West Virginia bishop accused

Bishop Bransfield of West Virginia, reputed adversary of peremptorily ousted Jesuit president of Wheeling Jesuit University, is on a clerical-abuse hotseat:

PHILADELPHIA (AP) – Authorities have re-opened a 2007 fondling complaint against a priest who taught at a suburban Philadelphia high school and is now the Roman Catholic bishop of West Virginia.The complaint stems from Bishop Michael Bransfield’s days at Lansdale Catholic High School in the 1970s. The Philadelphia Archdiocese said it did not find the complaint credible at the time, and passed it on to Montgomery County authorities. But the archdiocese said last week that the complaint has been reopened.

The ousted Jesuit, Rev. Julio Giulietti, was fired after two years on the job after he and the bishop had disagreement about the fate of property that Giulietti wanted for expansion of WJU and the bishop wanted for Wheeling (Catholic) Hospital.  Giulietti has since headed Jesuit operations in Viet Nam, with health care a focus.

Not for attribution

I endorse the reason this fellow gives for blogging, though I do not have a physician’s recommendation:

Paul Gottfried is the Raffensperger Professor of Humanities at Elizabethtown College and the author of nine books, most recently an autobiography, Encounters, as well as several tons of essays on European social and intellectual history and the history of political movements. He contributes to Taki\’s Magazine, per request of his physician, as a means of releasing pent-up bile and vexation.

via Taki\’s Magazine – Contributors.

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Hold your horses on that Pius X Society no

It’s not as simple, apparently.  Also apparently, Pope B-16 has been close to this one, and some Vatican hard-liners, relatively speaking, have been removed from the picture.

Those who think that this is the endpoint, that those in charge of the Fraternity have definitively given up on the idea of putting an end to the injustices that burden them, and of fulling restoring the Tradition of the Church to Rome, risk being disappointed in the days and weeks ahead

via RORATE CÆLI: Op-Ed (English – français) The basis for the future relations of the SSPX with Rome La base des prochaines relations de la FSSPX avec Rome.

Very interesting.

Pius X Society to Vatican: No, thanks

Looks like Pius X Society declines:

(José Manuel Vidal).- There will be no return to Rome. The Superior of the Lefebvrians for Spain and Portugal, [Fr.] Juan María Montagut, will inform the faithful, after the 11 AM Mass, that the hierarchy of the SSPX, assembled in Écône, has decided to say \”no\” to the Vatican.The followers of [Abp.] Marcel Lefebvre do not return to the Roman fold. Mainly because they are not willing to accept the Second Vatican Council in all its farthermost points.

via RORATE CÆLI: For the record: With a grain of salt.

Not for attribution

* What Noosepapers do:  They run stories by the carload of government-supplied services being cut, far more than ones that waste money.  You have to be a gadfly to go after that sort of thing, and, well, we know how they are, sniff.  Noosepaper reporters are professional, you know.  But they listen to squeaky wheels and go for the sentimental jugular, too often blissfully unaware of the theft that goes on under guise of helping people with public money. 

Editors coast to coast react, lemming-like, in all seriousness and sincerity, according to a script prescribed by the NY Times-Wash Post combine, the East Coast liberal axis.  These editors are shocked and contemptuous when another narrative is followed, as by Fox News, which with all its faults gives play to stories that the others never touch.  And gets accused of bias, when at worst they are supplying a crying lack.

*

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Rush Limbaugh off his game?

Look, I tune in to the maharajah at lunch time in ye olde kitchen, regaling myself with cream cheese on whole wheat or p.b. and jelly and activa yogurt. Got into habit of wine or beer but am dropping that. Flip goes the switch to WLS-AM and Rushbo.

I have loved it for the news items (sound clips), his insights delivered with unique panache and sometimes laugh-out-loud humor. He has exuded confidence. Did. Now — I date it from the Roberts decision to OK Obamacare — he’s off his game, worried. Hard to listen to.

Maybe I don’t spend enough time with him — only a fraction of his three hours. Maybe I am misreading his tone. But Cassandra has a rival these days, I fear, and it’s he.

