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Year: 2007

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Current Events, Perspective, PNCC, Poland - Polish - Polonia,

…and lead us not into temptation

I never liked lustration, the process of outing former collaborators in formerly communist countries. I actually much prefer the South African truth and reconciliation process. This gets to the heart of the matter and if handled according to Christian ethics, is the best choice for moving forward. As a matter of fact, in some sense the Bush administration is going to have to backtrack on its de-Baathification process and get to truth and reconciliation in Iraq.

In Poland not a small number of clergy cooperated with the U.B. and S.B. (Communist secret police) To a certain extent the outing of their personal sins was perceived to be worse than cooperating with the communist devils. Men entering seminaries were often presented with dossiers on their ‘activities’. Afraid of embarrassment? Do as we say.

What sins? Sexual relationships with women or other men. Priests having ‘secret’ wives and children is quite rampant in Polish society. It is a frequent source of gossip and salon talk. While there were certainly homosexuals among the clergy, heterosexual scandal was the order of the day, going back 1,000 years. As to homosexuality, there hasn’t been much of a homosexual subculture in Polish seminaries until quite recently. The trend in Poland, according to my sources, has been the appointment of homosexual rectors in seminaries. This trend, and the results it produces, will probably save the Church from having to support women who have been, for all intents and purposes, victimized, and from supporting their children. There will be other problems of course.

The recent scandal involving Bishop Wielgus, soon to be installed Archbishop of Warsaw (and that which flows from it, the red hat, the title of Primate of Poland) is a case in point (see the NY Times article Ties to Secret Police Snare Polish Bishop).

Are we to believe that the communist secret police were able to turn him, all for the ‘advantage’ of studying in Germany? The Jagellonian University or KUL (Catholic University of Lublin) have excellent faculties. No need to go to Germany to study. What could have forced a Hobson’s choice on the young priest? I have friends who refused to turn when threatened with rape and death.

The problem is twofold.

The Church imposes a standard that many men cannot endure. The resulting personal and public scandal that results from breaking your ‘commitment’ and choosing God plus God in a personal relationship is too much for some men to bear. This is of course for those who accept personal responsibility. For some, their girlfriend is no more than a convenience and a prospective source for scandal, they are no more than users. I give a ton of credit to priests who seek out the PNCC because they want to lead honest and open lives, with their wives and children. The stories of women and children, victimized and scandalized by absentee priest-fathers and priest-husbands (common law) are many fold.

The other problem is that the deals made with the secret police will be a generational defect. Is revenge and punishment worth the cost to society? I can’t imagine it is. There are those who will bear ill will toward their victimizers forever. We should pray for their healing. Above that, I would hope that a society, with a concordat, that is supposed to be 98% Roman Catholic, get its perspective on repentance and forgiveness in proper order.

The title for this post is lead us not into temptation. The bureaucracy of the R.C. Church and the weakness of men, as well as of those seeking vengeance, are sources of temptation. The best thing to do is to find God’s way in accordance with the Catholic faith once practiced and believed by all. Set aside vengeance and live honestly and justly.

Current Events

No mandatum for you…

LifeSite News reports: Apostate Catholic Turned Muslim is “Acting Chair” of Religious Studies at Catholic University

Is same woman invited to address Canadian Catholic Women’s League convention last year

LifeSiteNews.com has learned that Dr. Alexandra Bain, the formerly Catholic turned-Muslim who mocked the doctrine of the Trinity at a Catholic Women’s League convention last year, is a professor and acting chairman of the Religious Studies department at Fredericton’s St. Thomas University.

LifeSiteNews.com was tipped by a leader of the CWL that Dr. Bain, even though she was an apostate Catholic, was the keynote speaker at a Catholic Women’s League Ontario convention. Asked why she left the Catholic faith, Bain told Catholic Women’s League members at their 2006 Provincial Convention on July 11, that simple arithmetic had told her the doctrine of the Trinity, the central tenet of Christianity, was nonsense.

