Guy Selvester at Shouts in the Piazza brilliantly captions this photo with.
Pssssst! Benedict, what did you get for number 36?
-Number 36? That answer was "Apostolic Succession".
Oh…I didn’t get that.
By The Universe: Scores of Catholics who pay thousands of pounds a year to watch cable television are frustrated at being denied access to the dedicated Catholic channel EWTN.
And it is looking increasingly unlikely that communications giant ntl:Telewest has any plans to resume negotiations aimed at broadcasting the network. This may mean many Catholics leaving cable for Sky, which shows the free-to-view channel, according to EWTN’s European manager Ian Murray.
Mr Murray has called on Catholic viewers to make one final attempt to change ntl:Telewest’s mind.
“As many people as possible should bombard the company with requests for it to show EWTN,” he said.
Andy Tollock, head of St Claire Media, which broadcasts the American-based channel, said: “We receive frequent requests from cable viewers for EWTN to be broadcast on ntl:Telewest but nothing so far has happened from them.
“I have ntl:Telewest myself and it has a large number of channels, including the pay-for-view God Channel, so one presumes the problem is not a restricted number of channel bands available.”
Pay-for-view God Channel? Shouldn’t that be Pray-for-view? Some of course do try to channel God or say make me a channel of your peace, but the God Channel just seems more like a parody idea than an actual name. This channel though is actually not pay-per-view, they charge a 5 pound premium per month for access. Checking up on this channel I found that they started off with a really dumb idea for Billboard advertisements with "God the Father, God the Son and god the tv channel." Again more like parody then an actual Christian cable television ad campaign.
Now they have a new ad campaign for their future availability in the U.S. with "GOD is coming to AMERICA." Apparently God is now writing press releases for them in this long rambling piece.
“And I shall light a TORCH, a TORCH, a literal TORCH of the fire of My saints of America – a torch that shall set ablaze the world, for it is time to look OUT America, beyond your cities, beyond your towns. Look out, Look OUT, America, for the nations have need of you. Rise up from the bondage of complacency, for the East cries out to you and the North travails and the South calls to you in the spirit. And so My fire shall fall and from the East Coast to the West and from the West across the seas it shall go, and from the North it shall rise, north, north even to Russia, it shall burn, and to the South – the South, a flame of fire shall rise."
It seems by the quality of this writing that God is either suffering writers block since the completion of the New Testament or somebody else wrote it. Though I have heard that he hired a Holy Ghost writer for the Bible in the first place.
THE POPE, who is this week meeting the Archbishop of Canterbury, is drawing up plans to welcome disaffected Anglicans into the Roman Catholic Church.
Pope Benedict XVI is keen to reach out to conservative Anglicans who have been antagonised by their church’s stance on women priests and homosexuality. Senior Vatican figures are understood to have drawn up a dossier on the most effective means of attracting disenchanted Anglicans.
The recruitment drive is a potential embarrassment for Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who is travelling to Italy for his meeting with the Pope.
It is understood that Fr Joseph Augustine di Noia, undersecretary of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, the most powerful of the Vatican’s departments, has led a team analysing the current schism in the Anglican world.
…In America, some of the 2.5m Anglicans have already left the church and become Catholics. In some cases, entire parishes have “defected”, but they have been allowed to continue with some of their Anglican traditions and prayers.
John Myers, the Archbishop of Newark, New Jersey, who has been involved in supporting former Anglicans who have converted to Catholicism, has been helping di Noia with his recruitment dossier. He travelled to Rome last month to suggest ways of appealing to Anglicans.
The Pope’s enthusiasm for bringing traditional Anglicans into the fold was expressed powerfully three years ago when as Cardinal Ratzinger he sent greetings to a group of conservative churchmen meeting in Texas in protest at the election of Robinson.
The way the article is framed this seems rather dubious. As if they was planning some specific recruitment drive aimed at conservative Anglicans. For one thing what can the Vatican do compared to what the Anglican communion isn’t already doing to repel conservative Anglicans?
There could be some things in the works though. The website for The Pastoral Provision, the process to bring in Anglican priests into the priesthood, has recently been spruced up. There could also be an effort to make Anglican Use parishes more available – though this is just conjecture. Any effort to heal the schism is very unlikely since the split has been widening at a pace to make the Grand Canyon seem like a crack in the sidewalk by comparison. Any efforts at this will primarily be done at the individual and the rare case a whole parish level. Diogneses has a good post on this subject.
Now if there was an actual campaign to attract disaffected Catholics – what would it look like? A campaign could be the reverse of this one in a Simpson’s episode.
Though "Welcome pissed-off Anglicans" just doesn’t have the desired ring to it.
Maybe something more like this.
CLEVELAND — The Rev. Dan Smith uses an extremely unorthodox way to preach the Christian gospels. He wants to attract young people turned off by conventional churches.
NewsChannel5’s Ted Henry reported Smith will do almost anything to convince those turned off by religion that being spiritual can be cool. He wants to attract the unchurched.
"I have some people who haven’t been to church in 10 to 15 years or forever, saying man that this is cool," Smith said.
Another interesting element is where the church — Momentum Christian Church — is located.
The congregation meets at the Cinemark movie theater on Canal Road.
"A lot of time when you walk into a church it feels kind of solemn, but when you walk into a theater, it feels like something exciting is about to happen,” Smith said.