==================

Informed rejoinder from Reader D:

The Economy Alone Doesn’t Equal an Automatic Win for Republicans – The Rush Limbaugh Show

Don’t think I can agree in general with your Rush/Cassandra comparison.
In this transcript he sounds pretty sure Obama will lose — but I think he is torn between bolstering the base and whistling in the dark in this campaign — he is suspicious of the Republican establishment, and Republican consultants and Republican Old Guard, etc. But Rush isn’t telling us it’s time to head to New Zealand YET, but I think he’s looked over the travel brochures.
The Roberts decision threw Rush completely. I think it threw the other conservatives on the court, too.
When I listen to Rush it’s usually for the full 3 hours. I didn’t hear him this Mon-Tues, and he had subs on for a few days last week that I don’t listen to. I like Mark Styne as a sub.
Rush has been supportive of Romney — as he said during the primary — Anyone But Obama.
The joys of interactivity.

Cat has tongue of monsignor

Bishop Edward Braxton has suspended a priest for not following the missal when saying mass. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch asked for comment, but

A spokesman for the diocese, Monsignor John Myler, did not respond to a request for an interview.

That’s a shame, passing up a teachable moment, as they say in school-ville. He represents the holy church but cat has his tongue when he’s given the chance to explain what’s going on? Lack of apostolic spirit there, I’d say.

The Atlanta case: A study in black

Ever wonder why there are no black incompetents on TV?  Especially among police, judges, and prosecutors?  If so, you will wonder even more if you read Nicholas Stix’s “Never Too Busy to Hate: Affirmative Action Criminal Justice in Atlanta”:

During the sixties, white civic leaders liked to call Atlanta “The city too busy to hate.” But it turns out that the real Atlanta always has time to hate.

During the 1960s and early 1970s, blacks flocked to Atlanta. The attendant violent crime drove out tens of thousands of whites, resulting in a black majority and the election of the city’s first black mayor, Maynard Jackson, in 1973. Atlanta has now been under black rule for almost 40 years.

This period has seen the racial corruption of every level of law enforcement and criminal justice—from 911 dispatchers who don’t know where major landmarks are, to cops who don’t understand police “10 codes” (e.g., a “10-13”), to jailers and prosecutors who identify with black felons, to judges who repeatedly grant a persistent felon “first-time offender status,” until he murders someone. 

Bad scene: reality vs. television shows.

On the other hand, a Wikipedia article gives a rather upbeat version of crime in Atlanta.  Which Stix concedes, noting improvement.

In July 2002, Mayor Shirley Franklin appointed as police Chief Richard Pennington, also black of course, who served through 2009. Pennington had supposedly turned around the country’s most corrupt police department in New Orleans.

Pennington shrewdly created a baseline that presented the department he inherited as possibly the country’s most incompetent, and Atlanta as the “most dangerous city in the country.” For example, his audit showed that, in 2002 alone, officials had lost and/or destroyed 22,000 reports from 911 calls.

Pennington changed Atlanta from America’s third-most violent city, to number 18. (It was never most violent—that honor goes to Flint, Michigan.) His methods included computerized statistical analysis and humiliating commanders at meetings, i.e., methods William Bratton made famous in “disappearing” crime in New York. [Ex-APD Chief Richard Pennington has a stroke by Rhonda Cook, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, June 17, 2010.]

Back on the first hand, TV gives a sharply skewed picture of crime in general.

Television’s portrayal of criminals also diverges markedly from real life. According to the latest FBI arrest reports, crimes are disproportionately committed by males, young people, nonwhites, the poor and the unemployed. They act out of a wide variety of motives, and more often than not their crimes go unpunished.

 In the fantasy world of prime-time television most of these relationships are reversed. The bulk of prime-time criminals are male but they also tend to be white middle- or upper-class adults. Their transgressions usually stem directly from simple greed and they are usually thwarted before the closing credits. We shall consider each of these characteristics of TV criminals in turn.

Bigger issue: By what misguided calculation is it racist, as some will say, to point out that we are systematically misled?