...more cake!
A new car!
A pony!
And we want the Church to be more conciliar!!!!
-The Ecumenists
The whole article is scary, but here's a particularly frightful piece. They want:
"Strengthening the teaching authority of bishops' conferences and giving them authority over things such as the adaptation of the liturgy to their culture."
So much for universal! We wouldn't know when to stand, sit or kneel.
Can you guess the author without Googling?
Katrina and Catholic Social TeachingHurricane Katrina and its aftermath have dealt an unspeakably cruel blow to the U.S. Gulf Coast and to hundreds of thousands of people of all ages, races, and economic strata who have resided and worked there for all or most of their lives.
But this is not the time to meditate on the meaning of human suffering or the mystery of life. This tragedy, although the product of nature, could have been substantially mitigated by adequate preparedness beforehand and an effective plan to deal with its aftermath.
In the face of the subsequent torrent of widespread and angry criticism, the Bush Administration's strategy became one of repeating, mantra-style, the line that it did not want to "play the blame game." Now is the time, it said, to address the problems created by the hurricane and the subsequent flooding and evacuation of New Orleans. The determination of what went wrong and who was responsible can wait until later.
And the whole point of the article:
A tax policy that favors the rich to such an excessive degree is contrary to the principle of distributive justice, which is a cornerstone of Catholic social teaching.
I'll give you a hint:
It's a renegade catholic theologian who is more likely to get lefty on you than affirm the divinity of Jesus.
We got a support call from a Web hosting customer today. We've had to restore from back-up several times in the past because he has deleted index.htm or entire Web directories and then called to tell us his site is "inaccessible."
So today he asked when he couldn't access his server from inside his office. Our tech reviewed and determined it was an internal firewall issue.
What he should have said was, "There's nothing we can do. The server has acted in defense of itself."
I just deleted a post and the associated comments that were getting out of hand.
It's one thing to have a problem with the state of Catholic liturgy. It's quite another to bash the Pope and the Church with a bunch of vitriolic bile.
An examination of conscience is advisable for anyone who carries around that much angst and hate.
And if one feels the urge to publish long lists of "sins" and "false teachings" that's obviously been copied from dubious sources - get your own blog.
This story looked interesting even before I found out what the name of the airline was: Jet Fakes Emergency for Gambia Soccer Game
The airline: Air Rum.
Your public service announcement for the week.
September 18 is the beginning of National Clean Hands Week. Spare your family and pals from the flu and other nastiness by giving those hands a good scrub.
Teachers and moms who like to hang things around the house: here's a nifty Clean Hands Week poster in convenient PDF format.
This is encouraging and infuriating at the same time. It's a huge pile of cash that could have gone to so many things.
OC diocese pays off most of debt from $100 million settlement
ORANGE, Calif. - The Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange has paid off most of the debt stemming from last year's $100 million settlement with alleged victims of clergy abuse, church officials said Monday.The diocese took out a $50 million loan from Bank of America to fund payouts to some 90 plaintiffs and relied on insurers to pay the balance, according to a diocese statement.
Last month, it paid down about $35 million of the loan with proceeds from the sale of some of its investments, said Rob Fitzgerald, a retired executive who helped advise church officials. Plans are to pay off another $5 million to $10 million by February before retiring the loan next June.
The diocese did not rely on money or investments earmarked for its parishes and schools, Fitzgerald said.
The Richard DeLong "Prayer of Saint Francis" - it's a lyrical 20th century piece. Challenging for the choir, but some interesting colors in the harmony.
It is a devil of a job but someone has to do it. Applications are invited for exorcism training at the Vatican's Rome university, the Athenaeum Pontificium Regina Apostolorum. The 10-week course includes sessions in exorcism rites, how to talk to the Devil, the tricks he uses to fight back and signs of the occult hidden in rock music and video games. more...
I was up in the middle of the night listening to five or six barred owls and their territorial call (click here to listen). One was very close to the house, the others were farther down the street. They were getting fresh for about half an hour.
My editorial provided in the brackets.
Married [former] priests call on pope to end celibacy rule
WIESBADEN, GERMANY - Some 80 Catholic former priests ended a four-day meeting in Germany Monday by issuing an open letter to Pope Benedict XVI calling for an end to Rome's nine-century-old policy that forbids priests to marry."We want the practice of the married priest in the Eastern Church to be implemented in the Western Catholic Church," said conference spokesman Heinz-Juergen Vogels.
