Sun-Times headline makes risky reading

Watchdog: IRS at risk for unfairly auditing political groups is the headline.

At risk FOR? As if it may be abolished? IRS is not itself at risk. It’s at risk OF unfairly auditing, etc.

As to the story: Because of inadequate supervision, it says. Inadequate supervisors, that is? And that’s assuming innocence somewhere, when the question is responsibility.

Who’s to blame, for cryin’ out loud? Nobody, I bet. It’s not so messy that way. Like Hillary and Benghazi and her what-difference-does-it-make?

Granted, Rep. Roskam’s committee’s report is a finding of fact, with judgment yet to come. When it does, the above analysis applies.

Fr. Barron gone, Abp Cupich can further remake Chicago, says Crux writer

The seminary’s the thing, social justice to be king?

As rector of Mundelein, Barron reworked the curriculum to focus on the New Evangelization, an idea promulgated by Pope John Paul II and institutionalized at the Vatican in 2010 by Pope Benedict XVI aimed at engaging contemporary culture with the Catholic faith.

Whether Cupich’s choice to replace Barron changes the focus of that curriculum — and in what direction — will be closely scrutinized by Church-watchers.

Bye-by New Evangelization, hello Social Gospel?

(BTW, the former is “in a nutshell . . . salesmanship,” wrote Crux’s John Allen from Rome in March of ’13, in his National Catholic Reporter days, which is linked above.)

Chicago-based Media Star Priest Off to Hollywood

From Midwest to Far West, into the belly of the media beast: (per Wall St. Journal via Google)

LOS ANGELES—A Catholic media star is coming to Hollywood.

On Tuesday, the Vatican announced that FatherRobert Barron,a popular Catholic commentator, author and television host with a significant social media following, would relocate to the Los Angeles Archdiocese from Chicago afterPope Francisnamed him an auxiliary bishop.

The move is expected to boost the Catholic church’s voice in a region that is the center of the entertainment industry and home to the nation’s largest Catholic diocese.

Father Barron will continue running a robust media operation that includes his “Word on Fire” media ministry, as well as posting video talks on his YouTube channel. His videos have been watched more than 13 million times

He’s happy as a clam:

At the announcement of his appointment in Los Angeles Tuesday, Father Barron said that he plans to carry on the mission of “evangelization of the culture, bringing Christ to the arenas of media, politics, law, education, the arts. I can’t think of a more exciting field for this sort of work than Los Angeles, which is certainly one of the great cultural centers of our time.”

. . . .

In an interview Tuesday, Father Barron said he’s eager to “meet some of the players out here, the screenwriters, actors and producers and directors.”

He has plans:

The priest’s videos and writings have a conversational tone, and often reference pop culture, history and politics. His slickly produced videos, usually about 10 minutes long—often show him sitting in a library or sanctuary. He’s tackled topics such as original sin and belief in God, but also the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on gay marriage, comedian Bill Maher and “The Hunger Games” movies.

Father Barron said his strategy is “not to scold the culture for what it’s doing wrong” but to find common points of interest.

For instance:

After criticism [by some] of the movie “Noah,” [for deviating from the Biblical original] Father Barron brushed aside its critics.

“It’s remarkable to me how this movie preserves an awful lot of what I call the biblical logic of the story of Noah in a way, I must say, that’s rather remarkable for a major Hollywood movie,” he said. “God is clearly affirmed throughout the movie.

The ball is in Chi Archbishop Cupich’s court as to who should succeed Barron as rector of the Chicago and regional seminary, a very important post as to the quality and pastoral orientation of presumably many ordination classes of priests.

McCarthy: Pastors, staffers prepared to deal with Supreme Court marriage decision – Illinois Review

McCarthy: Pastors, staffers prepared to deal with Supreme Court marriage decision – Illinois Review.

Frequent commenter to this blog Margaret McCarthy covers Daniel McConchie, Vice President of Government Affairs for Americans United for Life, in a Grayslake IL presentation, including threats to conscience, including:

Here in Illinois, [where] Holy Family Catholic Church in Inverness is faced with a lawsuit over employment discrimination by Colin Collette because he was fired when he married his male partner.

