What's all the fuss about "socialism" among the tea-bag crowd?
They think socialism is supposed to be somehow more inherently evil than a capitalist system that takes the shattering, sickening tragedy of a talented, vain and self-centered man blowing up his family because he can't keep it in his pants, then uses it as commercial fodder to sell people swoosh-bedecked, overpriced s*** they don't really need anyway?
This -- this sainted capitalism -- is the foundation of what it means to be moral, God-fearing and 100-percent American? Really?
WE'RE SUPPOSED to buy the notion that there's something foundational about an amoral, materialist system that, at its heart, is based on the motivating power of greed to encourage productivity and creation of wealth? In the 1950s, the American Way gave us doctors vouching for the superiority of Camels and the rise of the military-industrial complex.
Today, capitalism carried to its logical marketing extreme gives us a hypersexualized culture, then finds a way to profit off of one of the more notable tragedies arising from a society organized around a quest for the eternal G-spot.
Tiger Woods is a wreck. His family is a bigger wreck because of Tiger's appetite for fresh meat. And now Nike gets the perpetrator in a tabloid tragedy to trade on his sins against his wife and children -- and even drags his dead father into the sewer for good measure -- just so it can sell you s***.
Hell, it'll probably work. Because we Americans, after all, will walk a mile for a Camel. Or sell our souls to a Tiger.
It's cloudy, and chilly, and it's been rainy around the Big O lately.
And the other night, we even had our first big thunderstorm of the season. Welcome to April on the Great Plains.
Welcome to spring.
Next week, the weather forecast calls for sunny and 90. Or snow, I forget which.
WHAT I DO KNOW is that the mint is coming in all over the back yard, and we're going to be in high cotton -- so to speak -- until late fall. You know what that means, right?
Mint tea, made with fresh-cut goodness from the yard.
In honor of the occasion, I thought I'd immortalize the first pot of the year in pictures -- from fresh cut sprigs of green gold to the steeping pot, to the fourth cup of the evening.
It's early April, my allergies are about to do me in, the weather is all over the place, they tested the tornado sirens this morning (meaning it's that time of the year) . . . and life is good. And it's served up in a cup.
Jesus had problems with his bishops long before His bumbling bench of disciples got a promotion and a pointy hat. One of the first things they didn't "get," back in the 18th chapter of Luke, was the Boss' memo about how "everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted." Quickly after, still scratching their heads over that pronouncement, no doubt, the clerics to be tried to shoo away children seeking the good rabbi.
Luke sets the scene in Judea on what had been a long, tiring day.
"People were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them," the evangelist writes, "and when the disciples saw this, they rebuked them.
"Jesus, however, called the children to himself and said, 'Let the children come to me and do not prevent them; for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Amen, I say to you, whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it.'"
ALMOST 2,000 years later, the successors to the disciples still don't "get" it. In fact, too many of them absolutely have perverted Jesus' unambiguous admonition.
In America and, as we now learn, all across the world, far too many Catholic priests -- these men who act "in persona Christi," in the person of Christ, at the altar -- let the children come to them all right . . . and then molested and raped them. Then, in the name of not giving "scandal," bishops protected not the children but, instead, their violators.
If what Jesus said is really so, and the "the kingdom of God belongs to such as these" -- the children -- and the bureaucracy of the church has spent decades acting contrarily, what then is the kingdom to which it lays claim?
If the guardians of the Catholic faith obscure the kingdom of God behind a phalanx of bureaucrats and canon lawyers -- with secrecy their cry and Vatican letters their shield -- does that mean they've decided to deny Jesus in order to save His church? Has the magisterium suspended "whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it," kind of like Abraham Lincoln suspended habeus corpus during the Civil War?
Do they consider that it is better for us that a few kids be thrown to the wolves instead of the hierarchy, so that the whole church may not perish? Is that it? Why does that sound familiar?
UNBELIEVABLY, the Vatican seeks to portray itself as the victim in all this -- hounded by the "pagan" media much as Caligula and Nero tormented the early church.
The Vatican heatedly defended Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday, claiming accusations that he helped cover up the actions of pedophile priests are part of an anti-Catholic "hate" campaign targeting the pope for his opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage. Vatican Radio broadcast comments by two senior cardinals explaining "the motive for these attacks" on the pope and the Vatican newspaper chipped in with spirited comments from another top cardinal.
"The pope defends life and the family, based on marriage between a man and a woman, in a world in which powerful lobbies would like to impose a completely different" agenda, Spanish Cardinal Julian Herranz, head of the disciplinary commission for Holy See officials, said on the radio.
(snip)
"There are those who fear the media campaign of anti-Catholic hatred can degenerate," Vatican Radio said.
