Harrowgate Tales - Excerpts

My latest on Kindle - Harrowgate Tales


Excerpts:


Parade in Kensington - Harrowgate Memorial Day Parade


...The biggest event annually in Harrowgate - Kensington was the Memorial Day Parade being that most parents of school aged children in the neighborhood and areas were veterans of WWII and Korea. Old males likely vets of WWI etc. I once marched in Memorial Day Parades in high school with the North(east) Catholic High marching band of which I played Sousaphone.

One performance I personally remember was in a parade that was in Port Richmond, we were bused to different locations that day in a P.T.C. chartered bus. There I saw two amazing things. An old man of about ninety, skinny and tall and wearing what looked like a Boy Scout Uniform with some medals and looking through thick as the bottom of a Coke bottle lenses of his eyeglasses. This old guy was an actual Veteran of the Spanish American War. Small world. There too, this is the late 60's, I saw my English teacher from freshman year who at that time was a seminarian studying to be a priest, teaching on a year long sabbatical of sorts, teaching in our high school for a year, after finishing four years of college in the seminary before continuing with an additional four years of seminary training after this year of teaching. It was after all a teaching religious order and his salary from the archdiocese doubt went to support the order. 

He was no longer in a black cassock but in a white tee shirt, shorts and sandals. She was also with what must have been his girlfriend. He saw me during a break from marching and said hello with no other explanation other than to say hello and ask how Junior year was going etc. I guess he left the seminary for one reason, reasons or another etc. ...


The Long Dark Corridor

...I guess that the religious order had decided to maintain the property until it could be evaluated whether to sell it - use it, convert it etc. I think that maybe about fifteen priests and seminarians used the grand estate as a second faculty house - to relieve overcrowding in the primary faculty house – and commuting by car back and forth to the high school. 

In retrospect I connect some dots (possibly in total error) and perhaps it was the gay section of the original faculty house that went into separate quarters at this white elephant mansion.

Oh this speculation breaks down into two categories: good gays, abstaining from gay sex religious and the bad gays - actually occasionally practicing their natural instincts -

There is not much to this story except for connecting dots and wondering. In the middle of that sophomore year, a young, dynamic, charismatic seminarian teacher died in a car crash coming back from some long distance weekend duties - deacon at some parish etc. I remember his picture in the newspaper and the official speculation that he had fallen asleep at the wheel of his car in this "single vehicle collision" - And then my biology teacher, I liked him, died during the summer break.

I suppose I would not be writing this today except that in the next school year, my junior year, a very prissy but not unlikable priest blurted out something in class. Father Tom, a history teacher, said something like a veiled admission regarding the sudden tragic death of Father Ed, the biology teacher. He said something like "wrapping oneself around a highway pillar was indeed a suspicious thing to happen" while talking to the class one day, I think his comments went over many students heads... 

Chapter Two - The Long Dark Corridor

...But I got the A+++.  Been there.  Done that.  Time to move on. Etc. 

I decided then and there. I would drop his course. So much of what he had fed this class so far was his own personal bullshit full of his ambitious plan to one day run the school system downtown which he in fact did one day. I have since read many things about cults and brainwashing and such and “E.” would have made a great Jim Jones in the secular world etc. IMHO. 

I also as I have written this blog for many years have to wonder how ambitious church lady types with penises, how they rise to the top of their professions being perhaps tops and not giving a shit about who gets ground into sausage along the way, especially children.

I also have  to wonder how “E.” built his great education system as the archdiocese, one by one, shut down their inner city schools and high schools.  That glory sometimes is a story, a press release, as the world and or institution dies from attrition.  

Will the last person in the Archdiocese Education Office at “222” kindly turn off the lights as they leave the building forever. 

I also have to wonder how many times how the elites of the Education Department rubbed elbows with the Elites of the hierarchy at board meetings or gatherings over cocktails and how polite church talk and education talk never got mixed with the very real talk of child abuse and criminal cover up emanating from the Cardinal’s penthouse office suite on the top floor above?...

