St Cecilia Prayer Card

My father-in-law has asked me to give this to someone named Cecilia. I like the rhyme.

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To Saint Cecilia

O glorious saint, who chose to die 

instead of denying your King, 

we pray you please to help us 

as His fair praise we sing. 

We lift our hearts in joyous song 

to honor Him this way. 

And while we sing, remembering, 

to sing is to doubly pray.

At once in our hearts and in our tongues 

we offer double prayer 

sent heavenward on winged notes 

to praise God dwelling there. 

While in our hearts and tongues we try 

with song to praise God twice, 

we ask dear saint, to help us be 

united close to Christ! 

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Other info on Card

Feast Day celebrated on November 22nd.

Written Date on Card: 1993 Jun 04

Made in Italy

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Catholic Answers to 'Why are Homosexual Acts sinful?' by Ask A Priest @ xt3 ~ Bible ~ On Love & Truth ~ by Cardinal Ratzinger (Now Pope Benedict XVI)

Someone asked this question recently.
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I thought this here below was quite a good answer (for Catholics), although I still find this answer insufficient because it is still difficult to explain this to people outside the Catholic Faith unless they first accept the Catholic Faith.

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Catholic Answers to 'Why are Homosexual Acts sinful?' by Ask A Priest @ xt3

http://www.xt3.com/library/view.php?id=9602&categoryId=55

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ASK A PRIEST - WHY ARE HOMOSEXUAL ACTS SINFUL?

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My friend asked me why homosexual acts are sinful. I gave answers based on both science and religion, but then my friend said, "If two people love each other, how can that be wrong?" Any ideas on what should be said here? 

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Answer:

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Saying that love can justify anything is a very emotionally based ethical system. Love is a good thing, but it also needs to be rightly ordered. If we use this justification that love means it is OK to justify same-sex marriage then by that logic you would have to concede incest, polygamy and pedophilia could also be permitted, so long as the two, or more, people loved each other.

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The then Cardinal Ratzinger, in his homily before the start of the conclave from which he would emerge as Pope, said that "a mature adult faith is deeply rooted in friendship with Christ. It is this friendship that opens us up to all that is good and gives us a criterion by which to distinguish the true from the false, and deceit from truth." \

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He went on to say: 

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"Truth and love coincide in Christ. To the extent that we draw close to Christ, in our own lives too, truth and love are blended. Love without truth would be blind; truth without love would be like "a clanging cymbal" (I Cor 13: 1)."

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Therefore, love does not exist in a vacuum and it needs to be accompanied and guided by the truth about ourselves, the truth about human sexuality, and the moral truth about how we should act.

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This question was posted in Xt3's 'Ask a Priest' group. You can join the discussion by visiting the original thread - you must be logged into Xt3. Or, to see more Ask a Priest questions, click here.

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Further Reading:

• Hot Topics – Xt3 Podcast: Episode 4 of Xt3's 'Hot Topics' podcast series deals with homosexuality and the teachings of the Catholic Church, narrated by Bernard Toutounji of the Life, Marriage and Family Centre in Sydney.
• Xt3 Library - This link takes you to all the resources in the Xt3 Library that deal with this topic.

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Bible ~ On Love & Truth ~ by Cardinal Ratzinger (Now Pope Benedict XVI)

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The then Cardinal Ratzinger, in his homily before the start of the conclave from which he would emerge as Pope, said that "a mature adult faith is deeply rooted in friendship with Christ. It is this friendship that opens us up to all that is good and gives us a criterion by which to distinguish the true from the false, and deceit from truth." 

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He went on to say: "Truth and love coincide in Christ. To the extent that we draw close to Christ, in our own lives too, truth and love are blended. Love without truth would be blind; truth without love would be like "a clanging cymbal" (I Cor 13: 1)." 
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Therefore, love does not exist in a vacuum and it needs to be accompanied and guided by the truth about ourselves, the truth about human sexuality, and the moral truth about how we should act.

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http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+13&version=NIV

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1 Corinthians 13

.New International Version (NIV)

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13 If I speak in the tongues^[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. ² If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³ If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,^[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.

