Tag Archives: stupidity

Waking the Sleeping Killer: B-Movie Horror, the Plague, and Two Flus

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"[Y]our scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should." – Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park

Scott Paulsen cracks me up. 🙂

"Fellas! Come in here! Look what I just made!"

"This week, government scientists awakened a sleeping killer, when they were successful in genetically recreating an influenza virus last seen in 1918. Using preserved lung tissue samples from two soldiers and a frozen Alaskan woman, each of whom succumbed to horrible, painful suffering deaths, the team of scientists brought one of the worst killers in the history of the world back to life from a dormant state."

"Gee. What could possibly go wrong? "

Read the rest.

Fulfilling Your Sunday Obligation

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On Friday, October 21 and Saturday, October 22, 2005, a Total Catholic Education Conference, will be held at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, in downtown Pittsburgh. The conference is directed at at those who share in the teaching mission of the Church, including CCD catechists, campus ministers, priests, religious and other Catholic laity. The registration guidebook is impressive in terms of both content and packaging, and sessions feature heavy hitters like Bishop Bradley, Michael Aquilina, and Kimberly and Scott Hahn.

However, the full-page announcement for Eucharistic Liturgy on Saturday at 3.30 pm, features the legend, "This Mass fulfills your Sunday obligation" and that little line was more informative to me, than all the rest of the impressive text. The late Fr. John Baptist "JB" Fernandes, S.J., impressed upon me that ‘fulfilling an obligation’ is one of the least appropriate of reasons to go to Sunday Mass. The Lord wants us to attend Mass because He loves us, and we ought to be going, because we love Him. Surely the participating Catholic educators should understand this perspective. I dearly hope so, because it would be a shame if those in their charge, were only taught the ‘obligatory’ perspective.

Would it kill the participants to attend Mass on Sunday as well? Some, if not many, may actually do so, for reasons just highlighted. That begs the question, what is the understanding of the people organizing this conference, as regards Sunday Mass? Do they think of it primarily as an obligation? Further, do they believe, that the question of ‘whether or not the obligation is fulfilled’ would be uppermost in most participants’ minds? With the surfeit of contact information available in the guidebook, whoever (and I sincerely hope that would be, if not zero, a really small number) was concerned about that, could have find out that information for themselves. Maybe the organizers were anticipating a flood of emails/phonecalls and therefore decided to be proactive – pragmatism trumped spirituality.

We Are ChurchHeresy

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"Oct. 04 (CWNews.com) – The international dissident movement ‘We Are Church‘ is issuing an appeal to the Catholic bishops, gathered in Rome for the Synod, to confront the ‘real’ problems relating to the Eucharist. At an October 4 press conference in Rome, the dissident group called for reconsideration of the key Catholic doctrine on the transubstantiation, an end to the ‘hierarchical monopoly’ on the sacraments, and approval of shared communion with other Christian denominations."

….

"Specifically, the dissident group called for abandoning the notion that the Eucharist is a sacrifice, and instead saying that the mass is ‘in memory of the entire life of Jesus.’ The group called for ‘full freedom of philosophical and theological interpretation of that mystery.’ We Are Church argued that the dogma of the transubstantiation– the teaching that the bread and wine at Mass are transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ– is unacceptable to Protestants, and thus impedes ecumenical unity. The group decried traditional forms of Catholic piety, such as Eucharistic adoration and processions, as tending to make an ‘idol’ of the Blessed Sacrament."

*rolls eyes* This is infuriating and comical at the same time. To paraphrase the Big Lebowski:

"Your revolution is over, Ms. Heizer et. al. Condolences. The heretics lost. My advice is to do what your intellectual forebears did; become Protestants, folks. The heretics will always lose."

William Bennett’s Modest Proposal

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"I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout."

….

"For first, as I have already observed, it would greatly lessen the number of papists, with whom we are yearly overrun, being the principal breeders of the nation as well as our most dangerous enemies…"

– Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal

"But I do know that it’s true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could, if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down." – William Bennett

Does nobody else see the similarity? MSM certainly doesn’t.