Leon J. Podles :: DIALOGUE

 
Rod Dreher has a post apologizing for his delight in the prompt death of the wicked.
 
I have been watching a DVD of the interrogation of Rev. Ryan Erickson, who murdered two men in cold blood to cover up his sexual abuse. The detectives cornered him in lies, and he knew the game was up. Shortly [...]

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Kreuz.net reports that the Jesuits (who else) want to host a homosexual group at the World Youth Day in Australia; the organizers of WYD are not enthusiastic.

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I doubt that this will go anywhere, but it should provide some entertainment for a while.
 
The Miami Herald reports:
 

A church modeled in part after one in Miami but with a ”revolutionary” spirit that praises Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez is now at the center of a religious and social controversy in Venezuela.

Although it has adopted many [...]

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According to Der Spiegel’s “In the Hell of the Files,” a book in Poland, The Secret Police and Lech Walesa, claims that Walesa, after his first arrest in 1970, agreed, under the code name of Bolek, to inform on his follow workers in Gdansk, and received 13,000 zlotys, about two months pay, for his work.
 
Walesa, [...]

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The National Post reports on this exhibition on eugenics at the Canadian War Museum. The exhibition “reveals how it was not thoughtless right-wing thugs as much as writers and scientists, the intellectual elite, who led the movement.”
 
But

It also fails to stress just how much the socialist left initiated and supported the eugenics campaign, not only [...]

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Christoph Casetti, a canon of the diocese of Churr in Switzerland, according to Kath.net, has said that Switzerland needs many more exorcists. He sees more and more cases of possession. Perhaps the French anti-cult authorities are not being alarmist.

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Dietrich Bonheoffer denounced liberal Proetstantism because it preached cheap grace: “Cheap grace is preaching forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession. … Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.”
 A leading minister of the United Church in Canda has decided the the [...]

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There is a very odd discussion at the Commonweal blog about the Vatican’s pointing out that the formula some priests are using: “I baptize you in the name of the Creator, Liberator, and Sustainer (or any such variant that omits the hated masculine names of Father and Son) is not   valid Christian baptism. It began [...]

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Gerald at the Cafeteria is Closed attended the dinner for the International Theological Institute in San Francisco (I went to the one in San Diego); Gerald gives excellent coverage of the current situation at ITI.

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At a roadside café we encountered this recently-posted sign:   
My Spanish is not very good, but here is the substance:
Dear Drivers and Travelers:Please be informed that on the road between Guer Aike and El Calafte the personnel of civil defense has detected a plague of spiders commonly known as black widows. We therefore recommend that you [...]

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The majority of Austrians (63%) fear the consequences of the low birth rate in their country, according to Kath.net.                                                                                                        But the age distribution means that those who could do something about it are least likely to.  Among older Austrians 74% fear what will happen.  But among the under-thirty generation, only 44% fear the consequences. 
Consequently, the number [...]

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  I was a scout leader in my son’s troop for many years. Adolescent boys can be difficult, but sometimes their courage and self-sacrifice go to the heart. 
At one scout camp I was at, a boy with a minor eye problem was patiently learning how to shoot a rifle. I overheard him explaining to the [...]

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 Philip Jenkins, in his books The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South and The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity,  has argued that the future of Christianity is in the Third World. For the people of that world, the Bible is not an ancient book to be demythologized and [...]

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Mitteleuropa has the tradition of the New Year’s Eve Dust Up. It involves, as always, young men, and their motives are the same the world over.
 
Der Standard reports:

Bucharest: The Romanian police on Monday morning ended the traditional Sylvester Fight in the village of Ruginoasa with a tear gas attack. In the settlement near the northeast [...]

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