Real Saints of Australia

Soon to be excommunicated Father Peter Kennedy of St. Mary’s in Exile in Brisbane gets my vote for future sainthood and in his own church. God Bless him!

In any case he would not be the first religious excommunicated by a cracker bishop intent on upholding strict discipline in the ranks. One pending RC saint managed to get herself excommunicated over miscommunication with her bishop in her time.

The above photo of Blessed Mary MacKillop, soon to be the first native born Australian saint, is waiting for her third miracle.

Bathersby, the archbishop, is merely cleaning off his desk before retirement in two years time of old paperwork. Efforts to defrock ahead of the curve Father Kennedy have been going on for over twenty years. Previous bishops have not tried so hard to please the Vatican.

But then this is an old case file on the desk of Cardinal Ratszinger, then John Paul IIs hatchet man in the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. Lots of files left on Joe’s desk from the past and into the present. Makes you wonder why they elect somebody so old or was it fear that he knew where too many skeletons are buried or in the closet in the Vatican? Oh well.

Besides Blessed Mary MacKillop, let us not forget Joan of Arc who was excommunicated by the English bishops only to have the black mark taken off her record a few decades later in spiritual or was it political regret? In any case it would have saved a lot of fire wood. It only takes one bishop to excommunicate and, as in Joan of Arc’s case, another bishop not unlike a mere bishop of Rome to rescind an order of excommunication.

The church doesn’t always know the real thing when they see it. I think Peter Kennedy is the real thing. Like the historic model with Joan of Arc, Bathersby and his crowd (including Joe) don’t seem to know Christmas from Bourke Street as they say in parts of Oz.

Mary MacKillop’s nineteenth century RC bishop backed off and rescinded his excommunication. Father Kennedy officially or unofficially in his church will continue his work, his labor, his sheparding in the truest sense of the Message of Jesus and the Christian faith to the members of his congregation.

There is something so stubborn and frontier like in the nature of some Australians to blaze a true path to settlement or to the future that I greatly admire.

Maybe Mary MacKillop’s third miracle to achieve sainthood will have to do with the softening of the stone hearts of the RC hierarchy intent on destroying true good works.

Pax.

British Embassy - Hostages - Iran

I had a momentary flashback to 1979 and the seizing of three hundred American hostages in the American Embassy in Tehran.

The photo above is a documented picture of an American hostage from those days and the guy in the circle is allegedly Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in his salad days of local Iranian politics.

The headline and words in the CNN piece below did not immediately clarify the situation to me.


Britain blasts arrest of embassy staffers in Iran

The arrest of local staff members at the British Embassy in Iran is "harassment and intimidation of a kind which is quite unacceptable," British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said Sunday.

"About nine" staffers have been affected, he said, adding that some had already been released.

"We have protested in strong terms directly to the Iranian authorities about the arrests that took place yesterday," but there has been no response, Miliband said.

Iran's government-backed Press TV said earlier on Sunday that eight local British embassy staffers had been seized for their role in the unrest following the disputed presidential elections on June 12.

My main complaint about this piece of “Journalism” above is that it does not fully follow the old rules of newspaper journalism and answer the basics of who, what, how, where and why and being addressed in the first paragraph of the news story.

“Local staff members” does not say if the local staffers are British Citizens or not.

As I usually do, I turned to a British news source to get a fuller, tighter, more professional body of the story and situation.


Iran arrests UK embassy staff

David Miliband, the foreign secretary, has angrily refuted allegations that Iranian employees of the British embassy in Tehran played a role in the post-election protests of the past two weeks.

In the latest in a series of spats between the two countries, Iran detained eight or nine local embassy staff for playing a "significant role" in the unrest, which has seen serious clashes between demonstrators and security forces.

Miliband, speaking from a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Corfu, said the government was "deeply concerned" at the arrests. "This is harassment and intimidation of a kind that is quite unacceptable," he said. "We want to see them released unharmed."

The other side, the Iranians, who are not unlike the Chinese in 1971 before Nixon’s visit in 1972 – their dictionaries and handbooks on western protocol are decades out of date.

Words are important. Not everybody on the planet talks urban street. An old fuddy duddy such as myself sent an E-mail to CNN or one of the mainstream media because they had called the actress Loretta Young an actor in her obit when she passed in 2000.

Other people may have decided that actor is good word, not actress, for a female. I do not agree. I thought it disrespectful and or inept on the part of the MSM. Lorette Young lived and displayed her talents in another age in which she was called an actress. Modern day PC words did not fit her obituary. Just because I had not gotten with the new asexual word of “actor”, does not mean that I liked or understood it as part of the obit.

We should do not presume that headlines in an American News Source are correct, or interpreted correctly and or reliable especially when the other side, or its leadership is still in a permanent unmovable 1979 AD western moment frame of mind (like Iran).

I doubt that we can be drawn into another Iranian Hostage situation even though it would suit the Supreme Thug (wearing a so-called mantle of God) and his cronies especially his grape peeling sycophant Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

I doubt that the “bunker busters” are at this moment on Air Force transports to Israel.

