“Consider revising to avoid this word,” says Grammatik, a syntax and spelling checker on my WordPerfect 12. The word was “hell,” as one of the “four last things,” also including death, judgment, and heaven. Even the spell-checkers don’t want to hear about it!
“They’ve got to stop this predator,” the dad said. “Chicago Province [of Jesuits], please, put this man out of circulation.”
And announce with fluorish that you have done so.
Chi Trib’s Manya Brachear has more on the Rev. Donald McGuire S.J. suit filed today, with chilling details from the suit and in a news conference:
The parents of the plaintiffs in the latest suit met the priest in 1983 on a spiritual pilgrimage to shrines in Europe. In Lourdes, France, McGuire inspired the mother to convert to Catholicism and asked the father to organize spiritual retreats in Arizona, the plaintiffs’ father said during a news conference Tuesday.
McGuire allegedly abused the older brother, John Doe 117, inside the confessional during those retreats. McGuire later baptized the younger brother, named in the suit as John Doe 118, and presided over the marriage ceremony of John Doe 117. He allegedly abused John Doe 118 at a fundraiser thrown by the family the same weekend as his older brother’s wedding.
The Jesuits apparently had a monster on their hands.
Two more accusers of Father Donald McGuire the Jesuit convicted of sexual abuse, from two brothers in Arizona who today will file suit in Cook County, reports WBBM’s Bernie Tafoya. According to Barbara Blaine of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP),
the young men’s father made a comment about how he thought Fr. McGuire, a family friend, was not guilty of allegations that had been made against him elsewhere, and the oldest told his dad, “I wouldn’t be too sure about that.” That led to questions from the dad; and the 28-year old, a decorated former Marine, admitted he had been molested by Fr. McGuire starting when he was eight or nine years old.
The father later asked his 19-year old son and the son, too, admitted he had been abused by the priest.
This is awful.
During National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, it is fitting and proper that women be informed about any newly discovered dangers, even as the public groans under the weight of all the warnings surrounding the mere act of living.
So speaketh Dennis Byrne in today’s Trib, “Snubbing cancer study will only hurt women.” It may be fitting and proper, but as he makes abundantly clear in the rest of his column, not if the information conflicts with women’s health as understand by pro-abortion people.
Read on, and do not overlook the last two paragraphs, in which he (a) analyzes the madness of crowds as fomented by newsies and (b) cites the General Sanchez critique of media as ignored by them in favor of his critique of the Iraq war in the same speech!
Independent correspondent Michael Yon is warning us. “The disconnect” between what’s happening in Iraq and what’s in the newspapers etc. is stunning:
It is clear that Iraq is turning a corner. Not only are Sunni and Shia talking here in Baghdad, but the fighting definitely is abating. I’ll be out in Sunni and Shia neighborhoods all day Tuesday and Wednesday. Petraeus’ ideas are starting to work.
I’ve been watching for days as LTC Patrick Frank pulls neighborhoods together here in the Rashid district of Baghdad. We’ve been swamped going to reconciliation meetings. ( Spent hours in meetings today. ) LTC Frank is one of many battalion commanders I have seen who are winning in their zones. A Washington Post writer was here for several days and his observations were similar.
He expands on this here, not in the clearest prose around, but cogent enough:
I was at home in the United States just one day before the magnitude hit me like vertigo: America seems to be under a glass dome which allows few hard facts from the field to filter in unless they are attached to a string of false assumptions. Considering that my trip home coincided with General Petraeus’ testimony before the US Congress, when media interest in the war was (I’m told) unusually concentrated, it’s a wonder my eardrums didn’t burst on the trip back to Iraq. In places like Singapore, Indonesia, and Britain people hardly seemed to notice that success is being achieved in Iraq, while in the United States, Britney was competing for airtime with O.J. in one of the saddest sideshows on Earth.
. . . Father Barron on Beauty, Lady Asquith on Shakespeare
Rev. Robert Barron explored beauty for the Catholic Citizens of Illinois Oct. 12 at the Union League Club; and Clare Asquith, an English viscountess, argued that Shakespeare tried to subvert the Elizabethan anti-Catholic police state.
Ellen DeGeneres should learn that the world laughs with you when you laugh but sometimes laughs at you when you cry. I did.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Ellen DeGeneres’ talk show was put on hold for a day because of her emotionally wrenching dog-adoption drama.
“It’s been a long week and a tough week and we decided to take a long weekend and be back on Tuesday,” said Laura Mandel, a spokeswoman for Telepictures Productions, which produces “The Ellen DeGeneres Show.”
So what was it all about, Ellen? She got this dog from this non-profit animal-rescue agency, Iggy his name, and he didn’t get along with her cats. So she gave him to her hair-dresser’s kids in violation of contract: adopter has to give it back to agency, who then re-locates the animal.
So the agency took the dog back, leaving both the kids and Ellen in tears, she on air.
Not gonna let “the Ellen DeGenereses of the world” push them around, said the agency women, who (I have heard on the radio, where I also heard a clip of her losing her composure completely) have since found another home for Iggy.
So Ellen took a few days off to recover. It’s like Oscar Wilde’s comment on the death of Little Nell in Dickens’s Old Curiosity Shop:
One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing.
Blithe Spirit 