New York Times - Easter 2013 Edition:
“Dolan Says Church
Should Be More Welcoming of Gays” ...
– P.T. Barnum N.Y.C. Media Show – 24/7/365
(Yawn!)
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Sunday, March 31, 2013
The Changing Face of Religion = St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Philly looks to Lease out Property to Wal-mart, Home Depot, Jack in the Box?
Well somebody has to pay the child abuse lawyer bills from the
decades long drunk on the blood of martyrs and saints party by power hungry,
greedy Cardinals Krol, Bevilacqua and Rigali.
Who better to pay the bills than
a carpetbagger like Archbishop Charles Chaput who, where he comes from in
Kansas and Denver, Wal-mart, Home Depot and Jack in the Box etc. are considered
a “good thing” - the only thing. Duh!
Whatever.
Welcome to the new secular global culture! (no need for the sacred when it can be replaced with the $ecular)
http://articles.philly.com/2013-03-09/news/37564098_1_seminary-enrollment-seminary-board-seminarians
Theology is shrinking its footprint at the intersection of City and Lancaster Avenues in Lower Merion.The Archdiocese of Philadelphia said Thursday that it would explore selling or leasing 45 acres of the St. Charles Borromeo Seminary campus in Lower Merion, consolidating in older buildings on 30 acres in the back of the property. The move follows Eastern University's relocation last year of its Palmer Theological Seminary from the southwest corner of that intersection to a rented space one-fifth the size in King of Prussia. Over the next three to five years, St. Charles Borromeo Seminary will vacate the palatial college building that was built in 1928 and dominates the view of the property from Lancaster Avenue, the archdiocese said.
Proceeds from selling or leasing underused land and buildings will be used to help pay for renovations of existing buildings, parts of which have been mothballed for 35 years, officials said.
"St. Charles Borromeo Seminary is the heart of our church in Philadelphia, and we remain dedicated to not only maintaining its presence in our community but strengthening it for many generations to come," Archbishop Charles J. Chaput said in a news release.
Since arriving in Philadelphia from Denver in September 2011, Chaput has been working to improve the church's financial health by selling real estate, trimming operations, closing schools, and consolidating parishes.
An open question until Thursday was what the archdiocese would do with the seminary, founded in 1832 and moved to its current location in 1871. Deliberations included moving it to a new site.
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| Location, Location, Location - Retail, Retail, Fast Food (GoogleMaps) |
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| Soon to be Lost Iconic 85 year old View From City Ave. (GoogleMaps) , |
Lord Carey - Archbishop of Canterbury Emeritus - Whining About Christian Privilege being Pushed Back in the New Global Culture and calling it Persecution
Lord Carey, a Thatcher crony appointment, Archbishop of Canterbury
Emeritus, is going about trying to preserve Religious privilege in a growing
secular global culture.
He is going off as in most typical English eccentric,
crack pot fashion, and dishing it out on the current temporary resident of No.
10 Downing Street.
More of the usual of late Christian “they’re persecuting me”
bullshit of not wanting to pay their fair share of taxes or pull their own weight I would say.
I like David Cameron and believe he is genuinely sincere in his desire to make Britain a generous nation where we care for one another and where people of faith may exercise their beliefs fully.But it was a bit rich to hear that the Prime Minister has told religious leaders that they should ‘stand up and oppose aggressive secularisation’ when it seems that his government is aiding and abetting this aggression every step of the way.
At his pre-Easter Downing Street reception for faith leaders, he said that he supported Christians’ right to practise their faith. Yet many Christians doubt his sincerity. According to a new ComRes poll more than two-thirds of Christians feel that they are part of a ‘persecuted minority’.
Their fears may be exaggerated because few in the UK are actually persecuted, but the Prime Minister has done more than any other recent political leader to feed these anxieties.
He seems to have forgotten in spite of his oft-repeated support for the right of Christians to wear the cross, that lawyers acting for the Coalition argued only months ago in the Strasbourg court that those sacked for wearing a cross against their employer’s wishes should simply get another job.
In a way this whole Christian paranoia so-called persecution thing
of late on both sides of the pond has to do with the fact that the churches and
church leaders have spewed unchecked religious propaganda into the town square
or public forum without challenge from the media or the public for centuries.
