extreme Catholic 

Bishop revamps religious ed : Newsday

Rockville Centre Bishop William Murphy announced a major shakeup of religious education yesterday that reconfigures the program that produced a generation of lay Catholic leaders, as well as many members of Voice of the Faithful, an activist group that has demanded the bishop's resignation.

Murphy said the restructuring would "not mean a major change in the content of what we offer, which is the teaching of the Church," in a column in this week's diocesan newspaper.

But critics said they feared the changes - coming two weeks after he named a new seminary rector known for strict orthodoxy - signal a retreat from what they describe as the progressive, post-Vatican II model that had flourished under the late Bishop John McGann, to a more top-down setup.

My plea is Give orthodoxy a chance

As the bishop's spokeman honestly observes the old programs have failed to keep Catholics going to Mass. Even if you are a progressive, the ought to mean something to you.

Blogger credit to Domenico Bettinelli and Jeff Miller

posted by Patrick Sweeney at 10:58 AM   Permalink  

The man who killed Kitty Genovese in New York City while 38 people heard her screams but did nothing to help has again been denied parole by a state panel.

Winston Moseley, now 70, has been denied parole 12 times since 1984, according to the state Division of Parole. The denial last week, earlier reported by the New York Law Journal, means Moseley will have to wait another two years for another hearing.

The murder of Genovese, a Queens bartender, became a symbol of urban apathy after neighbors heard her screams but did not help as she was stabbed to death on March 13, 1964.

There's a dispute about the culpability of the local residents of Kew Gardens.

Moseley was fortunate to have been convicted around the time that the appeals process for death row inmates became extended. In his case, he was alive at the time all the death sentences were reduced to life imprisonment in 1972 by the United States Supreme Court.

posted by Patrick Sweeney at 9:38 PM   Permalink  

Appeals court upholds city policy on public holiday displays : AP

A federal appeals court has upheld a city policy on holiday displays for its schools that allows Santa Claus, reindeers, Christmas trees and symbols of Jewish and Islamic holidays but prohibits nativity scenes...

In a dissent, Judge Chester Straub said the policy promotes a year-end holiday celebration which "utilizes religious symbols of certain religions, but bans the religious symbols of another."

[Petitioner Andrea Skoros] said in her lawsuit that the policy promoted and endorsed the religions of Judaism and Islam and conveyed a message of disapproval toward Christianity.

The appeals court noted that Skoros was not trying to stop the display of the menorah and star and crescent but rather wanted to force the schools to allow nativity scenes.

Robert Muise, an Ann Arbor, Mich.-based lawyer who argued the case for Skoros, said he will ask the full 2nd Circuit to hear the case. If that fails, he said, he'll appeal it to the Supreme Court.

Muise said the new Supreme Court justices were "just waiting for cases like this to come before them to hopefully straighten out the mess the courts have created."

posted by Patrick Sweeney at 6:02 PM   Permalink  

Colorado's three Catholic bishops blasted proposed state legislation which would lift the statutes of limitation on sexual-abuse cases, noting that this would unequally punish the Catholic Church while exempting public-school teachers and coaches accused of abuse.

The free bishops of Colorado disagree with the unfree bishop of Spokane who also is the president of the Conference of Bishops.

The Catholic League is all over the aspect that it applies only to non-public schools and leaves public schools off the hook. I wonder if they got input from the victims on that?

posted by Patrick Sweeney at 10:28 PM   Permalink  

Michelle Malkin is covering this story. She's put up the cartoons that mainstream media refuses to.

She puts this in context with the sort of mockery of Christianty that everyone in the United States gives a pass under freedom of speech. To use very recent examples we have the now-cancelled Book of Daniel and the Rolling Stone cover featuring a phony Christ wearing the crown of thorns.

posted by Patrick Sweeney at 10:21 PM   Permalink  

At least three people were killed yesterday when bombs rocked the Vatican's mission and several churches in Baghdad and Kirkuk, police said.

At least 17 were wounded, nine of them in Kirkuk, where 11 died in similar church bombings last August.

Seven people were wounded yesterday at a Roman Catholic church in Kirkuk. Minutes later, a bomb went off in an Anglican church, killing three and injuring four.

Police said the dual attacks consisted of seven bombs. Iraq's Christian community makes up 3 percent of the population, and Islamist militants have recently ramped up attacks on Christian-owned liquor shops.

Also in Kirkuk, U.S. forces fired at four suspected terrorists in a car, killing three and wounding the other. The four were wearing police uniforms as disguises, police Col. Adel Zain Alabdin said.

This probably missed the expectations of the terrorists in having an impact worldwide -- because of the wounding of Bob Woodruff, ABC Anchor.

I've heard terrorism experts say it -- this may be a hopeful sign: That terrorists no longer go after the military and police but pick on softer targets now. The number of terrorist-active areas in Iraq continues to drop.

posted by Patrick Sweeney at 9:51 PM   Permalink  

Rare Kind of Scandal Accord in Spokane Diocese : New York Times

That's rare as in "infrequent" and not "undercooked" -- featuring rare nonfinancial concessions by Bishop William S. Skylstad.

The bishop will lobby state lawmakers to abolish statutes of limitations on child sex crimes and will go to every parish where any plaintiff was abused, tell the parishioners that an abusive priest had ministered there and encourage them to report any suspicions of abuse. What's wrong with this agreement? First of all, it makes connecessions that are incompatible in my view with the justice for Church and for the accused priests.

It appears to bind the diocese to a pepetual agreement with the state. A similar sort of concession made in Phoenix. There is justice in a status of limitations. An accusation of child abuse should be allowed until the victim is 30.

An unlimited statute of limitations is a potential source of unlimited mischief. An unscrupulous person can wait until a priest dies and then come forward and accuse him and demand a settlement from the diocese. The diocese doesn't have a means to defend itself and the accused is no longer around to admit or deny guilt.

Even if the bishop felt like lobbying for this change, why accept the authority of the state to be compelled to do so? Saint Thomas Beckett accepted death rather than this.

posted by Patrick Sweeney at 8:34 PM   Permalink  

Read the rest of Maggie Gallagher reflecting on the moral state of the union.

Odd, perhaps, that at the very start of his pontificate, Pope Benedict (in his new encyclical "Deus Caritas Est") would choose to take on Cole Porter's old question. Or maybe not. Scroll through the newspaper.

• Oh, another dead child in New York City, killed by her mother's boyfriend. A middle-aged mother, hearing her husband is about to divorce her, fails at suicide but succeeds in suffocating her three young children.
• America's 34th richest man serves divorce papers unexpectedly on his (fourth) wife, apparently to avoid an imminent hike in the prenupped price of divorce.
• A 41-year-old child protective services worker is arrested for raping his two adolescent daughters "at least 100 times," according to the New York Post. He remorsefully tells police "he couldn't help it. He would fight the urges for a while and it just became a thing." ...

posted by Patrick Sweeney at 11:42 PM   Permalink  

According to this article at Nextbook, Robert Crumb will be developing an illustrated Old Testament.

Crumb became famous for his "adult" comix. I hope that his new work will be clever and funny and not obscene.

posted by Patrick Sweeney at 11:31 PM   Permalink  

A combination of hardware problems and paying more attention to my family resulted in a blog interruption. With God's help and some time management discipline on my part, I'll get more items into the blog.

posted by Patrick Sweeney at 10:14 PM   Permalink