Author: Richard Chonak

Starting small and likely to stay that way

I wonder if 30 people got up yesterday and said, “Hey, I think I’ll commit de facto schism over at the Elks’ Lodge.” A sympathetic article has this:

[The Rev. Ronald] Ingalls’ wife, Sheila, said she didn’t want the service to be too conventional.
“I wanted it to be special,” said Sheila Ingalls, manager of online banking at Middlesex Savings Bank in Natick.
A boom box, taking the organist’s place, played tapes with songs for everyone to sing including, “Come As You Are,” which expressed the sentiment of the congregation.

Not so shocking

Yesterday the Globe teased some results of its recent poll of Catholics, saying that 39% would support an American Catholic church independent of the Vatican. (Never mind that 52% would oppose this.) But today the details show who’s behind those numbers. People who attend Mass less than monthly — non-practicing Catholics — support such a suggestion (no surprise there). People to whom the faith is “very important” reject it (62% vs. 26%). So to all of you people who never attend Mass: have a nice day.

Pope John Paul II at 83

Says Gregory Wolfe, editor of Image Journal, an arts and religion quarterly: “In the Catholic tradition, faith is about making the invisible present. Catholicism celebrates the physicality of the sacraments — Christ’s body and blood in the bread and wine. We witness through our bodies to others.
“What we see when we see the pope is the way time reveals what lies beneath the externals. Our existence is a kind of testing and refining, a purifying that shows what we are really made of,” Wolfe says.

The ninth circle of spam

Where in Hell are you? According to the “Dante’s Inferno” Test, I’ll be in Purgatory. Hooray!
Call me judgmental, but it looks like the author of the following badly-spelled spam is buckin’ for a permanent spot Down There.

Subject: Has Your Life Been Ruined by Evil?
Have you really, really, really been hurt to the point where your live is a living hell?
~ Has somebody or something drastically altered your life? ~
~ Would you give anything to take back your stolen life? ~
~ What if there was a way to undo all done to you for $100,000? ~
What I am referring to is something which is well covered up from the general public! I have access to the way, and need just one single person to work with.
Who I pick will be determined on the severity of their situation. This is your one and only chance to live life over, and take control over what was stolen from you. Mentally stable open minded individuals a must! Someone close to the Boston area is preferred.
If you want your life back and would like for me to consider you, email a brief description of your situation to me at powercrystals@firemail.de .

But which circle is he competing for? He could qualify under greed and under treachery.