I am mildly concerned that a major story on a major American News source in its opening vagueness might escalate a propaganda war on both sides of this potentially hostile global conflict.

Obama is a lawyer and I expect him to put negotiations first or foremost. If that does not work – well – let’s not go there.

Death of a Legend in La La Land - Michael Jackson

Great artists are allowed their eccentricities.

Without a doubt Michael Jackson was a stellar example of talent and worthy of icon mania. His visuals in music videos, an art form perfected at the height of his career, may be played for a thousand years. I can picture the “Thiller” video being played in space in 3009 AD or on a solar colony near Saturn.

The visual arts in video are sort of like the Greek statues of their day and they stayed around and were imitated and found a place in many a villa in the Roman Empire for centuries after their creation. Man, in his spirit, in his soul, recognizes artistic high watermarks on the common civilization brand. Michael was without a doubt one of those high watermarks of the present western and worldwide culture.

The human race turns on a dime and forgives the eccentricities of great artists. His eccentricities were many to say the least.

I was never fully evolved to accept Michael as the “It” of his generation. My generation was a little bit before in the fifties. I burned out on Rock and Roll in the late fifties as a child of five. I sort of yawned when the Beatles came along and ignored them until I discovered them as Muzak in an elevator in the late seventies. Etc.

Nobody, not even myself, could ignore the energy and creativity and breath of life that MJ’s talent exhibited.

I am somewhat taken aback by the power of the media or music or concerts to transmit that something and indiscernible quality of life of this age, these many short ages overlapping, of rock, pop, punk, metal and so on and so forth. The quality of this age I am not certain of. Only history will tell.

Of men and or women who makes hundreds of millions of dollars and can live in a luxurious bubble world and believe anything they want to and do anything they want to – one thing is certain – they can only believe or do anything for a short time and then there is - Death.

As for Michael, I find it ironic that his last days of life ended in La La Land, Los Angeles, known for its eccentricities and a place with the movie and music industry, a place not totally fixed in everyday reality. His preparations for the “next tour” seemed to be an appropriate, if untimely, place to exit life.

Michael Jackson, The King of Pop, has left the building.

I have to wonder if in the days and weeks and months to follow how many new urban legends and sightings, like that of Elvis, of the elusive, eccentric and talented Mr. Jackson will be created and transmitted by word of mouth and media to accent his recent passing.

RIP

Gov. Mark Sanford - That Jimmy Swaggert Moment

My karma in life, if there is such a thing, is to not to judge others too hastily. God knows I am not perfect and that by creative (?) design. The variable at work in our evolution to perhaps keep improving the model line generation to generation is I think part of the grand plan of things.

With twelve years of black and white catholic education under my belt, it is difficult for me sometimes to break away from the mold and not be judgmental. Look at this fool Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina who has to go all the way to Argentina to schtupp a piece of ass on the side of his ( at this point ?) marriage.

I believe in karma within your own lifetime. What goes around comes around. Sanford was one of the choir of Pubs calling for Clinton to resign when he got caught in his marriage infidelity with a White House intern back when in the late nineties.

Had it not been for his , Sanford’s, holier than thou, family value attitude toward Clinton back when, I might feel for this fool right now.

The tears and please have pity on me show displayed at a poorly run news conference yesterday I think were staged to give time for the Governor to backtrack on whose credit card (his or the State of S.C.) paid for an expensive last minute excursion to his love shack in Buenos Aires. And if the ticket was booked way in advance for a discount, all the more proof of another lie. But don’t go there.

I am reminded of the TV evangelist Jimmy Swaggert who got caught with a prostitute way back when and I remember his crocodile tears about sinning but it was more about being caught than sinning. Anyway, that slag heap is still in the tax free God business these days but on a lower tier than he occupied in his prime.

Good, bad or indifferent I am not going to ask Sanford to resign. He should not for his lust but for his Republican Idol rhetoric about free markets and balanced budgets etc. There are a awful lot of South Carolinians out of work and in need of Unemployment Benefits that he, the Governor in his Republican Idol rhetoric, would keep from getting those federally funded extra benefits to survive. Mark Sanford’s privileged view of himself and his ruling white class bubble world is something separate and not equal with the dirty unwashed masses.

There I did it. I judged him at some level. Not very Christian of me. But then, I try to follow the ten commandments like the one about adultery. For me the ten commandments are a real living breathing thing and a challenge at times to uphold. For people like Sanford and Swaggert the Ten Commandments should be carved in stone and collect dust as decoration in some statehouse hallway.

Enough said.

Age of Chronic Luxury

The visuals. The visuals.
They all come quick.
A life of Visuals,
quick, quick, quick.
Incomplete as memory fades.
Always the taste and
the draw for more.

I suppose the
Chev-Ro-Lay
in Black and White,
a commercial
and Dina Saur - we
called her that - tee hee hee,
framed a magic moment,
boomer kids seemed to have
all the rag tag makings,
potential glory of a new
rich golden age.

