Blocked by China

Yeeeessss! I've been blocked by China. What an honour! Find out if you've been blocked at the Great Firewall of China.

Maybe it was that post Your home will be destroyed and your cows taken away if you don't abort.

(It could be a false alarm, however. I'll have to double check in a couple of days in case it is simply a network problem somewhere.)

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1962 Missal pdf online

The Church Music Association of America and Jeffrey Tucker of the New Liturgical Movement have made available the 1962 Missal online in pdf format (72Mb). The file is hosted at Musica Sacra , the website of the CMAA, thanks to a generous gift from Fr Robert Skeris While you are at it, take a look at the articles clarifying the rules for music at Low Mass and music at High Mass .
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She shall crush thy head

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A commenter says (of St Jerome's translation of Genesis 3.15) "That is not what the lectionary says." I am sure he/she is right, whichever lectionary is used. In fact, the Nova Vulgata , the Church's new official translation of the Bible in Latin, translates the Hebrew with the neuter ipsum . Here is the (old) Vulgate text again for the sake of reference: Inimicitias ponam inter te et mulierem et semen tuum et semen illius ipsa conteret caput tuum et tu insidiaberis calcaneo eius. (I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel.) The word ipsa translates an epicene Hebrew personal pronoun: one that has only one form to denote either male or female. It can legitimately be translated either as "he", "she", or "it." In one place, St Jerome quoted the Vetus Latina version which gives ipse . (Lib. Quaest. Heb. in Gen. PL 23.943) and this has been t...
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Margaret Sanger: KKK speaker

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Tertullian: invective masterclass

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The other day, I was introducing my students to Tertullian's De Baptismo . As the great patrologist, Quasten, pointed out, this is "not merely the earliest work on the subject, it is the only Ante-Nicene treatise on any of the sacraments". I spoke a little about the character of Tertullian and mentioned the beginning of the Adversus Marcionem by way of illustration. Sometimes in the blogosphere, people want to hurl theological invective but I do not think I have ever come across anything to equal the master: The Euxine Sea, as it is called, is self-contradictory in its nature, and deceptive in its name. As you would not account it hospitable from its situation, so is it severed from our more civilised waters by a certain stigma which attaches to its barbarous character. The fiercest nations inhabit it, if indeed it can be called habitation, when life is passed in waggons. They have no fixed abode; their life has no germ of civilisation; they indulge their libidinous desi...
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