Surfing the web and found these gems...

Time for another post on the assorted insanity I find on the internet.  

First up! 

The derangement of Protestantism continues. 

Quote: Pastor VanHall says "What would it look like to be a church that looked like the movement that Jesus started and not like the church that we know in America today? Out of that consistent questioning came this model for a brewery church that generates funds for local charities,"

Christopher VanHall pastor of Greater Purpose Community Church in Santa Cruz, California is founding a new "church" which is set to open next summer. His theology is white supremacists killed Jesus and Jesus was a feminist, an environmentalist and LBGTQ affirming- so that is what VanHall's new "church" will be too.  

Quote: "We are all for racial justice, which Jesus was a Palestinian, Jewish rabbi, he was a person of color that was killed by white supremacy so we're usually making every effort to be on the front lines for racial justice. So that's what sets us apart from many American churches." 😕

This "pastor" is opening a brewery in his "church" (which sits below some Planned Parenthood offices) and will be serving beer during the "church" services- he says having two beers will make his sermons better -I believe him. Proceeds from the beer profits and donations (30%-60%) will go to Planned Parenthood and other local progressive charities.  

Source: https://www.christianpost.com/news/beer-church-donates-planned-parenthood-pastor-jesus-killed-white-supremacy-226971/

Thank you Jesus once more that I am Catholic! 🙏

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Next up...Check your Holy Water fonts!!!!!!!! 

Catholic church BANS holy water to keep mosquitoes away

Quote: "A CATHOLIC church has stopped providing holy water for its visitors after virus-spreading tiger mosquitoes were spotted using it to lay eggs. The holy water has been removed from the church of Gesu, known as the church of Saint-Jacques-le-Majeurin, in the heart of the old town of the southern French city of Nice."

Quote: "Father Dardonville, the church priest, said that he asked for the water to be removed after a visitor spotted tiger mosquito larvae in it and he says there are not enough staff to deal with the problem. 
A note stuck on the wall above the empty holy water bowl reads: "No water-sanitary reasons, risk of proliferation of tiger mosquitoes". 
Father Dardonville said: "A father and his two children came to warn me about the presence of larvae in the holy water and two days later I put the note up. 

"For safety, I asked for something radical because I could not make sure that the holy water would be changed every other day during my holidays."

Source: https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1006399/Catholic-church-BANS-holy-water-to-keep-mosquitoes-away

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A Maine restaurant faced threats of violence when it changed from crinkle-cut to straight-cut fries 

Quote: "The Journal had reported the Waterville restaurant faced threats of violence when it changed from crinkle-cut to straight-cut fries in June. 

Parsons says the change was a financial decision because crinkle-cut fries required special blades that needed to be bought monthly. She says many people felt as new owners they were changing tradition at Bolley's, which had served crinkle-cut fries since it opened in 1962." 

Seriously people? Threats of violence over fries? 😕

Source: https://www.yahoo.com/news/restaurant-cites-worldwide-freakout-over-french-fries-214400580.html

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Okay ladies, what do you do if you think someone is going to attack your husband? 

This woman decided - at a high school softball game- to drop her pants and moon the threatening man to distract him from going after her husband. 

Quote: "The Roanoke Times reports 57-year-old Debbie L. McCulley is accused of mooning the stands, but a judge Thursday said the indecent exposure charge could be dropped.

McCulley's husband coaches Glenvar High School junior varsity softball. A Floyd County sheriff's deputy's report says McCulley took the field after a loss to Floyd County High School and exposed her right butt cheek. McCulley said she thought the other coach was going to attack her husband, so she refocused attention." 😮 

Source: https://www.yahoo.com/news/mooning-case-against-virginia-softball-coachs-wife-wanes-123354596.html 

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Paris residents peeved at very public eco-friendly urinals 

Quote in part: "PARIS (Reuters) - A new set of eco-friendly but completely exposed urinals deployed on the streets of Paris are provoking uproar from locals.

One of the bright red "urinoirs" installed on the Ile Saint-Louis, not far from Notre Dame cathedral and overlooking tourist boats passing on the Seine, has caused particular indignation.

Locals have written to the town hall to demand its removal and are planning a petition.


"There's no need to put something so immodest and ugly in such an historic spot," said Paola Pellizzari, 68, owner of a Venetian art store."  

And... 

Quote: "We're told we have to accept this but this is absolutely unacceptable. It's destroying the legacy of the island. Can't people behave?"

