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Build your Parish in 2011

From Christian Newswire: Top Eight Things Your Church Can Do to Increase Membership in 2011

Most churches in the United States are facing declining membership, but the message is still as relevant as in the past. So what’s changed? The message is getting lost in all the clutter.

Here are my top 8 tips for increasing your church membership in 2011:

  1. List your church on Google Places. Last month 17 million people googled “church, find a church, church home, Methodist Church, Baptist church, etc.”
  2. Make up or buy some cards that invite people to your church and hand them out to every member. Ask them to go out and perform random acts of kindness and give out the cards. Memory Cross has developed some very unique ones or you can create your own. If each of your members can touch three people a year, think what an impact that would make to your community and your church.
  3. Get a list of people in the neighborhoods around your church and reach out to them at least 3-4 times a year. Postcards are a great tool because they are inexpensive and people have to see them, at least for a second.
  4. Create door hangers or flyers and give them to members to hand out in their neighborhood.
  5. Hold a free community event. It can be anything from a car wash to a concert to handing out bottles of water on a hot summer day. Do not accept any donations. Instead hand out a card with your church information on it.
  6. Start using email marketing and ask for the names and email address of all visitors. This will provide you a second way to connect with them.
  7. Set up a system where you connect visitors with someone in your church as soon as possible. Too many people come one time; and if they don’t feel connected to the church, they may not return. Even a phone call to thank them for visiting is a great way to open up conversation.
  8. Form a group that is committed to praying for people in your community. Meet on a regular basis and encourage them to write down any outreach ideas they come up with.

If you take action on these eight steps, you will find new visitors coming to your church and people’s lives being changed.

Art, Christian Witness, Perspective, ,

Plant an olive tree

From the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation: Please join in solidarity this holiday season, and help to replant olive trees in occupied Palestine.

Knowing that the common people in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem continue to suffer under occupation and displacement, we are reminded that Mary and Joseph, huddling in a nook, were refugees under Roman occupation, and that they had traveled from Nazareth to Bethlehem, where Joseph’s family lived. Just as they lived in fear of a foreign occupying power two thousand years ago, sadly the Palestinians live in fear of the Israeli occupation, which imposes apartheid and takes their land. Often times, their olive trees are ripped out in an effort to displace them from their land.

Help to plant so that the children of many future generations might enjoy and be sustained by a gift of hope, a gift calling for a just and lasting peace.

The Olive Trees by Vincent van Gogh, 1889
Christian Witness, Current Events, Perspective,

Giving thanks for a helping hand

From the Los Angeles Times via the Press Democrat: Man repays jobless benefits, 46 years later

LOS ANGELES — California’s budget crisis has eased a bit, thanks to a South Carolina man grateful to the state for helping him 46 years ago.

Dennis R. Ferguson wrote a check for $10,000 to the state treasury Nov. 23 as “repayment for what California did for me” when he was laid off from his aerospace engineering job in 1964.

Ferguson, a 74-year-old retired computer programmer who lives in the Atlantic coastal community of Fripp Island, S.C., said the four months’ worth of unemployment benefits he collected after losing his job with Douglas Aircraft allowed him to re-train for a new career in computers.

State Treasurer Bill Lockyer said Ferguson’s money will be spent on schools, as required by state law.

That’s appropriate, Lockyer said, “because there’s a lesson to be learned here about what it means to have a sense of shared sacrifice and commitment to the common good.”

Ferguson was 26 and living in a rundown, $25-a-week West Los Angeles motel when he collected state aid. Officials of the state Employment Development Department estimate that his total benefits during the four months totaled about $1,100.

Ferguson said he wanted to show his appreciation for the assistance by adding “interest” to his repayment. He said he picked $10,000 because it is a “nice round number.”

“Anyone who is helped out when they are down ought to give something back, especially now that California has budget problems,” he told state officials.

The jobless benefits helped him go back to school, Ferguson said. He enrolled in computer programming at the now-defunct International Tabulating Institute in Los Angeles.

According to Ferguson, the school had one IBM 1440 series computer with 4K of memory that was shared by 10 students. That room-size data processor sold for $90,000 at the time.

But Ferguson learned programming on it, creating 21 programs during the three-month class. He earned an A grade and a certificate of completion.

After that, Ferguson went to work as a computer operator for Belmont Savings and Loan in Seal Beach. A year later, he landed a better-paying job as a programmer at Honeywell in Los Angeles.

Later, Ferguson worked in the Atlanta area before settling in South Carolina.

In the note to Sacramento officials that accompanied his check, Ferguson thanked the state for letting him collect unemployment while studying at the storefront computer institute.

“This allowed me to have a great career, and I’ve been ever thankful,” he wrote.

Tom Dresslar, a spokesman for the state treasurer’s office, said Thursday that Ferguson’s check cleared and has been deposited in the public schools fund.

