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Since I’m staying in a hotel room right now, this little piece from a recent FSSP parish’s bulletin particularly appeals to me:
When You Travel
Another sobering statistic from Bishop Finn’s pastoral letter, “Blessed are the Pure in Heart“: Half of all hotel guests order pornographic movies. These films comprise 80% of in-room entertainment revenue and 70% of total in-room revenue.
If you stay in a hotel room, unless you are literally the first guests, you can be morally certain that there have been serious sins committed in that room. These means that you can be morally certain that there are devils lurking about that room. Yes, you read that correctly: you can be morally certain that there are devils in that room. But no worries! Take a towel and cover the television . . . (and leave it covered!) Then take blessed salt and drop a little pinch in each corner of the room and flick a tiny amount across the room, and then sprinkle a little holy water around.
I hope that I’m not culpable for neglecting to bring holy water with me, not to mention blessed salts. It’s probably not something I can ask for at the desk, is it?
On a completely unrelated note, I was just speaking with a friend and recent graduate of Ave Maria University; the word is that Fr. Fessio was fired, probably at the instigation of Monaghan. I haven’t found a link yet to this story elsewhere . . .
St. Louis-Marie de Montfort,
Pope St. Pius X,
St. Joseph,
St. Ambrose of Milan,
St. Thomas Aquinas,
St. Francis (and St. Clare),
St. Catherine of Siena,
St. Alphonsus Ligouri,
St. John Chrysostom,
You can read about Fr Fessio’s departure here:
THE NEWS-PRESS: EDUCATION - Ave Maria U. Provost Fired
Shouldn’t the TV be the thing being blessed? Or would the holy water zap the set? How much water are we talking about?
I won’t lie… this sounds pretty goofy to me. Not that I think we should be totally indifferent to the significance of “spaces” — obviously I think it’s okay to make pilgrimages to places where particularly holy things happen, and I pray an “Ave” every time I pass the abortuary a few blocks from my apartment… but if we go around trying to dispel devils in every place where sins have been committed, well, it would get pretty difficult to go on with normal life.
I think it’s probably better not to think too much about it. Wear your scapular wherever you go and be content.
So what’s the deal with Fr. Fessio? Why did Monaghan want him ousted?
Thanks for that link, Iohannes!
D.A.: I don’t know - I only heard that he had been fired
Some holy water could be sprinkled on the towel which is covering the TV.
How about smashing the Devil’s tabernacle?
You mean, the television itself? I’m all for that. The one liberal bumper sticker, often seen around Ithaca, of which I heartily approve is “Kill Your Television”. It seems to me, though, that it would be something of a blow to the bad elements in this country if people did stop watching television.
I knew you’d get my drift but when you do it, there are certain people that you can’t tell. This is one of those traditional things that it takes some time to get used to.
P.S. On your way out don’t forget the Gideon Bible.
Maybe it’s his theology, logic, English or something:
“There is no salvation outside the church, but there is salvation outside the visible Catholic Church — just no salvation outside the body of Christ,” explained Fr. Joseph Fessio, S.J., editor of Ignatius Press.
http://www.examiner.com/a-624232~Clerics__Religious_tolerance__indifferentism_not_the_same.html
3/17/07
Speaking of destroying things - it’s morally licit to destroy condom dispensers in convenience store/gas station bathrooms. Just take some apoxy or something similar and squirt it in the coin slot.
Or what’s more handy to put in the coin slot — gum.
Wait a second - how is it licit to destroy these things?
Where on earth are prophylactics being dispensed in public restrooms?? I’ve seen many things, but never THAT.
Haven’t you heard, Anonymous? In NYC, the municipal govt. is dispensing them. Cardinal Egan and one of his suffragans really came down hard.
Also, very many convenience stores and bars have condom dispensers in the restrooms. Probably just the male ones, though — are you male, Anonymous? (We request that guests at least make up a pseudonym, so we don’t have to keep referring to “Anonymous,” which gets confusing when more than one anonymous person writes. Thanks.)
Alright, I de-anonomized. No, I am female. But I am horrified by that–I had not heard. And I’d like to thank y’all for your blog. Now I’m going to go soak my head: little children now have unsupervised access to “birth control”??
There were condom dispensers in the restrooms of my high school. And that was several years ago. I believe it’s quite common these days to distribute condoms in high school restrooms.
Go ahead and disable condom dispensers if you like, but a word about TV-smashing — whether or not it’s immoral, it’s presumably illegal, so be prepared to be charged for it at some point.
I don’t think this is nutty at all; it’s a real, practical problem for those of us who travel, and I for some time have made sure I never even open the thing that the TV is closeted in in most hotel rooms. We have no TV in our home, and I appreciate someone writing a little something about it. Never thought of the holy water and salt, though…
Let’s put it this way.
Before this thread it had never even occurred to me to wonder, when staying in a hotel room, whether previous guests had been watching porn there.
Now that’ll probably be the first thing that will pop into my head the next time I walk into one.
