Happy 64th Birthday Barb
Sunday, June 30, 2024
Saturday, June 22, 2024
Blessed are They who Mourn
At the beginning of the Covid Pandemic when our Church doors were closed, Pat, Madeleine Margaret, and I met at the Grotto in front of the Rectory each morning to pray the rosary. This is where we met Al, the young man who rode a bicycle and wore a BIKER Jacket sitting before Mary holding his head and weeping.
He told us about a miracle that happened to him while in the hospital and the first thing he felt that he needed to do after he was discharged was to find a Catholic church and he did. The Annunciation of the Lord in Beacon Hill North. Our church had been closed along with all the others in Ottawa and so Mother Mary consoled AL's heart and soul again at her Grotto in front of the Rectory of the Parish. Al loved his family and regretted the sins of his past. Al was in mourning and felt great sorrow for the way he was living his life before Mary's Visitation. This was evident in everything he did from the moment of Mary's visit to the General Hospital in Ottawa. Alain made a complete u-turn in the way he lived his life.
He told us he was renting a room near the Church in a house owned by an elderly lady on Bickerton Ave. He had just been discharged (or about to be discharged ) from the Hospital but without a place to live. I can't remember the details of how he found a home but he said it just fell into his hands by a friend of a friend or something like that. He said that Our Lady found the place for him. When this kind woman passed away parishioners Ken and Janet Warren invited Al to live with them and he remained with them until his passing. Ken and Janet were like second parents to Al. God bless them
Alain's Miraculous Conversion Story
Alain often joined us when we prayed the rosary and at the beginning said his prayers in French. As time went by Al not only learned the rosary in English he meditated on each mystery of the rosary with such depth that you were transported back in time to the Annunciation or the Visitation or whichever mystery it was, whether the Joyful, Glorious, Sorrowful, or Luminous. Al would absolutely put you there. I can't even describe it.
We all know that Mother Mary led Al to The Annunciation church and over the next few years, AL's presence was something I have no words for. I have never known such a devout soul, so mournful of past sins, so grateful for everything, so in love with Jesus in the Eucharist, Mother Mary who led him back to the Father. The poor, the homeless, the unborn, those suffering from addictions......... every soul on earth I would say.
He told us that even though he was raised a Catholic, he hadn't practiced his faith for years and was so hungry to know everything there was to know that he searched on the internet for everything he could find out about the Church and our Faith, about Jesus, and our Blessed Mother and the Saints, prayers, devotions everything Catholic. He listened to podcasts and he wrote almost everything down. He must have hundreds of books of handwritten prayers. I told him about the Marian Congress in 1947 and that I had the 80-page program that my dad had given me as a souvenir and he borrowed it so he could handwrite the entire book.
He had a special place in his heart for the Biker Church and the homeless. Father Joshua and Al visited the Biker Church in Vanier weekly with clothes for their "Free Store" And, Al loved to hear Pastor Rob Preach on Thursdays.
Al was like a sponge. He wanted to know everything Catholic and do everything Catholic. Naturally, he joined our parish 40 Days for Life in 2022, but went way beyond anything expected, He spent the entire day at the corner of Bank and Queen praying with Father Joshua For more details click here
Many in our parish have been inspired by Al, with his love for the Church, Jesus in the Eucharist, our Blessed Mother, Saint Joseph, and all the Saints.
Al and a few others below praying at our Grotto In October 2023
Al's love for the poor and homeless is beyond words and has inspired many to follow his example not only here at the Annunciation but elsewhere. In the last couple of years, Al became very attached to the Queenship of Mary Community here in Ottawa and together with the Community they provided food for the homeless on several occasions Al wanted to do everything
Al Loved the Mass and participated in each one with such AWE and Reverence. I can't imagine our parish without Al's humble presence.
You know I really feel that Alain could be a saint. Of course, one should not be presumptuous when it comes to anyone's immortal soul but I really believe that God sends us holy souls to inspire and lead us to Him and I believe Al is such a soul. Well, I am an old lady and have known many very devout Catholics who have inspired me but never someone quite like Alain. I mentioned this to a friend today who told me well we shouldn't be making assumptions because it is not easy to become a saint and I agree but looking at Al, my gosh the way he expressed sorrow for the sins of his past, his profound love of Jesus in the Eucharist, Mother Mary the saints his fellow brothers and sisters. I believe God sends us souls like Al for a reason to help each one of us reach heaven as well and I feel extremely blessed to have had the Grace to have known Al. And he never judged anyone.