Now with a little push back and a demand for a two way conversation in the
changing nature of the new uncharted global culture paradigm thing, they want
to yell "persecution".
I don't buy it, this screaming whining “persecution” thing and won't
until they fill, stock the fields of the football stadiums on both sides of the
Atlantic with lions, tigers, bears and feed these pampered little church folk,
church ladies to other species for a snack in earnest. Then I might believe they have something on their side in terms of substance in a real argument.
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Happy Cesar Chavez Birthday! - March 31, 2013
Happy Cesar Chavez Birthday!
I must say how refreshing it is for Google to display a birthday
greeting on its opening web page site in the U.S.A.
Google and these displays of history and science on appointed days
and with Google theme graphics is a breath of fresh air for America’s youth and
others to regather and cherish a heritage of labor and its struggles that our school
systems have try to purge out of our collective memory and national purpose.
And not the usual tired old religious Pagan thing with a faked empty
tomb or a Bunny Rabbit representing the rebirth of the Earth in the wonderful
God given season of Spring.
Hallelujah! (secular of course)
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Saturday, March 30, 2013
Harrowgate Easter Basket - 1960
This started the other night when Jimmy Kimmel had built a Peeps gun
and was shooting Peeps out into his late night TV audience.
Peeps are kind of an iconic waste product that comes out in
marketing every Easter and most people I believe are not fond of them other than
for their nostalgic value from childhood. Biting into one of them is the oral equivalent I think of listening to the screeching of a piece of chalk on a chalk board.
They come in colors now. They used to be many decades ago only
yellow and decorated my Easter morning basket.
One each I think we got. The whole Easter basket thing is another
thing I as a parent recreated to a younger generation without much appreciation
for the hand me tradition thing.
Stepping back a few weeks before Easter in my youth in the last
century was the nuns in the grade school issuing every child from grade 1 to 8
an Easter Egg Gambling punch card thing where for a nickel or a dime you sold a
box, a circle with a designated name.
The lucky person who had the winning name
revealed after you sold all your peeled away red dots would be revealed behind
the big red circle at the top of the gambling card.
These cards, along with Bingo were a very Catholic thing to raise
funds for the school and or parish and under no circumstances could be
confessed in the confessional as the sin of gambling. There was a special dispensation for it of
course!
The prize(?) was a coconut crème Easter egg with its dense
confection surrounded by dark milk chocolate.
The appeal of these eggs I believe was with the older generations and strangely
too with my older siblings who could not get enough of them when chopped up
with some difficulty with a big butcher knife from the kitchen.
I usually gave my coconut crème egg away in
pieces, not desperate enough personally to consume more than just the first awful
taste of it.
Luckily when I reached eight or nine, they now had hollow chocolate
bunnies in boxes which my parents let me have in lieu of the coconut crème thing. No doubt the hollow bunnies, new to the
market then, were cheaper to purchase.
The baskets with filled with the usual colored hard boiled eggs,
decorated the previous day on Saturday with a egg coloring kit, color fizzy
tablets, wax crayon and wire loop egg holder that cost a dime everywhere in the
neighborhood stores.
The real thing about chocolate that I loved in my basket was with the
Hershey Kisses which were rationed to like a half dozen. The whole product was
expensive and marketed differently back then. Quality not quantity and coming
in a small cellophane bag.
So now, we have the Peep, chocolate hollow bunny, Hershey kisses.
Of course, there were jelly beans in an improvised aluminum foil shaped cup and
the thing I loved most was the chocolate covered marshmallow eggs wrapped in
colored silver foil which my father purchased special in a store off of K &
A south in one of those stores with steps leading up into the storefront of an
old house.
I believe he may have been purchasing the foil covered chocolate
marshmallows at the same place since his youth. Of all the things in the sacred
Easter basket, this purchase and these handmade marshmallow eggs with the most preciously
thought of by all.
That into a basket with plastic colored hay. Each of us had a
reserved color and I cannot remember my specific color at the moment.
One other thing, the baskets themselves, used every year and made of
natural materials looked their age and use. My father would go to the local
Easter Flower stand selling Easter plants, the kind you gave to your
grandmother, and he would purchase the colored aluminum foil sheets used to
wrap and decorate clay pots holding the seasonal plants. This foil, again
following the color reserved theme, got wrapped onto tired old wicker Easter
baskets.
