Saturday, November 26, 2005

I created one of those Frappr! maps but not for Gen X Revert readers. It is for my Catholic Blog Directory and I am encouraging all Catholic bloggers to put their pin on the map so it will become a map of Catholic blogs.

If you have a Catholic blog and it is listed on the Directory, please add your pin, thanks.

Friday, November 25, 2005

8th Commandment 101

Kellenberg High School became somewhat famous when it announced it would no longer sponsor a senior prom. Now, some Kellenberg students make the news again -

"Two teenagers videotaping a school project caught a convicted thief on camera allegedly stealing money from a church in Malverne. "

I'd say give those kids an A+.

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Tassone's domestic partner asks for "marital privilege" in court

"Two months after former Roslyn Superintendent Frank Tassone implicated his longtime companion in an $11.2-million embezzlement scheme, the partner says Tassone would be violating "solemn" vows they made during a commitment ceremony in the Caribbean if he testifies against him."

From Newsday, a list of stories on this scandal

The scandal at the Roslyn school district involved several figures stealing millions of dollars over the course of several years. The school district discovered assistant superintendent Pamela Gluckin had stolen some money and allowed her to pay it back and quietly retire. The school district did not tell anyone, not even the police for fear of scandal. Sound familiar Catholics? The scandal broke when an anonymous letter was sent indicating what had happened. It turned out a lot more money was stolen than the district realized. The scandal involved many people and shocked this very wealthy neighborhood. The people involved were absolutely selfish- Frank Tassone gave up information on his homosexual lover, the former assistant superintendent Pamela Gluckin gave up information on her own son (John McCormick) and niece (Debra Rigano), and the district auditor (Andrew Miller) tried to cover up the embezzlement by altering documents. He ended up losing his entire business. What were these people thinking? Is Long Island so filled with trash that important jobs can't even be filled with honest, decent people? Gluckin was the most conniving, even keeping records on all the rest so that when the crimes were uncovered she would be able to give up the others in exchange for a lighter sentence. It makes you wonder how the people in this very good and very wealthy school district could be so clueless about the character of the people they trusted. I mean I really don't find it too hard to tell when a person is a liar, a professional charmer, two-faced, etc... Newsday should do a story on the people who knew these crooks, worked with them, dealt with them to see how so many people could miss so many clues.
From the minutes of the Long Island Voice of the Faithful regional meeting (9/8/5):

"VOTF will continue to “sing a new Church into being.”

I prefer the old Church thanks.

Monday, November 21, 2005

The chief engineer at the television station of the Diocese of Rockville Centre was arrested. He was accused of setting up a company to do the maintenance work around the station's tower and this work was never done. Telecare paid for this work for several years and the engineer, Joseph Kosik collected the money. Telecare said this was discovered after a routine audit that occurred soon after a new priest took over the station. This is the second time I have seen someone arrested after a "routine audit" after a leadership change. The last time was when Holy Family parish in Hicksville got a new pastor and two men who were long time employees of the parish were discovered to have used the parish's credit cards for all sorts of personal uses. The Diocese needs to keep good control over what goes in the seminary, the priesthood but also all the various apostolates.

This would probably also be a good time to ask whether it is worth having Telecare around. It is nice to have a place where people can see what is going on in the Diocese, but perhaps the network should stick to showing EWTN mostly and just produce a couple hours of local Catholic programming a week. EWTN has succeeded because it is not Catholic Lite, it is fully Catholic. Sadly, this cannot be said about Telecare.