Deacon’s Blog

Tabled:

From Global News: Polish [R.C.] bishops divided over right-wing head of Radio Maryja

Some Catholic bishops in Poland reportedly want the controversial priest Tadeusz Rydzyk removed as head of the country’s influential right-wing ‘Radio Maryja’ station. However, a meeting of bishops in Czestochowa this weekend failed to take a decision on the matter according to a report in the ‘Rzeczpospolita’ newspaper. Archbishop Jozef Michalik, the head of the Polish Episcopalian Conference, said that “it was not possible to judge a man because of an inconsiderate statement.”

The Redemptorist priest Rydzyk has become one of Poland’s most controversial clergymen, following a number of anti-Semitic comments. Cultivating an audience of predominantly poor and elderly rural listeners, Radio Maryja has become a platform for right-wing politicians seeking voters. Rydzyk was most recently embroiled in a controversy over having apparently called Poland’s first lady Maria Kaczynska a ‘witch’.

Power and influence or repentance and discipline? Oh the hard choices we must make. Let’s table that one bishop…

This certainly points out the dichotomy evident in Church leadership. The bishops that were courageous witnesses under the communists remain courageous. The compromisers remain as such…

What has been wrought:

From the National Catholic Reporter: Liberal Catholicism endures in pastoral church

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (National Catholic Reporter) – Evangelical Catholicism may be running the table in terms of official policy, but most experts say that rumors of the death of liberal Catholicism have been greatly exaggerated.

Just as the evangelical impulse is one way of responding to modernity, so too is liberalism, and most sociologists say that complex religious institutions are likely to contain both and many others – only sects, they argue, have the luxury of rigid consistency. Further, terms such as “evangelical” and “liberal” are ideal types rather than airtight ways of categorizing real people, and many Catholics reflect elements of both in their own thinking.

At least in the United States, many observers believe that a broad liberal instinct is firmly entrenched at the grass roots.

“I think the genie has been let out of the bottle, and there is no putting it back in,” said Richard Gaillardetz, a prominent lay theologian at the University of Toledo, Ohio, even though he conceded that “liberal Catholicism … no longer enjoys the ecclesiastical support to which many had become accustomed in the ’70s, ’80s and early ’90s.”

Gaillardetz argued that in the United States, liberal Catholicism is less an ideology than a “pastoral phenomenon … alive in parishes that have a flourishing catechumenate, vibrant liturgies, thoughtful and relevant preaching, and multiple lay ministerial opportunities,” as well as “in a growing number of intentional Christian communities that are determined to keep alive a vision of the church that they associate with Vatican II.”

Looking around, observers such as Gaillardetz say that the moderate-to-liberal camp probably represents a disproportionate share of the church’s ministerial workforce, meaning priests, deacons, religious, and laity, as well as the theological guild.

Nor are these attitudes confined to a class of church professionals.

In fact, the evangelical camp seems a distinct minority within the overall Catholic population. In 2005, sociologist Dean Hoge published a survey about how American Catholics define what it means to be Catholic. At the top of their list was belief in the resurrection of Jesus, the Eucharist and the other sacraments, and helping the poor.

Other traditional markers of identity were sidelined – only 29 percent said a celibate male clergy was important, and just 42 percent said that about the teaching authority of the Vatican. Seventy-six percent said one could be a good Catholic without going to Mass on Sunday, and 75 percent said the same about following church teaching on birth control…

And, Roman Catholic liberals are proud of their accomplishment? Pastors are proud of their pastoring?

For sure…

Now if they had only focused their energies on bring people to God through Jesus Christ, rather than focusing on the ascent of man absent God.

As they Young Fogey would probably point out, NCR drops the f-bomb (rotten fundamentalists, them against us) to describe the resident “”evil”" in their midst.

Catholic liberals in the U.S. are not different in many respects from the left-liberalism he describes and links to here.

Sadly, they missed Jeremiah week in their OT class.

Thus says the Lord of hosts: Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you; they are deluding you. They speak visions of their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord. They keep saying to those who despise the word of the Lord, ‘It shall be well with you’; and to all who stubbornly follow their own stubborn hearts, they say, ‘No calamity shall come upon you.’

Christian Witness, Perspective News

From theNews.pl: Poland chosen Europe’s most attractive investment destination

Poland is the best country to invest in among 31 European states according to the latest rating by The Federation of European Employers.

