August 2006

A federal judge has ordered personal items seized in 1996 from Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski’s Montana cabin to be sold online.

U.S. District Judge Garland Burrell Jr. ruled Thursday that items belonging to Kaczynski – including books, tools, clothing and two checkbooks – should be sold at a "reasonably advertised Internet auction."

The auction will not include 100 items the government considers to be bomb-making materials, such as writings that contain diagrams and "recipes" for bombs.

I wonder how much Kaczynski’s personal heavily marked up copy of Al Gore’s "Earth in the balance" will go for?

Rich at Ten Reasons posts this:

The clothing-otional Franciscan is coming to Xavier (‘natch):

Xavier University will host two Franciscans to speak on Franciscans International’s work at the United Nations and at the grassroots level on behalf of the world’s most vulnerable.

The talk, at 7 p.m. next Saturday (Aug. 19) at the Schiff Family Conference Center in Xavier’s Cintas Center, is open to the public. A $20 donation is suggested with proceeds benefiting Franciscans International.The speakers will be the Rev. John Quigley, co-founder and executive director of Franciscans International, and the Rev. Richard Rohr, founder of the New Jerusalem Community in Cincinnati.

‘At times, nudity at the retreats is communal. We often have camp-fires, and I know some of you have been at these where it happens, so you know what I’m talking about. Always, always, there’s some guys — I mean, is it in their hard wiring? — They’ll strip and have to leap over that fire, burning their balls . . . .I don’t know what it is. They’re the ‘real’ men, who can leap over the fire, naked.’

Well I guess there is a Franciscan precedent since St. Francis did strip off all of his clothes and returned them to his father during a courtroom appearance. Somehow I don’t think that that was not meant to be added to the rule as part of the Franciscan charism.

Catholic News Agency has a good overview of Catholic Charity of San Francisco alliance with Family Builders for adoptions. Jill Jacobs, executive director of Family Builders in the article told the Bay Area Reporter that, “We’re about the gayest adoption agency in the country."

…“I ask myself, ‘How is this not supporting homosexual adoption?’” Vivian Dudro, a San Francisco resident, told CNA. Dudro, who has lived with her husband and four children in the area for the last ten years, says that her family has given to Catholic Charities through parish appeals nearly annually.

“When I found out that these adoptions had already been occurring I felt betrayed. Now I learn that (Catholic Charities employees) are going to continue to assist in placing children into the hands of homosexual couples and I just wonder, ‘What is going on? How is the Church’s teaching not clear?’”

Vivian, who works full time raising her children, is not alone in her confusion. Several moral theologians, familiar with Church teaching on the issue, are also unclear as to how the Catholic organization is rationalizing their participation. Dr. William May, a professor at the John Paul II Institute for the Study of Family and Marriage, told CNA that he’s not sure why Catholic Charities thinks they are not acting contrary to the Church’s teaching.

“I find it difficult to reconcile the actions of Catholic Charities of San Francisco with the 2003 document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,” May said.

Dr. May pointed to a paragraph of the document which considers the fact that homosexual unions lack in both the biological and anthropological elements that make up a marriage. The CDF document states that children should not be placed into such a situation. “As experience has shown, the absence of sexual complementarity in these unions creates obstacles in the normal development of children who would be placed in the care of such persons,” it says. “They would be deprived of the experience of either fatherhood or motherhood.” In other words, the best environment for raising children involves a mother and a father.

The document continues, “Allowing children to be adopted by persons living in such unions would actually mean doing violence to these children, in the sense that their condition of dependency would be used to place them in an environment that is not conducive to their full human development.”

Such actions, the Vatican says, are “gravely immoral and in open contradiction to the principle, recognized also in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, that the best interests of the child, as the weaker and more vulnerable party, are to be the paramount consideration in every case.”

May also pointed to a paragraph of the document which discusses what action individual Catholics and Church organizations should take in situations, such as the ones which exist in Boston and San Francisco, in which governments recognize homosexual partnerships as equal to marriage. The document states that in such situations, “clear and emphatic opposition is a duty.”

What is more, the document says that, “One must refrain from any kind of formal cooperation in the enactment or application of such gravely unjust laws and, as far as possible, from material cooperation on the level of their application.”

I hope that this won’t be the last word on the subject especially being that this is Bishop Levada (Now prefect of the CDFs) last See. It is pretty hard to see how this is not formal material cooperation instead of it being just remote material cooperation.

…Cahill repeated his views in the Bay Area Reporter this week saying that adoption to homosexual couples has never been an issue for his staff. “It only came onto the radar after it became an issue in Rome,” he said.

