Notre Dame Holy Cross priest defends a brother

Rev. Wilson Miscamble CSC speaks up for Bishop Daniel Jenky CSC of Peoria in re Jenky’s vigorous, pointed analysis of Obama’s attacks on Catholic ministry:

His homily was a courageous homily which pointed to a pattern of behavior of a number of regimes to limit religious freedom and to attack religious institutions.

He was echoing rebuttal by ND law prof emeritus Charles E. Rice of letter by 49 Notre Dame faculty members who condemned Jenky’s sermon and called for his resignation from the Notre Dame board.

Bishop Jenky properly drew attention to the impending dangers to religious and personal freedom. The Obama regime . . . is substituting for the free economy and limited government a centralized command system of potentially unlimited jurisdiction and power. . . . The HHS Health Care Mandate imperils not only the mission of the Catholic Church but also the right of conscience itself.

Haunted Jesuits

Latest highly placed, high-profile Jesuit to resign under fire. Past misdeeds keep popping up.

This one departed his post as trustee of Boston College.

When reports of Donald McGuire’s sexual abuse of minors came to Fr. Bradley Schaeffer’s attention in 1993, no significant action was taken to remove McGuire, a renowned retreat leader and close friend of Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta, from his ministry. Fr. Schaeffer, who was the Jesuit Provincial in Chicago at the time, never contacted the police regarding the allegations; instead, he sent McGuire for rehabilitative treatment which reportedly ended early and in failure due to McGuire’s lack of cooperation with therapists.

Naughty Chinese, says Big Government in Beijing

Image representing Twitter as depicted in Crun...
Yr not using it right, Beijing tells its subjects. (Image via CrunchBase)

Big Government fans have their model:

China has stepped up its campaign to clamp down on the Internet, which has emerged as a virtual town square for exchanging information about the Bo Xilai scandal and the nation’s biggest political upheaval in years.

The popular Twitter-like microblogging service Sina Weibo on Tuesday deleted the accounts of several users, including that of Li Delin, a senior editor of the Chinese business magazine Capital Week, whose March 19 post helped fuel rumors of a coup in Beijing. The service announced the move to many of its more than 300 million user accounts, thereby turning it into a public lesson in the consequences of rumor mongering.

They have their ways of getting things done, don’t they?

Mo. judge to SNAP: Hand over your files

Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment
Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

To clergy defendants’ lawyers, that is, to see if they have been coaching complaining witnesses to dig out repressed memories that lead to accusation.  It’s an attack on the accuracy of the dredged-up memories, which are crucial in Missouri, where the five-year statue of limitation begins only at the time of the recovered memory of abuse.

If defense lawyers can prove that the plaintiffs did not actually suppress memories of sexual abuse for decades, judges would have to throw out the lawsuits under a five-year statute of limitations that the Missouri Supreme Court reaffirmed in 2006, The Kansas City Star reported (http://bit.ly/IeKExU ).

Read more: http://www.kmbc.com/news/30940594/detail.html#ixzz1szPf7S7m

It’s an “ironic reversal,” comments Catholic World News.

In scores of other cases, SNAP has demanded complete disclosure of confidential personnel files by Catholic dioceses. But the group has fought stubbornly to prevent disclosure of its own internal records. [Jackson County Judge Ann] Mesle said that she expected her order would be appealed.

Carol Marin fulminates feverishly

. . . about bishops and nuns.

Criminal trial in Philly, Peoria bishop compares Obama to Hitler (sic), and Vatican takes on U.S. nuns. How dumb and irrelevant can the Vatican be?

What, no condemnation of pederasty, no instant censure of over-top sermonizing? The Vatican approves of pederasty, is indifferent to what’s playing in Peoria? Apparently.

You decide if this makes sense. Ongoing, longstanding over-the-top pronouncements by nuns’ leaders over many years finally motivates the glacially speeding HQ of the world’s biggest, longest standing, most intricate and many-faceted religious organization, unparallelled in global sweep, to do what? Investigate nuns’ leaders. And a Chicago columnist is thinking Philadelphia and Peoria? You decide.

Yes. The Philly trial provides a sickening display of moral cancer in the world’s biggest, etc. religious organization, which has what to do with the sisters? It’s a war on them? Rather, a war between them and the Vatican, which is supposed to butt out until people forget about the moral cancer? A tough sell, to be sure. Major problem. But not to obscure every other problem.

That sermon in Peoria. Lesson #179 in the problem of comparing people to Hitler, even if you speak of lesser indignities that point to greater ones on their way, lesser infringements leading to greater, etc. But you can’t win talking that way, and you don’t need Hitler for your case in point. Better stay with, say, Bismarck, whose Kultur Kampf sounds more like what’s happening here and now:

The German term About this sound Kulturkampf (help·info) (literally, “culture struggle”) refers to German policies in relation to secularity and the influence of theRoman Catholic Church, enacted from 1871 to 1878 by the Prime Minister of Prussia, Otto von Bismarck. The Kulturkampf did not extend to the other German states such as Bavaria. As one scholar put it, “the attack on the church included a series of Prussian, discriminatory laws that made Catholics feel understandably persecuted within a predominantly Protestant nation.” Jesuits, Franciscans, Dominicans and other orders were expelled in the culmination of twenty years of anti-Jesuit and antimonastic hysteria.[1]

Bismarck sought aggressively to secularize Germany. He was a man on a mission, in which he succeeded, created one glorious reich where there had been rival and barely cooperating duchies and the like. Thing is, he could not abide churchly competition.

More later, perhaps, on the current Bismarcking of Obama’s country by him and his devotedly secular allies, among which he is obviously very comfortable, thank you.

See also the Catholic Encyclopedia on this pregnant subject.

African Americans wig out, beat up caucasian man

See how reporting is done here on tippy toes, lest people know that this was black on white crime.

Victim’s sister:

 “It was the scariest thing I have ever witnessed.” [Ashley] Parker says 20 people, all African American, attacked her brother on the front porch of his home, using “brass buckles, paint cans and anything they could get their hands on.

Police will only say “multiple people” are involved.

Episcopal perps?

Barack Obama delivers a speech at the Universi...
Who will rid me of these troublesome bishops? (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This Notre Dame alum blogging at The Weekly Standard says a stand-off between Obama and the Catholic bishops on the HHS mandate “may not be good for either side.”

He gives an instance, “the disastrous situation of the president sending bishops to jail for being faithful witnesses to their religious convictions.”

I’d say he’s on to something.

Later, from an informed source, an alternate scenario:

The bishops and obama go head to head — the bishops blowing steam — and Catholics (some) getting all revved up for months. Then, just before the election — a week — Obama caves on HHS and  Catholics are relieved to relax and get off their soap boxes.

They watch the bishops on TV kiss and make up profusely to Obama — photo op all’round, conciliatory quotes from Obama, and it’s practically an endorsement just before casting their ballots. You know nothing would make many of these bishops happier…to be assured they’d get the rest of Obamacare initiated.

As the poor lad legendarily told Shoeless Joe, say it ain’t so.