In Africa if You Don't Believe--Get Out!



In this country that would mean the exit of 60% of the teachers.



From allAfrica.com: Uganda: Leave Catholic Schools, Non-Believers Told:



"THE Bishop of Lugazi Diocese, Dr. Matthias Sekamaanya, has said parents and teachers who do not want to obey Catholic rules should not seek vacancies in Catholic-founded schools.

'It is not my problem that I am a Catholic, but my mission is to see Catholic ideologies imparted in the followers of the Church. Parents and teachers who cannot obey these rules should look for other places to work,' he said.



Sekamaanya was on Saturday speaking at St Peter Clavier Church, Namagunga during the Teacher's Day celebrations.



'We have initiated a new education policy for Lugazi Diocese that will guide Catholic schools. It is coming out soon.



'We want to see that Catholic students are given higher priority in admissions,' he said."

New Catholic Blog



Well worth checking out!



Times Against Humanity

Indiana



From

WISH TV:



"Workers at a car wash saw a bizarre scene at a bank machine, and it led police to what they think is a complex plot involving identity theft in Greenwood.



Officers arrested a man claiming to be from Texas, but he carried three different drivers' licenses. It left police officers trying to figure out who the suspect really was.



A car wash employee saw a bizarre scene at an automated teller, and told his co-workers. Someone was wearing motorcycle headgear while withdrawing money from the machine without a motorcycle anywhere in sight."

It Begins...



One day after the Episcopal Church made a move that has rocked the Anglican Church, leading to a massive protest within the convention of Episcopalians meeting in Minneapolis as reported by Rachel Zoll here. What does CBS Evening News lead off with tonight?



Kolbe Bryant you guess, nope that didn't make it.



Arnold's run for the CA governor, wrong again (Matt Drudge breaks this after breaking earlier that Arnie wouldn't run).



The crisis facing the Episcopal church, well of course? Again, not even close.



So what was the top story of the day? This:



Sex Crimes Cover-Up By Vatican?



From CBS news:



For decades, priests in this country abused children in parish after parish while their superiors covered it all up. Now it turns out the orders for this cover up were written in Rome at the highest levels of the Vatican.



CBS News Correspondent Vince Gonzales has uncovered a church document kept secret for 40 years.



The confidential Vatican document, obtained by CBS News, lays out a church policy that calls for absolute secrecy when it comes to sexual abuse by priests - anyone who speaks out could be thrown out of the church.



The policy was written in 1962 by Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani.



The document, once "stored in the secret archives" of the Vatican, focuses on crimes initiated as part of the confessional relationship and what it calls the "worst crime": sexual assault committed by a priest" or "attempted by him with youths of either sex or with brute animals."



Bishops are instructed to pursue these cases "in the most secretive way...restrained by a perpetual silence...and everyone {including the alleged victim) ...is to observe the strictest secret, which is commonly regarded as a secret of the Holy Office...under the penalty of excommunication."



Larry Drivon, a lawyer who represents alleged victims, said, “This document is significant because it's a blueprint for deception.”



Drivon said the document proves what he has alleged on behalf of victims in priest-abuse lawsuits: that the church engaged in Mafia-style behavior -- racketeering.



“It's an instruction manual on how to deceive and how to protect pedophiles,” Drivon said. "And exactly how to avoid the truth coming out."



First of all this is hardly news at all. Knowledge of this document has been around for weeks. It is old and it may indeed be responsible for much of the cover-up that went on in a different day and time, but it is hardly the big story of the day. Why would CBS lead off with this when there is so much other big news today?



Read the first paragraph again of the news story. This is exactly the way it was read at the top of the newscast. Is that objective reporting? Is that what has been going on in the Catholic Church?

Prediction: (in McLaughlin Group fashion)



The Media is About to Launch a Renewed Attack on the Catholic Church



The recent Episcopalian decision to openly consecrate an openly homosexual bishop will unleash a renewed attack on the Roman Catholic Church.



Why?



Because it will afford many newspapers an opportunity to "out" certian high ranking Catholic bishops who have long been rumoured to be active homosexuals. Several papers were close to doing this last year but didn't want to appear to be anti-homosexual by exposing these prelates at the same time as the sexual abuse of the minors was the main issue. It would have made the papers seem to be unsympathetic to homsexuality linking it with the deviant behavior of pedophilia.



Now they have their opportunity and I fully expect them to act on it.



