Blood Moon or a Super Blue-Blood Moon: What Do It Portend?

“The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood , before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord” Acts of the Apostles 2-20 

See that button-like light just southwest of my chimney?  That's a Super Blue Blood Moon!

I took that on my way to St. John Fisher Catholic Church at around 6:10 AM.  Today is the feast of St. John Bosco, the patron saint of Catholic schools.  St. John Bosco has alot of work cut out for him these days, as the Archdiocese is more about skyscrapper development in Streeterville than in providing little kids with a foundation in the faith of our fathers. Cardinal Blaze " The Closer" Cupich is more concerned with what Carol Marin thinks of him than the parishioners of Immaculate Conception in Crestwood.

Moons come and go and so do schools that helped build the character of generations of Chicagoans.
End of the World?  Over my dead body, or at least until my aromatic meatloaf *comes out of the oven.

Anyway, if the Final Day was underway with full HD Sound and Effects, people would be tuning in to The View, or Ellen to find out exactly why Melania was wearing white at the State of the Union.

We have had many blood moons, or as they used to say in Cleveland before the Old Chief got tomahawked by bed-wetters, " Many Moons!"

God raised up Patriarchs, Judges, Prohpets and Kings and told them exactly what was expected of us.   We did whatever the hell we felt like, until the shit his the fan and Lot's wife went all salty; then we got right with the Almighty, until things got soft again and then ignored He Is Who Am - all three of Him.

We don't listen, unless it is on cable news.

We don't care, until Cardinal Closer shutters all of the schools.

Then what?


The Blood Moon was beautiful.

Now, about that meatloaf: Hickey's Herbed Meatloaf (lifted from the NYT's Recipe with my variations):

1      pound         ground beef
      1/2  pound         ground veal
      1/2  pound         ground pork
    2                    eggs
      1/2  cup           fine Italian bread crumbs
      3/4  cup           chopped parsley
      1/4  cup           finely chopped chives
    3      Tablespoons   Fresh basil
      1/4  cup           finely chopped green pepper
    1 1/2  teaspoons     salt
      1/2  teaspoon      freshly ground black pepper
                     

 Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Combine all ingredients
    Shape the mixture into a Rugby Ball
 Place the loaf on Tin Foil  pie plate.
 Top the loaf with  Red Onion and 6 whole garlic pods.  Bake one and one-half hours.   Chill over night.  Slice and serve on baby spinach leaves with horseradish on good pumpernickle bread.

  

Life is Not a Seamless Garment -Book of Maccabees e.g.

 

 First Maccabees 1:10-15; 41-4310 From these there grew a wicked offshoot, Antiochus Epiphanes son of King Antiochus; once a hostage in Rome, he became king in the 107th year of the kingdom of the Greeks.11 It was then that there emerged from Israel a set of renegades who led many people astray. 'Come,' they said, 'let us ally ourselves with the gentiles surrounding us, for since we separated ourselves from them many misfortunes have overtaken us.'12 This proposal proved acceptable,13 and a number of the people eagerly approached the king, who authorised them to practise the gentiles' observances.14 So they built a gymnasium in Jerusalem, such as the gentiles have,15 disguised their circumcision, and abandoned the holy covenant, submitting to gentile rule as willing slaves of impiety.  . . .41 The king then issued a proclamation to his whole kingdom that all were to become a single people, each nation renouncing its particular customs.42 All the gentiles conformed to the king's decree,43 and many Israelites chose to accept his religion, sacrificing to idols and profaning the Sabbath.

 “We should be no less appalled by the indifference toward the thousands of people who die daily for lack of decent medical care; who are denied rights by a broken immigration system and by racism; who suffer in hunger, joblessness and want; who pay the price of violence in gun-saturated neighbourhoods; or who are executed by the state in the name of justice.” - Blase Cardinal Cupich, Archbishop of Chicago

Cardinal Cupich is very much like most Progressive Cook County Democrats ( Claypool, Preckwinkle, Quigley & etc), because he nails appointed positions, but just can't seem to get enough votes.  Recently Chicago's Archbishop, elevated by Pope Francis I and destined to be long associated with his pontificate, suffered a loss in an election of the National Conference of Bishops, to Archbishop Joseph Naumann:

Archbishop Joseph Naumann, by contrast, has argued that “issues that involve intrinsic evils – direct attacks on human life, abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, or direct attacks on the institution of the family (for example, a redefinition of marriage to equate with same-sex unions or cohabitation) – must assume a moral priority. While all issues are important, all are not equally important from a moral analysis.”
Some observers, such as Christopher white(sic) of Crux, had framed the Cupich-Naumann vote in advance as a “referendum on both the conference’s approach to pro-life policies and Pope Francis”.
However, the editor of the Catholic News Agency, JD Flynn, tweeted after the vote: “CNA has talked with bishops who emphasis this is not a referendum on Francis. Bishops voting for both candidates told me it was only about trying to discern the best fit.” Catholic Herald

Today, at St. John  Fisher, Ray the Lector read the wonderful passage from the Book of Maccabees posted above and it got me to thinking about this vote and the state of goofy culture.

