Humor

Dom reports that the Cardinal Newman Society has now alerted the University of Notre Dame to a second instance of possible plagiarism involving dissident theology professor Rev. Richard McBrien.

CNS yesterday faxed Notre Dame President Rev. John Jenkins, C.S.C., an 11-page comparison of numerous citations from McBrien’s 1997 book Lives of the Popes which closely paraphrase and sometimes identically resemble wording in the 1986 edition of The Oxford Dictionary of Popes by Rev. J.N.D. Kelly. This “troubling problem” was first revealed by another Notre Dame professor—Rev. Marvin O’Connell, professor emeritus of history—in a 1998 book review published in Books & Culture magazine.

Interesting since Dan Brown is also in the news today for his plagiarism trial where the judge called him a liar. Fr. McBrien was hired as an advisor on the Da Vinci Code movie and now we know the reason why. Maybe Dan Brown wanted a fellow (alleged) plagiarist with (not alleged) wacky theology on the set.

It does make me think of doing a top ten list.

The top ten things Fr. McBrien will not Plagiarize.

10. Actual documents from Vatican II
9. Academic Mandatum
8. The Catechism of the Catholic Church
7. Catholic Answers: Voter’s Guide for Serious Catholics
6. General Instruction of the Roman Missal
5. Ex Corde Ecclesiae
4. Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons
3. Redemptionis Sacramentum
2. Humanae Vitae

And the top document that Fr. McBrien will not Plagiarize is:

1. Ordinatio Sacerdotalis

Considering the news that the Pope has been spotted around the Vatican using his new iPod Nano and sporting the white earbuds this cartoon is pretty appropriate.

Dave Coverly’s Speed Bump.

It does make me wonder that since the reason that the Pope wears white is because of a tradition started by a Dominican Pope what will be the effect of the Pope wearing white earbuds have on future Popes? Will the color of the headphones change based on the liturgical season? I hope they won’t be restricted to the ones that come with the iPod and can have a decent pair instead.

I also wonder if the Vatican website will start displaying the Pope’s playlist. Even cooler if they could sync it up with his iPod "The Pope ‘s is currently listening to _____".

SOUTH SIDE — A man was charged Monday evening with one count of burglary, just hours after he broke into a South Side chapel and stole religious relics and a priest’s boots, authorities said.

Ricky Anderson, 42, of the 10200 block of South Forrest Avenue, Chicago, was taken into custody at 2:30 p.m. Monday, near the chapel of St. John de la Salle Catholic Church, 10212 S. Vernon Ave., where the burglary occurred less than an hour before, a Chicago police spokesman said.

While Anderson was stealing brass candleholders, a pair of boots and bones believed to be those of a saint, a priest startled him, causing him to flee, authorities said.

Anderson was arrested a short time later, wearing the boots, authorities said. The priest positively identified him, the police spokesman said.

Rather odd choices taking boots and a relic, maybe he was a pious thief?

Tangentially I was thinking that the Vatican should create an SQL (Sacramental Query Language) database tracking all known first degree relics. This would be pretty cool since you could enter the name of a saint and find out where all of their relics are. And of course you would submit the request via a relic query.

The pope’s new 2-gigabyte digital audio player already was loaded with a sampling of the radio’s programming in English, Italian and German and musical compositions by Ludwig van Beethoven, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Frederic Chopin, Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky and Igor Stravinsky. The stainless steel back was engraved with the words “To His Holiness, Benedict XVI” in Italian.

Once the pope, who is also a pianist, gets the hang of the device’s trademark click wheel, he will be able to listen to a special 20-minute feature produced by the radio’s English program that highlights Mozart’s life and music to commemorate the 250th anniversary of his birth.

The iPod also contains an English-language radio drama on the life of St. Thomas a Becket and a 10-minute feature on the creation of Vatican Radio, with original sound clips of the inventor of the radio, Guglielmo Marconi, and Vatican Radio’s founder, Pope Pius XI.

The pope also can relive the historical papal transition of April 2005. On the player, the radio’s German program included a mix of news and interviews done during the death of Pope John Paul II, the conclave and the election of Pope Benedict.
[Via Domenico Bettinelli]

I think the Pope needs a larger iPod then the Nano with much more space. I am sure he would rip his classical music CDs using the Apple Lossless encoder. He has worked hard to prevent a degradation of the faith and I am sure he would want his music the same way. He doesn’t put up with Theology Harmonic distortion, so I am sure it is the same goes for his music.

There is another reason the Pope should have a larger iPod. When he showed his Nano to Francis Cardinal Arinze, the Cardinal replied "Mine is bigger."

The iPope picture is from my Rome Depot parody.

