The Authors – Raven, Bro. Burrito, Kathleen, MMVC, GC, and Gertrude wish you and your loved ones a Happy and Holy Christmas and offer our thanks for your support over this last year.
Adoration of the Magi (1479-1480), Hans Memling, Prado museum, Madrid
The mystery of the Incarnation is a fitting theme of joy for both angels and men. Therefore the Word of God, Himself God, the Son of God who “in the beginning was with God,” through whom “all things were made” and “without” whom “was nothing made” (John 1:1-3), with the purpose of delivering man from eternal death, became man: so bending Himself to take on Him our humility without decrease in His own majesty, that remaining what He was and assuming what He was not, He might unite the true form of a slave to that form in which He is equal to God the Father, and join both natures together by such a compact that the lower should not be swallowed up in its exaltation nor the higher impaired by its new associate.
Catholicism Pure & Simple 
Merry Christmas, and many thanks to the team for your never failing efforts to provide your readers with much nourishing food for thought, spiced with Catholic bonhomie. Best wishes to all in 2017.
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Merry Christmas to all the readers and writers and rhetoricians of CP&S.
May Christ be ever increasingly present to us and in us with every passing day, and may we all meet some day in the Heavenly Jerusalem whatever road we take from Bethlehem. Amen
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PS: I have moved my writing table to a new one-donkey blog. You are all welcome.
https://burritosstable.wordpress.com/
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Merry Christmas, guys, and may you continue to stay saved.
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Bonne chance, Doctor. I used to like your fireside chats in Yoda’s Pub (I can’t believe my memory is so good!) You were/are one of my favourite commenters these past 7 years, and in honour of our friendship and with best wishes for your new blog undertaking (fabulous website picture, btw) I offer you this hymn: “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” by the great Rastifari theologian, Bob Marley, who died, perhaps not for humanity, but at least for the love of one of his toes, which he refused to have amputated because His Imperial Majesty, Emperor Haile Selassie the Almighty (RIP) of Ethiopia, would have disapproved. Out of respect for his beliefs, I decline to post a link.
I should add – it’s not the start time for our midnight Mass over here, so I can still say silly things.
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“…one of my favourite commenters these past 7 years…” by which I meant (BB) – since when we first became lovers on Damian Thompson’s Holy Smoke blog, not just mere acquaintances on this one since July 4th, 2010.
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Yeah, thanks people for ‘keeping the B……..s honest’, some more so than others. Wont name them, they know who they are. Generally your stout defense of the Church has been admirable, and if you think 2017 is going to be easier then think again…the usual culprits are still with you. They continue to get older and smarter but not necessarily wiser
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You can’t be serious, Geoff !! 2017 is shaping up to be one heckuva blast. The quincentenary of the Deformation, the centenary of the Bolshevik Revolution, the 70th anniversary of the founding of Pakistan, 20 years since Harry Potter first came into our children’s lives (great-grandchildren in your case), 40 since the 350 lb King of Rock and Roll died whilst having a bowel movement…
…on the other hand, 2017 marks the sesquicentenary of the birth of the greatest nation on earth, not to mention it’s also the year when there will be no more monkeyshines in the White House.
Happy New Year, John Kehoe!
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This Christmas, may all the Grinches who hang out on this blog be converted by the power of Christ’s infinite and merciful LOVE. Amen.
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“This Christmas, may all the Grinches who hang out on this blog be converted…”
Awwww, that’s so sweet. Isn’t that sweet, Ginnyfree? But Bruvver Eccles and Geoffkiernan are “Grinches”? I don’t think so! Maybe you mean the amphibian and his freeloading houseguest?
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JH @0002,
No I meant you and our ill-tempered ilk. Merry Christmas.
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Did anyone here see, hear or read the “Urbi et Orbi” today?
If one cannot acknowledge that these are the God-given words of our God-given Pastor,
then one is not right in the head, and needs urgent help, which is as near as your nearest Confessor.
Merry Christmas
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Burro says: “JH @00:02, No I meant you…”
NO WAY !!!, as my ill-tempered friend from outer space (Jabba the Hutterite) would say if he was still here instead of down the Pig and Whistle drowning his sorrows in – er – Earl Grey.