[And we also want to have our cake and eat it too! We want Christmas in July! And we want a pony!]
The irony shouldn't escape anyone. If one's vocation is abandoned, one shouldn't petition Rome to make disciplinary changes - as if that was the problem in the first place. There are plenty of former priests who are living quiet, holy lives in support of the dogmas of the Church and the disciplines of each vocation.
I'm sure most Catholic Light readers are all in favor of the Vatican reviewing American seminaries. While looking for "evidence of homosexuality" sounds outrageous to some, the Church needs an educational system that is capable of preparing men for life-long celibacy and fidelity to the Church.
A side benefit: you probably won't hear any show tunes at Catholic seminaries any time soon. That's what I call progress.
Judge says pledge is out of bounds
Thanks to Michael Newdow, a misguided activist intent on spoiling something that millions of people have no problem with, we have this:
U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton said the pledge's reference to one nation ``under God'' violates students' constitutional right to be ``free from a coercive requirement to affirm God.''The ruling is sure to be struck down by a higher court, and Newdow will be forced to sit at home scratching "In God We Trust" off his nickels and muttering, "One nation... indivisible..." but not until after California school districts spend millions on legal fees.
Go to the Google Blog Search with the term "Catholic" (it's already in the link above.) See what comes up at the top of the page under "Related Blogs"
"In this corner, weighing in at 214 pounds, the defending World Boxing Federation Champion.
In the opposite corner, tonight's challenger, a dill pickle."
That's what the Victor Davis Hanson vs. Arianna Huffington debate is going to be like. It's an 8pm webcast (pacific time I believe). If you get to watch, please make a few comments. I'll be at choir rehearsal tonight, then retiring for the evening with Hanson's book Carnage and Culture
...that Ted Rall is a thoroughly contemptible, detestable person. That's the definition I got when I typed the word I was thinking into dictionary.com.
It's a classic liberal rant about how the U.S. government should care for, feed, educate, house, provide medicine, retirement benefits, etc. to everyone who inhabits the United States.
Does he really think that private charities are for suckers? That the Red Cross is less efficient and effective at helping the displaced than FEMA, Gov. Blanco and her state resources, of Mayor Ray Nagin and the public work force of New Orleans? Of course he does! But he argues that because of those nasty republicans, the govt is under funded, under staffed and in some cases, literally, underwater.
Bottom line for the lefties in the Ted Rall Club: If it's not paid for with tax dollars and executed by a bumbling bureacracy, it's not done right.
Thanks for another classic, Ted. You can think of all the great things that happen with your federal, state and local taxes. And maybe you can feel a little guilt when you claim more than one tax deduction - "Am I doing enough to help??? The government can do so much with what comes out of my paycheck!"
I can think about the wonderful things that charities do with great people, great resources, and the generosity of people who actually care. And we aren't suckers.
Chinese City Bans Foreign-Sounding Names
SHANGHAI, China (AP) Farewell, "Aladdin Gardens." "White House Mini District" — you're history.The southwestern Chinese city of Kunming is forcing developers to change the names of those properties and others deemed too foreign sounding, saying they debase traditional culture, officials said Tuesday.
At least nine developments in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province, have changed their names since officials began implementing new guidelines last month. "Paris of the East Plaza," "French Gardens," and "Ginza Office Tower," were among others making the change.
"It's not proper to name those communities with so many weird foreign titles," said an official with the Kunming Urban Planning Bureau, who like many Chinese bureaucrats would only be identified by his surname, Xiao.
You never know what you're going to get on the Google news listings...
This appeared today in a quick search.
SITUATION OF CATHOLIC CHURCH CALLS FOR IMMEDIATE AND DECISIVE ACTION!Reasons why we are urging the faithful to rise and fight for Our Lady of Fatima now.
1. The Third Secret of Our Lady of Fatima is a Dogma of Faith whose declaration perfects the Holy Catholic Church in preparation for the second coming of Our Lord and God Jesus Christ.
2. The Proclamation of this Dogma is long overdue and Our Blessed Mother has warned us that the Third Secret is vital to our salvation.
3. The Holy Catholic Church is disintegrating and our Clergy are going astray because of the Papacy’s disobedience to the Most Holy Trinity. etc...
The release links to this site - Mary is God, which is obviously Nutrageous. Possibly the nuttiest thing I've ever seen.