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Friday, March 29, 2013
Thursday, March 28, 2013
Crucifixion – Medallion – by Andro Meszaros
"Bronze medal 'Crucifixion', designed by Andro Meszaros and minted by Pinches, London, in 1947.
This is the 11th medal of the Stations of the Cross by renowned medal sculptor Andor Meszaros.
Meszaros, a Hungarian immigrant, arrived in Australia in 1938.
He found that Australia did not have a developed tradition in medallic art and in 1949 travelled to England to undertake sculpture and medallion work at Canterbury.
Here his Stations of the Cross medal series, which he had been designing for seven years, was endorsed by the Bishop of the Cathedral and became known as the 'Canterbury Series'.
It took Andor a further 20 years to complete the 14 medals of the series, which was available in both silver and bronze.
Description (above):
A bronze uniface medal (64 mm diameter) depicting Christ being nailed to the cross, three other figures in the field."
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On Growing Older – Group School Photo - 1966
The photo above kind of got sprung on
me. It appeared on a Facebook friend’s page. Had not purchased the photo from
the photographer originally. Had never seen it until about three weeks ago.
My first honest reaction to it was how white
it was. That I have since lived most of the past thirty five years since
leaving Philly in or around the diverse city of New York. That because of economics that means one of
the less expensive outer boroughs other than Manhattan.
Oh I did live in Manhattan decades ago
in a studio dormitory room and shared an apartment near campus.
Manhattan in the late seventies was
still a largely American city. Now it is an International City with international
prices like Hong Kong or London.
That the mind does wander and getting
back to Philly and youth and the memory of it all, perhaps could be the subject
of a book.
The Neighborhood in which I grew up in
is no longer 99 and 44/100 percent white, ethnic western European
white. The neighborhood was predominately Irish with a smaller percentage of
Italian and Polish.
The German ethnic label thing had faded into the background with two world wars and it was not thought of as an ethnic thing even though some of the names of my classmates in retrospect
were definitely German sounding.
The school is still there as a
building. It is no longer a Catholic school but a public charter school in the now
50% black and Hispanic neighborhood as per official government stats.
The front doors in the photo were plate
glass. The present ones are steel. The
parish complex is chopped up with the school a city owned public school, the
convent with its many cell like bedrooms is a half-way house for Catholic
pregnant teens and the Church is on life support with two weekend masses and
two weekday masses being said by one priest shared with another parish about a
mile away, the Italian parish, with that priest in that rectory.
There is or was the grave of the
Monsignor who founded the parish in 1919 somewhere in the church yard next to
the closed up old rectory.
Lots of stats and not lots of feelings.
The real feelings have to do with
growing older and with word of mouth knowing that at least eight of the faces in
the photo are no longer with us on this earthy plane.
In fact, my being on Facebook had to do
with one friend seeking me out after the death of my neighbor classmate of two
doors down from where I grew up. The social network thing is the present day
family dinner or town square of virtual reality.
I never really thought much about it.
The classes were not co-ed. It was an all-boys class, separate and not equal
next to an all-girls class. The boys classes got the better qualified teaching nuns imho. Then all off to an all-boys High School, now also a
Public School charter high school.
The inner city has no appeal to the RC church. The
money is in the burbs.
And indeed in another age of segregated
by sex schools, a mighty school system was built as separate but superior to
the public school system that rejected Irish and German Catholic immigrants in
the 1840’s, riots and the determination to build that separate but superior
Catholic School System in spite of the Protestants and the Protestant Banks
having all the money.
That many a Catholic parish in inner
city America got built on pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters of immigrants
looking positively to a better life in America. That is something that carpetbagger bishops now cannot understand regarding the history of the place in which they now mismanage or "govern" by modern global Harvard / Brown / Wharton spreadsheet style management.
As I try to reconcile a lot of things,
I realize that the factories surrounding that school above are either empty,
torn down and turned into parking lots or on a small scale supporting many small
businesses in one building or gentrified into living lofts etc.
