Let's Talk About it

Some of the members have expressed concern to me over the time of the Society's existence about Sylvia's Site. I have always had a 'wait and see' attitude, fueled in no small part by my desire to extend a little bit more slack toward the victim lobby than pure jurisprudential reason alone would allow. Today, however, I was rather disturbed by what I read in her latest post: read it here.

I have communicated with Sylvia a few times over the last few years and have always found her to be very humble and obliging. That has tended to reassure me. Yet I have read enough about justice going bad to have been really disturbed by the kind of things I was reading in this latest post.

I think more - much more - work needs to be done to clean out the Church, and in that regard I am 100% alongside the goal of her blog. Yet a blog is not a private sphere of private contemplation. Legislation is catching up with the internet and perhaps some day we will have a better idea of what constitutes online defamation, etc. But so far, a blogger seems to have a great deal of freedom to harm another's good reputation. I am practically libertarian when it comes to free speech, but fueling speculation that another person is perpetrating, or has perpetrated, illegal activities should be against the law, in my opinion. Frankly, priests don't have it easy these days, and it is the fault of the few bad apples, not the majority. Law is at its best when it serves to ensure every person receives due-process, including the presumption of innocence.

As many of you know, I spent one year in the seminary. When I announced my desire to become a priest, a family member, someone very dear to me, said, "I hope you don't become one of those molesters." Suspicion hurts. It is unchristian. But people are astronomically stupid, even the best of us. Because of human stupidity, we need law. Innocent people deserve it, and it is usually very difficult to sort out the innocent from the guilty - that is why the legal system is so expensive to run.

If you want to make sure that none of the guilty get away, you employ the tactics of someone like Joseph Stalin. But no one got away from Stalin, neither the innocent nor the guilty.

So, now that I have stacked the deck, I put the question out in the open, as all these things deserve to be: should I remove Sylvia's Site from the SCCB roll or not? I am all ears.

Catholic Insight Aboard

My favorite Canadian Catholic publication is now listed here. Please check out all the latest from their slew of great bloggers.

Updates on List

Welcome to Mr. Sergio Vereiro who writes at St. Pat's Youth Speak

And good-bye to some long defunct blogs...

My Third Pope is Like What?

Sure, I'm a convert, but I don't think that this fact comes into play for anyone in their mid-forties or under: Pope Francis is the third pope of our generation. And he's the first one not to fit into the neo-conservative, anti-spirit-of-Vatican-2 pope our very faith has come to rely upon, unfortunately. Sure he's orthodox - all popes are by definition - that's not my point. The point is, he's the first non-Ratzinger pope we've ever known, and we are having trouble making sense of that. The papal atmosphere that JP II and B XVI evoked doesn't seem to be present in our current Holy Father. Something else is. I know it's good, but I just don't know what it is! He is a great and loving man, but seems much more mortal than the previous two. Of course, he is making it difficult (on purpose, I believe - good for you, Holy Father!) for his Vatican handlers to create a pristine papal image for.

But of course, in the end, a simplistic view of the papacy is much easier to maintain with only two popes to fit into your mold than it is with three. I accept that the Holy Spirit is doing great things in Pope Francis. These simply don't fit the saint-theologian mold that I have constructed over these twenty or so years. Thank you, God, for this!

Maybe I am just growing up as a Catholic? I am moving beyond the superlative stage of my faith-life? You know what I mean, the need to have all aspects of your faith magnified: JP II was the most 'seen' human being in history, he is John Paul 'the Great', Ratzinger was the greatest pope-theologian since Gregory the Great, the Catholic Church is the oldest continuous institution in human history, the Catholic Religion is the largest in the world, our doctors of the Church are the smartest human beings in history, Catholic art and literature is greater than... you know the need for this kind of thing.

Certainly, Pope Francis is hard to fit into superlatives. He is the most South American pope ever... Don't you see, though, that this kind of thinking is not from God? The Holy Father's heart is pure and good. And even if it weren't, we'd still be obliged to say, thank-you, God, for Your tender mercies!

Open-Up Those Churches!

As the heat rages in Ontario, spiritual pilgrims should always count on a quiet afternoon retreat in a cool, stone church. Is your church open? Is your's cool and stone-walled?

Matter glorifies the Lord too.



This is Little Stone Church, Abernethy, Saskatchewan.

Got any cool churches for me to visit? Best if they have the Real Presence in 'em.

Santo Subito Subito!

Our Popes, In Picture

Unfortunately, there will be too few of these pictures, I am sure. If you contemplate what you are seeing, you will realize that at very few times in human history was such a picture possible - at no other time when the camera had been invented!

And here is one of my favorite shots. It's my desktop background: