Today my pastor wasn’t available so I needed to go to another church for confession.
Lucky for me the wife had some shopping to do near a church this afternoon so I went with her; dropping her off as Marshalls and went down the road to St. Leo’s figuring I could pick her up when done. I was worried as they tend to have a line but as it turned out an extra priest was on so I was in and out of fairly quickly.
After saying my penance prayers in the church I headed down to the road happy that my wife wouldn’t have to wait for me but thinking the penance I was given seemed small.
When I got to the department store the wife was still having trouble deciding what to get in terms of a gift sweater. Once I was there she had me going back and forth with her looking through woman’s sweaters, every one I suggested didn’t make the cut, wrong materials, wrong style, wrong cleaning instructions etc, etc etc…
I learned two important things today:
God has an excellent sense of humor
When God wants to show you mercy, take it, don’t question it!
It goes without saying that the scandal in the Irish church is reprehensible and in some ways even worse than the similar scandal in the American church a few years ago. Legally and morally it is simply horrible.
In terms of a Victory for Satan it is one on many levels:
First it is the victory of the actual sin.
Then there is the victory of the sin of corruption of the individual priests involved and the violation of their vows.
Then there is the victory in the corrupution of their superiors failing to act and abeting their sin and again violating their vows.
Then there is the corruption of the police and the sin of persuading them not to act in name of the church
Then there is the sin of creating scandal in the church.
There is the effect on the people who might reject the truth of the church due to anger over the scandal.
and finally there are those who might not even consider the church due to the news of all of this.
Consider this: If at the very start, the first report in the 60’s instead of giving in the temptation (and it was actual temptation they gave into) they took decisive action, what would have been the result?
The scandalous behavior would have been stopped.
Others tempted to sin would have thought twice.
The scandal would have been brief and confined to a couple of priests and most importantly.
Many innocents would have been spared.
But if’s and buts mean very little, unfortunately the church in Dublin the priests and Bishops and Cardinals involved forgot two things first their scripture:
Thus says the LORD: ‘I will bring evil upon you out of your own house. I will take your wives while you live to see it, and will give them to your neighbor. He shall lie with your wives in broad daylight. You have done this deed in secret, but I will bring it about in the presence of all Israel, and with the sun looking down.'” 2 Samuel 12:11-12 emphasis mine
And second the whole reason for the church to SAVE souls. At the first report it is the job of the superior to attempt to save the souls involved, covering things up doesn’t do it.
SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.
It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.
They did keep what they refer to as “adjusted” data.
Let’s put this in a way our liberal friends can understand: Do you remember this iconic picture?
The woman above is Rose Mary Woods. She was President Nixon’s secretary who claims to have “accidentally” erased the 18 1/2 minute gap in the Watergate tapes. Lets pretend it is 1973 and All the Watergate tapes were erased and only “reconstructions” created by the Nixon White House were available. Would you have taken the Nixon White House’s word that the tapes were “accidentally” erased? Did you take Rose Mary Woods word? Is that credible?
So also faith of itself, if it does not have works, is dead. James 2:17
In the same way, Science without data is “hypothesis” at best and “speculation” at worst.
If you still want to believe in this that’s up to you, far be it from me to tell you what religion you want to follow but don’t tell me it is “settled peer reviewed science”.
And Roger as far as your suggestion to postpone the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, not a chance! The people feeding at the Climate Change troth are going to try to push through one last big score while the gravy train still exists. Time is not on their side. That have to act NOW if they want our money.
How the MSM decides to cover this will be interesting.
Update: My friend Robert Stacy gives me the best blogging anniversary present there is: A top level link! He also touches on a pet peeve of mine:
This temptation to think that we are morally superior to our ancestors, you see, is the road to hell that Scientism paves.
The biggest problem with the baby boom generation is they never grew out of the teenage idea that they were smarter than their parents. That failure as much as the changes of the 60’s are the cause of a lot of the troubles we have today.
As a person who has been an eyewitness to at least one Miracle in person I’ve never understood why believing Christians have no problem believing all those other miracles but not Transubstantiation.
And herein lies what both Robert Stacy and I have over the climate guys. We disagree on this subject, passionately I suspect, but are not only unafraid to debate it publicly we will still be friends when our debate is done.
