Thursday, March 26, 2015
Tuesday, March 24, 2015
Monday, March 23, 2015
Weekly Address: It’s Time to Confirm Loretta Lynch
In case you missed it, Saturdays White House message championed Obama's pick of US Attorney General. This blog strongly
affirms the need to VOTE and approve the Attorney General nominee. It is inexplicable and unprecedented that any President's choice for AG of Justice would be upheld by non-vote for this long. It appears more than politics is at play but perhaps also sexism and racism. The Republicans want to run Holder out of town and leave us apparently with no replacement. Here it is appropriate to say-Are You People Crazy? or just racist or sexist? Or do you perhaps not understand the importance of what an Attorney General does in America? We are watching. And we are not amused.
affirms the need to VOTE and approve the Attorney General nominee. It is inexplicable and unprecedented that any President's choice for AG of Justice would be upheld by non-vote for this long. It appears more than politics is at play but perhaps also sexism and racism. The Republicans want to run Holder out of town and leave us apparently with no replacement. Here it is appropriate to say-Are You People Crazy? or just racist or sexist? Or do you perhaps not understand the importance of what an Attorney General does in America? We are watching. And we are not amused.
Sunday, March 22, 2015
Saturday, March 21, 2015
FOR SHAME
The Voice of Another Intern.
I was an intern in the White House Transition Team during the first Clinton period in 1992-3 in the Justice "Cluster" and State Department "Cluster." I wasn't there long before I found more substantive legal work in the DC private sector- But this gives me some perspective on Monica Lewinsky's latest taking to the public sympathy waves at a Ted Talk that was splattered all over the media.
I should note that the comments below are not motivated by a desire to see Hillary in the White House (I am equally a fan of Al Gore or John Kerry for whom I also volunteered as Presidents I think), nor are these comments meant to in any way excuse real cyber-bullying. For that cause they need another champion.
Here I go- Monica, you are Shameless. Admittedly. She boasts she's over the Shame thing now. The problem with Monica's shame, like that of all self-justified adulteresses who hit on married men or entertain their roaming eyes and other parts is that they don't couple the Shame with Repentance because the remorse is situational. The remorse she explains is because she was caught. Were she not caught and dragged through the legal nightmare of FBI stings, threats of jail and prosecution for lying on an Affidavit, and legal harassment, she would have found it perfectly acceptable, normal even to be in love with her boss who just happened to be married and happened to be the President of the United States. That's not real remorse. Its really pathetic.
When I met Bill Clinton briefly (twice) he struck me as tall, pudgy (it was his Big Mac days) with a funny W.C.Fields bulbous nose and he struck me as someone from a Southern State who likely wouldn't make partner in a big Manhattan firm so why not run for President. I was not remotely attracted to him or impressed with his charisma. He never remotely tried to hit on me and if he did I wouldn't have hesitated to tell him I wasn't that kind of girl. In fact I first volunteered for Jerry Brown and after he gave his sad concession speech at the Convention I switched teams I was so not into Clinton. I was not attracted to the sleazy single attorney in the White House counsel cluster from Yale either who shall remain nameless, who kept asking all the female interns for back-rubs and shoulder massages (provoking my thought of -get a girlfriend loser). But had I been strongly overwhelmingly attracted to Bill as some dimwits are to men in power because of their position, I would have said to myself- WHAT ARE YOU MAD STARKING CRAZY? HE'S A MARRIED MAN AND THE PRESIDENT. Monica had no such inner voice.
Monica was and is missing a morality filter. Its the filter that says DON'T YOU DARE. Its the lack of any solid moral foundation that would have educated her to the fact that adultery is on the top ten hit list of DON'T YOU DARE right up there with murder. When you murder a family bond, you destroy a marriage united soul bond and potentially even future fruit of the marriage. DON'T YOU DARE. I wondered if anyone bothered to take the girl to church or synagogue. You don't volunteer on campaigns to start flipping your thong at the candidate- (I repress here my instinct to be brutally unkind out of respect for Lent.)
A person who admits she knew the game because she was 'in love' with a married man before (busy girl for 22) who boldly on and off blows the President for two years under massive delusions that she meant anything to him other than the girl who was stupid enough to blow him off for two years could only have been raised in a broken home in Beverly Hills. Delusions of grandeur must have prompted her to think he would actually dump his Ivy League lawyer wife for someone who barely graduated from college apparently majoring in bad musicals because she was a daughter of a rich doctor from Beverly Hills.
Someone who is called out for what they actually did is not being cyber-bullied. She is not the light shining against innocent victimhood of gays jumping off bridges because she is neither innocent nor a victim. She made her bed, or bathroom closet, and she didn't get to sleep in it- because she was servicing someone she had no business carrying on with. You get to leave, and yes, shut up about it, because your mouth should be sanitized with rubbing alcohol before you get to air it ever again. Again, I repress here my instinct to let her have it out of respect for Lent (we are told to be Kind.)
The fact that the Washington Post, and Ted organizers and anyone else who invites her to peddle her OBSCENELY OFFENSIVE recreated Innocent Victim lying tripe around nationally is purely political. This is a girl who has no moral judgment, who has no appreciation of the gravity of her sins, who has no concept that she did anything wrong in any sense other than run afoul of that pesky thing called American perjury law.
I am beginning to believe there is a Right Wing Conspiracy against Hillary. Keep it up and I may be tempted to help her run for President.
DISGUSTING.
I was an intern in the White House Transition Team during the first Clinton period in 1992-3 in the Justice "Cluster" and State Department "Cluster." I wasn't there long before I found more substantive legal work in the DC private sector- But this gives me some perspective on Monica Lewinsky's latest taking to the public sympathy waves at a Ted Talk that was splattered all over the media.
I should note that the comments below are not motivated by a desire to see Hillary in the White House (I am equally a fan of Al Gore or John Kerry for whom I also volunteered as Presidents I think), nor are these comments meant to in any way excuse real cyber-bullying. For that cause they need another champion.
Here I go- Monica, you are Shameless. Admittedly. She boasts she's over the Shame thing now. The problem with Monica's shame, like that of all self-justified adulteresses who hit on married men or entertain their roaming eyes and other parts is that they don't couple the Shame with Repentance because the remorse is situational. The remorse she explains is because she was caught. Were she not caught and dragged through the legal nightmare of FBI stings, threats of jail and prosecution for lying on an Affidavit, and legal harassment, she would have found it perfectly acceptable, normal even to be in love with her boss who just happened to be married and happened to be the President of the United States. That's not real remorse. Its really pathetic.
When I met Bill Clinton briefly (twice) he struck me as tall, pudgy (it was his Big Mac days) with a funny W.C.Fields bulbous nose and he struck me as someone from a Southern State who likely wouldn't make partner in a big Manhattan firm so why not run for President. I was not remotely attracted to him or impressed with his charisma. He never remotely tried to hit on me and if he did I wouldn't have hesitated to tell him I wasn't that kind of girl. In fact I first volunteered for Jerry Brown and after he gave his sad concession speech at the Convention I switched teams I was so not into Clinton. I was not attracted to the sleazy single attorney in the White House counsel cluster from Yale either who shall remain nameless, who kept asking all the female interns for back-rubs and shoulder massages (provoking my thought of -get a girlfriend loser). But had I been strongly overwhelmingly attracted to Bill as some dimwits are to men in power because of their position, I would have said to myself- WHAT ARE YOU MAD STARKING CRAZY? HE'S A MARRIED MAN AND THE PRESIDENT. Monica had no such inner voice.
Monica was and is missing a morality filter. Its the filter that says DON'T YOU DARE. Its the lack of any solid moral foundation that would have educated her to the fact that adultery is on the top ten hit list of DON'T YOU DARE right up there with murder. When you murder a family bond, you destroy a marriage united soul bond and potentially even future fruit of the marriage. DON'T YOU DARE. I wondered if anyone bothered to take the girl to church or synagogue. You don't volunteer on campaigns to start flipping your thong at the candidate- (I repress here my instinct to be brutally unkind out of respect for Lent.)
A person who admits she knew the game because she was 'in love' with a married man before (busy girl for 22) who boldly on and off blows the President for two years under massive delusions that she meant anything to him other than the girl who was stupid enough to blow him off for two years could only have been raised in a broken home in Beverly Hills. Delusions of grandeur must have prompted her to think he would actually dump his Ivy League lawyer wife for someone who barely graduated from college apparently majoring in bad musicals because she was a daughter of a rich doctor from Beverly Hills.
Someone who is called out for what they actually did is not being cyber-bullied. She is not the light shining against innocent victimhood of gays jumping off bridges because she is neither innocent nor a victim. She made her bed, or bathroom closet, and she didn't get to sleep in it- because she was servicing someone she had no business carrying on with. You get to leave, and yes, shut up about it, because your mouth should be sanitized with rubbing alcohol before you get to air it ever again. Again, I repress here my instinct to let her have it out of respect for Lent (we are told to be Kind.)
The fact that the Washington Post, and Ted organizers and anyone else who invites her to peddle her OBSCENELY OFFENSIVE recreated Innocent Victim lying tripe around nationally is purely political. This is a girl who has no moral judgment, who has no appreciation of the gravity of her sins, who has no concept that she did anything wrong in any sense other than run afoul of that pesky thing called American perjury law.
I am beginning to believe there is a Right Wing Conspiracy against Hillary. Keep it up and I may be tempted to help her run for President.
DISGUSTING.
Thursday, March 19, 2015
Wednesday, March 18, 2015
Georgetown and the World Bank make great partners.
THANK YOU
"There is an acknowledgment that there IS Climate Change in the Congress, but just not that it is man made." That is progress from flat deniel, said the World Bank President in his address to Georgetown on Climate Change as part of the Global Initiatives symposia series Georgetown is collaborating with the World Bank. The work continues.