Clergy Child Abuse Still Under The Radar With Pope Francis Who Throws A Bone To American Bishops and Their Obsession with Abortion and Not the Welfare of Children once Born except in Rhetoric

Clergy abuse of children is still under the radar regarding Francis's thoughts and words on a throwaway culture which has its merits as a concept. 

Makes a great sound bite for the media.

But once born and not aborted, children in this world like in the church are on their own to fend for themselves against the wolves of this world.

 

Words do not change anything Francis.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/01/13/pope-francis-abortion/4459865/

 Pope Francis on Monday called abortion "horrific" and said it was part of a new "throwaway culture" he said wasted human life as easily as it wasted food — his strongest words yet on a practice that is a divisive political issue in the United States.

Until now, Francis has appeared to have stayed away from strong statements on the church's stands on moral behavior of individuals, preferring to focus on more positive messages about the teachings of Jesus Christ and the need to see to the poor.

His comments during the start of his papacy that the church need not "obsess" about abortion and gay marriage bothered conservative Catholics who see the issues as ones that the church ought to object to strongly. On Monday, Francis put his own stamp on the church's long-held opposition to abortion.

"It is frightful even to think that there are children, victims of abortion, who will never see the light of day," Francis said in what has become a traditional annual address to the Vatican diplomatic corps.

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Why Catholicism Does Not Matter – The Growing Vatican Meltdown

The embarrassing end of Christianity also known as Catholicism is melting down around its potentate idol king in the city of Rome.

The struggle for power in the waning months of Benedict the German’s administration revolves about scurrying around the hallways and ferreting away blackmail documents about the closeted sexuality of a celibate clergy army. Celibate means “not married”.  It does not mean “chaste” and or “honest”.

The attempt by Joe the Pope to rig the next papal election and give it to his official stooge for decades Secretary of State Bertone is in
question.  A moot point?

One recent rumor coming out of damage control central, Cardinal Bertone’s office, is the banning of all mobile cell phones in the Magic Kingdom and their ability to photograph documents and record conversations and sex sessions among the “celibate” clergy of the Vatican.  


Who needs the Swiss Guards to protect dirty little sex trafficking secrets anymore?  Quite impossible anyway in the age of Internet.


Blackmail and promotions among closeted Vatican clergy is in great question in this modern technical age, like at no other time in the history.

Marriage equality however will empty the Catholic Church of it closeted gay clergy in the next decade.  The truth will set you free and Catholic free as well.

That is why Catholicism Does Not Matter. 

It is based on an obsolete labor force much the same as the antebellum South’s economy was based on the obsolete and inefficient labor force of slaves. 

Christianity will evolve back along the path that Jesus envisioned and will no longer stray along any roads falsely leading to Rome.

Time Marches On!

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Sinead O'Connor - First Prophet of the New Age

What can be said about Sinead O’Connor?  What cannot be said?

Tore up a picture of John Paul II on the popular American show Saturday Night Live in 1992, accusing him and his cronies regarding the hidden sexual abuse problem of their clergy.  Was hailed not as a prophet for reform but as a blasphemer by the Main Stream Media whores of Babylon.

Survivor of the Irish state/Catholic church Magdelane Asylum, abuse gulag, slave labor system for unwanted women.

Ordained priest of the Irish Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Church.  Yes, there is a traditional of ordaining women in the Celtic Christian Church.

And a remarkable performing talent, blessed by God. 

Benedict XVI and Second-Hander Clergy

I am a visionary of sorts. I have a passion for looking at many different things. I look for the ways to rearrange the pieces of the puzzle of life into a better fit and or the perfect fit.

In terms of the present moral meltdown and officially sanctioned cover-up of rape and torture of children in the past decades, it is time to stop and realize that an institution that claims to be founded by God – that God has apparently been absent for long periods of time since the beginning of this particular church.

