Category: Uncategorized

The question of corporate greed came up in relation to the Cantor Fitzgerald TV commercials. I’ve been thinking about this a lot this week (since I find myself blessed in a wonderful new job with a company that has ethical, Christian owners) and with companies like Enron, WorldCom, and who knows who else we don’t need terrorists to wage war against our economy. Lucky for us the US economy is more resilient than to be decimated by such corporate monkey business. Still, it makes you wonder if more Enron-like collapses do serious damage to the US economy. I hate to say this because it is against my nature, but we need more regulation. Mr. Reagan, please forgive me for saying that!

When kids can’t play together without poking each other with sharp sticks or taping the cat’s tail to the back of it’s head you have to have rules. The adult world works the same way – the stakes are just higher.

Goodbye, Good Men

I haven’t yet chimed in on Mr. Rose’s book. I bought a copy of it at Borders and the cashier whose entire body had been pierced and tatooed except for the tip of his nose looked at me like I was a complete freak. Since then it has been sitting on a pile of other unread but less contentious books. A few friends have told me I absolutely must read it but I have been stalling. The negative press the book has been getting as well as the dueling letters I have read online have increased my misgivings. The fact is, though, that it is not fiction. As Fr. Richard John Neuhaus states in his piece on First Things “even if the situation in vocation offices and seminaries is only half as bad as he suggests, it is very bad indeed.” That’s what make me so apprehensive about reading it – I don’t think I want to know even if it is almost as bad as Rose says.

What is also curious to me is that this book is getting a lot more criticism from the right as opposed to the left. Why not more from the left-leaning groups inside and outside the Church? Time Magazine caught rapture fever but there hasn’t been a peep in the mainstream media about thing about the role of dissent or homosexuality had in causing this crisis. Some are saying Goodbye, Good Men is at worst a fabrication and at best bad journalism. Are we denying that there has been a problem in seminaries in this country for a several decades or is there a disagreement on the extent and nature of the problem? I have to take a practical approach – clearly there has been a problem. If this was the Titanic I’d be more concerned about the existence of a hole in the ship than it’s nature.

Just took my final for my 2nd accounting class, completing 6 credit hours of amortized ecstasy that began in Jan 2002. That and the fact my job has been taking alot of extra time have kept me from blogging much. Now I’m back. After I take my wife on a picnic this weekend maybe I’ll even have a new tidbit.

From foxnews, this is what I would call greed:

A British rival to bond trader Cantor Fitzgerald plotted to poach the devastated firm after it lost 658 staffers in the World Trade Center attacks, an explosive lawsuit charges.
The bosses at Garban Intercapital Management Services discuss their scheme to hijack three top Cantor staffers in an operation its parent company’s CEO described as “a heist,” according to secret e-mails cited in a London lawsuit filed by Cantor this week.
“This is the time I have been waiting for,” gloated one e-mail.
London-based Icap, Garban’s parent company, was blasted for making “a systematic and carefully planned attempt to poach leading brokers” from Cantor while the firm was struggling to rebuild and raise funds for its widows and orphans.

I can’t fault the guy for making a television ad in an effort to “rebuild and raise funds for its widows and orphans. That’s very different from what the firm above was doing in the wake of the disaster and what others did trying to profit from the attacks.

Have you ever thought about writing a priest an affirmation letter? I have lately because I feel our good priests are under a tremendous strain based on Current Events. I came up with the idea that the best affirmation letter was anonymous – there’s no strings attached in terms of trying to get the priest to think, “Wow, that Jack Jackson is such a nice fella! And he likes my homilies!” And considering the contents of most anonymous letters, it’s a double surprise: no author, but also no content about parking problems, homily length or the lack of flavored coffee at church socials.
If you decide to do one, talk about Jesus and His grace at work in that priest. Tell him that you will pray for him. Thank him for his service and example.
Everyone needs a pick me up, and a letter can be a combination of a prayer and a remembrance of the greatest of God.