Still trying to digest this. Plenty of discussion and analysis at SLUGGER O'TOOLE
Saturday, March 31, 2007
Vatican newspaper says Jesuit was right to apply Gospel to injustice
By John Thavis
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The Vatican newspaper said Jesuit Father Jon Sobrino, whose work was recently criticized by doctrinal authorities, was right in trying to apply the truth of the Gospel to concrete situations of global injustice.
Where Father Sobrino risks going astray, the newspaper said, is in proposing a new type of Christology that seems to prefer the "Jesus of history" to the "Christ of faith" and downplays his transcendent nature.
The article, published in L'Osservatore Romano March 24, came 10 days after the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published a note warning of "erroneous or dangerous propositions" in the work of Father Sobrino, a leading proponent of liberation theology.
...
The article said Father Sobrino begins with a "very just" application of theology to the concrete situations of extreme poverty and injustice in Latin America and other parts of the world.
It said Father Sobrino rightly believes that the Christian faith cannot act as a "sedative" in the face of such injustice, which affects millions of people.
'We were torturing people for no reason'
'We were torturing people for no reason'
Tara McKelvey
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Tony Lagouranis is a 37-year-old bouncer at a bar in Chicago's Humboldt Park. He is also a former torturer.
That was how he was described in an e-mail promoting a panel discussion, "24: Torture Televised," hosted by the Center on Law and Security of the New York University School of Law on March 21. He doesn't shy away from the description.
As a specialist in a military intelligence battalion, Lagouranis interrogated prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Al Asad Airfield and other places in Iraq from January through December 2004.
Coercive techniques, including the use of dogs, waterboarding and prolonged stress positions were employed on the detainees, he says. Prisoners held at Al Asad Airfield, about 110 miles northwest of Baghdad, were shackled and hung from an upright bed frame welded to the wall in a room in an airplane hanger, he told me in a phone interview.
When he was having problems getting information from a detainee, he recalls, other interrogators said, "Chain him up on the bed frame and then he'll talk to you." Lagouranis says he didn't participate directly in hangings from the frames.
The results of the hangings, shacklings and prolonged stress positions - sometimes for hours - were devastating. "You take a healthy guy and you turn him into a cripple, at least for a period of time," Lagouranis told me. "I don't care what Alberto Gonzales says. That's torture."
Lagouranis was on the NYU panel to talk about torture and its role in the Emmy Award-winning television show "24."
FULL ARTICLE HERE
A CALL TO ARMS: A REVIEW OF LOOK HOMEWARD, AMERICA
[Review by Caleb Stegall, at http://www.godspy.com]A CALL TO ARMS: A REVIEW OF LOOK HOMEWARD, AMERICA
In "Look Homeward, America", Bill Kauffman offers an idiosyncratic look at the real split underlying American society and politics -- not the one between Republicans and Democrats, or conservatives and liberals, but between materialists who recognize only a temporal order and those who admit to a higher, transcendent order.
...the result is, by design, impossible to categorize. Kauffman's collection of throwbacks and throwaways, retreads and retrofits, hillbillies and hell-raisers, poet politicians and insubordinate patriots is a stinging rebuke to political categorizers, taxonomers of the soul, and those who reduce humanity to the talking heads and soundbitten ghosts of American punditry. Kauffman describes himself as an 'outsider even among outsiders' and 'the love child of Henry Thoreau and Dorothy Day, conceived amidst the asters and goldenrod of an Upstate New York autumn.' ...FULL ARTICLE
Look Homeward, America: In Search of Reactionary Radicals and Front-Porch Anarchists
by Bill Kauffman
(ISI Books, 2006).
Friday, March 30, 2007
Evolution of a Feminist Daughter
REBECCA WALKER — the daughter of Alice Walker, the author of “The Color Purple,” and Mel Leventhal, a civil rights lawyer — was a nascent feminist when she laid bare the details of her freewheeling, lonely adolescence in her 2001 book, “Black, White and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self.”
The memoir, like the 20-something Ms. Walker, was impassioned, poetic and occasionally messy. But it hit a nerve with many critics who considered it a poignant meditation on race and sex.
It also chronicled the author’s efforts to cope with being hot-potatoed from city to city in the wake of her parents’ divorce and what she perceived to be her mother’s ambivalence about her existence.
Left to her own devices by parents she thought were preoccupied with their careers, Rebecca Walker experimented with drugs, had sexual encounters with men and women, and had an abortion at 14.
But by the time she was an adult, she was writing about intergenerational feminism (her godmother is Gloria Steinem), and had helped found the Third Wave Foundation, a philanthropic group for women ages 15 to 30, becoming a symbol for young women who may not have considered themselves feminists.
Symbol though she was, Ms. Walker also cultivated a private life, and in her 20s was in a serious relationship with another woman.
Today, however, Ms. Walker, 37, has become what she called a new Rebecca, one who has a male partner, a child and some revised theories about the ties that bind, which she explores in a new book, “Baby Love: Choosing Motherhood After a Lifetime of Ambivalence” (Riverhead), to be released on Thursday. A review appears in The Times Book Review today.
Pope recalls anniversary of 1980 slaying of popular archbishop in El Salvador
VATICAN CITY: Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday recalled the 1980 slaying of El Salvador archbishop and human rights activist Oscar Romero, and praised those who lost their lives in carrying out their mission for the Roman Catholic Church.
Benedict reminded pilgrims in St. Peter's Square that Saturday [March 25th] had been the anniversary of Romero's killing, and that the church had dedicated the day to prayer and fasting for missionary martyrs.
He described they martyrs as "bishops, priests, other men and women clergy and lay people cut down in carrying out their mission of evangelization and human promotion."
Benedict said martyrs represent hope for the world "because they testify that the love of Christ is stronger than violence and hate."
With song and prayer on Saturday, hundreds of Salvadorans in the capital, San Salvador, mark the 27th anniversary of Romero's slaying.
The day before Romero was gunned down in a chapel, he had called on the military to halt its repressive tactics. During El Salvador's 12-year civil war, the [*U.S. backed and financed] military was blamed for death squads that killed thousands of suspected guerrillas and leftist opponents of the military-led government.
The Vatican is considering Romero for possible sainthood.
