Crime, drugs and bishops

One Peter Five writes:

Just as the latest round of homosexual network and sex abuse allegations in the Church are reaching a fever pitch, Pope Francis – who has been eerily quiet of late – dropped a nuclear theological bomb into our midst. 

 From Crux:

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the death penalty now is no longer admissible under any circumstances.

so how does the Pope handle the wrath of pious catholics?

by changing the subject.

update: related essay: Fiddling while Rome Burns.

Author mentions the up coming meeting on Families in Ireland, which has Catholic christians up in arms... and he will give a speech at an alternative meeting that is in effect protesting the "official" meeting.

ewtn News report on that alternative meeting.

but shouldn't the Vatican welcome all? Or is there an agenda that a lot of people worry about?


because guess who is in charge of the official meeting?

“Our Holy Father Pope Francis is encouraging families from all across the world to come to Ireland in 2018 to celebrate family life. And to reflect on the importance of family in our lives,” Cardinal Kevin Farrell says in the video. Prefect of the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life, as well as a Dublin native, Cardinal Farrell is one of the persons responsible for organizing the event.

heh. What could go wrong with an esteemed Cardinal in charge?

more here from an Italian site.

Much has already been written about the McCarrick case in recent days. But not much yet on the extent to which it may involve not only the protagonist of the affair, but also the churchmen most closely connected to him, they too the beneficiaries, thanks to him, of careers verging on the miraculous. One of these in particular prompts serious questions. It is Kevin J. Farrell, 71, made a cardinal by Pope Francis in 2016 and the prefect of the new dicastery for laity, family and life. 

no problem here, folks, just move along.

---------------------


Well, I am against the death penalty, and indeed we don't have it here in the Philippines.

Yet the Pope forgets the Catholic church is... catholic, i.e. all over the place and has been around for 2000 years.

the affluent world who can remove criminals into jails for prolonged periods to keep ordinary people safe. But in the past and future this might not be true.

You see, the reason for the death penalty was because historically  jail was not an option.

Ironically, there were alternatives (exile, paying weregeld, etc) or even release into the community, especially if the perpetrator's family could guarantee he would no longer be a danger to the community, but outsiders and criminals and gangs who terrorized people needed to be stopped somehow.

The alternative? think Robin Hood or Seven Samurai or Death Wish.

Vigilante justice is the result if the state doesn't use controlled violence to keep people safe. But the result is often a cycle of violence and payback. (Njal's saga relates how feuds destroyed many innocent people in medieval Iceland).

establishing rule of law is sometimes harmful to the poor, or maybe I should say easy for the rich to manipulate, but better than the alternative.

Even those cases where moderns point fingers have a reason.

Killing "witches"? well, some time it was because they committed crimes. This is true whether you are discussing the Sun King's Paris or rural Africa today.

Killing "gays"? no one probably cared about quiet relationships, but when the local boys were powerless against rich and powerful predators, some folks got mad: so justice maybe? even Dante put one of his beloved teachers in hell because he was a serial predator against young men sent to him as students.

hmm... maybe Cardinal M should study Dante.

Of course, Dante also put two popes in Hell for meddling into politics, but never mind: those were the good old days of immoral Popes who schtupped their mistresses, but remained Catholics (as opposed to today, where we have a moral Pope who wants to reform the church by making any type of schtupping okay).

they aren't just in the church, of course.
author and ex policeman Joseph Waumbaugh said

As a cop, I dealt with every kind of bum and criminal. They all have more integrity than some Hollywood people. 

A lot of the rage is against false mercy: and seeing the abuse as a psychiatric problem, not as a sin or a crime. This allowed people to game the system with fake repentance and who are given another chance to harm again by the naive.

