Pouring New Wine into New Wine Skins

Are You Confusing The Traditions of Men with the Will of God

Jesus berated the Pharisees for confusing the traditions of men with the Will of God. We can make up a bunch of man made rules that are over the top and that bind us, and take us totally out of the will of God. The Pharisees for example used to try to catch Jesus in Sabbath- breaking (on the 7th day you shall rest) when he was healing people on the sabbath- You would pull a donkey or a mule out of the well on the Sabbath if he fell in, how much more shouldn't I heal a sick person pulling them out of their metaphoric well-he retorted. Healing doesn't break the Sabbath- it's the man made perversion of a sound teaching that does that. Jesus wasn't selling carpentry goods or carving wood on the Sabbath- he was healing people.
The Pharisees confused the man made institutional constructs that bound them with the will of God all the time to inflate their importance which took them completely outside the will of God. This really angered the Lord. This is largely why Jesus came exactly when he did. The fact that the Levite and the Priest walked on the other side of the street (in the parable Jesus himself told) when they saw a man lying robbed, beaten, lying in the ditch wasn't just because they were afraid he was dangerous, it was because if he was dead it was ritually unclean to touch him. Everyone hearing that would have understood that the priest and levite who ignored him did so to remain ritually pure. So it took the Samaritan half breed to go over, lift him half unconscious onto his donkey and take him to shelter. That Samaritan was a metaphor for Jesus himself who came to show the hypocricy of the man made rules that directed people away from the will of God and in fact caused them to not serve God with their whole heart, mind, soul and strength. Jesus is trying to tell the priests and levites something here- don't elevate your man made laws about touching the dead to a point where you don't help someone because you are afraid to find out if you touched a dead person-thus leaving him for dead. That misunderstands what true purity is about.

Similarly, while it is good to ritually cleanse your hands for washing-something ceremonially done and still done at the Sabbath, Jesus taught that it is not what goes into a mouth that makes one unclean, it is what comes out of the mouth- out of the mouth comes what originated in the heart. What you put in your mouth just goes into you and out. What issues from a man's mouth comes from his heart- it is that which makes him clean or unclean. So people should be more concerned with slander,malicious speech, cursing people, hatred and hardness of heart than handwashing. Life and death comes from the Word.

You can't pour new wine into old wine skins. They will break. The old wine skins held the old wine and by the time new wine is poured into them they are rotten and unsuitable for them. Jesus is the living water. He brings daily his new blood shed for your sins. You can't pour it into old wine skins- it will break. The Pope is talking a lot about "The New Humanity." You can't create the New Humanity if you are bound by the old institutional thinking and man made shackles binding you that have nothing to do with the will of God. You are then just pouring new wine all over the floor. This might be a bit of a metaphor for the prohibition on spilling seed onto the floor for he who has ears to hear it.
When a sound teaching is added to, even by an Iota, and surpassed, over the top it becomes not only out of balance, but flatly perverted. It is cautioned severely not to add even an Iota to scripture. It is like a soufle immediately flattened because someone opened the oven door prematurely, or like a cake burned because someone turned the heat to 500 rather than 375. It destroys what was it was intended to be.
Mandatory priestly celibacy is just such an example. It is based on a sound teaching that if you leave your father, mother, wife, brother, etc. to follow Jesus your reward will be great, but that does not impose a mandatory leaving of the father, mother, brother or wife who is also following Jesus-that is oxymoronic. That teaching presupposes that the people one left were not following Jesus so it was impossible to follow him and hang with the old crowd-even when they are your relatives (it has nothing to do with all the family who are in the same boat with Jesus at the helm and there are multiple instances of brothers together following the Lord, --James, the brother of John, etc.-it would be absurd to suggest James had to leave John when John also was following the Lord).
It is sound teaching that some will make themselves eunichs for the Kingdom, but it does not impose a mandatory castration on the entire Priesthood- that is oxymoronic (this is also flatly contradictory to the rules in scripture regarding marriage concerning the priesthood and the New Testament mandate that all Bishops and Deacons be the husband of one-not many, not none, but one, wife.).
It is sound teaching that Saint Paul urged that it was better that some be single as he was, but that does not mean that all Saints are called to be as Paul wished he was- that is oxymoronic. Peter in fact was not called to be as Saint Paul was. Paul himself takes pains to state that this is not the Lord talking but him stating a personal preference.
It creates more than an imbalance, it creates a boldly unholy perversion. It is just scripturally unsupportable and deviates from God's intent. It creates something other than what it was made to be. It's burned cake. And this makes God angry. This is in fact exactly how to turn living stones, the church of the body of Christ into white washed tombs full of old men's bones.

Scripture is like the owner's manual to your car. If you read it wrong and replace orange juice for unleaded, your engine will crash and burn. It is a recipe book for maximum wholeness, health and joy; if you always replace baking soda for baking powder instead of getting a cake you get flattened pancake, and you never realize what a full real cake is supposed to look like. It is clear that God wants us to follow his recipe and not wing it making substitute ingredients just to get something that fits in what we already built or serve something we think we want to see-or because we refuse to clean out the refrigerator to make more shelf space for real cake. There is real full cake in the world. And it is good. When you say, lets leave the One Wife thing out of the priesthood recipe for everyone, it's like a pound cake made without eggs. It's not a cake. It's a puddle of flour. We can get used to it- and think that is all there is-but there is supposed to be more than latkes and gnishes in the priesthood. The Priesthood is supposed to have latkes, gnishes, croissants, brioche, strawberry pound cake, two tiered German chocolate cake and huge full joyous wedding cake. Priests living as hermits, priests living in monestaries and Priests living in a diocese parish residence should have different charisms and do have different requirements to fully fulfill their vocations.
That isn't to say that some cakes aren't ever supposed to be made without eggs- at times of the season only unleavened bread is suitable and you can't make Matzo with yeast. But that is Matzo not cake. John the Baptist could not have been married and do what he was called to do, neither could Elijiah. Paul could not have been married and be the witness he was and do what he had to do traveling, being shipwrecked, flogged to near death multiple times, thrown in jail, teaming up with tentmakers and living in exile without subjecting his wife to abject hell and so his choice was compassionate. That was Paul. Great missionaries like Francis Xavier could not perhaps feel like they could pick up and leave everything, traveling to an unknown land like India, or Japan if they felt they had to support a wife and family -unless she was a missionary wife-so the choice there looks practical. And now there are wives who would not need supporting but would add financially to the mix.
This has to be a freely chosen choice not a mandate package of bundled vows. God is calling many more men (and women) who want to be Priests and religious than are called to vow to celibacy. There are many more people gifted to be priests than are gifted with celibacy- these are two separate distinct gifts of the Spirit, and it misunderstands the gifting of the Spirit to conflate them all together or assume that because someone is gifted with one that God wants all of them for them or has given the gifts of all of them to the same people all the time. It's a biblically absurd statement. When all of them are forced on them, it is eventually uncomfortable and it shows. The church is not obeying Christ when it turns these people away or snuffs their light out. The body of Christ needs them for how they are gifted- and God is calling them. The church would be far richer for them. Scripture says, some are gifted with teaching, some prophesy, some talking in other tongues, etc. It does not assume if someone can speak prophetic utterance that they can teach, or that someone who can talk in other tongues can preach or that someone who can preach is a gifted celibate for all seasons. It is a misreading of scripture and the Spirit to conflate all the gifts for all the priesthood and over-assume this and adds more than an Iota to what is written. As a "discipline" celibacy (non-marriage) has to be a choice that should not be packaged as a mandatory discipline to express all the other gifts of the Spirit. That quenches the Spirit- because some people know that they are called to marriage and procreation.
The church should never force the Sophie's choice between preaching for the Lord and administering his holy sacraments and taking a forced vow killing off one's humanity as a precondition to its unscriptural definition of holiness because Jesus never did. That is not how Jesus defined holiness for everyone. He died so you would live. It is clear scriptural error, and the church should correct itself.
Note that the vow of "poverty" is easily suspended for "secular" priests (as opposed to those who live in orders like Dominicans, Franciscans, Benedictines, etc.) so the triumvirate vow package of "poverty, chastity/celibacy and obedience" is modified already to suit personal needs. And yet the church has elevated the vow of non-marriage into immutable sacrosanct precondition to priesthood- an elevation in importance that should be examined as approaching an unholy idolotry.
A Marriage option would obviously lead to far greater holiness of the Priesthood than what is collectively experienced now. It is not holy to do as some priests honestly do and take lovers on the secret side, bed them (of either gender)or each other in secret ways without commitment or community support, favoring people who are willing to engage in such illicit seruptitious activity of this kind over more integrous honorable people in a misguided search for wholeness (looking for love in all the wrong places as it were). It's not good for the priests and not good for the church and it is not good for the world. It undermines trust in the priesthood and thus the church.
One only has to look at the statistics of the people who have left the Priesthood in America to marry (over 20,000 in the last twenty-five years), the numbers of paid off sex claims, and the financial health of the church in America to see that the old wine skins are rotting and the stench is foul.


A sweet young woman wants to be a New Nun. One of the traditions of men is that God can't use you if you still have debt. That isn't going to stop a friend of mine from hearing God's call and will for her life. A society formed to help people who have debt get rid of it so that they can enter religious life. Her name is Krystyn Schmerbeck and she is being assisted by the Laboure Society (after one of my favorite Saints Katherine Laboure)- see "current aspirants" listed at http://www.labouresociety.org/.
Her name is listed on the site- so you can help her follow God's call. Please contribute to assist her vocation.