*my note
Why James Frey Doesn't Get It
by Heather King -- Publishers Weekly, 1/17/2006
Heather King, author of Parched, examines the deep differences between her memoir and A Million Little Pieces
I first read about James Frey's A Million Little Pieces in a New Yorker review. I was working on my own memoir, Parched (Chamberlain Bros.), at the time, so I scanned the piece with interest. Frey and I had a couple of things in common: we'd both had major substance abuse problems; we'd both been to Hazelden (him for six weeks, circa 1992; me for four weeks, six years earlier). But there the similarities seemed to end. It wasn't so much that we were of different genders, that I was a teensy bit older than him, that we'd chosen different approaches to staying sober. No, it was that Frey was angry. The whole tenor of the review was that Frey was angry. The testosterone-fueled rage! The studly ire! In light of my own 20 years as a falling-down blackout drunk, it struck me as an odd stance. The people who really had cause to be angry, it seemed to me, were the ones I'd trampled, cheated on, stolen from and lied to on my way to the nearest bar.
Now that the accusations of lying have surfaced and I've actually read the book, I see the differences go even deeper. Drama is the movement from narcissism to humility, but Frey is exactly the same at the end of his story—minus the drugs—as he is at the beginning: an insecure braggart without a spark of vitality, gratitude or fun. "A ballsy, bone-deep memoir," Salon.com called it, but for any alcoholic worth his or her salt, throwing up blood, puking on oneself, and committing petty-ass crimes in and of themselves couldn't be bigger yawns. What's gritty is the moment, knowing you're dying, when the world turns on its axis and you realize My way doesn't work. What's ballsy isn't just egomaniacally recounting your misdeeds; it's taking the trouble to find the people you've screwed over, looking them in the eye, and saying you're sorry. What's bone-deep—or might have been if Frey had done it—is figuring out that other people suffer, too, and developing some compassion for them. Oprah speaks of "the redemption of James Frey"—but redeemed from what, and by whom? Sobriety, in my experience, isn't the staged melodrama of sitting in a bar and staring down a drink to prove you've "won"—as Frey does upon leaving rehab. It's the ongoing attempt, knowing in advance you'll fall woefully short, to order your life around honesty, integrity, faith.
So, in fact, is writing. It's every writer's sacred honor to "get it right," but perhaps the burden falls heaviest on the memoirist. As a memoirist, it seems to me, something has to have happened to you that you're burning to tell. You've undergone some kind of transformation that matters not because it says something about you, but because it says something about the world; because it touches on the mysteries of suffering and meaning. There may be great leeway in being faithful to this emotional truth, but you have to have an emotional truth to begin with. The details you remember, your stance towards the people you meet, your interpretation of your experiences: all have to spring from this deeper level; this vision you carry around like a secret; the yearning to get it right that eventually drives everything you think, say, do. You have to have some kind of love for the world, with all its terrible suffering; you have to be willing to cut off your writing hand rather than betray by a word what it's taught you. The problem is that it doesn't seem to have taught James Frey much of anything, which is why A Million Little Pieces rings false, on both levels, from start to finish.... REST OF ARTICLE HERE
click here for Heather King podcast interview at NCR
Monday, March 26, 2007
Straddling Liberalism and Conservatism
Larchmont
...“I used to be a liberal, if liberal means concern for the other guy,” Father Groeschel said. “Now I consider myself a conservative-liberal-traditional-radical-confused person.”
His old friend Mrs. O’Keeffe doesn’t see any contradiction.
“If you knew the man all along, you just see a human being developing from one place to another,” she said. “His basic simplicity, intelligence and love of people has never changed. He’s still clothing the poor and feeding the hungry.”
Missing Fathers of the Church: The Feminization of the Church & the Need for Christian Fatherhood
by Leon J. Podles
You may have noticed that, in general, men are not as interested in religion as women are. There are usually more women than men at Sunday mass, and there are far more women than men at devotions, retreats, and prayer groups. The men who do come are often there because wives or girlfriends have put pressure on them to attend. In fact, if men speak honestly, they will tell you that men have a general feeling that the Church is for women. They may add that women are more emotional than men are, or that religion is a crutch that a man doesn’t need, as Jesse Ventura, the candidate of young white men, said in Playboy.
In my book, The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity, I examine the lack of men in the Western churches, which only the unobservant doubt, and I look at the possible causes and results of the lack of men. My thought has continued to develop, and I have slightly revised my thesis. In what follows I will first summarize my thesis that men stay away from the Church because they regard it as a threat to their hard-won masculinity. Second, I will explore how the Church has become identified with femininity. Third, I will consider how this feminization has undermined fatherhood, and how the Church can reach men and help them to be Christians and Christian fathers.
I think the lack of men is self-evident, but the reactions to my book have shown me that some people have not noticed and that others choose to deny the obvious because of a feminist, or, what has surprised me, a traditionalist agenda. Sociologists have gathered statistics about both practice and opinion, and the studies confirm the popular impression: religion, especially of the Christian variety, is largely a feminine affair in Western society. FULL ARTICLE
Are We Experiencing The Last Days Of Constitutional Rule?
March 15, 2007 By Paul Craig Roberts
The Bush administration’s greatest success is its ability to escape accountability for its numerous impeachable offenses.
The administration’s offenses against US law, the US Constitution, civil liberties, human rights, and the Geneva Conventions, its lies to Congress and the American people, its vote-rigging scandals, its sweetheart no-bid contracts to favored firms, its political firing of Republican US Attorneys, its practice of kidnapping and torturing people in foreign hellholes, and its persecution of whistle blowers are altogether so vast that it is a major undertaking just to list them all.
Bush admits that he violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and spied on US citizens without warrants, a felony under the Act. Bush has shown total disrespect for civil liberty and the Constitution and has suffered rebukes from the Supreme Count. The evidence is overwhelming that the Bush administration manufactured false "intelligence" to justify military aggression against Iraq. The Halliburton contract scandals are notorious, as is the use of electronic voting machines programmed to miscount the actual vote.
The chief-of-staff to Vice President Cheney has been convicted for obstructing justice in the outing of a covert CIA officer. Proof of torture is overwhelming, and the Bush administration has even had the temerity to have permissive legislation passed after the fact that permits it to continue to torture "detainees." The Sibel Edmonds and other whistle blower cases are well known. The Senate Judiciary Committee has just issued subpoenas to Justice (sic) Dept. officials involved in the scandalous removal of US Attorneys who refused to be politicized.
Yet the Democrats have taken impeachment "off the table." Many Democrats and Republicans and a great many Christians can contemplate illegal military aggression against Iran, but not the impeachment of the greatest criminal administration in US history. Far from being scandalized by what the entire world views as an unjust invasion and occupation of Iraq by the US, leading Democratic and Republican candidates for the 2008 presidential nomination rushed to inform the Israel Lobby, AIPAC, that they, if elected, will keep US troops in Iraq.
