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.
Hearing trivia from the pulpit? What’s this Last Coming thing anyway?
At some point during this Advent season, there will undoubtedly be a priest somewhere with a smattering of biblical-critical trivia he picked up in seminary who will confidently inform his congregation that Paul changed his mind on the coming of Christ.
Early on in his ministry, he’ll say, Paul believed Christ would return soon, during Paul’s own lifetime . . . .
Later, however, it is claimed, Paul supposedly came to the disappointed realization that Christ was not returning “soon,” and that he (Paul) would be dead when Christ came. . . . .
Confused parishioners may then be allowed to swing hopelessly in the winds of confusion. There’s nothing some people like better than showing how much more intellectually sophisticated they are than the supposedly “naive” early Christians.
Oh those early Christians, oh those early Christians (to the tune of Oh Dem Golden Slippers) . . .
What do do? Well, for starters keep this in mind:
The Catholic way of reading Scripture is based on the faith that Scriptures weren’t merely a random jumble of books by various authors gathered together by some Church bureaucrat in the Fourth Century, but that the Holy Spirit inspired all of it, so that we can use texts from one book to illuminate our reading of others.
What Christ tells us in the Gospels about the end times is that “no one knows the day or the hour” (so for the life of me I can’t figure out why people keep listening to people who claim they do); that it will “come like a thief in the night;” that in the meantime, we should, like the wise virgins, “keep oil in our lamps,” “be sober,” and “stay alert,” for when the time comes, a man on his roof won’t have time to come down and go inside. There’ll be no time for grabbing one’s coat or packing up a few nice things for the trip. When it’s time to go, it will be time to go.
Beyond that,
we should live our lives, caring for our children, planning prudently for the future, finishing our little projects, and doing all those things that we can do to be “provident” in the image of the God in whose divine providence we participate.
And yet at every moment we should also be asking ourselves the ultimate . . . question: If Jesus were to return right now, and I were to be asked to give an account of my life and my soul, what would I want the Lord to find me doing and thinking about?
Good advice.
Those who can’t, clamor
From Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) American author, philosopher, awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom:
“Those who lack the capacity to achieve much
in an atmosphere of freedom will clamor for power.”http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Eric.Hoffer.Quote.DEB5
Angela Bowman and friends with Cajun music at Hideout Dec. 29
Chicago’s Andrew Sa closes the evening off at 10, right after Hey Chere! at 9.
Hey, Chere!
It’s the happiest sad music around! Inspired by the plaintive, wild sound of Dennis McGee and other Cajun greats, Hey, Chere! plays early traditional Cajun music, a close cousin to high-lonesome old-time and early country. Angela Bowman, featured on fiddle and voice, has taken this short step from country to Cajun, joined by Sean Colledge (Le Travaillant) on accordion and fiddle and John Huber (The Wandering Boys, the Lantern Kickers) on guitar and t’fer.
Evening begins at 8 with Steve Hinds and John Huber on fiddle and guitar. Fun!
St. Louis Rams ringleader a bad apple?
Multiple arrests and NFL policy violations.
But he talks nice when he wants to.
Britt told reporters that he and his teammates weren’t taking sides:
“We just wanted to let the (Ferguson) community know that we support them,” said Britt. “I don’t want the people in the community to feel like we turned a blind eye to it. What would I like to see happen? Change in America.”
But his tongue is forked!
Pope Francis on the case of abusive Spanish priests
Goes around the covering-up archbishop, priests arrested.
An activist pope, to be sure.
FYI: Almodóvar’s “Bad Education” treats clergy abuse in grim detail.
Praise from the Koch brothers from praiser of Pope Francis
They both make poor people their number-one priority.
Which naturally cobs the Left no end. Not to worry. It goes with the territory.
Archbishop Cupich’s heart bleeds, he likes Obama’s exec order
He wants the strong man in the White House to make all things right:
On Sunday, the Chicago Archbishop who has been described as “Pope Francis’s American messenger” praised President Barack Obama’s executive amnesty and expressed concerns about the privacy of illegal immigrants who will be coming out of the shadows.
Archbishop Blase Cupich, who was recently chosen by Pope Francis to lead the Catholic Church in Chicago, has said that amnesty for illegal immigrants is on God’s agenda. He stated that the bishops of the United States are “very much in favor of action being taken to protect people who need to come out of the shadows.
“It’s been too long of a time for people to wait for comprehensive immigration reform. And so we see this as an important first step hopefully to jumpstart what’s happening,” he said on CBS’s Face The Nation.
Like many if not most bishops, he’s weak on freedom, in this case from diktat by elected official, strong on doing good, period, by any means necessary. Very big problem here for Chicago and its Catholics.
NYT lady who gave out Darren Wilson’s address feels under the gun . . .
Some there are who do not like Archbishop Cupich of Chicago
A columnist lists long-reported problems — #’s decline, school closings, clergy abuse, plus Abp C. going “calmly ballistic,” a Sneed item, over dearth of women, nuns, and altar girls at his installation ceremony.
Almost any pre-conciliar bishop coming in to the devastated vineyard that is Chicago would begin emergency triage measures to stop the dire crisis of Faith in the city. He might start by cleaning house of heretical celebrity clergy like Fr. Pfleger, restoring sanity to the city’s liturgy, ensuring the Catholic Faith is taught in schools and from pulpits, loudly condemning the city’s “Catholic” yet pro-abortion politicians, and promptly punishing predator priests who were allowed to run wild for 50 years in the “Church of the New Springtime.”But not Archbishop Cupich. Absolutely no level of devastation, moral suffering, mass apostasy, heresy, or paganism can hope to offer a reality check to the good bishop. Why? Because the Archbishop, like his Modernist forerunners, proudly believes his own ideology to be infallible. After all, the presence of the divine has welled up in the people (aka liberal Catholics) who have gathered together to express their divine sentiment as a consensus opinion. That consensus opinion, to Archbishop Cupich, is, de facto, the voice of God.
And the fight goes on . . .