Here are his solutions in a nutshell:
1. Put a price on Carbon.
2. Remove Fossil Fuel subsidies, accelerate efficiency and recoverable uses.
3. Build low carbon cities (infastructure)
4. Develop Climate Smart Agriculture.
There is no denying that climate change devastates poorer countries worse than developed ones and that you cannot care about poor people without caring about Climate Change.
Decoupling economic growth from Carbon Emissions should be a real objective.
Access to energy should not be dependent on carbon emissions. We can do this in a more climate smart way. A Carbon Price forces you to be smart.
The World Bank President (former President of Dartmouth) is brilliant, down to earth, incredibly
well informed, and someone whom anyone who cares about energy policy should listen to.
The insistent visionaries like Al Gore and the Prince of Wales in Harmony harping have proved prophetic. Climate change is here. Flat-earthers and carbon belching industrialists who are modern day robber barons robbing the future of sustainable life try in vain to recruit delusional proxies.
The World Bank President and Georgetown's President Jack DeGoia help lead the charge to a world where everyone can breath easy in clean air, peaceful with adequate resources for all.
"There is an acknowledgment that there IS Climate Change in the Congress, but just not that it is man made." That is progress from flat deniel, said the World Bank President in his address to Georgetown on Climate Change as part of the Global Initiatives symposia series Georgetown is collaborating with the World Bank. The work continues.
Here are his solutions in a nutshell:
1. Put a price on Carbon.
2. Remove Fossil Fuel subsidies, accelerate efficiency and recoverable uses.
3. Build low carbon cities (infastructure)
4. Develop Climate Smart Agriculture.
There is no denying that climate change devastates poorer countries worse than developed ones and that you cannot care about poor people without caring about Climate Change.
Decoupling economic growth from Carbon Emissions should be a real objective.
Access to energy should not be dependent on carbon emissions. We can do this in a more climate smart way. A Carbon Price forces you to be smart.
The World Bank President (former President of Dartmouth) is brilliant, down to earth, incredibly
well informed, and someone whom anyone who cares about energy policy should listen to.
The insistent visionaries like Al Gore and the Prince of Wales in Harmony harping have proved prophetic. Climate change is here. Flat-earthers and carbon belching industrialists who are modern day robber barons robbing the future of sustainable life try in vain to recruit delusional proxies.
The World Bank President and Georgetown's President Jack DeGoia help lead the charge to a world where everyone can breath easy in clean air, peaceful with adequate resources for all.
Saturday, March 14, 2015
Sunday, March 08, 2015
Friday, March 06, 2015
Poet as Minor Poet
Little boy who lost his runaway mom
then his home as his father went awol
never to return from the star afar,
i hold your head in my hands
and whisper in your eyes
saying my mother left too
i am just like you
and my father died in misery and mystery
with a broad smile on his face
as he surely found Grace
with Jesus in his celestial boat ride
to the other side. Yours did no doubt too
and he watches over you.
Little sweet boy who lost his runaway mom
then his house as his father went awol
never to return from the star afar,
I hold your head in my hands
and whisper to your eyes
saying you are loved
beyond the grave, beyond the brave
face you must put on, beyond the boisterous
bourgeous demands of ostentations'
pride. You are loved and alive
and I will meet you at The Center
where it still all holds together.
then his home as his father went awol
never to return from the star afar,
i hold your head in my hands
and whisper in your eyes
saying my mother left too
i am just like you
and my father died in misery and mystery
with a broad smile on his face
as he surely found Grace
with Jesus in his celestial boat ride
to the other side. Yours did no doubt too
and he watches over you.
Little sweet boy who lost his runaway mom
then his house as his father went awol
never to return from the star afar,
I hold your head in my hands
and whisper to your eyes
saying you are loved
beyond the grave, beyond the brave
face you must put on, beyond the boisterous
bourgeous demands of ostentations'
pride. You are loved and alive
and I will meet you at The Center
where it still all holds together.
Thursday, March 05, 2015
Golden Handcuffs
Golden Handcuffs
chain you to the mansion
in the lush suburbs with 2.2 kids,
and a fine furry dog
as the wife Leaves it to Beaver
with avacado appliances
on a designer's discount
as she enthrals with coctails
but your eyes
belie your misery
Your eyes say these lies
don't fool me.
Your eyes are the sadness
of a life gone to madness
and your eyes are your soul's
look for Love.
I knew you when you had dark hair
and your paunch was slimmer than santa when
your mind was quick and your wit was slick
and your joy mixed with longing for heaven
But settled in
to prestige and position
and a mansion in bucolic green
Life is so sweet
when its not so neatly
chaining you in
an ego's dream.
Exemplary sure,
but dead as the door
and I can feel your rage
that life wasn't supposed to be this mean
and you were supposed to love this age.
But you can't leave
it would cause scandal
which would destroy your mind
a second time
and so it goes,
frost on a rose
obla dee obla dah
the dream froze waiting
sleeping beauty's princely kiss.
Wednesday, March 04, 2015
Sunday, March 01, 2015
Saturday, February 28, 2015
Friday, February 27, 2015
His Star is Rising- to the North, North Star
Celebrity culture hails individuals for all the wrong reasons often but there is one YouTube celebrity that is hailed for the right ones: Father James Martin, SJ (Jesuit Priest) is fastly becoming more famous than Stephen Colbert whom he pastored in the now dormant Colbert Report. With the expansion of America magazine into America Media, he flips the script and mike to become not the interviewee but the interviewer of spiritually interesting significant people as the Jesuits answer to Oprah.
His star rises like the North Star- not just because he is in the NorthEast (son of the Boston province from Philadelphia originally now in Manhattan), but because like the North Star everything he does brightly beams a spotlight on JESUS.
James Martin is the author of "Jesus: A Pilgrimage" and about a hundred (exaggeration) other best selling books, some hilariously funny as he strove to put humor back in the oft morose spirituality of the limping saved.
He is what you hope a true christian is-- for his Lenten message he talked about not so much giving up something (my mother always gave up watermelon which was never in season) but about affirmatively doing something concrete along the carnal acts of mercy lines- echoing Pope Francis' mandate to pay attention to the Matthew 25 demands. His lenten message was simply titled "Be Kind" which would be a good description for him all around.
Father Martin started his career in finance as a Wharton grad working at GE. He decided to enter the prieshood after the business world which he says is a great career for some but just not for him as he heard the call. He is incredibly witty, smart, and imminently wise. Once in a while he goes on book tours and you can catch him and get him to sign a book. He will be appearing March 1 at Fordham Prep in NYC in an event open to the public with blogger/author Andrew Sullivan and a Fordham theology professor to sign more books. If you are lucky enough to be in NYC go. I love this guy.
Thursday, February 26, 2015
Saturday, February 21, 2015
Denial is not a River in Egypt
France My Beloved
I love most things about France. Its Anti-Semitism is not one of them. There is a serious problem in France regarding their attitudes about Jewish people. There are huge numbers of Jewish people now migrating to Israel for that reason. Their history during WWII witnessing an occupation of Nazis and deportation of massive numbers of Jewish children is shocking. And it didn't end there.
Recently there has been a wave of violence and desecrations against Jewish synagogues and business establishments. A viral YouTube is going around of a Jewish man who is merely walking down the street with a yamulka on receiving harassment and provocations.
It is so bad that a French Minister took to their equivalent of Parliament and loudly denounced the sentiment all too prevalent. The Anti-Defamation league picked it up and wants everyone to see it- so watch.
IT HERE.
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10152766267563717&fref=nf
I love most things about France. Its Anti-Semitism is not one of them. There is a serious problem in France regarding their attitudes about Jewish people. There are huge numbers of Jewish people now migrating to Israel for that reason. Their history during WWII witnessing an occupation of Nazis and deportation of massive numbers of Jewish children is shocking. And it didn't end there.
Recently there has been a wave of violence and desecrations against Jewish synagogues and business establishments. A viral YouTube is going around of a Jewish man who is merely walking down the street with a yamulka on receiving harassment and provocations.
It is so bad that a French Minister took to their equivalent of Parliament and loudly denounced the sentiment all too prevalent. The Anti-Defamation league picked it up and wants everyone to see it- so watch.
IT HERE.
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10152766267563717&fref=nf
Friday, February 20, 2015
Spare Me Please
Cardinal-Speak For Yourself.
There are mounds of psychological studies on the difference between men and women.
The church made of all male decision makers gets one thing insistently wrong stemming from the difference between men and women. Men are constantly thinking of sex. It is a psychological function stemming from biological function. It has been posited that this is because their male organs are outside them visible and observed every time they go to the bathroom and they can be 'aroused' by merely looking at something. Women's sex organs are hidden inside them, they don't see them-out of sight out of mind. Women psychologically crave affection, warmth, and emotional security. These also are born of biological functions because they are necessary to nurture children. Men crave sex. So men clergy often engage in classic "projection" where they think male female relations are complicated by a sex urge on the woman's part, imputing impurity in women because they suffer from it. Women crave children. Accusations of impurity from male priests are nothing more than projection. Its in their imagination because they assume women are like them in that regard. This causes a lot of heaved abuse on women.Women want children more than sex. They want not to be wasted. They want not to have to freeze their eggs because men are too immature to know how to conduct relationships until their 40s and 50s. Women do not look at their sex organs on a daily basis with wild imagination.
So when men want to lecture women on purity, chastity or sexual continence, women want to lecture men on growing the F up.
Corporal Acts of Mercy
Jobs.
Not Steve, the kind you get a paycheck for.
