This entry originally appeared in The Black Republican.
no-cd exe starcraftThinking the two current occupants looked a little lonely, I went looking for appropriate links to add to our new St. Blog's blogroll. I found a quite entertaining site by Kathy Shaidle, Relapsed Catholic.
At one point on her current front page, Kathy comments that she'd changed her position on abortion - but then fails to say from what to what. Naturally, I went diving through the archives to satisfy my curiosity, and came up with this gem. Make sure to read the linked commentaries by some of her friends - they're dated by the onward march of the campaign, but still quite insightful and entertaining.
This entry originally appeared in The Black Republican.
I'm tempted to move to St. Louis.
This entry originally appeared in The Black Republican.
Stay away from me - I seem to have caught a vicious strain of leprosy that's eating my brain from inside-out. What causes me to think this? I disagree with a conservative, and agree with a Jesuit.
(A)ccording to Louis Giovino, a spokesman for the conservative Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights.... South Park made Life of Brian "look like a playground." The animated series, where almost everyone is Catholic, "is very vicious in its satire toward most religions."Anyone got a cure for this?Other Catholic observers disagree.
"In the midst of all this gross-out, puerile humor are flashes of insight into the religious condition," says the Rev. James Martin, associate editor and culture critic of America magazine, the national Catholic weekly. The show is subversive, he says, because it uses humor to lead people to a serious consideration of faith and theology.
UPDATE: Forgot the hat tip to Relapsed Catholic.
This entry originally appeared in The Black Republican.
I guess you should put me into the third class of Catholics according to the Dallas Morning News' editorial excoriating the Church for the sex abuse scandal: I feel powerless. But here's a news flash for you: I always have. What else is new? That's part of being Catholic.
You may be asking, "The sex abuse scandal?" Yes, it's still alive.
In the Romanesque version of the Abu Ghraib story, the abuse goes on and the press is all too delighted to tell us about it. It smells like 1974 all over again... not content to come close to destroying the American Presidency, the press sets its sights on the papal throne.
Don't get me wrong, it's heinous what some priests have done, and it is compounded by the apparent complicity of certain bishops. But the press isn't in this for Truth alone. Nowhere in the editorial does it even suggest that some of these men might not be guilty - even though some of them haven't even had a trial yet. In the midst of a furor over wrongful prosecutions despite DNA evidence proving otherwise, you'd think some people carrying on a crusade for Truth might consider that at least some of the adults pointing the finger of blame for their screwed up lives might just happen to be lying about what happened five, ten and twenty years ago. And we're still talking about a disgraceful minority of the priests and bishops.
That said, many if not most of these cases are not in doubt, and many times bishops have shuttled priests from parish to parish despite knowing full well what they have done. The problems need to be rooted out and excised from Mother Church. But you're not going to get lay Catholics who remain active in the Church to foment a revolution from within. We're the ones who respect and adore the Church for taking hundreds of years to come to a conclusion about something, despite the pressure of a modern age that demands things get done yesterday.
The church will heal, but don't expect it on your timetable. You want "fast"... we'll give you fasting.
UPDATE: Robert Novak offers some (as usual) pessimistic words about freedom of speech in churches.