Archbishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis was appointed prefect of the Apostolic Signature, the Church's supreme court. This is a significant recognition of his abilities as a canon lawyer and puts another American in Rome. Burke is well-known for taking a stand for orthodoxy, excommunicating some individuals for attempting a woman's ordination and others for schism. He is well respected by those who count. This is a good move. He will be sorely missed as an archbishop, though. I do feel bad however; well-known Catholic speaker and convert from Judaism Rosalind Moss just picked St. Louis as a place to start her new religious order, no doubt due to the influence and presence of Archbishop Burke. Hope things go well with her and her order.
News Clips: June 2008 Archives
Unless you've been under a rock for the last several years, you're familiar with the runaway success of the user-edited Wikipedia encyclopedia, where anyone can contribute or edit an article, even anonymously. Well the same open-source content is now being applied to the Bible. Yes, you heard that right; budding scholars can take a chapter and translate it themselves. Never mind that this will produce a patchwork of chapters with inconsistent styles and widely varying quality. It's a bit more critical for the Bible than for Wikipedia. Not to mention the religious wars over translation (although it's unclear whether they'll follow exactly the same model as Wikipedia in terms of being completely open to edit by anyone). So far there is no danger of it being done anytime soon; only 21 have signed up so far.
Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family and Barack Obama are sparring over Obama's biblical references and "fruitcake" interpretations of the Constitution. Obama had cited Levitical laws in an apparent attempt to make following the Bible look silly, taking it out of context in the process. "... He is dragging biblical understanding through the gutter," Dobson said. The criticism comes as Obama attempts to reach out to Evangelical voters.
The goal of these liberals who "haven't read their bibles" (an ironic criticism Obama made in one of his speeches) is that they attempt to undermine Biblical teaches against, say, homosexuality by reading them out of Leviticus together with proscriptions on eating pork and shellfish and weaving two types of thread together and say, see, if you buy one, you have to buy the whole package, and are you willing to do that? What they don't understand is that homosexual acts were proscribed both before and after the Mosaic law they are quoting, which only applies to Jews (technically to Hebrews but we'll go with Jews for now). While the Mosaic law passed away with Christ, the stricture against homosexual acts was reiterated by St. Paul. Consequently, it is independent of the laws forbidding shellfish. This is how these people take verses out of context and yes, don't know their Bible.
And thanks be to God I don't live in Canada so I can say the above and not be prosecuted.
Could it happen — might George W. Bush convert to Catholicism like his brother Jeb? Shades of Tony Blair! If he does let's hope the Pope treats him a lot better, though apparently they've met several times recently and had warm exchanges.
I'm not sure what I think of this. Obviously having another convert is good, in and of itself, though having someone as unpopular as Bush with his reputation for intelligence might not reflect as well on the concept of converting to Catholicism as one would like. But we'll take 'im.
On a totally, totally random note — I was imagining conversations between him and Jeb, and thinking about how a president's relatives reach him by phone, and wondering if the White House operators learn to recognize their voices so they can't be faked, and finally whether the president uses a commercial off-the-shelf cellphone, or whether the military builds a custom one for him. Actually there are two questions, the second being, does he use his highly secure military-grade communication for personal calls, or does he reserve that for official business? Surely they have a way of communicating with him that is not over the commercial networks, although I don't know how you do that without building a parallel cell network or something similar. That seems unlikely. This may be a question for the incomparable Cecil Adams.
(Thanks to my friend Bacon)
A man had his name legally changed to "In God We Trust". The Artist Formerly Known As Steve Kreuscher wanted to be able to sign his paintings that way and said he wanted to the change "so bad".
Frankly I think the whole thing is stupid and I suspect he'll change it back after the novelty wears off and he tires of dealing with the inconvenience of the name.
At least he didn't have it tatooed across his forehead.
Serves 'em right. The Diocese of Rome banned Ron Howard from filming Angels and Demons, the prequel to Dan Brown's DaVinci Code, in two key Roman churches. I read the book because it sounded innocuous, even favorable toward the church, but turned out to be the same anti-Catholic drivel (power-hungry Vatican official threatens to destroy the world). Thank goodness I only borrowed it from the library.
An underground site has been discovered in Jordan which archaeologists believe may be the oldest church in existence, dating to A.D. 33 - A.D. 70. If true this is an exciting find because the next oldest church is third century.
