Quite a video.
via Catholics Called to Witness – Inspiring Catholics to Live their Faith.
They have three “non-negotiables” — right to life, sanctity of marriage, parental rights.
Category: Blithe Spirit
The good and the bad, emphasis on Trib and Sun-Times
Carol Marin fulminates feverishly
Criminal trial in Philly, Peoria bishop compares Obama to Hitler (sic), and Vatican takes on U.S. nuns. How dumb and irrelevant can the Vatican be?
What, no condemnation of pederasty, no instant censure of over-top sermonizing? The Vatican approves of pederasty, is indifferent to what’s playing in Peoria? Apparently.
You decide if this makes sense. Ongoing, longstanding over-the-top pronouncements by nuns’ leaders over many years finally motivates the glacially speeding HQ of the world’s biggest, longest standing, most intricate and many-faceted religious organization, unparallelled in global sweep, to do what? Investigate nuns’ leaders. And a Chicago columnist is thinking Philadelphia and Peoria? You decide.
Yes. The Philly trial provides a sickening display of moral cancer in the world’s biggest, etc. religious organization, which has what to do with the sisters? It’s a war on them? Rather, a war between them and the Vatican, which is supposed to butt out until people forget about the moral cancer? A tough sell, to be sure. Major problem. But not to obscure every other problem.
That sermon in Peoria. Lesson #179 in the problem of comparing people to Hitler, even if you speak of lesser indignities that point to greater ones on their way, lesser infringements leading to greater, etc. But you can’t win talking that way, and you don’t need Hitler for your case in point. Better stay with, say, Bismarck, whose Kultur Kampf sounds more like what’s happening here and now:
The German term
Kulturkampf (help·info) (literally, “culture struggle”) refers to German policies in relation to secularity and the influence of theRoman Catholic Church, enacted from 1871 to 1878 by the Prime Minister of Prussia, Otto von Bismarck. The Kulturkampf did not extend to the other German states such as Bavaria. As one scholar put it, “the attack on the church included a series of Prussian, discriminatory laws that made Catholics feel understandably persecuted within a predominantly Protestant nation.” Jesuits, Franciscans, Dominicans and other orders were expelled in the culmination of twenty years of anti-Jesuit and antimonastic hysteria.[1]
Bismarck sought aggressively to secularize Germany. He was a man on a mission, in which he succeeded, created one glorious reich where there had been rival and barely cooperating duchies and the like. Thing is, he could not abide churchly competition.
More later, perhaps, on the current Bismarcking of Obama’s country by him and his devotedly secular allies, among which he is obviously very comfortable, thank you.
See also the Catholic Encyclopedia on this pregnant subject.
Bishop in Peoria stirs controversy, attracts support
St. Louis reporter actually asks Peorians what they think. Amazing.
Wheeling Jesuit president: 2008 independent review found no problem in federal grant billings – The Washington Post
An unnamed “independent, special counsel experienced in federal grants who had served as general counsel for a major research university” examined how Wheeling Jesuit U. allocated its NASA grants and issued a clean bill for the U. in 2008, WJU president Richard Beyer says in the wake of recently publicized findings to the contrary by a NASA investigator:
That person, who was not named in Beyer’s statement, “determined the university’s cost-allocation method to be permissible under federal regulations and found no improprieties.”
The period covered by the NASA agent’s report was 2005 through 2011 and referred to WJU vice president Davitt McAteer, who oversaw the grant expenditures..
McAteer’s attorney hasn’t commented on the allegations, but the affidavit suggests he and the university could face five possible federal crimes — theft of federal funds; major fraud; conspiracy; false claims; and wire fraud.
Very hot news in Catholic circles: the Society of St. Pius X, broken away from the Vatican since the 2nd Vatican Council, is “on the verge” of reconciliation with the church.
It’s remotely comparable to the resolution and dissolution of The Great Schism of the 14th century, the three-pope period when disarray was the order of the day.
Benedict XVI is making it happen. Standing objections by the SPX people to Vatican 2’s “rupture” or disruptive aspects will remain.
Trust me, folks, it’s like The Episcopal Church U.S.A. making room for Evangelical Christians. Somewhat like? Am working on that.
In Oak Park it means that the Pius X Latin mass church at Ridgeland and Washington, kitty-corner from Julian Middle School, is no longer out of bounds for venturesome Catholics.
More to come. more more more
Assorted Jesuits, Jesuit university teachers, and other liberal Catholics DO NOT LIKE Rep. Paul Ryan’s citing Catholic teaching in support of his budget.
Among his sins surely would be his embracing the long-ignored principle of subsidiarity, which says big organizations or governmental entities should butt out of matters better handled by smaller ones.
In accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, neither the state nor any larger society should substitute itself for the initiative and responsibility of individuals and intermediary bodies.
No surprise here: A Jesuit history prof at a large Jesuit university told me 20 years ago that the principle no longer had currency. If it did, one might add, big government would not be considered the cure-all it is treated as today.
It was Dorothy Day, I believe, who referred ironically to “holy mother the state.” It’s a good phrase for today’s feckless reverence for big…
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Where does the Buffett Rule fit in, anyhow?
A poem criticizing The Tablet, UK’s Catholic newspaper of record:
For the people at The Tablet
Life seems very tough.
They publish, publish, publish,
But no one buys their stuff.On tables, shelves, old, yellowing
Unsold, the copies lie.
“What can be done to save our jobs?
What is there left to try?”
More more more at The Left Footer’s blog.
Not a regular reader of The Tablet, and this critique isn’t what would come to my mind, but I love how this urbane writer does it.
* On Green Line: At Madison and Waa-waa-waa-Wabash, baby crying wickedly. Oh for a nursing mother (who can quiet a kid in seconds). Nothing doing, bottles visible on stroller top from other end of car. Young mother and wailing child debark at Clark. Man in hoodie to someone across aisle, commiserating: “I feel sorry for that young girl.”
* Day two, Green Line: At Adams and Wabash, packed car furiously loud, as if a bevy of raucous school girls were hooting and hollering with tales of their social life, talking over each other. A few stops later, the crowd thinned, it’s clear there are only two women making all the racket, chatting.
A few stops later, at Ashland, one got off. As the two said goodbye, the boy sitting next to the one remaining took his opportunity, leaping over the seat in front of them, and began running up and…
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Barack alias Barry and the Mrs.: law prof not
A take on the Obamas as lawyers that qualifies as a take-down.
1. He got the U Chi lecturer’s job after a call to the law school from the trustees, he
having been turned down as adjunct.
2. She “voluntarily surrendered” her license, as Bill Clinton surrendered his after he was convicted of making false statement in the Lewinsky case. Point: “Voluntarily” is not the surrendering one’s idea.
(H/T Nancy J. Thorner)
