Almanacs “The Almanac - Jan.19 - Post Chronicle” plus 4 more |
- The Almanac - Jan.19 - Post Chronicle
- When it comes to integrity issues, and election to baseball's Hall of ... - Minnpost.com
- Legendary Radio Show A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION with Garrison Keillor ... - PR Inside
- Matt C. Abbott - RenewAmerica
- On Native Ground - American Reporter
| The Almanac - Jan.19 - Post Chronicle Posted: 19 Jan 2010 04:43 AM PST Today is Tuesday, Jan. 19, the 19th day of 2010 with 346 to follow. The moon is waxing. The morning stars are Mercury and Mars. The evening stars are Saturn, Venus, Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune. Those born on this date are under the sign of Capricorn. They include Scottish engineer James Watt, inventor of the steam engine, in 1736; Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in 1807; American short story writer and poet Edgar Allan Poe in 1809; English metallurgist Henry Bessemer in 1813; French post-Impressionist painter Paul Cezanne in 1839; billiards player Rudolf "Minnesota Fats" Wanderone, in 1913; singer and Broadway actor John Raitt in 1917; Ebony magazine founder John H. Johnson in 1918; former U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar in 1920 (age 90); actors Jean Stapleton in 1923 (age 87), actor Fritz Weaver in 1926 (age 84) and Tippi Hedren in 1930 (age 80); television newscaster Robert MacNeil in 1931 (age 79); singer Phil Everly of the Everly Brothers in 1939 (age 71); British stage singer and actor Michael Crawford ("The Phantom of the Opera") in 1942 (age 68); actress Shelley Fabares in 1944 (age 66): singers Janis Joplin in 1943 and Dolly Parton in 1946 (age 64); and singer/actors Michael Crawford in 1942 (age 68) and Desi Arnaz Jr. in 1953 (age 57); NFL football player Junior Seau in 1969 (age 41). On this date in history: In 1861, Georgia seceded from the Union and joined the Confederacy. In 1920, the U.S. Senate voted against the country joining the League of Nations. In 1938, the Spanish Nationalist air force bombed Barcelona and Valencia, killing 700 civilians and wounding hundreds more. In 1975, China published a new constitution that adopted the precepts and policies of Mao Zedong. In 1977, U.S. President Gerald Ford pardoned Iva Toguri D'Aquino, who had been convicted of treason for her World War II Japanese propaganda broadcasts as Tokyo Rose. Also in 1977, snowfall was recorded in Miami and the Bahamas. It was the first recorded snowfall in Miami. In 1994, ice skater Tonya Harding's former husband, Jeff Gillooly, was arrested and charged with conspiracy in the attack two weeks earlier on Harding rival Nancy Kerrigan. In 1995, Russian forces captured the presidential palace in the rebel republic of Chechnya. In 1999, NATO warned Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic that he must honor the 1998 cease-fire negotiated with the rebels in Kosovo or face airstrikes. In 2001, U.S. President Bill Clinton announced he had made a deal with the independent prosecutor that would prevent him from being indicted after he left office. In 2003, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the Bush administration might allow Saddam Hussein to seek safe haven in another country as a way to avoid war. In 2005, the Southeast Asian tsunami death toll was raised to 220,000, including more than 166,000 killed in Indonesia. Also in 2005, the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted 16-2 to approve the nomination of Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state. In 2006, monitors for the Dec. 15 Iraq parliamentary elections validated the vote despite reports of "irregularities." In 2007, former U.S. Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, the only member of Congress to plead guilty in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison. In 2008, the majority of black voters in a new poll, a reported 58 percent indicated a change of direction by supporting Barrack Obama over Hillary Clinton for president. Also in 2008, U.S. President George Bush said that although the economy is growing, the rate of growth has slowed and "there's a risk of a downturn." He called it "a challenging period for our economy." In 2009, Iranian intelligence officials said their forces had dismantled a U.S.-backed spy network involving several nations aimed at toppling the country's Islamic regime. Also in 2009, rescue teams dug through the rubble of a Sao Paolo, Brazil, church looking for survivors. At least seven people died and about 100 were hurt when the church's concrete roof collapsed during services. A thought for the day: In "As You Like It," William Shakespeare wrote: "All the world's a stage, "And all the men and women merely players. "They have their exits and their entrances, "And one man in his time plays many parts, "His acts being seven ages." (c) UPI Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. | |