Thank God for all such organizations that weave the fabric of new wine skins toward the
New Humanity to change the face of the earth. God knows it needs it.

In the Fullness of Time

And Abraham Took Sarai

When God called Abraham to leave his father's house he took with him a few beloved things- Lot, his nephew, all his belongings so there was no turning back, provisions for the road, and of course, most importantly his wife, Sarai. {Some things you can't do and others you ought not try alone at home boys and girls}
Her name wasn't changed until after he took her and moved -to "Sarah". She became for him a testament of God's immovable secure love even in the flux of life and dislocation of everything around him. Life got dicey on the road at times. One time Abraham actually passed her off as his sister and pimped her to Pharoah because he feared him. They both lost faith for a moment in God's promise of progeny and she let Abraham sleep with the maid essentially so he could try to have a son- she knew it was one of the deepest desires of his heart. All this time Sarah stood by her man- baked cookies like Tammy Wynette, washed his socks, cooked his dinner and made his bed in the morning. A lifetime almost passed before they saw God's promise in Isaac. Sarah laughed at the Angel when he told her she could conceive-- it sounded too ludicrous at her age.

Aren't you glad Angels always get the last laugh.

Ephesians 3: 14-19

Hujus rei gratia flecto genua ad Patrem Domini nostri Iesu Christi,
Ex quo omnis cognatio in coelis et super terram nominatur,
Ut det vobis secundum divitias gloriae suae, potentia roborari per Spiritum suum in hominem interiorem,
Ut inhabitet Christus per fidem in cordibus vestris, ut sitis in charitate radicati atque fundati,
Quo valeatis comprehendere cum omnibus sanctis, quae sit latitudo, et longitudo, et profunditas, et altitudo;
Cognoscere, inquam, dilectionem Christi, quae cognitionem exsuperat, ut completi sitis in omnem plenitudinem Dei.

The Lord Of The Dance

God is a long slow dance,
holding hands and staring you in the eyes
telling you everything will be all right
Not a hurky jerky turkey bad disco poke you in the side
rock your roll travolta -in- drag shivering electric slide

God is a long slow dance
to flute or Ode to Joy
a graceful waltz careening magic
like gliding on water to singing ecstatic

God is a long slow dance
who holds you close
so you can't fall
or want to
Not a wanton fast trip tripping you
on awkward beats, pulls with wierd facial features
He won't make you look like you are having a seizure

God is a long slow dance,
he comes steady and sure
and the more you fall
the harder he pulls you back secure

God is a long slow dance,
holding hands and staring you in the eyes
His faithfulness endures forever
his love for you is ever better
He holds you tight so you can't fall
right through the last curtain call.

JOHN

THE BAPTIZER

Saturday is a day of recognition of John The Baptist. What do you really know about him? Do you know that the religions of Christianity, Islam, Mandaeanism, and the Bahá'í Faith all consider him a "prophet." Did you know that he was the one that Baptized Jesus in the Jordan at Jesus' request? Did you know he was the cousin of Jesus, who even in the womb recognized the presence of Jesus and jumped for joy leaping for joy in his mother Elizabeth's womb? There is pre-natal cognition and even pre-natal joy.
John the Baptist had his own following- it's intriguing- he was the one crying in the wilderness to make straight the paths of the Lord when everyone thought he was a screaming lunatic, until the Lord came and he passed the mantle.
He lived aesthetically- on wild locusts and honey. You can live on wild locusts and honey. Try it.
He died because his sexual integrity was despised. His witness to the truth was something the powerful couldn't handle.
King Herod was an evil man- way worse than Saddam. You probably remember that Herod killed all the first born and children under the age of 2 in Israel out of a jealous rage in attempt to kill the rumors of the Messiah Jesus which prompted the Holy Family to move for a time to Egypt when Jesus was a baby (Jesus was a displaced child refugee for a time). You probably recall the terrors that he inflicted while he was the head of the provinces of Israel for the Roman Empire. By all accounts he was simply a power hungry pig.
He had no sexual morality, integrity, restraint or continence (this not infrequently comes with unaccountable power). He just took what he wanted. He lusted after and took his own brother's wife to be his lover.
Herodias must have been hot. He didn't care apparently that it was his brother's wife- he wanted her. Herodias had a daughter - apparently equally hot- and she could dance. She could dance better than Nicole around a pole. Herod was in perpetual heat and wanted to see Herodias' dance. Apparently it was not enough he lusted after his brother's wife, he lusted also after her daughter-Salame. So he promised her anything and everything she wanted to see her dance. Anything. Herodias told her to get the head of John the Baptist. Why? Because he threatened her- he disapproved. Clearly, this is an evil to take your brother's wife-- even if she whimpered, sighed, begged, moaned and threw herself at him. Even if she watered all the flowers in the palace gardens and acted like the place was her palace.
Herodias is the Anti-Mary. She looks like she has power, but obtained it illegitimately-she classically slept her way to the top. It wasn't good enough apparently to be the Brother of the King's wife, she wanted the power that the King's wife had- she wanted to be Queen. She is the model-the Patron Anti-Saint- of someone who uses cunning coy sexuality to entice, weaken and ensnare. She is the adulteress who destroyed her husband's trust and broke his heart for the lust of power-and stopped at nothing even pimping her daughter's seductions to achieve it. And she stopped at nothing to hang on to it- she stooped even so low as to demand that the King get rid of that which threatened her position -by killing him.

The holy righteous herald of the Lord was sacrificed for the lust of a horny prelate who wanted to get off on a belly dancing juvenile-as encouraged by her equally depraved Mother of all Hag-Sluts.
And so it was- the horny Herod got his dance, and John the Baptist met his fate on a platter.

And what do you kill- what righteous life giving message of Jesus' love do you pre-emptively kill off before you even hear it, what potential for salvation and life do you extinguish in your lust? What do you take illicitly without authority, whose affections do you appropriate and alienate? Who is the hag-slut demanding more and more attention and devotion in your life to a point where you are blinded to any sense of morality, crowding out love for illicit desire?
John the Baptist, the dearly dearly beloved cousin of Jesus, died for the lust of a prelate pig and the bitter jealousy of an old hag-slut.
He dies all over again every time you take what is not yours, and don't take care of what is.

John the Baptist Baptized people- ritually cleansed them in water, in the Jordan river.
Go and dunk yourself in holy water on his feast day and pray that you don't behead him ever again.

Blessed is the Fruit

Of the Womb.

The abortion statistics in this country are truly staggering: roughly 45,000,000 (forty-five million) abortions have occured since Roe, roughly 3-4 million every year. Every two years a population the size of Philadelphia is aborted, every three years a population the size of Los Angeles. Every two years we abort the number of people killed in the Hollocaust over four years.

You know someone who knows someone who had an abortion. You may have had one or encouraged one. You know someone who knows someone who knows the darkest despair that led to self-mutilating surgical strike destruction and shedding of blood. You know someone who knows someone who didn't jump with elation when they found out they were pregnant, they drank a bottle of something until they passed out. You know someone who knows someone whose man walked out on them, maybe not after slapping them around but maybe after slutifying their dignity-insulting them, calling them something nasty, insisting they "get rid of it". You know someone who knows someone who told them that they were stupid to get pregnant in the first place and should have a better job first or should be paying off their car loan before they were so stupid as to be pregnant. You know someone who knows someone who decided that they needed a mortgage on a house before they wanted a kid so they "got rid of" their first one before they saw the light of day. You know someone who knows someone who thought their parents would not pay for college if they got pregnant, or who thought that they could not have a kid and be in school at the same time so they chose school. Maybe someone even bribed them- stay in school and "get rid of" the problem and we will pay you, and buy you a car!
Because they value cars, houses, neighborhoods, status, jobs, education and money more than babies-human life. And they were not a little afraid.

This is not the only reason of course why people would have abortions, they may have them because they fear that the child is so horribly deformed that it would be an act of mercy to kill it off, but that is the rare exception. Usually when people kill their pregnancies they don't bury their dead. Some abortions are done to protect the life of the mother in very dire situations where there is cancer or severest stroke threatening gestational hypertension situations, but that is also extremely rare. By far the majority of abortions that are done are purely "elective" surgical strikes.

Mother Teresa said that the greatest terror was done in the womb (I'm paraphrasing.)

Most of it is honestly done with the same callous indifference to life as the suicide nut-jobs who strap explosives to their waists. Only it is done by an army of millions of unconscious women at the bidding of their unconscious partners who -forgive them Lord- don't know what the hell they are doing. Literally.

A national platform that insists on women's right to be unconscious is doomed to fail.
That is why it is singularly insane for the Democratic party to year after year after year insist that campaigns should revolve around standing on the right to be unconscious and demeaned. There is no constitutional right to choose abuse and abortion abuses both mother and child. There is no constitutional right to self-mutilation-even when you want to do it "in private."
I am a lawyer- I looked.

There was a time in "civilization" in Latin America where on the mounds of Peruvian and Guatemalan tiered temples prior to the age of the conquistadores where people religiously practiced human sacrifice- where all the people gathered to watch the priest carve out with a machete the hearts of virgins and throw them bleeding off the edge of the temple. This was considered appropriate and necessary sacrifice to the Gods. It was culturally embedded in the consciousness of everyone in the culture and to think it was not appropriate would have been unthinkable. Of course they were not sacrificing to the One true God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but a demonic idol that they worshipped.
Currently we consider it appropriate and necessary sacrifice to the idols to rip beating hearts out of our bodies and throwing them over the edge. There is no difference. God is the creator of all life. There is no life that he creates that is a mistake. We are sacrificing to demon idols.