I really think it is probably better not to go around speculating about where other people, including people you don’t even know, have been sinning. It’s not a savory subject to be dwelling on, and it’s neither your job nor even your business to be worrying about it. The idea that devils linger in packs at the site of former sins waiting to attack you sounds crazy to me (where has the Church ever taught that?), but in any case as long as I wear my scapular I figure I have some protection against devils wherever they may lurk.
That’s my word on the matter.
Prostitution by proxy.
If anyone is in the position of planning a trip or a conference for matters Catholic or otherwise, a brief inquiry about the hotel’s standards or lack thereof might help change things for the better.
Perhaps the best course lies in the middle. Actually, I never smashed a television that wasn’t my own and when I stay at a motel, the TV goes completely undisturbed. And yet if anyone wanted to smash a TV, I would think it more amusing than disturbing—especially if it were someone like Josephus. I leave the Gideon Bible alone too, since it’s far better than the TV Guide etc. which all go into the bottom draw upon entering. No one wants to dwell on the sins that may have taken place there and I try not to notice the ones that concurrently are taking place during my stay but I do sprinkle holy water around. Why not? The Church encourages its use. Until now, I haven’t heard of placing blessed salt in the four corners and it does sound a little much but if someone wants to do that in the privacy of their room, God bless them. I don’t actually think of the television as a place where legions of devils are locked up ready to pounce on anyone walking by, yet there are devils everywhere, just like angels and they’re probably more prevalent around places of habitual sin. Use of the term the “Devil’s Tabernacle” seems quite descriptive to me since in many a home it takes the central place, while everyone stares at it with something resembling reverent awe. And I’m sure I don’t need to prove that evil comes from it, making it a tool of Satan.
TPC, I assume your house and auto were blessed by a priest, and he used holy water. Upon entering a church you use holy water, to drive away distractions and devils. Saint Benedict saw little black devils whispering in the ears of his monks during office. (I find that true and yet funny to picture especially the way the saint describes it-in a very un politically correct way.) The priest sprinkles the congregation with holy water before sung Mass. Most likely you have crucifixes and holy pictures in your home. So, you may find some comfort when traveling, to bring along with your holy water bottle a small self-standing crucifix and a laminated picture of Our Lady to put on the table.
It’s not at all clear to me that condom dispensers can be destroyed licitly.
Unlike condoms themselves, which are arguably inherently evil, condom dispensers can dispense anything that comes in small packets of a certain shape.
Many you will see dispense medicines as well as condoms or novelty items like temporary tatoos (which are wierd, but not immoral!).
What sense are we to make of talk which suggests the spatial location of non-physical beings, such as angels or demons? But we do talk in this way….
I’m still wondering about the suggestion that it is morally licit to destroy condomn dispensers . . . this doesn’t strike me as something licit - well, or no more licit than it would be to destroy abortuary facilities or equipment. I’ve always wanted such destruction to be licit . . . and at the same time I could never quite get myself in the position of understanding why it was illicit
“What sense are we to make of talk which suggests the spatial location of non-physical beings, such as angels or demons? But we do talk in this way….”
Well, the angel of the Pool of Probatica (John 5) visited only that place. God put two cherubim at the gates of Eden to block Adam and Eve from returning. In addition to demonic possession, there is demonic infestation. Fr. Amorth, the Vatican’s chief exorcist (do you think that he and “the Vatican’s chief latinist” ever talk?), basically identifies demonic infestation as the cause of haunted houses and poltergeists.
Additionally, we combat demonic forces by means of holy water, which is a partly physical agent. We believe that saints’ spiritual power is somehow localized in their relics, such that veneration of the relics gives glory to the saint and God can use the relic as a vehicle of spiritual transformation. The Catholic Church does not draw a sharp line between the spiritual and physical/spatial realms.
Speaking of demons and locations, the Book of Tobias (surely the best in the Bible . . .) talks about how St. Raphael the Archangel expelled the demon Asmodeus from the bridal chamber of the younger Tobias and Sarah. He purified the bedroom by burning the heart and liver of a miraculous fish. Asmodeus fled to Upper Egypt, where St. Raphael chained him. Compared to burning fish entrails with incense to clear a hotel bedroom of demonic influence, holy water and blessed salts sounds like much less work (and smell) . . .
Don’t fret Iosephus. A highly respected FSSP priest told me about the licitness of condom dispenser destruction.
Fr. John A. Hardon, SJ said, “Civil laws are not always morally binding.”
Dear JSP (and his FSSP priest),
This could make things a bit unclear, no? What about abortion-clinic bombing? Wait, not bombing–let’s just say abortion clinic “disabling:” is this wrong? What if only an abortionist or two is inside? Wrong? Nobody inside, only the structure and its contents destroyed? Wrong?
I worry where such allowances could lead. No disrespect meant to your priest.
I think that some of this is conditioned on expected outcomes. Right now, continuous armed resistance by Christians against abortion would probably result in the fairly swift criminalization of anti-abortion activity. But, what if the opposite were the case? What if we could look into a crystal ball and see that a string of abortion clinic “disablings” would lead in a few years to the banning of abortion? Consider WWII. We tend to admire the Resistance fighters who sabotaged the infrastructure of Nazi oppression. We wonder why the German people did not physically resist their government. Of course, that’s easy for us to do, since we know that the Nazis fell within 6 years of the beginning of the war. But Germans, Poles, etc., in 1940 did not know that. Abortion clinics are worse than Nazi concentration camps — at least some people managed to survive the camps. But whereas the armed Resistance eventually was vindicated when the Allies won, we have no idea when or how the abortion movement might end. I would say that abortion clinic “disabling” is wrong primarily because it is so imprudent — it defeats long-term goals.
