Geez, it’s
the burning of the Reichstag.
Category: Blithe Spirit
Going an extra mile or two
And let me put in a good word for fasting, and I don’t mean the minimal requirements of the church.
For years, I did longer fasts of five to seven days and it was easier to do than imagined because a little button in my brain related to food just clicked off. I was usually hungry the first day, but not after that. The energy usually given to the digestive process was channeled into a higher state of spiritual awareness. And fasting brought up emotional issues big time, causing psychological as well as physical cleansing.
Fasting is a powerful spiritual tool I urge you to consider. And youre not going to starve or ruin your health in a few days, as some would have you believe. Fasting is great for your health and is recommended many times in the Bible.
Tilapia because it’s the fish we had for dinner that set off the smoke alarm because we left the kitchen door open and set off neither stove nor ceiling fan.
If this be penance, make the most of making fun of us holy people.
This NCReporter lady has obviously given the matter some thought:
Results are what we should be looking for this Lent, lifelong habits and virtues nurtured through our chosen disciplines.
We live in challenging times just as Jesus did, and to be a disciple of Christ requires much spiritual maturity and strength. Following Jesus example, lets go the extra mile and really expose ourselves to the sometimes scary influence of the living God, which just might turn out to be unconditional acceptance and love.
She’s on to something.
P.S. Lady of house did the tilapia, FYI.
Related Articles
- Ash Wednesday (sacredheartcatholicchurchcrosbytexas.wordpress.com)
- What is Lent Anyway, Besides Strange? (logicandimagination.wordpress.com)
- Mark’s Tilapia alla Milanese (katcanblog.wordpress.com)
Scripture for dummies
Deacon Tom preached from Isaiah 58 this noon, at the mid-day ashes service:
5 Is this the manner of fasting I wish, of keeping a day of penance: That a man bow his head like a reed, and lie in sackcloth and ashes? Do you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD? 6 This, rather, is the fasting that I wish: releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke; Setting free the oppressed, breaking every yoke; 7 Sharing your bread with the hungry, sheltering the oppressed and the homeless; Clothing the naked when you see them, and not turning your back on your own.
Thus New American Bible.
I followed along with my King James Version:
5Is it such a fast that I have chosen? a day for a man to afflict his soul? is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? wilt thou call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the LORD?
6Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?
7Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?
NAB pedestrianizes it, to reach a new, I say lower, common denominator.
It gives up on the rhetorical questioning after verse 5, for one thing, and that lessens the impact.
Some phrases have the same effect:
5Is it such a fast that I have chosen? a day for a man to afflict his soul?
becomes
5 Is this the manner of fasting I wish, of keeping a day of penance . . . ?
Another:
to loose the bands of wickedness
becomes
releasing those bound unjustly
A third:
that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?
becomes
not turning your back on your own
Not good trade-offs, undue emphasis on the literal, the everyday.
This Lent, a spirituality of resistance
A spirituality of resistance to empire, what do you know?
This is indeed to subsume religion to political action, though I’m sure your everyday activists won’t buy that concept.
Off the record with National Public Radio
The “so-called elite” in this country with their heads screwed on straight, says the NPR man in conversation with two fake Muslims with $5 million in their pockets, is too small.
Do you also think there are not enough of us? You and me, I mean. Do you?
Then fight the Republican plot to take away this fellow’s federal funding! What could be clearer?
It’s only money, so???
Oak Park’s elementary school district understates on the April 5 referendum ballot how much its passage would cost taxpayers, leaving out state equalizer info that ups the ante.
We didn’t have to put it in, say the district’s lawyers.
The law firm that helped draft District 97’s ballot question . . . said it followed state law that dictates how such ballot measures should be written. The law, the firm says, does not specify using the equalizer.
So referendum ballots throughout Illinois routinely do not tell voters the whole story?
Note: Campaign information has been accurate in this case; only the ballot is in question.
On the other hand, what the hell difference does it make? How many people read the fine print on a referendum ballot anyway? Tsk.
Related Articles
He’s not into paying as he goes . . .
See? The Dems came up with this boy wonder president, and look what happened.
Vote Republican, or better yet, Tea Party-endorsed.
Related Articles
- George Will tries to shut Tea Party out of 2012 (americablog.com)
Thou shalt not in Illinois
The NU after-class sex demo not outside the law? Commenter Erastus is not so sure.