There is a lot of discussion about the acts of mercy one should do around Lent. All the Matthew 25 heavenly litmus tests: feeding the poor, clothing the naked, visiting those in prison, tending to the sick, etc.
There is a way to undermine all the suffering occasioned by the needs of Matthew 25. Give someone a job or teach them how to create them. If people had "legal" work in exchange for the fruits of their labor they could buy their own clothes, feed themselves and tend to their medical care and stay out of prison.
The Protestant world might focus more on Jobs and Enterprise and Business for that reason and the catholic world on straight 'Charity.' Catholic Charities is the greatest provider of emergency support along the corporal acts of mercy lines outside any government.
To truly be 'charitable' the church would not settle for people with stripped dignity getting hand-outs, but would be actively teaching people job skills in prisons. There should be church run business schools in every prison. The Jesuits have a world class business school at Georgetown. They could launch a program of business and enterprise to take to prisons across the country. Someone steal my idea. I won't press charges.
Wednesday, February 18, 2015
Wednesday, February 11, 2015
Moving to DC?
I don't often do this and am not in the real estate biz but I have a friend who is selling an awesome Condo in the cool, hip 14th St. corridor of DC, ten minutes from the Columbia Heights metro in a renovated classic building. He has had it for about a decade and wants to move on to the important next phase of his life.
His MLS listing is http://matrixreports.mris.com/MatrixReportOutput/ReportOutput/97626/Full_Listing4364.PDF
Tuesday, February 10, 2015
Monday, February 09, 2015
What Is An Honorable Man.
Jealousy is of the devil, it is the work not of God but division can be demonically inspired to destroy Love. When you destroy authentic Love you destroy God because there is no greater tautology. God is Love. Love is God.
http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2015/02/09/pope_francis_the_devil_is_the_root_of_jealousy,_war/1122281. http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2015/02/09/pope_francis_the_devil_is_the_root_of_jealousy,_war/1122281
Priests should be allowed to marry ONE woman, not three, or ten in polymorphous pagan confusion and exploitation. ONE. If Priests married ONE many manipulated women wouldn't suffer delusion for years. Everyone would know if someone was seriously honorable or not.
Jealousy is of the devil, it is the work not of God but division can be demonically inspired to destroy Love. When you destroy authentic Love you destroy God because there is no greater tautology. God is Love. Love is God.
http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2015/02/09/pope_francis_the_devil_is_the_root_of_jealousy,_war/1122281. http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2015/02/09/pope_francis_the_devil_is_the_root_of_jealousy,_war/1122281
Priests should be allowed to marry ONE woman, not three, or ten in polymorphous pagan confusion and exploitation. ONE. If Priests married ONE many manipulated women wouldn't suffer delusion for years. Everyone would know if someone was seriously honorable or not.
If you must be dogmatic
Be Dogmatic About This:
"I have a dogmatic certainty: God is in every person's life. God is in everyone's life. Even if the life of a person has been a disaster, even if it is destroyed by vices, drugs or anything else - God is in this person's life. You can - you must - try to seek God in every human life." Pope Francis
"I have a dogmatic certainty: God is in every person's life. God is in everyone's life. Even if the life of a person has been a disaster, even if it is destroyed by vices, drugs or anything else - God is in this person's life. You can - you must - try to seek God in every human life." Pope Francis
The Age of Women
Let Them Eat Wedding Cake-
Yesterday at Mass the usual cycle of reading came around and presented that troublesome verse that make priests uncomfortable. You know the one- Jesus was brought to the house of Simon-Peter whose MOTHER IN LAW was sick with fever, Jesus cures her and she gets up and serves him. Wait, What?
The first Mass I went to indicated that Peter Had a Mother in Law, ergo Peter was a Widower. Reductio Ad Absurdum, non sequitor. Why did this priest think that-aside from the convenient justification of the absurd policy forbidding wives of roman catholic priests you may wonder. He was taught that because nowhere is Peter's wife mentioned anywhere in scripture she must not have been alive during his travels. He couldn't divorce her-that wouldn't fit the narrative- and the apostles had to be a sort of band of brothers, so ditch the wife. Kill her off before the show begins. Magdelene who?
When I went on Pilgrimmage to Rome I asked where the statue of Mrs Peter Pope was at the Vatican.
This shocked and horrified the mother of the priest who led the pilgrimmage as if i had asked where Saint Peter's brothel was in the roman baths, such was her association with Priest and Wife. Very Silly but true. Can you say oedipal? The tour guide said in hushed tones that its rumored throughout Rome that she was crucified upside down as was Peter, next to him, and she is buried with him in the tomb of Saint Peter in Rome, because of course. Wives were buried with their husbands. Has anyone done any DNA on the bones in the Tomb of Saint Peter to see if there is only one person in there?
The fact of lack of mention of a wife would be normal if she were as ubiquitous a backdrop as the wallpaper. If she was always there you wouldn't need to mention her as her presence would be and is assumed, i.e. and then Peter went home and had his back rubbed by his wife to put his troubled mind to sleep - or whatever. You wouldn't write in the gospel of Matthew, then Peter's wife washed the clothes and laid them on Peter's bed before he went fishing. Women didn't rank much then and their works wouldn't make the narrative. Peter's wife might just have been the reason for the bed he found made, the clothes he found washed, the bread he found baked and the soup he found hot and the folded fishing line in the back of the shed. That's not what the story is about however. If I am writing an engineering book about NASAs first flight I don't need to mention that the wife of the astronaut makes great lasagna. I don't need to kill off the wife however narratively to demonstrate what superb mission the NASA flight is. Its just a non-mention.
I wanted to see how the Jesuits treated the passage so off to Holy Trinity whereupon the same reading is read. If you don't already know anywhere in any catholic church in the world the same New Testament gospel reading is read the same day-they do it in cycles. Here is how they treated it: they didn't. The Cardinal ordered all churches apparently to pump the Cardinal's appeal and ask for money, so after the reading the Pastor pre-empted this broadcast for a message from your sponsorship. Convenient dodge? A segway from "and she got up and served them?" I choose to think that the Pastor had more sense than to peddle the -ergo Simon Peter was a Widower line. That's why I like Jesuits-they don't pretend.
This nixing of wives from holy men's biographies strikes me as fundamentally at the root of some of the deeper malaise plaguing the catholic church creating pathologies that are legendary. The debate over whether the catholic church should come into the realization of the worth, value, and intrinsic equality of women surprisingly has people actually debating whether girls can even be altar servers in some areas of the modern world. In which cycle is the passage "there is not male nor female in Christ as all are one in the Lord…" because we don't hear it enough or it doesn't sink in. There are women Deacons mentioned by name in the scripture. If you ask a Dominican how to explain that one away they will say the office of 'deacon' didn't mean the same thing then as today. That's because we now define it to only mean-the stuff people who are not quite male celibate priests do. Clearly the women who are significant in the Bible have been footnoted into minimal importance in modern times but we still know they were hugely significant then. I want to know more about them. Why can't you find a bible class in a catholic church on Women in Scripture. There was a judge named Deborah-who was she for example. There was a saavy business woman named Lydia, who appeared not to fund things with just her husband's money.
It is highly disturbing to me that churches overtly want to put women in the church 'in their place' and some even are required to have classes on the 'proper role of women' in the church- as if to say-don't you dare fall in love with a priest or we will deem you unfit to sit in the pews. This of course should offend the entire Christian world as much as it grieves the Holy Spirit and God who is Love.
It appears that tempting a priest to marriage is akin to a temptation worthy of a whore house because the emotional lives of women have been so theologically demeaned or misunderstood that Woman as temptress Eve is the predominant view.
The maligning of women, the petty persecutions of women, the caddy gossipy perverse bullying of women that goes on in catholic churches where there is a woman in love with a priest is a form of emotional distress that scandalizes God.
I puzzled how to title this. I almost titled it "the Miseducation of Monsignor," or "the Writing -Off of Peter's Wife" or "the Murder of Mrs. Pope."
But that didn't say enough. Because if you understand how profound this negation of the wife of Peter plays into theological bastardizations and perversions of the life of catholic church communities, you will understand better why women get beaten, abused, dismissed, demeaned, disgraced and emotionally destroyed by men who consider themselves "Holy" or at least justified. You will also understand better how men can justify pederasty as an occupational hazard because going the temptation to women route would be utterly more damnable.
Its time to put a statue of Mrs. Peter Pope in the Vatican, somewhere next to her husband, where she likely was all her life. When Jesus told people that those who left behind wives, children, brothers, sisters, etc. for the kingdom would receive multifold more in this life and the life to come, he did not mean ditch, castigate out those also following me. That verse is a twin to the one telling people that mother will be against daughter, son against father, brother against brother, etc….because some would follow him and some not. It is not a command to leave your wife. You don't leave people on the same mission.
I settled on the aspirational title 'The Age of Women' because its time. It must be time. It is a call of the Holy Spirit to get real and get right with half the human race.
Because a Heart is a terrible thing to waste.
Yesterday at Mass the usual cycle of reading came around and presented that troublesome verse that make priests uncomfortable. You know the one- Jesus was brought to the house of Simon-Peter whose MOTHER IN LAW was sick with fever, Jesus cures her and she gets up and serves him. Wait, What?
The first Mass I went to indicated that Peter Had a Mother in Law, ergo Peter was a Widower. Reductio Ad Absurdum, non sequitor. Why did this priest think that-aside from the convenient justification of the absurd policy forbidding wives of roman catholic priests you may wonder. He was taught that because nowhere is Peter's wife mentioned anywhere in scripture she must not have been alive during his travels. He couldn't divorce her-that wouldn't fit the narrative- and the apostles had to be a sort of band of brothers, so ditch the wife. Kill her off before the show begins. Magdelene who?