It noted anti-Catholic graffiti on walls of a church outside Viterbo, a town near Rome, and reminded listeners that a bishop was attacked by a man during Easter Mass in Muenster, Germany. The bishop fought back with an incense bowl.
The radio likened the recent campaign to the persecution suffered by early Christian martyrs. "The crowds, incited by the slanders of the powerful, would lynch the Christians," the radio said.
NO, the "persecution" of the church by the press comes not because the pope "defends life and the family," but -- ironically -- because some elements of the church have been acting like (or covering up for those who've been acting like) Caligula. Or, at a minimum, a guest at one of the mad emperor's Roman orgies.
The thing about the press is this: If you're in public life and generally keep your nose (and other appendages) clean, reporters generally don't go around creating slanders out of thin air with which to persecute you. If you're getting bashed, oftentimes it's because you handed someone a baseball bat and dared them to use it.
The Vatican's problem -- more our problem, actually -- is that its clerics and functionaries forget whom they serve. Sometimes, they're just serving themselves . . . perpetuating the bureaucracy and the institution with no regard for the first principles that gave life to the institution.
Other times, they're serving the pope -- sheltering a pope from scrutiny, accountability and, ultimately, reality. It's as if they have no faith that a church built upon the "rock"-- Cephas . . . Petrus . . . Peter . . . the clueless bumbler formerly known as Simon -- who denied Christ three times could survive a present-day pope being exposed as a fairly ordinary specimen of fallen humanity.
It's as if these slobbering toadies think only an übermensch with no need of Christ's saving grace could lead the church toward that Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
At no time in all of this has anyone at the Vatican given the impression of actually being, first and foremost, a servant of Jesus. Or of the billion Catholics today who, tragically, find themselves in the spiritual care of self-pitying political creatures such as these.
Really, were the last words of our first pope -- the martyred Peter -- "Help! Help! I'm being repressed!"? Somehow, I think not.
IN MATTHEW 18, Jesus has a few things to say about children, the hierarchy of heaven and the fate of those who causes the "little ones" to fall:
Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 5 And whoever receives one child such as this in my name receives me. 6 "Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. 7 Woe to the world because of things that cause sin! Such things must come, but woe to the one through whom they come! 8 If your hand or foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter into life maimed or crippled than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into eternal fire. 9 And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter into life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into fiery Gehenna. 10 "See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that their angels in heaven always look upon the face of my heavenly Father.
IN THE CONTEXT of this particular Catholic moment -- one that has been decades in the making -- no fair reading of Jesus' words from Matthew would point toward divine condemnation of how the press has covered the scandals.
But if anyone in Rome -- or among various mau-mauers taking up space on the world's hapless bench of bishops -- finds Christ's words here somehow discomfiting . . . well, I don't think that would be an unreasonable reaction.
We live in a world that is sick unto death. We are beset by death-lovers and death-dealers. We are slaves to materialism. We live amid a culture where vulgarity has beauty in full retreat.
We need Jesus. We need His saving grace -- all of us, Catholics, Protestants, pagans . . whatever.
We need to see Jesus. We need to see Him in all things -- and especially in His church.
Somehow, those who administer Christ's church on His behalf have come between the Son of Man and those of us who stand at a distance, crying "Jesus, Master! Have pity on us!"
We look for God, but do not see Him in Rome.
We look to the successors of the apostles but, at best, we catch only fleeting glimpses of pre-Pentecost imitators.
We listen for the Truth, but what we've been hearing of late -- from Rome -- sounds more like the Father of Lies to me.
Michael Spencer, known on the Web as the Internet Monk, died Monday night at his home in Kentucky.
What a terrible disease -- cancer -- stole from the Baptist minister's family, friends, students and readers, it has given back to Him who is the source of all blessings. And the work and life of the Internet Monk was a blessing, indeed.
HERE IS a snippet of the kind of wisdom and fearless cultural criticism we have lost with the passing of the Internet Monk. It's from a 2006 post of his on what he learned from the Chinese exchange students at the Baptist boarding school where he taught and ministered:
It’s impossible to know and talk with these Chinese students without catching their conviction in the superiority of their communist culture. As something of a student of Asian history, I understand how our Chinese students differ from other Asians in their cultural interactions with others. They do have a historical conviction of the superiority of their culture, and they see little need to demonstrate that to outsiders. To the Chinese, there is little doubt that their culture will be proven to be superior to all others.
Further, it is impossible to know these students without seeing that the Chinese communist revolution -- with all its many, many failures and evils -- is producing a generation of young people who have remarkable values, ethics, loyalty and devotion to their culture. I see little evidence in these students of much for a resistance movement to work with.
