Bellyache (Belloc) please elaborate.....Thanks all.
not likely going to, unless you can tell me why I am a bellyache.........
I know why I'm thorny, but I wouldn't take it all personally because I think oldavid arrived in the middle of a lot of bellyachin' in these boards as there was some fussin & a'feudin going on. Mat banned an instigator and the rest of us settled down in our corners, didn't we?
Anyway, thank you for the re-assurance. The Bishop was very old in this case (mine) and so I'm pretty sure he was outside of the conflicts we see today, this was back in 1969.
NOw the second part, about Saint's names, I don't think should be a big problem because I have always related to Sainte Therese as my personal patron, anyway.
But I did have a rocky return to the Church because I left when I came of age not long after that Confirmation (and largely due to my sponsor's state of sin, which embittered me) and so I was not prepared for the extent to which N-O changed the Church over the past 30 years.
During my wanderings I learned a great deal about the spiritual world and about the work of Our Lady to protect us in it. Like many returnees, I returned in my heart long before I used my feet.
Anyway, as I have related elsewhere, I ran headlong into the new protestant catholic culture and one of the things I found very disturbing was the increased involvment of the laity with the demonic world. This can be blamed on too much tolerance of the charismatic heresies alongside the collapse of good teaching about sacramental holiness and the proper attitude of prayer.
In the parish to which I returned, before I moved to Austin, they use the Rosary as a kind of prayer-coven and they do not pray for converts, they pray "against" specific individuals and pray to rid the community of specific individuals. They use mob tactics to spread rumors and suspicion. I was actually invited into that type of Rosary prayer, and I expressed my shock and outrage. I then became a target.
Now I struggle with the devil of fear every time I go to Mass, even though I am 150 miles away. I want to put every source of reasonable worry to rest so that I can walk past that little fear-devil with a confident step.