| When it comes to integrity issues, and election to baseball's Hall of ... - Minnpost.com Posted: 19 Jan 2010 06:23 AM PST Hall enshrinement is not a right. It's a privilege reserved for the best of the best, in achievement and character. It resonates with me when Hall members like Jim Rice and Goose Gossage say steroid users don't belong, when Ryne Sandberg comes out against former Cubs teammate Sammy Sosa's possible enshrinement, and when Hank Aaron predicts some Hall of Famers will walk off the Cooperstown stage in protest the first time a steroid user is enshrined. That's not a unanimous feeling. Willie McCovey told the Associated Press he would vote for McGwire, if he had one, because his record chase did so much for baseball. And last February, Mike Schmidt — who in 2005 told Bob Costas on HBO that he would have taken steroids himself had they been available when he played — said he would welcome admitted juicer Alex Rodriguez in the Hall if the writers voted him in. Certainly, it's a tough issue that reasonable minds can debate. The answer for me is easy: Bar the cheats. And that includes Pete Rose for betting on baseball. We can't pretend they never played; baseball will never expunge their records. However, we can deny them the highest honor. But if integrity matters, you can't just use it to keep players out. It has to be applied to allow players in, especially those with credentials that some voters consider borderline. That's why Dawson deserves to be in, and Larkin and Raines, too. The statistical arguments against Dawson are fair. He only had one dominant season (his 1987 MVP year with Cubs), he rarely led the league in anything, had only four 100-RBI seasons and a .323 career on-base percentage, and fell 62 home runs of 500 in his career. But the numbers don't reflect Dawson's stature as a leader, the example he set on the field, and the respect that opposing players had for him. I covered Dawson near the end of his career, in Boston in 1993 and '94, when his knees were shot and he was primarily a designated hitter. I had seen plenty of Dawson on television in his Montreal Expos heyday — the speed, the cannon arm, the remarkably quick bat. But several images from Dawson's first spring training with the Red Sox left an indelible impression that made voting for him an automatic. Raines credits Dawson for helping him overcome his cocaine addiction when they played for the Expos in the early 1980s. They grew so close after Raines emerged from rehab that Raines named his son Andre after Dawson. So Raines was a natural person to seek out while reporting a Sunday feature on Dawson for the Portland Press Herald. When I approached Raines in the White Sox clubhouse in Sarasota, he had just finished a table tennis game with his two sons. He seemed indifferent until I told him I was writing about Dawson. Then his expression changed. "How much time you got?" he said, offering a chair. Half an hour later, Raines was still talking. That was the spring Dawson nearly impaled himself on a chain-link fence running full speed for a foul ball during an exhibition game. For a franchise whose players often jogged to first on ground balls, it was a remarkable moment that sent an important message to the kids in the dugout: If Granddaddy Hawk can bust it on arthritic knees in a game that doesn't count, I'd better, too. Dawson and another veteran, Billy Hatcher, greatly influenced one kid who lockered near them, a first baseman named Mo Vaughn, the American League MVP two years later. I saw more of Raines later in the 1990s, covering him with the Yankees for the Newark Star-Ledger. Like Dawson in Boston, Raines' best years were behind him. But his savvy and bubbly personality rubbed off on the talented kid a couple of lockers away, Derek Jeter, now the Yankee captain. Raines' statistical achievements get him to the door of the Hall — 808 stolen bases (fourth all-time), an .847 success rate (second), 2,605 hits and seven All-Star selections — and his leadership swings it open. Since I mainly covered American League teams, I did not see much of Larkin, who captained the Reds from 1997 until his retirement in 2004. Larkin's achievements stand out — 12 All-Star selections, nine Silver Slugger Awards, three Gold Gloves, one MVP, and more career walks (939) than strikeouts (817). But teammates and opponents praised his leadership and presence. That's important. And as we sift through the aftermath of the steroids era, those of us who spent so much time around major league clubhouses and batting cages need to use our eyes and ears as well as our Baseball Almanacs when our Hall ballots arrive. More than ever, integrity and character matter. The Hall is a better place with people like Dawson, Raines and Larkin in it, and the cheats out. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. | |
| Legendary Radio Show A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION with Garrison Keillor ... - PR Inside Posted: 19 Jan 2010 04:14 AM PST 2010-01-19 13:16:01 - TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwire) -- 01/19/10 -- Cineplex Entertainment (TSX: CGX.UN)
Advance tickets are now available online at www.cineplex.com/events :
A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION WITH GARRISON KEILLOR - LIVE IN HD! will feature special guests as well as regular show performers such as actors Sue Scott and Tim Russell, sound-effects wizards Tom Keith and Fred Newman and the Guy's All-Star Shoe Band led by keyboardist, composer and arranger Richard Dworsky, with Pat Donohue (guitar), Peter Johnson (percussion) and Gary Raynor (bass).
For more than 35 years, legions of fans have tuned in to Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion to be entertained by his low-key reflections, sharp insights, and trademark humor. Each week, A Prairie Home Companion is heard by more than 4 million listeners of every age, on more than 600 public radio stations across the country. The show - performed live on stage in front of an audience - has been host to thousands of wonderful guest artists, little-known and world-renowned, who've brought the audience to their feet. And there has been plenty of adventure along the way, including broadcasts from Canada, Ireland, Scotland, England, Germany, Iceland, and almost every one of the 50 states.
