Found While Looking for Something Else

The Lord says this: "Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery." [Luke 16:18] 

You, however, divorce your wife as if you had every right to do so and you are not afraid of doing her an injury.  You believe it is permissible because the natural law does not forbid it. 

But the law of God does forbid it!  And you, without being disobedient to human law, ought also to fear God.  Listen to his law:  "What God has joined together, let no man put asunder." [Matt. 19:6] 

It is not of any great importance whether you commit adultery openly or under the guise of 'marriage'.  There is one difference only:  the fault committed on the pretext of principle is more serious than that which is committed secretly. 

-- St Ambrose
On the Gospel of St Luke, 8, 2 (PL15, 1765)

Found in Drinking from  the Hidden Fountain: A Patristic Breviary, Ancient Wisdom for Today's World,  by Thomas Spidlik, Cistercian Publications, 1993.

Culture of Death Advances Apace

One despairs of influencing the Sacramento Home for the Criminally Insane for good.  But I suppose it does behoove us to let them know that not everyone in this state thinks killing someone is the solution to every problem.

Rummaging Through the Tune Archive.

I did a funeral this afternoon and re-discovered an old favourite tune.   At this service all the family wanted from the pipes was to lead the procession from the mortuary chapel to the gravesite.  I don't do that very often and the last couple of times the family specifically wanted Amazing Grace, which I can do, but it isn't much of a processional.

So I paged through a couple of tune books and there in my big, black binder full of xeroxes and hand-scribbled scores was Lord Lovat's Lament, which I haven't done since, oh, maybe Clan Donnachaidh Band days, i.e., back in the late '80s or early '90s.  And it's a great little tune, very melodic.  It works well both as a very slow air and as a proper quick step.  I probably played it somewhere in between.  (You can't slow march a congregation of civilian mourners, now can you.  Not with a motorized hearse on your tail, anyway.)  The tempo was indeed slower than the folks in the video above, although I really like the tempo they've chosen.

What a beautiful little tune that is.  That has to go back into the standard repertoire.

(Hmm.  I wonder how it works on the  melodeon.)


[ADDENDUM: It works a treat on the melodeon; at least it does on my C/G]

That Synod Again

Herewith a cogent piece of analysis from Fr Jackson of the Priestly Fraternity of St Peter on the prep document for that Synod.  (He is not, you'll be happy to know, best pleased.)
It's here in pdf format.

(H/T to Kirk, who sent along the link.)

Myriam's Story

[H/T to The Remnant]