Instead as it all turned out
it became a burb age,
a bubble age, a mindless
consuming age and
compared to the rest
of an unaware humanity -
we, the many, lived the good life
the high life - for a short time
in the America of
domestic tranquility.

It was a coming age, full of
promise, progress, a golden time,
an age yet to be sorted out.
Global awareness was only
in books in college bookstores.
And issues like race, sex, sexuality
had yet to struggle, come of age.
It was an age of chaos - the good
parts are yet to survive and lead us
elsewhere - but by and large and
for most of us it was an unprecedented
Age of Chronic Luxury.

Nothing in history
to compare with it - nothing
to compare it to -
the might of Detroit
and a Maytag
washing machine
and "Queen for a Day"
on the tube.
The decades on from the fifties
were sweet though in retrospect
in-complete. Those years had glamour
and simple sight - but little or
no long lasting soul.

The visuals in the beginning of
that age had a few companions,
radio, hi-fidelity, stereo
and not one but many local
daily hard copy news-papers.
When the age ended
with a crash so to speak, a muted thud,
only the noise and chatter,
cacophonic clatter dulled
virtual, not real, reality
- cable, e-pod, e-mail, mobile cell phones,
PCs, the Internet, tweeter -
as disinterested witness to it all.

A Tower of Babel reborn? Retorn with
a new dark age of chaos to follow?

The great charade of the big war,
Vietnam - some growing years,
and the estimated body counts -
we always won - we never lost a...
Mission statement to keep the anthill
threat of S.E. Asia over
there - it boosted GM stock.

"What's good for GM is (was) good
for America" then. Or at least that
is what the Wall Street mantra then spake.
A national treasury of gold, ideas, youth
- a whole generation wasted, misled,
misdirected - doped - spun - eventually
onto a pagan altar of deregulation
and temporary titanic paper profit?

(That and a moon walk to represent that
early decade or so. Anybody lately drink the
scientific wonder of that age? Tang!)

Fast forward, those other years to
the modern day - and in between (?)
Work. Work. Work.
Marriage, a mortgage, kids.
401(K) - retirement?

Where did all those golden
Boomer days go?
Who counts?
Upon reflection in a glass
or into a trash filled lake,
why does the rest of the
planet want beef
plastic credit and
power muscle cars?
Silly question silly fool.

And as the recent age of
chronic luxury collapses (here)
what is the legacy best? Left?
Shouting - argumentum
ad hominem - ad nasueum.
Hate Radio. Hate News.
Death to my domestic enemy!
My bubble world is superior
to yourrr bubble world!!!
(on a dying planet)

Whatever happened to God?
Is he retired - living in Vegas?

Where has the Republic gone?
The upper half (10%) of an
economy struggles to recover.
The bottom 90% is lost forever
in fifth world bliss
amidst empty factories and
empty office towers (for sale - cheap!).
It's the new economics -
Broken promises - unfulfilled dreams.
Plastic card idols and
the pursuit of fantasy
-the illusion or was it delusion
of a common man's world -
could not last - a temporary
half century long Camelot?

Lost. So many things amidst
the fading echo
and fading visuals - of time gone-
not properly managed
an unsustainable age
that no one questioned
this passing age
of chronic luxury.

What next?

NEDA - VOICE - IRAN

Neda! Voice!

I chose not to publish the picture of a twenty-six year old woman murdered on the streets of Tehran by the religious thug militia.

It is all over the net and YouTube. The picture of her dying, dead, and with blood pouring out of her mouth and nose onto her face, after being shot in the heart, is the face of Iranian justice today.

Her name – Neda – in the native language means Voice.

Her name is a rallying call to the protestors. We perhaps have our defining image of this historic moment, though somewhat gruesome, to match the man in front of the tank in Tiananmen Square in Peking twenty years ago.

I find it totally ironic that the religious thugs who run Iran and are forbidding foreign correspondents from covering the protests and the violence that followed a fixed election, that those western journalists would have already censored a graphic violence image and filtered it before going into the smug atmosphere of a couch potato American audience.

So it goes.

RIP – NEDA.

Secular Victory in Iran - Round One

Crackk!!!

Did you hear that sound – the crack in the wall surrounding Iran?

Ever since the thugs took over thirty years ago and put on the robes and began a reign of terror over the minds of men and women – this past week has shown that the educated middle class of merchants and students in Tehran want a modern breathing space for their humanity.

I do not know why all the repressive religions in the world take such comfort from their idol – a Mean Spirited Desert god of Moses, Jesus and Mohammed that loves tyrants and hates people. Don’t they know that God is Love?

My guess is that if a Hypocrite like Khamenei or a humongous Assh-le like Ahmadinejad can no longer talk for the Man – God/Allah – or be believed to be able to talk that talk and walk that walk of the almighty – their days are numbered like those of Danton and Robespierre from dark darks of the French Revolution.

Secular Iran won the first round of an ongoing battle to free the minds of man from the tyranny of mean spirited clerics in robes.

Was the Shah really that bad in retrospect???