The previous occupant of the White House could not escape being impeached by the House of Representatives for lying about a consensual Oval Office sexual affair. President Nixon and his vice president, a saintly pair compared to Bush-Cheney, were both driven from office for offenses that are inconsequential by comparison. Liberals branded Ronald Reagan the "Teflon President," but the neoconservatives’ Iran-Contra scandal was a mere dress rehearsal for their machinations in the Bush regime.
What explains Bush-Cheney invulnerability to accountability?
Perhaps the answer is that Bush has desensitized us. Like kids desensitized to violence by violent video games and movies and pornography addicts desensitized to sex, we have become desensitized by the avalanche of Bush-Cheney crimes, lies, and disdain for Congress, courts, and public opinion.
Our elected representatives, if not the American people, now regard as normal such heinous actions as war crimes, the rape of the Constitution, self-serving use of government office, and the constant stream of lies and propaganda from the highest offices of the executive branch.
Perhaps that is what disillusioned foreigners, who once looked with hope to America, mean when they say that America does not exist anymore.
If the notion has departed that the highest political offices in the land are supposed to be occupied by people who are honest and faithful to their oath to the Constitution, then we are far advanced on the road to tyranny.
In future history books, will Bush-Cheney mark the transition of the United States from constitutional rule to the unaccountable rule of the unitary executive who cancels out Congress with signing statements and silences critics with the police state means that are now part of the US legal code?
COPYRIGHT CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
Paul Craig Roberts [email him] was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration. He is the author of Supply-Side Revolution : An Insider's Account of Policymaking in Washington; Alienation and the Soviet Economy and Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice. Click here for Peter Brimelow’s Forbes Magazine interview with Roberts about the recent epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
The Israel lobby debate
In March the London Review of Books published John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's essay 'The Israel Lobby'. The response to the article prompted the LRB to hold a debate under the heading 'The Israel lobby: does it have too much influence on American foreign policy?'. The debate took place in New York on 28 September in the Great Hall of the Cooper Union. The panellists were Shlomo Ben-Ami, Martin Indyk, Tony Judt, Rashid Khalidi, John Mearsheimer and Dennis Ross, and the moderator was Anne-Marie Slaughter.A video of the event, produced by ScribeMedia, is now available to view online. Click here to view the debate.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Subpoena Power II
Darn, that patriot feller can write - check out his latest...
The Patriot, " Subpoena Power II"
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Well, as I predicted the other day the administration is planning a full on war against the House Judiciary committee’s use of subpoenas to extract testimony from the White House and the DOJ over the US Attorney fiasco. I would have hoped that a Constitutional showdown with the White House would have occurred over something more germane to the flagrant abuse of power exhibited by the Rove cabal, but you take your victories where you find them. As with all scandals, the cover-up is probably worse than the underlying event. Practically speaking the President can fire some, or all, of the US Attorneys for any reason, including replacing them with patronage appointments. What the administration cannot do, what is actually illegal, is to attempt to direct the course of criminal investigations by applying political pressure. Replacing a US Attorney with Karl Rove’s friend? Ok. Replacing the same US Attorney because he wasn’t investigating more Democrats? Not Ok.
Bush’s churlish press conference yesterday was clear evidence that the administration hasn’t really changed its position on the issue of executive power since the election. Perhaps they think that the traditional presidential prerogative on attorney appointments will be given deference by their conservative packed Courts. Here they may have miscalculated. True conservatives are nervous about the concept of unbridled power no matter where such power is concentrated within the body politic. The right-wing Bush coalition is not as uniform as it appears and all that executive power makes libertarians nervous.
The administration is still trying to hoodwink Congress with its lies. The White House’s official position is that "The president expects everybody who talks to Congress to tell the truth, and so does the law. And they know that it would be illegal not to tell them the truth," he said. Which would be ok….if the administration had a shred of credibility left after lying about every significant issue in the last seven years. The administration’s lack of credibility isn’t lost on John Conyer’s, the head of the judiciary committee who commented that just having Rove and Meir come in for a friendly chat would be a pointless exercise. "We could meet at the local pub to have that kind of conversation," he said. "But in my judgment it would not advance us toward uncovering the simple truth in this matter."
And it isn’t as if the DOJ has been any more forthcoming than the White House on the motivations behind the firings. Pat Leahy complained about 3,000 documents the Justice Department handed over to the committees late Monday, saying redactions in the documents make them unworkable. "Instead of freely and fully providing relevant documents to the investigating committees, they have only selectively sent documents, after erasing large portions that they do not want to see the light of day."
Of course the administration’s promise to fight the subpoenas in Court has the potential to drag the whole matter into the presidential election, as it is unlikely that the Supreme Court would get the case within the 21 months left in the Bush administration. How typical of this president, who never finished anything he started in life, to dump this issue squarely in the lap of the Republican party as they try to figure out how to undo 8 years of damage in time for the next Presidential election. Good luck boys!
VIdeoOfMark and LouiseZwick, " The Catholic Worker: A Model for Church and World "
http://ethicscenter.nd.edu/archives/videos.shtml
Mark and LouiseZwick, "
The Catholic Worker: A Model for Church and World "Length: 1:15
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Listen to this when you're doing the dishes...
What Role Does Spiritual Thinking Have in the 21st Century? Interview with Dr. Charles Taylor
Interview with Dr. Charles Taylor
2007 Templeton Prize winner Charles Taylor is a genial man with a predisposition to laughter, often at himself. Perhaps more importantly, for a thinker who coined the term "malaise of modernity" he is also an optimist. That he, is considered a philosopher's philosopher by his peers, exhibiting a rare mastery across an impressive spectrum of ideas only increases admiration. The author of more than a dozen books, including the widely praised "Sources of the Self" and the forthcoming "A Secular Age," Taylor's work explores a dizzying array of disciplines–philosophy, religion, political theory, moral theory, and ethics, among others. Lindsay Waters, executive editor at Harvard University Press, says, "Charles Taylor's passionate philosophy allows him to zero in on the most distinctively human issues of our time, and not be afraid." In the following Q&A, Professor Taylor explains the importance of the concept of mystery to our understanding of the universe, why "God is not Dead," and whether he is a fox or a hedgehog.
Prominent Conservatives Launch Effort To Restore "Civil Liberties Under Assault By Executive Branch"
Four prominent conservative thinkers are set to launch a campaign "to restore checks and balances and civil liberties protections under assault by the Executive Branch," arguing that, "since 9/11, the President has acquired too much power."
