In one sense it is always up to the conscience, but you're supposed to know that, for instance, that there are some sins that keep you from receiving communion until/unless they are confessed. If someone committed a murder on the way to Mass he shouldn't receive communion, even if his conscience tells him the guy deserved it.

The mortal-venial distinction can get kind of legalistic but it's pretty important.

Stu, reception of the Eucharist is up to the individual's conscience, but the teaching about right and wrong cannot change. Also, venial sins don't prevent us receiving, only mortal.

Mac, Just got word that Fr. Borbridge died this morning at 2:30. He had been retired out to Grand Coteau, Louisiana where I visited him several times in the past three years. When I tried to see him in December he was in an Alzheimer's facility, so I was unable to. May he rest in peace with the Lord.

Replying to comments is more fun than working!

Thanks for the clarification, Louise!

I don't mean to sound snarky about rules of the Church everyone. Thanks for putting up with me.

Cross-posted. Don't worry Stu, we love you.:-)

What I mean about "cafeteria Catholic": it was so often used from the "conservative" side in a way that made it sound like you could not ever disagree with the pope about anything and still consider yourself a Catholic in good standing. It was usually way too broad a brush. I always thought, besides the fact that it wasn't always fair, that it might come back to bite some of the people who used it, because we were not always going to have a pope they agreed with on everything. I think that's happened now.

Too big a question to answer while I'm supposed to be working, but remember how, in Brideshead Revisited, Julia's younger sister made Julia's husband Rex Mottram look ridiculous.

We love you, too, Louise. :-) I know what you think about Francis. I hope you're wrong.

But, Stu--no, no, no! Whatever "conservatives" may have said over the past 30 years or so, Catholics are most definitely not "supposed to just take as gospel what Francis says due to his being God's representative here on earth." The pope is the servant, not the master, of the faith. His doctrinal authority is very limited. If he wakes up one morning and decides, say, to embrace the Anglican understanding of the Eucharist, we would not be obliged to say "Oh, ok, that's what we believe now, too."

Dante places several popes in hell.

It's true that the internet is available in most libraries here, and in my local library specifically. I think I could stay off it there, though, but would be distracted by other things.

It's not so much when I'm composing that I have the problem, especially when the weather was warm. I took a folding chair and a pad and pen and sat by the bay. That worked pretty well, even though I also had my phone with me, in case my part-time employer had an emergency. For the most part I was able to leave the phone alone. When the weather turned cooler and I had to stay inside it was worse, even though I could work somewhere well away from the computer. But I did manage to get a fair amount done. It was when I got to this point, typing and revising, and *had* to be at the computer, that it started getting out of control--when all it takes is a couple of mouse clicks.

From a sympathetic long time lurker (and friend of Craig's), I've found the 'Freedom' app pretty helpful at avoiding the internet as distraction over the years. Set it for x number of minutes and it stops you from surfing (or surfing specific sites) unless you restart your computer. Creates just enough of a delay for me.

What I mean about "cafeteria Catholic": it was so often used from the "conservative" side in a way that made it sound like you could not ever disagree with the pope about anything and still consider yourself a Catholic in good standing.

I first heard the term about 30 years ago uttered by a bishop in Southern California. He was describing a pro-abortion politician (whose name might have been something like 'Lucy Killea'). I don't think Catholic politicians of that ilk merit delicate terminology. The 'cafeteria Catholic' is an element among the laity who generally aren't doing much systematic thinking at all about matters religious (in my experience). With most of the church-o-cracy, you're looking at a different phenomenon (which Amy Welborn characterized in part as 'bored out of their minds careerism').

It would be cheaper to drop your internet service altogether.

Hey, I wasn't throwing it at you folks, I was describing my own shortcomings! Unless I am not one of the progressives you are referring to. I never see too many people hanging back when it becomes time for communion, but I suspect that my particular parish are all in full compliance!

