunday of October, of St. Mary of Victory.  Gregory XIII., his successor, established the Festival of the Rosary, to be celebrated, on the same day, in all the churches which contained a chapel or an altar dedicated under the invocation of the Blessed Virgin of the Rosary.  Clement X., in 1671, at the prayer of the Queen of Spain, extended the feast to all the Spanish dominions.  Another victory gained over the Turks, in 1716, under circumstances precisely similar to those of the victory of Lepanto, induced Clement XI. to grant the celebration of the Festival of the Rosary to the Universal Church.

Such is the history of the origin and progress of this holy devotion; let us now consider briefly the intrinsic claims that it has to our veneration and love.  The prayers that compose it are most holy in their origin.  The Our Father was taught by our Lord Himself, and is a complete synopsis of Christian doctrine and morality.  We call God Father, thereby indicating His Divine Paternity.  Father implies Son, and where these two exist, there is mutual love between them.  The Eternal Father and His Only Begotten Son love one another with an eternal Love, and that Love is a Divine Person, the Holy Ghost.  But God is not only Father, but He is Our Father, by creation, preservation and the imparting of His grace.  Grace implies Jesus, the God-Man, the Source of all the graces of intelligent creatures, and he who mentions that Adorable Name fits the key to the treasury of wisdom and love contained in the mysteries of Incarnation and Redemption.  Bow down, Christian soul, in awe and adoration before the throne of the Eternal God!  See how in the first words of the prayer that He has taught us are contained the three great mysteries of our faith!  What should we find if we were to go through it in detail?  Verily, nothing else than these other great truths—the rewards of heaven, the existence of evil spirits, the punishments of hell, the Sacraments of Penance and the Most Holy Eucharist, and the principal moral obligations of our religion, as the duty of filial love for God, conformity to His Divine Will, confidence in His Providence, fraternal charity and the avoiding of the occasions of sin.  O, Adorable Lord! whose words so fruitful in meaning as Thine, whose so full of hidden wisdom, whose so full of love!

The Hail Mary is composed of three parts.  "Hail full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women," were the words of the Archangel Gabriel, when announcing to the Blessed Virgin that she was to become the Mother of God.  The latter part of the same salutation, with an additional clause, was repeated by St. Elizabeth, inspired by the Holy Ghost, when Mary visited her in the hill-country of Judea:  "Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the Fruit of thy womb."  The General Council of Ephesus held, in 431, against Nestorius, the heretical Archbishop of Constantinople, who impiously asserted that Mary was not the Mother of God, added the third part:  "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death."

The Hail Mary is both a hymn of praise to the Blessed Virgin for the glory of her Divine Maternity, and a prayer of intercession for her protection during life and at the moment of death.  Heaven is filled with jubilee when it is said; the beautiful angels bow down in reverent adoration before the throne of their Queen; the glorified children of men, of whom no one ever reached the country of the Blessed without the assistance of Mary, hymn a new song of gratitude to their Mother and Mediatrix, and a new sea of divine radiance from the Holy Trinity breaks around her throne in a spray of dazzling splendor.  At the words, blessed is the Fruit of thy womb, her Immaculate Heart turns with unutterable love to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and the flames of those two fiery furnaces of divine charity unite and arise before the Ever Blessed Three, the only offering, with the Adorable Sacrament, worthy of the Majesty of the Godhead.  Child of Mary! will you refuse this increase of accidental glory to your Mother?  One fervent Hail Mary can give it, and the third part of the Rosary will repeat it fifty times.  If you say the beads every day during a month, you will work wonders in heaven more than fifteen hundred times.  Mary will be your debtor, and never will her gratitude be satisfied until she welcomes you to heaven.  "Love," said St. Augustine, "and do what you please;" yes, let us all love Mary, and then we can, in all things, do our own will, because, in all things, it will be conformed to hers and hers is to that of Jesus.  That love will burn sin and affection for sin out of our hearts, and bring our Lord into them with all His treasures of grace and sweetness.