All of these students are atheists, and none are familiar with Christianity, but when we do talk about the area of core beliefs, they are quick to witness to the influence of their families and their country. They want to return to China and live for the benefit of their families and country. They are endlessly grateful to their country and, unlike some internationals, have no reluctance to say where they want to return and live.
I’ve concluded that Mao may have been a poor communist, but he was a brilliant Confucian. Our Chinese students demonstrate so many of the virtues of Confucius, and are clearly bemused at what they see in our American culture. No longer are they in awe of the capitalism of our country. Our students come from strongly capitalistic areas. (I took one student to a sub shop, and he said the sandwich was good, but far too expensive.) They want to make major contributions to their society and to find materialistic success, but they are not enamored with the vices and immaturities of their peers in the declining youth culture of America.
In many ways, these Chinese students are a revelation of American decline and a preview of future Chinese cultural success. China may not be our military equal, and their government may be repressive, but the products of a culture are an indication of where things are going. These 8 Chinese students will not go to college and run up credit cards, wreck the car, stay drunk, fail classes and waste their time. They will soon be engineers, pilots, doctors and scientists; leaders in their field.
And I doubt, very seriously, that they will be Christians. Not because I haven’t tried to live, teach and preach the Gospel. I have, and will continue to do so as will all of the Christians on our campus.
I doubt they will become Christians because they are seeing American Christianity, and it’s far more American than Christian. They’ve helped me to see my own cultural religion, and it’s been a disturbing revelation.
When they attend chapel, they frequently hear moralistic preaching. Their own Confucian and Maoist culture gives them morals and moralism, and produces a far more moral person than their typical American peer. They hear sermons on being a good person, staying off drugs, not having sex and staying in school. They were doing all this when they came here and will do it when they leave.
They see American Christians without a Bible most of the time. We have few spiritual disciplines and are hungry and thirsty for the things our culture values more than the gifts and callings of Christ. They hear us talk about Jesus, but the Jesus we talk about is not compelling enough to cause us to live truly sacrificial or revolutionary lives. I’ve noticed this with other Asians as well. When they hear us talking about our religion, they expect to see the same holiness and devotion they see in Buddhist monks, but in American Christians they simply see another American, with a slightly different set of consumer interests. Same American. Different t-shirt slogan. Our spirituality is clearly inferior.
MICHAEL SPENCER loved God, and he loved the truth much more than he feared tipping sacred cows. Actually, I think he kind of reveled in sacred-cow tipping.
That's a good thing.
And now, as my own church, the Catholic Church, sinks once more into the fever swamps of sex and lies -- weighted down by the millstones of its many clerical malefactors -- I find myself wishing for someone, anyone with the simple faith and deep-seated integrity of an iconoclastic Baptist preacher in the hills of Kentucky to step up and say "Enough! In the name of God, enough!"
I find myself grieving that it no longer will be that iconoclastic Baptist preacher in the Kentucky hills writing insightful pieces challenging his branch of Christianity and mine, too, to cast aside the pride and the prejudices standing between us and the risen Savior who beckons all.
Too often, we who claim to be followers of Jesus are instead worshipers of false gods. Followers of idols made in our own image. Devotees of spiritual fads proportionate in stupidity to that of the fools who birthed them.
And it is our grievous loss that the Internet Monk no longer will be there to call us on it. To hold us accountable for what we've done with the unfathomable, unmerited grace so hard won on our behalf one terrible day at Calvary. Requiescat in pace, Michael.
Thing is, I don't understand what all the fuss is. And why did people have to wait until Saturday to get one when it would have been easy enough for them to make an iPad anytime they wanted?
That said, I'm glad people are so excited over the iPad. I'm fond of mine, and I find that it's infinitely customizable.
But could someone explain to me why all these tech heads and yuppies are paying $499 and up for something you can get at the grocery store for under a buck?
Sometimes, I just don't understand this country at all.
When you're out of Schlitz, it's time to switch to the dry Riesling. If you can find it.
Over on Beliefnet a while back, Rod Dreher notably recounted his struggles with the Pennsylvania state liquor collective in finding a simple bottle of dry Riesling. After much abuse from some uncultured gourmands whose idea of a dry wine is letting the Mogen David go a little vinegary, the poor man allegedly broke several state laws by sneaking across the border to New Jersey and purchasing illicit, yet suitably dry, hooch.
Sunday, Rod blogged about his Easter triumph. Or, at least, the triumph of the anonymous bootlegger who found dry Riesling across the Maginot Line and smuggled it back through the Quaker State defenses . . . thus sending Mr. Dreher into dipsomaniacal reverie.
I'm talking about you, E. Bunny -- if that's your real name. NOW, I don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' no piquant bouquets, or sniffin' no corks, or subtle fruitiness vs. Electric Kool-Aid Acid Tests, but I do OK when it comes to sucking the stuff down. Because when you're out of Schlitz, you're out of beer. And when you're out of beer, that means it's time to switch to wine.
