Author: Jim Bowman

Jim Bowman covered religion 1968-78 for the Chicago Daily News, since then has written books, articles, etc., mostly on corporate history but also on religion (Company Man: My Jesuit Life, 1950-1968), and more recently on politics (Illinois Blues: How the Ruling Party Talks to Voters -- Lulu.com, Kindle). Longtime Oak Park, Illinois, resident, he lives now on Chicago's North Side, where four of his and Winnie's six children live close by.

The Vandals sack Rome….again

Bye, bye Humanae Vitae.

An exercise in raw intellectual vandalism has been underway in Rome since July 23: what was originally known as the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Marriage and the Family has been peremptorily but systematically stripped of its most distinguished faculty, and its core courses in fundamental moral theology have been cancelled.

Concurrently, academics known to be opposed to the teaching of Humanae Vitae on the appropriate means of regulating fertility and the teaching of Veritatis Splendor on intrinsically evil acts are being appointed to teach at the reconfigured Institute, which is housed at the Pontifical Lateran University – the pope’s own institution of higher learning. [Italics added]

Sixteen hundred nine years after the first Vandal sack of Rome, they’re at it again, although this time the chief vandal wears an archbishop’s zucchetto.

Sic transit authentic teaching — in the reign of Bad Pope Francis.

I liken it to Chicago Mayor Daley II (Richie) demolishing an airport in the darkness of night or President Obama dropping billions in the Ayatollah’s lap.

Another Argentinian, Peron, couldn’t have done this vandalism any better.

via  Catholic World Report

Due To Homicide Rates, Baltimore Residents Could Claim U.S. Asylum

Woe is Baltimoreans, at least those in high-crime districts.

People have long misunderstood and misrepresented Baltimore, my cherished hometown, but much of what President Donald Trump said this past weekend about Charm City was right on the nose. The president categorized Baltimore as a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess,” which sparked ire among his always-vocal choir of critics but offered no untrue information.

The president was responding to longtime Maryland Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings, whose district includes Baltimore, who had issued an incendiary attack on acting Department of Homeland Security head Kevin McAleenan for conditions on the U.S. southern border. Cummings yelled at McAleenan during a House Oversight hearing, claiming he possessed an “empathy deficit” about migrant families at the border.

Yell if you must, Rep. Cummings, but get it straight. And if possible, do not set yourself up for a presidential take-down.

via Due To Homicide Rates, Baltimore Residents Could Claim U.S. Asylum

The Godless Confusion and the God of Justice — sermon material here

Would you want a sermon like this?

Dominus Vobiscum: Notes from a massgoer's underground

I’d take a sermon like this any day. Has punch, gets to the heart of a major, burning issue: how react to a society that rarely hears such talk. Society? How about parish mass-attenders?

First few ‘graphs:

According to atheist Richard Dawkins in his best-selling book The God Delusion, the God of the Old Testament is “arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

That remark indicates far more familiarity with the dictionary than with the Bible. I wonder, how much fiction has Dawkins read? More seriously, how carefully has he actually read the Bible?

Sadly, Dawkins merely appeals to the tired notion that the “God of the Old Testament” is a cruel tyrant with little love for His creation. I suspect that…

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The Comma: “When in Doubt, Leave it Out” (Don’t We Wish!)

Something I heard from my father (born 1895), which he had been taught at mostly public schools on West Side of Chi (two years at Presentation, 7th and 8th grades), which comes to my mind regularly or used to.

Once I taught grammar to frosh at St. Ignatius HS Chi and Loyola Academy Wilmette (note my leaving commas out*), I had the various uses down cold.

So does this writer, who has a very good site.

via Gone Writing

* FYI: Leaving them out in this case is a matter of blogspeak, not to be emulated in other kids of writing. Verb sat sap.

Amazon synod to take church into uncharted territory?

The people who wrote this apparently have very high regard for their boss, quoting him as sufficient authority for apparently heavy changes to come:

Indigenous peoples “have much to teach us” (Evangelii Gaudium 198).

In their love for their land and their relationship with the ecosystem, they know
the Creator God, the source of life. “In their difficulties they know the suffering Christ” (ditto).

In their concept of a social life in dialogue, they are moved by the Holy Spirit.

How he knows that is another mystery.

For this reason, Pope Francis pointed out that “we need to let ourselves be evangelized by them” and by their cultures, and that the new evangelization implies “lending our voice to their causes, but also [we are called] to be
their friends, to listen to them, to speak for them, and to embrace the mysterious wisdom which God wishes to share with us through them” (EG 198).

Go with the hitherto unrecognized Amazonian flow.

His teachings, therefore, could set the direction of priorities for the new paths of the Church in the Amazon.

If the November synod votes his way, but he’s generally good at that.

via Preparatory Document for the Synod for the Amazon