Sunday, January 11, 2009
A Sunday Night
Bless the super of the apt building up the street. He always has excellent holiday decorations, including lights on a tall evergreen tree & a big star at the top, & he hasn't taken them down yet. Cheered me up on lonely, cold Sunday night.
***
A volunteer from the Marine Stranding Center reported that three of the five remaining dolphins that had been residing in the Shrewsbury River estuary since June were spotted in Sandy Hook Bay. That's just one observer. Which leaves two dolphins unaccounted for. Two others had died. Maybe halting bridge construction at the entrance to the estuary was the solution. Shrewsbury may freeze over later this week.
***
No one is more Catholic than a convert:
Rev. Richard John Neuhaus died on Jan 10. Former radical leftist Lutheran pastor turned neocon theologian & ideologue; converted to Roman Catholicism in 1990, ordained a priest a year later personally by His Eminence John Cardinal O'Connor of that church across 5th Ave. from Rockefeller Center. A celebrity catch for the rightward sailing Catholic hierarchy as it countered widespread pedophile scandals & multi-million dollar lawsuit awards, resulting in hundreds of church & school closings, by using the power of the Eucharist to squeeze & embarrass moderate Democratic politicians on behalf of the Church's powerful extreme right financial benefactors & political allies. A fake scandal to divert attention from the real ones. Neuhaus was the apologist the Bishops trotted out on TV to rationalize it all. & he was very good at it. So much intellect & activist Gospel spirit twisted 180 degrees & put in service of such crappy ideas & awful leaders. You'd think he was imitating reactionary protestants. Heh. Hopefully, he was welcomed into Heaven by Father Thomas Merton, a rather different sort of convert.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
***
A volunteer from the Marine Stranding Center reported that three of the five remaining dolphins that had been residing in the Shrewsbury River estuary since June were spotted in Sandy Hook Bay. That's just one observer. Which leaves two dolphins unaccounted for. Two others had died. Maybe halting bridge construction at the entrance to the estuary was the solution. Shrewsbury may freeze over later this week.
***
No one is more Catholic than a convert:
Rev. Richard John Neuhaus died on Jan 10. Former radical leftist Lutheran pastor turned neocon theologian & ideologue; converted to Roman Catholicism in 1990, ordained a priest a year later personally by His Eminence John Cardinal O'Connor of that church across 5th Ave. from Rockefeller Center. A celebrity catch for the rightward sailing Catholic hierarchy as it countered widespread pedophile scandals & multi-million dollar lawsuit awards, resulting in hundreds of church & school closings, by using the power of the Eucharist to squeeze & embarrass moderate Democratic politicians on behalf of the Church's powerful extreme right financial benefactors & political allies. A fake scandal to divert attention from the real ones. Neuhaus was the apologist the Bishops trotted out on TV to rationalize it all. & he was very good at it. So much intellect & activist Gospel spirit twisted 180 degrees & put in service of such crappy ideas & awful leaders. You'd think he was imitating reactionary protestants. Heh. Hopefully, he was welcomed into Heaven by Father Thomas Merton, a rather different sort of convert.
Labels: nature, obituary, potpourri, religion
