Cacciaguida linked to this Newsday article:

"Conservative Catholic groups share reverence for doctrinal orthodoxy"

He is right to say the article is surprisingly better than it might seem from the headline. But there was this jawdrop from a "theologian" Paul Lakeland:

"With the Latin Mass, you had people praying rosaries and reading about the saints because they couldn't follow along," said Paul Lakeland, a theologian at Fairfield College in Connecticut. "The new Mass was created for participation -- to keep people's focus on the Eucharist."

I have attended the traditional Latin Mass many times and have never seen people praying rosaries or reading about the saints during the Mass, but I have seen this before the Mass or afterwards. Perhaps things were different before the 60's but I doubt that things were as bad as some say they were. I have noticed people reading the parish bulletin during the novus ordo Mass which I think is worse than praying a Rosary or reading about the Saints. The next part of this quote is something traditionalists would jump on and with good reason: "The new Mass was created for participation". I thought the Mass could be developed naturally over centuries but that no one, not even the Pope had the right to "create" a Mass? And if the Mass was created to "keep people's focus on the Eucharist" then so far it has failed miserably. I don't like to nitpick one quote from somebody but a Google search will quickly show what Lakeland's agenda is:

"keynote speaker Paul Lakeland, professor of religious studies at Connecticut's Fairfield University, told the Newton gathering that Catholics were "suffocating from structural oppression" and advocated the abolition of the College of Cardinals, the ordination of women as deacons and lay participation in the election of bishops.
And, Lakeland predicted, future priests would consist of "some married, some not; some straight, some gay, some women, some not."

Shame on me!

I have had the pleasure of attending several events run by Dr. Joseph Varacalli and his Center for Catholic Studies at Nassau Community College. He does an excellent job running a Catholic studies program at a secular college. I have failed to mention two published articles of his-

The Pertinacious Papist summarizes his article "Policy Suggestions for the Church" taken from the June 2004 Homeletic and Pastoral Review which is not online.

The talk he gave at the local Faith on Tap group is available online at the top notch website Catholic Educator's Resource Center - "The Cultural and Political Impotence of Catholics in Contemporary American Life"

Some reason from Reason Magazine:

"The world has never been overpopulated with humans in any meaningful sense. It seems, though, that it is overpopulated with theoretical fears of overpopulation."

CIA Asks Bush To Discontinue Blog

I was glad to read El Camino Real and see that I am not alone in finding it hard to get upset over illegal immigration. I find most immigrants from Latin America and the Caribbean are good people (and very Catholic) and just looking for work. If we are going to push to deport people, lets try to make it these types of people. Meanwhile some sort of legalization, such as a worker program is needed. Reading this article was great:

"When about 60 Peruvian immigrant victims of human trafficking were discovered in three Suffolk County houses earlier this summer, the Church on Long Island responded.

"Catholic Charities arranged for them to have medical examinations, mental health counseling, and provided items like clothing. While federal officials were doing background checks, we needed to find temporary housing for them,” Mrs. Maquilon said. She found great openness among families and institutions, including the seminary."

“In June, I received a call from Catholic Charities to ask if we would take some of the refugees,” said Msgr. Francis Schneider, rector of Immaculate Conception Seminary. “I replied that we would do the best we could to help as many as we could.” They took in 23 men for three weeks.“Each one had a private room and we had a lounge area set up for them where they could watch TV and talk,” Msgr. Schneider said. “They joined us in the dining hall for meals, eating with the seminarians, students in the master’s degree program, and the seminary faculty and staff.

“Many of them also joined us for daily Mass,” Msgr. Schneider said."

From the Long Island Press:

Newsday Writes Tribute On Judge Who Will Hear Its Case

Newsday wrote a real nice piece on Leonard Wexler who got a purple heart 60 years after he was wounded. This is all good, however:

"What Newsday's story failed to mention, however, is that Wexler is the judge set to preside over the $600 million lawsuit filed against the paper on behalf of advertisers claiming circulation fraud. Wexler's name is clearly stated on the first page of the complaint filed in the U.S. District Court. The document is available to the public. Newsday's editorial staff, which is conducting its own investigation into the paper's circulation misdeeds, almost certainly has a copy. "


This is why Long Island needs another daily newspaper - Newsday is anti-Catholic, biased in its reporting, and can't be trusted. But if you want to know what is going on here, you have no choice, and when Newsday is good, it is real good. I am a reader, and the other NY papers just don't cut it. They have more pictures of Britney Spears than informative articles. The Long Island Press is a free Village Voice wannabe that occasionally has some great stories, but is generally a paper for finding out what local band is playing in what local watering hole. Hopefully it will grow to become real competition for Newsday. Bill Donohue lays the smackdown on the paper in a recent press release: NEWSDAY SCANDAL REVEALS HYPOCRISY . Awesome thing is that much of it sounds like it could have been written by the bigot Jimmy Breslin (although unlike his writing this stuff is true):

"Here’s the way they do business at Newsday: they count dead people as subscribers; they deliver papers to burned down houses; they drop off bulk copies to dealers who have said they don’t want them; they cook their internal corporate reports; and they even alter affidavits by distributors to pump circulation figures. The extent of corruption is so common that they have even developed their own jargon: ‘Code 51’ means to continue delivering newspapers to customers who have cancelled their subscriptions or have stopped paying.