The Rosary opens the gates of Purgatory.  We may well believe that God will deign to release daily one soul from that place of exile and punishment for one pair of beads said with devout intention, and the application of the indulgences attached to the Rosary.  Now think, good reader, what a thing it is to have thirty-one souls in heaven, who would not have been there so soon had it not been for your beads!  They will be indebted to you, Mary will be indebted to you, her Divine Son will be indebted to you.  And what will be your recompense?  The grace of a happy death, the crowning gift of all God's gifts, that of final perseverance.  Mother Mary! Queen of the Rosary! we resolve to say the beads every day; neither business, nor pleasure, nor fatigue, nor disgust, shall hinder us from offering thee this tribute of love.  Receive our promise, and seal it by obtaining for us from thy Son the grace to keep it.

The versicle, Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost, is said before each decade of the Rosary.  It is a salutation of praise to the Blessed Trinity.  The name doxology, applied to it, is derived from the Greek, meaning a word of praise or glory.

The generally received opinion attributes the origin of the doxology to the 1st Council of Nice, held in 325, against the Arian heretics who denied the Divinity of the Eternal Word.  But Pope Benedict XIV. (De Festo SS. Trinitatis) proves that it existed and was used by the faithful before the time of that Council, and that it arose naturally from the formula of baptism given by our Lord to the Apostles—baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost (St. Matt. xxviii.)  The response, as it was in the beginning, etc., was most probably added by the Nicene Synod, to meet the errors of the Arians who asserted that the Son was not born of the Father in the beginning, that is, from all eternity, but in time.

The same learned Pontiff combats the opinion that the practice of adding Glory be to the Father, etc., at the end of the Psalms in the Divine Office, was introduced into the West by the order of Pope St. Damasus, in the end of the 4th century, by the advice of St. Jerome, who had heard it sung by the Oriental monks, though this opinion has in its favor the 6th Lesson in the Office of St. Damasus (December 11th:) Statuit, ut, quod pluribus jam locis erat in usu, psalmi, per omnes ecclesias, die nostuque ab alternis canerentur, et in fine cujusque psalmi diceretur, Gloria Patri, etc.  Benedict XIV. thinks that the practice in question arose from a Canon of the Council of Narbonne, in 589, which was, in course of time, adopted throughout the Church.

There are few devotions to which the Holy See has granted so many indulgences as to the Rosary; one hundred days for each Our Father and Hail Mary, and a plenary indulgence once a year, on any day the reciter may choose.  To gain the latter the usual conditions of a plenary indulgence must be complied with, that is, confession, communion, and prayers for the wants of the Church.  It need not be said that a person must be in a state of grace, because an indulgence, being the remission of the temporal punishment due to sin, cannot avail until the sin itself, and, consequently, its eternal punishment, are removed.

To gain the indulgences of the Rosary, the beads must be blessed by a priest having the requisite faculties, and the recitation of the prayers must be accompanied, according to very many who have written on the subject, by meditation on the mysteries of our Lord and Lady, if the person reciting the beads is capable of meditating.

THE FIVE GLORIOUS MYSTERIES

For Sundays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays.

1.  The Resurrection.

2.  The Ascension.

3.  The Descent of the Holy Ghost.

4.  The Assumption of the B.V.M.

5.  The Coronation of the B.V.M. in Heaven.

THE FIVE JOYFUL MYSTERIES

For Mondays and Thursdays.

1.  The Annunciation.

2.  The Visitation.

3.  The Birth of our Lord.

4.  The Presentation of our Lord in the Temple.

5.  The Finding of our Lord in the Temple.

THE FIVE SORROWFUL MYSTERIES

For Tuesdays and Fridays.

1.  The Agony in the Garden.

2.  The Scourging at the Pillar.

3.  The Crowning with Thorns.

4.  The Carriage of the Cross.

5.  The Crucifixion and Death of our Lord.

Many pious persons make it a point to have their beads always about them during the day, and to place them around their neck or under their pillow at night.  Faithful soldiers of Mary, they have their arms always in their hands.  Let bad thoughts attack them or dangers menace, and at once the faithful fingers are on the beads, the Hail Mary is on their lips, the image of their Mother is before them, and the victory is won.  Let us adopt this easy and salutary practice; it will save us from at least one temptation, that of omitting to say our beads because we have them not at hand.