In a statement, Lockyer expressed his appreciation of Ferguson’s gift.

“I hope that as we work together to meet our budget challenges, we keep in mind his act of generosity and the spirit it embodies,” he said.

Reading this story, I was impressed by the real difference a helping hand can make, and the beauty of Mr. Ferguson’s attitude of thankfulness. He provides an excellent example of gentlemanly/gentle-womanly conduct. May he be blessed for his thankfulness.

Christian Witness, Current Events, Perspective, PNCC, Political, , , , , , ,

Thanksgiving 2010

We give Thee our most humble and hearty thanks, O God, for blessings without number which we have received from Thee, for all Thy goodness and loving kindness, for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life. And, we beseech Thee, give us that due sense of all Thy mercies, that our hearts may be truly thankful for all things, and that we show forth Thy praise, not only with our lips, but in our lives, by giving up ourselves to Thy service and by walking before Thee in holiness and righteousness all our days. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. — A General Thanksgiving – from A Book of Devotions and Prayers According to the Use of the Polish National Catholic Church, Published by the Mission Fund of the PNCC, 7th edition, May 1, 1984.

John Guzlowski posted a poem for Thanksgiving at Lightning and Ashes. It begins:

My people were all poor people,
the ones who survived to look
in my eyes and touch my fingers
and those who didn’t, dying instead

of fever or hunger or a bullet
in the face, dying maybe thinking
of how their deaths were balanced
by my birth or one of the other

stories the poor tell themselves
to give themselves the strength
to crawl out of their own graves.

…

It is stark, and fitted to our times.

From CNN: More Americans filing for unemployment

The number of Americans filing for first-time unemployment benefits rose by 2,000 in the latest week, pointing to continued weakness in the job market, the government reported Thursday.

The number of initial filings rose to 439,000 in the week ended Nov. 13, the Labor Department said. The number was slightly better than the 442,000 economists surveyed by Briefing.com had expected, but higher than the revised 437,000 initial claims filed the week before.

Overall, the weekly number has been treading water since last November, hovering in the mid to upper 400,000s and even ticking slightly above 500,000 in mid-August.

Economists often say the number needs to fall below 400,000, before the stubbornly high unemployment rate can start dropping significantly…

While Congress (various sources): Fails To Extend UI Benefits – Program Faces Lapse By November 30

On November 18th, the House of Representative failed to pass a three month extension of emergency unemployment benefits (EUC08) setting up the possibility the program will lapse once again on November 30.

Plunging over 2 million people into hopeless economic uncertainty. No lifeline, no paycheck, no jobs — nothing by which they might feed their families, pay for housing, or sustain themselves till the one job for every five people becomes theirs.

The hope for that happening is slim, at least for 6 years at the best estimate. From Money Morning via NuWire: Pre-Recession Unemployment Rates Won’t Be Seen Until At Least 2016

Stocks are up nearly 70% from their bear market lows. Corporate profits are rising. And the economy is expanding. Yet the unemployment rate continues to hover around 10%.

Neither President Barack Obama’s $787 billion stimulus program, nor the U.S. Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing has generated enough good news to convince companies to hire meaningful numbers of new workers.

Of the 8.7 million people who lost their jobs during the recession, more than 7.3 million are still without work. There are still nearly five job seekers for every job opening. In fact, adding in workers who are working part time but looking for full-time work and those who have given up looking all together brings the “real” unemployment rate to a staggering 17% compared to 16.5% last year, the latest government report shows.

And even though private sector payrolls increased by 151,000 in October – bringing the number of jobs created since the economy bottomed in December 2009 to 1.1 million -the share of the population working or looking for work declined to 64.5%, its lowest level since 1984.

…

The Great Recession has spawned some truly unique – and ugly – economic offspring. But one trend has emerged that sets it apart from most economic downturns: the swelling ranks of the long-term unemployed.

The number of people who’ve been collecting unemployment benefits for at least six months increased by more than 100% in 40 states over the last two years, according to an analysis of unemployment insurance data compiled by National Employment Law Project (NELP).

The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) stood at 6.2 million in October. Those folks now account for 41.8% of the 14.8 million unemployed workers in the country.

“Long term unemployment is more than ever the norm of a layoff , and it’s across the country and across the economy that this is happening,” Andrew Stettner of NELP told the Huffington Post.

The reality of long-term unemployment is even worse than the numbers suggest.

“This is certainly a crisis of huge proportion and it is reflected in an extraordinary number of people unemployed for a very long time,” wrote Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, in an email to the HuffPost. “It’s even worse than that because we’re seeing a large withdrawal from the job market and one can assume that this is among those who have been unemployed a long time — giving up.”

This trend is important because long-term unemployment feeds on itself.

There are a series of consequences that follow long-term unemployed workers far into the future. Job skills deteriorate, job networks disappear, and workers lose hope. The longer a worker is unemployed the less likely he or she is to find a new job and the more likely it is they will find only a lower-paying job.

