My First Meme!

Shannon gave me my first meme. It's this bookish type one. Well...here I go!


1. One book that changed your life: Introduction to the Devout Life St Francis de Sales - See post I wrote on it for reasons. Keys of the Kingdom by A.J. Cronin had a huge impact on me as a kid as well. I think that it was this book that began my understand about what Priesthood really was.

2. One book that you've read more than once: One?! Um The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe CS Lewis -Also the first book I ever read.

3. One book you'd want on a desert island: Desert Islands for Dummies

4. One book that made you laugh: My Family and Other Animals Gerald Durrell - Who knew that natural science could be this good?

5. One book that made you cry: Seven Little Australians Ethel Turner - How DARE Ethel kill off Judy. I've never been able to get over it.

6. One book that you wish had been written: Hard one. Have been thinking about this one for ages. Will get back to you 'cause I want to post this before I leave work!

7. One book that you wish had never been written: Any Jane Austin sequels. Why set yourself up for failure?

8. One book you're currently reading: Return to Modesty Wendy Shalit - Very good read!

9. One book you've been meaning to read: Well I've been meaning to read Return to Modesty but I'm actually reading that now, so .... CS Lewis' Sci-fi Trilogy. Have been meaning to read them for AGES.

10. Seriously, all the people I know have been tagged so if you haven't been tagged by this one ... consider it done! Also if Meg ever gets herself organised into the blogsphere she's tagged too.

Now how absolutely fabulous is this??? I thought that I would work out how to post pictures AND put up one of my most recent favourite ones! I got a magnet of this picture as a present and now it is stuck up on my door at work.

Busy Busy Busy

Things have been so busy today and I haven't had time to post anything too substantial. Two pieces of exciting news though:

1. My oldest, and one of my most dearest friends, is coming down to Melbourne tonight for a week or so. I'm so damn excited. I haven't seen her for two years and both of us are really ordinary at keeping in touch and so therefore we have a multitude of topics to catch up on. I credit myself with helping her to find her brilliance in the world of Science (She is 23 and doing her Doctorate in some kind of Biological Chemistry thingy) by doing all sorts of experiments with her has we were growing up. One being some kind of celery, water, food colouring thing which we kind of forgot about, only to find it in a most disgusting decaying state. I blame this rotting celery experience for my complete and utter rejection of both this vegetable and science. I do digress.

2. I have a computer! I know. Primitive. But for the last nine months I have been computerless at home and it has been a sad existence. True, I don't have internet connection, but at least I can write things for this blog at home and bring it in to upload, instead of cramming it into my lunch hour or some other break. How joyous.

Well, I have broken my record for posts in a week, it's Friday, nearly the end of the working day, so I think I'll celebrate with a pint or two tonight! :)

Note to self...

Learn how to post pictures and whatnot!

Our Lady of Fatima

In Melbourne at the moment the "traveling" Our Lady of Fatima statue is visiting various parishes. I went along to the first of these parishes last night in St Fidelis,Moorland . It was a blockbuster! Car parking was difficult to say the least and then you really had to look hard for a spare inch or two or pew to squeeze yourself into! I don't know when I last heard a packed parish church say a Rosary. It's really quite an amazing sound, try it yourself! See if you can fill a church one day, just for fun. The confession line was busy and people kept on coming and coming! All the while there, at the front, was the really lovely statue solemnly gazing over proceedings. (Just a note to random visitors...no I don't believe that the statue is actually Mary.)


I have a personal devotion to this particular, "version" I suppose, of Our Lady. It captured my imagination when I was very young and it stuck. Perhaps this was helped along by my very devoted grandmother, who would tell us the story of when she was carried the statue when she was in her 20s, around the age I am now.

When I heard this was going to be on I decided to make sure I could get along to one of the nights. As wonderful as it was, it really was quite an old crowd that was there which really quite saddened me. Does this mean that in say ten years the Fatima message will pretty much be forgotten? In our climate of war and violence, is this a time to forget that in order for peace to be even a blip on the horizon, prayer and even sacrifice (oooo extreem concept I know) perhaps might be a way to go. Just a thought.

Mea Culpa ect...

Shannon has chastised me for not writing properly. For writing the way I talk and for general “word vomit” (a phrase he is very proud of coining). I know he is right. You can do a lot more in this world if you write out your ideas, premises and whatnot, with a certain finesse – read here “literary structure”.

For my lack of style at present, I blame the years and years I have had to write ordered and coherent essays. Sometimes I just want to vent…without the confines of structure and without having marks deducted from me because of the lack there of. This is what I have been doing here, on the odd occasion when I do actually DO blog. Childish, I know.

I really should practice my writing. I actually need to work on explaining what I think. Therefore, I will, for the main part, make sure that I write properly and avoid my stream of conscience (word vomit) style. As long as I can be forgiven for every now and again, having a rantish type post in which I let my inner Miss Monification think straight onto the blogpage and in which I can make up as many words as I like.

Mass Preferences

Something that has become an increasingly asked question around the Catholic traps is “What is your Mass Preference?”, "What kind of Mass do you go to?" or some other varient.

I have a problem with this. It really doesn’t sit all that comfortably with me. Why? I’m not overly sure. However, I’ll try and give some kind of reason.

Firstly you are talking about MASS here. You know, Christ, transubstantiating Himself into the form of bread and wine, the most incredible and wondrous mystery that we have been given by God. So when asking what is your Mass preference it can seem a little like they are saying, “So how do YOU like YOUR Jesus?” Whether they mean to or not.

Secondly, whether it is meant or not, this kind of question seems to me to breed a kind of snobbery. A “My Mass is better then your Mass” kind of mentality. Now I have been accused myself of being a liturgical snob. In some of my most formative years I was lucky enough to have as a Parish Priest Fr William Fitzgerald, who is an incredible liturgist and who now resides in the States. Because of this kind of formation, I cringe every time I see a glass/wooden/clay/ “insert other obnoxious material here” chalice/pattern/ect. Or when women, who don’t understand their own feminine genius, get up and perform various roles and tasks of a priest. The other day I saw a women exposing the Blessed Sacrament while THE PRIEST WAS ON THE SANCTUARY Ahh!!!! It nearly killed me!

Yes liturgical abuses make me cry. But this is because the liturgy has been fomed in oder to link back to salvation history and to our faith. The Church has guidelines on it because if you do something wrong, then it can be like preaching a heresy in action rather than in words.

The snobbery I can’t stand is where if you say that you like the Novus Ordo, done well, and without a navel gazing focus, there is the danger that some will either see you as a liturgical fool who knows nothing, or as some kind of psycho-conservative who doesn’t understand the “ebb and flow of the spirit of Vatican II”.

Sheesh… I just can’t win!!!! You know what? I am not a “Traditional Catholic” but I don’t mind going to an Old Rite Mass every now and again. I am not a “Charismatic” by any stretch of the imagination, but I have been to “Charismatic Masses” which don’t abuse the liturgy. I am not a “Liberal Catholic”, I am not a “We are Church” Catholic, I am not a conservative Catholic, I am not a Feminist Catholic, or a “Neo-‘insert favourite phrase here’ Catholic”. Do you want to know what I am? I am a Catholic. That it! Just that. I have no Mass preference so long as it is in the truth, beauty, goodness and oneness of the Church.

Hmmm this is starting to sound like a rant. I might post part two of this later… hey!! At least it will mean that I have to post again! That will keep Shannon happy.