Anti-Vatican Council 2 traditionalists have until June 28 to respond to an offer from the Vatican of reinstatement in the RC Church with their own bishops, parishes, and seminaries.

They would have to buy into Vatican Council 2, however, and cease objecting to the mass that came from it, reports Catholic World News. 

Their founder — of the Society of St. Pius X — Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, “had accepted both of those terms before his break with the Vatican in 1986,” CW News said.

Their independence within the church would take the form of a “prelature,” says the Italian daily Il Giornale.  Opus Dei has its own prelature, or is one, to be precise.

Speaking from my own experience with the the society, at its Oak Park church, I would be surprised if they take the offer.

Later: On the other hand, if they can stomach the Vatican 2 and new-mass conditions, they get not only legitimacy, which they do not require, they feel, but also lots of new worshipers — although one wonders what effect the big-church prohibition has had on deflecting them.

Nor do they lose autonomy within the big church, which means they go on as before, especially in recruiting and training priests and handling their own financials.  This means also they could freely poach on big-church enclaves and in effect act as a reforming element. 

Of course, many if not most big-church clergy and bishops would look on them as a cyst or tumor on the Mystical Body.

In any case, this would be the Catholic story of the year, religion-news-wise.  I think.

Can anyone tell me why my “Playing Dumb,” blogged on Oct. 26, 2006, has all of a sudden become my hottest item, with 122 hits, or “views,” as WordPress says, in the last two days?

It’s about North Shore congressional candidate Dan Seals likened to the Big O. as a comer, with Seals downplaying it,

saying the only similarity is their complexion — both are African-American.

I note that the “boiler-plate analysis” provided by the Sun-Times writer would have made an o.k. lede, and that’s about it.  How did this become so relatively (for me) popular?

Steve Rhodes takes the inimitable Dawn Taylor Trice to task for fatuous observations on “the air waves” the other night about the future of newspapers.

Can you imagine the civil rights movement without newspapers? Trice asked. If the Internet was around, certainly! [Rhodes commented]  Can you imagine! YouTube video of Bull Connor and Internet fundraising for SNCC and MLK blogging directly to the people. Progress would have come much sooner.

He’s down on “Old World journalists” in general.

The very idea that the facts of a new media world – and the underappreciated facts of the newspaper industry’s gross negligence and essential journalistic malpractice of the last three decades – are still dawning on our nation’s newsrooms is just incredible. The time to ask how and why is long past.

This is in Rhodes’s Beachwood Reporter, which rocks — that is, pleases me greatly — and will you too, I bet.

I pass this on unvarnished, from a reader:

A biker is riding by the zoo, when he sees a little girl leaning into the lion’s cage.

Suddenly, the lion grabs her by the cuff of her jacket and tries to pull her inside to slaughter her, under the eyes of her screaming parents.

The biker jumps off his bike, runs to the cage and hits the lion square on the nose with a powerful punch.

Whimpering from the pain the lion jumps back letting go of the girl, and the biker brings her to her terrified parents, who thank him endlessly.

A New York Times reporter has watched the whole event.

The reporter addressing the biker says, “Sir, this was the most gallant and brave thing I saw a man do in my whole life.”

The biker replies, “Why, it was nothing, really, the lion was behind bars. I just saw this little kid in danger, and acted as I felt right.”

The reporter says, “Well, I’ll make sure this won’t go unnoticed. I’m a journalist from the New York Times, you know, and tomorrow’s paper will have this story on the front page… So, what do you do for a living and what political affiliation do you have?'”

The biker replies, “I’m a U.S. Marine and a Republican.”

The journalist leaves.

The following morning the biker buys The New York Times to see if it indeed brings news of his actions, and reads, on front page:

U.S. MARINE ASSAULTS AFRICAN IMMIGRANT AND STEALS HIS LUNCH