Wednesday, August 22, 2007

JUST DOING THEIR JOB

One of the dumber sayings to come out of the 1960’s youth explosion was, “Don’t trust anyone over thirty.” It’s good advice only if you add, “…neither trust anyone thirty or below.” I heard a Jesuit twist it to: “Don’t trust anyone over thirty-three, unless they’ve been crucified.”

Poor Cardinal Bertone has been whining again about negative press coverage. Like the great majority of Enron employees who were hard-working and law-abiding, the Catholic Church is made up of mostly good people. Heck, even Hitler’s army was made mostly of people like our current pope!

“…the men and women of the church, have done and continue to do an immense volume of good in every part of the world," Bertone said.

SFW! To say anything less would be condemnation. The whole purpose of the church is to do good. The fact that it is doing some good should come as no surprise.

Bertone, in the CNS article, stupidly compares the Catholic Church to the newly restored Sistine Chapel ceiling. If only it were so easy!

Anyway, two Catholic priests are in the news for doing their magisterial duties.

Father Steve Kelly, S.J., and Franciscan Father Louis Vitale are facing federal trespassing charges in Fort Huachuca, near the Arizona-Mexico border.

Fathers Kelly and Vitale tried to enter the Fort Huachuca Army base with the intent of instructing the soldiers there about the evil of torture.

Jesuit Watch' position: there is no contingency that justifies torture.

The action of the two priests is elegant symbolism. They weren’t chaining themselves, or blocking entrances, they were simply doing their job, teaching people to avoid the unhappiness associated with mortal sin.

The CNS piece says that Father Kelly, S.J., had been associated with a Catholic Worker group in Northern California, and that Father Vitale is retired from St Boniface Church which for decades has served the down-and-out in San Francisco’s Tenderloin.

In the picture below Jesuit Kelly says mass in a setting that almost resembles that of the Last Supper, more so, at least, than say, St Peter’s in Rome, or the Sistine Chapel with Michaelangelo’s cartoons that the Cardinal is so proud of.


And Father Louis Vitale dresses the part, he's no stranger to police tape, and he doesn’t scare the children.




Bertone is right. There are lots of great Catholics.

BTW: One of the smarter sayings from the 1960’s was “Turn on, tune in , drop out.” Leary’s message repeats the message of Jesus, at least that of the hippie, contrarian Jesus as educed by the Jesus Seminar.

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