That the chaos of wars in Europe from Napoleon to Hitler in World Wars and tens of millions of deaths start with the collapse of the corrupt French monarchy around 1789 and propped up by the corrupt Roman Catholic Church. The Church of Bling, not the church of God, saw fit to bless and sanction cake and pastries on the fat King’s plate while the peasants starved outside the palace gates.

I love the French. Their arrogance and their anti-clerical atheistic attitude is a breath of fresh air after living a life in America with the holier than thou Cardinal Spellmans and Cardinal Codys and their boyfriends and mistresses. And all under the cover of celibacy which is of course not the problem in this global sex abuse scandal in America and Europe as stated by paid church apologists.

I am sorry that we have not heard from Latin America, Africa and Asia where there is little free press, unseen and unheard at present, from those other tens of thousands of victims screaming to heaven for justice.

And then there is the whole of the last forty years of Born Again Bling by Swaggard, Jim and Tammy, Richard Roberts, Pat Robertson, Falwell and dozens of other absolute worshippers of the Pope Bling CEO style mismanagement and misperception of the needs of humanity. Management first, people last and children don’t count. That is not Jesus!

The smug German pope sat on his throne on Sunday, Easter Sunday, and listened to an equally smug Cardinal Sodano state that the faithful are not affected by petty gossip.

Where is the petty gossip? We are talking conspiracy, crimes against humanity, not petty gossip you asshole in a red silk gown that costs enough to feed a village in Africa for months. Where is your perspective and your humanity?

If I address humanity and with an empathy for humanity then I must be a humanist and that is a dirty word in the Roman church. Traditions counts first and foremost. People can apparently go ---- themselves.

A so-called institution of God goes ape shit crazy and corrupt and then the human race has to clean up the mess. The rise of Napoleon after the fall of the corrupt church/monarchy shaped European history in the nineteenth century. The corrupt Russian church/monarchy and its ensuing revolution dictated the course of 20th century politics and brinksmanship. And then there is Mexico in the twenties etc. and on and on.

This is not an institution of God but of corrupt men. Let’s have a going out of business sale once and for all. Let’s just put the Vatican and its contents up for sale at Christie s. That is the best humanist thing to do for humanity.

Let’s stop giving a bunch of third rate “second handers”* another chance to hurt and cause so much pain in body, mind and spirit in the future.

As a visionary I connect the dots and I now quote from a comment on Ayn Rand’s concept of the mediocrity - presently in the Vatican and American Business as well. She seems to have perfectly fitted and predicted this present situation and business management cancer in the Roman Catholic Clergy.

* Second-Handers

Isn’t that the root of every despicable action? Not selfishness, but precisely the absence of a self. Look at them. The man who cheats and lies, but preserves a respectable front. He knows himself to be dishonest, but others think he’s honest and he derives his self-respect from that, second-hand. The man who takes credit for an achievement which is not his own. He knows himself to be mediocre, but he’s great in the eyes of others. The frustrated wretch who professes love for the inferior and clings to those less endowed, in order to establish his own superiority by comparison . . . . They’re second-handers . . . .

They have no concern for facts, ideas, work. They’re concerned only with people. They don’t ask: “Is this true?” They ask: “Is this what others think is true?” Not to judge, but to repeat. Not to do, but to give the impression of doing. Not creation, but show. Not ability, but friendship. Not merit, but pull. What would happen to the world without those who do, think, work, produce? Those are the egoists. You don’t think through another’s brain and you don’t work through another’s hands.

When you suspend your faculty of independent judgment, you suspend consciousness. To stop consciousness is to stop life. Second-handers have no sense of reality. Their reality is not within them, but somewhere in that space which divides one human body from another. Not an entity, but a relation—anchored to nothing. That’s the emptiness I couldn’t understand in people.

That’s what stopped me whenever I faced a committee. Men without an ego. Opinion without a rational process. Motion without brakes or motor. Power without responsibility. The second-hander acts, but the source of his actions is scattered in every other living person. It’s everywhere and nowhere and you can’t reason with him. He’s not open to reason.