Striving for holiness is an ongoing thing but with God's mercy and His Grace it is attainable and within the reach of each one of us
Thank you, God for Alain, and thank you, Alain
A few photos I took
Friday, June 21, 2024
Alain Charette - Funeral Mass
Thursday, June 20, 2024
Run With Life: And now a word from our sponsor, Moses
Saturday, June 15, 2024
Protect our Children Rally, June 15, 2024, Parliament Hill
One Nation Under God for Children
Photos and Videos I took
SPEECHES
Howard
PHOTOS
Annunciation of the Lord Parish, June 15, 2024
Saint Monica Prayer Group
Father John during mass, mentioned that there was going to be a workshop after mass for Spiritual Directors and welcomed everyone
Father Shroff was asked to give a talk and arrived shortly after mass. But first, he wanted to see the recently renovated altar
Thursday, June 13, 2024
Finally! An Ontario School Board with Some Common Sense
On Tuesday evening, the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board voted 6-3 to shut down a motion allowing non-governmental flags such as the LGBT 'Pride' flag to be flown on school property.
During a June 11 board meeting, the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board (DPCDSB) voted 6-3 against the motion which effectively prohibits the flying of the LGBT “Pride” flag during June amid cheers from parents who had attended the meeting to defend Catholic teaching.
“This is a huge victory for parental rights and we give all thanks and praise to God for bringing it,” Campaign Life Coalition’s (CLC) Jack Fonseca told LifeSiteNews.
“Satan’s claim on the education arm of the Catholic Church has been pushed back!” he celebrated. “His conquered territory has been diminished, and the cross of Christ, once eclipsed at the DPCDSB by the flag of the deadly sin of pride, has been brought back more fully into view.”
The board meeting came after DPCDSB trustee Brea Corbet attempted to overturn a May 15 decision to ban flying any non-governmental or non-church flags outside the school’s buildings.
According to Parents As First Educations (PAFE), during a June 4 policy meeting, Corbet illegally introduced a motion to fly flags such as the LGBT “Pride” flag despite the motion not being listed anywhere on the meeting agenda.
In response, PAFE had called on local voters and parents to call their trustees and attend Tuesday evening’s meeting.
“We require massive numbers to be there to show the board the public has eyes on what they’re doing and does not approve,” PAFE urged.
At the June 11 meeting, three delegations spoke against flying the “Pride” flag, one from CLC, one from PAFE, and one from Citizen Go, according to the meeting agenda.
After hearing from the delegations, the trustees discussed flying the flag amongst themselves before finally voting on the motion. Trustees voted was 6-3 against the motion, with 2 trustees absent.
Following the decision, Ontario parents and grandparents can be seen outside the meeting celebrating the pro-family vote.
“Motion to fly ‘pride’ flags outside @DPCDSBSchools has been… DENIED!” CLC celebrated on X after the board meeting.
Monday, June 10, 2024
Betrayed by Medicine: The Unspoken Horrors of Gender Transition| National Catholic Register
Betrayed by Medicine: The Unspoken Horrors of Gender Transition
Riveting new book exposes the devastating impact of ‘gender-affirming care’ on young bodies and minds. ‘These real, lived stories are the greatest weapon in combating gender ideology,’ says journalist Mary Margaret Olohan.
Author and Catholic journalist Mary Margaret Olohan is out with a new book exposing the real harms of 'gender-affirming care.' (photo: Regnery )
Alyssa Murphy InterviewsJune 10, 2024
Mary Margaret Olohan first noticed it as a journalist around 2020-2021.
Stories and reports about “gender-affirming care” circulating across media outlets. The phrase, what Olohan calls an outright “euphemism for transgender surgeries, hormones, and puberty blockers,” was a “very coordinated effort to make this seem all palatable to the public.”
“And it was around 2021 that lawmakers were introducing legislation such as the Safe Act that would protect children from these procedures,” The Daily Signal reporter and author of DeTrans: True Stories of Escaping the Gender Ideology Cult told the Register. But these efforts were met with hostility by the liberal media and advocates of gender ideology.