Our Lady of Guadeloupe appeared to a converted native Juan Diego in what is now Mexico.
She is for that reason the Patron Saint, Blessed Mother of all the Americas.

I call her the Blessed Mother of Consciousness.

She's not trying to win any elections. She's trying to get you up out of bed in the morning. Today is a new morning.

OPEN LETTER TO THE POPE

Houston We Have A Problem.

Jesus of Nazareth is your Lord and my Lord and I call no other my Lord as instructed directly by scripture. When your doctrine deviates from Jesus, I am sure you will agree it is flatly error-even if Cannon law Dominicans at Catholic University have been teaching it for 200 years.
When your scriptural interpretation is cover to bind people in death, forced deceit, destruction and abuse, it is not of God and you know better. When you or your surrogates give legitimacy and cover to evil it is error. When people use your mantle to intimidate others into silence, it is error. The stones themselves will cry out "Hosannah in the Highest." The Holy Spirit will not tolerate it.

To Whom do you go for Confession? The same Dominican Canon law scholars who bind people in death, deceit and destruction? To Whom do you go when you permit your Priests to threaten, intimidate or insult people from the pulpit because they stand for truth and integrity and really know what is going on. Your doctrine places unbearable weight and burden on people that they cannot carry. The Holy Spirit will not tolerate it.

To Whom do you beg forgiveness for demanding blind obedience to error?
I call no man "Father" but he who is in Heaven, just as it is written.
You can take all your titles and robes of men who hide behind accolates, honors and titles and put them in the highest places of honor with all the litany of Pharisees who parade as pious while they defile the altar.
Houston -it's Spring Cleaning time. If you have not noticed, the church is in deep deep Crisis.
You may stone me like Jeremiah and I will not be silent.

The last Junior High Youth Seminary in Chicago just shut down. Several of your Archdioceses in America have declared bankruptcy reorganization. While little old ladies chanting the Rosary throw a dollar in the basket you have billions of dollars being paid in settlements on sex scandals. Billions. Count them. People are way mightily mad at you.

Priests steal affection and call it holy. They are bound in unhealthy vows of chastity married to an institution and lie prostrate spread eagle making love to the floor tiles in your service while God's women stare barren at them and others secretly throw themselves at them- this is not God. This is perversion. And you wonder why the Protestant evangelical church is gaining ground in Latin America?

You need to convene a Vatican III immediately. You need to let the laity address the matters that concern them openly or you are going to have an implosion the likes of which will make Martin Luther look like a church picnic in the church basement and the Jesuits look like the only people who read scripture.

And Fatima's Third Secret will unveil itself and fall on your head like an Alpine earthquake.

The Earth is the Lord's and Everything In It. Blessed Be The Name Of The Lord.

Integrity Meltdown

Say What You Mean

"Say What You Mean, Mean What You Say, and Don't Say it Mean." If you didn't learn it in Kindergarden you learned it from your Mom. If you didn't learn it from your Mom, you heard it from your uncle Joe who learned it at an AA meeting. If you didn't learn it at all, go to an AA meeting.

What WMDs? Who me? Fire Prosecutors? What emails? Tell what Press? Meet the Who? Abu where? We don't torture, really, we don't. Trust Me. Habeus Who?

Deployment toward Iran? What's on the table, off the table, under the table?

Aren't you just sick of it. Don't you just want a straight-shooter. Why do we feel like the people "governing" us are rather well dressed snail oil peddlers. Don't you just want someone to level with you on whatever level that ends up landing without hitting you first for contribution solicitations?

Integrity. Look it up. Standing on your principles and promises- and not talking yourself out of them when something else looks needy and enticing- even if they beg, whimper and sigh for the attention. Integrity-without it-commitment remains as elusive as peace in Gaza.

Lawyers get concerned with "appearances of impropriety" almost as much as the actual malfeasance. The Say One Thing-do and believe exactly the opposite-is enough to make one's head spin. Sneaky, smarmy, and smacking of "I need a shower" foreign policy because of the filthy double dealing.

Yeah- I'm tawkin to you.

A Moment of Silence Please

For Ruth GRAHAM


And here is what a living Saint is Doing:
----------------------
Sr. Rose Marie is a photographer and friend of mine. She has till the end of this month to raise funds for an orphanage in Tanzania (long story as to why that is so). She has already raised the funds for a school and women's center (both are built -- praise God). If you could put this on your blog or pass the word..that would be great. She has these awesome, inspirational, and high quality coffee table books to sell by the end of the month. They make fabulous gifts. A bit pricey but the quality and cause are worth it.

Her website is www.inthebetween.com
Take a gander. This is a very worthy cause. Every penny goes to Africa. A benefactor printed the books for her.

Thanks every so much in advance for whatever you can do.

In Christ
Therese

HOLY JOY

Holy Holy Holy Lord God Almighty Heaven and Earth are Full of Your Glory

There is a lot of Catholic misconception concerning the nature of "Holiness" that leads to
Joylessness. Holiness and Righteousness are not the antithesis of intimate conjugal love. To the contrary, we all know marriage is one of the major sacraments- just one in which the holiest of us-our priests-never get to partake from the other side of the altar.
The holiness of conjugal love ranks with the holiness of complete priestly celibacy. They are equally self sacrificial. Holiness is not a robbing oneself of all natural passion or impulse. It is not a denial of all that is human. Were that the goal, why would Christ incarnate himself? He could have yelled at us from a burning bush. Holiness is not a foresaking of all that is pleasing, lovely, and beautiful. For some that is a path chosen. But for no one should it be a path imposed. Jesus came that you might have life and have it abundantly-fully human, fully alive. New Testament scripture expressly states that a bishop or deacon should be "the husband of one wife". That is the biblical statement on church office. Jesus never said and never meant for his apostles or disciples to require throwing away their bodies or their wives. He healed Peter's mother in law and didn't tell him to dump his wife in the river. He doesn't demand or need a cast of castratti to transform himself for our consumption under the appearance of bread and wine.
Scripture all teaches that this should be a choice, and some will choose it for the kingdom- and we all should respect when some do. But many are called to be priests, and only some are called to isolate themselves from all intimacy with women for all time. The view that Prieshood must by mandate be celibate- a creation of church doctrine of the 12th Century and not anything taught by Jesus-EVER-- has within it a certain unholy fear, loathing and disgust of women. This view hurts women. It hurts women precisely because there are some women whose hearts were created to bond with men called to be holy priests and they were created from the beginning of time to be married to men who are priests. Their lives are simply discounted-given no value under this order and rule whatever. They are not asked, they are not considered, they are not valued. They are valued less than the building called the church and they are part of Christ's body, the heavenly Church. There is an understanding of the Blessed Virginal Mary and everything else womanly which is intrinsically unclean to this understanding of mandated celibacy.
Jesus taught just the opposite.
He elevated the dignity of women. He taught that the woman getting stoned was not someone to scorn, he taught that the woman at the well who had five or seven (whose counting) husbands could be spoken to and could serve him-she became the first Evangelist who ran to tell the town all about him; He taught that the woman who wasted all her money on perfume or oil to annoint his feet could use her own hair as a towel and caress his feet with her hair. The first person he spoke to when he rose from the dead was a woman (and he couldn't wait to get up to see her again.)
God himself in the Holy Spirit had conjugal love-cosmic sex-with a woman (you thought long distance relationships were hard, God reached through time/space galactic dimensions to get to his love). He knows every temptation known to man and is sinless. We are made in his image. Thus this kind of powerful life giving love of a woman is sinless. He chose one woman-and he impregnated her. Sinlessly. Love seeks -compels-union by its nature and he loved her so much he brought forth human flesh from her.
An entire theology built around a notion of holiness that mandates celibacy is frought with internal contradictions and forced deceptions, denials and delusions. God made man in his image. God impregnated a woman. God has a Holy Family. God came as a baby. All these things stare a Priest in his face every time he says Mass. And yet, somehow the church has pursuaded holy men for centuries that they cannot be both Priests and carnally intimate with a wife. They cannot even touch them. -Especially now with the litigation exposure threats.
And so many of them cheat against their own souls. They dally with temptation and face stern retribution while they torture their consciences. They are threatened with persecutions, derision and trapped then in unholy Fear accused absurdly of loving Jesus less because they love a woman also. Those are the ones who don't simply leave active service of the church making the Church the loser. And to this unholy tortured doctrinal imposition is added more than a touch of hypocracy when we note that Episcopal Priests may bring wives with them to the Catholic priesthood as can the entire Eastern Rite --
But the Roman Catholic church's Princes-after the order of Melchizadek -a married Jewish King and Priest of Salem (Jerusalem) may never know the caring tender gentle caress of a woman in love.
And at this- Jesus wept.

