Last year for Halloween Domenico Bettinelli posted some Halloween Safety Tips that he had created. They are quite funny and well worth reading.
Thinking about the recent meeting of forty conservatives and a handful of bishops and reading the reactions of various bloggers I will add my two cents. The appointment of Leon Panetta along with several others to the Bishops lay review board stuck in my craw at the time, but this is not even close to what the real issue should have been. It wouldn’t have mattered if every person on it was a faithful Catholic in all respects. This board should never have created in the first place. There is the old joke that an elephant is a horse designed by a committee
In circumstances such as these appointing a committee can be just a way of saying you did something without actually having to make a hard decision and do something. I believe my opinion has been born out by the history of this review board. They sent out questionnaires and then some diocese didn’t return them, and then Gov. Keating resigned after making some un-prudential comments. Did we really need a review board in the first place to get to the root of the scandals? Were not some of the factors that lead to this readily apparent by anyone who really looked at them?
We basically had two break downs in the scandals. One that some priests broke their vow and two that some bishops did not take prudential action to eliminate the possibility of further abuse. There is no way we can screen out all potential abusers at the seminary and in this toxic culture we do need to ensure that everybody at least gets an immunization shot of healthy orthodox teachings to help protect themselves from the culture of death. So just from a church management point of view we need to ensure that seminarians are properly catechized, any priestly dissent is dealt with, and when alleged abuse occurs that it is properly investigated and if abuse had occurred it is dealt with.
None of this required a lay board that sends out questionnaires, but it does require at least for bishops to act like bishops. As lay people we can do much to encourage and support our bishops, especially starting with prayer. We can also as Catholics keep some bishops from appointing pro-abortion politicians to posts or have them as speakers by keeping them from ever being elected in the first place.
We can look at the example of the Exodus and see that instead of trusting in God’s promise they appointed a scouting party (committee) to first check out the promise land and to give a report. When this committee lead by Joshua reported on what they found and about the Anakim living there, they saw it as a GIANT problem and instead of dealing with it they wandered in the wilderness for another forty years until that disobedient generation had passed away. I just wonder if we are going to have to wait for this disobedient generation to pass away before we start to make the hard decisions?
Erik of Erik’s Rants and Recipes remarks upon Steven Riddle of Flos Carmeli use of “metablogging” as a category that deals with the mechanics of the blog itself.
I would suggest a new category called “metaman” for discussing people. As Will Rogers said “I never metaman I didn’t like”
A federal judge has ordered New York’s Westchester County to pay a twice-convicted pedophile $2,500 for violating his rights by refusing to allow him to perform his clown act for children at a local amusement park.
[Full Story]
…State election officials randomly drew letters to determine the order of the recall ballot that could be choked with nearly 200 candidates for the special Oct. 7 election.
The first letter chosen was R, followed by W, Q and O.
The six-minute grab bag of letters seemed more like a lottery drawing than a routine process, which is done every election to help erase the estimated 5 percent advantage a candidate gets from being at the top of the ballot, Secretary of State Kevin Shelley said.
[Full Story]
Well that certainly shows a lot of respect for the intelligence of the California Voter. Looks like five percent of Californians are qualified to move to Palm Beach, Fl and accidentally vote for Pat Buchanan.
The most effective moment in the Australian premiere of this new American opera is one in which no music is played or sung. In the closing scene the convicted rapist and murderer Joseph de Rocher (Teddy Tahu Rhodes) is being executed at a prison in Louisiana.
Conductor John DeMain lays down his baton and the singers on stage fall silent after a headlong build-up. All we can hear is the electronic blip measuring a heart beat, the sighing click like elevators descending of the lethal chemicals being injected into the prisoner’s veins by mechanical means. And then flatline.
It is both the dramatic impact of this final scene and its abandonment of musical expression that underlines some of the strengths and weaknesses of this important work.
The opera is an adaptation of the book of the same name by Sister Helen Prejean, a Catholic nun who found herself drawn into the life-and-death struggles of several death-row prisoners. Its librettist, Terrence McNally, has avoided the note of sensationalism that marred the otherwise fine film version directed by Tim Robbins.
[Full Story]
After slaughtering a Muslim-turned-Christian, Islamic extremists have reportedly returned the man’s body to his Palestinian family in four pieces.
[Full Story]
Here is a story about the Franciscan Sisters of Christ the King who have decided not to charge rent for a football field on their property.
Why the change of heart for the nuns?
“They say they have no money,” said Sister Mary Bonaventure, the corporation treasurer.
“We can try it for this season and see how it goes. We’ve never had a football game in our back yard. Anybody who might have a football game literally in their back yard would be concerned.”
You would think that someone wanted to put up a nuclear power plant or some chemical plant. I just think that it is funny that someone would be concerned about a football game in their backyard.
Sister Bonaventure isn’t sure whether the nuns will attend.
“Maybe that would shake up the opposing team,” she said with a laugh. “We’ll see about that.”