I suspect it's more or less always been the case that the majority of lay Catholics don't do much systematic thinking about matters religious. Most people don't do much of it about anything. That doesn't mean they're stupid, but they just don't tend to look at things that way.

They immersed themselves in a Catholic (or at least, generically Christian) culture. You don't have to do much systematic thinking to come to a realization that the legal profession, corporate HR, and academe are force-feeding you something rather at a variance with the catechism. However, that's thinking the professional class numbskulls who enrolled their children in Charlotte Catholic High School are refusing to do.

Thanks Maclin. :)

Indeed it does. That was a good comment from you on one of those posts, about the school's financial viability possibly being dependent on the objecting parents. That's a fundamental dilemma facing a lot of Catholic institutions that might wish to be faithful.

:-)

Somebody was riffing on that very annoying rhetorical tactic and the shower head one was my favorite.

I might have wondered except that it was in the comments on someone's impassioned post about the trashing of the pro-life movement for being insufficiently active about other issues, or being on the "wrong" side of them. Though as I've said before I think on the whole "pro-life" is in some ways an unfortunate name for the movement, however accurate it is, because it practically invites that kind of attack.

Thanks, Janet. Went to Mass this morning so got to hear my parish priest talk for longer than you might think about Peter, and many other popes. It made for a nice time of prayer.

Date of birth comes to mind.

Well, I wasn't absolutely sure about that. It was done on the spur of the moment.

What made me think about that at all was that someone dropped off old (1894) KJV Bible. He said he didn't want to throw it away, so he brought it here. There were names and dates i the Bible and the owner was born in 1854, which is really a lot closer to the end of the Civil War than my birth date.

AMDG

I haven't had a chance to look through it. It's falling apart.

AMDG

About the pope, by the way, criticism of: I tried to make it clear, but in case I didn't, I'm not appropriating to myself the right to judge the doctrinal question. I'm criticizing the way he's handling it. And I'll admit that the *way* he's doing it gives me reason to be concerned about *what* he's doing. But I'm not making any definite pronouncement on it.

But when a pope says something that has nothing to do with the faith, and is plainly wrong as a matter of simple fact, I don't feel so constrained. I'm thinking of his saying the other day that "There is no such thing as Islamic terrorism." Presumably he was making the valid and uncontroversial point that most Muslims are not terrorists, but...well, frankly it made me think of Trump, and the way you have to look sometimes for the valid point behind the absurd way it's made.

I find the inscriptions in books to be very deeply moving.

I'm so delighted to hear you say that. I wondered if it was just me.

Me too, Grumpy. There was one I came across just within the past month or two but I can't remember which book it was.

Janet,
Yes, and that they tend to foment chaos in general. Plus, Pope Francis is prone to be verbally less than gentle with people he doesn't think much of--although it is usually not individual, but groups that he scolds and embarrasses.

Hey, be patient, I have many commitments: last night I had to watch a second episode of Twin Peaks when I would otherwise have been working up the album post.

Yes, and more immediately, I got Mark Frost's Secret History of Twin Peaks for Christmas, and when I'd gotten a couple of chapters in I decided I really needed to see the series again.

What Robert says above is pretty much what I meant about the Francis-Trump similarity, too.

Or in my case, a stepfather...

"...at the expense of the institutions they lead.." Yes, that's a good insight.

The Schmitz piece is quite interesting. I agree with a great deal of it, not 100% of course. I was particularly struck by this:

'This may be because, as the German writer Martin Mosebach has observed, Francis presents himself as a “dynamic, unconventional, courageous pope with a golden heart” in contrast to a church that is a “crusty, dead, faithless, rigid machine.” Why go to church? Better to follow the pope on Twitter.'

I've wondered about this all along, ever since he became something of a darling to secular liberals, which of course was pretty quick. Is he likely to cause people outside the Church to think "Hmm, maybe there's something to this Catholic business after all", or "Well, good, maybe they're beginning to come around to the right way of looking at things."