“People lose job skills, they become unemployable,” said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. “It becomes a real long-term problem. People in their late 40s and 50s who end up out of work for long periods of time may drop out of the work force and never get another regular job.”

There are also other – less obvious – consequences of long-term unemployment. According to recent research, job displacement can lead to significant reductions in life expectancy . Other research shows that the children of these workers earn less when they become adults and enter the labor force.

…

The specter of long-term unemployment will sustain the unemployment rate as the skills of idled workers deteriorate and segments of the labor force are compelled to retrain or move out of the areas of the country that were propped up by the housing bubble. The likely result is that the unemployment rate will fall at only a gradual pace.

…

To determine how long the recovery will take this time, the Brookings Institution recently examined the “job gap,” or the number of months it would take to get back to pre-recession employment levels while absorbing the 125,000 people who enter the labor force each month.

The results show that even under the most optimistic scenarios, it will take years to eliminate the job gap.

If the economy adds about 208,000 jobs per month, the average monthly rate for the best year of job creation in the 2000s, it will take 142 months, or about 12 years to close the job gap.

At a more optimistic rate of 321,000 jobs per month, the average monthly rate for the best year of the 1990s, the economy will reach pre-recession employment levels in 60 months, or about 5 years.

Here’s the takeaway: Based on the history, pre-recession unemployment rates won’t be seen again until at least 2016, and in all probability much later, as idled workers find it harder and harder to land jobs.

Also, if you are unemployed, certain elitist, undereducated, and reactionary segments of society cast the blame squarely on your shoulders. They think you’re banking the money for a lavish vacation and a grope from your local TSA agent. Of course reality is different, one job for every five workers, and that UI benefit money gets spent on the basic needs of life, preventing a horrific dip into poverty. Per the Congressional Budget Office in Unemployment Insurance Benefits and Family Income of the Unemployed [PDF]

  • Almost half of families in which at least one person was unemployed received income from UI in 2009. In 2009, the median contribution of UI benefits to the income of families that received those benefits was $6,000, accounting for 11 percent of their family income that year.
  • Without the financial support provided to families by UI benefits and under an assumption of no change in employment or other sources of income associated with the absence of that support, the poverty rate and related indicators of financial hardship would have been higher in 2009 than they actually were. For instance, in 2009 the poverty rate was 14.3 percent, whereas without UI benefits and with no behavioral responses taken into account, it would have been 15.4 percent.

But who cares about studies and research when we are simply angered because our neighbor is in need. Not too long ago we would have invited that family in. We would have fed and clothed them (Matthew 25:40). Now, who cares! Not businesses like Giant Food, the Thanksgiving Grinch, because someone may be slowed on the way to the cash register.

For many of us, it’s a Thanksgiving tradition to drop a few coins in the Salvation Army’s red kettle outside our local grocery.

It’s quick, easy, and has real impact – last year, more than $139 million was raised by red kettles to provide services ranging from hot meals to warm beds for homeless and impoverished Americans.

This year the need is greater than ever, with more than 44 million Americans on food stamps. But because of the objection of a large grocery store chain, the residents of poverty-stricken Washington, D.C. are at risk of going without essential holiday services.

Giant Food, a major supermarket chain in Washington D.C. and several surrounding states, just issued new regulations severely limiting red kettle fundraisers. Why? “In order to best serve our customers, and not hinder their shopping experience,” a Giant Food representative said in a statement.

Donating to the needy might not be at the top of everyone’s shopping list, but that’s why physical reminders of the importance of giving are needed. Caught up in the commotion of our own lives, we can all use help overcoming the distractions and indifference that prevents us from helping to alleviate suffering in our communities.

Tell Giant to offer more than a bargain, but hope as well. Tell Congress to actually do something for the long term unemployed, that is, other than posturing.

Oh, and if you are working; watch over your shoulder because employers are stealing their worker wages at an alarming rate. From the Albany Times Union: Wages belong to the workers

In New York City alone, a study by the National Employment Law Project earlier this year found that 21 percent of low-wage workers are paid less than the minimum wage, 77 percent weren’t paid time-and-a-half when they worked overtime, and 69 percent didn’t receive any pay at all when they came in early or stayed late after their shift.

We’re talking about the jobs that literally make our economy run — home care and child care workers, dishwashers, food prep workers, construction workers, cashiers, laundry workers, garment workers, security guards and janitors. Hundreds of thousands of them aren’t getting even the most basic protections that the rest of us take for granted.

And make no mistake, the problem isn’t going away: These types of jobs account for eight out of the top 10 occupations projected to grow the most by 2018.