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⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

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⁸ Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰ but when completeness comes,what is in part disappears. ¹¹ When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. ¹² For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

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¹³ And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

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Footnotes:

1. 1 Corinthians 13:1 Or languages
2. 1 Corinthians 13:3 Some manuscripts body to the flames

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English Grammar ~ Grammatical Person ~ Subject & Predicate

To better understand the English Language... probably the most difficult language in the world to understand... this is my research... I've not read it yet... maybe... one day I will... maybe... just maybe.

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English Grammar ~ Grammatical Person ~ Subject & Predicate ~ To Read

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~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_person

~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subject_(grammar) 

~ htp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predicate_(grammar)

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_person

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Grammatical person in nominative case English pronouns
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Pronoun	Person/plurality	Gender
Standard
I	First person singular	-
We	First person plural	-
You	Second person singular or plural	-
He	Third person masculine singular	masculine
She	Third person feminine singular	feminine
It	Third person neutral singular	-
They	Third person plural / third person gender-neutral singular	-
Colloquial
Youse	Second person plural, dialect Scouse, Australian English, Scottish English
Ye	Second person plural, dialectal Hiberno-English
You guys	Second person plural, dialectal American English and Canadian English	-
Y'all	Second person plural, dialectal Southern American and African American English	-
Archaic
Thou	Second person singular, archaic	-
Ye	Second person plural, archaic	-

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Additional persons

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In Indo-European languages, first-, second-, and third-person pronouns are typically marked for singular and plural form, and sometimes dual form as well (see grammatical number). Some languages, especially European, distinguish degrees of formality and informality. See T-V distinction.

Other languages use different classifying systems, especially in the plural pronouns. One frequently found difference not present in most Indo-European languages is a contrast between inclusive and exclusive "we", a distinction of first-person pronouns of including or excluding the addressee.

Other languages have much more elaborate systems of formality that go well beyond the T-V distinction, and use many different pronouns and verb forms that express the speaker's relationship with the people they are addressing. Many Malayo-Polynesian languages, such as Javanese and Balinese, are well known for their complex systems of honorifics; Japanese and Korean also have similar systems to a lesser extent.

In many languages, the verb takes a form dependent on this person and whether it is singular or plural. In English, this happens with the verb to be as follows:

• I am (first-person singular)
• you are/thou art (second-person singular)
• he, she, one or it is (third-person singular)
• we are (first-person plural)
• you are/ye are (second-person plural)
• they are (third-person plural)

The grammars of some languages divide the semantic space into more than three persons. The extra categories may be termed fourth person, fifth person, etc. Such terms are not absolute but can refer depending on context to any of several phenomena.

Some languages, including among Algonquian languages and Salishan languages, divide the category of third person into two parts: proximate for a more topical third person, and obviative for a less topical third person. The obviative is sometimes called the fourth person.

The term fourth person is also sometimes used for the category of indefinite or generic referents, that works like one in English phrases such as "one should be prepared" or people in people say that..., when the grammar treats them differently from ordinary third-person forms.^{[citation needed]} The so-called "zero person" (Laitinen 2006, Leinonen 1983) in Finnish and related languages, in addition to passive voice may serve to leave the subject-referent open. Zero person subjects are sometimes translated as "one," but the problem with that is that English language constructions involving one, e.g. "One hopes that will not happen," are rare and could be considered to be expressing an overly academic tone, while Finnish sentences like "Ei saa koskettaa" ("0 cannot touch") are recognizable to, and even used by, young children.

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References

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• de Gaynesford, Robert Maximillian (2006). I: The Meaning of the First Person Term. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Laitinen, L. 2006. 0 person in Finnish: A grammatical resource for construing human evidence. In Grammar from the Human Perspective: Case, space and person in Finnish. M.-L. Helasvuo and L. Campbell, eds. Pp. 209-232 Amsterdam: Benjamins.
• Leinonen, Marja. 1983 Generic zero subjects in Finnish and Russian. Scando-Slavica. 29:143-161.

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See Also

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• English personal pronouns
• Gender-neutral pronoun
• Gender-specific pronoun
• Generic antecedents
• Generic you
• Grammatical conjugation
• Grammatical number
• Illeism
• Personal pronoun
• Singular they
• Verb

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Subject and Predicate ~ Written by Frances Peck

http://www.writingcentre.uottawa.ca/hypergrammar/subjpred.html
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Every complete sentence contains two parts: a subject and apredicate. The subject is what (or whom) the sentence is about, while the predicate tells something about the subject. In the following sentences, the predicate is enclosed in braces ({}), while the subject is highlighted.