“We should be praising (those adopting) regardless of sexual orientation and thanking them for what they are doing.”

Under the new agreement, Cahill said, his staff will, in the end, do more of what they want to do. “It’s impossible not to use the word ‘irony’ in this situation,” he remarked, “Out of what could have been a crisis came a great opportunity. We actually are going to increase our role in adoptions. And working with Family Builders will actually help them double and triple the number of kids who are up on their Web site.”

The Catholic Charities partnership may even result in more LGBT families adopting children than before, the Bay Area Reporter said.

That the directory of Catholic Charities has no problem saying this out in the open is a serious indicator of problems in the diocese.

…Reconciling questions such as Dudro’s will ultimately be the task Archbishop Niederauer. The archbishop is officially the Chairman of the Board of San Francisco Catholic Charities. However, Cahill has praised the Archbishop for his “hand’s off” approach to the decision.

Though not everybody is thrilled about the hand’s off approach.

“It seems that the leadership of the Archdiocese decided that they were willing to sacrifice the children and the lay faithful in the pews so as not to earn the displeasure of the politically powerful in this city,” Dudro said.

“It’s as if political power and money have overshadowed the Truth of the Church’s teaching.”

Unfortunately this is about exactly what was expected by many pundits when Archbishop Niederauer was announced as Archbishop Levada’s replacement. When he was the Archbishop of Salt Lake City he was praised by many homosexual organizations for his views which appeared to oppose the document on accepting homosexual’s to the priesthood. He also In 2004 publicly opposed a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage that appeared on the Utah state ballot, even though he opposed same-sex marriage. How he has so far handled the Catholic Charities fiasco seems to be an indicator that not much has changed. For his statements and actions Mr. Cahill needs to be dismissed and if this doesn’t happen than the Archbishop might be more of a politician than a shepherd. Please pray for the Archbishop. Being a bishop is a responsibility that I can only dimly imagine the strain of and being one in a Archdiocese such as San Francisco could make a man request a transfer to Sodom and Gomorrah as a cushier job.

A CONTROVERSIAL art exhibit depicting Jesus riding on top of a missile has been raising eyebrows at a city centre church. The unusual installation is part of the ‘Yesterday, Today, Forever’ exhibition at St Peter’s Church in Hereford and coincides with the city’s annual Three Choirs Festival. The piece entitled Gods of Glory by artist Andrew Found shows Jesus hanging off the top of a missile while a Muslim, Buddhist, and a grenade-wielding nun are wrestling below it. St Peter’s curate James Mercer said the missile exhibit was the most controversial of the 45-strong show.

He said: “The objective of the exhibition is to engage people in conversation, and the theme is a reference to the Kingdom of God, and we have some interesting pieces which explore that theme. “The whole exhibition is an expression of what it means to be a local church in 2006, how do we engage people in conversation about the Kingdom of God? “The piece is not saying one group is victorious over another, it’s sufficiently ambiguous to be interpreted in a variety of ways.”

Mr Mercer said other churches had expressed surprise about the content of the exhibition, but added it was an exciting, creative way of evangelising. One interpretation of the exhibit is the role that religion plays in causing war, and that different religions fight war in the name of their God.

It is not the first time the church has staged a controversial exhibition. Last Christmas a sculpture of Jesus in a waste paper bin was displayed at the church. Meanwhile another work by Andrew Found depicting a laughing Jesus on the cross caused controversy two years ago.
[Via TheWorld…IMHO]

But the question is was it the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch being depicted.

Then did he raise on high the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, saying, "Bless this, O Lord, that with it thou mayst blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy." And the people did rejoice and did feast upon the lambs and toads and tree-sloths and fruit-bats and orangutans and breakfast cereals … Now did the Lord say, "First thou pullest the Holy Pin. Then thou must count to three. Three shall be the number of the counting and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither shalt thou count two, excepting that thou then proceedeth to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the number of the counting, be reached, then lobbest thou the Holy Hand Grenade in the direction of thine foe, who, being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it." — Monty Python, "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"

Jesus on a Missile could also explain the Ascension and would also explain the Second Coming bringing the end of the world.

On a more serious note the curate saying "it’s sufficiently ambiguous to be interpreted in a variety of ways” is not exactly high praise. Art that can mean anything in reality means nothing. It is like having a thesaurus that lists every word in the dictionary as a synonym for any word given. Though the artists intention and the curate interpretation are probably not one in the same.