The History of Catholicism on Long Island:

Glaciers cover the island.

Glaciers recede leaving behind tons of potato farms.

The entire population of Brooklyn moves to Long Island and procede to:

1. Pour concrete on everything
2. Talk about the old neighborhood and how much better it was in the old days, even though "we were poor"
3. create the Diocese of Rockville Centre

Then, on January 18th, 2003 a blog named Gen X Revert was created, ushering in the era known as "Pax Reverticana". All this is my way of advising:

My 4th Blogiversary will soon be here.

Entenmann's Bakery is downsizing at their Bay Shore plant. The cookies and crumb cakes will be made elsewhere. Entenmann's is a great Long Island business, their french-filled crumb cake is the greatest. You can't blame them for wanting to do business elsewhere, it is just simply too expensive here. The Entenmann family started out in Brooklyn and sold the business years ago.

Top Al Qaeda suspect killed in U.S. airstrike

I like what I see in Somalia, the Islamists are driven out the US can go in and kill Al Qaeda.

A choral group from Yale was attacked in San Francisco and not a single arrest has been made?

Mepham High School Football Rape -- 4 Years Later

Where are they now?

I am referring to the rapists from the Mepham High Football Team -

Ken Carney (the ringleader whose father died right after his son was exposed)

Phil Sofia

Tom Diasparra

Rich Guccione

These four monsters should be registered as sex offenders but don't have to because they were underage when they raped young boys as a football camp. This story focuses on the ringleader, Ken Carney, who was a typical white trash bully from Bellmore, but it also points out the problem with the attitudes of so many sports-minded people:

"Sometimes it’s hard to tell what bothers the people of Bellmore and Merrick more—allegations of sodomy or the abrupt end of football season. At a school-board meeting on October 1, packed with camera crews and angry parents, Superintendent Caramore tries to explain that hazing simply doesn’t happen at Mepham—that football was canceled not because of what the boys allegedly did but because their teammates never reported it. That hasn’t satisfied parents who complain about the lost scholarships, the deflated homecoming celebration, and the fund-raisers for other sports, all of which depend on football and are now ruined, they’re saying, because of a couple of messed-up kids."

Elizabeth Fox Genovese, RIP

Feminist, Writer, Scholar, Pro-Lifer, and Catholic convert

Link is via The Dawn Patrol

The East Meadow School District has refused to let a deaf student enter school with his service dog. It looks like the school district is breaking the law.

From Newsday:

"East Meadow School District officials appeared to dig in their heels after the state Division of Human Rights began an investigation into the district's refusal to allow John Cave, 14, to bring the dog, Simba, to W. Tresper Clarke High School. John, who has limited hearing with the aid of cochlear implants, was rebuffed yesterday for the fourth consecutive school day."

In other disability related news the big story is the "Ashley Treatment":

Parents halt growth of severely disabled girl (From The Seattle Times)

The parents have a website to give their side of the story, but it appears they have taken action to keep their girl small so they can more easily care for her.

"The girl's treatment has involved a hysterectomy, surgery to remove her breast buds and subsequent high doses of estrogen.

High-dose estrogen was used occasionally in the 1950s and '60s, mostly on teenage girls whose parents were concerned about the social stigma of being tall. The drugs could stop a 5-9 girl from becoming, say, 6 feet tall.

As that stigma has gone out of fashion, so has the treatment, medical ethicists say."

Sometimes Diogenes is so spot on that it is amazing! He is referring to Fr. Donald Cozzens but tell me this does not describe priests you have seen:

"We're all familiar with Cozzens's attitude, though perhaps most of us meet it in the celebrant at Mass. It's not as if they're obviously bored or perfunctory, but somehow they communicate the feeling that the real business takes place somewhere else. They seem bewildered, not by the meaning of Calvary exactly, but that the faithful would find it important. They don't understand genuflections or silences or prayers said kneeling. They're embarrassed by awe. Their breeziness at the altar as well as the velcro on their vestments shows that, for them, the whole golgotha/sacrifice/wine-into-blood thing is No Big Deal.


Their priesthood means something different to them than it does, say, to the faithful that show up at Mass during the week, whose eyes tend to focus on host and chalice. It's a priesthood in which the gift shop and the altar are simply two ways of reaching out to spiritual needs. It's a priesthood in which there's no damnation from which souls need to be rescued, a priesthood in which acceptance of self is more urgent than contrition. Small wonder if, for Cozzens's generation of priests, asceticism in general -- and celibacy in particular -- is hard to make sense of. "


Wow.

Oprah Winfrey has started a school for girls in South Africa which is awesome. More celebrities should use their wealth to make the world a better place as she does.

Speaking of Africa, a Long Islander originally from Rwanda has written a book on her experiences with the Rwanda Genocide.

Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust

Immaculee Ilibagiza is from Elmont and writes about surviving in a small bathroom of a pastor's house with seven other women. I will have to buy the book soon as my mother says it is an incredible story. Immaculee was featured on 60 Minutes also and it was amazing to see her speak about forgiving the man who killed her family members. Her Left To Tell Charitable Fund attempts to help the orphans of the Rwanda Genocide.