- I'm terribly fond of and have great respect for Ann Barnhardt but she's wrong about one thing. Plagiarism does matter. The person who steals the intellectual property of another and passes it off as his or her own is not to be trusted about anything else they write and the johnny come lately who was hostile to you for years and suddenly shows up claiming to be on your side will surely stab you in the back somewhere down the road.
- A while back I wondered if the Church's penchant for bringing illegal aliens from Latin America and Islamic countries to the West (and getting paid for it) wasn't going going to cause anger and resentment and possibly more than that. Ordinary people are watching and they see the Pope and their local priest carrying on about Muslims and Hispanics and they are drawing certain conclusions.
When I was 15, a tall, elegant looking Mexican man who worked at the embassy introduced himself to me and asked for a date. He told me that every day he looked out of his office and saw me walking home from school and thought I was pretty. He said he was 35 and I told him I was too young for anything like that. He told me that in his country 15 was a grown woman old enough to be married and have a child. I calmly told him that we could go out on a date but he'd have to come to my house and ask my parents for permission and thank God, he reacted the way I had hoped he would. He cleverly moved back from me, apologized and let me go on my way.
Last year a former co-worker of mine was jogging when she realized that two Latino men were following her in their truck. She went right and the truck followed. She cut left and the truck followed. Finally, she got to the park and ran onto the path. It had steel barriers to keep vehicles off the walking/running trail and the truck could not follow without causing damage. My co-worker ran for her life, then got off the trail and ran through the woods until she found a trail that led to another entrance and she ran home.
These two incidents happen to women and girls all the time and they don't always end well. The man or woman who has either comforted a frightened daughter who survived unharmed or shed tears of grief and rage over a daughter who wasn't lucky has got to be righteously pissed by now. People are leaving the Church over this. Protestants and unchurched people are looking at the Church and are getting the idea that Catholics not only don't care about their neighbors but are actively part of the network that brings in more and more hostile people who don't seem to be able to assimilate. It's going to boomerang on the Church and I think it's going to be ugly.
- Fr. Enrique Rueda, Fr. John O'Connor, pray for us and God bless, this priest, who it has been reported, got into a whole lot of trouble after giving this homily.
There's talk that Cardinal Farrell is about to get a bit of comeuppance. We'll see. Thanks to Hilary White for making this gif.
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