When I went on Pilgrimmage to Rome I asked where the statue of Mrs Peter Pope was at the Vatican.
This shocked and horrified the mother of the priest who led the pilgrimmage as if i had asked where Saint Peter's brothel was in the roman baths, such was her association with Priest and Wife. Very Silly but true. Can you say oedipal? The tour guide said in hushed tones that its rumored throughout Rome that she was crucified upside down as was Peter, next to him, and she is buried with him in the tomb of Saint Peter in Rome, because of course. Wives were buried with their husbands. Has anyone done any DNA on the bones in the Tomb of Saint Peter to see if there is only one person in there?
The fact of lack of mention of a wife would be normal if she were as ubiquitous a backdrop as the wallpaper. If she was always there you wouldn't need to mention her as her presence would be and is assumed, i.e. and then Peter went home and had his back rubbed by his wife to put his troubled mind to sleep - or whatever. You wouldn't write in the gospel of Matthew, then Peter's wife washed the clothes and laid them on Peter's bed before he went fishing. Women didn't rank much then and their works wouldn't make the narrative. Peter's wife might just have been the reason for the bed he found made, the clothes he found washed, the bread he found baked and the soup he found hot and the folded fishing line in the back of the shed. That's not what the story is about however. If I am writing an engineering book about NASAs first flight I don't need to mention that the wife of the astronaut makes great lasagna. I don't need to kill off the wife however narratively to demonstrate what superb mission the NASA flight is. Its just a non-mention.
I wanted to see how the Jesuits treated the passage so off to Holy Trinity whereupon the same reading is read. If you don't already know anywhere in any catholic church in the world the same New Testament gospel reading is read the same day-they do it in cycles. Here is how they treated it: they didn't. The Cardinal ordered all churches apparently to pump the Cardinal's appeal and ask for money, so after the reading the Pastor pre-empted this broadcast for a message from your sponsorship. Convenient dodge? A segway from "and she got up and served them?" I choose to think that the Pastor had more sense than to peddle the -ergo Simon Peter was a Widower line. That's why I like Jesuits-they don't pretend.
This nixing of wives from holy men's biographies strikes me as fundamentally at the root of some of the deeper malaise plaguing the catholic church creating pathologies that are legendary. The debate over whether the catholic church should come into the realization of the worth, value, and intrinsic equality of women surprisingly has people actually debating whether girls can even be altar servers in some areas of the modern world. In which cycle is the passage "there is not male nor female in Christ as all are one in the Lord…" because we don't hear it enough or it doesn't sink in. There are women Deacons mentioned by name in the scripture. If you ask a Dominican how to explain that one away they will say the office of 'deacon' didn't mean the same thing then as today. That's because we now define it to only mean-the stuff people who are not quite male celibate priests do. Clearly the women who are significant in the Bible have been footnoted into minimal importance in modern times but we still know they were hugely significant then. I want to know more about them. Why can't you find a bible class in a catholic church on Women in Scripture. There was a judge named Deborah-who was she for example. There was a saavy business woman named Lydia, who appeared not to fund things with just her husband's money.
It is highly disturbing to me that churches overtly want to put women in the church 'in their place' and some even are required to have classes on the 'proper role of women' in the church- as if to say-don't you dare fall in love with a priest or we will deem you unfit to sit in the pews. This of course should offend the entire Christian world as much as it grieves the Holy Spirit and God who is Love.
It appears that tempting a priest to marriage is akin to a temptation worthy of a whore house because the emotional lives of women have been so theologically demeaned or misunderstood that Woman as temptress Eve is the predominant view.
The maligning of women, the petty persecutions of women, the caddy gossipy perverse bullying of women that goes on in catholic churches where there is a woman in love with a priest is a form of emotional distress that scandalizes God.
I puzzled how to title this. I almost titled it "the Miseducation of Monsignor," or "the Writing -Off of Peter's Wife" or "the Murder of Mrs. Pope."
But that didn't say enough. Because if you understand how profound this negation of the wife of Peter plays into theological bastardizations and perversions of the life of catholic church communities, you will understand better why women get beaten, abused, dismissed, demeaned, disgraced and emotionally destroyed by men who consider themselves "Holy" or at least justified. You will also understand better how men can justify pederasty as an occupational hazard because going the temptation to women route would be utterly more damnable.
Its time to put a statue of Mrs. Peter Pope in the Vatican, somewhere next to her husband, where she likely was all her life. When Jesus told people that those who left behind wives, children, brothers, sisters, etc. for the kingdom would receive multifold more in this life and the life to come, he did not mean ditch, castigate out those also following me. That verse is a twin to the one telling people that mother will be against daughter, son against father, brother against brother, etc….because some would follow him and some not. It is not a command to leave your wife. You don't leave people on the same mission.
I settled on the aspirational title 'The Age of Women' because its time. It must be time. It is a call of the Holy Spirit to get real and get right with half the human race.
Because a Heart is a terrible thing to waste.
Tuesday, January 27, 2015
Home Sweet Home
Gaston Hall at Georgetown University has a special place in my heart, soul and memory because of some service held there in conjunction with my law school graduation over 25 years ago so whenever I get an invitation to go back to listen to any lecture or for any event I am honored, humbled and can't believe such a magnificent place exists each time I go there.
Today was a particularly beautiful day because Georgetown has launched with a lecture a Global Initiative cross -disciplinary series in which they will address through study, research, and lectures the pressing issues of the day on Development, Governance, Security and Environment/Global Climate Change/Warming.
Georgetown was founded of course originally by a Bishop and staffed with a bunch of French Jesuits, things I am extremely fond of- Jesuits and French people. Staring at the wall in the front waiting for the World Bank Group President to address the collection of academicians, community leaders and supporters and students, I noticed for the first time the words painted at the top of the wall spelled "WISDOM" and painted just below that "Ad Majorim Dei Gloriam." The later phrase is the Jesuit mantra meaning all for the greater glory of God. The two phrases go together- the greatest wisdom is found in action, contemplation, study, and all activity done for the greater glory of God. That was nowhere more evident than today when the President of Georgetown Jack DeGoia presented the President of the World Bank Group, Dr. Jim Kim, who spoke without notes for a solid long stretch on how the Bank is combatting global pandemics (Ebola, Aids, etc.) and poverty. Here is where practical real world "Kingdom Come" work meets the wisdom of two college Presidents (the World Bank President was President of Dartmouth prior to coming to DC). Georgetown has a mission to make the love of God real for the whole world which in a real practical sense involves saving it. And here was the gauntlet laid down for all listening, attending, blogging from afar and watching on c-span or wherever those cameras were from: THIS IS THE GENERATION THAT CAN ERADICATE POVERTY IN THEIR LIFETIME. It is possible. And the World Bank President dares everyone to coordinate in a cross disciplinary way to do it. Dr. Jim Kim spoke about how much health efforts in Africa keeping people alive in the face of global pandemics have helped the economies of countries affected by Aids and Ebola outbreaks.
The World Bank President has an American accent, and was raised in Iowa (where my grandparents were from). Its probably my (admitted) American bias that I assumed he wouldn't have an American accent but a Korean one just from photos I saw of him. I recognize that form of perhaps not so subtle bias, but Dr. Jim Kim wants us to recognize a far more insidious form of unsubtle bias, a mind-mold that says we can't do anything to save millions of Africans, so why try. It's Africa after all. He is brilliant, also an infectious disease medical doctor and he noted that it was possible to successfully treat people if you asked basic questions like are the drugs that cure or manage this on or off patent, can they be made generically cheaply (In India??) rather than be resigned to not treating people because of the cost of western drugs. He isn't a man who takes 'can't' for an answer.
Georgetown is a beautiful place. Not just because of the softly falling snow on the lawn that will sprout rose bushes in the Spring, but because of the Spirit of the people there who involve the best and the brightest around Washington to challenge people to think what is possible, what is worthy and what can we do together to change the world to bring His Kingdom on Earth as it is in Heaven.
Someone pinch me. World Bank Group President meets Georgetown President under a wall painted "WISDOM" . God must be smiling.
Monday, January 12, 2015
Friday, January 09, 2015
Thursday, January 08, 2015
Wednesday, January 07, 2015
Freedom of the Press and people who can't take a joke.
The French equivalent of masked gunmen storming with bombs and rifles Comedy Central headquarters and assassinating John Stewart, Stephen Colbert and John Oliver happened in Paris.
The Charlie Hebdo cartoonists were the French national heroes of political satire sacred cow lampooning.
An entire press office was blasted off the earth. This has been called France's 9-11.
Whoever did this heinous disgusting atrocity regardless of motive are the lowest life form that ever existed. As Satire is essential in and to democracy it seems an assault on democracy itself.
Former French Justice Minister Robert Badinter has called the editorial cartoonists France's 'soldiers of liberty.' Massive crowds have gathered all over Paris intoning "Je Suis Charlie" in solidarity. Candles are lit, banner waiving and chanting is heard around Paris' classic landmarks in protest.
Tomorrow France has declared a National Day of Mourning.
The Washington Post will publish some of Charlie Hebdos cartoons in solidarity.
Statements of condemnation of the acts have issued from no less than the Pope, French Imams,
President Hollande, Obama, NY Governor Cuomo and many other dignitaries who appreciate the gravity of the act.
We don't know the motives of these gunmen for certain or whether they acted on their own or were put up to it by someone or thing. But we do know what happened which is enough to say how very sad
and sorry that Paris and France experienced such a nightmare.
What do you say to a country when such an event takes place. Our thoughts and prayers are with you. Be Brave. Do not be Afraid. We are with you. Yes, all of that. Transatlantic hugs, wish we were with you now, prayers for your safety and peace.
