A book is a book is a book. But some are better than others.
It’s what policemen did when a suspect was getting away in 1950s Paris. So the incident in Simenon’s Maigret and the Man on the Bench. He wanted to alert other cops in the neighborhood.
Whistles all had same sound, I’m sure, so blowing it was just to get them looking for a running man or woman. Didn’t work this time in this 1953 book, 2/3 through it. Man got away.
Now excuse me, I have to get back at it. The book, that is.
Watching, watching, watching. Remembering, remembering, remembering.
The film [A new documentary, The Creepy Line,] claims that Google is part of a deliberate manipulation of millions of users through its multiple platforms including YouTube to suppress conservative views.
Please, tell me no right-wing lies.
Specifically, the film suggests that during the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign Google tweaked its search algorithm in an attempt to swing the election towards Hillary Clinton.
Oh no, The crooked candidate?
The filmmakers explain that, thereafter, searches for Clinton on Google almost invariably returned positive stories. In contrast, searches on other search engines had a more equitable and realistic split between positive and not so positive views on Clinton and her polices.
No fair!
Perhaps Google’s alleged position should not surprise us too much given that [former Google executive
Eric] Schmidt worked with the Clinton campaign in 2016.
No!
The filmmakers also point to the now well-known 2016 report revealing an anti-conservative bias in Facebook’s human-run “trending” topics.
That’s it. No more Google. No more anything? No!
. . . as neat avoidance of something he, she, they, or it can do something about.
In the case of Pope Francis’ statement-making office, also known as a dicastery.
Movement gone astray . . .
Dominus Vobiscum: Notes from a massgoer's underground
Dom ProsperGuéranger OSB and Pope (St.) Pius X were at the origin of the Liturgical Movement in the early 1900s, working towards “renewal of fervor for the liturgy”among clergy and faithful.
Promoters of the New Order (Novus Ordo) of the Mass say that’s where the new Mass got its start. Not so, wrote Fr. Didier Bonneterre in his 1980 book,The Liturgical Movement: Gueranger to Beauduin to Bugnini, Roots, Radicals Results.
The fact is, says Bonneterre in a detailed, fascinating, aggressively partisan argument, the liturgical movement was diverted from its course. It was his business to tell how that happened, discover who set reform off on the wrong track, what was its early deviation, what the main error, who “hijacked” the movement so as to “propagandize” for Vatican II and a New Mass.
He identified major protagonists who would be “hounding” the Popes of the decades to come, names to…
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Baring the soul. Or not.
Dominus Vobiscum: Notes from a massgoer's underground
I began this book in the role of a crabby old (very old) objector to the new mass, intending to issue primarily a cry from the heart, an extended complaynt at the plundering of liturgy as I knew it, which I sometimes considered akin to Henry VIII’s rape of the monasteries — Shakespeare’s “Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.” A despoliation, I feared — and to some extent still do.
You can imagine the shift involved, to go from complainer about the New Mass — Novus Ordo (new order of mass = new mass) — to looking for what I had to learn about it and charting a course for myself among Vatican 2 and other documents and assorted commentary and my own experiences and my own commentary including my complaynts.
So it’s an adventure, a journey of a soul, some might say, but not…
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To pick a good one, that is the issue . . .
Dominus Vobiscum: Notes from a massgoer's underground
Those Old Novus Ordo Blues: How Vatican 2 was betrayed by liturgical enthusiasts in the late 1960s and since then within the bosom of the holy Roman Catholic church
My Novus Ordo Blues: Extremely Old Catholic Looks Back
Novus Ordo Reconsidered: A Meditation
The New Mass Reconsidered: A Meditation
The Mass Since Vatican II: A Meditation
Novus Ordo: The Catholic Mass Since Vatican II
Novus Ordo: The mass since Vatican II and how it tore the heart out of religious devotion
Novus Ordo: The mass since Vatican II and how it offers the church opportunity for respect for conscience
New blog, about book in progress . . .
Dominus Vobiscum: Notes from a massgoer's underground
Watch a book in progress.
Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton
We’ll see about that.
