Bishop Javier Ecchevaria Rodgriguez, the Prelate of the personal prelature Opus Dei, died yesterday of complications arising from pneumonia. He had been chosen personally by Saint Josemaria Escriva, the founder of Opus Dei, to lead the worldwide lay apostolate, which fosters piety, spirituality in its members. Bishop Rodriguez oversaw Opus Dei from 1994 until his death. May God receive the soul of His servant… requiescat in pace.
Syria continues its civil war, now apparently in its last stages. One cannot believe everything reported in the media, to put it mildly, and one wonders in such a situation who is a ‘civilian’, and who not, who is in the right, and who in the wrong, the role of ISIS and militant Islam, and a leader, or a dictator, trying to ‘win back’ his country, rebels and loyalists, Russia, the United States, and on it goes. There comes a time in a war, even an unjust one, wherein surrender is the only viable, and moral, option. All we can do is pray for all those involved.
The once proud and prestigious, venerable and hallowed halls of Oxford academia are slipping further from the truth. It seems the Students’ Union of the British university, founded more or less in the 12th century, has now decreed from on high that all students must use the pronoun ‘ze’, instead of ‘he’ or ‘she’.
The motto of Oxford, curiously, is Dominus illuminatio mea, the Lord is my light, from Psalm 27, which continues, whom shall I fear? Well, one can fear the thought police at Oxford, now on the prowl for anyone who actually tries to make the (true) distinction between male and female.
Today is the memorial of Saint Lucy, the young virgin-martyr saint of ‘light’. Maybe she can pray for Oxford, Catholic up until the ‘Reformation’, and more or less sane until a few years ago, that they live back up to their motto.