The Sacred and the Obscene

I am old enough to remember when Richard Nixon stonewalled the federal prosecutors and the press over his crimes committed in the Watergate Scandal.

Having recently seen the movie Frost/Nixon, you see that Nixon said something to the effect that anything a President does is not a crime - The Nixon Defense so to speak. Nixon in the role of American King Richard I was a tragic figure worthy of a Shakespearian play.

As I see this VaticanGate sex abuse scandal unfolding at the feet of Benedict XVI, I cannot but help see similarities in the major hubris with which kings treat their crimes against the state and humanity. Benedict is stonewalling. He is running out the clock of his papacy because as a man of his age, he does not have much longer to endure or having to keep the modern world from his Ivory Tower world of fantasy and religion.



(click on start first, then click on screen to expand image)

With a mere lengthly papal letter of apology to the People of Ireland for the thousands of sexually abused children over decades of religious institutional authority – it got met with a big Irish YAWN. The Irish problem was that the state outsourced tens of thousands of orphans to slavery workhouse, sweatshop conditions of church institutions and the kids also got buggered as well in that bargain with the devil.

A letter from a lifelong bureaucrat in the Vatican does not hack it for the Irish or for the rest of Humanity as well.

This papal letter post scripts a long, concise and documented account of abuse by Irish clergy that was conducted by present day civil appointed authorities in Ireland. Those recent reports came to light in a secular day just as this sexuality problem, scandal, of celibate priests goes into its second decade, first in the United States and now leapfrogging to Europe.

The Ireland issue has triggered a Eurpopean bursting of the dam of silence over clerical buggery in many countries including the native Germany of the Pope. His deafness while at meetings about a certain German buggering priest that went on until last week was the hallmark of his Archbishop of Munich job done so well that they promoted him to the Vatican in the early 1980’s.

Sex abuse scandal in US, Italy taints papacy

Revelations that the Vatican halted the investigation of a Wisconsin priest accused of molesting some 200 deaf boys have eerie echoes in Italy, where 67 deaf men and women accused two dozen priests of raping and molesting children for years.

Only now — a year after the Italian case became public — is the Vatican directing the diocese to interview the victims to hear their testimony about the accusations, The Associated Press learned Thursday.

The two cases are the latest in a burgeoning abuse scandal on both sides of the Atlantic that now threatens to tarnish the papacy itself. The office charged with disciplining clergy was long led by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, and a church prosecution in the Wisconsin case was stopped after an appeal to Ratzinger.

And:

On Friday, The New York Times reported that the future pope was kept more closely apprised of a German priest's sex abuse case in 1980 than previous church statements have suggested.

The case of the German priest, the Rev. Peter Hullermann, has acquired fresh relevance because it unfolded at a time when Cardinal Ratzinger, who was later put in charge of handling thousands of abuse cases on behalf of the Vatican, was in a position to refer the priest for prosecution, or at least to stop him from coming into contact with children, the Times said.

Cardinal Ratzinger was copied on a memo that told him that a priest, whom he had approved sending to therapy in 1980 to overcome pedophilia, would return to pastoral work within days of beginning psychiatric treatment, the Times said. The priest was later convicted of molesting boys in another German parish.

Priest 'abuse victims' speak out

Three deaf men who say they were repeatedly abused by priests as children have confronted an Italian church diocese about why it has not punished their abusers, saying they want justice.

The three men appeared on a prime-time talk show on Italy's state-run RAI TV, squaring off with the spokesman of the Verona diocese amid a swirling global sex abuse scandal that has inched closer to Pope Benedict XVI.

The spokesman, the Rev Bruno Fasani, said he hoped the confrontation would be constructive and he welcomed meeting the men for the first time.

But the former students of Verona's Antonio Provolo Institute for the Deaf refused to shake his hand during the show. One of the three, Dario Laiti, 59, said he couldn't bring himself to greet the prelate. …

Advocates for the victims, however, said the diocese investigation was fatally flawed because no one interviewed the former students.

