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.

Strawless Starbucks To Offer Cupless ‘Direct Pour’

The last straw? Not by a long shot.

Just days after announcing it would drop plastic straws to save the oceans, Starbucks today introduced the option to have your hot beverage dispensed without a cup.

The new Earth-friendly ‘Direct Pour’ service is expected to increase sales by winning over people who have avoided Starbucks as a way to protect the planet from human refuse.

Little things mean a lot.

via ScrappleFace

You have to see this riveting video of Cardinal Cupich

Which I intend to do, but first, consider this about the video from a Michael Sean Winters column of last November:

As Jesuit Fr. Jim Martin pointed out in responding to the [Rev. Thomas] Weinandy’s strange account of how he came to the conclusion that Jesus wanted him to write to the pope [a highly critical letter last October]: “If one’s idea of discernment is seeking signs like this, then why would one trust, say, a divorced and remarried Catholic to consult his or her conscience about whether it is permissible to receive Communion? It is no wonder that discernment seems so arbitrary to some people. And so frightening.”

To which I am constrained to ask why Fr. Martin and others, including Winters, would be concerned with what a pope says in the first place.

If discernment opens the way for them to do what they wish, why were they bothered by previous popes who narrowed their options?

via National Catholic Reporter

@MichaelSWinters nasty remark about converts. Wherein Fr. Z rants.

Year-old news, for which I apologize, but Fr. Z. did so well rebutting this absurd complaint which I ran across while looking for something else, that had to “share” it, as they say — vs. the old, quite useful “tell you about it.”

Within his rebuttal, rambling at times but so what? was this neat capsule:

A couple days back, at the Fishwrap (aka National Sodomitic Reporter [ouch]), the Wile E. Coyote of the catholic Left, Michael Sean Winters, attacked converts.

“At Al Jazeera, Austen Ivereigh debates Matthew Schmitz from First Things. I am so tired of converts telling us that the pope is not Catholic.”

Then the neat wisdom slice:

What a snotty thing to say. Typical Fishwrap.  Liberals have a streak of moral superiority which leads them to all sorts of  humorless, condescending lapses.

more more more via Fr. Z’s Blog

Fort Worth diocese removes ‘no gun’ signs from church property — but bitterly clings to its no-gun policy

Chalk one up for common sense.

An uncommon virtue in gun matters.

But there’s a catch.

Fortworth, Texas, Jul 7, 2018 CNA/EWTN News.- The Diocese of Fort Worth is removing signs notifying people that concealed and open carry of firearms are both banned on church property – but the policy against guns has not changed. [?!]

Removal of the signs was recommended by a security team whom the diocese hired as consultants after a mass shooting at a Baptist church in Sutherland Springs last November, NBC reported.

Tony Perez, a parishioner at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, has a license to carry firearms, . . . told Dallas-Fort Worth’s NBC affiliate that the signs were “effectively advertising a gun-free zone,” which notified individuals seeking to do harm that the location was vulnerable.

The catch:

Instead of posting signs near the entrances of churches throughout the diocese, notification of the gun ban will be included in weekly Sunday bulletins, NBC said.

It’s called having cake and eating it. Impossible, you say? Nah. Happens a lot.

They will have their bans, won’t they?

Published 7/9/2018