Last week was one of those – God may be great but he picked an awful lot of shitheads to represent and interpret himself on this earth to the masses - yeah right - moments – happened – one of those turning points of history moments – did you take notice?

Good luck to the people of Iran to free themselves from the mental slavery of fools.

In Defense of a Dead Oblate

There is an article in the papers about how the nephew of the late Cardinal O’Connor of New York is filing a sex abuse case against a deceased priest. The article in the New York Daily News puts the victim at a totally different highschool in Philly than the one named in the lawsuit. So much for accurate reporting from the MSM.

A much more accurate accounting of details of all parties and factors concerned is found in a Philly article.

The contention is that a thirteen year old freshman at Father Judge High in Phila., was threatened with failure in his freshman religion class unless he submitted to abuse. The contention is that the nephew of a Cardinal would suffer shame if he could not get a passing grade in religion. The headlines in New York were no doubt eye catching using the name of a former famous dead cleric such as Cardinal O'Connor.

I have to disagree with the idea that a relative of an upscale cleric would automatically be a target for a jealous low level cleric. If anything, my being a cousin of a Bishop I think kept anybody away from me that might have wanted to harm me for fear of my reporting the whole thing to the front office so to speak.

The other point I do not agree with is that a sixty-six year old priest, before Viagra, could harass or rape a healthy thirteen year old boy who was not interested in any play.

The priest in question has been named in a suit earlier this year by another former student in the Delaware diocese where the priest had been teaching at the time of that alleged incident. A Delaware law extended the statute of limitations for these abuse crimes for reporting or for lawsuits for a period of twenty five years past the age of eighteen and with a two year window in which to file suits within this legal timeline.

Do two lawsuits prove guilt or does the name of a dead priest in circulation make for a convenient target for the blossoming cottage industry of abuse support/help groups and let’s not forget the lawyer industry that helped destroy affordable medicine in this country?

The deadline for filing suits at the end of this two year period is July 1, 2009. While the incident in the cardinal’s nephew lawsuit took place in Philadelphia, the teaching order, the Oblates of Saint Francis de Sales, based in Delaware and Washington D.C. are within reach of Delaware’s Abuse law regarding the alleged Philadelphia incident.

Several things I do not like here. One, the priest is dead. Two, the priest’s name is public knowledge by a previous lawsuit. The whole story sounds more like a nuisance lawsuit traveling on the coat tails of another lawsuit.

While the Church bears a hog’s share of responsibility for the shuffling around of perverts over the decades and centuries, not every allegation of abuse is necessarily true especially if money is involved in the equation.

I had disagreed on the clause in the Ryan Report regarding abuse by the clergy in Ireland – the clause that did not name parties involved. In a way the knife cuts both ways. Is it more important at this late date to document an era of abuse or try and shame aged clerics and nuns in their nursing homes to account for what in essence was a system of abuse designed and run by both the state and the church in Ireland?

So too in America, I do not think that dead clerics being named and not being able to defend themselves is a fair balance. By all means there should be counseling, healing and compensation for real abuse. The church has got to get over this hill, learn from its mistakes, reform and move on – this in order to be a credible institution in the modern age.

There is a time and reason – a season - for everything under the sun. It is time to move on.

Father Alberto Cutie Cuts Gordian Knot of Celibacy

A lot of the non-Spanish speaking American population may or may not be familiar with Father Alberto Cutie (Coo-tee-ay). He is a well spoken, photogenic, immensely popular media presence that has been called “Father Oprah” by some in the media to describe his role in dispensing advice in the Spanish speaking media.

I had not heard of him until some weeks ago when they started to publicize some fairly innocent pictures of him on the beach in Miami with his girlfriend. Of course a Roman Catholic priest is supposed to be celibate and not supposed to have a girlfriend. I had been reluctant to say anything before now about the whole affair until it died down and played itself out.

What happened is that the pictures got published. They took Cutie off his official duties. I suppose the RC church wanted time to have yet another so-called scandal to cool off and then go back to business as usual.

Father Cutie, a mature adult of 40, apparently had some soul searching to do or had already been in that process when the public figure in a public place got put on the cover of a Mexican scandal magazine. The decision about self, love, commitment, career etc. had come to a turning point.

While Alberto was on administrative leave, he decided to walk across the street so to speak to the Episcopalian Diocese of S.E. Florida in Miami and join that particular Christian sect that allows its clergy to live in the sacrament of matrimony. Matrimony is an issue that founded the Episcopalian or its mother Church of England and centered around Henry VIII’s need for a legitimate male heir to prevent civil war upon his death.

Father Cutie got married this week in Miami in a civil ceremony and hopes to have a church wedding after he gets settled into the job of Priest after he has passed a few administrative hurdles and paperwork to make him a fully functioning Episcopalian priest.

There is some bitch-bitch talk in the Catholic blog/news world but it is really how the RC Archbishop of Miami Lavalora is pissed at Episcopalian Bishop Frade of not following unwritten protocols of informing the other bishop of conversion and not making a show of the conversion. Well, the show thing was already in the news, and Father Cutie’s resume was no doubt already in the public forum. This was no priest knocking on the door at midnight and asking to change sides.

