Month: December 2007

Crazy But Ultimately Harmless

Dis guy name Stephen A. Smit’ says down wit’ bloggers.  De guy at deadspin.com has a problem wit’ dat but offers a solution:

We’re not sure how Smith would police his new blog-free society; probably with some sort of expansion of the Patriot Act. Bloggers would be rounded up and sent to Gitmo, there to be made to input guacamole recipes on Rachael Ray’s web site.

Smith, he crazy as a loon.  He reporter at Phila. Inquirer, recently demoted from 76’ers beat as sports columnist.  Too bad.  He have lots to offer.

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Do embryos count?

Tom Roeser nails Andrew Greeley.  How shall we count the ways?

“I subscribe to the position that abortion, now mater how nearly universal in human history, is morally unacceptable…”

said Greeley in Sun-Times column 11/28.  He continued:

“But I wonder if it is proper or prudent to try to impose this Catholic moral view on a whole society that does not agree with us, especially when we cannot even persuade most of our own people.”

It’s as if Hubert Humphrey in 1948 wondered about the propriety or prudence of pushing civil rights when most Dems didn’t buy it, says Roeser.  Greeley continues until he comes up with this atrocious observation: 

“Perhaps for the time that it would take to persuade our own, we may leave the embryos to God’s loving care, the God who also must protect the vast number of embryos who spontaneously abort.”

Roeser:

Leave them to God’s care. Just as we do miners who are trapped in West Virginia, eh, Andy? We go to the utmost to save them; we search lakes and ponds for missing people. We don’t we leave them to God’s loving care?

Greeley doubts if bishops can “convert anyone” by “ukases,” being “tarnished . . . by the abuse scandal.”

To which Roeser:

But when it comes to Iraq where Andy has a partisan interest, yes-yes-YES the bishops must speak!

There’s more more more . . .

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Living With Sins Of The Fathers

In Connecticut this priest adjusts:

When he is training new altar servers, he asks parents to stay for the lessons. If he is measuring young people for robes, he enlists mothers to help him. If there is a church- or school-sponsored field trip, everyone goes on a bus, never alone with him in his vehicle.

“It’s frustrating, I had nothing to do with this, but I just have to face it,” he says. “This is what happened and this is what we will do about it.”

What happened we know about.  How a priest manages things these days we may not know about.

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Crying wolf

This black Baltimore fireman did a bad thing:

Fire Chief William J. Goodwin Jr. said Maynard had admitted to “conducting a scheme meant to create the perception that members within our department were acting in a discriminatory and unprofessional manner.”

He planted a noose-with-threatening-note in the fire house when he felt his job was in jeopardy because of his incompetence.

“I’m extremely upset, as well as hurt. I believed the person who told me [that the incident was legitimate] was telling the truth,”


said the head of the black firefighters’ organization.  The local NAACP head remained stuck on protest, however:

“It really saddens us to hear that evidently things have reached a stage that even an African-American does an injustice to himself and his own people as a result of a negative culture in that department,” Cheatham said when asked to respond to the unions.


He could at least have said the devil made him do it.

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Southern exposure

We knew Catholics aren’t the only ones with abuse problems, but here’s a blog about Southern Baptists:

For faith groups that proactively try to address clergy sex abuse, prevention and compassion go hand in hand.

After all, how will people find out about clergy child molesters if victims are turned away and intimidated when they try to report their abuse?

For Southern Baptists, their leaders are still way behind the curve compared to the leaders of other faith groups.

Southern Baptists don’t even provide a safe place to which victims may report abuse. So most victims don’t try.

It’s worse among them, according to Christa Brown, “the national outreach director for SNAP-Baptist and maintains the StopBaptistPredators.org website. She is a wife, mother, attorney, jazz-lover, slow-runner, and a Southern Baptist abuse survivor”:

Why should anyone believe that Southern Baptist leaders will be able to prevent abuse by clergy child molesters they don’t yet know about when, day in and day out, they do nothing about the clergy child molesters they’re specifically told about?

In addition, Stop Baptist Predators dot org is “the voice of SNAP Baptist.”

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