All of this gets me to Sunday. Mrs. Favog and I went over to some dear friends' house for Easter dinner, where before eating, the four of us killed off a bottle of a rather excellent dry Riesling.
Not even a slight hint of that certain . . . oh, je ne sais quoi . . . Formula 44 cachet. Or Boone's Farm, either.
Do you know what our friend Laura went through to get that dry Riesling? She had to go all the way to the neighborhood Hy-Vee supermarket. And there, in the wine section . . . voila!
OF COURSE, she had to call on pretty advanced sommelier-type skills. We're talkin' mad skillz going beyond the training of your average Pennsylvania ABC store manager -- she looked at the label, keeping her eyes peeled for the telltale clue that you've stumbled upon a truly dry Riesling.
And there it was. The words "Dry Riesling."
When she stopped laughing hysterically, there standing in the Hy-Vee wine aisle -- she had read Rod's account of his disastrous encounter with socialized liquor -- she bought it. And we drank it.
It was dry. And that was good.
Flyover country, my ass.
NOW, WHAT WITH all the drankin' that had been goin' on during this Easter feast (and a feast it was), I lost my head and began to lapse into my native Louisiana patois, which makes somewhat less sense to the Midwestern ear than, say, Boomhauer on King of the Hill.
As we all watched The Sound of Music -- Mrs. Favog's favorite movie ever (ask her about the time she met Julie Andrews) -- for the 4.327th time, one of the characters noted that a previous governess had gotten a snake put in her clothes, as opposed to Maria merely getting pranked with a frog.
"They ain't nothin' wrong with a snake," I remarked, using the proper pronunciation of "sneck."
At which point Laura got up, went to the freezer, pulled out an ice cream cake and dished it up.
She thought I said "There's nothing wrong with a snack." Which there wasn't. Nothing a-tall.
In the immortal words of Bart Simpson . . . "HAAAAAAA haaaaaaaah!"
The source of my glee is this story in The Dallas Morning News:
Erykah Badu took her clothes off, but Dallas officials have decided it is the city that feels stripped of its dignity.
After consulting with city prosecutors, the Dallas Police Department has decided that it will issue a disorderly conduct citation to the Grammy-winning artist for getting naked in Dealey Plaza last month.
Initially, police said they had no complaints about the artist's taping of a video in which she disrobed in public, and had no plans to pursue any charges. But after the video went viral Monday, the subsequent brouhaha made national headlines and became the subject of talk radio and the blogosphere.
Dallas Police Deputy Chief Mike Genovesi, who oversees the special investigations division, said Friday that he expects that citation – about as serious as a traffic ticket – will be issued next week.
In a news release, police state that Badu had disrobed in a public place without regard to other individuals and children who were in close proximity.
Genovesi said police had one witness come forward Thursday, and she told authorities that she "observed Ms. Badu remove her clothing on the public street. The witness had two small children with her and was offended."
Not that there aren't more than a hundred thousand witnesses if you factor in the people who have watched the many versions of the video posted on YouTube.
In the video, for the song "Window Seat," Badu strips down as she strolls toward the location where President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. A rifle sound, edited into the video, rings out and she collapses to the pavement as bystanders watch.
SOMEHOW, I don't think the court will buy "EVOLVING" as a defense for gettin' nekkid and actin' crazy in a public place. Score one for "groupthink."
The ticket carries a $500 fine. But the satisfaction from seeing this loon get charged is priceless.
Now, if you're ensconced somewhere deep in the bureaucracy of the Catholic Church, there are procedures for deciding when the devil gets his due process. The procedures, it would seem, go something like this:
If you're in the media, and Vatican functionaries determine that your "biased reporting" is the handiwork of the Evil One, the church can move amazingly swiftly for a 2,000-year-old bureaucracy.
Then bishops get into the act, calling for the faithful to "besiege"The New York Times and cancel their subscriptions to The Oregonian in Portland. In the case of the Times, Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio said he would "suggest canceling our subscriptions . . . but we need to know what the enemy is saying."
And then, we have the Vatican's chief exorcist contending that the press isn't just "the enemy" but is taking its marching orders from The Enemy. Which, of course, has led to a persecution of the Catholic Church -- at least according to the papal preacher -- not unlike that of the Jews.
ON THE OTHER HAND, if you're a priest who's molested kids, and if a local Catholic Church canonical court has determined you possess "almost a satanic quality,"it can take years . . . and years . . . and years for the Vatican to get alarmed enough to remove the "smoke of Satan" from the sanctuary.