That the coded talk of my youth, with
the adults wanting to escape Philly and get over to Jersey or to Montgomery
County was code talk to fantasize a non-racial paradise outside of racially
changing, economic changing Philly in the post WWI and post WWII changing world of demographics along with rights for minorities – civil rights that extend to the future, the now, and
regarding issues like marriage equality etc.
That I catch an occasional fragmented
sentence from old friends, perhaps coded phrase of now living in Jersey or
Montgomery County of really meaning having achieved their parents dreams of family harmony in
a safe enclave place outside the origins of the family within the old city
proper.
The Europeans spent decades rebuilding
their inner cities after war and love to live, eat and entertain there.
American spared the destruction of war and with
a vastness of land into which to expand, made the loop thing of the American
civilization being turned into a grassy fortress suburbia supported by the
combustion engine etc.
Someone took the time to label the
photo with names. I remember and recognize 90% of the names and faces there.
Cannot quite still figure what happened
to a lot of the years from there to here.
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Arizona Anti-Transgender Kavanagh Potty Bill Amended to Protect Country Clubs, Restaurants in Discrimination against Transgenders
This Snowbird transplant, carpetbagger from New York Kavanagh
where I wonder what his as a cop police rap sheet against minorities looks
like, backed off on direct discrimination against Transgenders in public
facilities. His legislation is now amended to protect private businesses like
Country Clubs as in putting up No
Coloreds ”No Transgenders” allowed signs on Business Properties, Clubs, Restuarants,
Country Clubs etc.
Among other points in the proposed amendment, Kavanagh wants to make it so "no person or business shall be civilly or criminally liable for denying access to privacy areas based on gender identity or expression."
No doubt Rep. Kavanagh can hold his
head up high at Sunday Mass at The Church of the Ascension in Fountain Hills
sitting next to his buddy Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
Strange thing about the Catholic
footnote is that I found Rep. Kavanagh’s complete political bio on the Diocese
of Wilmington Delaware’s webpage which provides access and e-mail templates to
every state and national elected official in America.
Every state agency, e-mail, telephone number
etc. – everybody except governors where I still cannot find out the religion of
Gov. Dalrymple of North Dakota and signer of his draconian Catholic? Abortion Bill etc.
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Wednesday, March 27, 2013
The Nones Have It – Belief
The nation’s religious composition – as revealed in a recent presentation by Luis Lugo of the Pew Research Center – is changing. In 2012, America ceased to be a majority Protestant country – the result, mainly, of a decline in the numbers of mainline Protestants (though there have been smaller losses among white evangelicals as well). Catholicism is holding its own with a stable 22 percent of the public, but its ethnic composition has shifted dramatically – about half of all Catholics under 40 are Latino.
One group, however, has swelled: those with no religious affiliation, also known as “nones” (as in “none of the above”). In the 1950s, this was about 2 percent of the population. In the 1970s, it was about 7 percent. Today, it is close to 20 percent. These gains can be found in all regions of the country, including the South. The trend is particularly pronounced among whites, among the young and among men.
Not all the nones, it is worth pointing out, are secular. Only about 30 percent of this group – 6 percent of the public – are atheists or agnostics. The rest of the nones describe themselves as indifferent to religion or as “nothing in particular.” Sixty-four percent of the nones, however, say they believe in God or a universal spirit with “absolute certainty.” Even 9 percent of atheists and agnostics – defying both dogma and the dictionary – report themselves absolutely convinced of God’s existence. About equal proportions of the religiously unaffiliated (19 percent) and the affiliated (18 percent) report having “seen or been in the presence of a ghost.”
So the nones are united, not by reading Richard Dawkins or by any particular set of theological beliefs but by a complete lack of attachment to institutional religion.
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Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Manchurian (?) Candidate / Governor Jack Dalrymple has no Religion and Signs Draconian Abortion Law in North Dakota
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| Anti-Feminist Governor Jack Dalrymple of North Dakota And his breeding partner "Betsy" |
It is amazing that a state that ranks 48 according to population,
North Dakota has one seat in the House of Representatives, and two in the stagnant
Senate, that a state like North Dakota can set an anti-female abortion ban law
at as low as six weeks of pregnancy, that it has a Governor “Jack” Dalrymple
who signs this law into state law and has no “religion” listed anywhere in the
Internet.
It is not PC to question the religion of a politician. It is not a
constitutional requirement. But Abortion usually is a sick religious political
moral standard of the new Republican Christian Religion / Merger.
