Three years [after her parish church in Minersville PA
was shuttered], [Marie] Lutkus and parishioners at eight other shuttered churches in Pennsylvania‘s Allentown diocese have persuaded a Vatican panel to overturn the bishop’s decision to close them down an exceedingly rare reversal that experts say may signal a policy shift on U.S. church closures.
“This is a thunderclap. I am absolutely floored,” said Charles Wilson, executive director of the Saint Joseph Foundation, a San Antonio, Texas-based group that helps Catholic laity navigate church law.
What else?
In a series of decisions that parishioner groups began receiving in January, the Congregation for the Clergy the Vatican office in charge of the world’s 400,000 Catholic priests said the bishop had failed to come up with a “grave reason” for shuttering the churches as required by Catholic law. The panel ruled that parishioners must be allowed to use the padlocked buildings for worship.
“It does not bring the parish back to life, but it puts on the table what could be a workable compromise: to physically re-open the locked-up church as a Catholic place of worship,” said prominent Catholic activist Peter Borre of the Council of Parishes, which has spent years appealing church closures in the Boston area.
They can start with Bible services and maybe persuade a priest to come and offer the holy sacrifice. Who knows?
They also need a finance committee. volunteer maintenance, money, etc. Can it be done?
Capitalism in conflict with governmental maw in Illinois. Amazon is pulling out, as it announces by email:
Hello,
For well over a decade, the Amazon Associates Program has worked with thousands of Illinois residents. Unfortunately, a new state tax law signed by Governor Quinn compels us to terminate this program for Illinois-based participants. It specifically imposes the collection of taxes from consumers on sales by online retailers – including but not limited to those referred by Illinois-based affiliates like you – even if those retailers have no physical presence in the state.[Italics added throughout]
We had opposed this new tax law because it is unconstitutional and counterproductive. It was supported by national retailing chains [such as Sears, see below], most of which are based outside Illinois, that seek to harm the affiliate advertising programs of their competitors. [Here is where intrusive government has its favorites — big campaign donors etc. — those who are more equal than others, to draw on Orwell.] Similar legislation in other states has led to job and income losses, and little, if any, new tax revenue. [Most such intrusions do just that.] We deeply regret that its enactment forces this action.
It does not bother committed lib and quite affluent, thank you, Roger Ebert, who blows it off:
Roger Ebert is free to tweet about Levi’s corduroy pants after April 15, but Amazon will no longer pay him if someone buys a pair.
“Amazon will terminate my Associates account on 4/15, in order to evade fair and just [!] Illinois taxes. I have 20 more days to make a fortune,” wrote the film critic on his @EbertChicago account yesterday.
Amazon.com Inc.’s battle with state governments over sales taxes is escalating.
The online retailer on Thursday took action in Illinois, as it had threatened to do, to counter a new law aimed at forcing online retailers to collect sales taxes in the state. Hawaii, North Carolina and Rhode Island have enacted similar laws, and California is weighing action. Amazon is also in a court battle with New York over such legislation.
The Illinois law, signed by Gov. Pat Quinn Thursday, requires online retailers that work with affiliates in the state to collect sales taxes on purchases made by Illinois residents and businesses. Amazon responded to the measure by cutting ties to its Illinois-based affiliates, which are blogs and other websites that refer traffic to Amazon’s website and get paid commissions if customers make purchases there.
The draconian so-called E-Fairness Bill signed into law by Illinois Governor Pat Quinn, was being drooled over by Sears Holdings Corporation (Nasdaq:SHLD), as they backed the proposal for companies like Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) to be forced to collect taxes even though they have no physical presence in the state.
Sears said this in a press release: “Sears Holdings Corporation (Nasdaq:SHLD) one of Illinois’ oldest retailers, applauds Governor Pat Quinn’s approval of House Bill 3659, which will restore long overdue fairness to the tax system for retailers and taxpayers in Illinois. The “E-fairness Law” helps to correct a longstanding problem of out-of-state businesses not collecting and remitting the sales tax in Illinois, a practice that has put brick-and-mortar retailers at an unfair competitive disadvantage for far too long.
The consumer? Who cares about her? Gummint wants the money. Doesn’t always pay to build a better mousetrap.
The Amazon action has little impact on Illinois consumers. They can continue to buy directly from the company as well as pass through affiliate websites to reach its website, without Amazon collecting sales tax. But Amazon’s payments to those websites will be halted.
The 9,000 affiliates generated $611 million in advertising revenue and $18 million in tax revenue in 2009, said Rebecca Madigan, director of an affiliate trade group called the Performance Marketing Association, who estimates the state will lose 25% to 30% of that tax revenue because the affiliates will lose business, cut jobs or move out of the state.
In other words, helping Sears means hurting someone else. That’s gummint for you, mucking around in the market place.
Stood in the boys’ room at a St. Catherine or St. Edmund dance, coolly showing how to smoke a cigarette, and I mean without half trying. Had a picture of a lovely St. Catherine’s girl we knew, he said; it was a blond Valkyrie maiden, unclothed, sitting at a picnic site, arms overhead, hands clasped behind her head. (His brother had taken it while a G.I. in Germany.)
Another report: he saved a St. Catherine of Siena and Fenwick alum (or student) from a drubbing by bully boys on one occasion, stopping them with a word. Years later, the wife was still grateful.
That was kid stuff. Much later he pretty much hosted or at least prominently attended a birthday party for a Fenwick classmate, maybe at the Como Inn, at which an equally lovely, though only partially unclothed, young woman rose from a cake. Ed’s surprise. I was not there, but got details from some who were. A classmate recalled driving home from the event, that is, he remembers arriving in Melrose Park. Luckily.
One keen irony about the papacy of Benedict XVI is that while the Vatican regime over which he presides has sometimes come off as ham-fisted in terms of public relations, the pope himself is almost universally acknowledged as a gifted communicator.
In the old days, a pope would say or do something controversial, and then his aides would smooth things over. More recently, its actually been the pope who gets the Vatican back on message after someone else has put his foot in his mouth. (This, by the way, should not be taken as a criticism of Benedicts official spokesperson, Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi, who does a heroic job under the circumstances.)
“If a government were trying to squeeze as much money as possible out of a population, what would it do? [It would
employ:]
1. The use of indirect rather than direct taxes, so that the tax is hidden in the price of goods.
2. Inflation, by which the state reduces the value of everyone else’s currency.
3. Borrowing, so as to postpone the necessary taxation.
4. Gift and luxury taxes, where the tax accompanies the receipt or purchase of something special, lessening the annoyance of the tax. [Soak rich]
5. Temporary taxes, which somehow never get repealed when the emergency passes. . . . .
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.
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?
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;
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.
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?
Blithe Spirit 