The pope’s handling of German matters perhaps triggered a matter whereby the Vatican guy Joe Ratzinger squashed an investigation of an American priest that abused over two hundred deaf children in an institution of the deaf for many decades in the Milwaukee diocese.

The deaf in Italy are now talking out – out of frustration of not being heard – after the statutes of limitations have passed. The victims want closure and not forgiveness for their sin of tempting good priests to sin – or at least that is the medieval view from the Vatican on all this fuss about the mere abuse of children at the expense of the church’s prestige and “good” name.

Joe Ratzinger was the best of the best that John Paul II could put in charge of keeping the lid on this worldwide, decades - centuries long secret obscene behavior of the clergy.

Joe Ratzinger, the best of the best, has turned out quite mediocre and flat in light of victims who do not want a sacred letter of apology but instead want secular, human justice.

Real World – 1 --- Vatican – 0

Perverted Corporate Culture of Vatican

The name Jesus was quite common in first century Judea. So too the name of Mary was quite common. So common in fact that in recent light of the corporate culture of the Vatican and the hierarchy it selects and appoints as bishops makes me wonder.

I have to wonder which Jesus founded the church of Rome? Was it Jesus the moneychanger? Was it Jesus the Pharisee? Jesus the high priest? Or was it Jesus the poor country preacher?

On an aside, I look at somebody like the Dalai Lama, the head of a religious sect, he imitates the founder which would be Buddha. The various Muslim sects and their Imams would seem to at least look like and act like the seventh century political and religious founder. Who does the pope imitate except maybe a crony high priest of the secret Personality Cult of Constantine?

The crowd at the Vatican in terms of corporate culture are more like the U.S. Congress, totally out of touch with the common voting constituent or in the Vatican’s case, out of touch with the common faithful. This, as in the case of the current clergy sex abuse scandal rocking the European RC church structure.

There is enough being said in the Press about this current scandal that reaches right into the CEO’s office. I am not as eloquent or as precise as some British Articles I have read in the past few days. I believe British interest has to do with the proximity to Ireland. The truly shameful breakdown of humanity amidst the closeted confused sexuality of clergy and hierarchy breaks my heart.

It no doubt is true that the Brits were insulted by this little pope, who once swore allegiance to Adolph Hitler, and threatened a hostile take over of the Church of England in recent months. Such is the nature of corporate cultures and so too the nature of a still free press to react.

The Brit Press is doing a bang up job that I cannot remember the American Press doing in decades – not since Watergate I think. As I said, I do not want to write much more on this subject except to say that as I started life in the ranks of the common faithful of that church, I feel for the people on the ground who have kept faith with the message of Jesus in spite of the queer aspects of their hierarchy.

The RC church will survive. Though I would say that even if they lifted celibacy today, it would take fifty years for the institution to recover any legitimate claim to moral authority, with reference to these recent and ongoing scandals.

We are witnessing something historic in these current scandals in each European country. We are witnessing the implosion of a corporate culture that took over Christianity after the fall of the Mother Church in Constantinople in 1453 when it fell to the Muslim Turks. This is a corporate culture that has existed these past five hundred years through wars, corruption, reformations, counter-reformations, and an aversion to common sense and or science.

Like the aftermath of Watergate, many, many books will now be written and this period dissected in post mortem of the situation.

As such I have to make a statement here. I have partially defended Pius XII in my blog saying not positive things but things in partial defense of his actions towards some Jews, real or imagined, during World War II and the Holocaust.

I withdraw all statements regarding that pontiff. I have come to the conclusion that considering the preset corporate culture of the Vatican, the corporate culture of the Vatican 1939-1945 was no different than it is today.

Pius XII or his Vatican cronies could not have saved one Jew in World War II intentionally. By default maybe but not intentionally. It is not in the nature of the corporate medieval beast of the Vatican to do so.

I say this knowing that thousands of Jews were saved by the simple humanity, some of simple faith in the RC church, and of people on the ground of all faiths and creeds simply because it was the human thing to do. It was the right thing to do. It had nothing to do with Canon Law.

