Mark P. Shea's Blog, page 1422

If you are a priest who has been convicted of molestation...

you may have a future as a TSA worker!



Grope Children for Caesar! The pay is great and you can even punish those who resist!

Thanks be to God!

Father, thank you for hearing our prayer through Jesus Christ!

For the first time in the history of the US bishops, a vice-president standing for the presidency has been denied the top post, losing a stunning election to the archbishop of New York.

By a 128-111 vote, Archbishop Timothy Dolan bested Bishop Gerald Kicanas of Tucson on the third ballot at this morning's elections in Baltimore.

Overturning a half-century of tradition for the bench, the result represents a seismic shift for the leadership of the nation's largest religious body, and a mandate for a continuance of the outspoken, high-profile leadership shown by Cardinal Francis George over his game-changing tenure at the conference's helm.

Between this and the fact that last year there were six swiftly-dealt-with cases of abuse in the US, I think we are finally coming out of the woods. Two thumbs up for the growth of episcopal spine!

Obedience, Orthodoxy, and Torture

In which we discuss the astounding proposition that opposition to torture is heretical.

Bp. Kicanas Endorsed...

by Rainbow Sash group.

Golly. Who could have predicted that?

Father, we ask that you Spirit and not that of the Bourbons will prevail here, through Christ our Lord. Mother Mary, intercede for your children.

From a reader....

Dear friends,

As most of you I'm sure know, recently there have been several fatal attacks on Christians in Iraq. While they have lived with violence for years, the most recent incidents include murdering many while they were in church to pray. These acts were not random but deliberate - they were killed because they professed faith in Jesus.

This demands solidarity from us in whatever way we can give. While prayers are the best presence we can offer, someone in the faith movement I'm part of suggested writing letters to the Christians there to show our support, and to offer hope. (I've included her suggestion in her words below)
I know that for me, in times of difficulty, nothing has meant more than someone telling me that my presence was significant, and that even if my life felt meaningless, that the truth was the opposite. I encourage you to write and perhaps also get your churches to write. I've attached the copy of the letter I wrote, but of course, write from your own experience.
The nuncio His Beatitude Emmanuel Delli, Patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church, Baghdad at the UN has offered his diplomatic pouch (direct mail) to reach the Nunciature in Iraq. He proposed to have all letters and messages sent to him by Tuesday night in a package and he will send the package to the Nunciature in Iraq on Wednesday morning. (His pouch leaves every Wednesday at noon.) In addition, he will send a copy to the Syrian Patriarch in Newark, New Jersey (many Catholics who were killed last Sunday belong to the Syrian rite).

If you choose to write, I suggest e-mailing the message to Olivetta Danese odanese@gmail.com in New York (she is the secretary of Communion and Liberation, the the organization that is responsible for this initiative) and she will print the message and enclose it. Be sure to indicate your full name and address.

Please pass this on.

Here is Maria Theresa's original suggestion, shortened for length:

I kept thinking of their suffering, of their mysterious participation in the cross of Christ, and what this means for me and for the history of Iraq, the Middle East and the entire world. I thought to offer my work for them, to do it very seriously as my way to be present to them. And to pray for them, to ask the pastor of my Church to say a Mass for them, that they could be sustained in this difficult time and not feel alone in their struggle. That they could recognize Christ in these challenging circumstances.

In addition to praying for them, why don't we all write letters to them, many, many letters as soon as possible, also from our kids, to tell them that we are with them, that even if we are far, we are One in Christ, we pray for them, and we thank them for their presence in that precious land and in our lives? We can witness to them the miracles we see in our lives, the path we are following, our certainty in the presence of Christ in any circumstance, so they could be sustained in their faith.

It is a small gesture, like a drop in the ocean, but Christ can use it to make great things, because, as He said, when 2 or 3 are united in His name, He is in their midst.

This is one of the reasons I love Communion and Liberation.

Hey Western Washington! Mark your Calendars for November 18

Dear Friends of the Seattle G. K. Chesterton Society,


We invite you to join us next Thursday evening for the second event of this season:

Thursday, November 18, 2010, at 7:30 PM, UW Newman Center

The Lost Years of Catherine of Aragon, Queen of England and Henry VIII's First Wife
Dr. Theresa Earenfight
Seattle University
At fifteen, Catherine of Aragon married Prince Arthur of England. Widowed a few months later, she spent eight years in England with little money and few supporters until Henry married her, making her queen. Most writers focus on her later life, and dismiss her as a pious and bitter rival to Anne. But letters to and from her parents reveal Catherine as a vibrant and much loved wife.

