That Icelandic volcano with the Klingon name is still spewing. If this keeps me from going home in June, I will be most disappointed.
Why is it that Dems only seem to fret about anti-government rhetoric when one of their guys is in the White House? We need to distinguish between "anti-gov't rhetoric" and "anti-administration" rhetoric. I'm a big fan of republican (little "R") government. Just not a big fan of the B.O. administration.
Changes in the tax law and B.O.'s budget proposals will reduce charitable giving. This is planned. If charitable organizations go bust, guess who gets to pick up the slack: Big Government!
Report on the embarrassingly weak turn-out for the Tea Party Crashers. Like most lefty astro-turfing it was all blow and no hard. Also, the Partiers shunned the GOP Washington hierarchy, thus putting the lie to the MSM meme that the T.P. is all about Republican astro-turfing.
Hmmmmm. . .forget the Kindle and the iPad. . .what sort of handgun would be right for the discerning friar?
An interview with the woman who helped dioceses and religious orders hold their clergy accountable to the norms in sexual abuse case: "Several men I know have “tested” the CDF (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) and found no tolerance for sexual abuse in the priesthood and no sympathy for the cleric who disagrees with programs of prayer and penance. Evidence of where Pope Benedict XVI stands can be found in the following examples: here."
102 Things to Remember if you ever become an Evil Overlord. My fav is #34: "I will never turn into a snake. It never helps." Hey, that's just good practical advice for every day living.
Foreign Accent Syndrome. . .I wonder if there's a part of the brain you can whack that will start you speaking French?
According to complexity evolutionists, if you leave them alone for a billion years they will eventually grow into a real boy.
Follow HancAquam ------------>
while you will be most dissappointed, I will be mad as a wet hen....and you don't wanna be on my pecking list!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2010/04/19/100419taco_talk_hertzberg
ReplyDelete"To the extent that the Church manages to purge itself of its shame—its sins, its crimes—it will owe a debt of gratitude to the lawyers, the journalists, and, above all, the victims and families who have had the courage to persevere, against formidable resistance, in holding it to account. Without their efforts, the suffering of tens of thousands of children would still be a secret. Our largely democratic, secularist, liberal, pluralist modern world, against which the Church has so often set its face, turns out to be its best teacher—and the savior, you might say, of its most vulnerable, most trusting communicants."
Ludi, strangely, I don't disagree with this assessment...also, strangely, these same people, who gnash teeth and rend garments over sexual abuse, seem to think that butchering a child in the womb is perfectly moral. Go figure.
ReplyDeleteI do disagree, and vehemently. The modern (blah blah) world has taught the Church nothing that she had not already learned from the Saints. In fact, all of these problems (about which we are supposedly being "taught" by this Brave New World) were created by the Church making concessions to modernism.
ReplyDeleteIf you don't believe me, just read St Augustine, and Thomas à Kempis.
Anthony OPL
If Nazi's kicked in every door of a neighborhood looking for Jews and in the process discovered several meth labs and shut them down and even managed to find some corrupt officials covering it up well, the drug bust is a good result, but pardon me if I'm a little stingy with the gratitude.
ReplyDeletechiralcapers,
ReplyDeleteYour claim entails that none of "these problems" predate modernism.
Er, not so much...
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/04/how-long-has-this-been-going-on-ctd-2.html
And if you're claiming that it was "concessions to modernism" that caused lax standards in vocational formation, etc. etc...that doesn't begin to address the culpability of conservative/traditionalist bishops and cardinals scrambling to hush these crimes up and transfer predator priests to new hunting grounds. How did modernism blind these men to their moral duty to protect children?
Please tell us how the Maciel debacle is at root a symptom of "modernism".
The article you linked does an excellent job of reinforcing my point, actually. The rule quoted at the top is said to have been written in the Third Century - ie, before the Edict of Milan and the end of Christian persecution. This means that St Basil was addressing Christian monks who were living in times much like these - steeped in the self-obsessed hedonism of the ancient world, which readily accepted divorce, abortion and infanticide, infidelity and homosexuality (particularly the pederasty mentioned here).
ReplyDeleteSt Basil makes it very clear that any cleric or monk caught sinning in this way is to be publicly denounced, punished and humiliated - as well as perpetually monitored to prevent any future abuse. It is exactly this approach that led to centuries relatively free of this kind of filth (not withstanding the expectable exceptions - all have sinned).
I would like for you to demonstrate how the capitulations to modernist ideas of self-determination, relativism and sexual "liberation" did NOT create the sexual scandal that has appeared before us. I would like for you to demonstrate your implied claim that those who covered for sexual predators amongst the clergy were primarily traditionalist (whatever you mean by that), and most importantly I would like you to demonstrate that those bishops who in good conscience sought the advice of purported secular experts in psychology were not the victims of a depraved academic philosophy of sexual deviance.
Anthony OPL
Peggy Noonan agrees with Maureen Dowd: the Vatican needs a woman's touch.
ReplyDeletehttp://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304510004575186451300061536.html
They need to let younger generations of priests and nuns rise to positions of authority within a new church. Most especially and most immediately, they need to elevate women. As a nun said to me this week, if a woman had been sitting beside a bishop transferring a priest with a history of abuse, she would have said: "Hey, wait a minute!"
ReplyDeleteThat's actually not a half-bad idea. I'll be sold as soon as someone shows me evidence it works in other denominations or secular institutions. Oh wait, we are not supposed to look in other directions as the facts tend to dampen the "The Catholic Church, and only the Catholic Church covers up abuse and it is because of its Catholicism that this happens! RAWR!"
Ludi, no more comments from you that include links to heretics, dissidents, sado-masochistic blog-queens, shrieky-antiCatholic-NYT columnists, pickled New Atheists, or, basically anyone remotely affiliated with the HuffPost, TPM, DailyKos.
ReplyDelete