One case in point comes from Tucson, and the findings of the Arizona Daily Stardon't exactly heap discredit upon the much-disputed reporting of Laurie Goodstein at the Times:
The late Tucson Bishop Manuel D. Moreno, often characterized as a poor advocate for sexual abuse victims, struggled with both canon law and Vatican mandates in his efforts to defrock two local priests, documents obtained by the Arizona Daily Star show.
In one case, Moreno pleaded with then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, for help in removing the Rev. Michael Teta, who was convicted by the church in 1997 of five crimes including sexual solicitation in the confessional.
"I make this plea to you to assist me in every way you can to expedite this case, because the accused was a priest in whom I had great confidence at one time, but who, unfortunately, worked among our former seminarians, and, terrible to say, evidently corrupted many of them," Moreno wrote in an April 1997 letter to Ratzinger.
Ratzinger's office oversaw Teta's case because the crimes allegedly occurred in the confessional. His office did not handle the case of the other priest, Monsignor Robert C. Trupia, until 2001, when jurisdiction over such cases changed.
Teta's case, Moreno wrote, had already gone on for seven years. Teta was first suspended in 1990.
Teta and Trupia were defrocked in 2004. The diocese suspended Trupia in 1992 after a Tucson mother told the diocese her young son had been sexually abused by Trupia.
The diocese did not notify police about allegations against Trupia until 2000, when mandatory- reporting policies were adopted here.
(snip)
Tucson Bishop Gerald F. Kicanas said delays in cases here were not due to any Vatican office, including Ratzinger's.
"The frustration that you can sense in (Moreno's) letter, when put in the context of the delays experienced in our diocese, clearly refers to the challenges of getting the case resolved locally and did not refer to a frustration with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith," Kicanas wrote in an e-mail response to Star questions.
The church's canonical court in 1997 found "there is almost a satanic quality in (Teta's) mode of acting toward young men and boys." The court found that Teta's "insidious 'rape' of so many young men in his capacity as a priest" warranted his immediate removal from the priesthood.
"What is wrong with this system in which it takes another seven years to defrock a priest that has been found guilty of 'satanic abuse?' " Tucson lawyer Lynne Cadigan said.
Kicanas said that from 1997 to 2003, a process of review and appeals by Teta's canonical lawyer took place. "Unavoidably, criminal cases in our civil system of justice and canonical trials in the church, because of the need to respect the right to due process, can take a long time," Kicanas wrote.
DESPITE THEOFFICIAL bleating of the Vatican, various bishops, "orthodox Catholic" church militants, exorcists, papal preachers and L'Osservatore Romano, where there's smoke, there just might be hellfire -- and it's not in the press room.
The "smoke of Satan" still hangs over the church after two-and-a-half decades of sordid revelation after sordid revelation and egregious cover-up after egregious cover-up. The mystical Body of Christ has endured decade after decade of justice denied and responsibility evaded, and it's high time for the magisterium to account for its actions -- and its inaction.
Bishops the world over have some explaining to do. And that includes the Bishop of Rome.
They can do it now, or they can do it later . . . before a much higher court than that of public opinion.
The church militants of Catholicism, marching to the orders of their indignant leaders, have been quick to consign "the enemies of the church" to the fiery depths.
In the face of a decades-long trail of pederast priests, enabling superiors and abused, broken children, we at long last give voice to our outrage . . . at the media. For "an attack on the papacy."
I don't think it's the media the church needs to be worrying about. Because, truly, we have met the Enemy . . . and he is in us.
31 "When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit upon his glorious throne, 32 and all the nations will be assembled before him. And he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. 34 Then the king will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.' 37 Then the righteous will answer him and say, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? 39 When did we see you ill or in prison, and visit you?' 40 And the king will say to them in reply, 'Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.' 41 Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, 43 a stranger and you gave me no welcome, naked and you gave me no clothing, ill and in prison, and you did not care for me.' 44 Then they will answer and say, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or ill or in prison, and not minister to your needs?' 45 He will answer them, 'Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.' 46 And these will go off to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."
THIS IS, at its core, the grounds upon which the "satanic" press calls Catholic Church leadership to account.
And this, from the Daily Mail in London, is the reality these Catholics in high places (and low places, too) neglect as they hyperventilate over how terribly mean the press is being to the pope and the church:
An abuse hotline set up by the Catholic Church in Germany melted down on its first day of operation as more than 4,000 alleged victims of paedophile and violent priests called in to seek counselling and advice.
The numbers were far more than the handful of therapists assigned to deal with them could cope with.
In the end only 162 out of 4,459 callers were given advice before the system was shut down.
Andreas Zimmer, head of the project in the Bishopric of Trier, admitted that he wasn't prepared for "that kind of an onslaught."
