A ghostly tale for Halloween

 Years ago when I was still in high school I read a collection of ghost stories called "Haunted Heartland." Most of them weren't a bit scary and were presented in  the dry  businesslike fashion of a folklorist who is merely collecting materials for a dissertation, but one tale stuck with me. It was the story of Fr. Louis Lesches, a priest assigned to St. Mary's College in Minnesota, who tried to kill his superior, Bishop Patrick Hefron. The bishop was saying Mass in the seminary chapel one morning when he turned around and saw Fr. Lesches standing behind him. To the bishop's surprise, the priest was wearing a Prince Albert suit instead of his cassock or clericals. To add to this surprise the bishop quickly realized that  the priest was packing heat. Fr. Lesches fired a gun three times, hitting the bishop twice.

At that time Fr. Lesches was already the number one problem child of the diocese. Although he was said to be brilliant and had done well in the academic part of his seminary studies, he was judged to be overly emotional, and  insubordinate. He'd failed at all of his parish assignments and now the concerned and probably a bit exasperated bishop had recalled him to St. Mary's to keep a close eye on him.  Fr. Lesches became convinced that the bishop was persecuting him. 

 Bishop Heffron's  great physical and mental toughness probably saved his life.  Instead of dropping dead, hiding in the pews, or swooning, he yelled at his now panicked attacker and chased him out of the chapel. Fr. Lesches was later captured by the police and spent the rest of his life in a mental hospital.

 Students have been claiming to see the ghost of Fr. Lesches on campus for decades. It's a spooky tale but I hope everyone who hears or reads it will stop and say a prayer for this poor, strange, unstable man who never should've been ordained but is a priest forever and one who probably really needs our help now. 

Random thoughts on a Friday morning

•  I think somebody told poor Cardinal Burke that there were videos purporting to be of him denouncing Pope Leo and he panicked.   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• I think Will Knowland has missed something in his analysis.   If a man is hooked on, oh say, anime porn or any of the more unspeakable forms of visual carnality, no living woman can compete with that. His wife may be dutiful, but she does not have four foot long blue hair that levitates, a bosom that defies gravity and the limits of  human bone and musculature  or a 15 inch waist. 
  
  I know a woman who has 8 children. She's divorced. To put it delicately, she and her husband were clearly doing what it takes to beget and bear issue within their  marriage but it wasn't enough to keep the marriage in tact.
  
   Is a wife to blame for a pornography addiction that began when her husband was a boy? Is she any more responsible for his sin than the woman who found herself married to a man who chose her in hopes that she would magically change him?  Mr. Knowland, may not recall this part of the Bible, but when Adam tried to weasel out of trouble by going, "God, it was that Woman, You sent me that made me sin," Our Father had none of it. Eve was justly punished for her own sin but Adam had to face up to his as well.
  
  
  
  
  
•  Henry VIII left the Church in order to marry his mistress. 500 years later Charles III comes to the Vatican with his concubine to pray with the pope. History with all its tragedy and farce is amazing.
  
   St. Margaret Clitheroe pray for us.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• If you're Gen X, pat yourself on the back. You survived the Satanic Panic, the Backmasking on records obsession , the D&D suspicions, the Everybody is Going to Get AIDS hysteria, the Swine Flu and Legionnaire's scare, Acid Rain, Killer Bees, the Computers Are Going to Destroy US,  and the Nuclear Power Is Gonna Kill Us All fears. 
  Brothers and Sisters, if you've ever had to talk a member of the elder or younger generations down because they're freaked out over something they saw on CNN, I salute you. 

You need to read this

•  Chris Jackson is on fire.  I've been enjoying his crisp, unflinching writing  and I have learned much from reading his Substack.  To my knowlege, he is the only one who really dug into the unpleasant details behind one the most recent papal blunders.   On October 11, Pope Leo gave a public address lavishly praising the late Fr. Lorenzo Milani.  He was following in the footsteps of his predecessor. Back in June, 2017, Pope Francis visited Fr. Milani's grave and called him a role model for priests. Who was Fr. Milani? Chris Jackson answers that question and it's really bad. 
  
  If you read up on Fr. Milani, I suggest that you have an Alka Seltzer packet near by and remove any children who might be reading over your shoulder from the room.  I don't think I can be shocked by anything Vatican related anymore but I certainly can be disgusted and I definitely was when I read the quotes from Fr. Milani's own writings.
  
  In recent days I have  read people's defenses of Pope Leo saying that since Milani has been dead for 58 years, Leo didn't know about his private life and was praising his public ministry.   
  
  Phooey!
  
  When my bosses go out to make speeches they have me do research and send them a thorough background report on their  topic so they don't make fools of themselves. You can't tell me there was not even  ONE librarian in the entire Vatican who could have looked up Fr. Milani's putrid writings and sent a bunch of PDF attachments to Leo's assistant. Either the Vatican research staff is incompetent and failed to  let Leo XIV,  know that he'd be praising a vicious minded, nasty old communist who longed to prey on boys or that part of history was ignored by the very personage who gave the public address. The people who are still making excuses  will probably be the same ones making pitiful  excuses five years from now. 
 

Depo Provera- no birth, no control and apparently, cancer

I  read yesterday that over 1,000 women are suing Pfizer. Their complaint is that Depo Provera, which has been around since 1954, and was approved for use in the US in 1992, caused their brain cancers.  On Twitter the comments, particularly from young men, were not kind. It's true that dosing with chemicals to shut down your  reproductive system is dangerous. I'm sure that privately many of those women wish now that they had chosen either the baby who might be their comfort now or shown self control but guys, Depo wasn't just marketed towards  feminist Western middle class married and single women. In 1967, it was tested on poor black women in the South. These women weren't able to give informed consent because  they weren't honestly told what the shot could do and since the company "lost" over 90% of the patient medical records we don't even know how many deaths and side effects there were. For all we know, a few of the women who are suing might be in their 80s  and from that original cohort of test subjects.  In the Third World it was tested on Kenyan, Thai and Mexican women. It's still pushed heavily to African women.

I remember hearing a friend tell me approvingly, that one of her friends, who worked in the foster care system,  planned to start her teenaged foster child on DP because the kid was flirtatious with grown men and pregnancy was inevitable unless something was done.  Was that really true or was it just what the foster mother was saying? I'll never know. I just hope that poor kid is okay today, wherever she is. 

Depo Provera has always reminded me of Norplant, which was first developed in 1966, by scientists working for an outfit called the Population Council. The name alone should cause raised eyebrows. Norplant was tested on Chilean women and pushed heavily towards poor black teenagers and women on welfare. In Baltimore, girls could get Norplant at school, and without parental consent. I can still recall my shock and suspicion when it was announced that Norplant would be offered to girls in one high school located in the poorest section of my home town of DC. Eventually 50,000 women sued and Norplant is no longer available in the United States. Wyeth, the manufacturer of Norplant never lost a single lawsuit but it sure paid out a lot of out of court settlements.

 In the case of DP, many foolish, selfish women took the shot and many young girls were pressured/encouraged into mortal sin by authority figures telling them DP was "for their own protection," and now apparently many are suffering. Perhaps we are witnessing the beginning of the end of DP being sold in America. We'll see how the class action suit goes. Lord, have mercy!