"For if they do this when the wood is green..."

Read it and weep; a very sad story. A tragedy, in fact. It reminds me of this verse from the Passion of our Lord: "Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For behold, the days are coming when they will say, 'Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never gave suck!' Then they will begin to say to the mountains, 'Fall on us'; and to the hills, 'Cover us.' For if they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?"

"Something between France and Greece"

Please bear with the advertising at the beginning, this is worth watching.

Source.

U of Notre Dame Continues Hellward

Sick and sad. To what circle of the inferno has this brought the University of Notre Dame?

The week includes a screening of the film Prayers for Bobby, which portrays Mary Griffith, a faithful Christian mother who seeks spiritual healing for her homosexual son, as the cause of her son's suicide. According to a review at ReligionDispatches.org, the film biography ignores the real-life Bobby's drug use and "stint as a gay prostitute." The real Mary Griffith has renounced her faith and champions homosexual rights, including same-sex "marriage."

But it must be the fault of religion. Prostitutes and drug users hardly ever commit suicide until a religious person gets involved.

The piece goes on to report ND's participation in the "National Day of Silence" on April 17 which is to protest the so-called persecution of gays and other manifestations of "hate", i.e., Catholic teaching.

Notre Dame also will participate in the national "Day of Silence" on April 17, an event to oppose harassment of homosexual students in schools. Despite the worthy goal, the national event is used by the sponsoring Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network to promote school curricula that equate "sexual identity" with racial and ethnic differences, without clarification about the moral and health consequences of homosexual activity.

The announced agenda for the week indicates no effort to teach students about Catholic teaching on homosexual activity as gravely sinful.

Ironically, April 17 is the one-year anniversary of Pope Benedict XVI's address to Catholic educators in Washington, D.C., during which he called Catholic colleges and universities to a stronger Catholic identity.

I'll leave you with a blast of fresh air from the Pope's address.

"We observe today a timidity in the face of the category of the good and an aimless pursuit of novelty parading as the realization of freedom," Pope Benedict said. He continued, "Particularly disturbing, is the reduction of the precious and delicate area of education in sexuality to management of 'risk,' bereft of any reference to the beauty of conjugal love."

Preach it, Big Guy.

Father Z: What would "actual repentance" look and sound like?

Yes, yes, yes. Someone who says what I've been saying, except this time it's a priest, Father Zuhlsdorf, in his response to Dreher's latest drum solo. I've been saying that what Rod really wants is more Hollywood than holiness ever since he took it upon himself to "cover" the gay priest scandal long ago. Here's part of Rod's article:

Despite being an easy target for unjust treatment by critics – and I say this as someone who doesn’t think Benedict is going nearly as far as he must to deal with the "bishop problem" – there is a sense in which people who want to see actual repentance and reform in the Church over the child sex abuse scandal, instead of show trials and theater....

And here's Father Z's response:

Ummmm.... what would that look like, exactly? What would "actual repentance" look and sound like? Would there not be a greater risk of "show trials" and "theater" if dramatic gestures were made rather than steady quiet reform and change?

I've been reluctant to state this a lot because the learned knee-jerk reply is "Don't you care about the molested children?" And that goes to my theory why not many Catholic commentators want to deal with the silliness and fruitlessness of the demand for a sustained, dramatic self-immolation in front of television cameras on the part of Catholic Church leaders. Everyone should at least acknowledge the fact that this action would do nothing to protect children. And if they think it would, they need to explain how since no one ever has.

Their real problem is this: how do you film "steady quiet reform and change"? And who buys ads to run during the breaks? Those are media questions and problems, and in my view don't go anywhere near the real problem of the sexual abuse of minors, the causes, or the remedies.

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I make me laugh

I was researching my blog's appearance on a search engine result for a phrase which approximates what is referred to in the medical profession as diarrhea when I came across this old post from last summer. So funny—I'm still laughing. I'm sure there's something terribly wrong with laughing at your own jokes; it probably bespeaks some degree of amateurishness. But I did witness John Cleese do it in an interview when he was shown an old clip. On the other hand, Steve Martin supposedly hates his old material...


...so I guess we shouldn't remind him how many more laughs it generated than his new Pink Panther vehicles.