Most of all we wish to say however awkwardly diplomatically, We Love You Still and Always Will.
Je Suis Charlie Comme Toi.
Wednesday, December 31, 2014
Sunday, December 28, 2014
Sunday, December 21, 2014
Thursday, December 18, 2014
Monday, December 15, 2014
Sunday, December 14, 2014
Friday, December 12, 2014
Thursday, December 04, 2014
The Fix Is In
Cried the Public
at the apparent outrage of a number of white police officers trying to subdue a large black man (african-american, dark skinned american, whatever term is now descriptive and non-perjorative) in New York on Staten Island with one officer gripping him in a 'choke-hold' while another sat on him as he gasped 'I can't breath' over and over again.
While it was difficult to believe in the Ferguson matter that a 12 person grand jury reviewing for months facts that made it look like a self-defense or fleeing felon causing danger claim could be valid, in this case, even the most hardened of conservatives are speechless. Its on video. And the only person who is being prosecuted is the videographer! Even the holy trinity of blonde talking heads, Ingram, Kelly and Sustern must be scratching their dark roots going "how do we spin this one!!" John Stewart says tragedy and time makes humor and bemoans "I need more time" to process something so wrong.
New York is no stranger to questionable police profiling. Only recently have they started amending under Court order the 'stop and frisk' abuses that had many innocent blacks saddled with records for 'walking while black' in the wrong street at the wrong time. Blacks were stopped, rudely questioned and roughed up so the police could make their chits while stunned families saw their family members randomly picked on just to inspire terror it seems in the community. Legal battles (and an iphone recording creating evidence of one smart kid) made people look at it differently and forced change. Perhaps better community policing entails building trust not terror. A new paradigm.
The recent no-bill return on indictment for the white cop with his tatooed buddies thrusting to the ground with his neck in a vice grip chokehold (a violation of police policy apparently) has more people on the street shouting "I Can't Breathe!" And suddenly it looks like modern day lynch mobs dressed in badges.
The facebook post that got a lot of attention last night seemed to say it all: "America, You Are Broken." When its open season on black guys standing on the street because they are black guys standing on the street who may or may not be engaging in petty crimes-to be either shot dead, or choked to death or otherwise bullied into an early grave, what kind of country is this? The whole world watches us and shakes their head. How can a people so great, so innovative, so industrious, so creative, not fix this. Where is the political will? Why is this situation tolerated? Who are you people!
One of my favorite Jesuit priests, Fr. James Martin, who has a family member in law enforcement, penned something poignant worth sharing here that I agree with one thousand percent:
at the apparent outrage of a number of white police officers trying to subdue a large black man (african-american, dark skinned american, whatever term is now descriptive and non-perjorative) in New York on Staten Island with one officer gripping him in a 'choke-hold' while another sat on him as he gasped 'I can't breath' over and over again.
While it was difficult to believe in the Ferguson matter that a 12 person grand jury reviewing for months facts that made it look like a self-defense or fleeing felon causing danger claim could be valid, in this case, even the most hardened of conservatives are speechless. Its on video. And the only person who is being prosecuted is the videographer! Even the holy trinity of blonde talking heads, Ingram, Kelly and Sustern must be scratching their dark roots going "how do we spin this one!!" John Stewart says tragedy and time makes humor and bemoans "I need more time" to process something so wrong.
New York is no stranger to questionable police profiling. Only recently have they started amending under Court order the 'stop and frisk' abuses that had many innocent blacks saddled with records for 'walking while black' in the wrong street at the wrong time. Blacks were stopped, rudely questioned and roughed up so the police could make their chits while stunned families saw their family members randomly picked on just to inspire terror it seems in the community. Legal battles (and an iphone recording creating evidence of one smart kid) made people look at it differently and forced change. Perhaps better community policing entails building trust not terror. A new paradigm.
The recent no-bill return on indictment for the white cop with his tatooed buddies thrusting to the ground with his neck in a vice grip chokehold (a violation of police policy apparently) has more people on the street shouting "I Can't Breathe!" And suddenly it looks like modern day lynch mobs dressed in badges.
The facebook post that got a lot of attention last night seemed to say it all: "America, You Are Broken." When its open season on black guys standing on the street because they are black guys standing on the street who may or may not be engaging in petty crimes-to be either shot dead, or choked to death or otherwise bullied into an early grave, what kind of country is this? The whole world watches us and shakes their head. How can a people so great, so innovative, so industrious, so creative, not fix this. Where is the political will? Why is this situation tolerated? Who are you people!
One of my favorite Jesuit priests, Fr. James Martin, who has a family member in law enforcement, penned something poignant worth sharing here that I agree with one thousand percent:
You can support our country's police officers, as I do. I know a few police officers (as well as a former police officers) and I deeply admire them for putting their lives on the lines every day, something that I do not do. (Remember the police officers who sacrificed their lives, or who were ready to sacrifice their lives, on 9/11.) You can believe that the vast majority of law-enforcement officials are trying to do their best in often extremely complicated situations. I see that almost every day in New York. You can appreciate sometimes nearly impossible challenges of dealing with the volatile and dangerous people they must encounter. I see that too almost every day in New York. And you can understand that many of their decisions must be made in a split second, under the kind of pressure that few of us will know.
You can think all those things and still be appalled by the death of Eric Garner, who died after being subdued by police officers on Staten Island. His confrontation with police was captured on video and has been widely viewed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1ka4oKu1jo
At the beginning of the video, Mr. Garner seems belligerent. On the other hand he had, according to witnesss, just broken up a fight on the street. He was also under suspicion for selling "loosies," loose cigarettes, which is illegal. But Mr. Garner was also unarmed, and the chokehold or "vascular neck restraint" (or whatever one calls the maneuver shown in the video) and other subduing techniques led to his death. "The compression of his chest and prone positioning during physical restraint by police," read the coroner's cause of death. (Chokeholds, by the way, are banned by the NYPD.)
As the video clearly shows, Mr. Garner, on the sidewalk, gasping for breath, chokes out the words, over and over, and calmly, "I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe." And then he dies.
You can admire police officers and still admit that they made a tragic mistake. You can support the justice system and still feel that justice has not been done . You can uphold the rule of law and still feel that the law is not being applied justly.
And if Mr. Garner had indeed just broken up a fight--being a peacemaker, as Jesus calls us to be--then it is an even more brutal tragedy.
I'm not a police officer, so I don't know what that life is like. I'm not an African-American, so I don't know what that life is like either.
But when a man says, "I can't breathe," you should let him breathe. And if he dies after saying it, then you should have let him breathe.
Wednesday, December 03, 2014
Friday, November 28, 2014
And the winner is in….
Republicans or no one.
predicted to win the White House if a Dem ran against Minnie Mouse. In 2016 they will have won the House the Senate the White House and the Farm.
Why? One word: FERGUSON
This name, of a place no one knows really or has been to except it appears to be a ghetto attached to Saint Louis, sparked a national obsession over race relations, police brutality and presumed racist cops. We saw a town and the cars in it go up in flames for days.
Twelve citizens called a grand jury in a different town, with no particular beef reviewed piles of forensic, and physical evidence for months, and heard witness testimony as to how a shooting of a black male by a cop went down. They could ask questions. For months and months an apparently completely false narrative was peddled by professional race mongers, hustlers, racqueters, and profiteers in the media who generated memes like his hands were up in surrender, he was a little ten year old with headphones on (the picture NBC/MSNBC keeps showing when he was shot as a nearly 300 pound looking 18 year old), and he was just an innocent little kid shot dead for no reason by a bad white cop. He was the poster boy symbol of police brutality and the R word.
This was deliberately dishonest. Apparently his hands were not up, he was shot as an angry fleeing felon of around nearly 300 pounds who assaulted a police officer after robbing a store who resisted arrest and refused to respect the officer's request to "Stop, or I'll Shoot." Criminals who assault, taunt and bully cops get shot. No one should be surprised at that. It happens to idiots of every race.
Is there seething animosity toward police in minority communities. Yes. Is there injustice in the minority community regarding unfair sentencing ? Perhaps. Should this kid's death be the funnel for all historic black rage such that an entire town should get torched because we can know that the grand jury made a mistake? Absolutely Not- no excuse. Completely unjustified to torch a town. The fact that the media ginned this up to this degree guaranteeing that people would feel a misplaced sense of deep unfairness is scandalous. Criminal even.
Everyone feels when anyone loses a child. Its painful, its aweful and its tragic. Every kid or adult sitting in a jail has or had a mother. Its sad or tragic when people turn 'bad.' But Mike Brown, from the looks of the video of the robbery (owned by the way by a dark skinned Central Asian person) went 'bad.' He bullied the guy and shoplifted with a 'what are you going to do to me' attitude. He apparently assaulted a cop and 'tussled' with him to get his gun to shoot him in his car. Then he bolted.
The grand jury determined that this wasn't a 'he said/she said' apparently in reviewing the forensic and physical evidence which included blood on and/or in the car. A grand jury doesn't get paid from a wrongful death suit, doesn't get paid by media to peddle ratings grabbing results and doesn't get paid to cover for a cop. A grand jury is impartial and there are ways to kick people off if they are suspected of being partial.
The level of dishonesty doesn't end there with hyped false memes and exaggerated false claims of racism.
Lawrence O'Donnell, a reliable left sided MSNBC commentator was the straw that broke the donkey's back last night because he devoted a segment to accusing an Assistant District Attorney of intentionally misleading the jury by giving them an old 'Fleeing Felon' statute that he claims was overridden in 1985 because she didn't answer the question as to whether the US Supreme Ct. over-rides the 'Fleeing Felon' rule. In fact, the Fleeing Felon rule was not completely over-ridden but clarified by the Supreme Court to mean deadly force could only be used when the officer was in fear of the physical safety of himself or others due to the actions of the fleeing felon. That was what was evidenced, that was what was proved, and that is what justified the fact the officer was not indicted.