This is why I think Obama will win this coming election here in the U.S. Well, one among many reasons; disgust over Bush and the media attention Obama has received during the Democratic primary are other reasons. We know that Evangelicals were key to Republican victories in past elections. Republicans can't win without Evangelicals. And whereas before, Republicans asked Evangelicals to campaign for them, they aren't doing that this time, and basically there is no love lost among the Evangelicals. Now, with a tepid if not downright cold relationship between McCain and Evangelicals, Obama is taking a page from the Republican playbook and actively courting Evangelicals and Catholics. That can only mean trouble for Republicans, and more importantly, the key issues they stand for that we as Christians care most about.
This brings up an important issue. The election is being framed in terms of feeding the hungry -- social justice issues -- versus abortion and gay marriage and embryonic stem cell research. Let's be frank, Jesus, and even the Old Testament, did focus on feeding the hungry and taking care of the poor, with nary a mention, not directly anyway, of abortion and gay rights and so forth. This can give the impression that feeding the hungry is a more important issue. That's what Jesus emphasized, and so should we, the argument might go. But prescinding from the fact that abortion and embryonic stem cell research is murder and thus trump feeding the hungry, what we have to do I believe is look at the culture of Jesus' time and what the prevailing issues were. Gay rights, abortion, and embryonic stem cell research were not a problem. Thus I contend Jesus had no need to address them. Everyone knew that practicing homosexuality was wrong, and it was quite uncommon. Far more common were the poor and their suffering, so Jesus opted to address that first. Plus the scale of the suffering of the poor was such that it cried out to heaven.
If you compared the poor we have in the United States with the poor of the Middle East, you'd see a vast difference. First, poverty was far worse (i.e. more severe) in the Middle East. Second, it was more extensive (more people were affected). Contrary to what the Democrats would have you think, Republicans aren't against social programs for the poor, they simply disagree with the extent with which they should be extended. We have a very good social net in our country despite what anyone says, and the controversy is not whether we should have it, but how much it should be funded. On the contrary, while Republicans are not opposed in principle to social justice, Democrats are opposed in principle to restricting abortion, gay marriage, and embryonic stem cell research. So while Republicans don't agree with them on social justice issues, they at least get partial credit, while Democrats get no credit on these Christian issues advocated by Republicans. That would be my argument, anyway.
Bystanders ignored a victim of a hit-and run in Hartford yesterday while it is all caught on tape. Two cars, apparently one chasing the other, crossed the center line and the second one hit a 78 year-old man crossing the street. There were multiple witnesses but no one helped him until a cop on an unrelated call found him. What a crying shame! It's provoking much moral outrage in Hartford. One witness said he was "uncomfortable" helping the victim! You should be feeling more uncomfortable ignoring him! Maybe you can't provide medical hellp, but why anyone would feel uncomfortable calling 911 and reporting it is beyond me.
Of course this is not the first time this has happened.
Newsweek had an interesting article about the deafening silence that has accompanied the release of the Evangelical Manifesto, which is an attempt to reinvigorate the ranks of the Evangelicals and move beyond the bad name they acquired in the minds of some during the last several elections. Basically, it was an attempt to find common ground, but apparently not much common ground was found, and plenty of Evangelical leaders found it not to their tastes. "Called to an allegiance higher than party, ideology and nationality, we Evangelicals see it our duty to engage with politics, but our equal duty never to be completely equated with any party, partisan ideology, economic system, or nationality," the document says. It addresses the issue that I think is far too prevalent among Evangelicals, and that is the tendency to conflate the platform of the Republican Party with biblical doctrine. It therefore is not surprising that it hasn't been well-received among major Evangelical leaders. I haven't read it but based on what I've heard it seems a shame that it's not given more thoughtful consideration.
Here is an interesting dilemma. An autistic teen got kicked out of a Catholic church because his disruptive behavior threatened other parishioners, the church's board said. (I'm not sure why the board made this decision and not the pastor, not that I oppose lay involvement, just find it interesting.) Supposedly he knocked some people down, spit on someone else, and urinated in the church, things his mother all denies. She points out, rightly, that we have an obligation to attend Mass on Sunday and she's trying to fulfill that obligation. Of course I suppose one could argue that developmentally he's below the age of reason and isn't bound by that requirement (would be interesting to see if he receives the Eucharist). They offered to set up a video feed for him in the basement but his mother says that's no better than watching it on television. She kind of has a point, although I've seen live Masses with video feeds. Interesting dilemmas.