The book comes at an all-too-critical time, as WPATH just recently admitted to the fact that the “science” behind “gender-affirming care” had been doctored itself. And just as Olohan’s book exposes these lies and the butchering they caused of young teens who took the advice from medical professionals to heart, Olohan told the Register that the leak confirmed these disturbing facts:
“So-called ‘gender-affirming care’ is experimental and dangerous and the transgender-promoting ‘experts’ know it. They knew that testosterone was causing tumors in some female patients. They knew that girls were losing their ability to have kids from these drugs. They knew that some patients were unable to actually give informed consent due to their serious mental-health problems. And yet they publicly continue to praise and laud ‘gender-affirming care’ and claim it is pivotal for youth who identify as transgender. These are incredibly harmful lies to vulnerable minds, and the detransitioners in my book believe they were betrayed and deeply harmed by these lies.”
The stories of detransitioners and their families have impacted trans surgeries and so-called trans medicine in the U.K. — most notably with the closing of Tavistock Clinic, ending these life-altering surgeries for children — and a glimmer of hope came last week as some physicians in the U.S. signed a “Doctors Protecting Children” declaration that expresses “serious concerns” about the treatment of minors who are uncomfortable with their biological sex.
But the voices of Chloe Cole, Prisha, Luka, and Abel, some of the detransitioners in Olohan’s book, have been ignored, if not silenced as the nation charts a course through these controversial currents despite these alarms, especially under the Biden administration. Olohan is not surprised, telling the Register, “Ideology has trumped facts and science in the United States for a number of years now,” adding:
“U.S. gender activists have an insanely tight chokehold on American politics, media, corporations, medical institutions and more. Even as we see European countries taking steps to protect children from these irreversible procedures, our own medical institutions and medical professionals seem to be turning both a blind eye and ear to what is going on in the world around them as they continue to push these procedures on struggling youth.”
And medical professionals are not only selling a remedy such as surgery for a teen struggling with dysphoria. Olohan says it goes much deeper than that.
“I think there's kind of a spiritual promise to all of this. ... Alot of these detransitioners told me that it wasn't just that they were told that this would cure them of their dysphoria once they were living as a boy. ... They were told that they would be happy.”
And many teens considering transgender surgeries are living in vulnerable situations. The majority of the detransitioners Olohan spoke with came from homes where “most are not practicing a faith, not playing sports, not involved in community in any way,” Olohan said. “A mother may be an alcoholic or the parents are struggling in their relationship or leading to divorce. They are lonely, feel like they didn't fit in, and didn’t have a lot of friends.”
Olohan also observed a consistency among many detransitioners she spoke with: They were on the autism spectrum but were never diagnosed until after the life-altering hormones and surgery. “They said that if they would've been diagnosed,” Olohan told the Register, “they probably wouldn't have transitioned, as many of the questions they had about themselves might have made sense ...”
Two red sirens for adults to be mindful of in this era of trans medicine are the role that phones and social media play in coercing more youth into this dangerous mindset.
“If a teenager has the ability to go upstairs and lock their bedroom door and access the internet, they are absolutely exposed to gender ideology and activists and a whole world of harmful content that parents wouldn’t even begin to know how to identify. We have already seen major media outlets document the harmful effects of social media on our youth.”
Olohan’s book vividly describes the vulnerability of teens and tech when discussing how detransitioners like Cole bought into the lies being fed to her on social media. As Olohan recounted to the Register:
“Young women like Chloe, who are accessing social media at a young age, are looking for who they are supposed to be when they compare themselves to images of women online. As they are exposed to picture after picture of perfectly sculpted, seductive but demure women on Instagram, they begin to feel that they cannot match up to these ideas of womanhood. And at the same time, they are being exposed to pornographic material on the internet (as many modern children are), which depicts women in very degrading and humiliating ways. This makes some of these girls shy away from the idea of sexual intimacy as a woman and all too easy prey for the gender activists who question, ‘Maybe you’re not a girl, maybe you are a boy!’”