The hotline is the Church's attempt to win back trust in the face of an escalating abuse scandal that threatens the papacy of German-born Pontiff Benedict XVI in Rome.
Earlier this week it was alleged that an ally of the Pope, Bishop Mixa, beat children - a charge he has subsequently denied.
Former girls and boys testified that he beat them with fists and a carpet beater which screaming; 'The devil is in you and I will drive him out!'
Also, the bishopric of Trier reported that 20 priests are suspected of having sexually abused children between the 1950s and 1990s.
IT'S ALL ABOUT "the least ones." Not the pope. Not the bishops.
It is these "least ones" the church so grievously failed all around the world. It is these "least ones" priests preyed upon -- molested -- and it is these "least ones" the hierarchy shoved aside, all in the name of protecting "the church" from "scandal."
And if those self-pitying forces in the church think the New York Times is picking on them, they haven't seen anything yet. Because you can't mau-mau the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.
The man who preaches to the pope today compared a few critical news stories about the Catholic Church's problems with perversion to the persecution of the Jews. Above is what the persecution of the Jews looked like.
But the pope's own priest, in the Vatican, on Good Friday, as the pope listened, said that stories about priests raping little boys, bishops covering it up and enabling the priests to rape again . . . and again . . . and again . . . and again . . . and whether the pope -- when he was an archbishop and a cardinal -- did enough to put a stop to it, that those articles are somehow so awful as to be compared to the Holocaust and other persecutions of the Hebrew race.
The mind struggles to comprehend such personal and institutional narcissism. The mouth fails to form the proper words to respond to such a notion -- a sick notion put forth on the most solemn day in Christendom.
A senior Vatican priest speaking at a Good Friday service compared the uproar over sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Church — which have included reports about Pope Benedict XVI’s oversight role in two cases — to the persecution of the Jews, sharply raising the volume in the Vatican’s counterattack.
The remarks, on the day Christians mark the crucifixion, underscored how much the Catholic Church has felt under attack from recent news reports and criticism over how it has handled charges of child molestation against priests in the past, and sought to focus attention on the church as the central victim.
In recent weeks, Vatican officials and many bishops have angrily denounced news reports that Benedict failed to act strongly enough against pedophile priests, once as archbishop of Munich and Friesing in 1980 and once as a leader of a powerful Vatican congregation in the 1990s.
Benedict sat looking downward when the Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa, who holds the office of preacher of the papal household, delivered his remarks in the traditional prayer service in St. Peter’s Basilica. Wearing the brown cassock of a Franciscan, Father Cantalamessa took note that Easter and Passover were falling during the same week this year, saying he was led to think of the Jews. “They know from experience what it means to be victims of collective violence and also because of this they are quick to recognize the recurring symptoms,” he said.
Father Cantalamessa quoted from what he said was a letter from an unnamed Jewish friend. “I am following the violent and concentric attacks against the church, the pope and all the faithful by the whole word,” he said the friend wrote. “The use of stereotypes, the passing from personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt, remind me of the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism.”
I PAUSE HERE to give you a chance to catch your breath and collect your thoughts. It is not a good thing to take in this story all at once -- I made that mistake, and you don't want to repeat it.
While we're all catching our breath, let me just say that if there's a Catholic left in Europe -- or, hell . . . anywhere -- after all this, it won't be for the Catholic hierarchy's lack of trying. The devil is somewhere, but I doubt it's at the Times.
That said, we now return to our regularly scheduled outrage:
Father Cantalamessa’s comments about the Jews came toward the end of a long talk about scripture, the nature of violence and the sacrifice of Jesus. He also spoke about violence against women, but gave only a slight mention of the children and adolescents who have been molested by priests. “I am not speaking here of violence against children, of which unfortunately also elements of the clergy are stained; of that there is sufficient talk outside of here,” he said.
Disclosures about hundreds of such cases have emerged in recent months in Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland and France, after a previous round of scandal in the United States earlier this decade.
A leading advocate for sex abuse victims in the United States, David Clohessy, called comparing criticism of the church to persecution of the Jews “breathtakingly callous and misguided.”
“Men who deliberately and consistently hide child sex crime are in no way victims,” he said. “And to conflate public scrutiny with horrific violence is about as wrong as wrong can be.”
The comments could cause a new twist in Vatican-Jewish relations, which have had ups and downs during Benedict’s papacy.
Rabbi Riccardo di Segni, the chief rabbi of Rome, who hosted Benedict at the Rome synagogue in January on a visit that helped calm waters after a year of tensions, laughed in seeming disbelief when asked about Father Cantalamessa’s remarks.