Dalrymple has four daughters, no doubt brought up on chastity belts
and a loving look from mom Betsy who probably agrees to not have any opinion
about her own body from master of the house Jack.
Jack’s only political connections, traceable before his recent
election to Governor is as a contributor to the George W Bush Campaigns in 2000
and 2004 and Jack is and or was on the Board of Directors of the Right Wing
U.S. Chamber of Commerce which funnels, launders foreign money into domestic
American Political Contests from China and Saudi Arabia?
A farmer who is a graduate of Yale and a
member of Yale’s’, W’s Skull and Crossbones Society Network that worships Satan etc.?
All that aside, the morals / politics of Abortion but North Dakota
in on the Canadian border.
So if Governor Jack Darlrymple is a closet Muslim, not
to say he is a closet Muslim terrorist, we all in the real U.S.A. would sure
like to know.
Duh!
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The new face(s) of American Atheism – Todd Stiefel
CNN has this “Belief” Blog page that
gives all sides a chance to present their point of view. And there usually is a
few thousand typical dumbed down American “Duh!” comments made and repeated
hundreds of cliché times perhaps by a few dozen regular trolls left and right
for the sake of balance and appearance of modern style “Journalism”.
This past weekend I think they had this
piece about Todd Stiegel being the new face of Atheism in America. He has spent
something like three and a half million dollars on billboards on buses selling
the new Atheist religion and or dogmas of belief in anti-theism, is that a new
word?
Well I am all well and glad that the
Atheists are getting out of the closet for free of past fears that some red neck bible thumpers
and Wayne Lapierre kill ya with a gun dandy lobbyist types will kill
you for not believing in the angry desert god of the mono-theists (sounds like
a disease?).
Todd’s bio about getting to the point
of being a good Catholic Boy and giving up the faith when he realized in
college, after reading the bible, that it is a poorly constructed OT and NT
piece of uninspired writing – the bio leaves out the 100,000 word book that
should fill in the gap between uninspired bible book stuff and how he got to
Atheist.
Maybe he is just a Areligionist like me and wasting all his time on
the dogma of that Atheist shit.
The CNN piece sounded like it was a
polished knock off of Todd’s Foundation’s mimeographed PR handout appealing for
mo’ money, mo’ money like any other whoring church, synagogue, mosque, temple,
storefront on the planet.
Of course Todd is soft spoken and
affable and lives in laid back North Carolina where he presently makes his base
trying to spend the billions his family made in chemicals or Pharmas or
something like that.
Three and a half million Todd – chump change!
Time to pump the chumps for their change?
Todd is no loud mouthed drunk like
Hitchens or over educated academic don like Dawkins.
Stiefel and his real long term agenda,
whatever it is, is tied up presently, short term, in with a coalition of other
middle of the road, so-called non-religious but money collecting types, the
Secular Coalition of America.
Whatever.
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Pope Stumbles - New Vatican Greek Words in the Far Right Church Blogosphere – Coprophila and Coprophagia – Journalistic Odyssey of SH*T – Pope Francis’s words, actions of Denial?
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| Dancing Around the Truth? Otherwise you might step in IT. |
Rather than open up and or cop a plea
now that he has diplomatic immunity, Pope Francis I refuses to give interviews
to journalists about his ties to the murderous reign of the Argentine Junta
1976-1983 and its Dirty War and his part or non-part in it.
“We know Pope Francis is humble because
he keeps telling us he is humble.” David
Letterman 3/25/13
On the Roman curia, the governing body of the Catholic church:
"I see it as a body that gives service, a body that helps me and serves me. Sometimes negative news does come out, but it is often exaggerated and manipulated to spread scandal. Journalists sometimes risk becoming ill from coprophilia and thus fomenting coprophagia: which is a sin that taints all men and women, that is, the tendency to focus on the negative rather than the positive aspects."
No doubt, the Media, MSM, Journalists
in approximation of the RC Curia of the Vatican should wear Hazmat suits and
not be contaminated with a sexual turn on by or an addictive need to consume more shit (definitions below Wikipedia) than necessary
when working in and or commenting on the Vatican.
My thanks as always to Deacon Nick over
at Protect The Pope.
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