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.

Is the Pope a Protestant? (continued)

Sunday sermons, weekday observations

Picking up on the writer’s “mad, self-destructive gleam in [Francis’] eye”:

This conspiracy theory is made more plausible by the erratic and sometimes vengeful behaviour of the Pope. From the moment he stepped on to the balcony of St Peter’s after his election, minus the traditional gold-embroidered papal stole, Jorge Mario Bergoglio has played the role of a self-effacing reformer, humble yet determined. But it isn’t always a believable act.

His “edgier side”:

We saw a glimpse of the edgier side of Francis’s personality last month, when he gave a typically garrulous and score-settling interview on the plane back from Slovakia. Francis has – rightly, in my opinion – urged all Catholics to get vaccinated against Covid. One who didn’t follow his advice was Cardinal Raymond Burke, an American arch-traditionalist sacked by the Pope with characteristic brutality from a senior post in the Curia.

Naming no one, he identified…

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Is the Pope a Protestant?

Sunday sermons, weekday observations

The priest who wanted Francis to die, “In common with tens of thousands of conservative Catholics, including some cardinals . . .

believes Francis is driving [the church] towards the same rocks that have shipwrecked liberal Protestantism – and not through innocent naivety, but with a mad, self-destructive gleam in his eye.

Colorful, eh?

The world’s media . . . gave him an ecstatic welcome [ignoring] . . . the puzzled reaction of Argentinian Catholics, who were familiar with the new pope’s strange leadership style [and] had seen little evidence of easy-going charm when Francis was Cardinal Archbishop of Buenos Aires and, before that, provincial superior of the Jesuits in Argentina.

In Argentina his manner was

notoriously abrasive. . . . he sent out confusing signals, [increasing] the presence of the Church in the slums, had no appetite for luxury and cultivated his image as a man of the…

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Knowing things before they happen and avoiding them

Chicago Newspapers

Wouldn’t it be nice?

What if by leveraging today’s artificial intelligence to predict events several days in advance, countries like the United States could simply avoid warfare in the first place?

It sounds like the ultimate form of deterrence, a strategy that would save everyone all sorts of trouble and it’s the type of visionary thinking that is driving U.S. military commanders and senior defense policymakers toward the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled situational awareness platforms.

It also sounds like the Tower of Babel.

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Ho-hum, another Covid-19 story of a sort you will never read in your noosepaper

A lot in this first paragraph:

As governments around the world begin instituting Covid-19 ‘passports’ which will dictate the level of participation one is afforded within society – regardless of naturally acquired immunity or actual risk to the public from the unvaccinated (considering that the majority of transmission occurs in the home), people have begun to push back against authoritarian tactics to control privileges and push vaccines.

Read all about it. And weep.

First Vatican sexual abuse trial absolves a former altar boy who served the pope

Sunday sermons, weekday observations

Gabriele Martinelli had a years-long sexual relationship, but there was no evidence of coercion, the judges said.

But:

Numerous Vatican higher-ups, including Pope Francis, had received written warnings of a potential crime starting in 2013. But the Vatican brought indictments against Martinelli and Radice only six years later — after a wave of Italian media coverage. By then, Martinelli had been ordained.

A Washington Post investigation earlier this year detailed how Martinelli, now 29, had risen to the priesthood — with the help of prelates who brushed off the initial accusations and conducted only a cursory investigation.

Earlier, ball dropped:

The Vatican tribunal on Wednesday pinpointed one of the leaders in that initial probe, Bishop Diego Coletti, as having responded to the claims in an “absolutely superficial manner,” so as to “reach a quick dismissal.” Radice had worked with Coletti during that inquiry, the Vatican tribunal said, but could…

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He lied about U.S. funding of Wuhan institute, leaves U.S. Institutes of Health leadership post

Deep state fellow helped ChiComs figure out how to . . . do what?

Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), announced his resignation on Tuesday, just weeks after documents exposed that he made “untruthful” comments about U.S. federal funding of gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

A bit more about this giant of the DC appointees:

Appointed by President Obama in 2009, Francis Collins made history by becoming the longest-serving NIH director and one who also served in three administrations: Obama, Trump, and Biden. Prior to his tenure at the NIH, he founded The BioLogos Foundation, which aimed to bridge a dialogue between science and religion. In 2007, former President George W. Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his work on the Human Genome Project.

And of course he appreciated the value of strong media presence:

During the coronavirus pandemic, Collins frequently appeared on television where he advocated for children wearing masks in schools while blaming unvaccinated Americans for the pandemic’s continuation.

Will he be missed? And by whom?

By WaPo, for one institution, which has this to report on the above matter:

Dr. Collins has faced some criticism, along with Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, for not imposing stricter oversight on NIH research grants that were made through the nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Critics say risky “gain-of-function” experiments with bat coronaviruses should have been scrutinized by a Department of Health and Human Services panel. Dr. Collins has responded that the experiments “were not reasonably expected” to increase transmissibility of the viruses in humans, and the viruses studied could not have been the source of the pandemic strain.

The Wuhan laboratory is the focus of questions about whether an inadvertent leak might have led to the pandemic, but so far the virus origin remains unknown. Dr. Collins says he still thinks the evidence is most consistent with a natural origin, but he is frustrated by China’s refusal to be more open to further inquiry.

Oh. He’s been so long at the center of power — not in foreign relations, to be sure — but still answers a question with such naivete. Lots like him in the depths of officialdom, we may suppose.