The Vatican in WWII could not save a single Jew. This, in the same light that the buggered hierarchy of the RC church exists only for its own pleasure and prestige - a real institution uncovered and exposed in this current round of scandal.

An institution that could not save a single catholic child from perversion and buggery could in no logical sense have saved any outsiders, past or present, including Jews.

Drunk on the Blood of Saints and children too

'Endemic' rape and abuse of Irish children in Catholic care, inquiry finds.

The Ryan Report, out of Ireland, details decades of neglect and abuse of children by Catholic clergy and religious in Catholic institutions such as orphanages, workhouses or reformatories – whatever you want to call them. The bottom line is that the Irish Government dumped children in these places and trusted the Church to run these institutions as a substitute for a secular run system. This is what you get in a one religion state where Catholic Sharia Law and morals match what is on the books in the civil government. Why bother to waste taxpayer money on the children of the poor?

The Irish Government gave into demands for an inquiry and the then Prime Minister ordered this inquiry that has taken nine years to assemble. There are no names of the victims or of the alleged victimizers. No doubt Ireland recognized its culpability, co-conspiracy, in these many acts and crimes against humanity when it put a money cap limit of something like $175 million on the Church’s financial liability. The rest of the bill – the bailout so to speak – has now been dumped on the Irish taxpayer and the bill will likely be in the one to one and one half billion dollar range. No doubt in better economic times that sounded reasonable but the burden in reparations to victims is long overdue.

The standard cookie-cutter numbnut R.C. Archbishop of England and Wales Vincent Nichols (photo above), soon to be installed at Westminster, had words of praise for the courage of these disgraced religious orders to look upon their sins and brave on in their current duties.

Catholic Archbishop Explains Remarks on ‘Courage’ of Abusers

…It’s very distressing and very disturbing. And my heart goes out today, first of all to those people who will find that their stories are now told in public…. Secondly, I think of those in religious orders and some of the clergy in Dublin who have to face these facts from their past, which instinctively and quite naturally they’d rather not look at. That takes courage. And also we shouldn’t forget that this account today will also overshadow all of the good that they also did…

It is a tough road to take, to face up to our own weaknesses. That is certainly true of anyone who’s deceived themselves that all they’ve been doing is taking a bit of comfort from children….

“Taking a bit of comfort from the children…”(?)- sounds like a John Cleese line from Monty Python. And like a standard line from that comedy let me repeat the punch line “taking a bit of comfort from the children”(?) … “please sir, I want some more”… Dickens is not dead in Ireland at least or in living memory of these horrific crimes against the innocence of children.

Archbishop Nichols – can we all take a little comfort from you – PLEASE ?!

Words of comfort too from the Catholic Blogosphere and Bill Donahue, President of the Catholic League:
Hysteria over Irish Clergy Abuse

"Reuters is reporting that “Irish Priests Beat, Raped Children,” yet the report does not justify this wild and irresponsible claim. Four types of abuse are noted: physical, sexual, neglect and emotional.

"Physical abuse includes “being kicked”; neglect includes “inadequate heating”; and emotional abuse includes “lack of attachment and affection.” Not nice, to be sure, but hardly draconian, especially given the time line: fully 82 percent of the incidents took place before 1970…

There is nothing quite as therapeutic like some tough love for the little bastards to let them know their place in the scheme of things. Right Bill?

For a balanced more calm and more honest evaluation and perspective of this I recommend the ten minute video contained within below of an interview with Colm O’Gorman on British TV:
Response to Irish Abuse Report

According to one of the thousands of victims of abuse during this period, Colm O’Gorman, who was raped by a priest as a teenager, the abuses detailed in the 2,600-page report are “horribly, horribly shocking.”

Mr. O’Gorman, who now runs the Irish branch of Amnesty International, has recently written a memoir, “Beyond Belief.” On Wednesday he discussed the report and his own experience of abuse, during this interview with Jon Snow of Channel 4 News in London.