At a website specializing in Puritan writings from other centuries includes a list of 1,050 commands in the New Testament for Christians. The list found via Michael Barber is pretty extensive and kind of funny to read with heading like Three "Ask’s", Seventy-four "Be’s", and Three things to cast out or away: Good thing that God didn’t dump these on Moses because either he would have been squashed or at the minimum pulled something coming down the mountain.

New Testament Commands [PDF]

Though I like Jesus’ list much better because it is so much easier to memorize since it contains only two.

"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

This website does have a sense of humor though. Under What’s New it says "There is nothing new under the sun." Ecclesiastes 1:9."

Introducing the latest and most refreshing and relativistic gum – Dissidentyne. Up to now every brand of gum the flavor would fade as you chewed. Dissidentyne solves the problem by having no taste at all so it will never fade! Simply sing a new taste into being. Use your creative imagination to choose how you want it to taste. The primacy of taste buds guides you on how you alone will favor what flavor or interpret the taste.

Why be stuck with the same old traditional flavors passed on down in recipe succession. It’s the 21st century so choose what tastes fit your tastes and not be bound by dogmatic definitions of Spearmint, Wintergreen, etc. Why be universal or have a consistent gum flavor. At one time all the gum was the same till the advent of Babelgum with its towering taste that is different for everyone.

Dissidentyne was developed by, who better than Bishop Gumbleton. With a name like that and his experience who would know better about both gum and dissent.

"I wanted a gum I could chew in the cafeteria or when giving my latest speech at a Call for Action conference or while writing a column for the National Catholic Reporter. All the other gums left me cold and I wanted one as bland as heterodoxy itself. When I created my own gum, just as how I have done other things in life, I didn’t rely on what was passed down or what you might expect from a traditional gum – I went my own way."

If Dissidentyne is not for you then you might prefer Big Rad Trad. It includes the smells and bells of traditional Catholic gum – but is totally obedience free.

I greatly admire those bloggers who give up blogging for Lent, but as for me I will continue blogging as a penance for others. I will try to provide you with plenty of punance during this punitential season.

Here is some Lent trivia I posted in previous years.

The capybara kap-i-‘bar-uh, hydrochoerus hydrochaeris, is a semi-aquatic rodent of South and Central America. It is the only species in its genus, which belongs to the family Hydrochoeridae, order Rodentia.

When the Spanish missionaries found the capybara in Brazil during the 16th century, they wrote to the Pope to ask – there’s an animal here that’s scaly but also hairy, spends most of its time in the water but occasionally comes on land; can we classify it as a fish (and thus, the indigenous people could continue to eat it during Lent)?. Not having a clear description of the animal (and not wanting the petitioners to starve), the Pope agreed and declared it to be a fish.

The pretzel has a deep spiritual meaning for Lent. In fact, it was the ancient Christian Lenten bread as far back as the fourth century. In the old Roman Empire, the faithful kept a very strict fast all through Lent: no milk, no butter, no cheese, no eggs, no cream and no meat. They made small breads of water, flour and salt, to remind themselves that Lent was a time of prayer. They shaped these breads in the form of crossed arms for in those days they crossed their arms over the breast while praying. Therefore they called the breads “little arms” (bracellae). From this Latin word, the Germanic people later coined the term “pretzel.”
[Full Article]

The Teutonic word Lent, which we employ to denote the forty days’ fast preceding Easter, originally meant no more than the spring season. Still it has been used from the Anglo-Saxon period to translate the more significant Latin term quadragesima (Fr. car�me, It. quaresima, Span. cuaresma), meaning the “forty days”, or more literally the “fortieth day”. This in turn imitated the Greek name for Lent, tessarakoste (fortieth), a word formed on the analogy of Pentecost (pentekoste), which last was in use for the Jewish festival before New Testament times.

Carnival means "farewell to meat.”

It was thought that misfortune would come to those who married during lent – “Marry in Lent, live to repent” – because lent was a time for abstinence.

Jimmy Akin has a good roundup of Lenten information.

I have also changed one of my top graphics to this.

Now as for Lenten practices this year I have decided to give up giving up things for Lent. Well actually I have thought of some really good modern practices to give up that could be quite penitential.

• Switching from broadband to dial-up
• Turning off your popup-blocker
• Turning off your spam filter
• Not fast-forwarding through commercials on programs you have recorded on a DVR.
• Watching CNN

Though I am not spiritually advanced enough for these severe penances. But I am only half joking about turning of the spam filter. It use to be that when I woke up in the morning and found a lot of comment spam on my blog I would get pretty upset and even at times unleashed an expletive or two more appropriate for when I was a sailor. I contemplated what circle of Hell spammers deserved and devised appropriate tortures in my head. Knowing that this was a fault I started directing prayers towards the spammers instead as I deleted their offerings. Now I don’t look forward to this deletion ritual, but at least now there is no anger involved. Amazing what prayer and grace can do. If St. Terese can pray for a murderer maybe even a spammer is worth some effort on our parts.

