The Black Madonna

At least it doesn't start: "Two monks walk into a bar..."

Religious humor found at the pages of Snopes.com:

A monastery in the English countryside has fallen on hard times, and the monks decide to open a fish-and-chips restaurant.

char editor 1.11

A visitor comes across two monks working in the monastery kitchen in preparation for the restaurant's grand opening. The first monk fries the fish, the second one peels, slices, and fries the potatoes.

"What are you guys doing?" asks the visitor.

"Well," says the monk frying the fish, "I am the friar, and he is the chip monk."

I've had this conversation before

Oh, dear...

Where to get episcopal news?

Robert suggested I send along a heads-up for CardinalRating.com for keeping abreast of the news about your favorite cardinals. (I remembered seeing it linked somewhere else before, but I can't recall where.) I also recommend Episcopal Spine Alert for inspiring (though infrequent) reports of U.S. bishops showing signs of orthodoxy. Recently I stumbled on The Pope Blog for the latest news reports featuring the Holy Father.

I've got one more site about the Papacy I'd like to recommend, but I can't find the link right now. When I find it, I'll add it here, and on the blogroll to the left.

Blogs for Benedict

As some of you may already know, shortly after the election of Pope Benedict, I ran across this post at Dom Bettinelli's blog, and it gave me the idea to go looking for another domain that popped into my own head. Initially I'd intended to offer it to Christopher Blosser from The Cardinal Ratzinger Fan Club - and I still may do just that - but I thought I'd best give a try to organizing the thing myself.

So without further ado...

I've just finished flipping all the required Internet switches to redirect the domain name www.blogsforbenedict.com back here to The Black Madonna, for lack of a better place. (Ironically, it was only because I was rushing to get the "blogsforbenedict" domain that I bothered to finally buy "theblackmadonna", even though I've been thinking of picking up the latter for a couple of weeks.) For now, I'd like to blogroll as many sites as are willing to join, but maybe in the future we can set up a mob-blog with the best contributions from orthodox Catholics around the blogroll, a la Blogs for Bush. At least, that's a thought.

(EDIT: Come to think of it, that's what Catholics in the Public Square is for, isn't it? Maybe they'd like to be the host site and I'll just manage the links.... Stay tuned.)

If you're interested in joining the blogroll, please send me an email.

TECHNICAL UPDATE: I suppose I should say that I've currently got the blogroll managed as a random sample of 20 links, so aside from the pure sentiment of belonging to a list of bloggers who support the Holy Father, it's a relatively small block of links that can give your site more exposure. For those of us trying to gin up enough ad revenue/donations to pay for our passion, exposure can be a good thing.

Site makeover: The Black Madonna

Some time ago, I decided that my religious ravings at my other blog, The Black Republican, were getting a little too Catholic for my own taste. On that site, I may talk about anything at any particular time, but TBR always returns to issues of politics and culture as they are tinged by prejudice and racism. While there's nothing inconsistent in this day and age about being both Republican and Catholic, when I talk about the Faith there it feels like I'm trying to do too much in too small a space. The Catholic "angle" is overload, and detracts somewhat from the intended topic.

So I eventually decided to start another blog, and Ex Parte Fide was born. Naturally - as nothing good is ever easy - new problems arose. Actually, two interconnected problems: other than reflections about my Catholic faith, I wasn't sure what the new blog was about; and as a result, I tended not to post much, when I posted at all.

Several times, I thought of shutting this space down, as it was too underused. Even when I finally found something to say, I would feel compelled to post in both places, so that readers of TBR wouldn't be left wondering what I was thinking about some religion-inspired issue. Of course, that simply defeats the purpose of having a separate blog. Things were definitely spiraling downward.

But Our Lord had other plans. Pope John Paul II was due for a promotion (one day to Saint John Paul the Great, perhaps), and finally succumbed to the strain of his illnesses and an amazing and arduous 26 years on the throne of St. Peter. My interest in posting something to the religious blog increased, but I still wasn't sure what to say. I wanted to comment on my personal favorite to be the new pope, Francis Cardinal Arinze, a strongly orthodox bishop from Nigeria, but that would be unseemly before his election, wouldn't it? Yet, how our Holy Mother Church would be blessed by showing the world that the love of Our Lord knows no color! Besides, I reasoned, it's not like the College will choose someone too well-known and too orthodox, like Joseph Ratzinger....