The Supreme Court recognizes that an officer doesn't have to wait to be shot first to shoot a fleeing felon. After Brown assaulted the officer and ran he was a fleeing felon.
Its one thing to gin up false claims of racism, its another for a non-criminal lawyer (O'Donnell) to falsely accuse an Assistant District Attorney on national television of a degree of prosecutorial misconduct -something that would get her disbarred- by name-that jimmied a grand jury- and I am beyond offended. Its outrageous. She is owed an apology.
Its way over the top. The lengths the media, and the race arsonists and hustlers, have gone to justify their misplaced indignant outrage that a kid who shoplifted, a robbery suspect who assaulted a police officer, resisted arrest and fled was shot dead is beyond unpalatable -its dishonest.
And every Republican Presidential candidate from here till the turn of the century will play that "Burn this Bitch Down" clip to show just how off the wall out of their minds the established race narrators
will go to excuse people from having to create their own enterprise to advance their own lives and instead blame white cops and all whites who think law and order is a good thing as 'racist.'
America is not going to 'heal' so long as people continue to be dishonest about the real hinderances to advancement in these black communities where a good portion of the disposable income in excess of government benefits comes from illegal petty drug trades generating contempt for all law enforcement. Lack of Education is only part of the problem. Lack of Opportunity isn't as bad as perceived lack of opportunity. The socio-economic problems are not all whities fault. And whitie is getting sick of being blamed.
Are there any real pragmatic solutions? Here are a few basic no brainer things that have been suggested to make people feel comfortable that the cops are not being racist but doing their jobs:
1. small cameras on all cops on the beat
2. create a police academy in Ferguson and recruit from the community raising the number of black officers. Provide full scholarships for kids from the community who wish to go to the Police Academy, recruit heavily from the local schools.
3. involve the kids in church-community-police activities to generate trust and admiration of police.
4. create more police mentoring programs of black youth in Ferguson and St. Louis at large.
And even when that is all done there will still be people who, every single time a black kid is shot by a cop will insist the kid is the reincarnation of the Angel Gabriel and the cop was a racist bastard who just likes to go out for no reason popping off the heads of black kids.
predicted to win the White House if a Dem ran against Minnie Mouse. In 2016 they will have won the House the Senate the White House and the Farm.
Why? One word: FERGUSON
This name, of a place no one knows really or has been to except it appears to be a ghetto attached to Saint Louis, sparked a national obsession over race relations, police brutality and presumed racist cops. We saw a town and the cars in it go up in flames for days.
Twelve citizens called a grand jury in a different town, with no particular beef reviewed piles of forensic, and physical evidence for months, and heard witness testimony as to how a shooting of a black male by a cop went down. They could ask questions. For months and months an apparently completely false narrative was peddled by professional race mongers, hustlers, racqueters, and profiteers in the media who generated memes like his hands were up in surrender, he was a little ten year old with headphones on (the picture NBC/MSNBC keeps showing when he was shot as a nearly 300 pound looking 18 year old), and he was just an innocent little kid shot dead for no reason by a bad white cop. He was the poster boy symbol of police brutality and the R word.
This was deliberately dishonest. Apparently his hands were not up, he was shot as an angry fleeing felon of around nearly 300 pounds who assaulted a police officer after robbing a store who resisted arrest and refused to respect the officer's request to "Stop, or I'll Shoot." Criminals who assault, taunt and bully cops get shot. No one should be surprised at that. It happens to idiots of every race.
Is there seething animosity toward police in minority communities. Yes. Is there injustice in the minority community regarding unfair sentencing ? Perhaps. Should this kid's death be the funnel for all historic black rage such that an entire town should get torched because we can know that the grand jury made a mistake? Absolutely Not- no excuse. Completely unjustified to torch a town. The fact that the media ginned this up to this degree guaranteeing that people would feel a misplaced sense of deep unfairness is scandalous. Criminal even.
Everyone feels when anyone loses a child. Its painful, its aweful and its tragic. Every kid or adult sitting in a jail has or had a mother. Its sad or tragic when people turn 'bad.' But Mike Brown, from the looks of the video of the robbery (owned by the way by a dark skinned Central Asian person) went 'bad.' He bullied the guy and shoplifted with a 'what are you going to do to me' attitude. He apparently assaulted a cop and 'tussled' with him to get his gun to shoot him in his car. Then he bolted.
The grand jury determined that this wasn't a 'he said/she said' apparently in reviewing the forensic and physical evidence which included blood on and/or in the car. A grand jury doesn't get paid from a wrongful death suit, doesn't get paid by media to peddle ratings grabbing results and doesn't get paid to cover for a cop. A grand jury is impartial and there are ways to kick people off if they are suspected of being partial.
The level of dishonesty doesn't end there with hyped false memes and exaggerated false claims of racism.
Lawrence O'Donnell, a reliable left sided MSNBC commentator was the straw that broke the donkey's back last night because he devoted a segment to accusing an Assistant District Attorney of intentionally misleading the jury by giving them an old 'Fleeing Felon' statute that he claims was overridden in 1985 because she didn't answer the question as to whether the US Supreme Ct. over-rides the 'Fleeing Felon' rule. In fact, the Fleeing Felon rule was not completely over-ridden but clarified by the Supreme Court to mean deadly force could only be used when the officer was in fear of the physical safety of himself or others due to the actions of the fleeing felon. That was what was evidenced, that was what was proved, and that is what justified the fact the officer was not indicted.
The Supreme Court recognizes that an officer doesn't have to wait to be shot first to shoot a fleeing felon. After Brown assaulted the officer and ran he was a fleeing felon.
Its one thing to gin up false claims of racism, its another for a non-criminal lawyer (O'Donnell) to falsely accuse an Assistant District Attorney on national television of a degree of prosecutorial misconduct -something that would get her disbarred- by name-that jimmied a grand jury- and I am beyond offended. Its outrageous. She is owed an apology.
Its way over the top. The lengths the media, and the race arsonists and hustlers, have gone to justify their misplaced indignant outrage that a kid who shoplifted, a robbery suspect who assaulted a police officer, resisted arrest and fled was shot dead is beyond unpalatable -its dishonest.
And every Republican Presidential candidate from here till the turn of the century will play that "Burn this Bitch Down" clip to show just how off the wall out of their minds the established race narrators
will go to excuse people from having to create their own enterprise to advance their own lives and instead blame white cops and all whites who think law and order is a good thing as 'racist.'
America is not going to 'heal' so long as people continue to be dishonest about the real hinderances to advancement in these black communities where a good portion of the disposable income in excess of government benefits comes from illegal petty drug trades generating contempt for all law enforcement. Lack of Education is only part of the problem. Lack of Opportunity isn't as bad as perceived lack of opportunity. The socio-economic problems are not all whities fault. And whitie is getting sick of being blamed.
Are there any real pragmatic solutions? Here are a few basic no brainer things that have been suggested to make people feel comfortable that the cops are not being racist but doing their jobs:
1. small cameras on all cops on the beat
2. create a police academy in Ferguson and recruit from the community raising the number of black officers. Provide full scholarships for kids from the community who wish to go to the Police Academy, recruit heavily from the local schools.
3. involve the kids in church-community-police activities to generate trust and admiration of police.
4. create more police mentoring programs of black youth in Ferguson and St. Louis at large.
And even when that is all done there will still be people who, every single time a black kid is shot by a cop will insist the kid is the reincarnation of the Angel Gabriel and the cop was a racist bastard who just likes to go out for no reason popping off the heads of black kids.
Wednesday, November 26, 2014
Tuesday, November 25, 2014
Saturday, November 22, 2014
Thursday, November 20, 2014
Wednesday, November 19, 2014
A Rare Day
When I Pen a partisan diatribe. I try to see all sides. Its supposed to make a better advocate.
But its now necessary. The President is going to issue some kind of unilateral statement on immigration reform tomorrow. Horrah. Finally. Good for Him.
Senator Barbara Boxer has given a pointed speech where she notes that over the last 60 years, Presidents of both parties have taken immigration action of some kind on 40 different occassions. No one saw it as unconstitutional, threatened to shut down the government, or sue the President.
She noted that 17 months ago the Senate passed a bipartisan immigration reform bill. It was passed by the Senate and the House did not act on it. Ever hear the phrase 'Do Nothing' House or Congress? That is because their response to a bipartisan immigration reform bill was to do exactly nothing. No Action.
The President waited and waited and waited to sign a bill. Nothing. None came. It should be called the 'Sit on Your Hands and Suck Your Thumb House' Really annoying. So the President is going to do what the President should do and take responsible action to fix a serious problem.
We have a serious problem at the border. We have a serious problem enforcing the laws that exist. We have a serious problem in the way we are currently treating people who are here, who came here
with legitimate asylum claims. We aren't processing them fairly because evidence can't be ascertained fairly. People fled a civil war in El Salvador in the 1980s. They cannot go back because there is nothing to go back to in some cases. They and their children are American for all practical purposes in all but passport.
Stories of how families are torn apart with some family members sent back to Central America after being mistreated in immigration detention facilities are too numerous to let go unnoticed. People who have been here contributing to society, paying taxes, raising their kids to be responsible people, educating them in American schools should not be subjected to cruelty of banishment and return to a place they don't know as home any more. This is home.
