Anne Rice 'quits being a Christian'.

In an announcement on Facebook, former Catholic, turned atheist, turned Catholic again, writer Anne Rice has declared that she is leaving Christianity for Christ's sake. She claims she will "remain committed to Christ as always but not to being 'Christian' or to being part of Christianity".

Naturally, I have no idea how long this new conversion has been on her mind but, she names two issues (as she posted on Facebook) that have recently caused her quite a bit of distress .......namely, an American "punk rock ministry", called You Can Run (YCR) saying that "executing gays is 'moral'" and a report about the Westboro baptist church in Kansas, which "spreads the message that because the United States condones homosexuality, abortion and divorce, all Americans are going to hell".

I am, likewise distressed over portions of the message conveyed by these two, allegedly, "Christian" groups. However, I don't quite understand how distress over the action and views of two Protestant groups would lead one to quit the Catholic Church.

She says,
"I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen."

Is the Catholic Church anti-gay?

According to Catholic teaching, "Homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life" and "They [homosexuals] must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God's will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition."

Rather than call this position "anti-gay" it would be better described as "love the sinner-hate the sin".

What of the charge that the Church is anti-feminist?
Feminists for Life would must likely say no. Authentic feminism is not defined strictly by being pro-abortion.

Anti-artificial birth control?
Guilty as charged. However, Rice, most likely, hasn't given much thought to the problems brought about by our society's contraceptive mentality.

Anti-Democrat?
Except in the area of abortion, the Church is hardly pro-Republican either.

Anti-secular humanism?
If by secular humanism we mean moral relativism, then the answer is yes.

Anti-science?
The Church supports scientific research except in those areas where the research is detrimental to human life.

Anti-life?
This is probably the most ridiculous charge of all. The Church's teachings on abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment and the just war theory put the lie to that.

It is my hope that Rice will one day reconsider her abandonment of the Catholic Church. Hopefully, she will seriously consider studying the Church's teachings as they are and not under a "progressive's" microscope.

Asteroid 1999 RQ36 Headed for Earth!!

You learn something new every day.

The report from thesun.co.uk had this tidbit:

A GIANT asteroid could be on course to hit Earth causing massive devastation, space boffins revealed today.

One thing I learned - after consulting Webster - a space boffin is very much different than a space buffoon.

I also learned that yesterday's press release regarding the one in a thousand chance that the asteroid known as 1999 RQ36 will impact with Earth in 2182 is actually old news. Discover magazine reports that the study was released last year.

The Sun quotes the study's co-author, Maria Eugenia Sansaturio, from Valladolid University;

"The total impact probability of asteroid 1999 RQ36 can be estimated at 0.00092 - approximately one-in-a-thousand chance - but what is most surprising is that over half of this chance corresponds to 2182."

Andrew Moseman, who wrote the article for Discover, says he emailed Ms.Sansaturio asking her if there was anything new to report on the asteroid;

"The answer to your question is that there is nothing new. I’m still trying to understand how this has made it to the international media. I was contacted by the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology because they wanted to prepare a report on it and inform the Spanish Media, even though the article had been published in 2009…. and here I am overwhelmed with mails and phone calls from all over the world!"

I'm sure her website is getting an increase in the number of hits as well.

No word on what might happen if 1999 RQ36 were to hit Uranus.

Ujiosama Rides Again.

Recently on CNN, Kyra Phillips and John Roberts discussed the idea that the Internet was in need of a "gatekeeper" to monitor the ubiquitous and often nasty anonymous blogggers that inhabit the nether regions of the world wide web.

"There's going to have be a point in time where these people have to be held accountable," Phillips said. "How about all these bloggers that blog anonymously? They say rotten things about people and they're actually given credibility, which is crazy. They're a bunch of cowards, they're just people seeking attention."

I want to say at the outset that I do not subscribe to the view that the Internet needs the type of regulation such a scheme might bring about. However, like Kyra Phillips, I have no great love for anonymous bloggers. There is something about having, potentially, a world wide audience and anonymity that tempts some folks to write the vilest, most hate-filled garbage imaginable.

I do my best to avoid anonymously written blogs, though, at times, I stumble across one. A day or so ago, I was lead - via a link on Drudge - to one such blog. The writer, if he can be called such, was spewing filth - ranting about the Catholic church in general and Pope Benedict in particular. My first impulse was to write a commentary to tear apart his feeble arguments. I decided against that, however. You'll not find a link to that post here.

Unfortunately, the problem isn't reserved to one particular political view; these bloggers can be found on the Left and Right on the political spectrum. There is one rather popular blog (among traditional Catholics) which I no longer read because the anonymous writer will occasionally abandon good taste, saying things in a way I suspect he wouldn't if his readers knew his identity.

As much as I dislike the anonymous blooger, I have an equal lack of respect for those who comment on blogs anonymously. In doesn't take long for someone who comments anonymously to take things into the gutter. During the 2008 presidential primary season, I wrote something that upset someone so much that he began to seriously harass me with his anonymous comments. This individual even went into my blog archives to find areas to insult and pester me. Google Analytics revealed that this person was using a computer on the Georgia Dept. of Education web server.

I no longer allow anonymous comments.

Requiring that commenters have Google accounts is no guarantee that the problem is solved; it's easy enough to get a Blogspot profile. A couple of years ago, I began receiving comments from someone calling himself "ujiosama". At first, his comments were rather tame. After taking a look at his profile information, I knew that this "niceness" would not last long. There was nothing on his profile to reveal his likes or dislikes - nothing about his personality. He had no blog. This lack of candor told me that ujiosama had created this profile simply to be allowed to comment on certain blogs. He was still, basically, an anonymous commenter.