Former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr, who led the effort to impeach President Clinton, is one of the organizers of the effort, called the American Freedom Agenda. Others are David Keene of the American Conservative Union, writer and conservative direct mail pioneer Richard Viguerie, and constitutional scholar Bruce Fein, who served in the Reagan administration as associate deputy attorney general.
At a 1 p.m. news conference today at the National Press Club, they will pitch a legislative package "to restore congressional oversight and habeas corpus, end torture and extraordinary rendition, narrow the President's authority to designate 'enemy combatants,' prevent unconstitutional wiretaps, email and mail openings, protect journalists from prosecution under the Espionage Act, and more."
In a statement, the four said the president "has encroached on the power of Congress to make laws, and on the power of the courts to interpret the law - a scenario that the Founding Fathers foresaw and warned against." As a result, they said, "We are issuing this call to Americans of all political and philosophical persuasions to join us in urging Congress to enact The American Freedom Agenda."
"The AFA would roll back the alarming recent concentration of power in the White House and its end runs around due process... The AFA seeks to restore America's tradition of respect for the rule of law and the benefits of dispersed as opposed to concentrated power, to redeem the principle that no man is above the law, and to prevent injustices that undermine national security."
"We are conservative scholars, activists and writers. We do not favor a crippled executive or enfeebled government. In a time of danger, checks and balances make for stronger government because the people will more readily accept a muscular authority if barriers against abuses are strong. If at some future time Congress, in turn, aggrandizes power and invades the executive or judicial domains, we will be equally alert to sound the alarm. But today, the clear and present danger to conservative philosophy is the White House."
Click on article for comments:
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Monday, March 19, 2007
Salvador Option Surfaces Again
Michael O'Brien, "Flagellation"| by Elizabeth DiNovella |
| During Bush’s “social justice” tour of Latin America, he didn’t stop in El Salvador, a nation sorely needing some social justice. His military planners, though, had the small Central American country on their minds. The same day Bush talked about the U.S. being “generous and compassionate” on his Latin American tour, Pentagon officials and military consultants discussed a fallback strategy for Iraq based on counterinsurgency tactics used in El Salvador. The U.S. government spent millions of dollars to support the Salvadoran military throughout the 1980s as part of its Cold War strategy of propping up anti-Communist forces. Reagan also sent fifty-five Green Berets to train Salvadoran troops, led for several years by James Steele. After the 1992 peace accords, the United Nations Truth Commission investigated human rights abuses that occurred during the conflict. The vast majority were committed by the Salvadoran military or rightwing death squads. As Peter Maass wrote in the New York Times Magazine on May 1, 2005, these human rights violations, according to Amnesty International, included “extrajudicial executions, other unlawful killings, ‘disappearances’ and torture. . . . Whole villages were targeted by the armed forces and their inhabitants massacred.” One of the most notorious military units was the Atlacatl Battalion. It was trained by the United States. This discourse on death squads is nothing new for the Bush Administration. Cheney has been jawing about El Salvador in the 1980s as a model for Iraq for more than two years. But this time the Salvador Option resurfaces just a few days after the death of Rufina Amaya. Amaya saw Salvadoran troops slaughter her family and others in her village of El Mozote in 1981. The U.S.-trained Atlacatl Battalion tortured and executed at least eight hundred people in El Mozote and five surrounding hamlets. The Salvadoran and American governments denied that civilians were killed. But Rufina Amaya told another story. So did the mass graves unearthed after the war ended. Journalist Alma Guillermoprieto, writing for The Washington Post, interviewed Amaya a month after the butchery took place, and, along with Ray Bonner of The New York Times, broke the story. Twenty-five years later, Guillermoprieto recalled the only witness to speak about the El Mozote massacre: “Rufina Amaya managed to slip behind some trees as her group was being herded to the killing ground, and from there she witnessed the murders, which went on until late at night. An army officer, told by an underling that a soldier was refusing to kill children, said, ‘Where is the sonofabitch who said that? I am going to kill him,’ and bayoneted a child on the spot. She heard her own children crying out for her as they met their deaths. The troops herded people into the church and houses facing a patch of grass that served as the village plaza. They shot the villagers or dismembered them with machetes, then set the structures on fire. At last, believing they had killed all the citizens of El Mozote and the surrounding hamlets, the troops withdrew.” Amaya escaped the Atlacatl Battalion. But the Atlacatl Battalion escaped prosecution, thanks to a general amnesty passed in 1993. And James Steele is back prosecuting another counterinsurgency conflict, this time in Iraq. But the similarities between U.S. military involvement in Iraq and El Salvador don’t end there. In order to circumvent Congressionally mandated limits on the number of U.S. military personnel on the ground, the Pentagon outsourced the work to private contractors. Some of the same private military contractors, such as DynCorp, now hold contracts for security work in Iraq. PublishThe use of paramilitaries and mercenaries led to the deaths of thousands of people in El Salvador. This is not a decent option for the people of Iraq. Elizabeth DiNovella is Culture Editor of The Progressive magazine. She writes about activism, politics, music, books, and film. © 2007 The Progressive. |
St. Joseph, pray for us...
Holy St. Joseph, pray that we may follow your example of bravery, faithfulness and love, and that we may nourish and protect our families and communities and work toward building the new creation.
Mt 1,16.18-21.24.
The birth of Jesus took place like this. His mother, Mary, was engaged to be married to Joseph. Before they came to the marriage bed, Joseph discovered she was pregnant. (It was by the Holy Spirit, but he didn't know that.) Joseph, chagrined but noble, determined to take care of things quietly so Mary would not be disgraced.
While he was trying to figure a way out, he had a dream. God's angel spoke in the dream: "Joseph, son of David, don't hesitate to get married. Mary's pregnancy is Spirit-conceived. God's Holy Spirit has made her pregnant. She will bring a son to birth, and when she does, you, Joseph, will name him Jesus—'God saves'—because he will save his people from their sins." This would bring the prophet's embryonic sermon to full term:
Watch for this—a virgin will get pregnant and bear a son;
They will name him Immanuel (Hebrew for "God is with us").
Then Joseph woke up. He did exactly what God's angel commanded in the dream...
Crooked lines, mysterious ways
Jesuit liberation theologian Jon Sobrino was formally denounced this week by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. But in a surprise move, the Pope's enforcers have not silenced the man, banned his books or barred Catholics from reading them
For the first time in his almost two-year pontificate, Pope Benedict XVI has ordered the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - the CDF -to denounce publicly a well-known theologian's writings for containing "notable discrepancies with the faith of the Church". This week's formal "Notification" (and its explanatory note) on certain writings of Fr Jon Sobrino SJ accuses the liberation theologian of "erroneous" and "dangerous" theses that "may cause harm to the faithful".
