Silent Servants...
... of the Used, Abused, and Utterly Screwed Up.
A Secular Franciscan looks at the world...
with a more jaundiced eye than ever...
and lots of ellipses for you to fill in the missing text...
(with thanks to Thomas S. Klise for the title)
"The head of the eurozone's bailout fund is beginning attempts to persuade China to invest in a scheme to help rescue member countries facing debt crises."I really think that it's about time the world looks at a different form of 'finance', one that doesn't put one group or country in a position of power over another...
that the media is responsible for a great many of our ills. "The head of Vienna's Roman Catholic community ruled out sweeping changes demanded by dissident priests and said there could be "serious conflict" if they defied Church teaching on celibacy or give communion to remarried divorcees."An Anglican seminarian once quoted me in his thesis after a lengthy and involved conversation we had on the issue of modern communications and the Church. It may be the only thought I've ever had worth quoting as it didn't lead to the rejection of his thesis. In a nutshell (and certainly not worth quoting) instantaneous communications - even as they were in the early 1980s - are in a large part responsible for the current state of affairs in the Catholic Church, I believe. I won't bother going any further than that. My thoughts are never worth quoting anyway (so don't quote me)...
"Holland is to become the latest European country to ban the burka, despite the fact that fewer than 100 Dutch women are thought to wear the face-covering Islamic dress."
" Bruneseau found a number of interesting artifacts during his explorations, ... to the skeleton of an orangutan that had escaped from a zoo several years previously."I feel most sad thinking about an intelligent animal that took refuge from humans in the sewers and died there, not understanding where he was and why he had been held prisoner. (I've said before that I relate too well to the animals and not well enough to the humans.)
"The Vatican has expressed shock at raids, including a "violation" of a cathedral crypt, by Belgian police investigating alleged child sex abuse."This goes beyond investigation directly toward a deliberate slap in the Vatican's face. Drilling holes in crypts. Good grief!
any countries willingness to investigate and prosecute war crimes as much as it shows the inhumanity of war and of the perpetrators of war.
they've retained more of their religious culture and it will work out better for them?"Well-behaved prisoners in Georgia are being offered the chance to spend time in a monastery to serve out their sentences, as part of a plan to reduce prison overcrowding, Tom Esslemont reports from Tbilisi."It's sponsored by the State Church...
