NOTE: Father Martin Stepanich sent the following encouraging New Year’s greeting to Bishop Dolan.
Dear Bishop Dolan,
There never was any doubt that the devil stirred up everything, he hates everybody, and, in these times, especially faithful Traditional Catholics.
Our Lord’s words in His “wheat and cockle” parable said it perfectly, “An enemy hath done this!”
If I may say a bit more about the “cockle” (as in the Douay — “weeds” in the Confraternity), let me tell you that there was plenty of “cockle” on Dad’s old Kansas Farm (Wilson County, South East Kansas), we used to take hoes into the cornfield and go up and down between the corn rows (some a quarter of a mile long almost) and chop down the weeds, with plenty of them being “cockle.”
But nobody ever called them simply “cockle,” but “cockle burrs.” The “burrs” were the seeds hanging on to the weed, and they were about the size of a large jelly bean. The distinctive thing about those “burrs” (at first green, but brown in the fall) was that they were completely covered with tiny little hooks, and that made them hook themselves onto many things — your clothes, dog’s feet and tails, cow and horsetails, and so on. And just picture them getting caught in a girl’s long hair!
Anyway, to get to my last point, the fellow who invented velcro got his idea from those cockle burrs. A short article that I saw in the Chicago Tribune long, long ago (I wish I still had it!) said that the inventor of velcro was sitting in his chair one evening and happened to have a couple of those burrs in his hands, and would push them together and then pulled them apart, doing it over and over again. Somehow, the idea gradually crept into his mind that he could create tiny little hooks and fix them onto straps or clothing, and thus eliminate the need of belt buckles and shoe laces or strings, etc. And he did it. Maybe this story is told in some encyclopedia or other book.
And, boy! Does velcro ever mean plenty to me, who can’t bend down anymore to tie shoelaces! A big Deo Gratias for that man inventing velcro!
Looks like I got carried away. Apologies! Let us just look at that “an enemy hath done this” as being the devil and all his fellow demon “burrs” getting into everybody’s hair, not just at SGG, but everywhere in the Novus Ordo world.
Let’s pray it will turn out for you to be a real “Happy New Year” there at St. Gertrude’s, with the “burrs” all cleared out!
Benedicite, Pater Reverendissime!
Father Martin, O.F.M.