IT'S TRUE! Onion not making that s*** up!

Until now, I always thought The Onion was just making stuff up.

You know what I'm talking about -- for instance, the "fake" advice columns like "Ask a Bee" and "Ask a Faulknerian Idiot Man-Child."

You'll note that I put "fake" in quotation marks. That's because I don't think The Onion is making that stuff up -- at least not all of it. The was brought home by an Italian Catholic website, Pontifex, which apparently has run a real-life version of "Ask a Faulknerian Idiot Man-Child Bishop."

AND THE retired bishop then went on at length about how the recent media scrutiny of the Vatican is all a big conspiracy put together by the Christ-killers. From London, The Times reports :

A retired Italian bishop has provoked fury by reportedly suggesting that “Zionists” are behind the current storm of accusations over clerical sex abuse shaking the Vatican and the Catholic Church.

Monsignor Giacomo Babini, the Bishop Emeritus of Grossetto, was quoted by the Italian Roman Catholic website Pontifex as saying he believed a “Zionist attack” was behind the criticism of the Pope, given that it was “powerful and refined” in nature.

Bishop Babini denied he had made any anti-Semitic remarks. He was backed by the Italian Bishops Conference (CEI), which issued a declaration by Bishop Babini in which he said: “Statements I have never made about our Jewish brothers have been attributed to me.”

However, Bruno Volpe, who interviewed Monsignor Babini for Pontifex, confirmed that the bishop had made the statement, which was reported widely in the Italian press today. Pontifex threatened to release the audio tape of the interview as proof.

Monsignor Babini’s reported comments follow a series of statements from senior Vatican cardinals blaming a “concerted campaign” by “powerful lobbies” for accusations that Pope Benedict XVI was involved in covering up cases of clerical abuse both as Archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1982 and subsequently as head of doctrine at the Vatican.

None has explicitly blamed Jews or any other group. However Bishop Babini, 81, said Jews “do not want the Church, they are its natural enemies”. He added: “Deep down, historically speaking, the Jews are deicides [God killers].”

He was quoted as saying that Hitler was “not just mad” but had exploited German anger over the excesses of German Jews who in the 1930s had throttled the German economy.

Rabbi David Rosen of the American Jewish Committee said Monsignor Babini was using “slanderous stereotypes, which sadly evoke the worst Christian and Nazi propaganda prior to World War Two”.

YOU KNOW, by the time the Vatican gets through asking Catholics -- at least on this issue -- to believe several unbelievable things before breakfast, and by the time various Catholic clerics and laymen get through saying patently crazy things in defense of the church, you have to wonder how many people will be scandalized right out of believing in God.

And scandalized right into believing The Onion.

'Sweet' sign at the supermarket

Here's the deal. It's always yesterday somewhere.

And in the parking lot of the Peony Park Hy-Vee in Omaha, you still can party like it's 1999 -- at least judging by the vintage Sweet 98 radio station and "Gary Coleman Has a Posse" stickers on the back of a sign there.

If you've been in Omaha a while, you certainly remember Sweet 98, which reigned as the undisputed champion of FM radio here for a couple of decades.

NOW, IF YOU'RE new to town or happen to be under 20, you would be one of the few people who don't still call KQKQ radio "Sweet 98," even though it changed format and name six years ago. For your edification, that previous incarnation of Q 98 Five played all the hits, had all the great contests and enjoyed the undying loyalty of every teenybopper in eastern Nebraska (and some of their parents, too).

It goes without saying that -- like the vintage bumper sticker there in the Hy-Vee parking lot -- was back when teenyboppers still listened to the radio. Which, of course, was back when radio was the picture of health and the iPod hadn't come out yet.

Back in the day, however, Sweet 98 was a hell of a station . . . if Top-40 was your thing. It inherited the mantle of "king of the teen-age hipsters" from the previous Omaha Top-40 powerhouse, "the Mighty 1290" KOIL (always said as "coil").

Always.

KOIL reigned from the late '50s through most of the '70s, but difficulties with the Federal Communications Commission knocked it down -- even off the air for about six months -- and then when "Sweet" came along in 1980, that was that, forever and amen.

I'm not from here, and my glory days were in the '70s, not the '80s, but I understand how it is. Sweet 98 was to KOIL here what KOIL was to WLCS, which wasn't in Omaha, but instead in Baton Rouge, La., where I grew up. Are you following me here?

IN OTHER WORDS, when I was a kid, "the Big Win 910", was like KOIL, which was like Sweet 98, except that 'LCS got knocked off by WFMF, not KQKQ. Get it?

Whatever. If you're from my neck of the woods, and you still miss WLCS, go to the Big Win 910 CafePress shop and buy one of my shirts. Poppa needs a MacBook, OK?

They call this "full disclosure," I think.

But what we're really talking about here is sainted memory, isn't it? The little things long gone and -- objectively -- of little import, but which mean the world to me. And you. And everybody.

Usually, these things live on only in our hearts and minds. But sometimes . . . sometimes . . . they hang on and hold out -- kind of like those long-ago Japanese soldiers deep in the jungle on an island somewhere in the South Pacific, still fighting a war that ended long before, fighting on simply because no one told them it was over.

