Month: April 2012

The Bishop Jenky sermon

The Bishop Jenky sermon/call to arms is video’d and verbalized here, as poached by Orate Fratres from a leftist site that wants to capitalize on it as episcopal politicizing, nasty talk, etc.

A key quote is featured:

The Church survived barbarian invasions. The Church survived wave after wave of Jihads. The Church survived the age of revolution. The Church survived Nazism and Communism. And in the power of the resurrection, the Church will survive the hatred of Hollywood, the malice of the media, and the mendacious wickedness of the abortion industry. The Church will survive the entrenched corruption and sheer incompetence of our Illinois state government, and even the calculated disdain of the President of the United States, his appointed bureaucrats in HHS, and of the current majority of the federal Senate.”

The call to political arms is clear enough, and not new, in view of the importance stated by many bishops of the abortion issue:

This fall, every practicing Catholic must vote, and must vote their Catholic consciences, or by the following fall our Catholic schools, our Catholic hospitals, our Catholic Newman Centers, all our public ministries only excepting our church buildings could easily be shut down. Because no Catholic institution, under any circumstance, can ever cooperate with the instrinsic evil of killing innocent human life in the womb. No Catholic ministry and yes, Mr. President, for Catholics our schools and hospitals are ministries can remain faithful to the Lordship of the Risen Christ and to his glorious Gospel of Life if they are forced to pay for abortions.

Note the abortion emphasis. The HHS mandate (Thou shalt do this, under pain of . . . ) also calls for insurance coverage of morning-after pills, of course; but this is little noted and rarely remembered in reportage of the mandate.

Likewise underplayed or omitted is the religious freedom issue. First they came for the Socialists, etc.? — the Hitler-era sequence meant to alert others to their danger from arbitrary imposition of laws and regulations? Let’s see . . . A war on circumcision, the anti-mohel mandate?

Nah. It can’t happen here.

Are you sure?

Wheeling Jesuit president: 2008 independent review found no problem in federal grant billings – The Washington Post

Wheeling Jesuit University's Seal
Wheeling Jesuit University's Seal (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

An unnamed “independent, special counsel experienced in federal grants who had served as general counsel for a major research university” examined how Wheeling Jesuit U. allocated its NASA grants and issued a clean bill for the U. in 2008,  WJU president Richard Beyer says in the wake of recently publicized findings to the contrary by a NASA investigator:

That person, who was not named in Beyer’s statement, “determined the university’s cost-allocation method to be permissible under federal regulations and found no improprieties.”

The period covered by the NASA agent’s report was 2005 through 2011 and referred to WJU vice president Davitt McAteer, who oversaw the grant expenditures..

McAteer’s attorney hasn’t commented on the allegations, but the affidavit suggests he and the university could face five possible federal crimes — theft of federal funds; major fraud; conspiracy; false claims; and wire fraud.

via Wheeling Jesuit president: 2008 independent review found no problem in federal grant billings – The Washington Post.

Blithe Spirit

Very hot news in Catholic circles: the Society of St. Pius X, broken away from the Vatican since the 2nd  Vatican Council, is “on the verge” of reconciliation with the church.

It’s remotely comparable to the resolution and dissolution of The Great Schism of the 14th  century, the three-pope period when disarray was the order of the day. 

Benedict XVI is making it happen.  Standing objections by the SPX people to Vatican 2’s “rupture” or disruptive aspects will remain. 

Trust me, folks, it’s like The Episcopal Church U.S.A. making room for Evangelical Christians.  Somewhat like?  Am working on that.

In Oak Park it means that the Pius X Latin mass church at Ridgeland and Washington, kitty-corner from Julian Middle School, is no longer out of bounds for venturesome Catholics. 

More to come.  more more more

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Blithe Spirit

Assorted Jesuits, Jesuit university teachers, and other liberal Catholics DO NOT LIKE Rep. Paul Ryan’s citing Catholic teaching in support of his budget.

Among his sins surely would be his embracing the long-ignored principle of subsidiarity, which says big organizations or governmental entities should butt out of matters better handled by smaller ones. 

In accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, neither the state nor any larger society should substitute itself for the initiative and responsibility of individuals and intermediary bodies.

No surprise here: A Jesuit history prof at a large Jesuit university told me 20 years ago that the principle no longer had currency.  If it did, one might add, big government would not be considered the cure-all it is treated as today.