Local mayor Ariel Weil insisted the devices were necessary, however. Paris authorities have rolled out four of the stand-up loos in spots where public peeing has been a problem, and a fifth is planned.

"If we don't do anything, then men are just going to pee in the streets," he said. "If it is really bothering people, we will find another location."


That's just disgusting. 

Source: https://www.yahoo.com/news/paris-residents-peeved-very-public-eco-friendly-urinals-140031886.html

No mention in the article that migrants are to blame, but clearly that is why this is happening. Paris isn't what it used to be. 

Paris, France migrants camping in streets

Only a matter of time before California decides this is how they will deal with their homeless who are using the streets as restrooms. 
Watch this video if you can... 

Disgusting and horrible. 

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In Christ, 

Julie @ Connecticut Catholic Corner 

This weeks Surfing the Internet

One of my favorite things to do on the weekend is make a huge mug of Black English Breakfast tea with honey (heavenly stuff), lock myself in my home office for a few hours and surf the Internet in my pajamas. 😎 

I laugh, I cry and I rage at my computer screen while my fingers click from one news story to another. I am a creature of habit and this is a must for me on the weekends. My family knows to leave me alone until the tea pot is empty and my weekend ritual is finished. 

One of the first news stories I found this weekend was over on Aljazeera about Pope Francis, titled "Is Pope Francis a real reformer?". The interview was between Austen Ivereigh who believes Catholics who love the pre-Vatican II Church are delusional because that Church is dead and gone and isn't coming back, and Matthew Schmitz from First Things, who has to fight to get a word in. 

No one who reads my blog will be surprised when I say Ivereigh makes me want to scream. We clearly do not see the Catholic Church nor Pope Francis at all in the same ways. 

It saddens me to see Ivereigh and those like him who think the Church needs to "move with the times" as host Mehdi Hasan states. Why? Look around you. Are the times we are living in so wonderful and wholesome and holy that the Church needs to embrace our modern society? Of course not! So why, oh why would anyone want to the Catholic Church to "move with the times" and change Her doctrines to fit our morally bankrupt society? Ridiculous! 

This is precisely why I love the pre-Vatican II Church so much. They spoke clearly and in definite terms. No grey areas to give people false hope that one day...this or that will happen. It's misleading. Even if you love Pope Francis, you have to admit he is misleading. He does it all the time, he will state (on occasion) authentic Church teaching, and then come out with statements that are misleading like his "Who am I to judge?" comment, and when Francis said don't focus so much on abortion and gay marriage, and his letter to the Argentine Bishops to allow Holy Communion to people in mortal sin and his refusal to answer the dubia. All misleading people into thinking something has or is about to change in Catholic teaching. 

It's infuriating to me. 

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The next story that caught my eye falls into my "Just shoot me now" category. 

Over at The Washington Post, I found the article "Hundreds pack DC hall to discuss podcast exploring Harry Potter as a sacred text" by Julie Zauzmer and Michelle Boorstein. 

*sigh* 

Harry Potter as "sacred text"? Oh how far humanity and faith has fallen. 

Quote: "Mark Kennedy grew up a Catholic, and a Harry Potter fanatic. Only one stuck.
“I considered myself a non-spiritual person,” he said. He thought he was done with religion. And then he stumbled on the podcast “Harry Potter and the Sacred Text.”
The podcast told him that the Harry Potter series — the books that he always turned to for solace when he was angry or stressed or in need of an escape — could be a source of spiritual sustenance.
“I feel like I’m born again,” he said."

Born again from a Harry Potter podcast? Harry Potter as "spiritual sustenance"? Sustaining what exactly? Not the soul! Clearly the "new evangelization" the Church continually promotes is a complete failure if this is the result! 

The founders of the podcast are Harvard Divinity School graduates Casper ter Kuile and Vanessa Zoltan, and they are as confused and lost as those "born again" by their New Age nonsensical efforts. 

Quote: Zoltan and ter Kuile are complicated evangelists for

their own cause. Even as their following grows, they are still pondering some big questions: Can non-traditional types of meaning-making build community? Can texts that are deeply moving to readers truly hold them to account in the way Scripture has among the God-fearing? Neither one of them puts much faith in Humanism, though Zoltan tried working as a chaplain at the lively, cutting-edge secularism center at Harvard called the Humanist Hub, where there is a Sunday school for kids based on ethics. People who don’t want to join an organized religion aren’t looking to label themselves part of a religion for atheists either, ter Kuile said.
“That’s all being unbundled. You might get your ecstatic experience at Soul Cycle, and your community in your book group, and your [spiritual] formation in Harry Potter or ‘On Being,'” he said. 

