John Schultz: June 2007 Archives

Basilica glorifies in glass mosaic

Maybe Pete will write about this is "Surprised By Canon Law - Tertius Secui"

Kennedy marriage annulment overturned by the Vatican

The baby loves her pop-up books...

This from a blog post about English translations of the Latin Mass texts.

I imagine we've been here before. As koine Greek gave way to vulgar Latin, for the sake of the wider mission of the Church, Latin is now giving way to English and Spanish for the same reason. I wonder if some Greek speakers wanted to Hellenise the Latin as the Latinists now feel the need to Latinise English. 'My dear fellow; how can you possibly adequately translate the word logos into anything except, well, logos?!'

Can we ask the Latinisers to take English a little more seriously? Perhaps. During the apartheid era I visited a 'coloured' Catholic diocese where the mother tongue is Afrikaans, 'the language of the oppressor', a sentiment I then shared. When I attended the Eucharist in Afrikaans, my negative perception collapsed dramatically. Here was clear Catholic faith and piety, intense, prayerful, and faithful, 'sanctifying' a despised language.

What further evidence beyond the Incarnation and Pentecost do we need to be convinced that in Christ all languages are sacred and therefore to be trusted?

And the good father totally missed the point of an authentic translation. It's not about Latin being "better" than English. It just so happens that for hundreds of years Latin has been the official language of the Church. We need translations that express these texts accurately in English. Full post here.

Let's run some numbers from this article.

Data Shed Light on Child Sexual Abuse by Protestant Clergy

The three companies that insure a majority of Protestant churches say they typically receive upward of 260 reports a year of children younger than 18 being sexually abused by members of the clergy, church staff members, volunteers or congregants.

And later:

Religious groups and victims’ supporters have been keenly interested in the figure since the Roman Catholic sexual-abuse crisis erupted five years ago. The church has said it has recorded 13,000 credible accusations against Catholic clergymen since 1950.

13,000 sounds bad, right? Not as bad as 260 of course.
Except that for Catholic clergy, it's 13,000 since 1950.
And the companies insuring Protestant congregations are reporting 260 per year.
Since 1950, that would be 14,820.

Obviously this is a numbers game that is not good for anyone. Still - it shows how the reach of the evil of sexual abuse across denominations. And, in spite of similar numbers, the Catholic Church has taken the most punishment for this, both financially and in the eyes of the general public.

And if a reader wasn't thinking and didn't do the math, the Catholic Church would still be taking the most heat from this article.

Torture, death penalty, false imprisonment = bad
Abortion = a basic human right

"Amnesty International’s position is not for abortion as a right but for women’s human rights to be free of fear, threat and coercion as they manage all consequences of rape and other grave human rights violations," Gilmore claimed.

Gilmore condemns Cardinal Martino for saying Amnesty International is "promoting abortion" but says in her statement that "Amnesty International's actual policy ... is to support the decriminalization of abortion ... and to defend women's access to abortion."

O, the philosophical and moral hoops people jump through to try to create a facade of legitimacy to their views on abortion...