Theresa Earenfight, Associate Professor of History at Seattle University, teaches and writes on monarchy in the Middle Ages. She is the author of The King's Other Body: María of Castile and the Crown of Aragon (2009). Her edited collection, Queenship and Political Power in Medieval and Early Modern Spain (2005), included her essay.

Please see our full Events Calendar for more details pertaining to meetings. Our first-ever meeting last month at the UW Newman Center was a great event, as those of you will remember who were there.

We look forward to seeing you next Thursday!

Yours faithfully,

The Seattle G. K. Chesterton Society

So Bp. Kicanas responded...

...to Tim Drake last week.

I figure I can't be the only one wondering if anybody is buying what he's selling. His reply boils down to "Deny, deny, deny…. Ok, there was that time the seminarian who went on to become a serial pedophile got wasted and patted a guy on the tush, and then admitted that he'd had two other gay encounters while wasted. But I thought nothing of it." Note also that the deposition being referenced states that one of these incidents involved a minor--an issue left strangely unaddressed by the bishop's responses.

The USCCB can't be dumb enough to make this guy their front man... can they?

A reader writes:

I just wanted to know what you thought about the following:

Marco Rubio, the 'Catholic' senator-elect from Florida, attends and 'donates thousands' to a hardline Protestant church

Hope to hear your thoughts on this when you get back, Sir.

This probably looks different to a Brit (my reader is English) than to an American conservative, including Rubio. Here in America, everybody is a Calvinist, including the Catholics (which is why we have huge arguments about something as stupid as "women wearing pants"). So you can find conservative Tea Party types aligning themselves with crazy anti-Catholics sects on one side of the culture war divide over against the pro-abortion Left, etc, especially as conservative Catholics continue to embrace the theory that "Opposition to abortion taketh away the sins of the world". So Rubio can not only donate to, but even attend a sect like this and quite possibly detect no conflict with his beliefs as a Catholic. "We all believe basically the same thing" can mean, for an average Catholics" "We all worship Jesus" and (for an average conservative Catholic politician), "We all oppose abortion."

Chalk it up to more triumphs in Catholic catechesis.

News from the Fringe

A reader writes:

As promised a report on the Geocentrism conference from last weekend.

Pam and I had nothing better to do so we spent an extra day in South Bend after visiting friends and family.

First, the agreeable part: The meal that was included with the $50 admission was excellent. Give the devil his due, Bob knows how to pick a caterer. I had the salmon, Pam had the chicken- FWIW

Now, the conference... If you get the chance to buy and review the videos- Do it! You'll find no bigger indictment of these people than their own words and behavior.

An entire battalion of rent-a-cops was in place, on the look out for ''radical heliocentrists" and "zionist types." If the footage shows people being carried away, I'm sure you'll agree they were all plants to affirm Sungenis' paranoid delusions in the minds of the true believers.

Sungenis' talk was very had to follow. During the Q&A, he did a pretty good Jack Nicholson: "You can't handle the truth."

I've stopped laughing at the guy and started praying for him. He was either drunk or on drugs and the way he slurred his words toward the end made me think he may have suffered from a recent stroke. A non speaker came up from the audience and assisted him from the podium to his chair.

Later, E. Michael Jones spoke. Of course the Jews are behind keeping this information away from you. His talk was the dullest and most incoherent of the day; a rambling diatribe against Judeo-Masonic plots, Bilderbergers, Trilateralists, Amish etc. One cliche after another. We've heard it all before. There was even some babbling about the cranial capacities of Negro skulls and a suggestion that the myth of the Holocaust was hatched by a group yeshiva dropouts in Kiev.

Ralph Delano, a professional combox warrior, was a scream. Seeing again, the deer in the headlights expression he gave an undergrad who questioned him about stellar parallax, will be worth the price of the entire DVD set (if they're dumb enough to try to sell it.)

The real treat came at the end when the young earth paleontologist showed some slides from vacations he and his family took that included some digs. He was the calmest of the bunch but it was Yabba-Dabba-Do Science and he was talking to an audience that had dwindled down to about eleven people by this point.

Well, that's all for now. You probably already have similar reports.

It's all such a pitiable waste. You don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Catholic Bishops Want ...

more exorcists. I've always thought it weird that, in the century where the devil was most active, we responded by getting rid of exorcists and deciding that people were so great we barely need the sacrament of reconciliation. Glad to see they are coming back.