I think Archbishop Lavalora owes Bishop Frade an apology for unfair words stated about Frade and his neatly and quickly wrapping up and taking this matter off the public forum table.

I wish Father Cutie and his bride best wishes and good luck in their marriage. I expect to hear more of Father Cutie in his Spanish speaking media role should he choose to continue in that vein of his career in serving his God and his Christian faith.

Cyber Terrorism in Iran

Cyber Terrorism on a small global scale is being tested on the guinea pigs of the Iranian people these past few days.

Some in the capital of Tehran are slightly ahead of the curve with the use of Twitter to inform the outside world of events. Cutting off cell phones and the Internet along with jamming satellite signals do not make for a credible legitimate government of Iran.

Cyber Terrorism is real whether it is practiced by governments or crooks trying to steal your identity.

In the case of a government resorting to cyber terrorism brings to mind a quote by Thomas Jefferson.

"I Have Sworn Upon the Altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."

Holy Nuke! - The Coming War with Iran?

First of all – hint – hint – in terms of imitating the west’s style of democratic elections.

One. You wait to count all the ballots no matter how many days that might take.

Two. If you in fact do get 62% of the vote, it is a landslide and it is evident to everyoine who has won.

Three. If you need James Baker, Anthony Scalia or the Ayatollah Khamenei to tell you who won, then maybe you as a country are in deep shit – up to your arm pits in fact.

Putting aside all the last minute enthusiasm from the young, the majority of the nation, the future of the nation, last week in a sort of velvet, texting, twitter, spring, revolution atmosphere, I would have believed a squeaker election with 51% for the predictable winner to have been more palatable to the nation and to the world. Whatever.

The real issue today is if there is going to be war or airstrikes on Iran because of the theocracy posing as a democracy and within reach of nuclear mayhem.

I think that we in the west have been patient with the rhetoric coming and going out of the Islamic Republic of Iran. A lot of this rhetoric has to do in one way with the rights of a nation to develop peaceful nuclear technology.

There is always that awkward moment when words, ideas, thoughts get lost or misunderstood in translation. Persia has a very old rich mid east culture. Iran, aside from the historic Persia, is a secular state of sorts fronting for religious fanatics.

The west, that used Iran for decades as a convenient puppet state and bulwark against Soviet hegemony, got ungraciously kicked out in 1979. Iran now is within reach of being a nuclear power, bombs and all.

At this point in time with all the rhetoric floating around and with the good intentions to negotiate a peaceful solution to Iran’s nuclear ambitions – one thought comes to this crazy cultural secularist christian – would I want the pope to have a nuke?

No. No. No. NO. NO!

No matter if the Supreme Leader of Iran Khamenei has Ahmadinejad or Mousavi as a stooge for President, the point is that nobody who claims to talk for God/Allah should have nuclear weapons at their command.

Secular leadership in the arms race is bad enough. I have seen enough of anger and hate filled theocratic rhetoric from Iran, translated or mistranslated over thirty years back to the west, to say that enough is enough.

Polls in Israel are for a so-called strategic strike against Iran’s nuclear industrial network. I fear that such a strike at this point in time will set the whole world into blinding rage and uncontrollable global warfare.

The emerging modern global world is in need of global fiscal economic and democratic responsibilities. This new world order of things does not need another armed nuclear power. The world does not need another backward looking Medieval State.

Iran is entitled to live in benign isolation and religious bliss. (but without nukes for the sake of everybody else living on this planet) (it is also time to disarm everywhere else)

That's me in the corner
That's me in the spotlight
Losing my religion
Trying to keep a view
And I don't know if I can do it
Oh no I've said too much
I hadn't said enough
I thought that I heard you laughing
I thought that I heard you sing
I think I thought I saw you try… (lyrics – R.E.M.)

Birthers and other Crazies! - Sede Vacante

There is one of those annoying sounds from the far right lunatic fringe group that keeps creeping into the mental state of the nation. That is the new coded racist conspiracy crackpot theory, tin foil hat idea labled as the “birther” movement.

Apparently the far right lunatics have latched onto this idea that President Obama was not born in this country. He was born in Hawaii, a member of the Union since 1959. He was born in 1961. This came up during the campaign and I do recall that John McCain, was born of American parents in Panama while his father was on duty in the Navy there. If you are going to question the Dem’s credentials then you have got to mention the Pub’s questionable claim to native American born status as a constitutional prerequisite for the highest office in the land.

Putting aside campaign rhetoric, I saw a video clip last night on the Rachel Maddow show on MSNBC from some recent archive in which talk show host Rush Limbaugh was making a joke about what God has in common with Barack Obama – “no birth certificate”.

The poor excuse of a human being that walked into the national Holocaust Museum the other day with a gun and hatred has been linked to a belief in this “birther” conspiracy idea. That sick old man had a whole litany of confused and hate filled ideas. Primary among was them was hatred for the Jews, anti-Semitism. This guy also was surprising anti-christian as well.