But, surprisingly, it takes no direct steps to silence him, burn his books or stop Catholics from reading his theology. On the contrary, the CDF warning actually presupposes that people will continue to study Fr Sobrino's works and its Notification is meant "to offer the faithful a secure criterion, founded on the doctrine of the Church, by which to judge" what they read....
...
The present Notification has actually been sitting in a desk drawer in Cardinal Levada's office since 26 November 2006, the date on which he and CDF secretary, Archbishop Angelo Amato, signed it. It is unclear why it took nearly four months to issue it. But the timing could be poetic. Its publication this week came 10 days before the twenty-seventh anniversary of the death of Oscar Romero and exactly two months before the Pope will be in Brazil to preside at the opening of the month-long Fifth General Conference of CELAM (Episcopal Conferences of Latin America).
Although the Notification deals specifically with Fr Sobrino's Christology, it looks very much as if liberation theology is the Vatican's real target. Perhaps the Pope and his collaborators at the CDF believe their kinder and gentler approach will gain a more sympathetic hearing and help put the final nails in the coffin of liberation theology. But, on the other hand, this particular Notification could have the opposite effect and help increase Fr Sobrino's popularity and revive a form of theology that many people already thought was waning." FULL ARTICLE HERE
Military Abortions: Prolife Christians at the Crossroads---Fr. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy
From Stephen Hand at http://tcrnewscom.blogspot.com/
Is preserving borderline neo-fascist Muslim dictatorships (Kuwait, Saudi-Arabia, etc.) or control over oil fields or the vain posturings of patriotism just the "complexity" the pro-life movement needs to find the exception to its total rejection of in utero homicide?
If not, why was the Church's pro-life movement not being a microphone for those screaming in silence in the wombs of Iraqi mothers as thousands of abortions took place due to the US-UN embargo of Iraq? If not, why is the pro-life movement not now the lone voice in the world pleading for the lives of those Iraqi children presently in the womb who are about to be torn limb from limb by the dogs of war? Both Old and New Testament are clear: Where more is expected silence is sinful...
Is preserving borderline neo-fascist Muslim dictatorships (Kuwait, Saudi-Arabia, etc.) or control over oil fields or the vain posturings of patriotism just the "complexity" the pro-life movement needs to find the exception to its total rejection of in utero homicide?If not, why was the Church's pro-life movement not being a microphone for those screaming in silence in the wombs of Iraqi mothers as thousands of abortions took place due to the US-UN embargo of Iraq? If not, why is the pro-life movement not now the lone voice in the world pleading for the lives of those Iraqi children presently in the womb who are about to be torn limb from limb by the dogs of war? Both Old and New Testament are clear: Where more is expected silence is sinful...
...The time has come for a clear, unambiguous position statement and for political action by the Christian pro-life movement on behalf of the unborn children of Iraq and by extension on behalf of the unborn children of all countries in all wars. I believe God could be trying to raise the value and significance of the Christian pro-life movement in His salvific designs, but to do this, the movement must have the courage to say an unequivocal "No" to a misguided patriotism that ignores or justifies abortions as just "military operations." If, however, the pro-life movement now succumbs to the temptation to start "hair-splitting" or cleverly "side-stepping" its uncompromising and vigorous defense of ALL the unborn, it is finished as a moral force for it will have become the embodiment of the untruth it opposes: "I am against abortion, but…"
So to be clear, the Church is now being called to pass through the fire of Her own teaching. The integrity of Her response today will be the measure of the power of Her proclamation tomorrow. Murder does not become anything less than murder because it is mass murder. Logical pettifogging and rhetorical chicanery are what the pro-choice movement practices in order to justify abortion. These deceitful mind games must not become what the Christian pro-life movement practices in order to justify mass abortions - even if the Church's good and profitable relationship with the nation-state is jeopardized...
...moreSunday, March 18, 2007
Quo Vadis, Domine?
http://nonviolentjesus.blogspot.com/
"Millions of people around the world sadly believe this is a Christian war," said the Rev. Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners/Call to Renewal, one of the groups sponsoring the event. "We have to clear up the confusion."
"'Quo vadis, Domine?' his voice asked at last, punctured by his sobbing. 'Where are you going, Lord?' Nazarius heard no answer. But a voice of ineffable sweetness and abundant sorrow rang in Peter’s ears, 'When you abandon my people,' he heard, 'I must go to Rome to be crucified once more.' The apostle lay still and silent with his face pressed into the dust. Nazarius thought he had either died or fainted, but he rose at last, picked up his pilgrim’s staff, and turned again toward the seven hills.
'Quo vadis, domine?' the boy asked like an echo of the apostle’s cry.
'To Rome,' Peter murmured." Quo Vadis, Henryk Sienkiewicz.
To the question, "Where are you going, Lord?" the answer always returns, "I am going to be crucified for your neglect, your silence in the face of injustice, and the face of injustice that you so continually display to those who have done no wrong to you." The words should ring louder and louder in our hearts until, at last, we find the strength to respond.
"One 15 year old year old called Ban Ismet, hit in the legs, described how she had watched her friend Maha bleed to death. "The shrapnel hit her in the eyes," she said, "and there was blood all over her face. She was dead." These are the sights that Christians wish to hide from themselves, so that they don't have to understand what their civilization means to the other peoples of the world.
"The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), which represents about 45,000 churches across America, endorsed a declaration against torture drafted by 17 evangelical scholars. The authors, who call themselves Evangelicals for Human Rights and campaign for "zero tolerance" on torture, say that the US administration has crossed "boundaries of what is legally and morally permissible" in the treatment of detainees."
Now if only the Catholics would make a similar repudiation of torture.
"Only love is more powerful than hatred," the teacher said simply. "Only
love can clean the world of evil." Believe in the power of love - there is no cleansing by violence. Violence can only cleanse us of life, as its brown and sandy footprints across the face of our mother so clearly reveal. It does not bring justice, heals nothing, and destroys the souls of those who practice it or tolerate it. The Christian martyrs knew this, why don't we, who have inherited a far enriched tradition, know it as well?
"Millions of people around the world sadly believe this is a Christian war," said the Rev. Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners/Call to Renewal, one of the groups sponsoring the event. "We have to clear up the confusion."
"'Quo vadis, Domine?' his voice asked at last, punctured by his sobbing. 'Where are you going, Lord?' Nazarius heard no answer. But a voice of ineffable sweetness and abundant sorrow rang in Peter’s ears, 'When you abandon my people,' he heard, 'I must go to Rome to be crucified once more.' The apostle lay still and silent with his face pressed into the dust. Nazarius thought he had either died or fainted, but he rose at last, picked up his pilgrim’s staff, and turned again toward the seven hills.
