Richard Chonak: August 2004 Archives

An organization has been started to inform the Catholic faithful and clergy about options for coping with celiac disease.

Non-Catholic Elliot Bougis, a teacher over in Taiwan who's been standing in for Mark Shea at the CAEI blog, has announced that he's going to become either Catholic or Orthodox, with about a 90% probability for the Catholic option. It sounds like the decision has been under consideration for a long time, and it's happy news. Congratulations, Elliot.

I think Elliot knows his way around the Church already, but if there's anything we can do to help, do drop in!

Reduce, reuse, recycle

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Stop me if you've heard this one before.

A cleaner in the Tate Gallery threw out a bag of garbage because, after all, it was trash. But -- you know where this is going, right? -- it was part of a work of art.

Eventually the material was found, but it had to be replaced by the artist because -- if you can believe this -- it had been damaged.

Isn't there something wrong with that concept: the notion of garbage being "damaged"? I don't know if I can wrap my head around that. ("I'm sorry, sir, that garbage is not in good enough condition to throw out.")

Anyway, the wire-service folks should save this story for re-use, since it tends to happen in some modern art museum every couple of years, and the piece will be just as good next time. All they'll need to do is change the names.

A parish in suburban Weymouth is scheduled to close Sept. 1, but the parish council is suing Abp. O'Malley to fight the closing.

I hope nobody really expects this case to accomplish anything. The parish council may not even have standing to sue, since it is a purely advisory body. I doubt that it has the power to represent the parish in civil disputes. If my understanding is right, parishes are incorporated separately from the Archdiocese, but each one has a corporate board controlled by officials of the Archdiocese.

And even if the plaintiffs were to win, the Archdiocese would just go through the closure again, dotting the i's and crossing the t's according to whatever legal form is necessary.

Hey, Steve Schultz, did you get a chance to sign on?

(via CWN)

The new Mengeles

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Fr. Sibley asks what happens to the "extra" embryos generated in IVF procedures.

Apparently some of them are going to the new Mengeles of our day.

This month's Harvard Magazine stated, in an article about the stem cell controversy, that Boston IVF, a local fertility-procedures practice, had donated 344 frozen embryos abandoned by their parents to be used for research. The product of this effort was 17 new stem-cell lines.

344 victims, and only 17 of the experiments on them produced usable material for future research. And apparently this is considered to meet ethical standards!

Just keep taking the tablets

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Gotta get me a prescription for some Proloxil!

The Revealer's Jeff Sharlet complains that the WaPo put its Deal Hudson resignation story on page A-6 instead of some place more prominent:

Why is the resignation of the Bush's chief Catholic advisor -- a position of much greater power than the governorship of New Jersey -- getting so little attention?
Already, I find it hard to take that seriously. Mr. Sharlet thinks having a conference call once a week with an assistant of Karl Rove makes you more powerful than the governor of a state of 8.6 million people. I'll be nice and say "Bunk."

Stabat Mater

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Two excerpts from the Dvorak Stabat Mater concert I sang in a few weeks ago: first, the chorus alone on Tui nati vulnerati. Then tenor soloist Martin Kelly and the chorus on Fac me vere tecum flere.

De Latine nunquam satis

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Two articles from AP: Wheelock's Latin textbook gets an update, including a web site, audio clips, and racy poems.

Open Sundays 10-7!

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Time for a trip to the ultimate religious-goods superstore, the Rome Depot!

Or for on-line convenience, there's avazon.com.

(via the Curt Jester, via me)

High tech, low conduct

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A defense lab operated by MIT is getting into the news in a way it never wanted, with a religious-discrimination lawsuit.

A technician at Lincoln Labs claims that his bigoted co-workers harassed him for his Christian faith over a 15-year period, and that supervisors and union reps not only failed to take action, but participated in the mistreatment.

Y'know, if a company gets a reputation for condoning abusive employee behavior and anti-Christian discrimination, it will pay at least some price. Many religious believers who work in the high-tech sector (and there are many) can simply decide never to work there.

This lab, moreover, has a special need to be concerned with its reputation: it depends almost totally on the good will of Congress and the Air Force for its funding. I can imagine that some Congressmen would be outraged at a case of abuse that was ignored by management for fifteen years.

