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Is it a sin to look at Obnoxiously Pious in Lent?

I have just added this to the sidebar, check it out.
It seems to be phantasia of the type of thing that brings a smile to most Catholics, something worthwhile to look at during Lent, but not Fridays of course. Some of you, it will outrage, especially if you look at the links that are included.
I know nothing about the author, but I think he or she should get a job at Ecclsedon Square, now.
Yes, and I want the name "Obnoxiously Pious" to appear somewhere on this blog.
The style is whimsical, unlike most blogs.

Who is on

This is the break down of the last hundred people to log on today, America sleeps, but China is beginning to wake up, I must put up a bit more on the persecution of the Church there and the culture of death. I think it is important they get news of the Holy Father. There are more than the average number of Germans, and Spaniards for some reason seem to be logging on regularly nowadays. In Italy, well I know someone from the CDF occassionally logs, just to check, I am not sure if it is me or the English scene.

I would love to hear from foreign visitors in comments.

Why not just sign in and say "How do you do", if you are from the US, that's "Hi", and tell us where you are from and what you do.

Confession is important

Sac. Car.

In paragraph 20, and again in paragraph 55, Benedict XVI cautions against going to communion all the time, automatically, as if “the mere fact of their being present in church during the liturgy gives them a right or even an obligation to approach the table of the Eucharist.” One reason for this “superficial approach,” he writes, is the widespread loss of the sense of sin. In order to go to communion, one must be “in a state of grace.” In the following paragraph, the pope encourages the faithful to go to confession frequently. And he warns that individual confession must be the ordinary form, “limiting the practice of general absolution exclusively to the cases permitted.”

and he is smoking too! no it is not me!

Comment from Damian Thompson on this Blog

This can be found on Ecclesdon Square on Pope:no comment

Damian Thompson said...
I have just posted an update on this shocking story to my Telegraph blog. The Catholic Herald has now complained to the relevant Pontifical Commission about the English bishops' negligence. http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/ukcorrespondents/holysmoke/march07/silence.htm
Thank you for your kind comments, Father.
15/3/07 12:28 PM

This is what appears on his site

Shameful silencing of the Pope
This was the week that the leadership of the Catholic Church in England and Wales disgraced itself. Pope Benedict XVI issued one of the most significant documents written by a pontiff for many years – and the English bishops’ “communications network” effectively killed the story.
The Pope's pronouncement has not been embraced
Real anger is building up in the parishes over the bishops’ behaviour, which led to the document – Sacramentum Caritatis - a historic, 60-page statement on the Eucharist and the Liturgy – receiving minimal coverage in most secular newspapers.
The Pope’s pronouncement, an Apostolic Exhortation, was a huge story for my newspaper, The Catholic Herald, which will publish full coverage of the document this weekend.
I can’t tell you how infuriating – and downright weird – it was to discover that our bishops just weren’t interested in talking to us about its contents.
So, yesterday, we took an unusual step. The Catholic Herald lodged a formal complaint with the Vatican’s worldwide head of communications, Archbishop John Foley, Prefect of the Pontifical Commission for Social Communication.
Why did the Bishops of England and Wales keep silent? Inevitably, conspiracy theories are already forming, suggesting that they didn’t like the contents of the document. And I’m sure that some of them didn’t.
Pope Benedict calls for all new priests to be trained to say the new rite of Mass in Latin – he has yet to pronounce on the future of the Old Rite – and for a return to Gregorian chant. He also seems to shut the door on the prospect of married priests.
Not the sort of thing that the English Church’s right-on employees like to promulgate.
But those are side issues. The real point of Sacramentum Caritatis (Sacrament of Love) was its fabulously lucid and intellectually daring synthesis of Catholic teaching on the centre of the Church’s life – the Eucharist, or Holy Communion.
Reading the exhortation, I was awestruck by the quality of Benedict’s thinking: this is the most intellectually gifted pope for centuries. He spent months working on the document.
Today, two days late, the English and Welsh bishops’ website finally posted THREE WHOLE PARAGRAPHS on the subject. The Irish bishops, in contrast, issued a long and comprehensive response, setting out all the key points, on the day of publication.
So far as I am aware, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, Archbishop of Westminster, has yet to say a word publicly about Pope Benedict’s exhortation. It is inconceivable that his predecessor, Cardinal Basil Hume, would have been guilty of such an omission.

If you can be bothered to read the piece on the Bishop's website it really does show a very lack lustre approach, I support Damian in his complaint.