'Quo vadis, domine?' the boy asked like an echo of the apostle’s cry.
'To Rome,' Peter murmured." Quo Vadis, Henryk Sienkiewicz.
To the question, "Where are you going, Lord?" the answer always returns, "I am going to be crucified for your neglect, your silence in the face of injustice, and the face of injustice that you so continually display to those who have done no wrong to you." The words should ring louder and louder in our hearts until, at last, we find the strength to respond.
"One 15 year old year old called Ban Ismet, hit in the legs, described how she had watched her friend Maha bleed to death. "The shrapnel hit her in the eyes," she said, "and there was blood all over her face. She was dead." These are the sights that Christians wish to hide from themselves, so that they don't have to understand what their civilization means to the other peoples of the world.
"The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), which represents about 45,000 churches across America, endorsed a declaration against torture drafted by 17 evangelical scholars. The authors, who call themselves Evangelicals for Human Rights and campaign for "zero tolerance" on torture, say that the US administration has crossed "boundaries of what is legally and morally permissible" in the treatment of detainees."
Now if only the Catholics would make a similar repudiation of torture.
"Only love is more powerful than hatred," the teacher said simply. "Only
love can clean the world of evil." Believe in the power of love - there is no cleansing by violence. Violence can only cleanse us of life, as its brown and sandy footprints across the face of our mother so clearly reveal. It does not bring justice, heals nothing, and destroys the souls of those who practice it or tolerate it. The Christian martyrs knew this, why don't we, who have inherited a far enriched tradition, know it as well?
Allen on Sobrino
All this I have told you so that you will not go astray. They will put you out of the synagogues; indeed, a time is coming when everyone who kills you will think he is offering service to God. They will do such things because they have not known the Father or me. I have told you these things so that when their hour comes you will remember that I warned you. John 16:1-4
Allen on Sobrino
March 16, 2007, 1:11 pm
Haven't read a lot of Sobrino, but in my limited opinion I have not found anything problematic with his Christology. I can understand the Congregation's concern with Roger Haight, but I think they were a bit trigger happy with Fr. Dupuis, and I fear they are likewise over-reacting to Sobrino. Also, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the right wing death squad supporting hierarchy in Latin America have been pushing for this.
--------------------------------------------------Allen on Sobrino
March 16, 2007, 1:11 pm
John Allen has posted an analysis of the issues around the CDF's notification regarding the works of Jesuit theologian Jon Sobrino. He makes the important point--overlooked in many news accounts--that the notification has little to do with past disputes about Liberation Theology and much more to do with current debates about Christology:
In fact, however, the Notification from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on Sobrino is not quite as "retro" as it appears. A close reading reveals that its main concern is not really old arguments over liberation theology and Marxism, but rather more recent debates over the uniqueness and singularity of Jesus Christ. The text is of a piece, therefore, not with the 1984 "Instruction on Certain Aspects of the Theology of Liberation," but rather the 2001 document "Dominus Iesus," and the proper analogy is not to 1980s-era investigations of Leonardo Boff or Gustavo Gutiérrez, but rather to notifications over the last six years regarding Jesuits Roger Haight and the late Jacques Dupuis...
Surveying the contemporary scene, the Vatican's core theological concern is that, in the name of cultural and religious pluralism, traditional doctrines about Christ as the Son of God and Savior of the World gradually will be drained of their content. Theologians may continue to use the old vocabulary, but what they mean by it will mutate, and over time the Second Person of the Trinity will be replaced with a merely human Jesus analogous to other great religious founders and prophets.
Christology is, to this way of thinking, the "canary in the coal mine" for the impact of religious relativism on Catholic doctrine. Once the decision is made that it's arrogant to impute a special truth value to Christianity, then traditional claims about Christ have to be understood as "metaphors" or "symbols," rather than as statements of fact. If that's allowed to happen, then Christian doctrines become a sort of religious poetry, rather than a body of teaching grounded in ultimate reality.
Saturday, March 17, 2007
Happy St. Patrick's Day
This prayer is often called "St. Patrick's Breastplate" because of those parts of it which seek God's protection. It is also sometimes called "The Deer's Cry".
I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through the belief in the threeness,
Through confession of the oneness
Of the Creator of Creation.
I arise today
Through the strength of Christ's birth with his baptism,
Through the strength of his crucifixion with his burial,
Through the strength of his resurrection with his ascension,
Through the strength of his descent for the judgment of Doom.
I arise today
Through the strength of the love of Cherubim,
In obedience of angels,
In the service of archangels,
In hope of resurrection to meet with reward,
In prayers of patriarchs,
In predictions of prophets,
In preaching of apostles,
In faith of confessors,
In innocence of holy virgins,
In deeds of righteous men.
I arise today
Through the strength of heaven:
Light of sun,
Radiance of moon,
Splendor of fire,
Speed of lightning,
Swiftness of wind,
Depth of sea,
Stability of earth,
Firmness of rock.
I arise today
Through God's strength to pilot me:
God's might to uphold me,
God's wisdom to guide me,
God's eye to look before me,
God's ear to hear me,
God's word to speak for me,
God's hand to guard me,
God's way to lie before me,
God's shield to protect me,
God's host to save me
From snares of devils,
From temptations of vices,
From everyone who shall wish me ill,
Afar and anear,
Alone and in multitude.
I summon today all these powers between me and those evils,
Against every cruel merciless power that may oppose my body and soul,
Against incantations of false prophets,
Against black laws of pagandom
Against false laws of heretics,
Against craft of idolatry,
Against spells of witches and smiths and wizards,
Against every knowledge that corrupts man's body and soul.
Christ to shield me today
Against poison, against burning,
Against drowning, against wounding,
So that there may come to me abundance of reward.
Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.
I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through belief in the threeness,
Through confession of the oneness,
Of the Creator of Creation.
Friday, March 16, 2007
From 'The Patriot'
Subpoena Power
It seems that the Bush administration is going to have its date with destiny after all. The Democratic leadership in the Senate, joined by John Sununu and other Republican defectors are calling for Alberto Gonzalez’s head for his deliberate lying to Congress when he testified last week about the politically motivated firing of Federal attorneys. Of course Gonzalez’s head isn’t really the best one for the chopping block, the best head which could be severed here is attached to the corpulent body of Bush’s wonder boy Karl Rove, who orchestrated the firings as part of his slash and burn political strategy. I think Gonzalez is a toast; a very positive development for the Constitution, but as usual the real criminals in the administration have thus far eluded punishment for their sins.