Apart from Poland, the most attractive countries are: Denmark, Slovenia, Switzerland and Great Britain. The rating gave Poland a 6+ grade, leaving behind all the competitors from the region, i.e. Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary.

Considering the total work costs to work quality ratio, Poland has the most competitive workforce in Europe. “We still have large supplies of highly qualified workers who go onto raising their qualifications continuously”, said Paweł Wojciechowski, President of the Polish Information and Foreign Investment Agency.

According to him qualifications improvement is the best way to combat unemployment.

The major strengths of Poland are considered to be access to young workforce, women’s presence on the job market and availability of temporary employees.

However, Poland was not graded so positively on training investment, the possibility of recruitment from other companies and limitations concerning dismissals. Also the Internet skills of Polish employees leave a lot to be desired.

The rating evaluated 27 EU members, as well as Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Turkey. 15 factors were taken into account while performing the survey, such as access to workforce, human capital, job market relations as well as its flexibility, inflation and work costs.

Poland - Polish - Polonia News

From the Christian Science Monitor: Why teens have a tough time finding summer work

Many are enrolling in summer classes or doing community service while others are squeezed out by adults competing for the same entry-level jobs.

Boston - This summer is shaping up as a tough one for many of America’s youngest job seekers.

Camps still need counselors. Ice cream shops still need young arms with a knack for alternating between a scoop and a cash register. And the nation’s job market is strong.

Yet teen employment rates haven’t rebounded from the recession of 2001. Instead, these numbers are at historic lows.

The reasons include positive forces, such as the rise of new opportunities for summer education and community service. But the trend also reflects more competition from older workers for a shrinking pool of entry-level jobs…

While many are cheering the American economic dynamo, others ask, what, when, why, where, and how about me.

As the article points out, entry level jobs provide a training ground for young people entering the job market. In part, the share of jobs available to young people is decreasing as older, experienced workers compete for those jobs.

I’d ask why? Are older workers interested in shuffling hamburgers, cashing out sales to pre-teens, and doing janitorial work at the mall? Is this their motivation/career path, or is it simply their way of paying the bills?

It is regrettable in that our talent pool and experience are being wasted. It is regretable that our economic model relies on low paid service jobs. It is regretable that the division between rich and poor grows as uncle Bob and aunt Mary, formerly employed in their profession of choice, serve dinner at Red Lobster.

Current Events, Perspective, Political News

The Young Fogey links to: Bush lets Libby off the hook and posits:

What’s really disturbing is Libby’s bosses will get away with what they did.

To me it’s kind of like reflecting on the Paris Hilton story (thank you, thank you Mika Brzezinski), but reflect I do.

Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney will never face a war crimes tribunal or be held to account - getting away with it. But conscience is not so easily satisfied.

I know that it is easy to paint people black and white. Mr. Bush and his cohort are certainly in the black end of the scale - fear mongering, do whatever it takes to get what we want, who cares who dies types. At the same time, I do not think that those caught in the grips of perversion are without humanity and souls.

Unless they are truly mentally ill (I don’t think so) and devoid of humanity, like a fictional serial killer, the pangs of guilt eat away.

Mr. Bush may ask himself: ‘Can I let the Scoot man (I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby) suffer for what I and my people have done?’

Certainly not! Mr. Bush has shown remarkable loyalty to those who do his bidding.

Other Presidents would have cut Rumsfeld loose long before Mr. Bush did. Messrs. Gonzalez and Cheney would have been long gone as well.

But, in Mr. Bush’s world, he is the decision maker. He holds on to a fading illusion like a drowning man gripping sand. All he has, and will have left, are those glimmers of conscience for the dead servicemen and women he has refused to honor, the neo-con fascists he remains loyal to, and those whose sentences he will commute (and later pardon).

Know for a certainty, however, that whatever your hands or the hands of the infidels have wrought will never, as they never did of old, change the Cause of God or alter His ways. — Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u'lláh, CXIII, 12

Current Events, Perspective, Political News, Peace

If you have followed the press on the recent EU summit you probably heard that the Polish President and Prime Minister raised World War II issues in their negotiations.

The response to their raising these issues was less than positive. It’s kind of like the response a person receives when they raise a notion that no one else wants to acknowledge. “Can’t they just be quiet?”