Today is the Feast of Corpus Christi-the Body of Christ where upon the pre-eminence of the Eucharist in the Mass is expounded. You may hear a Priest say something like "there is no greater intimacy with God" than partaking of this. Yes of course, but we do not serve a God in a Box like a Jack in the Box. God is bigger than a bread box. We serve and adore a God much bigger than that. We serve the Source that created all life. God, it was once said was not in the thunder, he was not in the wind, he was in the still small voice. The still small voice might say something like "I love you, you are mine." It may say something like "follow me." God does come transubstantiated for us as the new Manna from heaven for our spiritual and bodily nourishment in his actual presence. God also comes through the hearts of purest love which can be found in a wife. God does not limit himself to his box. My mother used to say to our dog when it wouldn't mind (behave) "Get back in your box" and it would sit in its cage. God cannot be commanded to just remain only in the Eucharist at the command of the church. God is Love. There is not anything that was created which was not created through Jesus. The earth is the Lord's and everything in it. God is in the still voice. God is in the human heart. God is Love. God is Love. God is Love.

MONEY MONEY MONEY

Can I Please Have A Raise?

If you missed it, Supreme Court Justices Alito and Breyer appeared before John Conyers, Chair of the House Judiciary not too long ago giving a brilliant argument as to why Federal Judges should be paid more. It’s not about the fact that they make five times less than partners in major law firms in DC annually, it’s about the rule of law. I actually agree-somewhat. Breyer argued that you don’t want what the Soviet’s call “telephone justice” where the “party boss” calls to put the fix in to the vulnerable underpaid public justice servant for sale to the highest bidder. [Anti-graft Bar rules aren’t enough?] You also don’t want only people who have saved a couple million enough for lush retirements so that their paltry federal salaries don’t bother them while they neutrally dispense justice. It would be nice to have diversity on the Court-people who worked in the real world in private sector practices, corporations even. Alito argued that he knew a few Federal Judges in New Jersey who were thinking of leaving the bench because they couldn’t comfortably afford to put their multiple kids through college. The ego-power trade off looks less appealing when your kid needs a new wireless laptop to go with his crack-berry.
I wholly agree that Federal Judges should be paid more. They are generally great folk and they likely would spend it on mentoring young lawyers and supporting programs befitting their station. In fact I think that all Congressional staff salaries also have not kept pace with inflation. A temp. attorney doing doubletime overtime can almost make annually the salary of a federal judge and can make lots more than a staff attorney in the Senate. That is a bit nuts.
I vote for you-Alito- you should get a raise with the rest of them.
I only wish you had the same compassion. You know what I am talking about- that last ruling wherein Goodyear Tire got to pay the Ledbetter woman incrementally less than her male counterpart because she was female for years because she didn’t catch it in time. The lower court awarded her a nice 3 Million to even the playing field and send a much needed message- don’t do that- don’t cheat the woman because you think that the guy has more expenses or kids or financial responsibilities. You have no idea what she supports- whether she has an orphaned niece, or supports a husband, or single-handedly finances that pregnancy crisis center, or pays for her single daughter’s health-care, has twelve god-children or gives generously to the cardinal’s annual appeal. You don’t know what her mortgage is, what her car payment is, what her medical needs are. You just assumed it was cosmically OK to pay her monthly about a half grand less because no one told her how bad she was being jipped until it was too late. Instead of throwing a dollar in the plate should she now neatly tuck 59 cents into an envelope and drop it in the basket?
For every one lawsuit that ever makes it to the appellate level you know there are a hundred such untold stories in the naked city. This one made it on merit all the way to the Supreme Court and what did the Supreme Court do- na na na na na na- sorry honey- too little whining too late- shoulda caught it earlier. And for the rest of you plaintiffs lawyers living on air and church dinners to bring these suits for already financially diminished people- na na na na na na.


Are they serious? Really fellas. This is where it becomes obvious that too many Supreme Court justices are unfamiliar with the routine skank middle management with chauvinist agendas who think women who work are bad women, unloved enough to not-not have to work, or lesser humans not deserving of the same respect as men- just because they are working women forced or choosing to compete with working men . Do they think the extra half a thou just meant she now has to go to "Bubbles" hair salon rather than "Christophe's" and limit the nail emporium to once a month? If you spent most your life paid as a Yale law grad attorney working in government for respectable and respectful government people how can you be expected to know really how bad it can be out there? This ruling affects all women on discriminatory pay issues, whether they are widows, orphans, PHD students, divorcees, your mother, your sister, your wife, your daughter.
It is just astounding to me that the Supreme Court of the land would want to make it harder to address this persistent basic injustice- seems in fact totally Oxymoronic.
On this one I thank God there is such a one as the Ginsberg. And everyone in the country needs to back any Hillary legislation to fix this mess--- or Alito should get his pay docked.

It's enough to make a raging feminist out of a nice Catholic girl.

THE YOKE

IF YOU REMOVE THE YOKE FROM YOUR MIDST

THE POINTING OF THE FINGER

AND SPEAKING WICKEDNESS

AND IF YOU GIVE YOURSELF

TO THE HUNGRY

AND SATISFY THE DESIRE OF THE AFFLICTED

THEN YOUR LIGHT

WILL RISE IN DARKNESS

AND YOUR GLOOM

WILL BECOME LIKE MIDDAY

AND THE LORD

WILL CONTINUALLY GUIDE YOU

AND SATISFY YOUR DESIRE

IN SCORCHED PLACES.


Isiah 58; 9-11.



see, www.ONE.org

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY MOM

I Came That You Might Have Life, And Have It Abundantly.

If you had a mother like my mother you could hear her sometimes say things like “I would give my right arm for my kids.” I used to think that sounded a bit weird. Body parts for kids. What a sentiment.

Ever love someone so much it hurt- so much you couldn’t give them enough and nothing you have you felt was enough to give them, so you just kept giving them stuff-stuff you made, stuff you bought, stuff you thought they might like? Maybe you didn't know how else to tell them. Ever love someone so much that you had that kind of love where you thought you would literally die for someone, you would give them your organs, you would give them all your blood if you thought it would make them live, because life just wasn't full life if they weren't alive and around. That’s true love. It happens like once in a lifetime to a lot of people.

That’s what Jesus did. What did he give us? They drew lots for his clothes--so we didn't inherit his clothes. What did he give us instead? He gave us his very body, He gave us all his blood. He keeps giving it every Mass. So we can live. That’s true love. Harder than the kind your mother has.

Happy Mother's Day.

12 THINGS ODDLY DELICIOUS

You try now-----What a Wonderful Wonderful World

1/Green Tea Ice Cream
2/If at the end of Mass the Priest said instead of “Go in Peace”, “Stay in Peace- I like the company.”
3/Chocolate Sushi (substitute dark, white or milk chocolate for the fish-not kidding!)
4/If at the end of the Mass the Priest said instead of “Go in Peace to Love and Serve the Lord” “Go Home and Kiss your Wife who is the closest thing to the Lord still living in your House.”
5/Fried Calimari with Wasabi
6/ If the Pope said to Bush "Anyone who shoots anyone, instructs anyone to shoot anyone, pays anyone to shoot anyone or conspires with anyone who does any of the above in an unjust war has automatically excommunicated themselves sua sponte. I'll take care of the paperwork."
7/Anything and everything Cordon Bleu class in Firenzi dishes up
8/If Paris Hilton who got 45 days for DWG-driving while georgeous and tipsy and hurting no one wondered what would be the appropriate punishment for having a “late term” abortion, slicing and dicing her offspring with intent while sober.
9/Teriaki Salmon braized in lime juice and ginger cooked in orange juice marinade over boiled artichoke hearts resting on whole wheat pasta primavera (really).
10/If during Mass the Priest said “this is my body which is given for you” and added “because I must like to live vicariously.”
11/If the most beautiful holy consecrated people had beautiful more holy consecrated children
and
12/ If every nearly vacant old historic monestary in a beautiful bucolic European countryside or town converted half its space retrofitted to be a home for AIDS orphans from all over the world, complete with a school so they could grow up listening to monks chant the liturgy of the hours, sing with them and help with the dishes. I volunteer to cook for room and board.

Vatican Information Service Press Release- a View of Women

PROMOTE DIGNITY OF WOMEN AND THEIR ROLE IN SOCIAL LIFE

VATICAN CITY, APR 24, 2007 (VIS) - Made public today was the text of a talk delivered by Msgr. Franco Follo before the executive council of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), on April 20.

Msgr. Follo, Holy See permanent observer to UNESCO, dwelt on the importance of the authentic promotion of the dignity of women and of their participation in social life.

"Christian faith," said the permanent observer, "nourishes the conviction that no human being, man or woman, can be denied the intrinsic value that God granted to each person," a value "that cannot be alienated. At the same time, this original dignity reminds us that all human beings must be treated as people and not as objects."

Msgr. Follo highlighted how political and social, national and international organizations "have the duty to do everything possible to ensure that such dignity is always respected, in all the stages of a person's life. In this context, greater attention must be given to ensuring respect for women and girls, especially as concerns their physical integrity, their free decision to choose a husband, and the need for them to access education and social life."