This (if in fact it happens and I fully expect that it will), lends great credibility to the critiques of Father Benedict Groeschel's claim that the media circus that surrounded the sad revelations of clergy abuse last year were more idealogically driven and not as they were portrayed at the time a true search for the truth. Father Groeschel's critique can be read in his bestselling book From Scandal to Hope that I have linked to at the end of this post.



When these stories hit, make no mistake, they are being released with an agenda that is essentially anti-Catholic.



Of course it goes without saying that if the Church did a better job of policing itself there would be little to for the media to report. That is another issue and one that we should pray that the Holy Spirit will use whatever crisis arises to remedy and rectify.



But the truth is not the issue where the media is concerned, especially in this case for if it were these stories would have been released some time ago and not as I predict in the next few weeks.

Want to Own a Home? Move to Fort Wayne, IN



From of all places The New York Times:



Not a single house in Fort Wayne — a small, manufacturing-heavy city halfway between Chicago and Detroit, with a jobless rate below the nation's — has sold this year for more than $800,000, according to real estate industry data. That is roughly the average price of a two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan.



"The real housing boom is fairly concentrated," said Mark M. Zandi, the chief economist of Economy .com, a research firm. "And at the moment, it is clearly keeping the economy afloat in those areas."



There is no such cushion throughout much of the nation's interior. Some economists argue that the Federal Reserve's aggressive interest rate cuts might have been more effective at ending the economic slowdown if the gains in house prices — and the potential they create for consumer spending — had been more broadly shared.



Last year, Tom and Judy Auer sold the four-bedroom Fort Wayne house where they raised their three children for $107,900, or slightly less than the $34,000 they bought it for in 1974, after adjusting for inflation. Without a bonanza from the sale, the couple now live in a smaller house in Fort Wayne, relying on the pension from Mr. Auer's job as a hardware salesman at Sears, Roebuck and Social Security, which they began drawing early.



Marva and Bill Herx, on the other hand, left Fort Wayne in 1998 to move to the Philadelphia suburbs for his job. When they returned last year, they had made enough profit selling their Pennsylvania house — for about 40 percent more than the purchase price — that they were able to move into a house in Fort Wayne noticeably bigger than the one they had left.



"The home costs in Fort Wayne have stayed pretty much the same," said Ms. Herx, who is in her 50's. "In Philadelphia, we made a good profit in just four years."

It is good that we are here!



When Pope John Paul prophetically added the Mysteries of Light to the meditations of the rosary last October, he remarked that the Transfiguration was the preminent "mystery of light" in that it exemplified the others in a remarkable way. I have meditated on the mysteries of light myself, now for about eight months. Over the course of these meditations it has become more apparent that one of the essential elements of the spirituality of these mysteries is the statement of St. Peter on the mount at the transfiguration, "It is good that we are here, Rabbi!"



The title Peter uses "Rabbi" or teacher is also illustrative of what the Christian life is all about as it is lived. Jesus teaches us by his passion, death and resurection to view the daily events of life in a way that is only possible if we have faith in Him. Suddenly every element of our lives becomes a potential ephiphany, likely encounter. Truly, "light has shone in the darkness."



The Liturgy of the Hours for today presents a reading from St. Paul in the Office of Readings. I found it an intersting choice until I arrived at this part of the passage:



We have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways; we refuse to practise cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the likeness of God. For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For it is the God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness”, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.



For those who live in the world and have not come to truly believe (place all of their trust in) in Jesus Christ (this would include many of us) there is a blindness that keeps us from seeing the light. The mysteries of light point out our need to truly be baptized ("I must decrease, he must increase"); to give the water of our humanity to the Lord that he might turn it into the wine of His Divinity; to seek first the Kingdom of God in all of our actions; to come to know the ways of the Lord in the Scriptures (exemplified by Moses, Elijah and Jesus transfigured in the world) and to be fed by His Body and Blood in the Eucharist.



Experiencing the Kingdom of God here on earth is something that the Eucharist makes possible. Our participation in the Eucharist takes us from our sinfulness, to God's revelation, to our acceptance of God's Kingship, to a seat at the Banquet and a meal fit for a King and then a mission to "go" back into the world and to experience it transfigured in the light of God's kingdom. Mother Teresa stands as the greatest example we have of what it would be like to be such a believer. Literally to see Christ everywhere!



Today's feast is an invitation to change, to repent, to have our eyes opened by the Master. At every moment of today say with St. Peter, "It is good that we are here, Rabbi" in your light we see everything anew, where before all we did was curse the darkness.