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captainsblogQuite a week for our Holy Mother Church brethren. (Forget the sistren; they're limited to being Brides of Christ and runners of coffee hours.) The Electoral College of Cardinals named a new Pope in near-record time, smack in the middle of the holy season of Lent, and right before our most religious secular holiday of the season kicks into heavy rotation at a retailer near you.
Yes, begora, it's wearin' o' the' green time. And even a short stop into Wegmans these past few days meant being subjected to full-on performances of tin whistles and fiddles and playins of The Irish Washerwoman, which I will forever associate as being Tug McGraw's entrance music at Shea Stadium in the 70s.
(Well, that and this riff on it from Bullwinkle from even earlier;)
My cashier tonight was a guy named Pat. Even he seemed pained by having to endure so much malarkey in a single shift.
Yet there's serious conflict in the ranks. No, not over contraception or the role of women or anything of long-term importance. Rather, over whether Good Cachelics can indulge in corned beef and cabbage on the traditional Friday Before St. Patrick's Day when it's otherwise one of the seven still-remaining meatless Fridays, down from the 52 pre-Vatican II ones.
No problemo, says our own local suddenly Spanish-friendlyPrince of the Church:
In one of the semi-official rites of spring as well as of the Western New York political season, the bishop of Buffalo has always offered a dispensation from the Lenten obligation for Catholics to abstain from meat during the St. Patrick's Day Luncheon at the Buffalo Irish Center -- featuring mounds of corned beef and cabbage served family style.
But Bishop Richard J. Malone, at his first-ever appearance at the jam-packed affair on Friday, cracked that he wasn't letting the gathering of local pols and St. Pat's revelers off so easy. Indeed, he acknowledged he's not a fan of dispensing with Lenten obligations on Friday.
"Let's just say we're 'commuting' the abstinence," Malone told the crowd, adding he was issuing an alternative obligation for Friday's imbibing in the traditional Irish-American fare.
"It's up to you to choose another day of abstinence between now and Palm Sunday," he said, recognizing the crowd really didn't know what he was going to suggest.
"Got you nervous there for a moment, didn't I?" he cracked.
So, yeah. Eat your meat and drink to excess today (and again Sunday, which is okey-dokey-Popey since Sundays aren't counted as "days of Lent" proper and thus free you from whatever your holy promises may have been to abstain from excess. Can't cut into the till down at the lawn fete on that most special of saints' days now, can we?). Just don't expect similar "dispensation" if you've been divorced, or believe that the "right to life" is more important after birth than it is between that moment and conception, or consider homosexuality or vaginality to be random acts of Godness and not official disqualifications from so much of the faith.
And while you're at it, be sure to go along with His Eminence winking and nudging about eating and drinking at forbidden tables this weekend, but be sure to continue to forbid the likes of Methodist Me from sharing in communion under your roof, simply because I don't believe that a literal act of cannibalism is going on.
Whatevs, guys (and I do mean "guys.") Francisco, my dear, I don't give a damn.
Yes, begora, it's wearin' o' the' green time. And even a short stop into Wegmans these past few days meant being subjected to full-on performances of tin whistles and fiddles and playins of The Irish Washerwoman, which I will forever associate as being Tug McGraw's entrance music at Shea Stadium in the 70s.
(Well, that and this riff on it from Bullwinkle from even earlier;)
My cashier tonight was a guy named Pat. Even he seemed pained by having to endure so much malarkey in a single shift.
Yet there's serious conflict in the ranks. No, not over contraception or the role of women or anything of long-term importance. Rather, over whether Good Cachelics can indulge in corned beef and cabbage on the traditional Friday Before St. Patrick's Day when it's otherwise one of the seven still-remaining meatless Fridays, down from the 52 pre-Vatican II ones.
No problemo, says our own local suddenly Spanish-friendlyPrince of the Church:
In one of the semi-official rites of spring as well as of the Western New York political season, the bishop of Buffalo has always offered a dispensation from the Lenten obligation for Catholics to abstain from meat during the St. Patrick's Day Luncheon at the Buffalo Irish Center -- featuring mounds of corned beef and cabbage served family style.
But Bishop Richard J. Malone, at his first-ever appearance at the jam-packed affair on Friday, cracked that he wasn't letting the gathering of local pols and St. Pat's revelers off so easy. Indeed, he acknowledged he's not a fan of dispensing with Lenten obligations on Friday.
"Let's just say we're 'commuting' the abstinence," Malone told the crowd, adding he was issuing an alternative obligation for Friday's imbibing in the traditional Irish-American fare.
"It's up to you to choose another day of abstinence between now and Palm Sunday," he said, recognizing the crowd really didn't know what he was going to suggest.
"Got you nervous there for a moment, didn't I?" he cracked.
So, yeah. Eat your meat and drink to excess today (and again Sunday, which is okey-dokey-Popey since Sundays aren't counted as "days of Lent" proper and thus free you from whatever your holy promises may have been to abstain from excess. Can't cut into the till down at the lawn fete on that most special of saints' days now, can we?). Just don't expect similar "dispensation" if you've been divorced, or believe that the "right to life" is more important after birth than it is between that moment and conception, or consider homosexuality or vaginality to be random acts of Godness and not official disqualifications from so much of the faith.
And while you're at it, be sure to go along with His Eminence winking and nudging about eating and drinking at forbidden tables this weekend, but be sure to continue to forbid the likes of Methodist Me from sharing in communion under your roof, simply because I don't believe that a literal act of cannibalism is going on.
Whatevs, guys (and I do mean "guys.") Francisco, my dear, I don't give a damn.
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Date: 2013-03-19 02:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-19 02:38 pm (UTC)