"Thanks to women, whose often humble and unseen activities must be supported, it will be possible to promote the family more effectively as a basic social cell, young people will learn to integrate into social networks, peace will be sought with greater intensity, and dialogue and human relationships will become factors for fraternity and solidarity at the local level. In other words," he concluded, "all of society will benefit from the vocation, the activity and the genius of women."
DELSS/DIGNITY WOMEN/UNESCO:FOLLO VIS 070424 (290)

WHEN JUSTICE KISSES PEACE

FREEDOM FROM WANT

We hear a lot of talk about giving Freedom to people half a world away.
For that we are sacrificing our finest.
Yet, you can't turn on Sunday morning TV and see the Feed the Children guy and not know that there is suffering everywhere. But you knew that. John Edwards calls it the "two countries" where the middle class is losing ground in a newly stratified "have, have not" society or according to Bush, a society of his base of "have mores" and everyone else. John Kerry railed against decimation of communities by "outsourcing" jobs to India and elsewhere closing factories that supported entire communities. Everyone knows people are hungry everywhere-except maybe Simon Cowell who was shocked to find a Food Bank kitchen in Los Angeles. Any given early morning in Washington, DC I can walk past Western Avenue Presbyterian Church a block from the Watergate where Condolezza lives and see homeless men lining up around the block for breakfast.
The American Idol personalities last night travelled to Africa to "give back" to people who don't have antiretroviral drugs or food much less TVs. But you know you don't have to go to Africa to find it-while it is stark there. If you look hard enough you can see it everywhere-its ugly-its shameful- its POVERTY. There might be some of it in your family even that has annoyed you and to which you turned a blind eye-that relative who is a bottomless pit of need. There might be some of it in your street at that crackling painted house, and for sure there is some of it in that neighborhood where you seldom drive without locking the doors and the windows up in the city.

"A National Scandal" is what Peter Edelman calls Poverty in America. He has been fighting the "War on Poverty" since working for Robert F. Kennedy as an idealistic young Harvard lawyer who could have easily instead probably gone to Wall Street. He is heading a task force on fighting Poverty with the Center for American Progress.
See, http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/04/poverty_numbers.html

Katrina got to him. How on earth in this country could we lose entire parishes of people who were trapped and just drowned right before our eyes on TVs--IN THIS COUNTRY! No cars to get out, no bank accounts, no means to go anywhere but squatting in a sports stadium if they were rescued. You couldn't watch that and not be just sick at your stomach. People floating face down in the streets of New Orleans. Unspeakable.

Moral Lectures don't pursuade people to care about each other. Bad Boy, you made so much money you should give more of it away doesn't pursuade people to care more about those less fortunate. But economic arguments might. Poverty costs more than its worth. It costs in lost productivity costs for sick workers and for the non-integration of under-educated people who could be in the workforce, it costs in emergency room health bills, it costs in the emotional toll on people who love the people they know in poverty and it costs in terms of our international competitiveness in a thousand ways. Economists have ways to quantify this but it is obvious that Poverty costs us all. That is what the "ONE" campaign also understands.
Go to www.ONE.org and read about what they are doing to fight global poverty.

Ted Kenendy believes we can and must do better in Educating everyone to meet the competitive challenges of the global marketplace now. And don't tell him that anyone from a poor neighborhood cannot learn as well as the next kid from a rich suburb. Our public education system needs major overhauling at a national level to meet the obvious challenges, he argued.

Jesus spent his ministry doing three things basically; teaching, healing (healing people through teaching forgiveness, healing spirits and minds by driving out demons, and physically curing disease) and feeding people. He continues to do it and he continues to tell us to do it in his name. Matthew 25 is the clearest blueprint for what he has instructed and how he holds us accountable. We know that in so much as you do this to "the least of these" my brethren you do it to me. There will be sheep and goats, and you know the story. OK, so fear of firey hell doesn't motivate people much either these days. Charlie Rangel has another Angle. National Security. If we don't take care of people in poverty, they easily fall into crime, if we don't create employment in communties we create pathologies instead that eventually come back to bite us.
And the richest of us aren't saying "Bite Me." They are often really nice people who are happy to give if asked nicely in the right way by the right people-so long as they can write it off.

We have a chance now to make a real serious difference. In fact, Peter Edelman's goal is ambitious but realistic. We are the "Can Do" Nation and we Can Do this. We can cut Poverty in half in the next ten years. Certainly we can cut childhood poverty in half, and a huge percentage of people in poverty are kids. Think about it hard. A huge number of people in poverty in this country are kids. Kids. His task force has planned a 12 point legislative agenda toward this goal of cutting poverty in half in ten years and completely eradicating it in this country in a generation.
see, http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/04/podesta_poverty_testimony.html
We can do this painlessly if we commit ourselves to it. 12 points, like the 12 apostles of progressive reform, or the 12 steps to sober reality checking the country's conscience.

What does Poverty mean? It means people really don't have peace of mind that they can meet their bills, it means keeping a roof over the head sheltering from the elements, it means food on the table regularly, it means a place to go to work or not instead of hanging on the street, it means that the struggle is with existence itself.

And here is what else it means-it factors hugely into calculations concerning whether women think that they can afford to bring another child into the world. Poverty is the single most influential factor on the Abortion crisis. You cannot look at Abortion in this country and ignore the issue of Poverty. To solve the Poverty problem goes a long long way toward solving the Abortion crisis. Ask any single female. 51% of all women in this country are now living without husbands single. We cannot plan public policy on the old Father Knows Best model because husbands and fathers are missing from the picture of over half the women in America now. Women are struggling. Women with children are struggling much more. Three million people a year abort their offspring in this country. Every two years we have a holocaust sized abortion pile of dismembered fetal arms, legs and heads created largely by the Bondage to Want in a country that isn't paying attention to the effects of Poverty on women.

We all want Peace, Peace in Iraq, peace of mind, peace from the tortured violence of self-destructive, emotionally devastating, fetacide abortions.

When we achieve the Justice that can happen through this 12 point legislative agenda proposed by the Task Force on Poverty, that is when Justice meets Peace and kisses it.

PERVERSIONS AND OTHER SICKNESS IN THE CITY

ARE THEY KIDDING?

This has been an interesting week in Washington. We had a moment of silence today for the 32 victims of the Virginia Tech slaying.

How many years of silence should we have for the half a million Iraqis we slaughtered for their “freedom” and favorable oil trade terms? There is something just a wee bit perverse about that.

Then yesterday on the Hill:
Our Attorney General has proved that he should now be called “The Right Honorable Esteemed Little Lying Putz, Esquire.” His rehearsed lapses in memory make one wonder how he remembered to put a tie on. He was there, he wasn’t there, he had a meeting with discussions, without discussions, what meeting? he forgets who was there, he is the decider, he had minimal involvment, it's the DAG's job, it's his job, he didn’t know about it, Who’s on first? GIMME A FRIGGIN BREAK! The only things he can specifically remember about why he fired brilliant, highly educated, highly experienced, successful chief US attorney prosecutors in EIGHT jurisdictions had something to do with failings in the areas of “energy level” (from someone who could put the Energizer Bunny to sleep), vague ill-defined “judgment” areas (meaning they disagreed with the Torture Czar’s judgment) and failing in some undefined way to more vigorously prosecute immigration and obscenity cases.
What is really obscene, however, is the Attorney General’s total Perversion of Truth.

And for the triple hitter on the Too Perverse to Leave a Head Unscratched Meter, is the slew of statements from virtually every Democratic Presidential contender condemning the 5-4 Supreme Court “partial birth abortion” decision that was quickly eclipsed by the more macabre news. We actually have to have a law and we actually have to have the Supreme Court of the land saying it’s a good one, that we can’t puncture the skulls and suck the brains out of viable pre-born children as they are being born. The weird fact that we actually have to have a law saying that is trumped only by the weirdness of every Democratic Presidential contender boldly declaring that the law violates women’s rights to –what privacy-? Aren’t you forgetting that there is someone else present getting his or HER skull punctured in and brains sucked out?. In the last days it is said, people will call right wrong and wrong right and really not know the difference. Hard to see how we could be more there than now. A procedure that most people would recognize as inhumane torture worthy of locking someone up for life if done to a puppy, somehow should be permitted because to not permit it violates women’s rights? Are they kidding?

Women, who are by Democrats presumed to be completely emotionally incapable of making a choice to not have sex and thus avoid an unwanted pregnancy as if they had no clue how babies are made, want all the choices in the world when and how to dispose of the natural repercussion after ignoring the fact of how babies are made, abnegating all pre-conception choices, and after having made a baby.
Here are the choices they apparently thought they didn't have a problem exercising in a timely manner- whether to meet a man, to go to a private place with a man, to take off one’s clothing and have a man take leave of his clothing, to then consummate. Here are more choices no one seems to have a problem with- do you want the chicken or fish at dinner? Do you accept the guys call or hang up on him? Do you want to take a cab to his place or have him come to yours? Do you want to pay for parking or park on the street? Do you want to go to a movie first or just home? Do you want to go upstairs or just sit on the couch? Do you want to have the red or white wine? Somehow we think women are mentally capable of exercising all those choices out of their own free will-and guess what- they do!. But they don’t apparently have the last choice when to succumb to having him insert himself into them. Are they kidding?
Then they want to say that because their fetus (which contains DNA different than theirs and can even have different blood type) is in utero- regardless of the fact of whether it can exist viably outside the womb- it is something somehow etiologically of a different substance than the identical DNA it is ten minutes later after it makes it outside the birth canal such that they can't call it a "baby" or "child" and they have exclusive right to deny it of all legal right to existence. Just Totally Perverse.

