Author: Richard Chonak

So Cardinal Law has banned archdiocesan agencies from holding their meetings and events at a certain church: an affluent suburban parish whose pastor who is outspokenly dissenting and gay-friendly. He should have done this 15 years ago. Mark Sullivan’s Ad Orientem sums up his and my puzzlement. Dom Bettinelli indicates that there’s more going on than the Globe article would lead you to believe.

AP reports:

About 15,000 of the 46,000 U.S. priests belong to religious orders such as the Jesuits, Franciscans and many others.
In August, leaders of the orders in the United States decided that sexually abusive priests should be kept away from children but not barred from all church work a less restrictive plan than the bishops’. The orders left open the possibility that some abusers could return to their communities after treatment, serving the church in administrative jobs far from young people….
Rev. Ted Keating, executive director of the Conference of Major Superiors of Men… and the organization president, the Rev. Canice Connors, came to Rome last month, addressed a meeting of the International Union of Superior Generals and met with Vatican officials.
Keating said he was told that the international assembly on Nov. 30 expressed support for the concerns of U.S. orders. Officials of the world group were not available for comment Thursday.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Keating declined to provide details of his talks with the Vatican, but said he didn’t expect the Vatican to make immediate changes in the latest version of the norms.
”What we heard in Rome is, it’s too late to do that and we would work it out during the provisional period, case by case, and then take a thorough look at the end of two years,” Keating said.
He indicated the lobbying effort was aimed at the long term. The sex abuse policy will come up for review by the bishops and the Vatican two years after it is formally approved by the Holy See.

Since Fr. Connors has been one of the purported experts advising bishops for years on this subject, I don’t expect that his credibility is especially strong now.

Is it just another example of consumerism to the max, or is it religious art? Maybe even an opportunity for evangelization? Thanks to the folks at funeraldepot, you can be buried in your choice of Last-Supper-motif caskets. You even get to pick whether your Jesus is European or African. You can also go to your eternal reward under the patronage of La Guadalupana or the Virgen de la Caridad.
Of course there are bad taste possibilities here far beyond the two I’ve presented here, such as one for NASCAR fans (“the race is over” — no doubt intended as a reference to the words of St. Paul) and this hommage to The Big Apple, complete with Twin Towers. Thanks to Eric Ewanco for the link.

An October article in the Evangelical news magazine World (LRR) reminds us of the suffering of Christians under a North Korean regime that really does deserve to be labelled “evil”, and reports on the efforts of Western believers to aid them:

In a North Korean prison camp, inmates went about their work in a furnace – backbreaking labor their jailers forced them to perform 18 hours every day. As they worked, many of them appeared to be mumbling under their breath. They were not complaining; they were singing hymns. The prisoners were Christians – locked up for the crime of believing in God. Eventually, a guard noticed a female prisoner singing – and trampled on her face.[…]
Treatment of Christians was especially barbaric. “During the seven years I served in the prison, there must have been thousands of Christians who died as a result of punishment,” Ms. Lee related. “They were treated less than beasts, sub-human beings, being kicked by the boots of prison guards and lashed by leather lashes. The prison guard was telling these people to say, ‘We will not believe in God but we will believe in our leader, Kim Jong Il.’ So many people died because they did not say, ‘We do not believe in God.'”
In an effort to help Korean refugees, Sen. Sam Brownback has urged the State Department to review its policy of not admitting North Korean refugees into America. In response, Arthur E. Dewey, assistant secretary for the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, began a policy review – one that frustrated Brownback staffers say has been going on for eight months with no end in sight.

(Thanks to Drudge for the link.)