Going along to get along has won far too many elections for people who have no business crafting laws, let alone setting the table for human actions - especially with regard to moral and social justice issues. Seamless garments - one size fits all - have their  purposes, I suppose, but they do not  the necessarily present like a tightly tailored suit of ethical cloth.

Like this one from Deuteronomy

Learn Then that, I , I alone am God,
and there is no god besides me.
It is I who bring both death and life

Got it.

That will not play well on Chicago Tonight and WTTW, in general, but it just might get more cars in the parking lots of St. Cajetan, St. John Fisher and other parishes on a Sunday.

St. Odilo's 9:30 AM Mass was parked yesterday.  Just saying. 

Cardinal Blase Cupich - Exorcise Guns, Not Evil.

Guns kill people in the same way that pencils flunk exams.

The news media's most beloved Catholic leader, is Chicago Archbishop Cardinal Cupich.  Blase Cardinal Cupich is no Francis Cardinal George in that the media love Cupich's every utterance, teaching moment and close association with Cook County's political class, their operatives and their doctrines. The news media treated Cardinal George to an endless bed of nails.

Yesterday, Cardinal Cupich decried gun violence - not evil, but guns: assault rifles in particular.  Cardinal Cupich planted his crosier next to the banner of the Democratic Party in solidarity.

It’s not the first time that Cupich, a keen hunter and supporter of hunters’ rights, has called for tougher gun laws. But he was as pointed as he has been in his criticism of Republican politicians who toe the National Rifle Association’s line on gun control (President Donald Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan have offered their prayers after Sunday’s atrocity, but none has supported an assault weapons ban).
“When the hunting sport has human prey, we have to take action,” Cupich said.

I would venture to guess that more human prey have been 'taken down' in human history by the long bow, spears and swords than all of the quadruped beings shot by hunters combined. From the Battle of Muye in 1046 BC, through Marathon in 490 BC and beyond Agincourt, scores of thousands of human beings perished by the sword, lance and arrow. Deer, ducks and  pheasant are shot seasonally for the table. Human beings kill one another, because of human evil.

There was and continues to be some serious evil going on with our species.

Time was, churchmen would encourage prayer and changes of heart.  Francis of Assisi was soldier before he turned from Satan. St. Ignatius Loyola, a wounded veteran, did the same.

Evil in men's hearts compels them to take up sword, lance, bow and the monster in Texas's a Ruger AR-556 rifle.

Devin Kelley slaughtered 26 worshippers in a Texas church - A Ruger AR-556 rifle did not.  In fact a brave man with a Ruger AR-556 rifle returned fire on the monster and chased him away from his desire to kill more people.

I venture to say that Devin Kelley was one very evil son of a bitch:

• Kelley was convicted of fracturing his baby stepson's skull and assaulting his first wife, Tessa, in the incident at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico.

• He was confined for a year, given a bad conduct discharge and reduced in rank to E-1, or airman basic,  . . .  The military failed to enter the domestic violence case into a database that would have made it illegal for him to buy a gun, officials said.

• Records show his first wife divorced him in 2012 in New Mexico. . . .adding that she did not want to speak about him until she was interviewed by law enforcement.

• Kelley remarried in Texas in 2014. The status of that marriage was not clear, but authorities said there was a "domestic situation" with his in-laws.

This atheist preacher, Kelley, was going to kill worshipers  - and he did - with fire, flood, famine, or an AR-15. 

My Cardinal sees no evil at work here?  Cardinal Cupich sees an opportunity to 'get on the right side ' of the media and the elites who govern what is printed, presented and portrayed.  What troubles me, as a wildly flawed Catholic, is the oddness of the Cardinal's words on this evil event, “The time, however, for expressing sorrow and leaving it at that is over. It’s time to act. Let’s start with these high-powered weapons. Both state and federal law need to change to make these guns not available. We don’t need military weapons in our society. We’re not supposed to be at war with one another.” (emphases my own)

No, we are not. Guns do not go to war on us.  People do.

Things should never take on the qualities of a human being, created by God with a soul.  Human beings are blessed with free will, but an AR-556 is not.  A Ruger A-556, though banned in every Catholic parish in this Archdiocese along with every other ballistic discharging metal/composite tube, will never load its own magazine and make its own way into a Mosque, Synagogue, Basilica, Church, or Meeting House to do slaughter.  An evil human being will use a Ruger AR-556, a can a gasoline, ammonia and bleach, a machete, golf clubs, or a 24" tire iron to do what he wills.

Anthropomorphism is a mental exercise that gives human qualities to inanimate objects ( Demon Rum/Drug Abuse/Gun Violence & etc.) .  It can also help us understand God who is three Persons. It can also allow people to practice anthropomorphism in reverse and say, "It's not a human being/person, it's just a blob of tissue."  Pretend that there is such a thing as 'gun violence' and not criminal violence and we will watch the body count rise even higher. 

I was disappointed that my Cardinal did not demand a war on evil. That is something that my beloved Francis Cardinal George would have done.  He taught all of us that Satan was active in our world and that evil happens when we allow Satan to dictate our actions. No, Cardinal Blase Cupich knows that such a response would be scorned by the likes of Rahm Emanuel, E.J. Dionne, Michael Sneed, Michael Pfleger, Jim Acosta and Toni Preckwinkle.   

Rather, our society is free to continue to pretend that things control our lives.