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For the complete contents of the Butter Rum Cartoon, click here.

THE BROWN SCAPULAR

From The Sacramentals of the Holy Catholic Church, or Flowers from the Garden of the Liturgy, by Rev. William J. Barry ~ 1858

THE SCAPULAR OF OUR LADY OF MOUNT CARMEL.

The church is one in doctrine and in government, yet the modes in which she manifests the inward life which she receives from the ever-continuing action of Christ, her Divine Head, are countless in their beautiful varieties.  She is, at the same time, contemplative and active, abiding in the desert and dwelling in community, the physician of the bodies as well as of the souls of men, the teacher of the ignorant, the civilizer of barbarians, the defender of the Gospel at home, its missionary abroad.  These different and apparently incongruous functions of her sublime life she performs on a large scale by means of her Religious Orders.  These holy associations are members of Christ's mystic body, each having its different office, yet all conspiring, by their harmonious action, to the strength and beauty of the organism to which they belong.  They are the various ornaments of the golden robe of splendor which Christ has cast around His Spotless Spouse, the Church.

Numerous as are the differences in origin, mode of life and aim of the Religious Orders, they all, without exception, agree in cultivating and propagating a most tender devotion to Mary, the Mother of God, and many of the most beautiful and touching practices of piety in her honor, now existing in the Church, have been introduced by them.  The Rosary is a Dominican devotion, and an unwavering faith in the Immaculate Conception, and a burning love for that greatest of Mary's privileges, next to the Divine Maternity, characterized the Seraphic Order of St. Francis, centuries before the mystery was defined to be an article of faith.  Devotion to the Sacred Name of Mary found a home in the Cistercian Order, a nestling place in the heart of the greatest of its abbots, the illustrious St. Bernard of Clairvaux: respice stellam, voca Mariam: look to the star, call on Mary . . . . . in dangers, in troubles and in doubts think of Mary, call on Mary, were the words, sweet as honey, that distilled from his glowing lips which the coal of Mary's love had touched.  The Society of Jesus, the bulwark of the Church in modern times, shows its devotion to Mary by establishing, in the colleges under its direction, sodalities and confraternities in her honor.  

This agreement of all the Orders in devotion to the Blessed Virgin, though differing in so many other devotions, proves that it is not one of several modes of manifesting the vital energy of the Church, but one which is an integral and essential part of the Christian system.  Mary is not, as Father Faber shows in his Growth in Holiness, a mere appendage or ornament of true religion: she is the mystical neck uniting the Church to Jesus, its Head: she is so completely interwoven, like a golden thread, in the web of Christian doctrine, that to separate her from it is to destroy it.  The particular manner of honoring her may vary with times and countries and dispositions, but the devotion itself will live on through the ages to be transplanted with the Church Militant, when time has ceased to be, to those happy courts over which Mary presides as Queen.

These general remarks have led us away from our immediate subject, the Scapular of Mount Carmel, yet they may be useful in showing how all devotions in honor of the Blessed Virgin, and all the Sacramentals which concern her are expressions of one great truth—that Mary is to be reverenced because of her connection with Jesus.

The Carmelites claim to be one of the oldest Orders in the Church, tracing their descent from the immediate disciples of the Prophets Elias and Eliseus, who lived more than eight hundred years before the coming of our Lord.  They derive their name from Carmel, a mountain of Palestine, on which the first religious of the Order built their cells.  Whether they can make good their claims to so venerable an antiquity is not for us to determine; from the end of the twelfth century, however, their history is clear and reliable.  Albert, Patriarch of Jerusalem, gave them a rule in 1209, which was afterwards approved by the Holy See.  The troubles consequent upon the continual irruptions of the Saracens into Palestine induced the good religious to look out for a safer asylum, and one in which they would be able to practice, in its perfection, their rigorous rule.  Accordingly, they passed into Europe, in the middle of the thirteenth century, and rapidly spread through the different Christian kingdoms, owing to the protection and favor of the Holy See, and the ability and zeal of the Generals of the Order.  One of the most illustrious of those Generals was Simon Stock.  He was an Englishman by birth, and, from his early years, was remarkable for the austerity and stainless innocence of his life and his tender devotion to the Blessed Virgin.  Mary rewarded his confidence and love, as she did those of his contemporary, St. Dominic.  She appeared to him in a vision and delivered to him the Brown Scapular, promising special graces to those who should devoutly wear it.  The new devotion was eagerly embraced by all ranks of society; the priest, the king, the noble and the commoner prided themselves on wearing the livery of the Queen of Heaven.  The Popes approved it by granting indulgences to it and establishing a festival in its honor.  And thus it has continued in the Church until our day, the holy rival of the Rosary in winning souls to the love of Mary and her Divine Son.