When any allegations were made, priests were sent for a psychiatric evaluation and Bishop Adamec followed the recommendation of professionals in suspending or removing priests, the filing explained.
"It is unfortunate that the grand jury was apparently not provided a full and balanced set of facts based on all the materials and information that was available to it, including exculpatory information related to Bishop Adamec from the diocesan records that were obtained in August 2015," the filing concluded. "Those records contain clear information demonstrating that, contrary to the language of the report, Bishop Adamec's handling of sexual abuse allegations was anything by abysmal and that he most certainly placed a high priority on protecting the welfare of children."

yeah. And I remember Adamec writing in the diocesan newspaper (in the 1990s) that no abuse had been reported on his watch, yet I had a patient tell me that her husband was told to pressure a family not to report their son's molestation since it would destroy that nice priest.

and the sin has a ripple effect: I am convinced that the Penn State/Sandusky scandal happened because of the Altoona Diocese was gay friendly and pushed a non judgemental attitude in this matter: so when Sandusky was reported, the attitude was that they were just playing around, no harm done, just move along folks...


ironically, the bishops and the psychologists who were involved in the whitewash of these crimes are still free, but the DA who rooted out the corruption ended up going to jail: supposedly for releasing grand jury testimony against a corrupt politician in Philadelphia.

Which says a lot about the judicial system in Pennsylvania.

and don't forget the good priests who will suffer from this: often punished for not approving of sin by their superiors ("too rigid") and distrusted by laypeople who assume all are guilty, not just the few criminals in the church.

=======================
Here in the Philippines, our bishops are scoring browny points with the international elite for opposing the war on drugs. What they are NOT doing is fighting the drug cartels and the politicians who get rich off of bribes to look the other way. Why do I say this? Because if they did, they'd be dead like the 2 dozen or so Mexican priests and pastors killed in recent years for opposing these criminals.

openly naming crooked politicians/businessmen is the most common reason for killing reporters here in the Philippines.

In contrast,, although we have had a few priests here killed for opposing rich businesses who would grab land or destroy the environment or who defended the rights of the poor against local politicians, and priests killed by Moro terrorist gangs, but so far, none dead because they pointed fingers at corruption of the big shots involved in the drug cartels. Hmm...

===================

true conversion is the answer, not liberation theology.

GetReligionBlog has an article on the evangelical/Pentecostal churches in Central America who are fighting the gangs by converting them.

and the local protestant churches in our town are helping the mayor with drug rehabilitation, which is the unsung part of the drug war here. Traditionally the Catholic church is helping too...

When I worked in Oklahoma, we heard only one or two sermons mentioning drug/ alcohol use, but at least our church allowed AA to meet in their hall. However, addicts who wanted a church to help them in repentance and how to live an ethical life were better off going to the local Assembly of God, who had outreaches for addicts and other sinners. (I should note: On more traditional reservations, there were also tribal outreaches to encourage traditional healing ceremonies to help addicts turn their life around...which worked when the healer was truly a traditional healer).

here is an article on local rehab in the Philippines, which of course ignores the religion aspect of the problem.

the point is that unless you do both (threaten those who use/buy/sell drugs so they figure that changing their life is preferable to being dead, and then you have to offer them an alternative, which includes repentance and reintegration into the community) it won't work. And religion is part of rebuilding one's life.

_____________
speaking of rehabilitation:

President Trump just met with inner city pastors to discuss ways to reintegrate people from jail back into the community by giving them jobs, and encouraged the pastors to work with the returning prisoners to integrate them back into the community.

Hmm... how does that saying go? Only Nixon can go to China?

Philippine news

when China started to move into our fishing areas, chain off the lagoons and then dug up the seabed to make artificial islands, President Obama told President PNoy not to try to stop them, but to go to court.

Now they have weapons and airfields there

Family news

the electricity problem is fixed: the problem is the new wires that the city is fixing (putting higher with new concrete poles, replacing the many wires with more cables). The connection to the house was shorting out.

The electrician fixed it yesterday in the late afternoon, with supervision from the electric company, whose men were busy fixing other places. So we paid a certified electrician to fix the connection (i.e. paid for it ourselves).

Hopefully things are better now.