In Illinois, we have had The “Illinois Right of Conscience” [as] one of the strongest protections for religious objections . . . successfully used to protect a Catholic pharmacist from civil penalty when he refused to supply a customer with abortificient drugs.

Currently, SB 1564 . . . passed and . . . before the General Assembly, would weaken those protections.

Chicago Tribune columnist and blogger Dennis Byrne gave us a look at this book in April as applying to abortion.

As if we weren’t looking, pro-choice forces this week are pushing an anti-conscience abortion bill through the Illinois Legislature.

Illinois Senate Bill 1564, which rewrites theHealth Care Right of Conscience Act, is designed to cripple or shut down pregnancy resource centers, such asAid for Womenand theWomen’s Center, that offer womenalternatives to abortion. Ironically, the bill reduces choices for women and takes direct aim at health care providers whose conscience (whether religiously inspired or for logical reasons) does not allow them to participate in abortions.

That means that workers atpregnancy crisis centers would have to violate their conscience by describing the “benefits” of abortion and refer clients to abortion clinics.

The bill is presumed also to cover same-sex confrontations, McCarthy reports:

For several years, the homosexual lobby has been aggressively seeking out businesses whose owners refused on religious grounds to provide services for their prospective weddings. When refused, the couples sued, citing discrimination based on already existing laws permitting gay marriage.

McConchie cited numerous cases across the country of florists, caterers, wedding chapels, bakers that were singled out for attack. Some were defended successfully, others were fined and/or put out of business.

McConchie was blunt about it, warning his Christ Church “Crossroads” audience, “You may not be interested in politics, but if you don’t pay attention, politics will roll over you.”

In a billion years we’ll all be dead? Say it isn’t so!

From Fr. George Rutler at Pewsitter.com:

There is agreement among both kinds of personalities [pessimist and optimist] that the world is going to end.

Grimly or happily, they can cite physicists who expect that our own planet will be finished by the year 500,000,000,000 AD. But it will be too hot to sustain human life within a mere one billion years.

Keynes’s long run?

These days, many seem to be pessimists who think that the world will end faster than expected, at least in terms of livable conditions affected by climate change.

Some take this as a new Gospel, and skeptics are treated as heretics facing an opprobrium as harsh as it is capricious and as capricious as it is vicious.

The argument is declared settled, even though no true science is ever settled.

President Obama, you are no Jack Kennedy

Which is what Ira Stoll says in this informed assessment.

On Iran or any other aspect of foreign dealings.

Encouraging stuff here: a plan to bring out the best in people

Bring Back the Jack Kemp GOP – WSJ.

Some 30 years ago, an influential congressman named Jack Kemp gave a call to Bob Woodson, and in doing so became a Republican model for empowerment politics and minority outreach.

A high-profile group of conservatives is staging a revival, looking to finally engage the modern left on the politics of the poor. Republican presidential candidates, pay attention. . . .

Yes. The negative overwhelms. The positive, here stressed, is what counts. (Not to denigrate well-timed and -placed rebuttal, which has always to be with us.)

Hard words from a scandalized Catholic

Company Man

July 16, 2015

What on earth is Pope Francis doing?

By Louie Verrecchio

From the laughable notion that recreating the Petrine Office in one’s own image and likeness is a mark of “humility,” to the dog-and-pony press conference that presented the 40,000 word Eco-Marxist manifesto Laudato Si’ to the world as a contribution to the social doctrine of the Church, the current pontificate is so lacking genuine Catholic character that its official messaging often gives off the unmistakable stench of a spin job deliberately crafted to deceive.

The farcical tones that began emanating from Rome in the early evening hours of 13 March 2013, apparently detectable to but a relative few early on, have been growing louder and louder ever since.

Today, the alarm bells being sounded by the Franciscan pontificate are so deafening that even some among the slumbering class of the neo-conservatives can’t help but be stirred.

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