Wage theft in New York is not incidental, aberrant or rare, committed by a few rogue employers. Over the last two years, the state Department of Labor has brought cases against restaurants in Ithaca, a printer in Albany, horse trainers at the Saratoga Race Course, hotels in Lake George and car washes across the state. Altogether, the agency recovered $28.8 million in stolen wages for nearly 18,000 New Yorkers in 2009 — the largest amount ever. That’s a valiant effort to be sure, but still not nearly enough to match the scale of the problem…when workers made a complaint to their employer or government agency, 42 percent experienced illegal retaliation — such as being fired or having their wages or hours cut. That is enough to discourage even the most committed worker from filing a wage theft claim.

[And r]ight now, it’s all too common that a worker successfully brings a wage theft claim, only to see the employer declare bankruptcy, leave town, close shop or otherwise evade paying up… In New York City alone, more than 300,000 workers are robbed of $18.4 million every week, totaling close to $1 billion a year. Extrapolate that to the state level, and you get a staggering amount of potential stimulus that’s being taken out of the pockets of working families and local businesses, and state coffers.

Even in good times, fighting wage theft is smart policy. In a recession, it’s such a no-brainer…

Our call as people of faith is to bring hope, to give hope, to recall in the minds of our brothers and sisters that all we have, even our poverty, is from the Lord, and to take action. We must remind all that God is about freedom and justice, not subservience and pain, and show our solidarity with those thrust into poverty, hopelessness, joblessness, or who have their daily bread stolen out of their hands.

Today, the struggles are growing closer to those of 125 years ago. Our people no longer look to bright hope in tomorrow, but the hunger pains to come tomorrow. They are falling into a grave out of which they might not crawl.

As opposed to purveyors of the success gospel, or the gospel of monarchies of every type, we are aware our hard scrabble, blue collar background. Our Holy Church, the PNCC, gave hope to working men and women when all that was offered them were days of back breaking labor for little in wages and the company store. When their Churches were joined at the hip with the ruling classes and the government bureaucracy, we stood by their side on the picket line. What we offered then was education, literature, a better future, lived ideals based on God’s closeness to man, an expression of the freedom these men and women had as Americans. We showed them that they could join together in Unions, that they could worship God in truth and freedom. We taught them about our God who desires deeply to be joined to men and women in their lives, who communes with them in their work and struggle. Our God wants more than a fractional share of our pennies for others to administer, but true thanks from a free people joined to Him.

The hope of Jesus Christ, His peace, His presence, His justice, His tomorrow are more necessary than ever. Let us as a Church stand up and show the hope that is more than social services, more than mere charity and political posturing; the Church that is the hope of eternity, the hope of freedom and justice for a free people joined to Jesus Christ our brother. God stands with us. Let us give Him thanks and more — our action.

Christian Witness, Media, Perspective, PNCC, , ,

Parishioner discusses a church closing with her bishop

From FOX News 8 in Cleveland: ON TAPE: Bishop Lennon Recorded Talking About Church Closings

The entire conversation is available for listening. It runs a little over 28 minutes.

CLEVELAND — Behind closed doors, Bishop Richard Lennon, head of the [Roman Catholic] Diocese of Cleveland, is straightforward about the need to close churches.

“Let me be very blunt: why haven’t the people of Cleveland done this over the past years,” asked Bishop Lennon.

The bishop took part in a conversation back in May with Pat Schulte Singleton. She was a member of St. Patrick’s — a church on Cleveland’s west side that has since been closed.

Schulte Singleton was hoping to get the bishop to reverse that decision. She went to the meeting alone, and she recorded the conversation without his knowledge. Why?

“To have an accounting of what happened,” she says now. “When you go to talk to the bishop, especially Bishop Lennon, you’re a bit intimidated…”

A few things:

  • In most places people have a right to record conversations to which they are a party. I have no problem with Ms. Schulte Singleton’s doing so. It is her right.
  • The bishop hits all the right points on technical issues. Being catholic means more than just “place.” It also means a life of sacrifice. No one in the rest of the hierarchy will fault him on those points. You won’t likely get a co-adjutator or an apostolic administrator unless the Bishop goes completely off (becomes a heretic or a scandal to the Church) although the early change in Scranton looked to be a result of too heavy a hand by the R.C. Bishop there.
  • The Bishop is a good businessman who is cutting losses and moving to where his customers prefer to be (the suburbs). He knows the financials and the statistics.
  • He is equally wrong about place, because place is important, not just because of individual’s attachment to it, but because the presence of church and Christian witness changes the character of place. Yes church is more than place, but it is present in place and time to bring grace, life, and community.
  • He is absolutely wrong in his assessment of neighborhood change. If I were the folks living in, or moving into that neighborhood I would be deeply hurt by his attitude. I sense a subtle bigotry there. He could have just said, ‘I don’t want to minister to THOSE people in THAT neighborhood. I’ve written them off.’
  • The PNCC model works (as our Prime Bishop Emeritus often said – we have a gem of a Church because we are Catholic with a democratic form of governance) because parishioner ownership results in commitment to working for the home that no one can take from them. It allows parishioners to innovatively approach evangelization as well as solutions to issues. You would never hear – ‘we didn’t know about the financials,’ from the member of a PNCC Parish Committee (as opposed to Ms. Schulte Singleton noting that they didn’t know anything about assessments in arrears). Thanks be to God that the clergy in the PNCC can concentrate on the spiritual. You will never hear money preached from the pulpit. The people handle it and contribute toward what they own.
  • Whomever is hitting her people up for money to run appeals up the Vatican flag pole has quite the racket. Milk the dolts back in the states while we sip wine in Roma. O Solo Mio! The answer three years hence — Negato!
Christian Witness, Perspective, Poland - Polish - Polonia, , ,