Some may smile at a devotion based on no better foundation than a vision.  Yet they can not deny, without rejecting the Bible and the testimony of ecclesiastical and profane history, the occurrence of visions in past times.  If supernatural interferences have taken place, they may take place again; and whether such has been the case in any particular instance can be ascertained by the rules of historical criticism.  Now, in regard to St. Simon Stock, we have the testimony of his secretary, Suvaningron, who, relating the vision, says, hanc ego immeritus, homine Dei dictante, scribebam:  this account I have written, though unworthy of the honor, under the dictation of the man of God.  His testimony has been received, after standing the test of an historical and theological sifting, by every unprejudiced mind that has examined the subject.  It is confirmed by the high sanctity of the parties in the transaction, by the miracles, attested under oath, wrought by means of the Scapular, and by the spiritual blessings conferred on those who devoutly wear it.

The advantages which the Scapular procures us are threefold:  it puts us under the particular protection of Mary; it gives us a participation in all the good works of the Carmelite Order, and places within our reach numerous indulgences.

When we put on the blessed Scapular, we clothe ourselves with the uniform of Mary's army, we enroll ourselves under her banner, we choose her for our Mother and our Queen.  Like the domestics of the wise woman, whose praise is in the Book of Proverbs, we are clothed with double garments to protect us against the cold winds and storms of spiritual adversity.  The Scapular is the pledge of the sacred contract that we have entered into with the Blessed Virgin; and if we be faithful to it on our part, she will reward us with the choicest blessings of her Son.

It is piously believed, to use the words of the Roman Breviary (in the Lessons of the 16th of July,) that Mary will obtain a speedy release from Purgatory for those who wear the Scapular in life and die a Christian death.  There is nothing absurd in this.  Jesus is the King of Purgatory; then Mary must be Queen.  Is it not natural to suppose that she is the Mediatrix of pardon for the suffering souls, as she is of grace and mercy for us?  And what day more suitable to exercise her intercession for them than Saturday, which the Church has consecrated to her honor?  Of course it would be the sin of superstition to believe that a person dying in mortal sin could escape the fires of hell by the fact of wearing Mary's livery.  Nor need we suppose that God's justice remits, in favor of the members of the Scapular Confraternity, any of the Purgatorial punishment due to sin.  It can crowd into an hour, by increase of intensity, sufferings which otherwise might be protracted through years.

The devotion of the Scapular beautifully illustrates the Catholic doctrine of the Communion of Saints; it associates us to all the good works of the Carmelites.  Their satisfactions for sin becomes ours, their impetrations for blessings belong to us.  The Scapular is the key to the rich treasure of graces which, for centuries, has been accumulating in the Church by the Masses and missionary labors, and studies and toil, and praying and watching and fasting of holy Carmelites all over the world.  Our own poor penances for the sins of our past life are little worth, but joined to the superabundant satisfactions of the Saints, they are increased in value a thousand fold.