With his usual understated wit, Garrison Keillor noted: "After all these years, we're starting to get the hang of doing this show and feeling like we're ready for the big screen. Let people see what Dusty and Lefty and Guy Noir look like, and how the guy does the sound effects, and make sure the News from Lake Wobegon is not read from a script. It's a radio show that has lasted 35 years and now you can see why."
"Garrison Keillor's live radio show, A Prairie Home Companion, is filled with drama, stories, music and comedy, that is rarely experienced on the big screen by guests surrounded by an audience," said Pat Marshall, Vice President, Communications and Investor Relations, Cineplex Entertainment. "We are pleased to partner with Prairie Home Productions, American Public Media, and BY Experience Inc. to bring this unique show to guests."
A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION WITH GARRISON KEILLOR - LIVE IN HD! is produced by Prairie Home Productions, American Public Media and BY Experience, Inc and presented in the following Cineplex Entertainment theatres: BRITISH COLUMBIA Coquitlam SilverCity Coquitlam Cinemas, 170 Schoolhouse Street Kamloops Cineplex Odeon Aberdeen Mall Cinemas, 700-1320 Trans Canada Highway Kelowna Famous Players Orchard Plaza 5 Cinemas, 160-1876 Cooper Road Nanaimo Galaxy Cinemas Nanaimo, 213-4750 Rutherford Road Vancouver Scotiabank Theatre Vancouver, 900 Burrard Street Victoria SilverCity Victoria Cinemas, 3130 Tillicum Road ALBERTA Calgary Scotiabank Theatre Chinook, 6455 Macleod Trail SW Edmonton Scotiabank Theatre Edmonton, 8882-170 Street Lethbridge Galaxy Cinemas Lethbridge, 501-1st Avenue SW Red Deer Galaxy Cinemas Red Deer, 357-37400 Highway #2 MANITOBA Winnipeg SilverCity Polo Park Cinemas, 817 St. James Street SASKATCHEWAN Moose Jaw Galaxy Cinemas Moose Jaw, 1235 Main Street N Regina Galaxy Cinemas Regina, 420 McCarthy Boulevard N Saskatoon Galaxy Cinemas Saskatoon, 347 2nd Avenue ONTARIO Gloucester SilverCity Gloucester Cinemas, 2385 City Park Drive Guelph Galaxy Cinemas Guelph, 485 Woodlawn Road W Kingston Cineplex Odeon Gardiners Road Cinemas, 626 Gardiners Road London Cineplex Odeon Westmount & VIP Cinemas, 755 Wonderland Road S Niagara Falls Cineplex Odeon Niagara Square Cinemas, 7555 Montrose Road Oakville SilverCity Oakville Cinemas, 3531 Wyecroft Road Sault Ste. Marie Galaxy Cinemas Sault Ste. Marie, 293 Bay Street Sudbury SilverCity Sudbury Cinemas, 355 Barrydowne Road Thunder Bay SilverCity Thunder Bay Cinemas, 850 North May Street Toronto Cineplex Odeon Sheppard Cinemas, 4861 Yonge Street Scotiabank Theatre Toronto, 259 Richmond Street W Waterloo Galaxy Cinemas Waterloo, 550 King Street N Windsor Cineplex Odeon Devonshire Mall Cinemas, 3100 Howard Avenue QUEBEC Kirkland Coliseum Kirkland Cinemas, 3200 rue Jean YvesFor more information, visit www.cineplex.com/events :  .
About Cineplex Entertainment
About Prairie Home Productions
About American Public Media®
About BY Experience
Contacts:
Cineplex Entertainment
Liberty Ink
Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. | |
| Posted: 19 Jan 2010 12:04 AM PST By Matt C. Abbott The following is a reprint of a chapter (minus endnotes) from Catholic attorney/scholar Peter B. Kelly's book Cleansing Fire (which I've featured in previous columns as well — here, here and here). The chapter contains substantial information from another book: Index of Leading Catholic Indicators: The Church since Vatican II, authored by Kenneth C. Jones. Many thanks to Mr. Kelly and Mr. Jones for allowing me to reprint their material.
A Statistical Analysis "The message (of the Third Secret of Fatima) was not to be opened before 1960. I asked Lucy: 'Why this date?' And she answered me: 'Because then it will be clearer (mais claro).' This made me think that the message was prophetic in tone, precisely because the prophesies, as we see in Sacred Scripture, are covered with a veil of mystery. ... In 1960, she said, the message would be clearer."