The faith divide and a giant Jesus in Poland

From The Guardian: Poland’s faith divide: Ignited by the Smolensk crash, bitter tensions have emerged between Poland’s Catholics and liberal secularists

When 96 Polish dignitaries, including President Lech Kaczyński, were killed in a plane crash near Smolensk in April, the world briefly turned its gaze to Poland and its often tragic history. The victims were travelling to a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre – the murder of some 20,000 Poles by the Soviet secret police in 1940. The two tragedies became fused in the public imagination, reviving old anti-Russian prejudices and seeing the memorials to Katyn across Poland become the focus of fresh mourning. But the events that followed, and their consequences for Poland’s religious culture, have been little-covered in western Europe. The last six months have seen a bitter controversy emerge, raising serious questions about the place of religion in Polish public life.

Despite its image as one of the most homogeneously Catholic countries in Europe, Poland’s early history was one of religious diversity, with large Jewish and Orthodox populations, and the later founding of the Uniate church, making for a variety of traditions. The Warsaw Confederation of 1573 formalised a religious tolerance that had long been in existence and which had seen the country become a refuge for Protestants. The violence and extremism of the Reformation was hardly seen in Poland, and the country gained a reputation as an intellectual powerhouse in eastern Europe. With the arrival of the Jesuits in the late 16th century, however, the country experienced increasing Catholic dominance. The 1724 Tumult of Toruń, when Protestants ransacked a Jesuit collegium and were horribly executed for defiling Catholic images, marked a waning of religious tolerance. Finally, when Poland was carved up by competing empires in the late 18th century, Catholicism became a surrogate for nationalism in a fragmented country. It is the legacy of this that the country still deals with today.

The “cross controversy” that followed the Smolensk crash and dominated Polish headlines this summer was evidence of the intimate intertwining of Polish national identity and Catholic devotion. Threats to remove the large cross set up in front of the presidential palace in Warsaw as a memorial to the pro-church Kaczyński brought out conservative Catholic protestors in force. Styling themselves as “cross-defenders” and “true Poles”, they staged a round-the-clock vigil at a makeshift shrine. For a full month they could be found there kneeling in prayer, or blasting patriotic songs from a tinny stereo, holding their hands aloft in the victory sign that came to symbolise the Solidarność-led freedom movement in communist-era Poland.

The shrine provided a snapshot of the essence of contemporary Polish Catholic culture. Images of Pope John Paul II, Saint Faustina’s Christ of the Divine Mercy, Father Jerzy Popiełuszko and Our Lady of Czestochowa appeared alongside photos of Kaczyński, indicating his rapid transformation into a quasi-religious hero of the Catholic right. Popiełuszko, a political dissident murdered by the communist regime, and the Black Madonna of Czestochowa, mutilated by a Hussite heretic and later the miraculous defeater of invading Swedes, both carry strong messages about heroic Polish resistance to foreign foes and the threats posed to Catholics by unbelievers. Like in the equating of Katyn and Smolensk, historical specificity is erased to make universal symbols of Polish suffering, and at this shrine Catholicism was articulated as the essence of Poland’s history and nationhood.

But the cross controversy’s reaffirmation of conservative Catholic identity was met by an opposing force. Objecting to this overtly religious symbol at the seat of government, secularists and atheists were galvanised into action, staging a rally to call for the removal of the cross. Organised via the Akcja Krzyz (Cross Action) group on Facebook, this protest was dominated by a younger generation who were looking back to Poland’s history of liberalism and the prizing of enlightenment values. With the founding of the Polish Association of Rationalists in 2005, as well as the staging of an atheist “coming out” march in Kraków in October 2009 (repeated to great success just two weeks ago), another strand of Polish identity is emerging.