The indulgences annexed to the Scapular afford another illustration of the Communion of Saints.  By gaining them we cancel the debt of temporal punishment due to our transgressions; we offer to God, in place of our own satisfactions, those of Christ, the Blessed Virgin and the Saints.  Yet various acts are required on our part to appropriate them; we must free our souls from the stain of sin by cooperating with God's holy grace, which urges us to receive the Sacrament of Penance, and we must fulfill the other conditions prescribed by the Sovereign Pontiff in the grant of the indulgence.  The day of admission into the Confraternity of the Scapular, the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, on the 16th of July, and the hour of death, have a plenary indulgence annexed to them.  The numerous partial indulgences may be found in most manuals of devotion.  To participate in the benefits of the Confraternity it is necessary to receive the Scapular from a priest who has been empowered to give it, and to wear it constantly.  It is also advised that the members should recite daily seven Our Fathers and Hail Marys, or the Litany of the Blessed Virgin.

These, then, are the blessings which Mary offers us if we assume her habit; but in doing so we contract the obligation of serving her as faithful vassals and imitating her virtues, in proportion to our grace.  He who professes himself her client, and yet neglects the duties of his state of life, insults her and incurs the anger of her Son.  No exterior symbols will profit us if the interior spirit be wanting; the Scapular will not save us if we lead bad lives, any more than will the livery of his country screen the coward or the deserter from his merited punishment.

When the Prophet Elias passed from earth, in a chariot of fire, he dropped his robe to his faithful follower, Eliseus.  The disciple cast the garment about his shoulders, and, at the same moment, the spirit of his departed master was infused into his heart.  So it should be with us.  Mary's Scapular hangs around the neck to no purpose, unless the soul clothe itself with the virtues that she practiced.  Let us apply to ourselves what St. Paul wrote to the Galatians:  for as many of you as have been baptized in Christ have put on Christ—as many of us as have received the Scapular of Mary, have put on Mary.

It is related of Boleslas IV., King of Poland, that he always carried about with him the portrait of his father, as the witness and guide of his actions.  Whenever he had to pass any decree or engage in any important affair, he looked at the image of his parent and pronounced these admirable words:  "O, my father! do not permit me to dishonor the blood that flows in my veins; do not permit that my tongue should utter any word, or my hand perform any action, unworthy of thy name and my high rank."  In like manner, when we look at the Scapular and the image of Mary attached to it, let us cry out with a holy enthusiasm:  "O, Sweet Mother! do not suffer us to dishonor thy name or the title of thy children."

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SAME SEX MARRIAGE ACT disguised as RESPECT FOR MARRIAGE ACT

The Senate passed the "Respect for Marriage Act" (Same-Sex Marriage Act) last week thanks to 12 Republicans who supported the measure. 39 House Republicans voted for it today. It is now on the way to acting-president Joe Biden to be signed into law, and he happily said he would.

Here are the Republican Senators who voted to end traditional marriage between a man and a woman:

blunt of MO

burr of NC

moore Capito of WV

collins of ME

ernst of IA

lummis of WY

murkowski of AK

portman of OH

romney of UT

sullivan of AK

tillis of NC

young of IN

[I'm very disgusted with our Senator, roy blunt, who is stepping down and giving us this "gift" as his last act in Congress, destroying his legacy.]

Here are the Republican Representatives who voted to end traditional marriage between a man and a woman:

armstrong of ND

bacon of NE

calvert of CA

cammack of FL

carey of OH

cheney of WY

curtis of UT

cavis, Rodney of IL

emmer of MN

fitzpatrick of PA

gallagher of WI

garbarino of NY

garcia of CA

gimenez of FL

gonzales, Tony of TX

gonzales of OH

herrera beutler of WA

hinson of IA

issa of CA

jacobs of NY

joyce of OH

katko of NY

mace of SC

malliotakis of NY

meijer of MI

miller-meeks of IA

moore of UT

newhouse of WA

obernolte of CA

rice of SC

simpson of ID

stefanik of NY

steil of WI

stewart of UT

turner of OH

upton of MI

valadao of CA

wagner of MO

waltz of FL

I don't need to tell you what the Democrats did.  We all know.  Nor do I need to mention the Republican cowards who didn't vote on it at all:

brady of TX

hollingsworth of IN

kinzinger of IL

owens of UT

zeldin of NY

Pandora's box was a closet.

Killing babies isn't enough apparently.

May God have mercy on us as we try to destroy ourselves.

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For the complete contents of the Butter Rum Cartoon, click here.