But I went to bed at 7 pm and am now up at 2 am. Oh well.

Luckily our fish didn't die when the fishpond pump was off for 18 hours; we have had fish die offs with typhoons in the past when we had prolonged brownouts.

Family News

The electricity went off at midnight (a short that set off the circuit breaker). We couldn't fix it so had to sleep without an airconditioner: The problem is more that the house is concrete/stone so holds the heat until early am. So not much sleep last night.

The Puppies are large enough to get out of the box, but their eyes are not open yet. Another week and I'll kick them out of the bathroom, but right now, I have to watch where I step when I go in there: Not just to avoid stepping on the puppies but they tend to leave droppings behind.

Ruby has a netflix account on her cellphone, so between her friends, Netflix, and K-Dramas she is not watching much tv.

Just for nice

enough with depressing stuff...

Time to remember what is important in life.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,-----------------------------------------------

Weird stuff

Who is NXIVM and what are they doing? from wikipedia:

In March 2018, Raniere was arrested and indicted on a variety of charges related to DOS, including sex trafficking, sex trafficking conspiracy, and conspiracy to commit forced labor.[14][40] He was arrested in Mexico and held in custody in New York after appearing in Federal Court in Fort Worth, Texas.[41] The indictment alleged that followers were coerced into sex with Raniere, who forced them to undergo the branding ritual alleged by Edmondson and others.[42][43] United States Attorney Richard Donoghue stated that Raniere "created a secret society of women whom he had sex with and branded with his initials, coercing them with the threat of releasing their highly personal information and taking their assets,” and the FBI’s New York Field Office Assistant Director-in-Charge stated that Raniere "displayed a disgusting abuse of power in his efforts to denigrate and manipulate women he considered his sex slaves.”[5] On April 20, 2018, Mack was arrested and indicted on similar charges to Raniere's.

Local Albany paper has lots of stuff on them. lots of big shots?

NYtimes magazine.

The F.B.I. accused Raniere of “a disgusting abuse of power in his efforts to denigrate and manipulate women he considered his sex slaves ... within this unorthodox pyramid scheme.” The criminal complaint claimed that the severe DOS diet was not for the women’s good, but to please Raniere, who, it asserted, sexually prefers very thin women, whom he entertained in a Clifton Park bachelor pad called “the Library,” outfitted with a bed and a hot tub. Prosecutors also claimed that Raniere, in the 1980s and early 1990s, had repeated sexual encounters with under-age girls. (He denied this to me.)

and local law enforcement has been fielding complaints about them for years.

self help stuff gets people into the cult, which uses NLP type stuff to heal memories and bad feelings etc.

NLP is essentially using self hypnosis and counseling (in this case, the counseling morphed into manipulation) to change people (i.e. can be good or bad). But in the wrong hands, like here, it can lead to really bad stuff: Bad enough to get the feds involved.

Sheesh. Lots of crazy stuff out there.

---------------------
what got me started is that I was checking out how the ex bishop of Albany got off and ran into the story. Now there is a new accusation againt the WaCardinal from Albany too.

in the meanwhile, the Pennsylvania bishops coverup report is out there:, which also might point to the present day bishop of Washington DC, who was in Pittsburgh when a lot of this stuff was going on.

OnePeterFive article about how the dominos are going to fall.

between this scandal coming to a head, and the fact that we have a Pope more interested in green ecology than in preaching morality (he does both, but more the former than the latter), I can only sigh.

And get my rosary out and pray.

but the bad news is that this is not just in one church: It is all over the place.

Scandal

The Catholic bishop scandal is exploding again. Ho Hum. I lived in Altoona diocese...

I have a long article on my "bitch blog" here about that scandal, which by the way, overlaps the "Penn State/Sandusky" scandal. link2
there was even a gag order on the "problem".

When I was in medical school, we were assured most of these accusations were not true, merely psychological projections (and indeed, some were, and some were also induced false memories, and some conveniently remembered stuff to get money).