The difference this time is that Congress has begun to remember that they have the authority to issue subpoenas to force a recaltricent administration to explain its actions. The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee pat Leahy said that he wants answers. To that end the committee today authorized issuing subpoenas to five Justice Department officials in the investigation into the dismissals of eight U.S. attorneys. Unfortunately Leahy postponed a vote on the authorization to use subpoenas to compel White House officials to testify, including President Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, and former White House counsel Harriet Miers.
Please, oh please get Rove under oath in Congress; that would be high political theatre. The Country can finally see in the flesh the deranged puppet master who has been pulling Bush’s strings for the last seven years. The million dollar question is whether the administration would fight the subpoenas. I suspect that they would. At this point they have nothing to gain by testifying under oath before a hostile Congress and contempt for Congress’s subpoena power fits rather nicely into their view of the limitless boundaries of executive power. This may yet blow up into a full-on Constitutional crisis. We’ll all have to stay tuned…
Check out 'The Patriot' by clicking here:
Thursday, March 15, 2007
To Complement the last picture....
["Sacred Heart", Michael O'Brien ]
---------------------------------------
"I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children...Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."
Families Behind Bars
By Kari Lydersen
Protesters stand outside the T. Hutto Residential Center during a candlelight vigil on Christmas Eve, 2006.
Named after the co-founder of the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the T. Don Hutto Correctional Center in Taylor, Texas, opened as a medium-security prison in 1997. Today, the federal government pays CCA, the nation’s largest private prison company, $95 per person per day to house the detainees, who wear jail-type uniforms and live in cells.
But they have not been charged with any crimes. In fact, nearly half of its 400 or so residents are children, including infants and toddlers.
The inmates are immigrants or children of immigrants who are in deportation proceedings. Many of them are in the process of applying for political asylum, refugees from violence-plagued and impoverished countries like Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Somalia and Palestine. (Since there are different procedures for Mexican immigrants, the facility houses no Mexicans.)
In the past, most of them would have been free to work and attend school as their cases moved through immigration courts. “Prior to Hutto, they were releasing people into the community,” says Nicole Porter, director of the Prison and Jail Accountability Project for the ACLU of Texas. “These are non-criminals and nonviolent individuals who have not committed any crime against the U.S. There are viable alternatives to requiring them to live in a prison setting and wear uniforms.”
But as a result of increasingly stringent immigration enforcement policies, today more than 22,000 undocumented immigrants are being detained, up from 6,785 in 1995, according to the Congressional Research Service.
Normally, men and women are detained separately and minors, if they are detained at all, live in residential facilities with social services and schools. But under the auspices of “keeping families together,” children and parents are incarcerated together at the T. Don Hutto Residential Center, as it is now called, and at a smaller facility in Berks County, Penn. Attorneys for detainees say the children are only allowed one hour of schooling, in English, and one hour of recreation per day.
“It’s just a concentration camp by another name,” says John Wheat Gibson, a Dallas attorney representing two Palestinian families in the facility.
In addition, there have been reports of inadequate healthcare and nutrition.
“The kids are getting sick from the food,” says Frances Valdez, a fellow at the University of Texas Law School’s Immigration Law Clinic. “It could be a psychological thing also. These are little kids, given only one hour of playtime a day, the rest of the time they’re in their pods in a contained area. There are only a few people per cell so families are separated at night. There’s a woman with two sons and two daughters; one of her sons was getting really sick at night but she couldn’t go to him because he’s in a different cell. One client was pregnant and we established there was virtually no prenatal care.”
When local staff for the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) collected toys for the children at Christmas, Hutto administrators would not allow stuffed animals to be given to the children, according to LULAC national president Rosa Rosales.
“That’s what these children need—something warm to hug,” she says. “And they won’t even allow them that, why, I can’t imagine. They say they’re doing a favor by keeping families together, but this is ridiculous.”
A CCA spokesperson refers media to the San Antonio office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), but that office did not return calls for this story.
Immigrants have been housed at the facility since last summer, and public outrage and attention from human rights groups has grown in the past few months as more people have become aware of the situation. In mid-December, Jay J. Johnson-Castro, a 60-year-old resident of Del Rio, Texas, walked 35 miles from the Capitol to the detention center, joined by activists along the way and ending in a vigil at the center.
“Everyone I have talked to about this is shocked that here on American soil we are treating helpless mothers and innocent children as prisoners,” says Johnson-Castro, who had previously walked 205 miles along the border to protest the proposed border wall. “This flies in the face of everything we claim to represent internationally.”
A coalition of attorneys, community organizations and immigrants rights groups called Texans United for Families is working to close the facility. The University of Texas Immigration Law Clinic is considering a lawsuit challenging the incarceration of children.
Valdez sees the center as a political statement by the government.
“Our country likes to detain people,” says Valdez. “I think it’s backlash for the protests that happened in the spring—like, ‘We’re going to show you that you’re not that powerful.’ It’s about power.”
Kari Lydersen writes for the Washington Post out of the Midwest bureau and just published a book, Out of the Sea and Into the Fire: Latin American-US Immigration in the Global Age.Casa Juan Diego (Houston Catholic Worker) Under Siege from the Ku Klux Klan
From our good friend Stephen Hand over at TCR
[Picture of Jean Donovan, Holy Martyr of El Salvador. By William Hart McNichols]
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Casa Juan Diego (Houston Catholic Worker) Under Siege from the Ku Klux Klan: Justice Demands Immigration ReformOne commentator said, “This past Wednesday, the 14th, the KKK showed up near Casa Juan Diego to harass clients and staff. They were in the parking lot of the Jack-In-The-Box at Shepherd and Washington, yelling racist insults to any brown skinned person who was within shouting distance. This eventually grew to the point of yelling insults to anyone they thought had anything to do with Casa Juan Diego. According to some staff, they appeared to have the approval of Jack-In-The-Box management for use of their parking lot, as some sort of staging point.
Not only the Klan showed up, but the same sort of harassment was done by other folks as the Minute Men. Not that there is any difference in their messages.
Casa Juan Diego has been in existence for more than 25 years, providing a safe place for immigrants to receive shelter and comfort, and is part of the Catholic Worker Movement, started by Dorothy Day, many years ago. ...more (the above are stock photos)
Close to Slavery: Report Finds Labor Abuses Under Guestworker Programs
As President Bush renews his call for legislation that allows more immigrants to come to the United States as so-called guestworkers, a new report based on thousands of interviews finds widespread worker abuses under the program. We speak with the author of the report and we go to Guatemala to speak with a former guestworker. ...see DN interview
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
How Irish Are You?
came across this at http://arseendofireland.blogspot.com
What kind of tea?
a) Earl Grey, thanks.
b) Supervalu Own Brand
c) Barrys.
