The Fringe: June 2003 Archives

At a recent Baccalaureate (Debacle-laureate?) one of the 'spiritual representatives' (btw, there were NO priests) told those of us assembled about his church's 'Peace Pole'.

"What is it?" I hear many of you cry, anxious to be Enlightened At Last. Really, if you hadn't let you subscription to Commonweal lapse, you would already know... but I will tell you anyway. The 'classic' pole (so designated by the Peace Poles website) is approximately 8 feet high, with four sides. Each side has the message "Let Peace Prevail on Earth" inscribed on a brass plate in a different language. Really, the choice of languages to choose from is appaling... I mean amazing. It goes from Albanian to Zuni, with everything in between. Of course, for some of the more exotic languages (exotic to us, not to the 50 people who speak them) you can expect to pay $28.00 extra (I wonder if the Holy Spirit charged extra for His services to the few speakers of Ibo who were present in the crowds at Pentecost?)

Why didn't I think of this? How did I miss out on this astonishingly simple plan to make a billion dollars by simply going to one of the 43 Home Depot locations near me and buying some oversized tomato stakes and a wood-burning kit?

Well, anyway, after you choose which four languages you want to have screwed to your pole, you have to choose the finish: glossy white, glossy black, or your choice of three different resins (I know what you are thinking, but, no, Ikea doesn't make the poles.) Of course, all peace poles are crafted out of renewable resources (apparently, a peace pole made out of Brazilian rosewood would be a spiritual Faux Pas) and come in a variety of finishes. For the Very Diverse, there is an octagonal pole, which sports an impressive 8 languages of your choice! And all of this for a mere $1,300.00! The Peace Pole Maintenance Kit is an additional $20.00.

If planting a wooden stake in your front yard isn't your thing (well, what's wrong with you?) you can order a variety of other products. There are mini-peace poles to put on your desk... the website doesn't say if these are as effective as the full size model. There are pencils and tote bags and a full line of clothing (for you, not the pole.)

All I can say is that I know GIA is Kicking Themselves over missing out on this. Watch for a slew of Marty Haugen anthems, suitable to be sung in the shade of the Peace Pole.

How could I have missed this local story? Once there was Our Lady of Clearwater; then Our Lady of the Fencepost, and now Mark Sullivan tips us off about the Madonna of Milton, Mass.: a blur in a hospital window that to some poor dear souls looks for all the world like the Mother of God.

As some of you may have heard, this has been a rather rough week for the Anglican communion which is now threatening to split along continental lines over the issue of homosexuality. Here's my thought on the subject... click

John Pacheco and Bob Sungenis are going at it for another round, this time over the topic of Religious Liberty and the Ecumenical Gatherings at Assisi. John offers a number of choice comments here, of which my favorite is the following:

If you are really interested in winning souls for Jesus Christ, you preach love, forgiveness, peace, mercy and the rest of the things the Pope preached. You do this because the world already knows all about damnation. We are damning each other to hell every day. The world needs to hear about God's MERCY too and not just about judgement. That's why we have a feast of Divine Mercy. We are talking about a tactical way of winning converts to the faith. The over bearing hermeneutic of damnation that you operate under is not as effective today as it once was.

This debate is fascinating for a number of reasons, one of which is the great familiarity of each principle party with the other. Throughout the years, many Catholic apologists have passed through CAI. Yet Sungenis and Pacheco were probably the two mainstays, as President and Vice-President of CAI respectively. When John made the difficult decision last Autumn to leave CAI and found Catholic-Legate.com, most of CAI-Canada followed him over. I hate to sound melodramatic, but in reading this dialogue there is a Luke Skywalker vs. Darth Vader feeling about it, in that John respects Bob as one of his mentors in the apologetics world and is now trying to rescue him from the dark side of radtradism.

Meenwhile, the Lidless-Eye Inquisition also has a number of great threads going on as usual.

Additionally, one of my favorite blogs, namely, Against the Grain from the Ratzinger Fan Club also has an excellent entry in response to various radtrad attacks that explains The Meaning of the Word Subsists.

I will post about Arlington's ordinations today in a moment. First, a blurb about a rabble-rouser in the parking lot today who was handing out "report cards" on the Diocesan clergy after Mass. The man, someone who I've sung Latin with in a local schola, was handing this drek out while a woman next to him, somenoe who I also know from my parish, was standing right next to him asking people not to read it when he handed it to them. I passed them as I was leaving the parking lot and thought the man had something useful. I looked at it quickly as I heard the woman saying a short prayer to Our Lady. She then said, "Don't read that - you don't want that on your heart." I have spoken with this woman many times and in my humble opinion she's a saint. I quickly gave it to her and crushed it in her hand. Both were standing in the pouring rain.

One of my friends later told me a priest had walked into the reception with one of these sheets and was totally disgusted.

If I ever see that man again I will ask him what he was trying to prove. When I see this holy woman again at Mass I will thank her.

A few weeks ago, we noticed a fringe group starting up its own illicit Mass with a married ex-cleric at a suburban Boston Elks' club. Now they're moving up in the world, and finding themselves a more suitable worship space: the local Unitarian meeting hall. A few observations:

1. It's not very nice, as a matter of inter-religious relations, for Unitarians to help a group that's trying to start a schism in the Catholic Church. However, this is not surprising, since the UUA has in the past subsidized frauds like "Catholics for a Free Choice".


2. The celebrant of their first Mass in the new location is someone named Ed Minderlein, whose writing for VOTF urges people to leave "the current pyramid hierarchical structure" and "move into small healthy communities" like the Reverend Ed's fringe group where they "espouse the theology of personal freedom".

   This is a clarifying little event that shows what kind of thinking shapes the agenda at VOTF: they're reaching the stage of overt rebellion against the Church. They're not far from certain fundamentalists who hand out tracts and urge Catholics to "come out from among Babylon".

(Thanks to Jeff Miller for the link.)