Book bound in martyred Jesuit priest's skin for sale

A macabre 17th century book about the execution of Gunpowder Plot conspirator Father Henry Garnet believed to be bound in the priest's own skin will go under the hammer this Sunday.

Perhaps most spooky of all, some claim to see an image of the priest's tortured face peering out of the anthropodermic binding of 'A True and Perfect Relation of the Whole Proceedings against the Late Most Barbarous Traitors, Garnet a Jesuit and his Confederats'....

This brings new meaning to the phrase, "you can't judge a book by its cover".....The link above is to the Catholic Encyclopedia entry for Fr Garnet.

Priest has pro-life parishioner arrested

A pro-life activist banned from stepping on the grounds of St. Matthew’s Church in San Mateo after a controversy over his display of signs showing graphic pictures of aborted babies was arrested on Tuesday, Nov. 13, for trespassing on church grounds.

St. Matthew’s pastor, the Rev. Anthony McGuire, placed Ross Foti, 72, under citizen’s arrest when he came for the 8:15 a.m. Mass on Tuesday, the Nov. 14 Oakland Tribune reported. San Mateo police arrived and cited Foti for misdemeanor trespassing and released him. Foti has been ordered to appear in San Mateo County Superior Court on Dec. 27...

Foti, a well-known pro-life activist, has long been controversial at St. Matthew’s. Parents of children at the parish school began complaining last year of Foti’s truck, displaying the graphic signs, which he parked on a public street adjacent to the school. Parents, who dropped their children off on the street for school, complained that their children had to view the graphic pictures.

Those who are offended by the graphic and horrendous pictures of the murder of the innocent unborn should be thankful that they are not among the dead and this should give them even more resolve to diligently pray for the murdered little ones whose blood flows constantly because of society's decadence and hedonism.

I wonder how many of those who complain actually explain to the children or to others that they should use this truthful reminder to pray - both for the murdered babies as well as for those who perpetuate this culture of death?

Meditation for November 3, Preparation for Death

The foreign missionary, Theophane Venard, whom the Anna­mites used to call Father Ven because of his uprightness and purity, was martyred at Tonkin in 1860 and beatified in 1909. From the cage in which he was imprisoned before his death he wrote the following letter full of profound faith and calm joyousness:

"It is near midnight. Around my wooden cage are lances and long swords; at two yards from me a lamp throws its flickering light upon my page of Chinese paper, allowing me to write these lines. I am wait­ing from day to day for my sentence. Perhaps tomorrow I will be led to death.

"According to all probability, I will be beheaded. Glorious ignominy for which heaven will be the prize! At this news, dear sister, you will weep, but from happiness. See your brother, then, the halo of the martyr crowning his head, the palm of the conqueror waving in his hand. In a little while my soul will leave the earth, will finish its exile, will end its combat. But first the grain of wheat must be crushed, the grape must be pressed. Will I be bread, and wine pleasing to the taste of the Father? I hope so, by the grace of the Savior, by the protection of His Immaculate Mother.

"And you, dear sister, I leave you in the fields of virtues and good works. Harvest numberless merits for eternal life, which awaits both of us. Harvest faith, hope, charity, patience, sweetness, perseverance, and a holy death!

"Farewell, Melanie, farewell, darling sister, farewell!"

I will read this sublime letter as if it were addressed to me.

"Dear Sister, I leave you in the field of virtues. and good works. Harvest numberless merits. Harvest faith, hope, charity, patience, sweetness, perseverance and a holy death!"

_________________
Adapted from Meditations for Religious
by Father Raoul Plus, S.J. (© 1939, Frederick Pustet Co.)

Nagasaki, the City of the Atomic Bomb – And of the Christian Martyrs

There are 188 of them, from four centuries ago, and they will be beatified in one year. In the same city in which, on a single day in 1945, two thirds of the Catholics in Japan were killed. Was this a deliberate decision?
by Sandro Magister

More here

Fights as Spanish Civil War clergy are beatified

Angry protests have erupted as the Vatican staged its largest beatification ceremony ever, setting 498 Catholic clergy killed in the Spanish Civil War on the path to possible sainthood.

While 60,000 pilgrims attended the ceremony in St Peter's Square, fighting broke out between Left-wing anti-Church demonstrators and Catholic worshippers at a nearby church...

The Vatican estimates that up to 7,000 clergy died in attacks that began in 1931 and intensified during the 1936-1939 civil war.

Leftists....Figures...

Recently, other daily meditations were posted here from "The Priest at Prayer" by Fr. Eugenio Escribano, a Spanish Vincentian priest who died in 1951.

Those meditations were taken from his work, Meditaciones Sacerdotales which was published in 1928 and translated and published in English in 1954. The first volume of his Meditaciones Sacerdotales was held in such regard that several Spanish Bishops of the time recommended it to their clergy. The Preface of that book relates that Fr. Escribano's writings strengthened the spiritual life of the clergy who were to be called to martyrdom in during the Spanish Civil War.