What struck me last while watching that archive footage of Rush and making a droll joke about God’s birth certificate and reinforcing the lunatic fringe’s tin foil hat ideas was that this whole idea sounds familiar. It was when Rachel spent air time to go a little in depth on the silly subject that a light bulb went off in my head. Maddow had stated something like the fact that people, because of this idea, believe that the Office of President of the United States (POTUS) is vacant. It is not vacant. It is occupied and functioning better that it has in a decade what with Bill Clinton and his BJ Impeachment and the inbred idiot ruling class’s choice of George III.

Vacant! Sede Vacante! The seat of the President is empty in the minds of people who cannot see a black man seating there.

I have to assume corrently or incorrectly that this birther thing in the election fell onto the fertile ground of racism in America as well as tax supported Tradtionalist Catholicism where the idea of a vacancy in a seat of temporal power is a way to avoid with dealing with reality.

I believe we are seeing a secular version of the Latin Massers in the form of the Obama Birthers. Art imitating nature? Or screwed up thinking reflecting superstition and hatred both on a secular and “sacred” level. Whatever.

A film clip from the flaming liberal, lesbian news reporting goddess, Rachel Maddow from March to help you visualize and absorb this idea more fully:

Constantine Complex - a modern condition?

There is that thing about short men with an inferiority thing called a Napoleonic complex.

Looking at some present day figures does not necessarily bring to mind the Napoleon thing. If Napoleon had succeeded with his bloody military thing, the EU would have been born a century and a half sooner and WWI and WWII would have not likely happened. Theory and conjecture do not make a real history of facts.

Of course, now I see what I call the Constantine complex in this modern world. It has to do with megalomaniac egos and trying to start new world religions or belief systems. It has to do with marshalling the forces available to fuller the power of the one over the many by any means possible. It also has to do with “I am Right and you are wrong! Period!”

No doubt a light bulb or I should say a torch lit up in the great Emperor god Constantine’s mind when he sought the means to glue two halves of an empire back together again. The key word here is “one”. One Emperor, one world Empire, one world religion. The monotheistic christian religion was no doubt an ideal fit into the emperor god’s grand megalomaniac plan for his new world order in the fourth century.

One current candidate for the title or label of the Constantine complex is the movie maker and actor Mel Gibson. Of course if Gibson were alive in the time of Constantine he would have approved of laws forbidding Jews from owning christian slaves or Nuremburg type laws imposing death if a Jew dared to marry a christian. Constantine! What a guy! Founder and cosmic enabler of the present church in Rome.

Gibson’s grasp of defending the 16th century tridentine mass in Latin as the only bridge to the one absolute God that he and his cult alone can fathom and defend perhaps has its limits. While Mel is divorcing his wife of twenty eight years and he is about to have a child out of wedlock, he is a little upset with his congregation of 70 fanatics who he suddenly doesn’t feel loyalty from. He is supposed to have threatened to shut down his church tax shelter because his fellow congregants are gossiping about him. Minor stuff, the real Constantine killed one son and his second wife because of palace gossip. Thank God Mel is only a minor tin god reflection of the real standard.

Mel is so pure, he is more holy than the pope, more catholic than the pope etc. Of course Mel has a few mortal flaws but is none the less one of my candidates for the label of having a Constantine complex.

Fast forward and the current age of mass media which is not a two way media, and they got rid of the fairness doctrine, whereby a balanced point of view is supposed to go out on the airwaves. The king of this modern day Constantine complex thing – this absolute rule of “I am Right and you are wrong! Period!” - would have to be “Boss Tweed” Limbaugh spewing nonstop confusion and hate over the radio air waves both for himself and his dying political party.

Also, suddenly Pope Newt the First, newly arrived in the Constantine faith, is telling his constituency that besides being always absolutely right that we are surrounding by “paganism”. What the hell is Gingrich mumbling about? Or is this just a new label for secular humanism? We don’t need a new world religion Newt when so many of all the others don’t work that well or work at all.

The domestic culture wars I hope are over. While we are at it, isn’t it time for the Armed Forces of the USA to stand down from WWII and the Cold War. There are better uses for the money in the social and domestic needs of the American people. Constantine is dead and so too should be his idea of empire, combining church and state, that so many these days seem to want to emulate.

Confessions of a Clueless Bureaucrat

There seems to be a theme running through the ongoing sex abuse scandals of the Roman clergy. The theme is one of temporary memory or of living in a morality bubble that only considers morals and confession and the immediate needs of the soul. If private corporations ran their internal workings on the myopic short term limited concerns as in the RC church, they would be out of business - or – hint, hint – about to go out of business.

The theme I see is that the RC church gives no value to the secular soul. “Outside the Church, there is no salvation.”

The RC church, which had been both secular and sacred government for many parts of the world in the past, attacks modernism when secularism and or democracy doesn’t mix well with bubble morality – oil and vinegar. Coexistence with secularism and interfaith dialogue are to be feared as well and not reconciled at all costs.