St. Thomas University still bills itself as a Catholic liberal arts school, —whose roots are in the faith and tradition of the Roman Catholic Church…—

I guess she won’t be getting a mandatum…

According to Canon Law 812, university theologians are required to receive mandatum from the competent ecclesiastical authority, indicating that they will “teach in communion with the Catholic Church.”

Saints and Martyrs

From today’s Office of Readings

From The Five Hundred Chapters by St. Maximus the Confessor

A mystery ever new

The Word of God, born once in the flesh (such is his kindness and his goodness), is always willing to be born spiritually in those who desire him. In them he is born as an infant as he fashions himself in them by means of their virtues. He reveals himself to the extent that he knows someone is capable of receiving him. He diminishes the revelation of his glory not out of selfishness but because he recognises the capacity and resources of those who desire to see him. Yet, in the transcendence of mystery, he always remains invisible to all.

For this reason the apostle Paul, reflecting on the power of the mystery, said: Jesus Christ, yesterday and today: he remains the same for ever. For he understood the mystery as ever new, never growing old through our understanding of it.

…

The great mystery of the divine incarnation remains a mystery for ever. How can the Word made flesh be essentially the same person that is wholly with the Father? How can he who is by nature God become by nature wholly man without lacking either nature, neither the divine by which he is God nor the human by which he became man?

Faith alone grasps these mysteries. Faith alone is truly the substance and foundation of all that exceeds knowledge and understanding.

And this conference would have been interesting…

PNCC,

PNCC Ordinations and entries into the clerical state

Our seminarian Adam reports in Seminarians moving up… that Deacon Jason Soltysiak will be ordained to the Holy Priesthood of the PNCC, Cleric Greg Gronn will be ordained to the Diaconate, and that he and Rafal Kruszewski will be tonsured on Wednesday, January 24th, 2007 at 10am at St. Stanislaus Bishop and Martyr Cathedral in Scranton, PA.

Please keep these men in your prayers. Lord, Jesus, fashion these men into good and faithful servants in Your Holy Church.

Current Events, Perspective, Political

We’re coming to America…

Remembering the song from the Jazz Singer. We’re coming to America… Today!

Kind of makes you think of those immigrants coming to the golden shores of America… the land of ideals.

I have a feeling that regaining that status among the world’s poor and disaffected will take a very very long time.

FBI documents reveal details of abuse at Guantanamo

WASHINGTON, Jan. 3 (Xinhua) — A number of newly released FBI files give detailed accounts of abuses at the U.S. detention facilities for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, CNN reported Wednesday.

The documents showed that at least 26 FBI employees witnessed aggressive mistreatment of prisoners and harsh interrogation techniques by other government agencies or outside contractors at the prison, according to the report.

“On several occasions witnesses saw detainees in interrogation rooms chained hand and foot in fetal position to floor with no chair/food/water; most urinated or defecated on selves and were left there 18, 24 hours or more,” according to one FBI account.

Today!

One FBI witness saw a detainee “shaking with cold,” while another said a detainee in a sweltering unventilated room was “almost unconscious on a floor with a pile of hair next to him (he had apparently been pulling it out through the night).”

Today!

Another witness saw a detainee “with a full beard whose head was wrapped in duct tape.”

Today!

One file said that an interrogator squatted over the Quran and that a German shepherd dog was ordered to “growl, bark and show his teeth to the prisoner.”

Today!

The documents also said the detainees told FBI agents that they had been beaten and one detainee complained that a female guard had rubbed up against him, fondled him and wiped menstrual blood on his head.

Today!

Agents reported seeing detainees with facial injuries, such as black eyes and cuts, and broken fingers.

Today!

The temperature of detention rooms was also kept either extremely hot or cold and loud music was played to deprive detainees of sleep.

Today!

A few agents said they had seen prisoners wrapped with Israeli flags.

Today!

The FBI said none of its agents were involved in the mistreatment, which it said was carried out by civilian security contractors or military personnel.

You have to ask yourself – does this represent me?

