Recta Ratio

"They" are saying between one and two feet of snow, maybe more starting this evening. Snow could fall at a rate of 2-3 inches per hour for hours on end, with lightning. And the temps are not going to let up much. it is a frigid 11 degrees now, and it will not get better tomorrow.

Panic shopping now in progress all over Greater Boston: gotta get those ten loaves of bread and fifty batteries as the stores might never have them again.

If I'm not on line for the next couple of days, I'm hunkered down and snowbound. I think I'll try to catch Saturday evening Mass at a chapel, as I might not make Latin Low Mass at noon.

In the traditional Latin Rite, tonight at evening prayer (Compline) the Alleluia is said for the last time before the Easter Vigil Mass, as we begin the pre-Lenten period of penance. The liturgical color for the next three weeks will be purple, the same as for most of Lent. The Gloria in Excelsis is also omitted.

At Compline (or in some places Vespers) the Alleluia Dulce Carmen Vox is sung, saying goodbye to the Alleluia, and acknowledging that we are unworthy to sing it because of our sinfulness.

We do not now deserve
To sing the Alleluia forever;
Guilt forces us
To dismiss you, O Alleluia.
For the time approaches in which
We must weep for our sins.

This period is one designed to ease us into the austerities of Lent. We are reminded to pray, abstain and fast, look to our Lenten practices, seek reconciliation of personal estrangements, make sacramental confession, and do good works. This way, Ash Wednesday is not such a severe shock.

1/24 Update: John at The Inn At the End of the World has more on the goodbye to Alleluia.

I went to an early Mass at the chapel this weekend, and the Alleluia was still with us in the modern rite, and will be until Ash Wednesday.

A Penitent Blogger, run by Penitens, has been around for a while, but this is the first time I have seen it.

I like the title and concept. It is one I could have come up with.

The Thing Is.

Looks like it gets the GTF seal of approval.

The efficiency and reliability of the Air Marshals' Service's Mission Operations Center does not sound very good.

Good discussion on why liturgical dance is not appropriate in the Latin Rite as practiced in the US, Canada, and Europe. Backed up with authority from Cardinal Arinze.

And Women For Faith and Family announces an essay contest for students ages 12-21. The essays must be on matters of Catholic faith and morals. You have to scroll down to find the relevant item at this link.

We don't get to check out the Readers' Forum this month.

But the weathermen are not counting on it. Very cold again in Boston, with windchills well below zero.

This morning, I was walking with a heavy hood on, and my scarf fastened across the base of the hood. Problem was, my breath was trapped behind my glasses, steaming them up frequently, and the steam frosted over almost instantly. And I'm far too near-sighted to wander around the streets without my glasses.

Installment 57 of the joys of winter in New England: frost blindness.

Oh, I forgot the good news. It is going to warm up tomorrow evening, just enough for a substantial snowstorm. It can't snow much when it is this cold.

The county electoral map, with its glorious sea of red counties, is forcing the sidebar down past the blog text. I can't find a smaller jpeg version of the same map, that is as clear.

So the problem will persist for another 6 days, until the map passes into the archives, unless I post another large jpeg in the meantime (no promises).

Just realize that in order to see my extraordinary collection of links (some 320 or so at last count), the picture of Saint Dominic by Bl. Fra Angelico, the Boston Accuweather do-hickey, my archives, and the neat new, "Ite, Missa Est" illustration I've added to the bottom of the page, you have to scroll down past the last (first, actually, as blogs read from the bottom up) blog text for the week.

Learn more about this popular Roman martyr here.

The full text is here.

This was very much a wartime speech, one light on domestic matters, and setting a high standard for a new democratic international order, an order worth fighting for. That is what a wartime president needs to do.

Did it savor too much of Woodrow Wilson? Maybe. But dissect some of Franklin Roosevelt's wartime pep talks, and you will find much the same. I think this idealistic speech was what the country needed.

We are not just fighting for our lives, though of course we are doing that, and advancing that cause with every dead armed Moslem fanatic, we are also fighting for the benefit of others around the world, the people oppressed by the armed fantatics. In protecting ourselves, we are advancing their freedom. And that is a noble and worthy goal.

Peggy Noonan has a different take. But I think she is forgetting the tremendous advance of freedom brought about by the President she served so well, President Reagan.

Show me a non-democratic and oppressive government in Latin America today. The Sandinistas? Mouldering in the dung heap of history. Grenada? Ditto. Argentina? No longer a military government, or a Peronist dictatorship. El Salvador? Peaceful and democratic.