The Democrats want to canonize people like Kate Michaelman because she was victim to an abusive husband whom she divorced and so she wants the legal right to “terminate” her offspring before she figured out how to leave him. Cry me a River Honey. Sorry- Again- Just Perverse. Why are we canonizing women not having the strength or intelligence to exercise their bodily integrity before they get pregnant? We have bodily integrity enough to stick to a Jenny Craig diet, South Beach Diet, and bodily integrity enough to know when we have our clothes on or off. People have been leaving their abusive husbands for thousands of years. Aren’t we catering to and promoting a culture endorsing the bigotry of low expectations of women’s underestimated emotional intelligence? Can’t we insist women be –hello- just a little smarter than that? Because most of us are and we are sick of the argument.
Family Planning starts at “Hello, here’s my number.”

We are creating a culture where men treat women like disposable trash because, frankly, we treat the fruit of ourselves, our offspring that way. I would rather live in a country where women are considered worthy to be trained to be smarter than that, because until we respect ourselves and the lives within us how do we expect men to?

THAT's WHY THEY CALL IT A MIRACLE

That wasn't supposed to happen


You know it isn’t supposed to happen that you can take a few jugs of water and turn it into enough wine to feed a wedding party. Just thought I would remind you that this was one of my first miracles. A wedding. That’s because I adore weddings if you have not noticed.
It isn’t supposed to happen that I can say to a dead girl “Talitha Koum” –or “Get UP little sweetie!” and she isn’t dead anymore.
It isn’t supposed to happen that a guy who was blind from birth could see after I spit in a bit of dirt and made mud patties on his eyes. Some people might have even thought mud spittle pattys were disgusting.
It isn’t supposed to happen that someone who was lame for years could pick up the floor mat he sat on and skip away on the Sabbath when I asked him to. That one was really against the rules.
It isn’t supposed to happen that I could take a few loaves of barley bread and a couple fish and feed about five thousand people hanging out on the hill to hear me give a little lenten talk.
It isn’t supposed to happen that people can walk on top of water.
It isn’t supposed to happen that people can walk through walls to an Upper Room-I was really excited to see my old friends and the door lock was annoying-locked doors can't keep me from being with my friends.
It isn’t even supposed to happen that you could be dead and buried in a tomb and walk out come to think of it.

It isn’t supposed to happen that old ladies can be love and in love such that they have children well past what everyone thinks are usual child bearing years- but Sarai, wife of Abraham-the great patriarch of all nations did, Elizabeth, wife of Zechariah-the holy righteous Priest did, and Anna-wife of Joachin did, without which act credited to them as righteousness we never would have had Isaac, John the Baptist or the Most Blessed Mother Mary, thus Me. So get over it-you are too old- I love old ladies.
In fact I love all ladies- even skanky ones- even ones married five times, even ones getting stoned for being ho's, even one's with no money sense who waste all their money buying me annointing oil for my feet (still remembering that one aren't you), even ones who refuse to do the dishes so they can sit at my feet listening to me instead.

Listen- Do you need a Miracle? I am the storehouse of Miracles. I am the CEO of Miracles. I am the Way. All of you who are tortured, burdened, heavy, labored, just come to me. Just come to me. I can give you rest. Don’t you believe in miracles yet?
What are you blind? I have something for you.

"FIRST DO NO HARM"

THEN FIX THE PROBLEM NOW

God Saw the Light and that is was Good. And God divided the Light from the Darkness.-
And God called the Light Day and the darkness he called night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. And God said, let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament, and it was so.


Remember when “Christmas in April” was a clever play on words, not the fact that it snowed at Easter and the trees were budding at Christmastime in Washington? When was the last time you saw snow covered cherry blossoms? Can you remember a freakier weather system than what we have experienced lately? Have you seen the “Inconvenient Truth” movie yet?
Have you heard the connection between parts of the Nile Delta and Sudanese water systems drying up contributing to water wars and Darfur horrors and displacements?

I bought a portable DVD player recently. I can use it in the spoiled event I want to watch a movie on a plane that isn’t showing at the in-plane central listings on the screen right in front of me. Then I remember that my dearly departed grandmother was born in the year 1900-- 8 years before the Ford Model T was manufactured, when horses drew carts in the streets of New York, before there was such a thing as an airplane in the common man’s mind. Can you imagine it? Flying like a bird in the air?
In the year 2007 we have things totally unheard of to those living at the time that my grandmother was born; phones with cameras, blackberries, email, portable computers, internet, airplanes, electronic washing machines, electric hair dryers, convertibles, space shuttles, CDs, microwave ovens, electronic fences and garage doors, cameras in phones, to name just a few.

In the year 1960 when I was born, a computer was the size of an entire room and flicked IBM punch cards with holes in them through it. You could not “desalinate” the sea, you couldn’t nuke your dinner in the microwave, you couldn’t email your Mom in 1960. We have had a technological and communications revolution. The Internet has proved more revolutionary to civilization than the Guttenberg press and movable type. In a mere century the world has been amazingly transformed into something barely recognizeable to those who lived a century before.

But it is a mixed blessing that comes with a curse. We apparently are freefalling in a reckless desecration of the earth to birth all of it without much notice except for a few famous “environmentalists” who seem like John the Baptist to be screaming in the wilderness or Ralph Nader screaming at the Pinto or chicken little screaming the sky is falling--- Which one is the more apt analogy?
Sure, Al Gore got an award for his slide-show movie, so scientists think we are burning ourselves alive in a carbon overload that is melting everything to drought, flooding other parts in a dysfunctional greenhouse gone mad. Who actually gets it and how serious is it really doc?

Apparently, people who really know, really know how serious it is. It’s really serious. Take the Earth’s temperature over the last decade or so and you get part of the prognosis. Serious people like NASA scientists and the Harvard egg-head collection referenced by uncle Al in his movie all agree with the rest of the world scientific community apparently- Houston, we have a problem; we are in melt down. Ice caps are looking like my 7-11 slurpee.

Remember my DVD player above. Well, I dropped it on it’s head. It is rather delicately made and there is a laser that reads the DVD track paths unseen to my naked eye so it can project on a screen the DVD. All I see is the movie. I don't see the laser or the tracks. After I dropped it on it’s head, it disturbed the laser alignment and would not read the DVD. It projected instead on the screen “loading, loading, loading” forever and nothing came up. I damaged the laser alignment by dropping it on its head beyond repair. There was a “tipping point” of knocking about I could do before irreparably knocking the laser out of alignment. I had to go back to Radio Shack and get another one which, thankfully, they just replaced.

We are doing the same thing with our planet- only we can’t go back to Radio Shack and get another one, God gave us only one. There is a tipping point in the carbon cosmic meltdown after which the laser will be so out of alignment that it won’t read the DVD. It will be orphaned polar bears frying alive in Aruba heat, Avalon New Jersey the way of Atlantis and no such thing as about a thousand other species who will be remembered only in books if we can figure out how to make books non-combustable or instantaneously flammable and if we survive the melt down according to some. Is this science fiction or real science?

Lets assume that the environmental histrionics is based on real science, what should we do?

Gingrich in a rare moment of non partisan honesty actually applauded John Kerry for his new book, and indicated that there should be a vigorous debate on how best to most expeditiously address the problem. He doesn’t like big government, new taxes or apparently the “Fix” reputed to be “in” about carbon caps. But he surprisingly agreed that the problem is real, urgent and serious. He has a message for the Republicans stonewalling the debate which has to be well beyond whether it is a big problem or not, or whether there is any urgency to the need to address it. The challenge now is how to reverse the carbon overload immediately and stop the meltdown.

The laser knocked out of alignment is the point of no return. It caught me by surprise. We are working in the thinning margin.

The good news is that we are where the people were in 1900 when my grandmother was born in terms of not imagining what we can invent, what technological revolutions can be birthed in another ten to twenty years. Incentivization models, legislative structures, all these things can facilitate it- the best and brightest of the country should now be focused attentively and intensely on how to create it.
It is insane only Japanese companys make competitive hybrid cars.
Our American contribution to the carbon footprint is just piggish. I know insulting people does not motivate them, but come on now.
If this doesn't make you throw your soda can in the recycler I don't know what will.


This is apparently no time for arrogance of legislative posturing.
If there is one thing upon which we all should agree it is basic Stewardship of the Earth.

WHEN LOVE PENETRATES THROUGH THE RULES

THE WAY, THE TRUTH,
THE LIFE


Happy Resurrected Jewish Messiah Day all. Easter. It’s easy to fall into clichés of happy Hallmark cards and Christian Country Songs without realizing really what exactly happened here. The laws of death that bound everyone were pierced through and forever voided, the veil in the Holy of Holies torn for access to all to the inner sanctum, and Eternal Life forever triumphed-if only you believe it. Think about it. Rules and laws of gravity, death and political retribution, all of them overcome with a stone rolled away from a temporary Tomb that could not contain or suppress this Supreme Love. What Wonderous Love Is This.
This is Radical Revolutionary Love. This is love that did not let us die bound under the rules of death. Not that there is anything wrong with rules-they keep order, they provide guidance, but Love creates Life, not Rules-and LIFE is of the very essence of the Divine.

Nancy Pelosi must have known that this gives us power to bless those who persecute us and pray for our enemies. Love even your enemies breaks all rules of War. Those seeking to bind her to the rule of death in War who favor perpetual war for its own presumed rewards shouted she violated some law, possibly a felony, certainly "aid and comfort" to the enemy, probably the Alien and Sedition Act prohibitions. Those seeking to lock us in perpetual War, which when unjustified is just state sanctioned mass murder, are co-operators with Evil. Co-operators with Life don’t kill their enemies, they pray for them.