Judy {runs}.

Judy and her dog {run on the beach every morning}.

To determine the subject of a sentence, first isolate the verb and then make a question by placing "who?" or "what?" before it -- the answer is the subject.

The audience littered the theatre floor with torn wrappings and spilled popcorn.

The verb in the above sentence is "littered." Who or what littered? The audience did. "The audience" is the subject of the sentence. The predicate (which always includes the verb) goes on to relate something about the subject: what about the audience? It "littered the theatre floor with torn wrappings and spilled popcorn."

Unusual Sentences

Imperative sentences (sentences that give a command or an order) differ from conventional sentences in that their subject, which is always "you," is understood rather than expressed.

Stand on your head. ("You" is understood before "stand.")

Be careful with sentences that begin with "there" plus a form of the verb "to be." In such sentences, "there" is not the subject; it merely signals that the true subject will soon follow.

There were three stray kittens cowering under our porch steps this morning.

If you ask who? or what? before the verb ("were cowering"), the answer is "three stray kittens," the correct subject.

Simple Subject and Simple Predicate

Every subject is built around one noun or pronoun (or more) that, when stripped of all the words that modify it, is known as the simple subject. Consider the following example:

A piece of pepperoni pizza would satisfy his hunger.

The subject is built around the noun "piece," with the other words of the subject -- "a" and "of pepperoni pizza" -- modifying the noun. "Piece" is the simple subject.

Likewise, a predicate has at its centre a simple predicate, which is always the verb or verbs that link up with the subject. In the example we just considered, the simple predicate is "would satisfy" -- in other words, the verb of the sentence.

A sentence may have a compound subject -- a simple subject consisting of more than one noun or pronoun -- as in these examples:

Team pennants, rock posters and family photographs covered the boy's bedroom walls.

Her uncle and she walked slowly through the Inuit art gallery and admired the powerful sculptures exhibited there.

The second sentence above features a compound predicate, a predicate that includes more than one verb pertaining to the same subject (in this case, "walked" and "admired").

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Vocal Tip ~ Who sings higher Altos or Tenors?

I hope this helps explain.

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The Question: 

Who sings higher Altos or Tenors?

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The Simple Answer:

If we're talking about 'Pitch'... then... the Altos are singing at a higher 'Pitch' than the Tenors.

If we're talking about 'Range'... then... the Tenors are singing in the higher portion of their Tenor 'Range' than the Altos in their own Alto 'Range'.

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The Detailed Answer:

Contrary to what most people think... actually... most of the time... 

the Altos will be singing higher than Tenors in Pitch. 

That is why, in SATB music, the Altos are written higher than the Tenors and Lower than the Sopranos.

The only reason why most people think that... Tenors sing higher than the Altos... 
is because... most of the time...

~ the Tenors will be singing at the Higher portion of their range... while the...

~ the Altos will be singing at the Lower portion of their range.

To illustrate this... watch this video.

Both, the Tenor and the Alto, are singing at exactly the same 'Pitch'.

Neither are singing higher than the other.

The only difference is.. 

the Tenor is singing at the higher portion of his range... and...

the Alto is singing at the lower portion of her range.

I hope I don't have to explain which of them is the Alto or Tenor.

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The Video:

Singing Lessons - Releasing Squeeze In The Voice Part 2

Coach: Shelby Rollins

Artist: Jean-Luc Berkovits

http://youtu.be/Itb5AEDswxA

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Drawing on the Samsung Note ~ Smart Phone

Drawing on the Samsung Note ~ Smart Phone

ASAP = Always Say A Prayer

Take a good look at the candle... even though this is a still (non-animated) image... the candle looks like it's animated and "dancing".

ASAP = Always Say A Prayer

Quote ~ Integrity ~ by Michael Josephson

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Integrity... 

... is one thing you 

cannot afford to lose.

You can... 

give it away or sell it, 

... but you can't buy it.

Without integrity, 

... you become nothing, 

... and will have nothing.

 ~ by Michael Josephson

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War Story ~ True Story of Twins, Secrecy, War & Strategy

This story is on the front page of the The Australian Newspaper... today, Wednesday, 2012 Apr 25.

I thought this was a lovely, war-time story. I had a good read.