Current Events, Perspective

Bribe?

Not sure if anyone has been following the controversy over a Microsoft marketing ploy but here’s the short story. Microsoft sent certain bloggers an Acer Ferrari laptop (worth about $3k) with Windows Vista – absolutely free, some with, some without strings.

The blogsphere is all abuzz over the move. Media and some bloggers have blasted the bloggers who received the laptops as unethical PR people or journalists – because they got a marketing gimic with the Ferrari name pasted on it.

Brian Solis, principal of FutureWorks PR has a wrap-up in Microsoft PR Sparks a Blogstorm of Support and Outrage. Check it out.

Anyway, in my opinion, this dust-up is really nothing of concern. Top end bloggers have little need for free stuff. Free stuff is a nice perq, but has very little influence over anything. If a person can be bought for $3,000 then that propensity would have shown a lot sooner (along with their crack habit).

Bloggers range is style and in professionalism. Bloggers covering the daily antics of their cat(s) don’t really fancy themselves as journalists, but some of the high end serious bloggers do. Blogging has to do with defining yourself. While a $3,000 laptop might buy the admiration of your local cat blogger (or crack addict) – it really doesn’t do much for anyone who could drop that change on a new laptop anytime.

Microsoft got what it wanted, exposure and controversy. The rest of us can yawn and go back to sleep, Mac OS X Leopard will be out in the spring.

Oh, and pay no attention to that man with the Ferrari in the corner.

Christian Witness, Current Events, Perspective, Political

Ummm – would the outcome have been different?

From Bloomberg: Manner of Hussein’s Execution Draws U.S., UN Concern

Jan. 3 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. would have carried out the execution of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein “differently” and didn’t play a role in the proceedings, a military spokesman said as two United Nations officials criticized his hanging.

Major General William Caldwell said at a news conference televised from Baghdad that the way Hussein was put to death was “a government of Iraq decision.”

A U.S. military team only transported Hussein to the site of his execution, and the Iraqi government maintained custody of the former leader throughout, Caldwell said. After delivering Hussein to the Iraqi Ministry of Justice’s As-Buratha prison, U.S. personnel “withdrew from the building, back from the whole location,” he added.

The grainy video of Hussein being taunted by chants from those present while about to be executed and the former leader falling to his death on the gallows in mid-prayer has sparked days of demonstrations by fellow Sunni Muslims in Iraq and further inflamed sectarian tensions.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters in Washington today the U.S. raised “questions” with the Iraqi government “related to procedure and timing” of the execution…

I’m getting the feeling that we think we would have handled it so much more professionally, such that the execution wouldn’t have ended up bitter in President Bush’s mouth (as I said it would). I wonder how the general would have done it – firing squad, lethal injection, electric chair… Anything, as long as it wasn’t filmed and we could spin it the way we wanted.

All I could think of was that this general must be truly stupid – hey look everyone, we can kill much more cleanly, especially when we’re dealing with a prisoner.

No, you handed him over to an end that had already been determined. The general is simply playing Pilate – washing his hands of this man and his guilt and doing so on behalf of his Commander in Chief.

Fr. Jim Tucker points to the story of a soldier who actually used his brain and soul in What If They Threw a War and No One Showed Up?. First Lt. Ehren Watada took the time to discern what going along meant, before he went along. He’ll be severely punished for sure, but that’s the price he’s willing to pay for Christian witness.

On the other hand our ‘Christian-in-Chief,’ President Bush (at least according to him) can’t even muster the courage to criticize the brutality of it all:

The Bush administration sent conflicting signals Wednesday about the taunting and baiting that accompanied the execution, with the White House declining to join criticism of the procedure…

I’m sure they are very proud, especially of the outcome – which regardless of the methodology employed is equally deadly. And, yes Mr. Bush, we all agree that Saddam was an evil man and should have been punished for crimes against humanity, including the ones your and your predecessors helped him commit. But that story will die with the additional executions that will take place in the next 24 hours.

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