But if I were a Pole or Portuguese and the EU tried to use armed force to open abortion clinics against the local government’s will? Then I think it would be justified to “disable” the clinics they set up.
As for condom dispenser disabling, who would ever know that this was the result of traditionalist Catholics? I bet the owners would just figure that some jerk put gum in the coin slot. You remove an occasion of sin and prevent someone from profiting from sin. They won’t put security cameras in restrooms to observe you doing it. I would say that this is one way to redress the situation, and it might be more effective than trying to arrange a boycott (although that might work in certain more conservative communities).
A lesser example: Where I grew up, the Seventh Day Adventists had a lot of newspaper racks where they distributed free copies of their magazines. When no one was looking, I used to grab all of the copies in the rack at once and throw them away. I was engaging in sabotage in order to prevent vile heretics from promulgating their vile heresies. I also throw away the magazines that “Jehovah’s Witnesses” leave in laundromats. The chances of getting caught are slim, if you know what you’re doing.
I really don’t buy this condemn dispenser disabling claim - what’s the argument for it supposed to be? Can I “accidentally” spill my coffee all over a pile of porn magazines in a store that I happen to be in? Can I do any number of destructive things of this nature?
I don’t see where getting caught factors into it.
T.P.: I’ve never been able to swallow this argument that it’s more prudent for us to refrain from “illegal” anti-abortion activity in order to stop abortion sooner. (Even assuming that this would, in fact, be in the case, that it ends sooner.) We have a moral obligation to defend the innocent, and it seems a very reasonable human reaction to want to rush in to prevent the massacre of innocents. So that we shouldn’t be worried about the consequences, but about our primary duty to defend innocent life when it is about to be killed right in front of us. The consequences are in God’s hands, especially in cases like this where we really don’t know how things would turn out in the long run.
I take your point, though, about living inside the Nazi regime when there didn’t appear to be any end to it. That’s a good thought experiment. It might help us think about the cases when we should be willing to give ourselves up to certain death or punishment and those when we should remain in opposition, but silently for the time. (Not that I’m saying either living with the Nazis or now, with abortion, is suited for the latter.)
Well, I see nothing inherently unjust with a mob of concerned Catholics going and physically destroying an abortion clinic. As for the guards, nurses, receptionists, etc., they’ve already made their choice. If I were a governor or president, I would pardon people who went to jail for armed actions against abortuaries.
But, speaking feasibly, for the time being we are in the minority. The most likely response of the population would be to ban any and all opposition to abortion — including peaceful sidewalk protests. Let’s say ten clinics get destroyed, and let’s say no innocent people die. Yes, babies are saved. To that extent, a great good has been done. But let’s say that as a result all peaceful protests are banned and the pro-life cause is utterly repudiated by the leaders of the Republican Party, in an attempt to distance themselves from violence (the day is coming . . .). Then the protests and sidewalk counseling, which may save even more lives under legal abortion, is gone. One of the positive aspects (if there can be one) of legalized abortion is that those women who make this evil choice often have to pass by protesters and counselors. Before abortion was legalized, this was all very back-alley, and there was little to no opportunity to appeal to women at the last moment. I don’t know how all of this will be judged. IF there is a sound objection to clinic “disabling,” then I think it must be imprudence.
Twenty years from now, I can see a Democratic Congress banning any and all advocacy of the “pro-life” mention as a “hate crime.” If clinic disabling hastens this, it may well do so to the detriment of more people than it saves immediately. Or it may not. It really all depends on the future.
Getting caught — even if something is good, sometimes the potential negative consequences will render it imprudent. Is it worth it to throw away trashy magazines (in that instance, they were all free for the taking) if I will get arrested for it? No, it’s not worth it. Is it okay to do so if there are no consequences? Fine. Prudence.
I will back-track from what I said earlier. *I* do not condone messing with condom dispensers. It does not seem worthwhile to me. I would like to hear the whole story of what JSP’s priest told him, though. I would very much like for it to be morally licit to engage in such things. But Iosephus is right to point out that a line must be drawn somewhere — at some point private property makes such things immoral. And under normal circumstances, I don’t see how you could be obliged to destroy the thing.
I speak as one who worked in a grocery store and had the displeasure of selling prophylactics on two occasions (once, because I knew the guy, I could be fairly certain a statutory rape would be involved). I thought up all sorts of ways of avoiding that in the future (hiding the condoms while I was on duty, etc.), but I never could justify it. My confessor told me that I was a more or less remote accessory and that I was an employee, not the manager, so my sin was venial at most.
When I lived in Texas, I used to take the stack of National Catholic Reporters from the back of the church, bring them home and throw them away.
Sorry, Iospehus, I don’t have any scruples about these types of things.