Sure enough, it was not long before ujiosama began with the insulting, nasty comments. As a result, I deleted all his comments as well as my replies to his tripe.

Now, after a few years of keeping his "secret identity" in the closet, ujiosama has returned to leave a comment. On my recent post -The EMHC Scandal- my nemesis could not resist. His comment was, as follows;

"Blogger ujiosama said...
What about those Extraordinary Ministers who just quit because everything does not go exactly as they feel it should. Could that be considered disrespecting the Eucharist(by failing to assist as promised)? What do you think?
July 23, 2010 11:03:00 AM EDT"

For those who are unfamiliar with my history with ujiosama, this comment may seem harmless enough. But there is more below the surface. Ujiosama believes he has found a weakness. Because he doesn't know as much as he thinks he knows, his comment isn't the "gotcha" he believes it to be.

I once told ujiosama that I had requested that I be dropped from the parish's list of EMHC. Immediately, ujiosama assumed that I had done this because of, what he called, "church politics".

No, I tried to explain to him, I have painful arthritis in my right hand and wrist. In addition to the arthritis in my left hand, there is nerve damage which causes numbness in two of the fingers of that hand. I was afraid of dropping the Blessed Sacrament and felt obliged to ask to be removed from duties. What ujiosama doesn't realize, since he is not a member of our parish, I have since that time, changed medication and can hold onto the cup or paten without fear of dropping either. Because he does not attend Mass at our church, he is unaware that I asked to be put back on the list several months ago. He does not know that, due to frequent absences by other EMHC, I normally help out 3 or 4 Sundays a month.

Again, thanks to Google Analytics, I know that ujiosama reads my blog on a regular basis. Perhaps, rather than waste his time reading what I have to say and commenting on things he knows nothing about, maybe he should just get his own blog. There, he could write, without fear of censorship, on lots of things he, likewise, knows nothing about.

Female "Bishop" Resigns.

So, let's see.......

One of the arguments put forward by those proposing the ordination of women in the Roman Catholic church goes like this; having celibate unmarried males exclusively in the priesthood goes against Nature.

Allowing women (and married men) into the priesthood would almost certainly eliminate sexual abuse by priests.

The latest news concerning Lutheran Bishop Maria Jepsen shows how illogical that argument has been all along. Jepsen, the first woman to be anointed bishop in the Lutheran Church, resigned on July 16 after having been instrumental in a cover up of sexual abuse by "Pastor Dieter K."

After becoming aware of the Pastor's sexual abuse of three of his stepsons, Bishop Jepsen transferred Pastor Dieter K. in 1999 to a prison chaplaincy in order to prevent further contact with children.

According to an article on presstv.com;

"The female bishop had said she had no knowledge of a pastor's involvement in child sex abuse cases in Ahrensburg during the 1980s and only became aware of them last March.

But recent reports in the German news magazine Der Spiegel and the daily Hamburger Abendblatt claimed Jepsen knew of the priest's suspected behavior in 1999."

What do we have here?
Married Protestant "priest" Pastor Dieter K. molests his stepsons.
Female "Bishop" turns a blind eye.

As noted in a press release from Catholic League president Bill Donohue ;

"It is definitely true that sexual abusers are mostly male, but there is no evidence that when it comes to handling such issues, women in positions of authority do a better job than men. Mothers of abused youngsters, along with nuns, female teachers, social workers, counselors, lawyers and law enforcement agents have acted just as badly as men. But don’t tell that to Maureen Dowd—it would ruin her day."

The EMHC Scandal.

In the area of my understanding of Catholic teaching, I am very much the product of a pre-Vatican II mind-set. I received my first Holy Communion in what many might even consider prehistoric times - 1959. Indeed, the nuns who gave me instruction most likely received their first Holy Communion in the 1930's.

In those days, the only acceptable way of taking Communion was on the tongue. No one, other than a priest, was permitted to touch the Blessed Sacrament with his or her hand. Surprisingly, when I first encountered the, now acceptable, practice of taking of Communion in the hand, I adapted to the change rather easily. Obviously, I thought, if there was anything wrong with taking Communion in hand, the Church would not now be allowing the practice.

In addition to taking Communion by hand, another part of Holy Communion which those nuns of long ago would not recognize is the now common practice of taking Communion from the Cup. A logical step from Communion from the Cup necessitates the use of Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion (EMHC). Obviously, a priest could not manage this alone.

Unfortunately, this increased need for EMHC can - and has - lead to serious abuses. Sadly, I can use my own parish as an example of this abuse of the Blessed Sacrament. At the Mass we normally attend on Sundays, there are six EMHC scheduled to assist with Communion. For reasons which I cannot fathom, it is a rare Sunday when every scheduled EMHC attends Mass. More often two, three and sometimes four of the six do not bother to show.

If we were a Protestant denomination which viewed communion as simply a symbolic gesture, someone's not appearing at church on the day he had volunteered to assist with communion would be looked upon as unacceptable. Yet, in our Catholic parish where we understand that during Mass the bread and wine becomes the body and blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ, an EMHC can disrespect the Eucharist (by failing to assist as promised) and no one bats an eyelash. How could anyone who believes in the doctrine of the Real Presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist not view this as a scandal?

Being an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion is a sacred privilege....not a Right. In my opinion, any EMHC who displays such wanton disregard for the Eucharist should no longer be an EMHC. Will anyone be dropped from the roll in our parish? That's unlikely in these days when far too many people are afraid of hurting anyone's feelings.

There have been reports in the Catholic Press "......that approximately 70 percent of Catholics do not believe or do not know that by the action of the priest during Mass Jesus Christ becomes fully present in the Holy Eucharist."
Is there little wonder that this should be the situation when, by their example, EMHC are allowed to treat the Blessed Sacrament as if we are merely receiving bread and wine?