In mid-September, the Smolensk cross was finally removed. The shrine was cleared away, but the passions that built it are far from diffused and other controversies threaten to reawaken the conflict between conservative Catholics and secularist liberals. The atheist movement continues to grow, and there are also signs of greater religious diversity in the country, with an Islamic cultural centre planned for Warsaw, and more mosques being built across Poland. But hardline Catholic views also remain strong … Meanwhile, in a bold statement of Poland’s Catholic identity, the town of Świebodzin in the west of the country is building the biggest statue of Jesus in the world…

This article covers a lot of territory and hits the highlights of Polish religious and ethnic diversity very well. What Poland had been, for most of its history, was a welcoming and diverse country where the right to freedom of thought and conscience were protected. Much of that changed with the 18th century divisions of Poland. Poles were faced with rabid anti-Polish policies enacted in the German and Russian controlled sections of Poland (nationalism as well as religious and linguistic unity were the protective backlash), policies that pitted one ethnic group against the next in the Austrio-Hungarian controlled territories (which shored up the Empire’s control since the natives were too busy fighting each other to fight against the Empire), the murder of 6 million Catholic and Jewish Poles by Nazi Germany, and the subsequent shifting of borders leading to a more homogenous state. The result of the last 196 years is exactly the national mythos that exists today. Those who understand the longer and wider 1,044 year history of Poland know that it citizens achieve the greatest in human endeavor from diversity.

On the giant Jesus… what upsets me is not the fact of the statue, but the motivations behind it. The great buildings, cathedrals, monuments and such were always constructed to the glory of God and the memory of others. Not so much in this case! Underpaid and cheated workers building a statute to attract tourist money on a shaky foundation; not exactly a tribute to our God and King. Local newspaper editor Waldemar Roszczuk gets it right: “It’s a monster of a statue which has nothing to do with Christian teaching.” Amen!

Everything Else, Perspective, Poland - Polish - Polonia

Children of the rich

After reading the story I will point to below, my sarcasm meter went off the scale. I’ve long held that the rich, those who made their own wealth through enterprise are occasionally faced with a child or children who, if left to run the business would destroy it in a matter of minutes. As such, the rich are faced with a challenge in determining some future for their less than adequate (in a business sense) children. Where do these children end up? Typically politics. George W. Bush was a prime example – failed in every business he touched from oil wells to baseball, soft landing in politics. Looking at the pedigree of certain politicians, well, you know why they are there – let them screw up the government, just keep ’em away from the family business.

It appears that another alternative for these children is the arts.

If you have some modicum of common sense, looking at the pictures below might give a clue as to who one might consider trusting:

Trustworthy business people with insight into international intrigue?
Polish Priests and members of Opus Dei seeking to rule the world?

…but, a scion of the rich?

Hi, I'm Roger. Which did I choose? -- Photo via Roger Davidson Music

From the Gothamist and Interia: Laptop Repair Leads To $6 Million Scam Involving Opus Dei, More

If a 58-year-old pianist, whose family founded a huge oilfield services company, is worried about his laptop being infected with a computer virus, why not grift him for $6 million by telling him that not only was the laptop infected, but that he needed physical protection from the worm’s creators based in Honduras and that ” Polish priests affiliated with Opus Dei were attempting to possibly harm” him? That’s what computer repairman Vickram Bedi and Helga Invarsdottir are accused of doing to victim Roger Davidson.

Back in 2004, Davidson went to Bedi’s Mount Kisco, NY repair shop, Datalink, because he was worried music composition on the laptop would be lost. The Westchester DA’s press release about the alleged crime is kind of amazing, so here it is:

The scheme commenced in August 2004, when the victim’s computer developed a virus. Concerned that documents, photos and more importantly the music he had written and had stored on the computer could be lost, the victim took the computer to the defendant’s premises to have it repaired. Bedi confirmed that victim’s computer had a virus and indicated that the virus was extremely virulent and had also damaged Datalink’s computers.

Bedi told the victim that he had the facility, the contacts, and the means of tracking down the source of this virus that specifically targeted the victim’s computer and that he and his family were in grave danger. As a result, Bedi convinced the victim to not only begin paying for computer data retrieval and security, but also to begin paying for necessary personal physical protection.

Bedi subsequently advised the victim that he successfully tracked the source of the computer virus to a remote village in Honduras. Bedi informed him that the hard drive was the source of the worm that had invaded the computer and advised the victim that Bedi’s uncle, who Bedi contended is an officer in the Indian military, flew to Honduras in an Indian military aircraft during a reconnaissance mission and obtained the hard drive.

Bedi further related that his uncle obtained information that Polish priests affiliated with Opus Dei were attempting to possibly harm the victim.

Bedi also advised the victim that the Central Intelligence Agency had subcontracted with Bedi to perform work which would prevent any attempts by the Polish priests associated with Opus Dei to infiltrate the U.S. government.

Over this period Datalink charged the victim’s American Express card accounts on a continuing and monthly basis, resulting of a larceny of more than six million dollars.

It’s possible that the pair may have scammed Davidson, whose great-grandfather and great-grand uncle founded Schlumberger Ltd., for $20 million. Harrison police uncovered the scam when investigating a separate complaint against Bedi. Bedi and Invarsdottir were charged with grand larceny and their bail was set at $5 million bond over $3 million cash each. The pair also had to give up their passports.