I can't listen to people like Laura Ingram or any of the right wingnutty talking heads blast Obama's constitutional theories. They just look too white and too blonde to get it. There are massive numbers, 11 million roughly that we know of, people who have made their life and home here and we should 'Welcome the Stranger'- because families of EVERYONE except native americans came from somewhere else, and because its the only kind thing to do.
We are not a nation of bullies who rip children from their parents arms to lock them up. We don't need to create that kind of trauma and destruction of families. We can be a kinder gentler place. Did we forget that we are supposed to Love Our Neighbors?
But its now necessary. The President is going to issue some kind of unilateral statement on immigration reform tomorrow. Horrah. Finally. Good for Him.
Senator Barbara Boxer has given a pointed speech where she notes that over the last 60 years, Presidents of both parties have taken immigration action of some kind on 40 different occassions. No one saw it as unconstitutional, threatened to shut down the government, or sue the President.
She noted that 17 months ago the Senate passed a bipartisan immigration reform bill. It was passed by the Senate and the House did not act on it. Ever hear the phrase 'Do Nothing' House or Congress? That is because their response to a bipartisan immigration reform bill was to do exactly nothing. No Action.
The President waited and waited and waited to sign a bill. Nothing. None came. It should be called the 'Sit on Your Hands and Suck Your Thumb House' Really annoying. So the President is going to do what the President should do and take responsible action to fix a serious problem.
We have a serious problem at the border. We have a serious problem enforcing the laws that exist. We have a serious problem in the way we are currently treating people who are here, who came here
with legitimate asylum claims. We aren't processing them fairly because evidence can't be ascertained fairly. People fled a civil war in El Salvador in the 1980s. They cannot go back because there is nothing to go back to in some cases. They and their children are American for all practical purposes in all but passport.
Stories of how families are torn apart with some family members sent back to Central America after being mistreated in immigration detention facilities are too numerous to let go unnoticed. People who have been here contributing to society, paying taxes, raising their kids to be responsible people, educating them in American schools should not be subjected to cruelty of banishment and return to a place they don't know as home any more. This is home.
I can't listen to people like Laura Ingram or any of the right wingnutty talking heads blast Obama's constitutional theories. They just look too white and too blonde to get it. There are massive numbers, 11 million roughly that we know of, people who have made their life and home here and we should 'Welcome the Stranger'- because families of EVERYONE except native americans came from somewhere else, and because its the only kind thing to do.
We are not a nation of bullies who rip children from their parents arms to lock them up. We don't need to create that kind of trauma and destruction of families. We can be a kinder gentler place. Did we forget that we are supposed to Love Our Neighbors?
Monday, November 17, 2014
Saturday, November 15, 2014
A visionary
Who Was Assassinated 25 years ago
with his friends, confreres and the horse he rode in on.
Because they couldn't stand it- he made them face themselves.
The 25th Anniversary of the assassinations of the Jesuit priest-philosophers is marked this week-end.
At least stop in silence and say a prayer. There are people in the world who won't be silenced in the
face of obscene injustice- even when the US government and the richest people in the world have a hit on them. Wrong is Wrong- even when the establishment insists upon it and feeds off it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/15/opinion/a-jesuit-inspiration.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=Moth-Visible&module=inside-nyt-region®ion=inside-nyt-region&WT.nav=inside-nyt-region&_r=0
with his friends, confreres and the horse he rode in on.
Because they couldn't stand it- he made them face themselves.
The 25th Anniversary of the assassinations of the Jesuit priest-philosophers is marked this week-end.
At least stop in silence and say a prayer. There are people in the world who won't be silenced in the
face of obscene injustice- even when the US government and the richest people in the world have a hit on them. Wrong is Wrong- even when the establishment insists upon it and feeds off it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/15/opinion/a-jesuit-inspiration.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=Moth-Visible&module=inside-nyt-region®ion=inside-nyt-region&WT.nav=inside-nyt-region&_r=0
Thursday, November 13, 2014
Wednesday, November 12, 2014
CNN special on CONFESSIONS
Lisa Ling on Life
Dishes on what it is really like to be a Priest.
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/us/this-is-life-with-lisa-ling
Dishes on what it is really like to be a Priest.
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/us/this-is-life-with-lisa-ling
Why Elections Matter
For Foreign Policy.
This weekend celebrations from Coast to Coast are paying tribute to the Jesuit Martyrs of El Salvador. Because the Jesuits are on the front lines and cutting edge of bringing light to dark places they find themselves often between historical cross hairs of crucifiers and crucifixions.
Around 25 years ago there was a blazing civil war in El Salvador which can be simplified as follows: 13 powerful families dating back to 16th century conquistadors who owned all the land were fighting off peasant workers who were awakening to the fact that they were being horrendously exploited and eat dirt poor.
That would be none of the US' business you might think except for a few do gooding religious types who wanted to see that people didn't eat dirt.
However, this was at the end of the long 'Cold War' and Reagan was terrified the communism that took over Cuba was going to spread to Central America so it was expressly part of US foreign policy to provide official aid to the military of the establishment to keep order so the masses wouldn't revolt in some socialist uprising. The military was supported by the US with arms and US AID, and elections regularly rigged in latin and central america with the help of the CIA (directed by Bush, Sr. at one point Veep to Reagan). The military with our backing waged a brutal massacring slaughter of the peasant workers in El Salvador in a civil war that decimated huge portions of the population and wiped villages off the earth. Commonplace were torture, disappearances, mass graves, close to 100,000 dead and the worst human rights violations Amnesty International ever chronicled.
The US funded a School of the Americas- to train people in allegedly ostensibly fighting communism in Latin and Central America. We trained military leaders to fight to keep the established inequity and impoverishment in place to support our puppets.
It didn't end until 1992 after Clinton was elected and Democrats could not be relied upon for arms or USAID.
Prior to Clinton being elected, the military officially put a hit on the Jesuit intellectual priests who ran the University in El Salvador who were seen as spreading such silly notions as - exploitation isn't nice, fair treatment might be more Christian, and poor isn't something you have to really tolerate.
Six Jesuit Priest Professor intellectuals and/or University Administrators, along with their cook/housekeeper and her daughter were killed in cold blood. The Archbishop Romero was also assassinated and there is a cause for his sainthood pending at the Vatican.
The generals who put the hit out were trained by the School of the Americas faculty. Some of those guys are living in luxury in retirement in Florida. Not Kidding. Jeb Bush country. One of them has a deportation on appeal apparently.
Elections in the US matter. They matter for the entire region in a direct way and the entire world obviously.
From Saint Isaac Joques to the El Salvadoran Martyrs, the soil of the Americas is infused with the blood of Jesuits who died to proclaim the Good News to the Poor, and set the Oppressed Free. So this weekend Hug a Jesuit and say Thank You.
This weekend celebrations from Coast to Coast are paying tribute to the Jesuit Martyrs of El Salvador. Because the Jesuits are on the front lines and cutting edge of bringing light to dark places they find themselves often between historical cross hairs of crucifiers and crucifixions.
Around 25 years ago there was a blazing civil war in El Salvador which can be simplified as follows: 13 powerful families dating back to 16th century conquistadors who owned all the land were fighting off peasant workers who were awakening to the fact that they were being horrendously exploited and eat dirt poor.
That would be none of the US' business you might think except for a few do gooding religious types who wanted to see that people didn't eat dirt.
However, this was at the end of the long 'Cold War' and Reagan was terrified the communism that took over Cuba was going to spread to Central America so it was expressly part of US foreign policy to provide official aid to the military of the establishment to keep order so the masses wouldn't revolt in some socialist uprising. The military was supported by the US with arms and US AID, and elections regularly rigged in latin and central america with the help of the CIA (directed by Bush, Sr. at one point Veep to Reagan). The military with our backing waged a brutal massacring slaughter of the peasant workers in El Salvador in a civil war that decimated huge portions of the population and wiped villages off the earth. Commonplace were torture, disappearances, mass graves, close to 100,000 dead and the worst human rights violations Amnesty International ever chronicled.
The US funded a School of the Americas- to train people in allegedly ostensibly fighting communism in Latin and Central America. We trained military leaders to fight to keep the established inequity and impoverishment in place to support our puppets.
It didn't end until 1992 after Clinton was elected and Democrats could not be relied upon for arms or USAID.
Prior to Clinton being elected, the military officially put a hit on the Jesuit intellectual priests who ran the University in El Salvador who were seen as spreading such silly notions as - exploitation isn't nice, fair treatment might be more Christian, and poor isn't something you have to really tolerate.
Six Jesuit Priest Professor intellectuals and/or University Administrators, along with their cook/housekeeper and her daughter were killed in cold blood. The Archbishop Romero was also assassinated and there is a cause for his sainthood pending at the Vatican.
The generals who put the hit out were trained by the School of the Americas faculty. Some of those guys are living in luxury in retirement in Florida. Not Kidding. Jeb Bush country. One of them has a deportation on appeal apparently.
Elections in the US matter. They matter for the entire region in a direct way and the entire world obviously.
From Saint Isaac Joques to the El Salvadoran Martyrs, the soil of the Americas is infused with the blood of Jesuits who died to proclaim the Good News to the Poor, and set the Oppressed Free. So this weekend Hug a Jesuit and say Thank You.
Who Said
The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free,
Sunday, November 09, 2014
Saturday, November 08, 2014
Friday, November 07, 2014
Simply
JESUS
A Pilgrimmage.
That is the title of the newest book of Father James Martin, SJ, a Jesuit Priest, editor of America Magazine in New York, who spoke at Georgetown
this week discussing his trip to Israel described in the book. Every time I hear him speak (third time now) I am more and more in awe. He packed the house, as he always does and had the crowd both in uproarious laughter as well as 'ahah' lightbulb moments. People left with a 'Thank God For Priests Like That' feeling.