When the RC church has to coexist with other religions in the United States as an example, it continues to express itself as both a secular and supremely sacred institution within the confines of its bubble.

With special medieval tax entitlements, it goes along on its merry, nonconforming to secularism, way and subsidized by the secular world and secular taxpayers. In fact, alliances with Satan aka fundamentalist christian types on political issues and imposing Catholic Sharia Law on the U.S. Constitution for birth control and abortion is part of the master internal plan.

Problem with the RC church might be that it gives 110% to the soul of a man in an afterlife. It perhaps gives little or nothing to the welfare of a man alive in the secular world. Of course it gives comfort for the fear it helps to create in the first place about the afterlife.

The former archbishop of Milwaukee is coming out with a book more to show case his coming out of the closet about being gay. When that book goes on sale next week, all sorts of punditry and shouting will be going about. Over and above this cleric doing public confession for his individual sexuality, he does little to shed light on the real harm done to people, children abused by the clergy. He is pulling the old “I didn’t know or didn’t understand” defense regarding his own culpability in the greater arena of this decades, centuries old sexual dysfunction of the RC Church.

Sex-abuse victims group rebuffs Weakland’s naiveté claim

Weakland makes those assertions in his forthcoming memoir, "A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church," saying at one point, "We all considered sexual abuse of minors as a moral evil, but had no understanding of its criminal nature."…

In his book, the retired archbishop says that in the 1970s, he "naively" accepted the notion that victims would either forget or "grow out of" the abuse. He blames the leniency shown by judges toward priests (and other professionals) in sex abuse cases for shaping his views on the perpetrators…

In most of the last decade of abuse scandals, the real tragedy I think is that these front office clerics honestly do not know the modern day value of a human being in the real – secular – world.

In the past few months, I have seen the dysfunctionality of the bishops expressing empathy for sex abusers as with Archbishop Nichols of Westminster in Britain over and above the victims in regards to the Ryan Report. I see the mad bishops of Brazil more concerned about excommunication and Catholic Sharia law than the rights or safety of a nine year old pregnant rape, incest victim getting a late term abortion.

I see the holocaust denying Bishop Williamson getting a promotion in the RC church strictly on “moral” theological stands, that and real estate and money. Let’s not forget Cardinal Law of Boston and his promotion to run the third oldest church/shrine in Christendom within Rome.

I see my own chiding of the ever “no appointments available” Bishop Martino of Scranton for his ignoring and not commenting on the horrendous child selling and trafficking of children to “for profit” juvenile prisons by Judges Ciavarella and Conahan within his own so-called moral jurisdiction.

You get this - I don’t give a damn about anything except my job and pleasing the idiots in charge holding onto medieval fantasy, rhetoric and rules. That, lifetime tenure and let’s not forget the gelt.

I see a Bishop of Rome who tells the poor in Africa to die not from their ignorance but from his own regarding the use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV.

And while Rome burns, I see the same Bishop a year or two ago, a scholar of sorts, wanting approval from the ranks regarding his outstanding scholarship and then quotes medieval hatred as part of his scholarship and basically pisses on the entire Muslim world, past and present.

These guys in the RC hierarchy are not in touch with the same realities you and I are in touch with. Our reality, our secular reality doesn’t count to them. Children, victims of abuse, do not count. What is the whole point of your Roman Bling Church except to be a museum and charge tourists for a tour?

Luckily their hold on things, their (blindspot toward humanity) point of view loses valuable ground everyday toward the future of the human race as they remain clueless within our growing secular global interdependent interrelated existence.

Lest We Forget - May 35th 1989

It is late in the day. I did not get onto this daily changing planetary, global jargon until now.

Apparently today's date that this is posted in, my time, is not allowed to be mentioned in a certain country - Charade clue - You have this in your dining room ----- closet.

Well anyway, Geroge Orwell would be impressed if he were still alive. Until today, I would thought that this new minus-speak in the people's republic of ----- would have been obsolete - but I am wrong.

Netizens, among others, have shut down sites in ----- for the day in fear of offending some moron bureaucrats. These sites I read are putting up an out of service for maintenance sign.

Negative talk or minus-speak is no doubt censorship but we all remember Liberty in Tiananmen Square in Peking twenty years ago today. Human beings against tanks represent ideas and ideas are stronger than armies or tanks.

Hungary in 1956, Checkoslovakia in 1968, ----- in 1989.

History writes the final chapter in many struggles for human freedom. So too here we wish for a better world and a better country for all everywhere.

"Reimagine" إعادة تخيل - Barry in Cairo

I am perhaps reluctant to put too much faith in any one politician’s promises or their ability to deliver on such promises. At this moment in time, Political time, Economic time, Religious time, Environmental time – Global Time – People Time - The United States and the nations of the planet are at a critical crossroads.