Westchester DA Janet DiFiore said, “As is charged in the complaint, these two defendants preyed upon, duped and exploited the fears of this victim with cold calculation and callousness. The systematic method with which they continued the larceny over a period of more than six years is nothing short of heartless.”

I think they could have told him that an invading Martian army had infected his computer, or perhaps it was the Jews. The sorry fact is that people are indeed dumb enough to read Dan Brown and other fiction and draw real life conclusions from it. They believe in every conspiracy flight of fancy from Nostradamus, to Masonic, Bilderberg, and Trilateral Commission plots. There is a scary cleric around every corner just waiting for a piano player with some “very important world shattering sheet music.” Why isn’t he running for office?

Of course there is the unsaid: Where did Mr. Davidson learn (from mom, dad, grandpa?) that Polacks and Catholics can never be trusted. Does he have a load of bigotry that feeds his fears?

By the way, the Star Trek tie is the worst thing I’ve ever seen. Maybe the Vulcans will beam him up to save him from the Polacks?

More info from Pressan – the Icelandic Press:

Helga Invarsdottir’s father claims that Mr. Davidson was having an affair with her, even though he is/was married. Ms. Invarsdottir and Mr. Bedi sat on the “board” of Mr. Davidson’s Society for Universal Sacred Music, Inc. It appears that she was its Treasurer.

Christian Witness, Perspective, , ,

Conversions?

I have been following news of the new Ordinates for Catholics of the Anglican tradition mainly through my reading of articles and links the Young Fogey has posted. I wish these folks well in finding a new home, as I did in the PNCC. I wasn’t fleeing wholesale theological and patristic anarchy as they are, but rather a general weakness in Roman Catholic practice which was a disconnect from all I had learned and knew. It began as an escape, but in the time that passed I realized it had to be a re-evaluation of all I held; it had to be a process of re-education and becoming. That was necessary in order for me to be true to my choice and conscience. I needed to be honest, not just comfortable, rendering more than lip service (Matthew 15:8) to God and the Church. I faced struggles in adapting and in becoming PNCC, and I have to keep old habits and ways of thinking in check to this day.

That said, I offer a few things to consider. I know that the men (AKA bishops) leaving the Anglican Church could care less about my perspective, but here it is:

  • It is a conversion. You will not be who you were, nor will you be able, of good conscience, to believe what you believed or practice what you practiced. You will be able to preserve aspects of your patrimony in liturgies and the cycle of prayer, but even they will change. Do you have it in your heart and mind to accept, defend, and teach all that the Roman Catholic Church teaches? Can you work toward that in good faith and be willing to meet the day when you have to admit that what you were was a falsehood? It will take some time to integrate these things into who you are, but you should really be going in as more than just Anglicans getting rid of women bishops. You cannot resign yourselves to being the Anglican version of “Orthodox in Communion with Rome,” accepting and rejecting teaching as you feel is right. You will trip over this stuff almost every day for the rest of your life — a lot in the beginning.
  • The PNCC experience with many Anglicans has not been good. They rarely make it in the door because they freely admit they want to be Anglican in all ways, but with valid bishops and orders (of course we will not accept those who do not intend to be PNCC). Of those who do convert, many typically revert because we are simply too Catholic for their taste, or they miss home. Learn from those experiences and avoid the pitfall of tying to justify being in a happy place with few “window dressing” concessions. There is no via media. Cognitive dissonance won’t do you or the R.C. Church any good.
  • Can you back the Bishop of Rome as more than that, as your Pope, with full teaching authority and universal jurisdiction, so that when he says, ‘pray it this way,’ you do it that way personal objections notwithstanding? Can you be the new More or Fisher?
  • Can you see past smells, bells, pretty architecture, vestments and the like (externals) to the struggles you will face in the very small communities you will administer, who cannot pay for much, who will similarly struggle against their inbred Protestant ‘I’ll be the judge of that’ way of thinking? They may only be able to afford crappy polyester vestments… what then?
  • Can you get along with the local R.C. Bishop and Diocesan administration who will act more the pope than the pope, pushing you to prove your loyalty by throwing up obstacles and questions every step of the way? You may appear more Catholic than they externally, but they know the system from the inside, and in the R.C. Church the system and its laws can crush you.
  • What do you do when half of those you lead to Rome run back because the trials and work are more than they bargained for? Can you bless them and wish them well in their path to Christ, or will you crucify them as traitors to the cause?
  • Can you bear criticism when you cannot marry a parishioner’s half atheist daughter who hasn’t been to church since she was 14, or cannot baptize her child, or when you cannot give someone an annulment for their 3rd serial marriage, or when you cannot commune some in the congregation? How do you explain all those thorny issues after the glamor of venturing out wears off and reality hits home (pickup Monty Python condom sketch). Can you accept pastoring by Canon Law and the Catechism?
  • You will need to reflect on your choice of staying for as long as you did, accepting unheard-of innovations while holding your nose. People will call you on that. That acceptance will be used against you by R.C. innovators who will point to your acceptance as proof it can be done (as long as the innovations don’t touch you personally). It will also be used against you by ultra-traditionalists who will ask why women bishops became the final straw. Where were your guts when…

There are well wishers, but perhaps they too should be circumspect, looking beyond the initial rush and hype to the reality that awaits. Are you willing to really change? Seek God’s grace — with that and lots of humility and suffering it is possible. It will be interesting to see.