“The person in charge of the business side of Newsday, Ray Jansen, has been forced to retire early. James Klurfeld, editor of the editorial page, said today of Jansen that ‘nothing missed his gaze.’ Nothing? It gets better. Klurfeld then says of Jansen that ‘His power of observation was almost uncanny, as if he had X-ray vision.’ To make matters worse, Klurfeld tells us that Jansen ‘rose through the ranks of the advertising department’ and that his ‘talent was on the business side.’ He obviously doesn’t connect the dots—he has just indicted Jansen. "

**I dropped my subscription to Newsday months ago, but continued to receive the paper every Friday free of charge for a time.

Update: I just saw on Drudge that the Dallas Morning News also inflated their circulation and an executive there has resigned.

JIMMY BRESLIN'S DAUGHTER IS DEAD AND IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT

Jimmy Breslin: Caught in a lie again

Muchas gracias to commenter AZ, who gave me the above link about the anti-Catholic, bigoted, angry, foul-mouthed, drunk, childish Breslin and his horrible writing. I recently posted about Breslin's lies when he was caught printing something about what a minister said, only to have it publicly admitted by Newsday that the minister had not said such a thing. I first posted about Breslin the first week of blogging when I stumbled upon an old story about him calling an Asian woman a "yellow, slant-eyed c---". Nice guy huh? The interesting thing in the current article is that Breslin brings up the recent death of his daughter. I posted about the death of his daughter recently also because I found it ironic that the man who called an Asian "yellow slant-eyed c---" would have a daughter who received a degree in Asian studies. I heard a priest say (and this is true, not made up) that Breslin was upset with the Church back when his first wife died, and the priest prayed the prayer at the funeral, "forgive her her sins". Obviously, he can't deal with death, first his wife, now his daughter. How exactly the Catholic Church is to blame for these deaths, I don't know. But no Jimmy, people will not leave you the "----" alone as you ask, because you are a bigot and just because you aren't mature enough to handle the fact that people die, does not mean you can lie. Deal with it. In the meantime, perhaps your current wife (the one you use to drive you around since you can't drive) would also help you write since you can't seem to get things straight.

Vatican Sets Up Sports Department

If their baseball team were made up of all Cardinals over 80, they could still beat the Mets.

Scandal, what scandal?

"Investigators - using cell-phone records and stakeouts - also uncovered 17 inappropriate relationships between students and school staffers, up from 13 the year before."

RIP

Mets announcer Bob Murphy died - I have great childhood memories of summer ball games on the radio with Murphy's "It's a beautiful day for baseball!". He was a great radio announcer who actually described the game rather than spout out opinions like many of the announcers do today.

The Statue of Liberty opened for the first time since the September 11th attacks, but you can only go as high as her feet.

Diogenes at Off the Record has been posting an interesting series regarding Catholics and their charitable giving. This time, he/she posts about the head of a Marianist University and what she did with $1,500. I think it is a good time to remind readers that the Marianist community that operates Chaminade High School and Kellenberg High School here on Long Island, broke away from the New York province in 1976 and formed their own province. I believe they did this to remain focused on operating schools locally. I don't know all the details but I do know that their community has flourished since then. Vocations have been steady and they remain a young, vibrant community. They still focus on operating schools and they do this well. The schools are solidly Catholic, although the most hard core traditionalists might not appreciate them entirely. Their ability to break away from the Marianist structure and still remain Marianists helped to inspire the founders of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, who attempted to do the same type of thing without luck. The Friars ended up having to form a completely separate community and today they have a good relationship with the Long Island Marianists.

German leader acknowledges Polish suffering

"Schroeder became the first German chancellor to attend an anniversary of the two-month uprising, which ended with 200,000 Warsaw residents dead and most of the city systematically destroyed by the Nazis.
He bowed on the steps of the Warsaw Uprising Memorial as a lone trumpeter played taps. Just before, sirens sounded across Warsaw at 5 p.m., the hour the uprising began on Aug. 1, 1944. "

Muslim fundamentalists take note - what you do today, such as attacking Churches, will haunt your granchildren 60 years from now.

Clerical Family Ties

One of the great shows of the 80's was Family Ties. The original concept was brilliant: married hippies end up with a son who is supremely conservative. The parents and son, Alex P. Keaton, have a love for each other that transcends their ideology. Their different outlook on life lent itself to comedy -(when the show got serious it bombed - remember Alex's torment over the death of a friend that had never been mentioned before?) Well, perhaps the time has come for a similiar show based on the situation in rectories today. (See the article A New Breed of Priest (via ut unum sint), or the classic Young Fogies by old priest Fr. Greeley)
The show would take place at a suburban rectory and show what happens when a recently ordained 20-something is assigned to a parish with an aging ex-hippie type priest. Look at how each deal with engaged couples, Liturgy, busybody parishioners, finances, politics, etc.. This show could have potential if it were done correctly - both priests would have to be stereotypes but still be good guys. They couldn't hate each other but simply see things differently, and each would learn a bit from each other.