But thank you for reminding me of that lovely Canadian variety show, Pig and Whistle,the quinquagenary of which is another thing (pace Geoffkiernan above) to look forward to in 2017:
http://www.tvarchive.ca/database/18130/pig_and_whistle,_the/details/
But I am sorry – seriously sorry Brother – that we are ending on a sour note. It’s just sad that you have left us to join that murmuration of Franciscan warblers. Follow the leader without ever questioning him? I saw a real murmuration once – an absolutely spectacular sight:
https://www.allaboutbirds.org/how-do-starling-flocks-create-those-mesmerizing-murmurations/
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JH, with respect to my learned (legal) colleague etc,
At this time of night, and at the extremes of inebriation, I must request a recess of the court,
before I seriously address the lunatic ramblings set out so elegantly there above.
Merry Christmas.
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“…at the extremes of inebriation…”
I hear you brother (but it’s only 23:14 over here)…
My son and his Japanese wife are so good to me. I’ve just opened their Christmas gift parcel meant especially for me. Let’s see… a box containing four packages of Premium Original Kakinotane Tanebits (?) I wish JabbaPapa was still here to translate that into Italian, which we both speak semi-fluently. Crisps, I think (from the feel of them). And there’s this 50 ml bottle of Yamazaki Single Malt 12 Year Old Whisky (not Whiskey, in case our Irish Brother Burrito is still lurking about) which I will sip after finishing this comment. And then there are these two funky books, which why they ever thought I might actually read I don’t know:
The Final Martyrs by Shusaku Endo:
…and this oneSilence, also by Endo:
__
There are so many ways in which this complicated comment of mine could go wrong, and I apologize if it does. Now, for that Yamazaki Single Malt…
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JH at 1911: Like you JH I can hardly wait
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JH, to connect your Japanese gift ideas with the notion of next year, 2017 will finally see the full release of Scorsese’s filmic version of Endo’s Silence, that I first read as a mere 20-something-year-old all those many years ago. How is it that it still seems to me just like last week that I read it? Were you snowed in again this Nativity season in Ontario, JH?
My English friends assure me that Canada (British North America?) was the only colony that actually had a worse climate than Great Britain.
We await the operatic version, perhaps as soon as a generous Jesuit grant/subsidy is afforded to a composer of their choice? I am reliably informed that they would not have to dig into their pockets all that deeply.
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Merry Christmas, GC (or as my Jewish friend texted me yesterday – “Mary Christmas”, which is perhaps not as nonsensical a malapropism as appears at first blush):
1. Thank you for the info regarding the movie release of Silence. Not sure I will go to see it, and certainly not before I read the book. I sometimes find that film versions of famous books, even with well written scripts, fine acting, directing, etc. can diminish or even ruin the intellectual and emotional impact of the books on which they are based. I’m a fan of Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin novels, and in my mind’s eye had formed a distinct impression of what those two men were like; but then I rented the DVD of Master and Commander starring Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany (not bad actors) which was disappointing and which conflicted with my valid, albeit arguable, preconceptions of what those two protagonists would have been like in real life.
2. Yes, it was/is a White Christmas around these parts. Lots of snowmen and snow forts being built by children, as well as snowball fights being waged by some of the scrappier ones, although not in schoolyards, what with the almost total ban on rough play and physical contact insisted upon by our ever-so-wise educational (feminist) establishment.
3. Well, yes, keeping in mind that most of the Canadian land mass is in the Arctic or sub-Arctic, your English friends have a point about our climate; but we also have some large swaths of territory with very pleasant weather: the Niagara Peninsula, Vancouver Island, the Okanagan Valley, the Muskoka, Haliburton and Kawartha Lakes “cottage country” of central Ontario…
4. I heard a joke once, perhaps here: “Where there’s a will” (as in Last Will and Testament) “there’s a Jesuit.” 🙂
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JH,
Murmurations are a daily part of life where I live.
A naughty schoolboy once told me that he used to carry a starting pistol with him during the tourist season. When the resting starlings and crowds were co-mingled, he would fire a shot from a safe distance away and watch the birdies lift off and involuntarily drop their load on the visiting admirers. Bomber Harris would have been in awe of the spectacle.
I can recognise a cardinal who grins like a dog at all the echo-chamber attention he is getting, and who is numbered amongst Pope Francis’s attackers. I do not want to share in his dog day afternoon, which is bound to end sadly.
I sit here amidst the local beaches, looking at the Peaches (watching your video from the Pig and Whistle show), and I think this song might expand your musical horizons (as yours do mine):
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I’d never experienced tinnitus before today, BB. Thank you for expanding my musical and medical horizons 🙂
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