Momentum Church is new to Cleveland and people are finding a wide array of activities for kids, teens and adults.
"I am a younger person, I like a more upbeat type of church," one member said.
Another member said, "We’ve been here ever since it started. It’s different. It’s not like being at church."
…Some might consider this approach a bold church experiment because of everything — a movie house, video games, Hip Hop, comedy, plus the teachings of Christ. But Smith thinks it is his life’s passion to bring what he has to offer to both the unchurched and the disillusioned.
I wonder if they play trailers like "Jesus – Coming Soon! The Second Coming, the sequel we have all been waiting for, this times he’s here to judge."
John Allen Jr. writes on how the speech delivered to the press about the Pope’s talk with the Swiss bishops bore no relation to what the Holy Father actually said.
…The back-story to what happened is that on Sunday evening, the Secretariat of State sent the 2005 draft up to the papal apartment in preparation for Tuesday’s meeting. Hearing nothing, they presumed that Benedict intended to use it, and gave it to the Press Office and L’Osservatore Romano for distribution. In fact, however, the reason Benedict never replied with any corrections or amendments is because he decided to set aside the draft altogether. When the mistake became clear, copies of L’Osservatore Romano with the unused text had to be withdrawn, and the Press Office found itself in the awkward position of retracting its own bulletin.
If this were the White House, some of us might suspect that all this was on purpose. In the end, the criticisms of the Swiss church that Vatican officials wanted to make are now on the record, but the pope gets to look like a nice guy because he decided to go positive. In fact, however, the only realistic reaction to such a theory is the Italian word magari — if only the Vatican communications operation were that sophisticated! In fact, this is simply a classic instance of the right hand not knowing what the left was doing, an all-too-frequent reality of Vatican life.
I don’t think that this is a case that this was a mistake where first a more harsh speech is reported and then later corrected. I think maybe this could be a case, and perhaps the first, of them playing Good Pope/Bad Pope -a psychological tactic used for softening up wayward bishop conferences. Well I don’t actually believe that, but I do think it is a pretty funny idea especially if you contrast the two speeches.
Bad Pope: "it is a right and duty of everyone to ensure (the Mass) be celebrated in accordance with the rules laid down by the Church."
Good Pope: "This complete form of faith as expressed by the Creed, of a faith in and with the Church as a living entity in which the Lord is at work,"
With Good Pope/Bad Pope you can smack down about liturgical abuses and then go all pastoral and catechist on them. I guess this could also be called Pope-Rope-a-Dope.
Thinking further on Fr. Philip N. Powell vocation exhortation and the problems where some diocese seem to be spending most of their effort in creating pastoral associates to take over parishes and have priests to come in to "deliver" the sacraments instead of concentrating on praying for and encouraging vocations. I thought about the future of such an approach.
I have envisioned a couple of future dictionary terms that could be used when such practices become widespread.
Dieocease – A dieocease is an administrative territorial unit administrated by a bishop. The prominent feature of a dieocease is not necessarily a shrinking Catholic population, but a population characterized with both fewer priests and where as time goes by even less of the faithful live in accordance with Catholic teaching. A dieocease relies prominently on priests from other countries to fill their seminaries, though this starts to slowly diminish as potential seminarians see that there role will be just as SDUs (see entry under perish). Another prominent feature of a dieocease is heterodoxy or can’t-we-all-just-get-along-doxy where the attitude "Woe to me if I preach the Gospel" is prevalent. Those with Holy Orders become concerned that preaching what the Church teaches will make some people uncomfortable and that the idea of sin is highly intolerant to their flock’s self esteem. Another common parameter associated with a dieocese is that no matter how short of priests they get, they will never think of looking at a regular diocese that is filling their seminary and where vocations are flourishing and emulating what makes them successful.
Perish– A perish is a territorial subdivision of a dieocese. A perish does not have an assigned priest but a pastoral assistant instead. Priests knows as SDUs (Sacramental Delivery Vehicles) visit these perishes to deliver the sacraments from time to time and to consecrate enough hosts for Communion services throughout the month. The Entertainment/Worship (E/W) ratio of perishes is usually very high. The Holy Entertainment of the Mass is the dominant culture. Also the Relevant/Reverence (R/R) ratio is normally also in the same range E/W ratio and an E/W ration of 100/1 falls within a normal range for a perish.
Perish Mission -A annual retreat where perishioners are affirmed in their okayness.
Seminary – Empty building within a dieocease where seminarians used to be trained for the priesthood. In some instanced these buildings have been transformed into Feminaries where predominantly female Pastoral Associates are trained while waiting for a new Pope to allow women priests.
75 – A number looked forward to by some members of a diocese in that this number marks a year a bishop must offer their resignation in accord with canon law.
Pope Benedict XVI poses for the June page of his calendar called ‘Together, one year with the Pope’ in this photo released November 8, 2006. The Pope posed for this benefit calendar in the past summer during his retreat at Castelgandolfo, north of Rome. The calendar is made of 14 pictures, taken from the Famiglia Cristiana’s photographer Giancarlo Giuliani, and will be sold from November 23. FOR EDITORIAL USE ONLY REUTERS/Giancarlo Giuliani/Famiglia Cristiana/Handout (ITALY)
Being the Pope he of course posed in his loosey-whiteys not tighty-whiteys.