Obviously, not many people -- OK . . . no one, actually -- would mistake the parking lot at 78th and Cass for deepest, darkest New Guinea. But there, Sweet 98 holds out, ambushing unsuspecting grocery shoppers with promises of "Today's Hit Music."

Trying to win a brutal Top-40 ratings war that, for the rest of the world, is nothing more than a distant memory. A "sweet" memory of a time when radio mattered, and kids still listened.

The Vatican today: Homina, homina, homina

What The New York Times started, The Associated Press just might have finished.

The signature above is that of "Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger," who would become Pope Benedict XVI. That signature was on a 1985 document uncovered by the AP, a document in which the cardinal said, in effect, he didn't think it was such a great idea to laicize a pederast priest in California.

Presented with an incriminating document, Vatican officials insisted that the American press believe the unbelievable. Here is a bit of the AP report, but do go to MSNBC and read the whole thing:

The future Pope Benedict XVI resisted pleas to defrock a California priest with a record of sexually molesting children, citing concerns including "the good of the universal church," according to a 1985 letter bearing his signature.

The correspondence, obtained by The Associated Press, is the strongest challenge yet to the Vatican's insistence that Benedict played no role in blocking the removal of pedophile priests during his years as head of the Catholic Church's doctrinal watchdog office.

The letter, signed by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was typed in Latin and is part of years of correspondence between the Diocese of Oakland and the Vatican about the proposed defrocking of the Rev. Stephen Kiesle.

The Vatican confirmed Friday that it was Ratzinger's signature. "The press office doesn't believe it is necessary to respond to every single document taken out of context regarding particular legal situations," the Rev. Federico Lombardi said.

Another spokesman, the Rev. Ciro Benedettini, said the letter showed no attempt at a cover-up. "The then-Cardinal Ratzinger didn't cover up the case, but as the letter clearly shows, made clear the need to study the case with more attention, taking into account the good of all involved."

The diocese recommended removing Kiesle from the priesthood in 1981, the year Ratzinger was appointed to head the Vatican office that shared responsibility for disciplining abusive priests.

The case then languished for four years at the Vatican before Ratzinger finally wrote to Oakland Bishop John Cummins. It was two more years before Kiesle was removed.

In the November 1985 letter, Ratzinger says the arguments for removing Kiesle are of "grave significance" but added that such actions required very careful review and more time. He also urged the bishop to provide Kiesle with "as much paternal care as possible" while awaiting the decision, according to a translation for AP by Professor Thomas Habinek, chairman of the University of Southern California Classics Department.

But the future pope also noted that any decision to defrock Kiesle must take into account the "good of the universal church" and the "detriment that granting the dispensation can provoke within the community of Christ's faithful, particularly considering the young age." Kiesle was 38 at the time.

(snip)

Kiesle, who married after leaving the priesthood, was arrested and charged in 2002 with 13 counts of child molestation from the 1970s. All but two were thrown out after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional a California law extending the statute of limitations.

He pleaded no contest in 2004 to a felony for molesting a young girl in his Truckee home in 1995 and was sentenced to six years in state prison.

LET US REVIEW. The Diocese of Oakland flat-out tells the Vatican one of its priests is a stone-cold child molester.

The Diocese of Oakland tells the Vatican it's really, really important that this clerical molester be drummed out of the priesthood.

The Vatican sits on the case for several years. And then when the diocese gets a response, in 1985, it's from Cardinal Ratzinger -- the future pope -- saying, basically, "Not so fast, boys. Is it really good for the universal church to be kicking kiddie rapers to the curb here?"

And now, when the wire service tells the Vatican what it has, officials there confirm it's Ratzinger's signature, but stress they don't "believe it is necessary to respond to every single document taken out of context regarding particular legal situations."

Translation into American English: "Oh, s***!"

Out of context? What the hell context justifies -- after being told, as an established fact, that a priest is a pervert and, in fact, has acted on his perversion . . . with children -- placing appearances over justice, over protecting Catholic children?

How do you finesse that which cannot be finessed?


HERE'S WHAT is becoming quite plain. The Catholic Church -- and I am sure it is not alone among earthly institutions in this -- developed a culture of juridical and moral deviance when it came to its perception of, and its dealing with, pederasty. That culture was every bit as perverted as the child-raping priests it coddled and shielded from justice.

And Pope Benedict XVI was part of that culture. He bought into that culture. To the extent that he no longer buys into that culture, it is a relatively recent development in his long priestly vocation.

That seems clear, and yet the Vatican -- and many Catholics around the world -- cannot deal with that, almost as if admitting that the pope is human, possessing human frailties and committing human sins, would cause the whole edifice of the Catholic Church to come tumbling down.

O ye of little faith.

Obviously, we're still not done with the excuses, and we're certainly not done with the wagon-circling or the media-bashing. That, however, doesn't alter the fact that there really is only one thing left for the church to do -- something it absolutely requires of us mere laymen.

Confession.