As pope, I believed Cardinal Arinze would cause quite a stir with the press and the world, as they tried to grasp why Catholicism didn't feel scandalized by the selection. Surely Europe, of all places, can't embrace such an image... right?

The answer to that question is revealed in the faces of the mother and Child now adorning the masthead of this site. While I knew well of the Catholic tradition of veneration of The Black Madonna, and that inspirational thought drove me to look more closely into a new companion site for TBR, I must admit I'd forgotten that the monastery of perhaps the most famous of these Madonnas (Our Lady of Czestochowa) is in Jasna Gora, Poland. This would be the perfect complement to The Black Republican, I thought: a site that honors both our dear departed Holy Father, a new Holy Father from an unexpected place, and last but certainly not least, operating under the gaze one of the oldest and most beloved images of Our Lady.

As everyone knows by now, Our Lord surprised me again. My joy at the election of His Holiness Benedict XVI is almost beyond description, but some of our friends in the media world have apparently decided that Germany is enough of an unexpected place for them, and have generated some rather dark (though sometimes humorous) caricatures of him.

I know the Holy Catholic Church is "ready for a black pope". But I'd forgotten that perhaps the rest of the world might not be - some still aren't ready for any pope at all. This site will be devoted to the task of that preparation, and so we dedicate our work here to Our Lady of Czestochowa, that she might sway the hearts of the unready.

The Square Deal

The former editors of Catholic? Kerry Watch have morphed their blog, post-election, into Catholics in the Public Square. I trust they will continue to stand ex parte Fide.

Hazard Zet Forward

For a year when I was young, I attended a fine Catholic university, named after the first American saint. Though I never graduated from that institution, there are still times when I think myself an alumnus, at least in spirit.

I never graduated from Seton Hall because I was about to traverse the pitfalls of marriage and parenthood, and I needed to attend to the demands of supporting my new family. It struck me as ironic that I was leaving the university to live their motto: Hazard Zet Forward ("in spite of all hazards, go forward"). Through the travails of divorce and raising a family alone, I have tried to live that motto every day, both in the wake of good times and bad.

And so, now that the election has allowed me to breathe again, I think now is not the time to settle into a rut. Our sister blog, The Black Republican, must go on, pressing ever forward in its own mission, but I think I must take more time to reflect and ponder the mysteries beyond politics. Within the pages of TBR, I will continue to comment on Catholicism as it affects politics, where appropriate. But expect to see a more equal presentation of time and content devoted to Ex Parte Fide from here out.

At least that is my prayer and hope this fine Sunday.

To blog and serve... the heretic?

I realize I haven't been keeping up with this side of the duo-blog, but politics has been ruling the day lately. When I finally get fed up and leave it aside, I'm more in the mood for a laser rifle than a scripture reading.

That said... I suddenly feel dirty and need a shower - and since that admission just might confuse too many people at TBR, it goes up here.

(hat tip: relapsed catholic)

Yah, I know

Sorry for the screwed up template, but I'm working on it.

A question of titles

I should take a moment to note the title of this new blog, and how it came to be.

At first, I thought to call it, ex cathedra. But good sense told me someone would think I was hallucinating that I was Polish, and I decided against that. From deep in the recesses of my addled brain, I recalled the crucial Supreme Court case after the Civil War, ex parte Milligan. I looked it up at FindLaw and found that ex parte means "on behalf (of)". This, it turns out, was the kind of phrasing I was initially intending with ex cathedra, something that sounds as if it's a blog based on apologetics. A defense of my faith. A defense of The Faith. I wanted to speak on behalf of my own faith, the Faith of Our Fathers. So something that crosses ex parte with De Fide. I'm not sure if this is conjugated properly, but I decided on Ex Parte Fide ("on behalf of the Faith").

I should point out that I am neither a theologian or a lawyer nor a priest, so on a whole lot of levels, I'm shooting from the hip here. But that's sort of my point. I'm going to do my very best to learn about that which I don't know, expound upon it, then wait for my esteemed brethren to come to my rescue and tell me how it is not so. Error tends to be the basis of all my learning, so why should it not be true here? In the end, I hope to figure out who I am and where I'm going.

Let's start with the title of the blog, shall we? If it doesn't mean what I think it means, please correct me as soon as possible so I can change it before I say it too many times and can't change it.