Steve the Llama Butcher reminisces about "My Strongest Christmas Memory".
Richard Chonak: December 2004 Archives
Good news for the Defense of Life:
3 abortuaries close in Massachusetts: $150,000 in reported Federal and Commonwealth tax liens might have something to do with it.
Pro-life laws making a difference in Mississippi: Informed consent laws and other provisions have helped half the abortion rate in this pro-life state.
(Via OR: Boston.)
Fortunately, this hospital web site announcing male pregnancy experiments and a "genetic choice" clinic is a spoof, and an elaborate one, by a New York artist. I wish it were funny, but since people have advocated doing just that sort of bizarrerie, the effect is a bit creepy.
My pal Eric Ewanco has been on the internet since he started a Fidonet bulletin board in 1984, but it took until now to bring him into the world of weblogging. A Catholic apologist and über-word-geek, he has joined the "fine domain" with a site called Christifideles. Welcome, eje!
When I visited the top of St. Peter's Basilica in '84, the Daughters of St. Paul had a gift shop up there, and it's an ideal spot to provide pilgrims with religious articles. But why stop there: the roof now also features a coffee bar. Now that's a nice idea: is it time for a pilgrimage to St. Biscotti's?
It had to happen! Here's a new Internet service: if you want to have a Mass said, but are too busy to run down to the parish or send a request in the mail, the Conventual Franciscans will help you out, accepting your Mass intentions over the net and the stipend by PayPal or credit card. Just click to get those graces moving!
Why didn't Peterson's attorney call these experts? They're saying the secrets of the case are all in the New Age/King James/Prophetic/Astrological Bible Code! Laci's maiden name was "Rocha", which sounds like Rock, and of course "Peterson" reminds us of St. Peter, so, you get it, right? and it all has something to do with Chandra Levy, who was also from Modesto....
Msgr. Michael Bransfield, the long-time rector of Washington, D.C.'s Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception was named a few days ago to become the new bishop of the diocese of Wheeling and Charleston: that is to say, all of West Virginia.
A friend who grew up there warns that the place takes some getting used to: "Do you think he has an opinion on using moonshine for altar wine -- yet? I don't remember seeing that at the Shrine!"
Anyway, we here at Catholic Light wish the Bishop-elect all the best.
A hot-headed Rad-trad acquaintance suggested that since our parish is closing, maybe the congregation should do what had been done in another part of the country: buy the property from the Archdiocese through a non-Catholic front man, and get our own priest. My reply was admittedly a little huffy:
Hi, D--
I understand you believe that it's OK to "go independent", but that is absolutely foreign to me.
I converted to the Catholic Faith and was baptized in 1980, and endured all the stupidities going on in the Church at the time -- in a particularly liberal place -- in order to do so, offering it up as an act of faith.
I stayed for those months and put up with their nonsense in order to provide a little witness of reverence and faith to other people who were entering the Church there at the same time -- people who didn't know any better, and otherwise might never see anyone kneel at the Consecration or (once I was baptized) receive the Sacrament on the tongue.
The goal always before my eyes was simple: to receive the Sacraments, have my sins remitted, and to enter into communion with the Church of St. Peter. In spite of all the faults and errors of the people running that RCIA program, I knew that the priest in charge there would indeed confer the sacraments validly -- if barely so -- and at his hands I would become a Catholic, a member of Christ's one true Church.
I have no interest in becoming a Congregationalist.
---
(So, yeah, the tone of that is not too nice, but sometimes it seems these angry types don't take you seriously unless you sound a little cranky. That's today apologetics tip, folks.)
Does anyone know a retreat house with good vegetarian cooking? A friend of mine is looking for a weekend meeting place for a group she belongs to, and a fair number of the members are veg. She doesn't happen to be a Catholic, so feel free to suggest places run by other religious communities or even non-religious conference centers.
Please reply in the comments; thanks.
PS: I forgot to specify a geographical range. Anywhere in the Northeast should be OK: say, from Maine to Pennsylvania. Thanks to the reader who asked.
CWN had a link to this BBC piece with some interesting data bits. For a few seconds some reality was peeking out:
"The survey found that 42% of the gay men, 43% of lesbians and 49% of bisexual men and women had a clinically recognised mental health problem."
Which makes sense: one mental health problem may well be correlated with the presence of others.
However, the story and the researchers seem to cover this with spin and speculation, pretending that this level of mental illness is caused by "anti-gay prejudice". Considering how much mental illness is biological in nature, it seems awfully strained to claim that. Here's the sort of evidence the story presents:
"Eighty-three per cent of respondents said they had experienced either damage to property, personal attacks or verbal insults in the last five years, or insults and bullying at school, with many attributing these experiences to their sexuality."
I'm surprised: only 83%?
Did you notice how broad that list of offenses is? I'd expect virtually everybody, normal or not, gets a verbal insult at least once in a five-year period. But only 83% of gays do: what makes them so lucky?
Really. Anybody (other than a hermit) who hasn't been called names in the past five years just isn't trying hard enough. Even I got called a bleepin' bleepbleep by a dear friend a couple of weeks ago.
So I'm willing to read the study if it's published somewhere, but call me skeptical.
Good news: a corrupt religious order has been suppressed!
The bad news: a few years ago, the community's vision sounded rather promising, and a lot of us were rooting for it.
Bishop Joseph Martino of Scranton announced last week that he was suppressing the Society of St. John, a community of traditionalist priests founded with the aim of fostering Catholic culture and the Tridentine Mass.
The Society, founded in 1998, had an ambitious plan to found Catholic villages and a liberal-arts college, but $5 million in donations for those purposes seems to have gone to lavish spending.
The Society even racked up over $2.6M in debts and got then-Bishop Timlin's agreement to have the diocese co-sign for it. That had to be a sign to anyone with an attention span that something was wrong. For that matter, any Catholic in the U.S. who got their elaborate and attractive fund-raising mailings could tell that money was not being spent wisely.
The game started to unravel when lay supporters noticed they weren't getting an accounting of where the money was going; it all hit the fan when the two top priests in the group were found to be taking home and sleeping with teenage students from a prep school. Since the members of the Society were all Scranton diocesan priests, the diocese itself is now the target of lawsuits.
Who knew? The story illustrates a bunch of problems we've all heard before: immature priests justifying their kinky conduct with a new self-invented philosophy about sex; arrogant clerics who think that they know better than experienced laymen how to run financial matters and practical affairs; a bishop who (although he did a lot of good in other areas) neglected his responsibility to protect the people of God from a few self-indulgent charmers.
But there is good news: the new bishop has done what he can to put an end to it. Thanks, Bp. Martino.
Rod Dreher wrote about the case in '02, and CWN reported the bishop's decree last week.
In the meantime, the Society's website is still soliciting funds.