Media, Perspective, , , ,

The business cycle – what happens to the entrenched

From the New Yorker: Blockbuster, Netflix, and the future of rentals in The Next Level by James Surowiecki

An interesting read. In a few paragraphs he captures how companies can become entrenched and beholden to a model whose day has passed. Will Netflix be next?

In the nineteen-eighties, a new kind of chain store came to dominate American shopping: the “category killer.” These stores killed off all competition in a category by stocking a near-endless variety of products at prices that small retailers couldn’t match. Across America, independent stores went out of business, and the suburban landscape became freckled with Toys R Us, CompUSA, and Home Depot superstores. But the category killers’ reign turned out to be more fragile than expected. In the past decade, CompUSA and Circuit City have disappeared. Toys R Us has struggled to stay afloat, and Barnes & Noble is in the midst of a boardroom battle prompted by financial woes. And, last month, Blockbuster finally admitted the inevitable and declared Chapter 11.

The obvious reason for all this is the Internet; Blockbuster’s demise, for one, was inextricably linked to the success of Netflix. But this raises a deeper question: why didn’t the category killers colonize the Web the way they colonized suburbia? That was what pundits expected. Companies like Blockbuster, the argument went, had customer expertise, sophisticated inventory management, and strong brands. And, unlike the new Internet companies, they’d be able to offer customers both e-commerce and physical stores—“clicks and mortar.” It seemed like the perfect combination.

The problem—in Blockbuster’s case, at least—was that the very features that people thought were strengths turned out to be weaknesses…

Perspective, Political

Labor Law Enforcement

From the AFL-CIO Now Blog: Obama Labor Dept. Stresses Law Enforcement—Big Change from Bush Era

The U.S. Labor Department is committed to stronger enforcement of labor laws and is determined to reverse a “culture of noncompliance’’ that developed during the anti-worker years of the Bush administration, Labor Solicitor Patricia Smith said.

Smith told a labor law conference at Suffolk University Law School last week that the Bush administration emphasized voluntary compliance by employers while investigations and enforcement of labor laws declined, according to the Daily Labor Report (subscription required).

They relied on trickle-down enforcement; it doesn’t work any better than trickle-down economics. [As a result of reduced enforcement] many employers developed a “catch-me-if-you-can” attitude. Our challenge is to change that attitude.

To strengthen enforcement, the Labor Department plans to step up criminal prosecutions against violators, file more actions across industries, especially for wage violations, and seek damages in wage and hour cases.

Another Labor Department agency, the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), also is making enforecement a top priority, as the agency acts on its new tougher targeted inspection program for mines with troubling safety records.

Like MSHA, all Labor Department agencies also are working on potential cases that affect entire industries or enterprises, Smith said. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) inspections of U.S. Postal Service (USPS) operations prompted the Department of Labor to file the first-ever complaint seeking corrections at USPS workplaces nationwide. To date, OSHA has fined the USPS a total of $5.1 million for electrical safety violations at various facilities across the country.

OSHA also has launched a severe violators enforcement program and is vigorously pursuing egregious cases, Smith said.

Wage and hour enforcement “took a back seat to opinion letters’’ during the Bush administration, Smith said. Now the department is seeking damages in addition to back pay; focusing on industries, such as janitorial services, that are “prone to violations”; and considering a rule to require employers to furnish information on how pay is calculated, she said.

Other initiatives under way at Labor, Smith said, include:

  • Working with states on efforts to curb employee misclassification—when employers treat workers as independent contractors to avoid paying benefits and following legal requirements.
  • Resurrecting enforcement of the Family and Medical Leave Act, “which ground to a halt’’ in the previous administration.
  • Lifting the Bush administration’s one-year limit on Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) lawsuits. The agency has filed six OFCCP cases in the past few months.

Good, and about time. My experience, those who see fit immediately push toward the least common denominator, taking advantage of whatever pennies can be gained by cheating workers of their wages, depriving employees of adequate safety protections, and burden shifting to compliant taxpayers. Under the Bush Administration, an employer could cheat workers, paying them sub-minimum wage or not at all, and when caught, still pay less then they would have if they had paid the proper wages on-time (also see recommendation 1 here).

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