But in the late 1960s we were also told by psychiatrists teaching us that all mental illness was due to sexual frustration (Freud's idea) so that girls who said "no" but were forced into sex was okay, because she really wanted it or needed to lose her "inhibitions. But what was worse was that back the, some people were pushing the idea that it might be a good thing if a child was initiated into sex by a "loving" adult.

I saw 3 or 4 cases of sexual abuse each month when I was in private practice, or heard about it from my adult women patients (because the majority of my patients were women, but also because I evaluated most of the abuse of young girls, being the only lady doc in town).

the abuse was usually by a family member or a friend of the family......and often they coped but used alcohol, drugs and were promiscuous...

So I don't think the Catholics are alone in this, as the "#me too" movement shows: the public schools just keep it quiet too.

the problem is that bishops are supposed to be shepherds: and up to now it seemed they felt more compassion for the wolf than the sheep they were supposed to care for.

Catholic author Michael O'Brien, who suffered ostracism when he refused to be groomed, has written on the problem and suggests false compassion and sympathy for the "nice" sociopath combined with a weakening of the idea of right and wrong might be part of the problem :LINK

While it is true that an individual committed these gravest of sins, it is also true that he found a welcoming, sympathetic environment that allowed him to go on to become the “pastor” of souls. Such is the madness that has infected many dioceses and the national bishops’ conference of the particular church in my country, and in other countries as well.

Professor Podles, who has written a book on the problem, has questions about one famous priest writer whose history predates Vaticacn II...

The reason for the coverup, aside from the hestitation to help put a friend in jail, can be hinted at by the deformation of theology:

The priest attacked moral theology, “at least as it existed from Trent to Vatican II,” as a “stingy, pettifogging science,” that is “act-centered” rather than person-centered. Salvation lies in the “fundamental option” not in “individual acts,” he insisted.

hmm... sounds like the bishops who release wordy statements of high falutin gobbleygook and emphasize ecology and "help for the poor/migrants" by doing political lobbying for more money, and supporting other trendy causes...


(That is the USA. Here it is condemning the drug war to stay on the  good side of the international elites while getting photo ops with corrupt "catholic" politicians... and Duterte only rolls up his eyes and asks why they aren't preaching against drugs and the corruption of the politicians who get rich off of bribes to look the other way? He then  hints that the abuse scandal here will soon explode here too, and curses them out, but only his foul language hits the headlines).

but who is preaching how to serve God in the duties of our daily lives, which for most of us is caring for the family being faithful and loving to our spouses and children, and doing an honest days work?

There is a lot of evil out there folks.

Oh well: Jesus had eleven cowards and on traitor in his followers. Nothing new here, folks, alas.

and we lay people can only pray for the cure.

Sackcloth and ashes, bishops?

but I will stay Catholic: Because of the sacraments and the dogma that helps me serve Jesus, and because there are so many good priests who are serving the Lord, but get no respect.

But I mourn for the good people who lose their faith. Sigh.

Craft item of the day

Lady soldiers in drag

The USNIBlog has a list of notable women who served in the military by pretending to be a man, and the reasons why they did it: out of patriotism, out of desire to explore the world, and sometimes to accompany a husband or lover.

Not in the list: Dr James (Miranda) Barry: who actually attended medical school in the days when women were banned, and then later joined the British Navy and was sent to CapeTown:

In 1822 Somerset appointed Barry as Colonial Medical Inspector,[28] an extraordinary jump in expectations from Barry's low military rank which brought with it great responsibility. Over ten years of work in the Cape, Barry effected significant changes, among them improvements to sanitation and water systems, improved conditions for slaves, prisoners and the mentally ill, and provision of a sanctuary for the leper population...

Wherever Barry served across the British Empire, improvements were made to sanitary conditions and the conditions and diet of both the common soldier and other, under-represented groups. Barry was outraged by unnecessary suffering, and took a heavy-handed and sometimes tactless approach to demanding improvements for the poor and underprivileged which often incited anger from officials and military officers; on several occasions Barry was both arrested and demoted for the extremity of this behaviour.

heh. Trouble maker. The UKMail article about her relates that her bad temper is one reason no one suspected that Barry was a woman.