Certainly, it requires tremendous courage to accept martyrdom and this courage comes from the grace of God and one's willingness to accept that grace and do the will of our Father. May all of these newly named Blesseds pray for us so that we might also have the courage to be strong in the face of adversity and trials.

Homosexuality is just one of [God's] miracles we don’t understand...

St. Francis of Assisi Catholic church in Sacramento will hold interfaith service to honor memory of homosexuals supposedly killed for being ‘gay’

“It is not a coincidence,” said the PFLAG announcement, “that the service is held each year near National Coming Out Day,” Oct. 11. October, too, is Gay and Lesbian History Month. “Thus, this service reminds us that the history of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people has been fraught with injustice, hatred and violence.”

This article can be read here at California Catholic Daily and, in a related article, one can read that St. Francis of Assisi Catholic church in Sacramento is “Not the conservative Catholic Church”. Just what does that mean?

“Tolerant,” is one of the things St. Francis of Assisi church in Sacramento was frequently called in an online survey, “Why I Attend St. Francis,” found on the Franciscan parish’s web site...

“Inclusive” was another adjective survey respondents used to describe St. Francis church. One respondent noted that he likes to attend St. Francis “because it’s not the conservative Catholic Church.”

Yet another noted, “I love the liturgical dancing on special feast days.”

St. Francis church is also “progressive” and “open-minded,” ...

Tolerant, inclusive, progressive, and open-minded - when used with "liturgical dancing" and "Catholic church", you know you have arrived just this side of heaven...How 'inspiring.'

But rest assured, Sacramento Franciscan Fr. Larry Dunphy notes that ... "friars like himself 'are to be truly brothers, and a sign and a model of all human and creaturely relationships, because the one Father/Mother God is the origin of all these relationships.'"

What more could a "Catholic" ask for?

St John Fisher, Bishop & Martyr

St John Fisher, Bishop & Martyr
By Michael Davies
The Neumann Press

Excerpts, Part 21: John Fisher's Martyrdom

The last four days of the Saint's life were sunshine. All his depression of soul had left him, so that his jailors marvelled at the joy and sense of freedom which possessed him. At five o'clock in the morning of 22 June, the Lieutenant of the Tower came to his bedside and found him fast asleep. Waking the prisoner gently, Walsingham broke the news of his execution with great courtesy and sympathy. The cardinal thanked him, and asked when it was to be. When he learned that the hour fixed was ten o'clock, he made answer:

Well, then, I pray you, let me sleep an hour or two, for I may say to you, I slept not much this night; and yet, to tell you the truth, not for any fear of death, I tell you, but by reason of my great infirmity and weakness.

And he turned over and went to sleep again. When he was awakened he called to his man to help him up, and commanded him to take away the shirt of hair he always wore, and to lay him forth a clean white shirt and all his best apparel, saying: "Dost thou not mark that this is our marriage day, and that it behoveth us, therefore, to use more cleanliness for solemnity of the marriage sake?"

When he came out of the Tower, a summer morning's mist hung over the river, wreathing the buildings in a golden haze. Two of the Lieutenant's men carried him in a chair to the gate, and there they set him down, while waiting for the Sheriffs. The cardinal stood up and leaning his shoulder against a wall for support, opened the little New Testament he carried in his hand. "O Lord," he said, so that all could hear him, "this is the last time I shall ever open this book. Let some comforting place now chance to me whereby I, Thy poor servant, may glorify Thee in my last hour"----and looking down at the page, he read:

Now this is etemal life: that they may know Thee, the one true God, and Jesus Christ Whom Thou has sent I have glorified Thee on earth: I have finished the work which Thou gavest me to do (John, 17:3-4). . .
________________________

Continued here. For those who are not familiar with the events of this courageous shepherd, you really should read on...Would that more bishops had the courage that this man had.

St John Fisher, Pray for us.
St Thomas More, Pray for us.

"Having Taught a Martyr Is Something Else Entirely". . .

. . . Professor Shares E-Mails From Father Ragheed

ROME, JUNE 13, 2007 (Zenit.org ).- "The situation here is worse than hell," Father Ragheed Ganni wrote to a former professor the day before he and three deacons were shot after Sunday Mass in Mosul, Iraq.

Father Robert Christian, a theology professor at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, the Angelicum, in Rome, spoke at the requiem Mass held in that school on Tuesday. There, Father Ganni had studied theology and ecumenism.

On June 3, Father Ganni and three deacons, Basman Yousef Daoud, Ghasan Bidawid and Wadid Hanna, were killed in front of the Church of the Holy Spirit.

Continued at Zenit here.

Related posts:
A Chaldean priest and three deacons killed in Mosul

The Last Mass of Father Ragheed, a Martyr of the Chaldean Church

Murderers of Fr. Ragheed & Deacons Demanded Their Conversion to Islam