And it’s not by accident; this is the clear design of a transgender community that is anxious for new recruits. Organizations that are actually LGBT-lobbying groups even lurk in the shadows on apps like SnapChat. “This is a platform that most parents think is okay, but there is a feature that if you ‘swipe left,’ there are all these news stories that your kid can access, and these are actually just little snippets funded by Planned Parenthood, by GLAAD, the ACLU.” Olohan said, “Under the auspices of being cool and trendy and newsy, there are many inappropriate conversations on subjects like masturbation, polyamory, abortion, among other topics.”
The impact of pornography cannot be undermined either. With the accessibility to smartphones and tablets, Olohan shares some shocking statistics in her book.
“93 percent of boys and 62 percent of girls are exposed to pornography during their youth, according to a 2018 research summary on pornography and public health from the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. The summary found that 49 percent of college-aged males first encountered pornography before they reached their teens, and 64 percent of people between the ages of thirteen and twenty-four actively seek out porn at least once a week.”
The exposure at such a young age to such graphic images that typically show women in demeaning and degrading, often violent, situations but shown “experiencing pleasure from it,” is concerning. “Anti-pornography activists argue that this content promotes sexual violence and severely dehumanizes the consumer, who will desire more and more aggressive content to get the same rush as before,” Olohan told the Register.
The dirty business of “gender-affirming care” becomes very real when one considers the gatekeeper to the hormones: Planned Parenthood. A detransitioner named Helena, whose story is chronicled in the book, was able to apply for hormones and was granted them at her local Planned Parenthood, even though she had noted on her form to the clinician that she had had suicidal thoughts just two weeks prior. Olohan says the abortion giant is completely complicit in this grave path and has become “one of the largest suppliers of so-called ‘gender-affirming’ hormones in the nation.” However, they are very “coy about it,” Olohan told the Register.
“Planned Parenthood is also careful to use certain language when describing the testosterone and estrogen that they are prescribing; as they do with abortion, they use the framing of ‘care’ to describe these things, using phrases such as ‘gender-affirming care’ and ‘reproductive health care.’”
And as abortion facilities are now commonplace in most major cities, “a vast network of clinics throughout the country means that these hormones are far too easily available to young people.” And, sadly, the verdict is still out on the science behind these hormones, and many of their devastating effects are very rarely reported. “Tragically, in some cases, they take their own lives.”
And as patients go down this road, they are told that they will feel better and what they want is achievable, but what is not told are the horror stories that this book eloquently explores with compassion: mental-health issues on top of severe pain and organ malfunction from surgeries; but through it all, Olohan said she’s hopeful the book will expose the true dangers of trans science.
“I have been so impressed by Prisha, Luka, Abel, Helena and Chloe and their ability to articulate these very traumatic experiences that they have been through. It is incredibly brave for them to step into the limelight and tell their stories, but they do this so that other young people who are struggling with gender dysphoria will have someone that they can listen to, someone warning them about the dangers of gender transition. I truly believe that these real, lived stories are the greatest weapon in combating gender ideology, and it is so important that we give detransitioners a platform to share them.”
Sunday, June 9, 2024
Sacred Heart of Jesus - June 7, 2024
Friday June 7 beginning at the steps of Notre Dame Cathedral On the solemnity of the Sacred Heart, the SJAC Community hosted its Procession of Reparation for the outrages and blasphemies against the Sacred Heart and the Holy Face. We processed with the banner of the Holy Face and portraits of the Sacred Heart to Parliament Hill.
Sunday, June 2, 2024
Corpus Christ Sunday 2024 -
I love it when parishes have Processions with the Blessed Sacrament. Thank you, Jesus
OTTAWA
Pat went to mass in Almonte and took some pictures and this short video below
Background music Soul of my Savior, Dana Scanlon
Our Lady of the Assumption Catholic Church Windsor ON
https://assumptionparish.ca/photos/corpus-christi-procession-4/
Following 9 am mass at my Parish of the Annunciation of the Lord here in Ottawa Chris drove me to the Heart Institute to visit Mike. At Approximately 12:30 we took a walk around the area while Mike ate his lunch. I thought maybe we could look for a Corpus Christi procession. Saint Anthony's and Saint Mary's Churches are both in the vicinity so we decided to head to Saint Mary's on Bayswater but if there was a procession we were too late although I did make a little procession of my own which I will post later.
History of Eucharistic Processions