The Great Granddaddy of Them All
Volume XXVIII, Number 1
January 31, 2024
My Beloved Catholic Friends,
Welcome to the astounding twenty-eighth year of the CatholiCity Email Message—the great granddaddy of them all!
To begin the year I have great news, a crazy stream-of-consciousness, Alfred Hitchcock, lotsa intriguing quotes, and our worldwide group prayer.
From the Depths of Our HeartsThe great news? Because of your generosity during our annual Christmas appeal, we will definitely be able to keep our doors open for another year! We are relieved and grateful.
And we are already moving with great determination and speed on three exciting new projects—the first to be unveiled before Easter! If you somehow missed the appeal, or are like, What?
You can't beat that with a stick, my friends. Thanx again!
Drumroll PleaseMy theme in 2024 shall be Prayer and the Eucharist. No two things go better together. The reason for the latter should be obvious with our bishops' Eucharistic Congress coming up in July. We carried the True Cross in 2022 and 2023—it is time for the Resurrection in the Twenty-Four.
Nearer My God to TheeHow can it be that Ash Wednesday is only two weeks away? Here's my (our—you helped write it) famous Lent List.
Those A.I. programs can go pound salt—if "artificial intelligence" ever "writes" a Lent list, it will just be scraped from this one, only less fun.
Souls, Souls, SoulsAnd that means it's time to reach more souls in our parishes—remember to stock up on our tools for evangelization, especially the Daily Prayers to Save America, The Warning, scapulars and prayer medals, and the amazing little booklet, Going Back to Confession.
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Sorry it's been so long—I've been busier than spit, like a runaway train, like all get out, under the gun, over a barrel, surrounded on all sides, at wits end and on the razor's edge, beyond the pale, in a tight spot, over a rough patch, snapping to it, all over it like a cheap suit, high and tight, yet filled with boundless faith-filled mirth while everybody—and their uncle—is coming down on me like a ton of bricks like there's no tomorrow—more than you can shake a stick at, and in fact, as serious as a heart attack, until I'm black and blue and light as a feather, all while accepting that perfect is the enemy of good—and believe it or not, unless I stop doing whatever-this-is on purpose, I could keep these shopworn phrases coming (and going), well, until the nick of time...
...so enough already. Boy I'm in a goofy mood. 'probably because I only got three hours of sleep last night because I was crunching numbers until 5:00 am. 'tis a long boring story that I'll spare you.
Ahem, clears throat. Let's get serious. Or delirious. Nah nah nah nah, hey, hey, hey...
Unlikely StoryOn October 1st, 1962, at 6:10 am, minutes after I drew my first breath on this mortal coil, while my fatigued father gazed upon this dark-haired, ten-pounder as I rested contentedly in my mother's arms, I bet the last thing he could possibly have been thinking was...
I shall name him William Noble the Second, and verily, he shall be called Bud, and from the dawn of the yet-to-be imagined world wide web, when computers first form that dazzling and demonic mesh over this planet, he, my firstborn son, shall write the very first and longest-lasting Catholic email message in history. And then, decades hence, he shall walk in a crucifix of reparation across America, carrying the True Cross with hundreds of thousands of souls joining the ranks of Cyrenes and Veronicas...
Oh, what a world. 'least I still have my baby face and that full head of hair. In the summer of 1996, when six hundred souls received that very first message before 95% of people even had email, I was thirty-three years old.
Normal is GoodGod graciously made me pretty average. It's my writing superpower. I love milkshakes and baseball and movies about dinosaurs and pizza and watching tv and coffee and sleeping in and hanging out with my family and friends just like everybody else.
Thus, I consider being a believing Catholic perfectly normal. Because, it is. Supernaturally.
If I've had one rule for writing over the past fifty years, it would boil down to a single word...
Tender KnucklesLong ago, I heard on that old radio show, And That's the Rest of the Story with Paul Harvey, an incident that happened to Alfred Hitchcock as a school boy. Back in the days of severe corporal punishment, Little Alfred was sent before an infamously stern principal for a serious offense.