“With a minimum of irony, I will say that today is Good Friday, when they pray that the Lord illuminate our hearts so we recognize Jesus,” Rabbi Di Segni said, referring to a prayer in a traditional Catholic liturgy calling for the conversion of the Jews. “We also pray that the Lord illuminate theirs.”
I WISH to associate myself with the remarks of the good rabbi.
1To the choirmaster: according to The Hind of the Dawn. A Psalm of David. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Why art thou so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? 2 O my God, I cry by day, but thou dost not answer; and by night, but find no rest. 3 Yet thou art holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel. 4 In thee our fathers trusted; they trusted, and thou didst deliver them. 5 To thee they cried, and were saved; in thee they trusted, and were not disappointed. 6 But I am a worm, and no man; scorned by men, and despised by the people. 7 All who see me mock at me, they make mouths at me, they wag their heads; 8 "He committed his cause to the LORD; let him deliver him, let him rescue him, for he delights in him!" 9 Yet thou art he who took me from the womb; thou didst keep me safe upon my mother's breasts. 10 Upon thee was I cast from my birth, and since my mother bore me thou hast been my God.
11 Be not far from me, for trouble is near and there is none to help. 12 Many bulls encompass me, strong bulls of Bashan surround me; 13 they open wide their mouths at me, like a ravening and roaring lion. 14 I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax, it is melted within my breast; 15 my strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue cleaves to my jaws; thou dost lay me in the dust of death. 16 Yea, dogs are round about me; a company of evildoers encircle me; they have pierced my hands and feet-- 17 I can count all my bones--they stare and gloat over me; 18 they divide my garments among them, and for my raiment they cast lots. 19 But thou, O LORD, be not far off! O thou my help, hasten to my aid! 20 Deliver my soul from the sword, my life from the power of the dog! 21 Save me from the mouth of the lion, my afflicted soul from the horns of the wild oxen!
22 I will tell of thy name to my brethren; in the midst of the congregation I will praise thee: 23 You who fear the LORD, praise him! all you sons of Jacob, glorify him, and stand in awe of him, all you sons of Israel! 24 For he has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; and he has not hid his face from him, but has heard, when he cried to him. 25 From thee comes my praise in the great congregation; my vows I will pay before those who fear him. 26 The afflicted shall eat and be satisfied; those who seek him shall praise the LORD! May your hearts live for ever! 27 All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD; and all the families of the nations shall worship before him. 28 For dominion belongs to the LORD, and he rules over the nations. 29 Yea, to him shall all the proud of the earth bow down; before him shall bow all who go down to the dust, and he who cannot keep himself alive. 30 Posterity shall serve him; men shall tell of the Lord to the coming generation, 31 and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, that he has wrought it.
"Look, Fadda! I seen Laurie Goodstein from da Noo Yawk Times, and her head was spinnin' 'round like a top!" "Aye, my son. That's because the devil has a hold on her filthy soul, the ink-stained wench! Now, you remember that if you tell your mother about our 'meetings,' you'll go straight to hell, right?"
"Yes, Fadda."
That's a cheap shot, you say? Well . . . yes. I agree with you. It's a bigoted, stereotypical and nasty cheap shot.
On Good Friday, no less.
BUT WHEN IT COMES to cheap shots -- and playing fast and loose with the truth (not to mention wild speculation about the workings of angels and demons) -- is that really any worse than this, uncritically reported by the Catholic News Service?
Noted Italian exorcist Father Gabriele Amorth, commented this week that the recent defamatory reporting on Pope Benedict XVI, especially by the New York Times, was “prompted by the devil.”
Speaking to News Mediaset in Italy, the 85-year-old exorcist noted that the devil is behind “the recent attacks on Pope Benedict XVI regarding some pedophilia cases.”
“There is no doubt about it. Because he is a marvelous Pope and worthy successor to John Paul II, it is clear that the devil wants to ‘grab hold’ of him.”
Father Amorth added that in instances of sexual abuse committed by some members of the clergy, the devil “uses” priests in order to cast blame upon the entire Church: “The devil wants the death of the Church because she is the mother of all the saints.”
I KNOW a little bit about this mindset; I've seen it close up, and I know how alluring it can be.
It's alluring because it allows you to evade responsibility for your own sins. You're good, and any bad thing that happens to you -- any bad thing you do to yourself or others -- well, it's just not your fault. The devil made you do it.
It was a satanic attack. Yeah, that's the ticket. . . .
*I bought a hunk of junk car, then didn't have any maintenance done on it. And -- who'd a thunk it! -- it broke down when I was on my way to a job interview. I don't understand these constant attacks by Satan! He's trying to thwart me, and harm the Catholic Church!
* I love my wife, but these attacks by Satan are always forcing me to have sex with prostitutes! Now she's divorcing me, and my kids are going to grow up in a broken home!