One of the most recent roads that inbred American politics has tried to lead us onto is a conflict with the secular and sacred Islamic world. In 2003, a new cold war with different people in shades of color and religious persuasions seemed to fit the old make a buck deal that supported lazy rich individuals and lazy corporations for half a century after WWII. That recent road is not set in stone or concrete yet. Luckily it, that road and its shoddy workmanship, has been in the hands of phony crony corporations like Halliburton and its former phony crony CEO.

There is always hope for a new architect or a new style of architecture to come into vogue. What I say here, I say with no hesitation, that in style and rhetoric, the Obama Administration is as refreshing as Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie modernist architecture of over a century ago. I drove through Illinois once – Beautiful – what did God put in the soil and drinking water there to make it so fertile and rich both in land and imagination?

Perhaps a new light or a new way of looking at the world has been set into the energy of the planet today.

Many dreams, many hopes, many many hard roads and struggles are ahead. But perhaps a sign post or a modern day virtual Rosetta Stone has been planted in Cairo today with Obama’s historic speech reaching out to the Muslim world. A West holds out an open hand to the East kind of speech has been uttered. Blueprints for the future are being drawn as I write this. The future is an exciting place.

I was impressed with the simple eloquence of President Obama’s speech in Cairo today. Got up a little later than expected and caught the tail end of it on MSNB. Then I took the time to read its full text of Obama's Speech on the L.A. Times online site.

Much eloquence, much wisdom and much insight were shown in carefully choosing each word, phrase, sentence and concept.

I gave up a long time ago trying to figure out where the President, his advisors or speechwriters begin, converge or express individually or collectively the new Global viewpoint. And this, over and above their primary duty to the United States, as one of many nations on earth. We are truly interdependent and interrelated in 2009 and going forward.

Obama is certainly a student of history. While many seem to be fond of the Lincoln comparisons in his approach and style to exercising power, there is something else.

I believe I see a bit of Harry Truman, not in irascibility, but in knowing what he wants to do, knows where he is going and will try with all the limited time of his tenure to achieve set goals. I see someone who has worked hard outside of government. I see one who has touched people and know what the common man and woman are all about.

Having lived through many changes in both America and the Global sense of things for many decades, I realize that stating ones’ goals or mission statements openly will achieve more than if one randomly meets and solves crisis after crisis. One must anticipate, envision the results without necessarily knowing how to get to the results. Life sometimes resembles a game of sports. So too the human race must look at itself, struggle with both strengths and weaknesses and assemble on the clear playing field of the future.

What Barack stated in Notre Dames a few weeks ago and what he stated again today was the fact that youth must envision the future, set goals and go out into life to achieve those goals both for themselves and the general good of others.

The common good which is a secular goal, more than anything sacred, is in the hands of youth to “reimagine” and “remake” the world.

Reimagine.

Reimagine. إعادة تخيل

Peace. سلام

In Memoriam - Dr. George Tiller - of Kansas

I never heard of Doctor George Tiller before yesterday. I heard on the news that he had been gunned down while in worship at Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita Kansas.

Our prayers and condolences to his wife, family, friends, co-workers and fellow worshipers who had to witness "man’s inhumanity to man”.

I see that he was an usher in his local church. He is one of those people who greet you, welcome you into the house of God and escort you to a seat. He is one of many who indirectly usher you into the presence of the Divine in a worship service.

I know there is a culture war out there. Fundamentalism and ignorance are rampant. Doctor Tiller was a licensed skilled physician who performed a necessary service to the health of women. What he did was legal and out in the open.

The stalkers, the ignorant, the paranoid that feed on the vinegar and vitriol of Hate Radio and Hate News had plenty of opportunity to locate the doctor in his home, place of business or place of worship. Signposts encouraging hatred and violence are posted all over the Internet.

This is where the media in America is a one way situation. The media is virtual and not real or local. In the old days, a reporter or a local public citizen such as Doctor Tiller, could be greeted or jeered by his real life neighbors in a real town square and not in the pitiful virtual version of stuff that now exists in our nation.

Doctor Tiller no doubt had the courage to stand up for his rights to practice his profession and under the laws of the state of Kansas. Kansas by the way has a death penalty for first degree murder. Kansas has not exercised that option since 1976.

That he was murdered in his house of worship is outrageous! This is America! Not Afganistan!

His commitment to his profession and the needs of women were more important than his own personal safety. This is the sign of a great and remarkable man.

Many of us come down on either side of the morality concept attached to the abortion issue. None of us have the right under God to judge another regarding the use or practice of this medical procedure.

Matthew 7:1-5

1 “Judge not, that you be not judged. 2 For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you. 3 And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye? 4 Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove the speck from your eye’; and look, a plank is in your own eye? 5 Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. (NKJV)

Without knowing the man the personally, I must consider his last act of serving others in his house of worship.

As such I pass on his Church’s mission statement from their website which I think appropriate to the loss of this man Doctor George Tiller:

Welcome to Reformation Lutheran Church! We are a community of believers who gather to worship, learn, and share fellowship so that we can serve others and live out our faith in daily life.

RIP

P.S. June 6, 2009 Doctor Tiller's Funeral