Eastern Europe? East Germany has been integrated into a democratic Federal Republic. Both halves of the former Czechoslovakia are democracies. Ditto Poland, Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the Ukraine, Byelorussia, and even old Russia itself.

That such blessings can come to the inhabitants of Iran, Syria, Libya, Cuba, and North Korea is not just possible, but likely, given an American government consistently pushing for it. We can do many things (though of course not all things). Our influence is vast, vaster than many realize.

Afghanistan, scene of more than 20 years of war and oppression, has just had a fair and democratic election. Arch-terrorist Arafat is dead of some loathesome disease, giving the Palestinians a chance for peaceful development. The Iraqi elections may be very hard to secure, and may be bloody. But they are a chance worth taking.

Freedom is again on the march, as it was in the 1980s. Tyranny is holding onto its last victims with a strong hold, but that hold can be broken. And the United States can break it, if it sets its mind to it. September 11th made us the de facto world's policeman. Our stunning victories in Afghanistan and Iraq have proven that we have the capacity for that role, even while utilizing only a tiny fraction of our military/industrial/technological potential (all will have noted the complete absence of anything like a wartime mobilization in the last 3 years). President Bush has the will, like President Reagan before him.

I would not be surprised to see tremendous advances in human freedom in several countries now absolute black tyrannies in the next four years, even if we have to drag the rest of the world, carping and clucking, along with us.

The FBI is now seeking information on a total of 13 Chinese nationals, 2 Iraqis, and 1 person of unknown citizenship.

The information coming out is divided on whether the objective was to launch a dirty bomb, or attack an LNG tanker or onshore tank.

In fact, officials describe the entire story as sketchy. So don't worry too much, but just be aware.

God bless President Bush as he begins his second term today, and God bless the USA!

I thought our blue county friends could use a little reminder of the magnitude of their defeat.

Yep, they lost that big, folks. You'll notice that even the so-called blue states, except in New England and such-like liberal cesspools, have a lot of red counties.

Though I would ask a favor for 2006 and 2008. Can't the national media make the socialist Democrats the red states, and the true-blue Republicans the blue states, as they were, if I am recalling correctly, back in the 1980s?

Basically, the Democrat Party is the plaything of 4 constituencies:
1) Blacks. The black vote will go to a Democrat candidate by at least 85% every time, probably even if the Republicans have prominent black Americans like J.C. Watts or Charles Barkley strongly endorsing their ticket. Without the black vote, that map would be even redder to a startling degree.
2) Organized Labor. The unions, especially the government employees' unions, and especially the teachers' unions own the Democrat Party. They make up the rank and file Democrat convention-goer. But the union voter only votes Democrat by 65-70% at most. The number of union members is strinking in proportion to the electorate, and their power is, thank heavens, failing.
3) Feminists/Abortion Advocates. The other core activist group are the vocal, militant pro-abortion folks. If, as Rush Limbaugh has long said, "Feminism is a religion, and abortion is its only sacrament," then you can understand why it is so hard to find pro-lifers in a party dominated by this interest group.
4) Gay Rights Activists. With the liberal kulturkampf pushing for gay marriage (and then affirmative action for homosexuals) this group is more and more taking its place firmly in the Democrat Party, regardless of what its members think about economic and national security issues. As with Andrew Sullivan, the preferences of Mr. Happy dictate the political choices of the rest of the body. Fortunately for the Republicans, this group's increasing identification with the Democrat Party will be polarizing, forcing people like rank-and-file black and union voters to think about a GOP ballot more and more.

The next four years will be interesting. The pundits will declare President Bush a lame duck as of this afternoon. Don't you believe it.

But the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has approved the nomination of the eminently qualified Dr. Rice to be Secretary of State, on this day before the inauguration.

I've been noticing around the internet someteasers of a Condi v. Hillary race in 2008. I doubt it. Hillary may get the Democrat nomination (though as the most hated woman in the US, that may be difficult against the opposition of Kerry and Gore, both of whom are smarting over the lukewarm support the Clintons gave them, as they tried to clear the decks for Hillary! '08 (TM).

And the Republicans tend not to nominate people who have no experience in elective office (Condi has never been elected to any public office).

My money still says the GOP ticket in '08 will be Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney, two incumbent governors with all the fundraising advantages that brings (as incumbent governors have access to hoards of cash from businesses who do contract work from their states).

Just look at the last 25 years: Carter in '76, Reagan in '80 and '84, Clinton in '92 and '96, and Bush in '00 and '04: all governors or former governors.