Damn you, Satan! Oh, wait. . . .
*I'm a Catholic priest, and Satan forced me to enter the priesthood even though I've always been attracted to boys much younger than myself. And now, the demons have made me volunteer to be the head of my parish's youth programs!
Satan is making me molest 12-year-olds against my will! The devil is trying to destroy the church! It's not my fault!
What will the prince of darkness do next? Make my bishop move me to another parish when I get caught?
Not only that . . . the devil is going to dictate a story about child molestation in the church to Laurie Goodstein! The horror!
BECAUSE, YOU KNOW, none of us have free will. And none of us are capable of summoning the will -- none of us are capable of accessing the divine grace -- to look Lucifer in the eye and say "no."
Catholics have been saying the Prayer to St. Michael, begging protection against "the wickedness and snares of the devil," since 1886 out of sheer boredom, of course, being that resistance is futile when it comes to the Evil One. It -- obviously -- has been predestined that priests must submit to the devil's entreaties to screw little kids, and that their superiors must cover up that priests have screwed little kids.
This has been preordained so the devil can make priests screw more little kids, all so his malevolent majesty will have something juicy to make Laurie Goodstein of the New York (Satanic) Times write about.
In order to destroy the Catholic Church.
And perhaps a few immortal souls along the way . . . but that's not important now.
Oh, for cryin' out loud! Have they ever been to Topeka?
I didn't think so.
The Google people changed the name of the search engine this morning to pay tribute to Topeka, being that Topeka is now Google, Kan. What the people in Mountain View, Calif., don't understand, however, is the former Kansas Topeka's stunt wasn't a tribute to the former California Google -- it was straight up identity theft.
The former Kansas Topeka's reputation had been catching up to it for a century and a half or so, so the crappy little city on the sunflower-mottled flatlands decided to cadge a new start on life by passing itself off as the world's premier search engine, etc., and so on.
And now -- in a stunning fit of naivete surpassing what got it into its current Chinese misadventure -- the former California Google has saddled itself with the bad rep of the former Kansas Topeka.
At 79, Bill Bunten doesn't exactly understand the Internet boom. The Topeka, Kansas, mayor has an e-mail account, he said, but his assistants take care of most of his online communications and tend to search the Web for him.
But Bunten believes so firmly that younger residents of Kansas' capital city will benefit from faster Internet connections that he wants Topeka -- which he describes as a place of many lakes and the site of a burgeoning market for animal-food research -- to change its name for a month.
In a formal proclamation Monday, Bunten announced his city will be known as "Google" -- Google, Kansas.
"It's just fun. We're having a good time of it," he said of the unofficial name change, which will last through the end of March. "There's a lot of good things that are going on in our city."
The unusual move comes as several U.S. cities elbow for a spot in Google's new "Fiber for Communities" program. The Web giant is going to install new Internet connections in unannounced locations, giving those communities Internet speeds 100 times faster than those elsewhere, with data transfer rates faster than 1 gigabit per second.
WELL.
Frankly, I thought that if Google ever renamed itself in honor of a Midwestern town, it certainly would have been after the Nebraska Omaha, a far superior locale than the former Kansas Topeka. But no. . . .
Not that it matters, of course.
In a press release embargoed until 10 a.m. today, Omaha Mayor Jim Suttle will announce that Nebraska's largest city -- indeed, the largest municipality between Chicago and Denver -- is naming itself after the search-engine and Web-services company that already has committed to his metropolis.
Effective at high noon today, April 1, the former Nebraska Omaha will be known as Yahoo! Neb.
"For a long time, we thought the city had been selling itself short in the branding department with such a staid and, frankly, unintelligible name as 'Omaha,'" Suttle said in the release. "We think Yahoo! is a lot snappier. To our way of thinking, Yahoo! Neb., announces to the nation that we're the happiest sonofabitchin' place in the whole frickin' Great Plains region!
"You got some vodka on you? Yahoo! Neb., needs some more vodka," Suttle added. "And its mayor could use another Screwdriver, g**dammit."
IN THE press release, the president of the Yahoo! City Council, Garry Gernandt, agreed with Suttle that Yahoo! is a more upbeat, young-professional-friendly name than Omaha -- a Native American word meaning "streets of many potholes."
"Besides, we just think that naming the city Yahoo! makes a nice place name bookend for Wahoo just down the highway," he said. "Why the hell should those Saunders Country clodhoppers have all the fun? I mean, holy crap!"
WE'RE SUPPOSED to buy the notion that there's something foundational about an amoral, materialist system that, at its heart, is based on the motivating power of greed to encourage productivity and creation of wealth? In the 1950s, the American Way gave us doctors vouching for the superiority of Camels and the rise of the military-industrial complex.