Today's church joke

Some of the ladies in the parish had a little argument one day, because they couldn't agree about what was the color of the new minister's eyes. They asked one lady what she thought and she said: "I really don't know what color they are. When he prays, he closes his eyes, and when he preaches, he closes my eyes."

Voice of the Unscrupulous

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Boston's Channel 7 estimated that VOTF's protest Mass on Sunday attracted about 1,000 people. Their spokesman claimed it was more. Either way, there's no doubting what the photo tells: it's an old crowd.

The organization's mentality couldn't be better displayed than in two lines from the article. First:

The two-hour, Voice of the Faithful-organized Mass, which was neither authorized nor condemned by archdiocesan officials, was meant, organizers said, to offer a show of strength by parishioners at some of the 82 parishes slated for closure this year by Archbishop Sean P. O'Malley.
That is, they used the Sacrifice of Calvary as a means to an end -- and a political end at that.

And a dissenting priest-celebrant treated the virtues of obedience, generosity, and devotion as sins to be repented:

the Rev. Stephen S. Josoma of St. Susanna in Dedham ... asked forgiveness "for the times we have paid, prayed, and obeyed."
The TV coverage showed a row of signs planted along a walkway, each bearing the name of a parish to be closed. One was my parish in Boston: "Holy Trinity, South End". They've got some flaming nerve using the name of the Tridentine Mass parish to promote their organization at a Mass with dissenting priests and "dancers". But if they'll use our Lord Jesus Himself as a means to an end, they'll certainly do the same with the rest of us.

In a new book "by Mary", the renowned spiritual leader throws away all that stuff about warnings of trouble and instead takes on the hot-button issues of the day:
I am asking you to revise the way you see me. I am not an historical virgin. I am a contemporary leader. I am always contemporary because I live in the Now moment.
Oh, man, is there anything more passé than that?

Anyway, the folks who produced this book are evidently promoting it through Google ads that show up on perfectly orthodox Catholic sites. When you see one, click on it and make a little money for the good guys.

An expensive fad

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Schools in Maine have spent $15 million (with $22 million to go) on a contract to put laptops into the, well, laps of middle-schoolers. After two years of the program, the students with computers performed about the same as the students without them.

One school board member tells what her son learned in the process:

... David, 14, who will be in ninth grade this year, said his classmates found ways to play games on their laptops without their teachers noticing. Also, he said students spent a lot of time downloading and pasting photographs and sound effects to create movies.

''You don't have to do as much work as writing a report,'' he said. ''It's more about getting pictures and putting in sound effects than learning about the topic.''

Education Commissioner Sue Gendron said teachers over the past two years were just learning how to integrate laptops into the curriculum, and that it is unfair to judge the program after only two years.

When asked when the test scores should improve, she declined to give a timetable, saying laptops are worth the investment even if they don't boost test scores.

''I believe that the jobs of the future will be based on technology, and part of Maine's goal is to have the best-educated citizens and to ensure that they are skilled to work in a creative economy,'' she said.

It's sad to think that educationists are falling for the attraction of shiny objects. They're spending money and time on machines -- admittedly cute, handy machines -- that don't make much measurable difference to learning, while local governments are forced to cut teachers' jobs.

Livin' on luv

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Or "chi", "prana", or whatever. People claiming to live without eating as "breatharians" are planning to get together on Tuesday. Not too many of the interested people actually claim to be doing it, or not doing it, so to speak.

All you La Leche League moms will be pleased to see that the word is getting out: a campaign urges mothers to breast-feed their newborns exclusively for the first six months.

Dvorak: Stabat Mater

Boston-area readers are invited to a performance of the Dvorak Stabat Mater Friday, August 6 at 8 pm. The Harvard Summer Chorus will perform the work under the direction of Beverly Taylor at Sanders Theatre on the Harvard University campus.

Admission is free, but having a pass in advance gets you in before 7:45. I have four to give away, so the first two local readers who send e-mail to chonak@yahoo.com will get a pair each.

I heard the orchestra and soloists for the first time tonight, so I can tell it will be an exciting and moving performance.

Parents in Pennsylvania sue to overturn a law they consider an undue burden on home education.

"It really comes down to who owns the child," said Newborn, whose 17-year-old son just completed his freshman year at St. Vincent's College in Latrobe. "The parents are the stewards over the child, not the state."

What? Who?

On life and living in communion with the Catholic Church.

Richard Chonak

John Schultz


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