The principal raised his heavy wooden ruler high toward the ceiling, ready to strike little Alfred's shaking hands, which were palm-down on the giant oak desk. Then he brought the ruler down swiftly!
Only to stop it abruptly, an inch before slamming onto the little boy's tender knuckles. It was an unprecedented act of clemency.
Young Alfred was more than just relieved. He was surprised. As a filmmaker, Hitchcock never forgot the lesson. It's poetic that Paul Harvey based And That's the Rest of the Story on the same principle.
Surprise.
You weren't expecting to read a story about Alfred Hitchcock today. I didn't expect to write it, either. And now for the rest of the story...
The Boys from EssexAlthough Hitchcock was born and raised in Essex in protestant England, being of Irish descent, his family was Roman Catholic. I was raised in Essex, too. Essex County, New Jersey. Alfred and me, Catholic boys of Essex. Storytellers.
When I was in fourth grade, I got called into the principal's office for writing bad words on the bathroom walls. I deserved strong repercussions. I was terrified. The lovely but stern nun surprised me, too, with tenderness and clemency. I still don't understand why.
So I will continue to write this message once or twice a month for as long as you keep reading it—or as long as my addled-since-childhood mind keeps addling. If God so decrees, in twenty-eight years I'll be ninety, the same age as my father on this very day—hopefully long after the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Lo, in January 2052, whether we are on earth or in heaven, you have the word today of William Noble Macfarlane II, that I will remain shoulder-to-shoulder with you always—and you can take that to the bank, or to the cleaners, or to the mattresses, or to the limit, or to the ends of the earth, or to the beach, or to the bitter end, or to the cat's meow, or behind the shed, until the cows come home or by dawn's early light...
Apropos of Nuthin'Hey, it's only nine more years until 2033, the two-thousandth anniversary of Our Lord's passion, death, resurrection, and ascension!
Quotations
"I can write no more—I cannot! Such things have been revealed to me that what I have written seems but straw."
- Saint Thomas Aquinas
"The life of writing men has always been, since our remote fathers engaged upon it in the high Greek world, a bitter business. It is notoriously accompanied, for those who write well, by poverty and contempt."
- Hilaire Belloc
Ashen cross traced on brow!
Iron cross hid in breast!
Have power, bring patience now,
Bid passion be at rest.
- Lionel Johnson
"No art is ever learned without a master."
- Saint Jerome
"To be anonymous is better than to be Alexander. Cowley said it engagingly, in his little essay, Obscurity—bene qui latuit, bene vixit. 'He lives well who has lain well hidden.'"
- L.I. Guiney
"Anything worth doing is worth doing badly."
- G.K. Chesterton
"I read once that if Saint Teresa of Avila had one message to proclaim to the world, it would consist of one word shouted from a mountaintop, 'Pray!' If I had one word to add, it would be, 'More!'"
- Joseph Wood
Please take a pause, and begin with me and tens of thousands around the world, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit...
Lord Jesus Christ, we beg thee
for the grace to remain guarded
beneath the protective Mantle of Mary,
surrounded by the holy briar
from which was taken
the Holy Crown of Thorns,
and saturated with the thy Precious Blood
in the power of the Holy Spirit,
with our guardian angels,
for the greater glory of the Father.
Amen.
And amen. By the bye, that's the Tuesday prayer from the exorcism prayers in the Daily Prayers to Save America.
You can listen to the Daily Prayers for each day of the week on all the major streaming services.
Regular listeners have surely noticed the newly upgraded audio and voice quality—it's now perfectly paced as well. Coolest of cool beans.
With Looney Tunes, I bid thee that's all, folks.
Thanks again for keeping our doors open. You guys are the best!
I'll be back before Ash Wednesday with... a surprise—something particularly beautiful.
With Saint John Bosco,
Bud Macfarlane
Founder
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