Dr Barry, left, pictured with her dog Psyche and servant John, right, while in Jamaica in 1862. Alamy stock photo.

Another troublemaker; Catalina de Erauso , aka LieutenantNun (she was a runaway nun)
more here.

she could hold her own in a fight, to say the least, although some suspect the stories in her autobiography were a bit exaggerated.

One reasons she didn't get into trouble with the Inquisition was that she remained a virgin, and later received permission from the Pope to cross dress.

In contrast, Barry might have born a child out of wedlock at a very young age (?sexual abuse) because of the appearance of a young baby in the family, officially the child was her "sister"...but the history is unclear.

A lot of this is about overcoming the limitations on the female role model in those days, not about sexual confusion per se. Some may have been lesbians, others were married, and most probably celibate.

on other famous crossdresser was not in the military, except maybe as a scout: Calamity Jane is famous in frontier history: autobiography here.
again, much of her story might be exaggerated or made up.

Ironically, she had several children, (discussion here).

Climate change and the fall of Rome

SP has a book review about the fall of Rome being due to climate change.

It wasn't just Rome of course:

He shows how the rise of the empire occurred during a period – “the Roman Climate Optimum” (c. 200 BC-c. AD 150) – of remarkable climatic conditions, which favored agriculture, trade, and population growth. This was followed by a transitional period of erratic climatologic conditions (c. AD 150-450), with frequent poor harvests and plagues, which disrupted and destabilized the entire world – even to China and Peru -- and in Eurasia initiated the “Barbarian” migrations. There followed a period of general cooling – the “Late Antique Little Ice Age” (c. AD 450-c. 700), in which conditions worsened, the Western Empire disappeared, and the Eastern Empire was reduced to a rump state.

I found the audiobook on Scribd and will listen to it when I get around to it.

Right now I am relistening to Mike Duncan's series on the history of Rome: iTunes has it here. but at least some of the podcasts are on youtube and intenet archives.

related item: His present series of podcasts ia on Revolutions: and includes this one about the year of hunger in the 1840s and how it affected Europe.

Out of the silent planet podcast

APilgrimInNarnia has a guest post about Out of the Silent Planet.

the book with the original benevolent E.T.'s and the first CSLewis book that I ever read. It puts Christianity and life on other planets in context, making a benevolent universe where only earth is "silent" because it's guardians rebelled. (a similar context is found in L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time, where the children rescue their father from a planet where the rebellion was complete, in contrast to earth, where some still remained true...).

the most amusing part of the book, however, is when Ransom tries to translate the bad scientist's greedy imperialist ideology etc. to the innocent Martians.

I haven't listened to the podcast, but it is part of a series that includes discussions of starwars and Japanese fantasy films too.

LINKCulturezoo podcast.

Apple Link for itunes

the seige of Manila

Transparent aluminum

heh.

And then there is this:

Fish electrotherapy

Improbable research discusses electric fish therapy.

Aristotle, Pliny, and Plutarch recognized the numbing effect of electricity when referring to the application of the torpedo fish to the body. Scribonius Largus advocated the use of piscine electrotherapy for the relief of pain associated with gout, headache, arthritis, and hemorrhoids. Various means of providing electrical current were developed, including the use of the electric ray or great Nile catfish.“

more here about the great Nile catfish here. 