And if you think that the U.S. has cleaned up its priest abuse portfolio – don’t hold your breath – the reporter’s notes (a bit dated but still valid) and comments by Judge Anne Burke, who headed up a Catholic Bishops’ review of clergy abuse, is reflective of the on going cover up and Public Relations front of the American Church Hierarchy:
Judge Burke Tells All ( or at least some )

As an example of how the bishops twisted the truth to evade accountability, she recalls the story of an unnamed bishop who allegedly told her he'd cleaned out the stables in his diocese, but who later made front-page news by having a convicted sex-abuse priest living with him in his rectory. When Burke accused the bishop of lying to her, he said he didn't lie, because the priest had not been convicted. Burke reminded the bishop that the priest in question had pled guilty to the crime. The bishop insisted, bizarrely, to the judge that that isn't the same thing as being convicted.

She calls on the USCCB (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops) to be disbanded. “All it is is a trade association. And not a very good one at that.”

Burke and her NRB colleague Bob Bennett discreetly flew to Rome to meet with then-Cardinal Ratzinger (now, of course, Pope Benedict), to make sure he understood what the situation was in the American church.

I believe Ratzinger, I mean Joe the Pope, still has that report on his desk.

I do not mean to criticize here but I recognize that over half the Christian faith under control of the Hierarchy in Rome and its trickle down morality sound bites is still and has been since the Reformation – “Drunk on the blood of the Saints” and on the blood of children as well.

The sanctity of life not only begins at conception but should continue after it comes out of the womb. Comes out of the womb into a very cruel world where children worldwide and in the United States as well are nothing more than a commodity to be exploited if the society as a whole does not have a conceptualization of a holistic – total life – vision of the sanctity of life.

Prayer! What an Original Idea Bishop Wenski.

There is the bishop of Orlando (second from left - photo above - under right hand of Jesus) who is doing a Mass of Reparation to repent for the mortal sins against God – presumably regarding abortions by women and condom use by men – and in relation to President Obama’s arrogant uppity personal view of life and Christianity.

Notre Dame's Obama invite riles Catholic bishops

This coming week, Bishop Thomas Wenski of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orlando, Fla., will take the unusual step of celebrating a Mass of Reparation, to make amends for sins against God. The motivation: to provide an outlet for Catholics upset with what Wenski calls the University of Notre Dame's "clueless" decision to invite President Barack Obama to speak at its commencement and receive an honorary doctorate May 17.

This is a good thing. Prayer. How Original! “A Mass of Reparation, to make amends for sins against God” for mortal sins like abortions by women and condom use by men.

Sounds good from a PR stand point. Any American Bishop can sign on to the “me too” Radio Talk-Show Litmus Loyalty Test against Obama at Notre Dame. Why not try prayer to set your house in order - Bishop Wenski and the other “me too” American bishops following the same tired party line and protest about Notre Dame’s choice.

Notre Dame as a world class institution has the right to bestow a minor honor on this man. This man has done more in a short time for American greatness, for American healing in a symbolic manner greater than half a dozen Vatican Councils.

From the same Article Above:

"I think the bishops who believe abortion is the ultimate litmus test look at the polls and realize Catholics are not listening to them," said the Rev. Mark Massa, co-director of the Curran Center for American Catholic Studies at Fordham University. "They're playing a very dangerous game because they do not have the moral authority they had before the sex abuse crisis, and they're trying to find a toehold and get heard."

How many Masses of Reparation have been said by the these same “me too” bishops for the sins of the clergy against the innocent Bishop Wenski? Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands? Tell me!

Or does morality on that issue straddle a thin blurred line? Perhaps the clergy abuse thing is considered a secular matter because it deals, has dealt, with lawyers, lawsuits, civil and not church laws.

Perhaps the true moral authority of some American bishops can be ascertained after May 17 with this “moral” line in the sand tempest in a moral teapot thing about Obama at Notre Dame - by seeing who is on or off this loyal “me too” bishops' self righteous petition being passed around at present.