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News ~ A Lovely, True Story of Twins, Secrecy, War & Strategy

Article

25 Apr 2012

The Australian

CHIP LE GRAND

You're the spitting image of your brother: the ruse that sent twins off to a secret war

AFTER all these years, Don Field has never grown weary of the siblings' high jinks that landed him and his twin brother Peter at the centre of one of the more extraordinary Australian stories of World War II.

Twins Don and Peter Field, members of a secret team dropped behind enemy lines in WWII to intercept Japanese radio transmissions in the jungles of New Guinea

With a mischievous look, he passes over a photograph of two identical teenage Diggers in slouch hats, and challenges anyone to tell which one is which.

The only clue is that one brother is sporting a slightly forced grin. Surely that must be Peter, the one with something to hide?

Don Field, now 88, laughs and takes the photograph back.

It was 70 years ago that the brothers pulled a swifty on the medical examiner at the Ripponlea drill hall in Melbourne's southeast, enabling Peter to enlist despite his history of heart problems and against his father's wishes. As it turned out, neither brother would have any trouble keeping a secret.

The switch, Don Field admits, was his idea. As the would-be recruits were called in alphabetical order, Field, DC presented first and was given a clean bill of health.

He then joined Peter in the bathroom, where the brothers quickly changed clothes. When Field, PC was called, the doctor was amazed. ''You really are the spitting image of your brother,'' he exclaimed.

Later in life, the Fields would march together on Anzac Day, carrying the banner for the Australian Special Wireless Group. By then, the story of how they fudged the medical exam had become the stuff of legend.

Ask them what they actually did in the war, however, and you'd be met with a short response.

It was only two years ago, when a brown paper package sent by the British government arrived in the letterbox of Don Field's Melbourne home, that the full wartime exploits of the brothers could finally be told.

Inside the package were three things: a gold medal emblazoned with the words ''We too served''; a citation from the head of Bletchley Park, home to Britain's famous wartime code-crackers; and a separate citation from then British prime minister Gordon Brown.

The citation from Mr Brown ran to a paragraph. For Mr Field, they were words he never expected to read: ''The government wishes to express to you its deepest gratitude for the vital service you performed during World War II''.

Over a cup of coffee at his house in Melbourne's eastern suburb of Nunawading, Don Field yesterday said Mr Brown must have authorised the citation just before he lost his own job. ''I don't know if that means it is worth more now or not,'' he joked. For his wife Patricia, the revelation of her husband and his brother's feats came as a shock. ''He never told us anything,'' she said, shaking her head.

Peter Field died before the package arrived but the recognition from Britain meant that for the first time, Don Field could speak freely about the two years he and his brother spent in the jungles of New Guinea intercepting Japanese radio messages as part of a covert operation overseen by General Douglas Macarthur, the US Supreme Commander of the Southwest Pacific Area.

For three months at a time, the Field brothers and other members of a hand-picked group would live in jungle sites behind enemy lines, monitoring Japanese communications around the clock. They were armed with basic infantry skills, high-speed morse code, a working knowledge of Katakana, one of three Japanese scripts, an old Simpson radio and a concealed cyanide pill in case of capture.

The communications they intercepted and sent to London via Brisbane, provided critical intelligence to Macarthur's strategy of cutting supplies to Japanese troops in the Pacific.

The most spectacular success were the intercepts that enabled the US to plan the mid-air assassination of Isoroku Yamamoto, the Japanese admiral who had planned the Pearl Harbor attack. From their jungle camps, the Fields could see Macarthur's strategy also working on the ground. ''They would come into the camp,'' Don Field said of the starving Japanese troops. '' You couldn't help but feel sorry for them. They would come and raid our cookhouse at night. You always knew when they had been around because they used to wear funny shoes with one big toe. You would see the foot prints in the jungle behind.

''They knew we were there but they didn't know what we were doing. They weren't getting supplies and they didn't have much fight left in them. A lot of them were giving themselves up.''

It wasn't just the Japanese who were oblivious to what the Australians were up to. When they were first recruited for their mission, the specially trained members of the ASWG were sworn to secrecy. No records of their mission were kept. ''All the young fellas that were in this unit had to sign a statement that they wouldn't divulge what they did to anyone — any of their parents or loved ones — for 60 years,'' Don Field said.

''Everyone kept that secret. Whenever anyone asked me what I did I just said signals. That was it. For years Peter and I could carry the banner on Anzac Day. But I have never told anyone.''

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