The Egyptians reputedly used the electric shock from them when treating arthritis pain.[9] They would use only smaller fish, as a large fish may generate an electric shock from 300 to 400 volts. The Egyptians have depicted the fish in their mural paintings and elsewhere;[8] the first known depiction of an electric catfish is on a slate palette of the predynastic Egyptian ruler, Narmer, about 3100 BC.[7] It was suitably called "angry catfish" in ancient Egyptian. An account of its electric properties was given by an Arab physician of the 12th century; then as now, the fish was known by the suggestive name of raad, abo el raash, el raad or raash, which means "thunder"[8] (literally "trembler" or "shaker").

but beware the electric eels, whose shocks are more dangerous.


giving electric stimulation for pain is used in rehabilitation: And arthritis responds to this (probably in the same way that linaments and other irritants help wih the pain).

WAPO article on athlete who uses electric patches for his arthritis.

 The Arthritis foundation discusses here.

medical analysis of electrical stimulation for Rheumatoid Arthritis.

The results showed that ES had significant benefit when compared to a control no treatment group in terms of muscle strength and fatigue resistance of the first dorsal interosseous. Most favourable results were obtained by using a patterned stimulation derived from a fatigued motor unit of the first dorsal interosseous in a normal hand rather than a fixed 10 Hz stimulation frequency. Side effects of the ES application were not reported.

----
crossposted to my medical blog.

Klingon Grammar lesson

===============================

real or fake?

Medical Controversies

I was just watching the old film "Children of Men", where suddenly people stopped having babies.

this BBC article pooh poohs the premise, but with the falling of fertility rates in most countries of the world, it does make one wonder if there is a warning there.


Because a recent NYTimes article discusses the lower sperm count in modern men. Uh Oh.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4345759/

related item: what about giving young children hormones because they have gender dysphoria?

This trendy trend is being pushed to the point of hysteria in recent years, and anyone questioning the meme could lose your job, but there are medical questions that need to be discussed: radical surgery might not work, most kids change their mind, and the hormones have lots of side effects. LINK Yes, it's a religious webpage, but the articles they cite are not.

short discussion on my medical blog about hormones.

------------------------

and then we have this:

.
short discussion on my medical blog.

---------------

the claim docs can be replaced by computers etc might not be true:  sometimes a gut feeling in the doc will detect the problem better.

discussed at my medical blog.

------------------------
Breast feeding vs the bottle: a controversy in the third world.

Bottle feeding leads to more deaths, but what about when moms have to work?

-----------------------------
infectious diseas outbreak discussion.

measles and polio oh my.

modern parents in the US and UK may believe the crazies and since they never saw the actual diseases may underestimate how harmful they are.

Yet I am old enough to remember measles and polio epidemics in the USA, and saw these diseases and tetanus and whooping cough killing kids in Africa.

the above article about bad vaccines being used will make things worse, as will the kerfuffle about Dengue vaccine here in the Philippines.


--------------------

the latest occupational hazard: IPad neck.

Stories below the fold

Backyard chickens are causing a Salmonella epidemic.

Wait til they find out that Jakarta banned city chickens after fear of bird flu spreading to humans.

---------------------------
Saudi is investing in wind farms.

Yes, and they are investing in irrigation, desalinization of water, and exporting a couple hundred thousand overseas workers so local unemployment can go down.

but the only story gets in the news is that now women can drive.

The stories in the western MSM put this as a good thing for women's freedom, but the backstory is that middle class men benefit the most: Those too poor to afford a private driver come home from work and then have to drive their wives to shop, or do the driving themselves. Now their wives will be able to relieve their hard working spouses from domestic chores.

------------------

Vaccine scandal in China is causing protests there.

it's the corruption of the country that is behind these scandals.

250 thousand children got substandard DPT vaccine.
and the article notes other substandard vaccines and medicines that caused outbreaks of disease.

more here at NPR. the scary one is substandard rabies vaccine: which is highly fatal disease. And it's not just problems with manufacturing the vaccines: The vaccines are often fragile and have to be stored properly, but some criminal groups sell vaccines that were not stored properly and were supposed to be destroyed.

and it's not just vaccines: Substandard, fake and counterfiet drugs kill people. The latest scandal: Valsartan.

I always paid extra for Lolo's Diovan because of the worry that the generics might not be up to standard and he's get another stroke.