Love is much stronger than man made rules or even church made rules. Love is stronger than ceremony. Love compels, propels and insists on creating Life from death and nullity, even when the rules prohibit it. Love cannot be suppressed any more than you can silence the stones shouting out “Hosannah in the Highest.”

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. He rendered death void, and his love lives forever, penetrating through the rules that bind us to death. Love is stronger than Hate; it cannot be contained by ceremony. Love creates Life, and Love has already overcome the World. The Creator of all Life compels it.

The Lord Indeed Lives, and Blessed Be My Rock

STRAW MEN BURNING

LYING FOR A LIVING

Veritas splendor. Truth. The Way, the Truth, the Life.

A beautiful white robed Dominican Deacon FRIAR (soon to be a beautiful Dominican Priest) named Brother Dominic Legge gave a lecture recently in Arlington, Virginia on the topic of “Truth” in which he recounted for the ethical bemusement of a group of listeners the story of planned deception of the Allies during WWII in which we tried to fake out the Germans by staging a distracting planned battle in a part of France other than Normandy just before the Norman invasion to divert German resources instead to that fake battle. Can there be some instances where planned premeditated deception is more noble than playing a patsy- of course.
There was another such planned political deception story told in the movie Amazing Grace where to end the British slave trade the Member of Parliament circuitiously hurt the shipping industry first by a disguised bill with intended but unforseen consequences that paved the way for the slave trade industry to be dismantled almost without notice. Brilliant in that case.

But what we are dealing with in this Administration is not remotely of the same ilk. It is far more disturbing. It is far more akin to the Stalinist ends justified means by whatever slaughter kind of political deception can be cooked in perverted minds type of deception. It is a culture of lying for a living that has jeopardized the very soul of the country because we betray that Truth which is the divine person of Christ for ends that are self defeating and rather stupid. When you lie a country into war based on whole cloth fabricated evidence, when you persist in lying the country into a state of fear siege , when you stand and address the country in a State of the Union address and make up things to create straw men to attack, when you persist in misrepresenting the state of success or lack thereof to justify more billions spent, and when you fire, persecute or otherwise intimidate anyone who disagrees (including outing CIA agents to set them up), anyone essentially who stands for Truth, you have completely lost your soul and sold the country down the Euphrates river.

Who can we trust now? Our money says “In God We Trust” and I do. I trust God to right the wrongs done by those in authority we pray for. I trust God to make sure that the person charged with being the Chief Justice officer, the Attorney General of these United States, is someone of impeccable integrity- and that anyone who lies to Congress and to the public to serve the deceptive political agenda will simply not be allowed to be the Attorney General. Period. The Attorney General of the United States must serve Justice, which cannot know political favoritism. Right and Wrong cannot depend on which club you play in. US Attorneys cannot have investigations influenced or jeopardized by partisanship. People have to have confidence that corruption will not be rewarded-no matter which team is doing it.

Senator Schumer could not be more right when he says that this is very serious stuff indeed. Whatever your political stripe, we all need to agree that when we have lost trust in the truthfulness and integrity of our Attorney General, we are all in serious trouble. The big news today should come as no shocker- he lied. Big Time. More than Once. To more than one person, and about official matters. These aren't little white lies, or in the service of higher good lies. These are career destroying lies defaming long term professional public servants, Officers of the Court and good people- by someone whose greatest legal distinction after graduating from law school before being tapped by Bush to be the "what Geneva Conventions" torture czar is that he got Bush off from a DUI conviction just prior to his running for Governor of Texas.
That should be the end of the story. Really. Lets see how long until it is.

Coulter- Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?

Cultural Obsessions with Blonde Boobs

We laid Anna Nicole Smith to rest but Fear Not, we apparently still have a bigger blonde boob hanging around to amuse us-Ann Coulter. Whew, I thought the news might get us back to sane matters (Anderson Cooper reminded us that there is a War on), but no- With a Double-D Brain, Coulter almost calls Edwards a "Faggot" and almost apologizes for it -and the blogosphere exploded. I almost paid attention to any of it.
Coulter appears to be a bigger embarassment to the legal profession than Howard K. Stern-it's anyone's guess who is getting paid more for being a "media whore" and living off the celebrity of others. A guy I work with thinks she needs to be "pimp slapped." I would prefer to have Keith Olberman invite her on his show - they both went to Cornell -he apparently listened in school while she was organizing the campus republicans and experimenting with hair bleach-
Come on Keith- take her on. I will pay good money to see you ask her if she is bullemic or just
enjoys throwing up insane vitriol to see if the other dogs will eat it.

Stop Already-Rewriting History is called Fiction

It’s getting absurd.

Once again, we have to suffer the annoyance of people with their “proof” that something about the church teachings is deeply flawed and that branch of Judaism now known as Christianity is off the tracks. While I may have some minor doctrinal differences (are condoms O.K. to stop Aids spreading, etc), that is not what I am talking about. There are some actually trying to confuse the facts in attempt to undermine the basic story-this time with the persuasion of a “documentary” to be aired next Sunday alleging Jesus had a kid, a wife and all of them are buried with his mother. To call it a documentary seems, to put it mildly, a misnomer.
The documentary claims that the burial boxes containing the bones of Jesus, his mother Mary, Mary Magdalene and his alleged son were found and still exist. In the words of the “church lady”: ‘Well, Isn’t that special.’
Once again we have to suffer the smarter set who proclaim that their statistics prove it and the rest of the world is just ignorant science deniers who don't get it. Notwithstanding this intellectually hubristic presumption, the chances of Jesus, his mother, his follower and an alleged son all being housed in the same place is about as likely as Anna Nicole Smith, Howard K. Stern, Danny and Grandma being buried in the same space- in the yard of the Supreme Court. The statistical probability of their being a Jesus, son of Joseph, Mary or Marie and Joshua his son all in one place depends on how big the place was. The docu-dramatists would obviously have to explain how big the statistical pool is.
For example, the chances of a Jesus, son of Joseph, Marie or Mary or Mirium and Joshua and Matthew being all together in a place where 10 boxes were is more interesting than when in a place where there are 100,000 boxes. Lets assume they explain that and the statistical pool is small enough to matter. The names Jesus, Joseph, Mary, Mirium, Marie and Joshua and Matthew at the time and place are more common than Smith, Stern, Anna, Mary, Marie, and John.
So they found a box with John Smith on it next to a box with the name Mary on it and someone named Joshua is the son of Jesus. And in Mexico City today there are about forty-thousand Jesus's. That ought to shake the foundations of all of Christendom. Catch me, I'm shaking.
No one pretends to think that this "discovery" (which has been hanging around without much attention for a decade) had anything to do with the Resurrection, because Jesus still could be resurrected and leave his bones behind (while the Resurrection body biblical understanding is a bit different) so Easter is still apparently safe from Archeology. Whew. Further, it’s hard to disprove a resurrection theory when Jesus showed people he himself resurrected people, notably Lazarus and the daughter of Jarius and Elijah even resurrected at least one person from the dead. To challenge the possibility of the Resurrection also would challenge a basic Jewish teaching of a portion of Judaism that believed in the possibility of the Resurrection of the dead (an ongoing debate with the Pharisees and Saducees). So to attack Christianity without attacking Judaism (hard to do when Jesus claimed to be the Jewish Messiah) the challengers have to go after the Assumption.
So this challenges only the “Assumption” –a rather unique event which sounds spooky while -wait-Elijiah also it is written somehow "ascended" into Heaven. Hmmm. Note that the attack on the Assumption attacks Protestant and Catholic teaching because Catholic teaching also maintains that Mary had an Assumption (celebrated every August 15th) and her remains are thus not anywhere on planet earth either.

There were people like Saint Paul at the time who converted from being one of the hardest persecutors of the church who would have laid little rocks (a Jewish custom) or flowers at any burial box site were there one any time he was back in Jerusalem. In fact, pilgrimages from all over the world would have come all the time just to see it over the years and we have no recording of any such event ever. Jesus' popularity grew like wildflowers after his resurrection in spite of the persecutions. People from every corner of the Middle East would have come to see the body if there were one. People would have robbed the boxes and sold them to cathedrals and tried to buy their way into heaven with them.

Jesus was considered, inter alia, a great Rebbi (Rabbi) and there is a belief that visiting the tomb or remains of such holy men confers blessings. This is a tradition carried on by Catholics who make pilgrimmage to the remains and relics of Saints. Peter (the first Pope, a Jew) was considered so holy that merely passing by his shadow could cure disease. The mere touching of the fringe of the garmet of Jesus cured a women who had a chronic incurable hemmhorage. A church was built on Peter's remains and the Tomb of Saint Peter currently is in the base of the Vatican itself which is built around it. Yet, in spite of the Crusades to the Holy Land and centuries of relic devotions, we are to believe that Voila! they just discovered the box with the bones of Jesus in it that no one knew about before the BBC discovered it a decade ago. Right.

There are historic recordings that indicate that Mary and John were smart enough to realize that if a lynch mob just hung her son and best friend respectively from a cross bar tree, it was a wee bit uncomfortably hostile in Jerusalem and they might be more secure if they got out of dodge. It has long been believed that they went to the Fifth largest city in the greater Middle East at the time Ephesus (in current Turkey) where they would have been more anonymous and where there was a growing church community thanks to Paul’s missionary journeys and letters to the Ephesians (one of which is in the New Testament.) John in fact wrote letters some of which are comprised in the New Testament well into his old age. Jesus charged him with taking care of Mary after Jesus' death. Someone had to because she was widowed and lost her only son. There is no writing of him or Mary, Jesus mother visiting Jesus' remains or bones at any time after he resurrected from the Tomb.