Being that Lent in English means spring I think that is quite appropriate. Instead of spring cleaning we are engaged in Lenten cleaning. Everyday you have to clean up your house, but during spring cleaning extra effort is made to clean deeper and to throw out all the junk that has accumulated. Exactly what we should also do in Lent. To look at those faults that need some extra attention and scrubbing and to work on tossing out those distractions that have accumulated and to give them the heave ho. It is great to toss out this junk, but it is not just to make room for the addition of even more junk. The negation of Lent is to really make more room for Christ.

Spiritual reading is always a great disinfectant for Lent cleaning. Happy Catholic and The Anchoress both have reading lists of what they will be turing their attention to. One of the things I love about the Catholic faith is the inexhaustibility of the spiritual reading available. Even if you could read every book, so many deserve repeated readings. I read a lot of the classics during my entry into the faith. Though much of it was like a first grader reading college level material. So I am looking forward to re-reading some of those same books again.

One will be To Know Christ Jesus by Frank Sheed. I remember Frank Sheed once saying in effect that to be a good apologist you need to get soaked in the Gospels. Whether you are an apologist or not this is great advice and what all Christians should aspire to. He obviously took his own advice because this book is soaked with the Gospel and the spiritual insights in it are not just dry apology, but deep spiritual reading.

Another book is Thomas A. Kempis’ On the Passion of Christ: According to the Four Evangelists : Prayers and Meditations. Yes he wasn’t just a one hit wonder with the Imitation of Christ.

Fr. Dubay’s Fire Within: St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, and the Gospel-On Prayer. I remember first seeing a series by Fr. Dubay some years ago on EWTN where he talked about these two great saints. His descriptions of contemplation and that it was not just something for those in religious life really sparked an interest in me. Coming from the desert of atheism the idea of knowing and loving God more is obviously desirous. I really thank Fr. Dubay for introducing me to the these two great Carmelite doctors and for prompting me to read their works. I especially love St. Teresa of Avila for both her wit and ability to explain deeply spiritual ideas in easier to understand language. Maybe one day Carmelite spirituality might actually start rubbing off on me (I can hope), though maybe I need to read "Contemplation for Dummies" first. I would like to change the name of this blog to the Contemplative Jester, but Curt is still way to accurate.

So I wish you all success in your Lenten cleaning and your making more room for Jesus!

Lent is fast approaching

VATICAN CITY (Roto Reuters) – Pope Benedict in a long awaited shakeup which was widely expected announced today a software consistory. To reorganize the curia it had been rumored that a new network was needed to replace the aging computer system used by the curia within the Vatican. Computer networks used by the Congregation Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments could not talk to computer used by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith causing miscommunication, bottlenecks, and a reduction of the collegiality index.

Speculation had been made in the past as to whether Pope Benedict XVI would appoint Microsoft Windows, Apple OS X, Sun Solaris, or an open source operating system like Linux as the official operating system. Though some have objected to OS X because in Latin the words for "apple" and for "evil" are identical (malum) and to Sun since it would only encourage anti-Catholics in accusations of worshiping Babylonian sun gods.

The memorial of St. Polycarp, Bishop was deemed appropriate for this announcement since when he was arrested by a Roman official in Smyrna he told the captain that he served Christ for eighty six years. Thus since he served Christ for so long that the new servers might serve the Vicar of Christ for at least a couple of years before technology again made the system out of date. The new system will be named the server of the server of God.

Despite steady rumors that the Vatican would use Microsoft’s Stained Glass Windows, the Pope instead announced at a special audience the selection of Red Hat Linux. The Vatican will release their own distro of Linux on April 4 the feast day of St. Isidore of Seville the proposed patron saint of computers, computer users, and computer programmer. The proposed number of servers will be set to 120 as established established by Pope Paul VI of venerated memory (c.f. Computatrum Ligamen)

The system will also provide email accounts for everyone working in and with the Vatican through Post Office Protocol Extended (POPE3) to provide interoperability and the latest generation in collegiality enabled software. The kernel will control all operations and any software that does not obey system requests will be excommunicated or offloaded via the anathema bus. A new fiber optic backbone will also be laid and the specification instituted by the Pope will ensure it is stronger than the backbone provided by most bishops.

Altar of the Chair of St. Peter (Bernini 1666)

Today’s feast requires that we all be chairitable to the Pope.