Cupich spoke from the floor [of the bishops’
conference meeting] immediately after [Cardinal, Conference
president] DiNardo’s announcement of the change Monday morning [the ukase from Rome, which left bishops gasping]. The cardinal [Cupich] suggested that the bishops continue to discuss the proposed measures and take non-binding votes on them. He offered no indication at that time that he would introduce a completely different plan. [Emphasis mine]
His secret, the supposed ace he would play.
By Tuesday afternoon, the Chicago cardinal rose to question the premise of the USCCB’s proposed independent commission, asking if it was a reflection of sound ecclesiology. [Being an absolute stickler for sound theology.] Cupich suggested that the commission could be seen as a way of “outsourcing” difficult situations.
The guy is amazing. He’s heard “outsourcing” used as outcry against jobs going overseas or means of corporate cost-cutting or blame-avoidance, tosses it in here — cleverly, in his book, a sidelong shot at the proposal the bishops were told not to vote on.
Shortly thereafter, Cupich submitted to conference leaders a seemingly well-prepared and comprehensive “Supplement to the [USCCB] Essential Norms,” which outlined in detail the plan he had developed with Wuerl.
He had it all along!
More to come . . .
Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago and Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington collaborated extensively on a recently proposed policy for handling abuse allegations against bishops, CNA has learned.
Cupich submitted the plan Tuesday to leaders of the U.S. bishops’ conference, proffering it as an alternative to a proposal that had been devised by conference officials and staffers.
The conference’s proposed plan would have established an independent lay-led commission to investigate allegations against bishops. The Cupich-Wuerl plan would instead send allegations against bishops to be investigated by their metropolitan archbishops, along with archdiocesan review boards. Metropolitans themselves would be investigated by their senior suffragan bishops.
The two machinators want bishops vetting bishops. What about lay people?
Sources in Rome and Washington, DC told CNA that Wuerl and Cupich worked together on their alternative plan for weeks, and presented it to the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops before the U.S. bishops’ conference assembly in Baltimore. Cupich and Wuerl are both members of Congregation for Bishops.
Appointed by Pope Francis to this cabinet bureau that vets new appointees as bishops whenever openings arise.
Their minority position was announced as apparent blindsiding of the majority after the body as a while was told to hold off on the proposal at hand, Cupich and Wuerl being the pope’s men on the scene. (Cupich ran for bishops’ president last election, got a major turn-down, now operates as a sort of Chuck Schumer in clerical garb.
The Cupich-Wuerl plan was submitted to the U.S. bishops even after a Vatican directive was issued Monday barring U.S. bishops from voting on any abuse-related measures. The Vatican suspended USCCB [U.S. Conference of Catholic bishops] policy-making on sexual abuse until after a February meeting involving the heads of bishops’ conferences from around the world.
Where the pope will have the upper hand.
An official at the Congregation for Bishops [in Rome] told CNA on Thursday that the substance of the plan presented by Cupich at the Baltimore meeting is known in the congregation as “Wuerl’s plan.” The official would not confirm whether the congregation had received an advance copy of the document.
The two have been at it a while:
Senior chancery officials in Washington described the plan presented Tuesday as a collaborative effort by the cardinals, telling CNA that Wuerl and Cupich first informed the Congregation for Bishops several weeks ago about their idea for the “metropolitan model” [a
kind of Russian-doll situation, little bishops, big bishops,
biggest bishops, the latter being a whole state, for instance] to handle complaints against a bishop, and suggested they had continued to discuss the plan with Congregation officials since that time.“It was a mutual effort,” one Archdiocese of Washington official told CNA.
It was the American plan, apparently meant to keep power where it belongs.
More to come, surely, of this lesson in how Rome speaks and bishops listen. Or else.
. . . “renewable energy,” Trump knew better.
The Investor’s Business Daily editorial board writes that former President Obama was “determined to force the country to dump billions of taxpayer subsidies on ‘renewable’ energy, and needed a reason to justify it. Yet all along, the truth was that the U.S. could be a global energy powerhouse. Now, with President Donald Trump in the White House calling for U.S. energy dominance, everyone knows that to be the case.”
How a slim, trim fellow like Barack could be such a fathead.
Blithe Spirit 