The podcasters said they worry that these disparate experiences leave people much lonelier than experiences that are all tied up within one faith community.
“I’m scared what we’re going to do without the buildings. Some of the best things in the world happen in church basements,” Zoltan said. “That’s where you have sex ed classes, and that’s where you have kids on their church trip to build houses, and that’s where you house the new immigrant, and that’s where you register to vote…. I’m terrified if there aren’t these designated spaces. They’re called sanctuaries for a reason.”

I am as appalled at their definition of what a church sanctuary is as I am at their promoting Harry Potter as some sort of new religion that of course, won't use the word "religion" to describe it's self because "religion" is a bad word now. 

It gets worse. 

This is how they put their Scripture studies education to work. 

Quote: "They said that their podcast doesn’t aim to offer all the benefits of a religious community, but does strive to provide the moral insights that seekers gain from study of Scripture. In their podcast, they use the rigorous methods they learned in divinity school, like the Benedictine monks’ practice of lectio divina and the medieval florilegium, to parse the lines of Harry Potter, which they typically refer to as “the text.”

And it continues... 

Quote: Following a Jewish study method called Pardes, they analyzed the sole sentence on four levels, leading from the actual events of the story — a professor, looking at a moving map to see if it reveals that his students are in trouble — to an eventual sermonic conclusion. “I think what I would preach is that everybody needs to be taken care of in different ways. You should take care of the person in the form they need to be taken care of, not in the way that works for you. We have to teach each other how to take care of each other,” Zoltan said.
She said in an interview that she hopes this sort of close reading teaches moral values.
“To me, the goal of treating the text as sacred is that we can learn to treat each other as sacred. If you can learn to love these characters, to love Draco Malfoy, then you can learn to love the cousin you haven’t spoken to for 30 years, then the refugee down the street,” Zoltan said."

What's wrong with actual sacred text and the Good Samaritan story in the Bible?  

Where do you even begin with people like this? It's tragic really. 

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This last story, was personally refreshing for me to read. 

Having known a few Mormon's and several Seventh-Day Adventists, I was always lucky not to be spit on by them in their rabid attempts to save me from my idol worshiping paganized Mary church (A.K.A. Christ's Holy Catholic Church) that was damning my soul. (Yes, they actually told me things like that and worse.) 

So reading a story about Catholics, Mormons and SDA people coming together to help the less fortunate was really quite nice.😇

"Working across faiths, three churches shift 200 beds for homeless families" - By Rachel Alexander

Quote: What happens when a Mormon, a Catholic and a Seventh-day Adventist walk into an apartment complex?
On Thursday, the answer was: Something good.
Members of the three churches did some heavy lifting Thursday evening, moving 200 bed frames and mattresses into a new 50-unit apartment building for homeless families in Spokane Valley.
Teenagers, retirees and plenty in between marched lines of boxes and rolled-up mattresses into apartments as coordinators with clipboards managed the chaos and tracked the flow of furniture.
The project started when Cheloye Penwell, community service director for the Spokane Valley Stake of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, called Catholic Charities in early June asking how they could help with that group’s latest effort to build houses for homeless people.
The project, Pope Francis Haven, finished construction earlier in the summer and Catholic Charities was readying units for families to move in.
“I said, here’s what we don’t have. We don’t have mattresses and we don’t have bed frames,” said Monique Kolonko, Catholic Charities’ executive vice president of stabilization and housing.
Penwell decided she’d take care of it. The local stake applied for $50,200 through the church’s humanitarian fund in Salt Lake City. She got word the request had been approved one week ago, and found out the following day that the truck would be delivering the goods July 20.[clipped] 

Full article: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2017/jul/20/working-across-faiths-three-churches-shift-200-bed/#/0

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What stories caught your eye or got your goat this week? Please share them in the comments area below or send me an email! I'd love to hear about them.

God bless! 


In Christ, 

Julie @ Connecticut Catholic Corner 


links: 

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/upfront/2017/07/pope-francis-real-reformer-170721103254408.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2017/07/19/harry-potter-and-the-sacred-text-podcast-draws-non-believers-who-find-meaning-in-magical-fiction/?tid=sm_tw&utm_term=.8a45bef53f96

http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2017/jul/20/working-across-faiths-three-churches-shift-200-bed/#/0