Leon J. Podles :: DIALOGUE

The inimitable Bishop Milingo (APA):
 

Zambia’s controversial Roman Catholic Church archbishop Emmanuel Milingo, who has been defrocked (dismissed) from the church’s leadership after years of controversial actions, on Friday demanded that the Vatican should pay him his pension for the years he served the church.

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This pays the bills

But his heart is here
Once we were in the Ritz-Carlton in Montreal while a Bar Mitzvah of spectacular bad taste was going on. Workmen carried 12 foot models of the Oscars through the lobby. While we were waiting to talk to the concierge, we overheard the conversation between the concierge and black [...]

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Deo volente, I will do the Camino de Santiago, or at least as much of it as an aging body will take, in the fall of 2010. 
In preparation I have been reading accounts of other pelegrinos, some likely, like Father Kevin Codd , the rector of the American seminary at Louvain (To the Field of [...]

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Anti-Semitism has the ability to flourish in the absence of Jews. Reality had never troubled anti-Semites. I remember reading about the world system of a primitive tribe in Central America. Their mental map placed themselves (naturally) at the center, then neighboring tribes, then Spaniards, then Americans and in the outermost fringes and darkness witches and Jews (Not that [...]

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My computer is under some sort of attack

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In my wanderings around the West, I encountered a flash point of Gay-Mormon relations.
In the center of Salt Lake City is Temple Square, which is adjacent to the Latter Day Saints Temple. It was a public square until ten years ago, when it was sold to the LDS who maintain and control it. As it [...]

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A Jew decides to go to Rome to see what the center of the Church was like. He investigated the papal court. He realized that

Not only did they indulge in normal lust but without the last restraint of remorse or shame even in sodomy and to such an extent that the influence of whores and [...]

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A Kachina

Maidie and I went on a Kachina tour of Arizona, under the aegis of Crow Canyon and under the leadership of the archeologist Chuck Adams (above), who has worked on the Hopi mesas for thirty years. We started off in Phoenix at the Heard Museum, and then went up to Flagstaff, to the Museum [...]

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Priests who crack jokes during the Divine Liturgy are on my little list, and none of them will be missed. I know that priests have long been given the bad advice to begin the sermon with a joke to crack the ice with the congregation – but a sermon is not public speaking at a [...]

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Father Gerald Fitzgerald in the 1950s and 1960s warned American bishops and Pope John XXIII and Paul Vi about abusers. A sample of his opinions: 

In a 1957 letter to an unnamed archbishop, Fitzgerald said, “These men, Your Excellency, are devils and the wrath of God is upon them and if I were a bishop I [...]

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The files of East Germany continue to reveal secrets. The NYT reveals
The killing in 1967 of an unarmed demonstrator by a police officer in West Berlin set off a left-wing protest movement and put conservative West Germany on course to evolve into the progressive country it has become today.

Now a discovery in the archives [...]

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Ireland been shaken by the revelation of the tens of thousands of children physically and sexually abused by Catholic priests, brothers, and nuns.
Archbishop Cousins of Milwaukee knew that the Rev. Lawrence Murphy, the head of St. John’s School for the Deaf, was an abuser. In 1993 victims came to Archbishop Cousins, but Cousins defended Murphy [...]

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The National Post reports  

Europe’s top security and human rights watchdog is urging Ireland not to preserve “blasphemous libel” as a crime in a draft media law, saying this would flout international free speech covenants. Reuters reports that the Irish justice minister is changing a law that provides prison sentences for blasphemous libel and instead making [...]

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After much trepidation and soul searching, The Producers has finally opened in Berlin. 
Here are photos from Der Spiegel.
 
This means something, but I am not sure what.

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