Ho Chi Dean? A governor, yes, but a governor of a small state, clearly no match fundraising-wise for the Heinz Ketchup fortune.

The only exception has been GHW Bush,and his election can been seen as the electorate's effort to give Ronald Reagan a third term.

While we are on the topic of presidential politics, I don't think anything will comeof the little boomlet to amend the Constitution to allow naturalized citizens to serve as President. You can expect conservative Republicans to block that, so that the socially liberal governor of California does not take the GOP nomination by storm. And it won't have anything to do with the cartoon of the other day (Mallard Filmore?, I've forgotten) concerning a President Kissinger. Kissinger is over 80 for pete's sake! It is someone else with a Germanic accent.

And is taking no prisoners.

"[Retired Springfield] Bishop [Daniel] Ryan ... just had a domestic disturbance call at his home this summer, where he kicked his former boyfriend because he caught him with another man," said Stephen Brady.

You go, guys!

I've added images in the Incorruptibles and Relics album,

including this one of a Relic of the True Cross brought to Maryland in 1634 by an English Jesuit. Father Andrew White, SJ, a missionary among the Indians, wore the relic around his neck on a chain.

Virginia Mayo, an actress from the 1940s and 1950s died at the age of 84. I remember her from White Heat and as Hornblower's love interest in Captain Horatio Hornblower. Requiescat in pace.

Two penguins were checking out Back Bay condos as new digs this morning. Emerson College's newest dorm is being built from ice blocks. The swan pond at the Public Garden has many ducksicles sticking out of the ice. And the new UPS driver is a polar bear (he is a good driver, but you don't want to cut him off in traffic, or he'll eat you).

The penguins and polar bear felt right at home in the roughly zero degrees of warmth Boston was "enjoying" early today. Of course the wind chill was well below zero.

I just read a great, brief article over at Catholic Exchange by Marcellino D'Ambrosio on the topic of Jesus as Passover Lamb. I had not made that connection before in quite this way.

A great thanks to Father Sistare at Not So Quiet Catholic Corner for the link! I also liked the jpeg Father used, and will be searching for it for Recta Ratio: The Yahoo Group.

But Saturday is the anniversary of the US Supreme Court's creation of a "constitutional right" to murder unborn babies.

I know that St. Francis Chapel is planning a special Holy Hour that day. Many other parishes, chapels, shrines, or orders are also planning special liturgies or ativities to mark this ongoing tragedy which claims almost a million and a half American lives each year.

Just a short blog entry covering a number of topics.

I guess the Colts were not, indeed, quite all that. Next up, the Steelers.

Our 4-8 inches of snow fizzled to an inch, though, since it is a "holiday" weekend, snow and ice removal everywhere is subpar. The North Shore got more snow than Boston did.

But now it is freezing cold. The high for today and tomorrow is probably going to be under 20 degrees, with lows in the single digits, and windchills very far below that.

The Shanley trial begins this week, and I wonder, with 3 of the 4 identified victims refusing to testify, whether they have enough evidence to convict this guy. I have little doubt that he is, in fact, if not in law, guilty. But proving it is another thing, I fear.

As I said, today is a "holiday." It has to be the lamest excuse for a holiday on the entire official calendar. It is just a day off for school kids and government workers.

Oh, and by the way, the WORLD SERIES CHAMPION BOSTON RED SOX begin Spring training in about a month.

Enjoy the day off, if you have one. God willing and the creek don't rise, I'll have more tomorrow.

OK. I do everything else on the maxim, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." But I did want to get 5 images across the top of the page.

At least on the browser I happen to be using at the moment, all five fit across the top in a single row, which does not push the Masthead down too far.

I suppose that whether you see the images in one row, or two, will depend on your browser, and maybe on your screen size.

Today at 4:30.

We've been treated to fairly mild temps and bare ground for a few days (though a lot of rain did fall). Now it is colder again, and going to snow tonight and tomorrow. They "experts" expect 4-8 inches.

Meanwhile, I've got a chest cold that has just about taken out my voice.

I like this list that Dom Bettinelli offers via Crisis. A good discussion going on, too.

Hyperlink thingee not working, so here is the link so that you can cut and paste it:
http://bettnet.dyndns.org/blog/comments.php?id=4462_0_1_0_C

Even though I knew Lent started early this year, the fact that next Sunday is Septuagesima Sunday was a shock.

By the way, I updated my link for the Traditional Calendar of Saints' Days, which is courtesy of the Latin Mass Society (UK).