ILLINOIS (720 ILCS 5/11-9) Sec. 11-9. Public Indecency. (a) Any person of the age of 17 years and upwards who performs any of the following acts in a public place commits a public indecency: (1) An act of sexual penetration or sexual conduct as defined in Section 12-12 of this Code; or (2) A lewd exposure of the body done with intent to arouse or to satisfy the sexual desire of the person.Breast-feeding of infants is not an act of public indecency.(b) “Public place” for purposes of this Section means any place where the conduct may reasonably be expected to be viewed by others. (c) Sentence. Public indecency is a Class A misdemeanor. A person convicted of a third or subsequent violation for public indecency is guilty of a Class 4 felony. (Source: P.A. 91-115, eff. 1-1-00.
More honored in the breach, I suppose.
Wis. Dems have Dem Socialist leader
Dem Socialists exposed among Wisconsin senators who fled.
They are very vocal in Oak Park, where they tried for a “living wage” ordinance and failed.
It’s one of them I heard at a meeting of Oak Park lefties that in his speech the night before, Obama had given them “permission to hate insurance companies,” about which questioned, he specified “health insurance.” Gotta get those things straight.
Jesuit SNAP’d again — this time in Philadelphia
The long arm of The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) has reached cross country, from California in the 90s to Pennsylvania two days ago. Rev. Thomas Gleeson SJ has been found (out) again:
Another accused priest works in Philadelphia Archdiocese
Jesuit was accused of sexually harassing a young seminarian
Despite a settlement in 2002 [sic], he’s chaplain at a Philly university
SNAP wants him removed and students and staff told of his past
“It’s not just kids,” [SNAP] says, “Clerics also assault vulnerable adults”
The seminarian was a scholastic, a Jesuit in training. Gleeson was president of the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley. The Jesuits contested the hearing of the case, calling on a clerical exemption from workplace harassment liability, but when that issue was decided against them in late 1999, they settled with the complainant.
Gleeson was transferred back to his home base (Maryland Province) and put in charge of a retreat center in Wernersville PA, serving also as a director and trustee of Wheeling (WV) Jesuit University, where with two other (Jesuit) trustees he effected the dismissal of the WJU president in 2009, after two years in office.
In the aftermath of the widely unpopular firing, Gleeson was revealed by SNAP as having been accused of harassment. In a few months, he left the Wernersville post, remaining in his Wheeling Jesuit positions, SNAP’s protest notwithstanding.
Last October he assumed a chaplaincy at St. Joseph’s U., Philadelphia, where SNAP found him again and duly exposed and protested his California record, again calling on church authorities to depose him.
The Philadelphia Daily News ran a story:
[Former Jesuit scholastic] John Bollard alleged in the suit that Gleeson and two other priests harassed him for five years while he was a seminarian at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley, where Gleeson was president.
The suit was settled in 2000 out of court, with the priests denying any wrongdoing.
Unwillingness to argue the case is typical. Monetary settlement has been the norm in Catholic abuse cases, presumably according to legal and public-relations advice. But Bollard told his side on “Sixty Minutes,” and the grim details, never contested in court, remained to shock many and besmirch reputations.
Bollard, who said he was 25 when the incidents started, alleged in the suit that Gleeson had asked him to masturbate with him.
The other Jesuit priests, Drew Sotelo and Anton Harris, were accused of sending suggestive pornographic pictures of naked men to Bollard and asking him to cruise gay bars.
Harris sent a card “depicting a fully aroused man,” with the note, “Thought this might inspire some theological thoughts.”
Indeed, Harris lost his Seattle U. vice president’s job in 2006 once the Seattle Post-Intelligencer published its story, in which a Seattle U. spokeswoman unfortunately brushed off the law suit story as “old news,” betraying remarkable disregard for public, especially Catholic, opinion and tradition.
A similar pattern is evident in Philadelphia. A St. Joseph U. spokeswoman told the News they had known of “the allegations,” but that Gleeson had denied them and neither archdiocese nor Maryland Province had objected to his hiring as a chaplain. The paper also reported that the St. Joseph community had not been informed of Gleeson’s past.
This changed with a memo to students and another to faculty, as recounted in The Hawk, the student newspaper.
Saint Joseph’s University President Timothy Lannon, S.J., sent separate emails to students and staff regarding Gleeson’s employment at the university and the allegations leveled against him late yesterday afternoon. Both emails indicated that the university was made aware of Gleeson’s past by a recent letter from the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. [Italics added]
However, the president’s claiming he knew nothing of Gleeson’s history is in contradiction of what the spokeswoman had told the newspaper hours earlier, as The Hawk writer points out.
[I]n a Philadelphia Daily News article published this morning, Assistant Vice President for University Communications Harriet Goodheart stated that “we were aware of the allegations of 11 years ago, which he denied, and was cleared for assignment.”
The Hawk will be updating its story, the editor notes. [Here’s the link: Goodheart explains.]