And the bikkies?
a) Hobnobs
b) Bourbons
c) What's left in the Rover tin?
Settled in? Alright, off we go.
You're off to the US on a 3 month holiday. What do you bring with you?
a) Your passport, a scared expression, no ties to the IRA
b) Taytos, Barrys tea, Galtee rashers, brown bread.
c) A good pair of work boots.
What's the best kind of tractor?
a) A Massey... er... O'Callaghan?
b) One driven by a man in a flat cap.
c) A Honda Civic
What's the best thing to hear in an Irish niteclub?
a) Johnny Moy
b) Amhrán na bhFiann
c) The Baywatch Theme
Why are you still in Ireland, anyway?
a) The economy
b) The Craic
c) The Mammy
What can you smell when you venture into the Great Outdoors?
a) Camping gear, fleeces, GAA jerseys.
b) Freedom!
c) Honda Civics
And what can you smell when you go home to your Mammy's house?
a) Espresso
b) Good home cooking
c) Yesterday's carrots, Pledge, bleach.
What's your drug of choice?
a) Cocaine
b) Guinness!
c) Whatever's going around. Preferably free and in a can.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers are
a) So last year
b) A bunch of feckin' yanks
c) God
How do you vote?
a) Fia... Actually, that's confidential.
b) Sinn Fein
c) They'll tell me when I get off me arse and register.
Christ! What's that smell?!!
a) Wild garlic
b) Silage
c) Bad pint.
Where do you swear?
a) In the pub.
b) Everywhere!
c) I don't befuckinglieve you asked me that.
Which of these is funniest?
a) Dylan Moran
b) Brendan Grace
c) A B&B called Mount Bernadette
Her eyes they shone like diamonds, you'd think she was queen of the land...
a) That Glenda Gilson gets about, alright.
b) and her hair hung over her shoulders, tied up with a black velvet band!
c) With her ould lad slung over her shoulder, and half a pig's arse in her hand.
Priests are
a) An ageing breed
b) Pillars of the community, still.
c) Always asking for money
Bertie Ahern is
a) The Taoiseach
b) a Cute Hoor
c) a cunt
The Swearing Lady said...You're off to the US on a 3 month holiday. What do you bring with you?
a) Your passport, a scared expression, no ties to the IRA
b) Taytos, Barrys tea, Galtee rashers, brown bread.
c) A good pair of work boots.
What's the best kind of tractor?
a) A Massey... er... O'Callaghan?
b) One driven by a man in a flat cap.
c) A Honda Civic
What's the best thing to hear in an Irish niteclub?
a) Johnny Moy
b) Amhrán na bhFiann
c) The Baywatch Theme
Why are you still in Ireland, anyway?
a) The economy
b) The Craic
c) The Mammy
What can you smell when you venture into the Great Outdoors?
a) Camping gear, fleeces, GAA jerseys.
b) Freedom!
c) Honda Civics
And what can you smell when you go home to your Mammy's house?
a) Espresso
b) Good home cooking
c) Yesterday's carrots, Pledge, bleach.
What's your drug of choice?
a) Cocaine
b) Guinness!
c) Whatever's going around. Preferably free and in a can.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers are
a) So last year
b) A bunch of feckin' yanks
c) God
How do you vote?
a) Fia... Actually, that's confidential.
b) Sinn Fein
c) They'll tell me when I get off me arse and register.
Christ! What's that smell?!!
a) Wild garlic
b) Silage
c) Bad pint.
Where do you swear?
a) In the pub.
b) Everywhere!
c) I don't befuckinglieve you asked me that.
Which of these is funniest?
a) Dylan Moran
b) Brendan Grace
c) A B&B called Mount Bernadette
Her eyes they shone like diamonds, you'd think she was queen of the land...
a) That Glenda Gilson gets about, alright.
b) and her hair hung over her shoulders, tied up with a black velvet band!
c) With her ould lad slung over her shoulder, and half a pig's arse in her hand.
Priests are
a) An ageing breed
b) Pillars of the community, still.
c) Always asking for money
Bertie Ahern is
a) The Taoiseach
b) a Cute Hoor
c) a cunt
Ah, now. Check the comments if you want to know how you've done. Thanks, don't let the door hit you on the way out. By the way, how are you getting home?
a) Lexus RX
b) My tractor
c) Walking. Some cunt burned out me Civic.
b) My tractor
c) Walking. Some cunt burned out me Civic.
Well now. Let’s see.
Mostly As – You’re Middle Class Michael! The Celtic Tiger has blessed your tastebuds, bud.
Mostly Bs – You’re Second Generation Shawn! Feckin’ yanks, you always try too hard.
Mostly Cs – You’re Ciaran the Cunt! If you could get your hands on that tiger, you’d ride it, you would.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
I knew CWN was shit-stirring
Jon Sobrino, SJ, put on notice.
Posted by Grant Gallicho
The story hasn't made much of a splash Stateside, but Fr. Jon Sobrino, SJ, a well-known liberation theologian, is the subject of a "notification" by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which takes issue with several aspects of his Christology. The Spanish newspaper El Mundo broke the embargo on the document, and Catholic World News has run two stories on the matter, both of which contain a serious error. Their most recent story again claims that Sobrino has been sanctioned:
Calling the ten-page notification a "disciplinary notice" is misleading, and claiming it stipulates that Sobrino cannot publish theology or teach at a Catholic school is simply false. Unlike the notification regarding the theology of Roger Haight, SJ, Sobrino's contains no sanctions whatsoever. He is not ordered to cease publishing, nor is he told he cannot teach Catholic theology. Apparently Catholic World News has not read the notification they're reporting on. More updates as they come.
Michael at CatholicAnarchy comments:
The disciplinary notice will reportedly stipulate that Father Sobrino should cease publishing theological works and cannot teach at a Catholic university while he maintains the positions that the Vatican has identified as clashing with Catholic doctrine.
Calling the ten-page notification a "disciplinary notice" is misleading, and claiming it stipulates that Sobrino cannot publish theology or teach at a Catholic school is simply false. Unlike the notification regarding the theology of Roger Haight, SJ, Sobrino's contains no sanctions whatsoever. He is not ordered to cease publishing, nor is he told he cannot teach Catholic theology. Apparently Catholic World News has not read the notification they're reporting on. More updates as they come.
Michael at CatholicAnarchy comments:
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