SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - In the days after Mormon Church president and prophet Gordon B. Hinckley is laid to rest, the men who served as his closest advisers will begin the process of choosing a successor.But the deliberations after Saturday will not hold the intrigue of the election of a Roman Catholic pope, during which geography, politics and other factors combine in a process that ends with white smoke puffing from a chimney.
At least in modern days, choosing the leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has come down to the simple matter of who is next in line for an office unique among religious traditions. ...full story
January 2008 Archives
After a long wait, our foster (and very soon to be adopted) baby was baptized earlier this month. Our joy is beyond measure. One of these days I'll post the whole foster baby story - but for now, just enjoy the beautiful kid with the rosy cheeks.
From left to right: Jean DiPaolo, Teresa, Asya, Msgr. Tom Cassidy, Me, Dr. Tony DiPaolo. Dr. Tony and his wife Jean are the happy God parents.
Prof. Michael Healy (Philosophy, Steubenville) recalls two guest lectures held during his student days at Loyola: encounters with Hans Küng and Dietrich von Hildebrand that moved him to shun the era's fashionable embrace of heresy and to rejoice in the truths that can be known about man and God.
OK, I admit it: there is a "Christmas carol" which I really, really don't like. I simply find "What child is this?" rather depressing. I think it's not the tune's association with Henry VIII (that robber and killer); it's the whiny "Greensleeves" tune itself.
The carol would have been more upbeat if the pop-band "Chicago" had sung it:
"Does anybody really know what Child this is?
Does anybody really care about this Child?
If so, I can't imagine who;
but He was born for me and you."
Verse 1:
"As I was walking through the town one day,
a man and woman came to me
and asked: is there an inn where we can stay
today?"
The candidates of "hope" and "experience" are vying for Democrats' support by competing on which one has more zeal for abortion. Well, doesn't that just make you feel it's morning in America?
In the meantime, the Fox News Channel has excluded Ron Paul from its candidates' forum on Sunday, although he got over 10% support in the Iowa GOP caucuses. Seems a bit anti-democratic to me, and ironic for the company whose election slogan is "You Decide". (For the record, I'm supporting Huckabee so far.)
Has anyone else noticed this? if there's ever a docudrama about the life of Mitt Romney, Tony Snow could play the lead!
Warsaw, Jan. 2 (CWNews.com) - An entirely secular state is an "anachronism," according to the Catholic Archbishop of Warsaw. In an interview with the tabloid Fakt, Archbishop Kazimierz Nycz rejected the idea that the influence of faith should be confined to within the churches. That notion, he argued, had been tested during the 20th century and proven a failure. "The Catholic Church in Poland should tell Europe: We know what happened when the Catholic Church was separated from public life," the Polish archbishop said.