A person pushing real science or interested in truth doesn’t shut down debate. That was the biggest clue all along.
Update 2: In comments the discussion is Tradition tradition tradition…
Update 3: Gad-fry remembers Rose Mary Woods and comes up with his own 60’s connection.
Update 4: Democrat=Socialist has a good point:
If an employer can use computer forensics to find that Jenna Haze video you downloaded on the company laptop, couldn’t any diligent media outlet or United States DOJ (ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!) do the same?
That will depend on a couple of things, first to the tapes ACTUALLY still exist? They may not. Secondly it depends on how the data was wiped. If the assumption is that they wanted the data destroyed they would have certainly thought of this.
His suggestion is actually rather ironic considering this story, speak of the Nixon tapes and they are in the News again:
The US National Archives is bringing together investigators to search for scribbled secrets from the early days of the Watergate scandal as the chain of events began that destroyed Richard Nixon’s presidency.
The elusive goal is to discover what Nixon and an aide discussed during the infamous 18189-minute gap in a White House tape recording of a meeting held three days after burglars linked to the president’s re-election committee broke into Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate complex, then an office building in Washington.
One of the things that I find interesting about the meltdown concerning “global warming” and the climate change e-mails is how it symbolizes the cultural divide.
Not so much Red vs Blue, Conservative vs liberal, Robert Stacy McCainvs Charles Johnson (great timing changing sides btw Charles) but really in terms of how people look at things and why.
Way back in my HiWired blog days I wrote this to Glenn Reynolds concerning the Haditha debate.
Since the 60’s two unifying forces, for good or ill, were removed from the country: the removal of Judeo/Christian values as the semi-official moral code of the public schools) and the death of the draft/aka Vietnam. (actually ending in the 70’s). These two changes had one thing in common, it took two generations for them to have the following effect:
It is now unlikely that a student going to school today, had a teacher or parent who 1. Served in the military or 2. Was taught that moral code in school. To a whole generation now being born these are things that belong to outsiders. This makes the military and religious people outsiders and strange to one group and vice versa.
One important part of that moral code is truth and honor. Judeo/Christian values stress truth, lies are the work of the Devil. That is why contrary to the pop culture the Church’s role in the promotion and advancement of science and the University system looms large. It is a search for truth and as I’ve said before the only reason to be a Christian in general or a Catholic in particular is because it is true.
The concept of honor comes from the base of truth and is why it is so prominent in the military and also explains why the vast majority of people in the military come from Judeo/Christian backgrounds. The concepts of truth and honor are significant and the shame of violating those concepts are dreadful to a believer. Even if one didn’t believe in the religion itself the shared VALUES of truth and honor of the the Judeo/Christian system applied with great benefit to the culture as a whole.
One of the glories of Science is the reliance on truth. The best science consists of the gathering and measuring of data and the constant testing of it. The whole process of hypothesis, test and conclusion is a relentless search to confirm the known and discover the unknown truths of existence. This relentless search has improved the human condition beyond measure. When Christ says:
“you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
he is pronouncing the first commandment of science. The truth of knowledge frees the potential of the mind in as sure as the truth of Christ frees the soul.
What does this all have to do with the Climate Change e-mails? Just this: In two generations relativism and secular humanism rejection of Judeo/Christan values led to the idea that “truth” is relative and that one need to accept and even celebrate relative “truths” for the sake of various causes. This has been pushed culturally and politically with disastrous (and sometimes comical) results, but when that becomes the case in the sciences then bad things happen.
Would you want to be behind the wheel of a car who’s designer decided that he has his own different standard for how breaking and acceleration should work? Would you want to have him withhold his calculations or defend his actions by calling you a “friction denier”? How would you like to finance his production and have to drive your car under those same rules even if you don’t own one?
The subordination of truth for the sake of a cause and the abandonment of honor as a virtue is bad in any field, in science it leads to societal stagnation and decay. It is why daylight needs to be shined on this fraud and on the elites that decided they were going to protect it for the sake of money, stature and power. If it is rewarded or defended and or ignored then we condemn ourselves and our children to a world of superstition worse than any we have yet experienced.
Update: Nameless? Click on the link to the Glenn Reynolds letter I included in this post or on my amazon reviews and you will find my name very easily.
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