There is more than one bishop in Virginia and other random Easter week thoughts
Rocky and I went to the Easter Vigil at the Franciscan Monastery in DC and earlier in the week to the Burial of Christ service there on Good Friday. At the Vigil a little girl sitting behind me was sick. The poor thing coughed so long that her sisters kept getting up to take her to ladies room when it she started retching. On Monday I started coughing, sneezing, gagging and running a fever. Today I reached a disgusting stage and decided to the probable relief of my co-workers to just stay home.
St. Bernadette, a heroic little saint, once said that she hoped she wouldn't end up roasting in Purgatory because no-one would think to pray for her after her death. Mother Angelica may not need our prayers anymore than Bernadette did but say a prayer for the repose of her soul and that of all the poor souls anyway.
Susan Matthiesen, at the beautiful, Les Femmes blog just wrote a very interesting piece on Mohammed's dreadful vision of the Angel Gabriel and asks who did he really see? I think that if Joseph Smith actually saw an angel instead of just making up a magnificent con, it was the same person that Mohammed saw.
I'm librarian but I have no problem with censorship which makes me a pariah plague dog among my colleagues so I don't bring it up at professional meetings. If you want your kid reading porn, shame on you ----but you want everybody's kid in a public school reading gross sexual content then you're an overbearing, publicly dangerous person who must be opposed. Public schools were supposed to serve the local community and reflect the wishes of the parents. As late as 50 years ago public school teachers were expected to be upstanding citizens and held to a high moral standard. Any teacher who slipped up faced the wrath of the town fathers. That meant immediate dismissal and possibly being run out of town. Why were parents so strict? Because they knew that the teacher had access to their children's minds and souls for several hours a day. That's powerful. I think Mrs. Jones and Mr. Smith have a right to know if the teacher thinks it's cute to have their ten year old reading a graphic rape scene and they have a right to say, "No, get your dirty, filthy hands off my kid's mind." My state and national librarian membership groups are all for this effort to get Governor McAuliffe of Virginia to veto bill HB516, the so-called "Beloved bill," which would require schools to notify parents when their kids are going to be reading sexual explicit material. I can't go along with them and my annual dues check will not be in the mail this year.
I love Rorate Caeli but most of their head honchos are European and it shows in funny ways sometimes. I find that many foreigners have no understanding of how big the US is. Virginia is a large state, bigger than some Western countries and we have had two diocesan entities since 1974. Rorate is calling for Bishop Loverde to ban the governor from Communion because of his public promotion of sin. The governor comes from Northern Virginia, which is part of Loverde's diocese. Fair enough, but the governor lives in Richmond, the capitol of Virginia. That is the diocese of Richmond, which belongs to Bishop Francis Xavier DiLorenzo . If the governor ever really shows up at a Mass he probably goes to St. Peter's which is a few streets away from the Executive Mansion. If you want to press Bishop Loverde to make a statement about the governor, fine but don't forget Bishop DiLorenzo, because this particular gubernatorial wild ram is part of his flock on most days. There is a whole lot of horrible in the Richmond diocese but it exists. You can 't overlook 142 parishes and missions covering 74 counties and call yourself doing good reporting.
The wailing woman approach that columnist Hilary White first decried years ago has not helped the pro-life movement.
Speaking of the pro-life movement, did you notice that the big time professional Catholics who went to pieces over the death of David Bowie didn't have much if anything to say about the death of a truly great woman, Nellie Gray? The pro-life movement is beset by many enemies including those are supposedly in the same camp.
I've said it before, I'll say it again and again. Beware celebrity priest's.
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