It is long past time for institutional Catholicism to confess its sins against God, against itself and especially against its children. It is long past time for the church to confess, to repent, to exhibit a "firm purpose of amendment" . . . and then to do penance.

Just do it. Otherwise, there will be hell to pay.

Literally.

3 Chords & the Truth: Lidsen doo da Bigb Showd

Lidsen, ah godt terruhble allebgies ribe now, so ahm gonnab pubt on dis new ebbisobe ub 3 Chorbs & da Troof, anb youb cam enjoyb yoursebf while ah go blown mah node and taghe some more nadal spray.
Dere's lobs ub good stubf on da Bigb Showb dis weeg, so ah don dink youb wib be ad a loss for enderdainmenb.

Reahlyb, ah don'b.

AH MEANB, we gob eberyding fromb Moby Grabp do Pedrob da Liomb, amb all ginds ob eclegdic stubt im bedweemb.

Eggscudse meeb for a minbid. . . .

AAAAAAACHOOOOOOO!!!

Nah, wherb wad ah?

Oh yeahg, ah wad delling youb dad dis weeg's ebbisobe ub 3 Chorbs & da Troof ids anodder eggsellend eggsamble ub freeformb egglegdicism juz ligh radiob used do bee a long dime ago. So, youb lidsen do da Bigb Showb, guz ah can'd dawk no morb.

Idd's 3 Chorbs & da Troof, y'alb. Be dere. Alobgah.

When they get pissy in the salon

A high-school classmate made my day Thursday by passing this along on Facebook, and I just couldn't resist sharing it with you.

This highbrow shoot 'em up on The Dick Cavett Show back in the day is a bittersweet reminder of a time before America's EEG flatlined, and that of network television along with it.

ENJOY as a pissing match gets served up in the electronic salon along with the tray of canopés as Cavett and writers Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer and Janet Flanner go at it. In a most erudite manner, of course.

Make sure you watch the clip all the way through. Just do it.

In the end, the moral of this 1971 television gem probably is this: Don't mess with the boy from Lincoln, Neb. And I don't mean Vidal or Mailer.

Tlhagale, the self-hating archbishop

I regret to report that there's a South African cleric who is a fifth-columnist within Catholicism -- a linchpin of the anti-Catholic "hate" campaign hell-bent on tarring the whole church with the unfortunate actions of a few.

EWTN News, no doubt, reported this awful slander under extreme duress:

The “scourge” of sexual abuse by clergy is a problem in Africa, Archbishop of Johannesburg Buti Tlhagale said recently at a Chrism Mass. Condemning priests for betraying the Gospel and Christ himself, he called on clergy to experience the redeeming power of Christ and to rebuild “the battered image of the Church.”

Archbishop Tlhagale’s comments came at the Holy Thursday Chrism Mass at the Cathedral of Christ the King.

He said reports of the “painful” clergy scandals in Ireland and Germany kept him from a positive frame of mind “for I know that the Church in Africa is inflicted by the same scourge.”

“In our times we have betrayed the very Gospel we preach. The Good News we claim to announce sounds so hollow, so devoid of any meaning when matched with our much publicized negative moral behavior. Many who looked up to priests as their model feel betrayed, ashamed and disappointed.”

(snip)

He claimed that the image of the Catholic Church is “virtually in ruins” because of badly behaving priests, whom he compared to “wolves wearing sheep’s skin.”

“We are slowly but surely bent on destroying the Church of God by undermining and tearing apart the faith of lay believers. Ironically, priests have become a stumbling block to the promotion of vocations.

“Bad news spreads like wild fire. I wish I could say that there are only a few bad apples. But the outrage around us suggests that there are more than just a few bad apples.”

WILL SOMEBODY kindly supply this uninformed archbishop with the official talking points and get him on message?

Repeat after us Tlhagale: "It's just a few bad apples; we've got it under control. The press hates Catholics and wants to destroy the pope. It's not our fault, we swear to God."

Good God, they'll make anybody an archbishop down there. Sheesh.

Did you learn anything?

OK, this is officially getting out of hand.

It's not enough that Nike is trying to profit off Tiger Woods' bad behavior; now it's trying to make a buck off my dog Molly. I certainly hope she negotiated a good contract, though I have my doubts.

They're probably paying her in dog treats. She's not bright, you know.

Nothing sacred

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.

The year's first cuppa springtime

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.

Martyrdom by paper cuts?

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.

I am not making this up. Unfortunately, neither is The Associated Press:

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.

Miserere nobis.

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.

The Internet Monk, R.I.P.

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.


UPDATE: Michael Spencer's obituary is here.

I got an iPad!

I got my new iPad today!

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.

Would you like a snake with your Riesling?

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.

The eyes of Texas . . . saw too much

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.

Where there's smoke. . . .

Sometimes, Satan catches a break.

Sometimes, he doesn't.

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.

First, the Vatican newspaper launches a propaganda campaign against the printer's devil.

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 Star don'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 THE OFFICIAL 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.

We have met the Enemy. . . .

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.

A reading from the gospel of Matthew, Chapter 25:

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.