This is appalling. This is it, in all its glory:

The Sacrament of Love
Pope Benedict XVI's first apostolic exhortation, Sacramentum Caritatis - The Sacrament of Love, has just been published.
This exhortation is the Holy Father's reflection on the work that took place during his recent Synod of Bishops on the Eucharist. It picks up on the themes of love and charity that he began in his first
encyclical God Is Love.
The Sacrament of Love focuses on the relationship
between the Eucharist, the Trinity, the sacraments, and the Mass. The Holy Father highlights the social implications of the Eucharist and firmly connects it with the Church's social teaching.

Sacramentum Caritatis and Continuity

Sandro Magister has a reasonable summary of Sacramentum Caritatis in his column on Chiesa. I have actually printed off a few copies for interested parishioners.

He introduces by saying, "A Christian cannot live without the Eucharist, Benedict XVI writes. In it, “the Lord truly becomes food for us, to satisfy our hunger for truth and freedom.” With the duty that stems from this, and in the political realm as well: to give “public witness to our faith”

He says that you should read the document itself, I agree. I must say the more I read it the more fruit I glean from it and the more it shows the delightfully subtly of the Holy Father's mind. Reading him is rather like listening to Mozart or better Bach, it is pleasurable the first time, and becomes more and more profound as one goes over it again and again.

It is good that the teaching of the past 40 years has been taken by the Holy Father and made his own. He has continually spoken of the "hermeneutic of continuity", the last thing he wants is to be seen as breaking with past. His teaching on the Church is that it is united with Christ, as a continuum through all time, with the Apostles, the First Millennium, the Middle Ages and the immediate past, and indeed the future.

The much rumoured Motu Proprio has been seen by many as God's Rottweiler turning the clock back, that is foolish. He doesn't see the Church as a museum but as the "Temple of the Holy Spirit", a living thing continually being built up on the foundations established by God, its history, its whole history has been guided by God, who having been with it from the beginning, will be with it until the end of time. For him organic development of the Liturgy is vital. Vital too, that we are connected to all that has gone before. We cannot imagine, as many did after the Council that somehow the Church's (Pol Pot style) Year Zero had occurred some time in the 60s, therefore the music, the art, the style and yes, even the Rites of previous ages are important, to loose sight of what has been our past, would be a denial of God's action through all time and a misunderstanding of the nature of the Church and of the nature of God's dealings with humanity.

Audience: St Ignatius of Antioch

Pope: Ignatius of Antioch, the irrepressible desire of Christians for UnityBenedict XVI dedicates the general audience to the figure of the martyr, “doctor of unity”. In his city of Antioch, Christ’s disciples were first called Christians and he was the first to refer to the Church as “Catholic”
Vatican City (AsiaNews) – A strong urge within the Church and believers, their “intense desire for union” was the central theme of today’s general audience, in which Benedict XVI reflected on the figure of St Ignatius, “Doctor of unity”. Following on from his example the Pope “beseeched the Lord for the grace of unity”.

The audience returned to St Peter’s Square, where a multitude of coloured caps marked the sunny spring day. Over 30 thousand people were present applauding the Pope at great length as he made his way around the square to greet them before beginning his weekly address, on board his white open top car.

Continuing his reflections on the lives of the figures of the early Church, Benedict XVI dedicated his catechesis to St Ignatius of Antioch. The Pope noted that he was the third bishop of Antioch – the first bishop was Peter – from 70 to 107 the date of his martyrdom.

The was a flowering Christian Community in that great metropolis of the Empire, and it was there that the disciples were first called Christians. “While travelling to Rome to face martyrdom”, he wrote the seven letters to different Churches, in which “he defines Christian life as an imitation of the divine”. “In the towns where he stopped along the way he strengthened the Churches”, “urging believers to be on their guard against emerging heresies, to remain faithful to the apostolic tradition, and to maintain ecclesial harmony and co-operation”.

“St. Ignatius is called the ‘doctor of unity’” : “unity in God, unity in Christ, unity of the Church and unity among believers”, “Among the Fathers of the Church, Ignatius is renowned for his intense desire for union with Christ,”. He even expresses when pleading that his martyrdom “come quickly in order to be with Jesus. Let me imitate the passion of my Lord”. “His intense desire for union with Christ, taught that unity is a prerogative of God, and so for Christians is an imitation of the divine”. But there is a vision of unity in the Church too, he insists on communion among believers and with their Bishops. “Such harmony precludes any sense of opposition between ecclesial roles”.

Benedict XVI underlined how in the very language used by Ignatius terms linked to unity can be found: “the guitar cords, the unity of voices in a choir, the harmony of instruments”. But there is also the concept of unity between communion and mission.

The Pope recalled that we also owe Ignatius respect for being the first to attribute the term “Catholic” that is “Universal” to the Church. And he was also convinced that the Roman Christian Community “exercises a type of primacy in love and presides over charity”.