THE BATTLE OF LEPANTO

 

THE BATTLE OF LEPANTO

On the 7th of October in the year 1571 was fought the great battle of Lepanto—a battle upon which depended the freedom of the whole Christian world, for had it been won by the Turks, they would, for a time at least, have overrun the whole of Europe.

These Turks, who were followers of the false prophet Mahomet, hated Christians with a deadly hatred, and their great desire was to keep possession of the Holy Land, which is that part of Asia where our Saviour lived, suffered, and died, and is therefore very dear to Christian hearts.

From time to time the Christians of different countries had fought bravely to recover this dear land, and had sometimes held it, and then again the Turks would get it back into their possession; and thus it went on for centuries.  Many of you have studies about these holy wars which were called Crusades, and were carried on by men, who, though of different countries and different interests, had but one object in view when they started out as Crusaders.

Do you remember Godfrey de Bouillon and Tancred? —their names were great among the early Crusaders.

Well, brave as they were, and nobly as they fought, centuries went on and still the Turks were not conquered, and to the alarm of the people of Europe, their power was increasing; they were ever taking countries governed by Christian kings.

Things were in this dreadful condition just before the great battle of which we have spoken was fought, and it was, as you have already guessed, a battle between the Turks and Christians.  The Pope at this time was Pius V., a holy Dominican, who is now a canonized saint.

Though this great Pope had many cares and troubles, he saw the great danger in allowing the Turks to increase their possessions.  He determined, therefore, to make one more stand against them.  He knew that the difficulties would be great, and to add to them, those who should have assisted would not enter the league which the good Pope was forming in order to save Christendom.  Germany and England would not help; France could not; and so all the fighting was left to the men of that part of Italy under the Pope, called the Papal States, and to Venice and Spain.  Don John, who was an Austrian, was made General, and a commander named Colonna was placed at the head of the navy.

Even during these preparations, the people of Europe did not seem to understand the danger which threatened them.  They quarreled with one another, instead of banding together against the Turks, who had taken the Island of Cyprus, and butchered priests and people.  In spite of these sad events, and the little encouragement given to him, the Holy Father never despaired, but placed all his hope in prayer, and in the assistance of our dear Lady, the Queen of Heaven.  While everything was done by this holy pontiff to gain our Lord's favor, the men started forth to battle, with the blessing of St. Pius.  They set sail for Corfu, which is a Grecian island in the Ionian Sea, but failing to meet the Turks here, they went back, and sailed up the Gulf of Corinth, and when nearly to Lepanto, a town in Greece, situated on the Bay of Lepanto, the Christians met the Turkish fleet, and the great battle of Lepanto began.

The emblem on the Christian's flag was the cross; that on the Turk's flag was the crescent, and for many dreadful hours it was doubtful which would be waving when the battle was done.  The blood of Christian and Turk flowed like water.  The decks of the vessels were wet with it, and strewn with the bodies of the dead and dying.  The shout of battle mingled with groans and prayers, and the scene was one of horrible bloodshed; but when the shades of evening began to fall upon the sea, high in air, clear and bright against the blue of the sky, hung a banner, and upon it was a gold embroidered cross.  The battle of Lepanto was over; the Christians had won it!

This memorable day, Rosary Sunday, had been spent by St. Pius and his people in most earnest prayer for the success of God's cause.  The children of the Rosary marched in procession, singing hymns in our Lady's honor, and before the day was over, while the Rosary devotions still continued, the good Pope knew by inspiration that the prayers of the faithful had been answered by the Blessed Queen of Heaven.

As an act of gratitude and thanksgiving, St. Pius instituted the feast of our Lady of Victory, and later, Pope Gregory XIII., in commemoration of the great triumph, dedicated the first Sunday of October to our Lady of the Rosary.  This beautiful feast is now kept throughout the Catholic world.

So, when you see the Rosary procession on the first Sunday of October, or should you have the happiness of joining in it, remember that it was instituted in gratitude to our Lady for the victory won, through her intercession, by the Christians over the Turks at the great battle of Lepanto, over 450 years ago.

      ~ from an article in an 1897 issue of "Rosary Magazine"

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