----------------------

SP has a long article on China in Africa. Neocolonialism at it's best.

-----------------
Global voices has a series about colonialism and racism by an architect from Africa etc. I haven't listened to the talks, but bookmarking it for later perusal.

-------------------------

US/EU trade deal? 

Snail trivia

we have snails crawling around our compound, brought in from the trucks from the farms.

they are a pest: they eat rice seeds and young seedlings.

Article about them from IRRI (Rice institute)

Biological control Encourage natural predators. Red ants feed on the snail eggs while ducks (and sometimes rats) will eat young snails. Several wild bird species have also adapted to feed on golden apple snails and domestic ducks can be put into fields during final land preparation or after crop establishment when plants are big enough (e.g., 30−35 DAT). Snails can also be harvested, cooked and eaten or sold as animal feed. However, it is important to take extra care and cook the snails thoroughly, as they are known carriers of the rat lungworm.

Cultural control Handpick snails Handpick snails and crush egg masses. This is best done in the morning and afternoon when snails are most active. Place bamboo stakes to provide sites for egg laying that allows easy collection of snail eggs for destruction. You can also use attractants or plants that attract snails, such as papaya and cassava leaves, to make hand picking easier.

Manage water Apple snails have difficulty moving in less than 2 cm of water. Keep water level below 2 cm during the vulnerable stages of the rice plant. Construct small canals or canalettes (e.g., 15−25 cm wide and 5 cm deep) after the final land preparation. Pull a sack containing a heavy object around the edges of rice paddies or at 10−15 m intervals. Canalettes facilitate drainage and act as focal points for snails making manual collection or killing easier.

more HERE.

yes, our farmers have ducks which they herd into the rice paddies to control pests.

and yes you can eat them (although I haven't seen this done: Lolo would eat crickets once in awhile, but snails? Even our cook goes postal and smashes them with her sandal when she sees one)

recipe here for preparing them to eat.  Soak. Boil. Clean. Marinate. Sun dry. Then fry. then air dry. then cook again.

Lots of work involved, which is why probably folks are not eager to harvest them or cook them.





and another trivia question: Why do so many medieval manuscripts have pictures of knights fighting snails?

Audiobook of the week

The history of western civilization: a positive take (to counteract the modern criticisms that see only the bad side of history).

the Politically incorrect guide to western civilization

because if you don't know the basics, you are unable to judge good vs bad about history.

Speaking truth?

A priest dares to speak the truth in a sermon:

I was floored when the celebrating priest stepped up to give his Homily and focused on this particular Mass' Introit prayer, an excerpt from Psalm 53: "the Lord is the protector of my soul; turn back the evils of mine enemies, and cut them off in Thy truth." 

He spoke frankly about the... unsuitability of this exhortation for Godly vengeance for the modern sensibilities of the Church and related it to the recent revelations of an American cardinal who has been in the news for abusing seminarians for years, and yet continuing to rise in the Church hierarchy.

To hammer it home even more, the priest spoke of how - at least in the States - the Conference of Catholic Bishops has put zero tolerance rules in place that effectively deflect blame away from themselves down to the priests and parishioners ....

He even uttered those three magic words - Social Justice Warrior - and excoriated them from the pulpit for separating Christian charity from their works while putting all of their efforts into grandstanding and focusing on the worldly aspects of said works (i.e. politics)

This is a far cry from a mass I attended some months ago where the Celebrant was urging us all to call our representatives and cry a river over the Dreamer babies amongst us because - well, because. This Sunday's priest said, specifically, "If you open your eyes, and begin to pay attention, and learn what to look for, you will not like what you see.

from a letter posted on (of all places) VoxPopuli's blog.

---------------------

link

link2

link3

and here, we are waiting for the scandal to explode too.
and that ALJ article quotes that old leftie, Archbishop Cruz:

"I may be offending other bishops but this is a personal stand, that gone are the days when you can just close your eyes and plug your ears ... as if nothing is happening."