The EUObserver notes in Polish twins accused of bad taste in Brussels:

The most controversial Polish tactic was its attempt to leverage German World War II guilt. When Jaroslaw [Kaczynski] talked ahead of the summit about using EU voting to repay Poland for the millions of Poles killed by Germany in the 1940s, it seemed like just another populist faux pas.

But Lech [Kaczynski] brought up the idea again at the EU leaders’ dinner in Brussels, in a move that may have contributed to chancellor Merkel’s threat to call an intergovernmental conference without Polish approval. In post-summit interviews, the twins kept the same line.

“There are no reasons to censor the past,” Lech said, regretting that he himself was too young to have fought the Germans. “I’m sorry, but today we still have to remind people who was the executioner and who was the victim,” Jaroslaw said in his interview.

Commenting on the rhetoric, Polish liberal MEP and historian Bronislaw Geremek told PAP that “the EU was based on the idea of putting an end to the war era…[the Polish government] tried to open wounds that have not yet fully healed.”

The German press was less kind. The biggest selling paper, Bild, called the twins “poisoned dwarves” and referred to their “sickening double game…”

Speaking of ‘poisoned dwarves,’ probably a bad choice of words for the German Press.

Among Mengele’s favorite experimental subjects were Jewish dwarves and identical twins.

From The Ethics Of Using Medical Data From Nazi Experiments by Baruch C. Cohen at Jewish Law Articles.

– or –

Many people with disabilities became the subject of medical research both before and after their deaths and were used to enrich the profits and prestige of medical institutions, doctors, and German and Austrian universities and researchers. Corpses of patients that had been marked before gassing as being of potential “scientific interest” were separated out and delivered to a nearby autopsy room. Young German physicians performed autopsies on these corpses to earn academic credit. Many organs from murdered disabled victims, brains in particular, were recovered for scientific study at medical institutes. Researchers sent lists of desiderata to killing centers requesting the brains of dwarves and people suffering from “idiocy” and rare neurological abnormalities, presumably with the belief that such disabilities would be scientifically interesting. Although many organs were harvested, the brains of murdered victims were the ones most utilized. Some of Germany’s most prestigious institutions benefited from this hideous use of the body parts of murdered people with disabilities, including Breslau University, Heidelberg University and the medical schools and psychiatric departments at Bonn, Cologne, Berlin and Leipzig.

From Forgotten Crimes - A Report by Disability Rights Advocates.

But then again, Bild is not exactly about journalism…

Current Events, Poland - Polish - Polonia, Political News

From The State: Justices affirm ban on partial-birth abortions:

The Supreme Court Wednesday broke new ground in upholding federal restrictions on abortion, with President Bush’s two appointees joining a court majority that said Congress was exercising its license to “promote respect for life, including the life of the unborn.

”The court’s 5-4 decision upholding the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act passed by Congress in 2003 marked the first time justices have agreed a specific abortion procedure could be banned, and the first time since the landmark Roe v. Wade decision that justices approved an abortion restriction that did not contain an exception for the health of the woman.

“The government may use its voice and its regulatory authority to show its profound respect for the life within the woman,” wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy. He said the ban on the controversial method of ending a midterm pregnancy was valid because other abortion procedures were still available to a woman. It provides an exception to save the woman’s life…

While it isn’t a panacea for the ills that have been created since Roe v. Wade, this is the beginning of some kind of common sense.

The most interesting comments I’ve heard are from the abortion fanatics out there, pandering by saying women’s health will be put at risk.

I’m wondering, how? Is Doctor Kildare still delivering babies? You mean we can’t save a mother and a 5, 6, 7, 8, or 9 month old baby?

I really do not believe anything these folks say about health. They simply want to use dead babies as score sheets. Twenty dead in the last hour, twenty victories.

The key is that a baby can’t be killed when medical technology has shown us that many, if not all of these infants can be saved.

You’re giving birth by one or another means to a child and killing it just as it’s partially born, a child that, if placed in an incubator and properly cared for under today’s technology would live. I’d wonder, why make the choice to kill?

Now to me all life is sacred, from conception onward, but even if you’re a complete dolt, and can’t reason beyond the obvious, you have to see that this is nothing more than murder for the sake of murder.

More on this issue from the Pro-Life Action League and Priests for Life. A lot more screaming elsewhere.

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Christian Witness, Current Events, Perspective Life, News