It was Dorothy Day, I believe, who referred ironically to “holy mother the state.”  It’s a good phrase for today’s feckless reverence for big…

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Oak Park hate crime not out of poverty

Image representing Zillow as depicted in Crunc...
Image via CrunchBase All about addresses.

The black-on-white hate crime with which an Oak Park man is charged was committed in the village’s NW quadrant, its most affluent, and the offender has a NW quadrant address, Fox-Chicago reports, using a fuller, updated Sun-Times Media account that gives this info:

Alton L. Hayes III, of 1233 N. Woodbine Ave., was allegedly one of two people who attacked a man walking on the 600 block of North Kenilworth Avenue at 12:45 a.m. Tuesday.

The address is for a single family home, 2195 square feet, with 2 1/2 baths, price estimated by Zillow at $487,000. Nice digs.

Out of the mouths of mothers . . .

On the Today Show, Trayvon Martin’s mother called the shooting of Trayvon an accident:

One of the things that I still believe in, a person should apologize when they are actually remorseful for what theyve done. I believe it was an accident. I believe that it just got out of control and he couldnt turn the clock back. I would ask him, did he know that that was a minor, that that was a teenager, and that he did not have a weapon?

Which is what he said later at his bond hearing:

“I am sorry for the loss of your son,” he said. “I did not know how old he was. I thought he was a little bit younger than I am. And I did not know if he was armed or not.”

I hear you, he was telling the mother. Dr. Boyce Watkins, at KultureKritic.com, is not amused:

I havent spoken with Al Sharpton in a few months. But if we were still speaking and he were to ask me what to do with the mother of Trayvon Martin, my answer would be very simple: Get her off the stage right now.

It hurts the case, yes, but at least as important, it takes from the narrative, does it not? He says the same thing at Huff Post.

She did recover, however:

Meanwhile, Martins mother raised eyebrows with her own comments on Today about the accidental nature of the case, but she clarified what she meant in another interview later in the day. Sybrina Fulton told The Associated Press that she was referring to the chance encounter between Zimmerman and her son.

Their meeting was the accident, Fulton said. That was the accident. Not the actual act of him shooting him. That was murder … They were never supposed to meet.

Yet and still, we still have the revealing response from the good doctor.

Later:

Yet another yet-and-still notification:

This is a redundant conversational convention. As both adverbs have the same meaning, you only need one.

Yet and still, he did not change his ways.
Yet he did not change his ways.
Still he did not change his ways

Personally, it’s something I picked up in civil rights and related gatherings of the 60s.  A black usage, I presumed and stillpresume.

Trayvon Martin Protest - Sanford
Trayvon Martin Protest - Sanford (Photo credit: werthmedia) What the mother said.

Wheeling WV cathedral rector has to testify in Phila. abuse case

A Wheeling WV judge says an aide to the Wheeling bishop must appear in the criminal trial of two Philadelphia priests.

A West Virginia judge has ordered a Catholic church official formerly from Philadelphia to testify at the clergy sex-abuse trial now under way in the city.

The ruling late Thursday by Ohio County Circuit Judge Ronald E. Wilson ends a weeklong stalemate over testimony by Msgr. Kevin Michael Quirk.

Quirk served as a judge in the the 2008 church trial of one of the defendants, Rev. James J. Brennan, in which Philadelphia prosecutors say Brennan made “inculpatory” statements usable against him.

Brennan is charged with attempted rape of a 14-year-old boy in 1996. Prosecutors seek corroborating testimony from Quirk, who objected to his being required to testify. But the Wheeling judge ruled Quirk a material witness and said his testimony in Philadelphia “is essential in ascertaining the truth.” He ordered Quirk to appear in Philadelphia when requested between April 29 and May 1.

A decided wrinkle to the contest over requiring Quirk to testify is that in the Philadelphia trial a witness has implicated Quirk’s boss, Bishop Michael Bransfield of Wheeling, accusing him of sexual abuse, which Bransfield has denied.

The Trayvon case made him do it

Mugging of white man in our fair village:

 Alton L. Hayes III, of Oak Park, and a 15-year-old Chicagoan both black walked up behind the 19-year-old victim and pinned his arms to his side early Tuesday, police said.

Alton:

He said, Empty your pockets, white boy,” robbed him, threw him down and punched him out, he and his friend.

He was mad about the Trayvon business and took it out on the white man, he told police. It didn’t pay.

Hayes was charged with attempted robbery, aggravated battery and a hate crime, all felonies, Oak Park police Detective Cmdr. Ladon Reynolds said.

He was still in jail Friday.