This Priest, whom I particularly connect with because he grew up not far from where I partially grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs is one of the single best advertisements for "Catholic" I know of- he is extremely witty (wrote also "Heaven and Mirth"), down to earth, and profoundly spiritually insightful. Moreover, he's just extremely kind and sweet and disdains trolling meanness on the internet. "We have to recover and reuse the word 'Mean'", he said describing some of the vitriol he received merely by posting something controversial. He describes how going to Israel aided greatly his understanding of Jesus' talks, noting that he saw places along the Sea of Galilee that were 'rocky' ground, and good soil that had things growing-and noted when Jesus spoke parables of the Word falling on rocky ground and good soil that bore much fruit, he wasn't making up abstractions but pointing to -that good ground over there with good soil, or that rocky ground. The book chronicles in part his journey with his friend George (a prison priest chaplain at San Quentin) as they followed trails to purple rocks spotting the Bay of Parables where Jesus taught from a boat to a natural amphitheatre because the acoustics were great as sound travels over water so well.
He noted that when Jesus was called to the Tomb of Lazarus by his frantic sisters they likely didn't have a singsongy tone but one of exasperation and anger. What would you think if your brother was having a heart attack and you called a relative who was a heart surgeon and he didn't come for days- he noted in expressing the Jesuit approach to putting yourself in scripture to better connect with the message.
We can understand Christ better by embracing the Jesus of history- a historical Jesus approach. He was fully human and fully divine at the same time all the time. Fully human when raising Lazarus, fully divine when doing 'carpentry.' The implications of that are truly staggering if you realize the fullness of what that means.
There are some encounters which have been called holes in heaven where light travels fast to touch earth and Father Martin walks with one over his head. An encounter with him leaves one with the feeling that you touched heaven for a few minutes, or an hour long talk and you didn't want it to end. This is a real Priest, and a really good man.
I highly recommend getting his book- (which make excellent Christmas presents and some of my relatives are getting it:-)
click to order here:
http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Pilgrimage-James-Martin/dp/006202423X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1415378209&sr=1-1&keywords=jesus+a+pilgrimage
A Pilgrimmage.
That is the title of the newest book of Father James Martin, SJ, a Jesuit Priest, editor of America Magazine in New York, who spoke at Georgetown
this week discussing his trip to Israel described in the book. Every time I hear him speak (third time now) I am more and more in awe. He packed the house, as he always does and had the crowd both in uproarious laughter as well as 'ahah' lightbulb moments. People left with a 'Thank God For Priests Like That' feeling.
This Priest, whom I particularly connect with because he grew up not far from where I partially grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs is one of the single best advertisements for "Catholic" I know of- he is extremely witty (wrote also "Heaven and Mirth"), down to earth, and profoundly spiritually insightful. Moreover, he's just extremely kind and sweet and disdains trolling meanness on the internet. "We have to recover and reuse the word 'Mean'", he said describing some of the vitriol he received merely by posting something controversial. He describes how going to Israel aided greatly his understanding of Jesus' talks, noting that he saw places along the Sea of Galilee that were 'rocky' ground, and good soil that had things growing-and noted when Jesus spoke parables of the Word falling on rocky ground and good soil that bore much fruit, he wasn't making up abstractions but pointing to -that good ground over there with good soil, or that rocky ground. The book chronicles in part his journey with his friend George (a prison priest chaplain at San Quentin) as they followed trails to purple rocks spotting the Bay of Parables where Jesus taught from a boat to a natural amphitheatre because the acoustics were great as sound travels over water so well.
He noted that when Jesus was called to the Tomb of Lazarus by his frantic sisters they likely didn't have a singsongy tone but one of exasperation and anger. What would you think if your brother was having a heart attack and you called a relative who was a heart surgeon and he didn't come for days- he noted in expressing the Jesuit approach to putting yourself in scripture to better connect with the message.
We can understand Christ better by embracing the Jesus of history- a historical Jesus approach. He was fully human and fully divine at the same time all the time. Fully human when raising Lazarus, fully divine when doing 'carpentry.' The implications of that are truly staggering if you realize the fullness of what that means.
There are some encounters which have been called holes in heaven where light travels fast to touch earth and Father Martin walks with one over his head. An encounter with him leaves one with the feeling that you touched heaven for a few minutes, or an hour long talk and you didn't want it to end. This is a real Priest, and a really good man.
I highly recommend getting his book- (which make excellent Christmas presents and some of my relatives are getting it:-)
click to order here:
http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Pilgrimage-James-Martin/dp/006202423X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1415378209&sr=1-1&keywords=jesus+a+pilgrimage
Thursday, November 06, 2014
Monday, November 03, 2014
Sunday, November 02, 2014
Let Them Eat Croissants, Lots of Them
DOG TAG BAKERY- Not Just For Dogs.
One of the most exciting things coming to Georgetown is a cool Bakery which is the brainchild of a Priest which he located on GRACE street, naturally. Yes, there is a Grace Street in Georgetown.
Father Rick Curry who masters the art of one armed bread kneading (because he only has one arm, not kidding, no joke-was born that way, don't remind him), wanted to see disabled vets returning from the war fiascos get a break. He developed an idea, pitched it, got it funded and set up a non profit to allow returning disabled vets to get credit at Georgetown by working in a bakery especially equipped for disabled people.
He calls it Dog Tag Bakery and it is strongly rumored to open this week (actually he announced it at Mass so its more than a rumor).
I dare you to google it. You can also get his Jesuit's guides to breakmaking and soupmaking- which found their way under a few of my extended family's Christmas trees in years past.
I dare you to google him- its the most exciting thing you learned today. Plus they have chocolate croissants according to their on line menu which is my fav. breakfast of champions:-)
God's Speed (even if its slow rise in a dark place:-)
Love, Love, Love It!!
www.dogtagbakery.org
One of the most exciting things coming to Georgetown is a cool Bakery which is the brainchild of a Priest which he located on GRACE street, naturally. Yes, there is a Grace Street in Georgetown.
Father Rick Curry who masters the art of one armed bread kneading (because he only has one arm, not kidding, no joke-was born that way, don't remind him), wanted to see disabled vets returning from the war fiascos get a break. He developed an idea, pitched it, got it funded and set up a non profit to allow returning disabled vets to get credit at Georgetown by working in a bakery especially equipped for disabled people.
He calls it Dog Tag Bakery and it is strongly rumored to open this week (actually he announced it at Mass so its more than a rumor).
I dare you to google it. You can also get his Jesuit's guides to breakmaking and soupmaking- which found their way under a few of my extended family's Christmas trees in years past.
I dare you to google him- its the most exciting thing you learned today. Plus they have chocolate croissants according to their on line menu which is my fav. breakfast of champions:-)
God's Speed (even if its slow rise in a dark place:-)
Love, Love, Love It!!
www.dogtagbakery.org
Saturday, October 25, 2014
Sunday, October 19, 2014
WHO AM I TO JUDGE
A discussion with Renown Jesuit Father James Martin, SJ.
Tomorrow night Fordham University Lincoln Center in the heart of New York city is hosting a discussion with renown author Jesuit Father James Martin, SJ. on the latest from the Synod titled
"WHO AM I TO JUDGE" --
In keeping with the Popes theme of-- try not to obsess too much on gay issues driving people away, if a person is sincerely seeking God and trying to find him WHO AM I TO JUDGE, famously said the Pope.
While the synod thinkers tinkered with syntax and wording on a document concerning whether we
should 'welcome' gays, or 'provide for' gays (whether it was right to shut down completely all catholic social services for adoption in DC and Boston because a gay couple might show up) the basic premise according to Fr. Martin's prolific facebook page is that gays are our brothers and sisters in Christ who have God endowed skills, talents and contributions to make to the Church. He wants them 'welcomed' with open arms. That's the Christian thing to do.
If you are in NYC this is a must see TV event (meaning I hope they film it and post the whole thing on Facebook/Youtube.
http://www.fordham.edu/Campus_Resources/eNewsroom/topstories_3314.asp
click FORDHAM EVENT
Tomorrow night Fordham University Lincoln Center in the heart of New York city is hosting a discussion with renown author Jesuit Father James Martin, SJ. on the latest from the Synod titled
"WHO AM I TO JUDGE" --
In keeping with the Popes theme of-- try not to obsess too much on gay issues driving people away, if a person is sincerely seeking God and trying to find him WHO AM I TO JUDGE, famously said the Pope.
While the synod thinkers tinkered with syntax and wording on a document concerning whether we
should 'welcome' gays, or 'provide for' gays (whether it was right to shut down completely all catholic social services for adoption in DC and Boston because a gay couple might show up) the basic premise according to Fr. Martin's prolific facebook page is that gays are our brothers and sisters in Christ who have God endowed skills, talents and contributions to make to the Church. He wants them 'welcomed' with open arms. That's the Christian thing to do.
If you are in NYC this is a must see TV event (meaning I hope they film it and post the whole thing on Facebook/Youtube.
http://www.fordham.edu/Campus_Resources/eNewsroom/topstories_3314.asp
click FORDHAM EVENT
Sunday, October 12, 2014
Saturday, August 23, 2014
Sunday, August 17, 2014
Thursday, August 14, 2014
Wednesday, August 13, 2014
Tuesday, August 12, 2014
Friday, August 08, 2014
The Jesuit Almost Martyr
Pater Mayer
Congratulations to the Jesuits on the anniversary of their Society's restoration.
In Munich, a Jesuit died in 1945. He was co-operating with the resistance against the Nazi's and was thrown in prison. He was called The Apostle of Munich. Its a reminder of what 'religious liberty' means.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)