Mary Magdalene has been through the ages hailed by the French as one of their patron matron saints (hence the great Church of the Magdalene Cathedral in Paris) and she is rumored to have ventured even further North than Ephesus into Aix-en-Provence and other Southern French towns. It’s unclear whether these rumors pre-dated the efforts by the Popes to remain in Provence during the Schism when 13 Popes lived in Avignon on the Cote du Rhone trying to claim their legitimacy there over Rome. Some stories have her with a companion who was later named a Bishop. Her remains have been alleged to be in various places throughout in France.
The attempt to impose myths that Jesus had a child are to say the least wildly far fetched inasmuch as he didn’t have means to support a wife much less a child and relied, it is written on the benevolence of his followers. Neither was his widowed mother wealthy enough to support another family. He left his carpentry trade to enter full time ministry at the age of around 30 for three years of itinerant preaching, and he never stayed in the same place more than a few days and nights as he traveled the countryside preaching. There are zero accounts of his taking along with him anyone like a son and wife when he went anywhere.

Jesus cast 7 demons out of Mary Magdalene. She was a demoniac. If he was to be taken seriously, it would not make much PR sense for him to wed the former demoniac. Everywhere he went he would be known as the lover or husband of the former demoniac. It’s kind of like Howard Marshall getting ripped for marrying a young former topless dancer- he might lose a wee bit of credibility at the deacon’s meeting. Jesus had enough trouble convincing people what he was about without laying that on people. And how would the former demoniac get along with her mother in law? She would surely want to be buried with her, the Virgin pious Mary Mother of the Lord. Right. The likelihood of that is about the likelihood of Judge Larry ordering Anna Nicole to be buried with her mom Vergie.

Clearly this is all more or less crazy bunk. It makes more sense that if all these names appear together that someone tried to create an impression that they all ended up together there and did not “Ascend” anywhere to discredit the story that was growing like wildfire. In the early days Christians were rather persona non gratis, hiding in catecombs, thrown to lions and set afire to light Nero’s rose gardens like tiki torches. Jews weren’t fond of losing people to this sad martyrdom- for reasons they thought were meritless. What better way to debunk the story than to claim that Jesus had sex with the former demoniac slut, bore a son and everyone including mom Mary stayed in Jerusalem until they died. Right.

The liklihood of those boxes carrying Jesus's bones along with a son, Mary Magdalene and his Mother the Virgin Mary are about as likely as Anna Nicole Smith being canonized and Howard K. Stern dying a monk, after giving away all his money to charity.
My advice; Don't miss Church to watch the docudrama.

PROFILES IN COURAGE -All We Are Saying Is Give Peace A Chance

MARCH 16.
Put it on your calendar.

see,
www.ChristianPeaceWitness.org

There will be a huge eceumenical gathering of Christians of all stripes at the House of Prayer for all People, the National Cathedral in Washington, DC followed by a March to the White House.

People are serious folks. We are not fooling around anymore. Whatever may come of suppressing the Senatorial debate about the most misguided Foreign Policy folly based on pure deception we have ever engaged in, We the People will not be intimidated, threatened or silenced. It is our moral patriotic duty to stop the madness.

Last Sunday an unlikely opponent of the War stood before a Congregation at the Bethesda Presbyterian Church in an affluent Washington suburb where congregants who are employed by the government, contracting companies and Exxon Mobil sat in attendance. She is the Pastor. Her name, one you should not forget, is Reverend Anne Troy. She is a Chinese American, and understands persecution of the Church throughout the World. The silencing and threatening of people who oppose this war is indeed a form of persecution of the church. She insisted that the sort of witness that Christians are called to be in order to honor the mandate to be Peace Makers in this context must be bold. Christians- if you are "lukewarm" I spew you from my mouth - it is written. Boldness in a Christian Peace Witness DEMANDS we stand and be counted and heard.

You may think this not so unusual coming from a pulpit. So let me tell you more about the Reverend Anne Troy. She is also an attorney who is on a part time basis employed by the Federal Government. She is a former JAG attorney, and thus a former ranked military person, who stands to lose by her confession of faith her high security clearance and possibly her job.
She confessed that her, and indeed Christian leadership's past silence and acquiescence to this war is a form of betrayal to the character of Christ, the Prince of Peace.
There was no evidence to start this war, she insisted, speaking as an attorney.

The Administration seems completely blinded to the fact that it is the problem;
that it has engaged in policies that have directly inspired more murderous mayhem and put Americans in more danger around the globe, that its aggression and warmaking has catalyzed
our enemies to bond together against us, and that it incited the Iranians to join forces against us.
No, Mr. Gingrich, it is not the debate that is dangerous, it is the failure to debate responsibly that is dangerously irresponsible.
It is the only responsible thing to understand what is actually happening in our name because our actions are further endangering our security.

Imagine that if in our civil war the entire country of France joined the confederate army while they were being defeated. That would of course inspire the British to join the Union forces and massive bloodshed the likes of which would be characterized a "world" or global war would have followed until half the country was dead- and it would be fair in that case to blame the French for the escalation.
What we are doing in Iraq MUST be questioned because we not only have a moral obligation to see what our money is funding, but because we are being placed in far greater danger by the strategic ineptitude and policy miscalculations of a Foreign Policy so off the reservation that Congress, as co-equal to the Presidency must slam on the breaks before we all careen over the bridge.

BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS

Join us on March 16.

THE PRIVATIZATION OF EVERYTHING

THE PRIVATIZATION OF WAR
By Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Sr.
02-06-07 © Tribune Media Services
Reprinted with permission


They guard U.S. officials. They patrol the Green Zone, the U.S. headquarters in Iraq. They supply the food, the oil, clean the barracks and fix the machines. They aren’t U.S. soldiers; they are private contractors. The Bush administration has privatized war. The second-biggest army in Iraq consists of armed security forces supplied by private contractors.
They act above the law — and with unclear lines of authority. They work abroad, so they are largely beyond the reach of U.S. law. On contract from the U.S. government, they are beyond the reach of Iraqi law, as established in an order issued by the U.S. Authority there before turning power over to the Iraqi government. When the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandals were revealed, private security forces and interrogators were at the center of it. But none was held accountable under law.

It isn’t only the U.S. that privatizes war; the British have followed suit, as well. The British charity, War on Want, reported last year that there are three British private security guards to every British soldier in Iraq.
Congressional investigators are about to unearth massive abuses and corruption in Iraq, but the mercenaries operate across the world. In 1998, for example, DynCorp security agents in Bosnia were implicated in a highly publicized sex-slave scandal. The firm quickly recalled at least 13 agents from the country; none faced criminal prosecution.
The modern-day mercenaries also operate largely free of government scrutiny or oversight. Their contracts and their activities are shrouded in secrecy. Companies, unlike government agencies, are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act and often stonewall congressional inquiry. Members of Congress have sought — thus far without success — to get an explanation of the contracts that Blackwater USA security officers have in Iraq.
Under George Bush, the use of private contractors generally has doubled to about $400 billion a year in 2006, as the administration is driven by a philosophy that would privatize everything it can. Finally, with Democrats reviving congressional oversight, questions are being asked.
Private contractors claim to provide savings and efficiency because of the benefits of competition. In fact, the GAO now suggests, in most areas, the contractors have little competition. Sole-source, no-bid contracts are the rule, not the exception. And the contractors — as we saw in the bribing of Rep. Duke Cunningham and the other scandals of the DeLay Congress – spend millions wining, dining and rewarding the legislators who provide them with their immensely profitable contracts. Instead of saving money, taxpayers are likely getting fleeced.
The Privatization of War
Page 2
The top 20 service contractors, according to The New York Times, have spent nearly $300 million since 2000 on lobbying and have donated some $23 million to political campaigns.
The whole thing gets incestuous. The New York Times reports that in June, the General Services Administration, short of employees to review cases of incompetence and fraud by federal contractors, actually hired a private contractor to do the investigation. And the contractor — CACI International — had itself barely avoided suspension from federal contracting for its role in Abu Ghraib’s crimes. For the GSA, CACI supplied six people — at $104 an hour — over $200,000 per person annually.
These private armies now may themselves become a problem. The Guardian reports on a bizarre plot in Equatorial Guinea, where 67 foreign mercenaries were arrested in what may have been a foiled attempt to overthrow the dictator of that oil-rich nation. And former Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide charged that the private guards who were supposed to be defending him instead abandoned him under orders from the U.S. government when he was overthrown.
If privatization doesn’t produce savings and offers such scope for abuse, why has it continued to grow? Part of the reason is simply the animus for government by modern day conservatives. Part of it is political grandstanding. President Clinton, for example, boasted that he had cut the size of the federal bureaucracy — even as those cuts were feeding a cancerous growth of contracting out vital services. The problem now is that the government lacks the capacity to control its contractors — and has begun contracting out that oversight. The result, too often, is costly waste. But when the government is creating private armies, often beyond the reach of war, the perils are far greater.
The Congress has begun a great debate about our policy in Iraq. But it is vital that they investigate — as Sen. Joe Biden and Rep. Henry Waxman have promised — the privatization of war. This must be brought under control before the Congress finds itself — like the Roman Senate at the end of the Roman Republic — faced with mercenary armies that are out of control.