Re: Statistical Analysis of the Post-Vatican II Collapse of the Catholic Church in America Source: Jones, Kenneth C.: Index of Leading Catholic Indicators: The Church Since Vatican II Roman Catholic Books, P. O. Box 2286, Fort Collins, CO 80522-2286. (Original ISBN: 0-9728688-0-1) In the introduction to his book, Kenneth Jones begins by accurately explaining that when Pope John XXIII began his Second Vatican Council in 1962, the American Catholic Church "was in the midst of an unprecedented period of growth." He reports that "bishops were ordaining record numbers of priests and building scores of seminaries to handle the surge in vocations. Young women by the thousands gave up lives of comfort for the austerity of the convent. These nuns taught millions of students in the huge system of parochial and private schools. The ranks of Catholics swelled as parents brought in their babies for baptism and adult converts flocked to the Church. Lines outside the confessional were long, and by some estimates three quarters of the faithful went to Mass every Sunday." There is an old American proverb that is still in constant use because it is both practical and profound. The saying is used to both preserve successes and avoid unnecessary failures on both a large and small scale. If only Pope John XXIII had chosen to reject those Modernist voices looking for a Conciliar opportunity to derail the efficient and on-time train of Roman Catholicism by simply reciting, with the Italian accent of a practical peasant: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." John XXIII was dubbed "Good" Pope John by his manipulators and Modernist "puppet masters" — as if to distinguish him from his saintly, sophisticated and uncompromising predecessors who the Modernists must have considered "bad" because they saw their corrupting progressive agendas for what they were. Poor Pope John! He appeared to have been selected by the Modernists in the conclave precisely because of his naïveté as a curial outsider and a non-theologian diplomat who could be easily manipulated and sold on the false promise of a new Council. If even the inside player, Paul VI, could be subsequently betrayed into tears by the Modernist plan to re-spin Lumen Gentium after the Council, leading him to compose the nota explicativa, Pope John was a pathetically easy mark. He was a pious man, so giving him the benefit of the doubt, he was probably unaware that he was being completely used by the Modernists to bring on a Council intended to stall-out a revving Traditional Church. Pope John gave the ironic opening speech at the Council. There he chided those Catholics who saw no need for a Council when everything was going so well. He said: "We feel we must disagree with those prophets of gloom, who are always forecasting disaster, as though the end of the world were at hand." The Holy Ghost led Pope John to his election and, as a favor, must have blessed him with truthful, if gloomy, prophets to guide him regarding his Second Vatican Council. But just as Moses struck the rock twice, even God's chosen leader can fail to always use good judgment. Pope John gave the order that marched his Church into a complete disaster — that, at least, was forecast by some. Mr. Jones had gathered and presented in his book various American body counts resulting from the internal ecclesial war that tumbled out on to the streets as a result of Vatican II. If the goal of the enemy of the Church was to strategically diminish the Catholic Church as an effective organization in saving souls for eternity, the enemy must have been gloating since 1965 when the Council ended. Jones' presentation speaks for itself: "Priests: After skyrocketing from about 27,000 in 1930 to 58,000 in 1965, the number of priests in the United States thereafter dropped to 45,000 in 2002. By 2020, there will be about 31,000 priests — and only 15,000 will be under the age of 70. Right now there are more priests age 80 to 84 than there are age 30 to 34.
"Priest-less parishes: About 3 percent of U.S. parishes, or 549, were without a resident priest in 1965. In 2002 there were 2,928 priest-less parishes, about 15 percent of U.S. parishes. By 2020, a quarter of all parishes, 4,656, will have no priest. "Seminaries: Between 1965 and 2002, the number of seminarians dropped from 49,000 to 4,700 — a 90 percent decrease. Without any students, seminaries across the country have been sold or shuttered. There were 596 seminaries in 1965, and only 200 in 2002. There were over three times as many total seminarians in 1930 as in 2002. There were over seven times as many religious order seminarians in 1945 as in 2002. There were over three times as many diocesan seminarians in 1945 as in 2002. There were more seminaries in 1955 than in 2002. Between 1965 and 2002, the number of U.S. diocesan seminaries decreased by 33 percent. In that same thirty seven year period, the number of U.S. religious seminaries decreased by 75 percent. "Sisters: 180,000 sisters were the backbone of the American Catholic education and health systems in 1965. In 2002, there were 75,000 sisters, with an average age of 68. By 2020, the number of sisters will drop to 40,000 — and of these, only 21,000 will be age 70 or under. In 1965, 104,000 sisters were teaching, while in 2002 there were only 8,200 teachers. That is a reduction of about 92 percent. There were over nine times as many sisters teaching in 1945 as in 2002. "Brothers: The number of professed brothers decreased from about 12,000 in 1965 to 5,700 in 2002, with a further drop to 3,100 in 2020. Between 1965 and 2002, the number of brothers teaching decreased by 80 percent. There were three times as many brothers teaching in 1945 as in 2002. "Religious Orders: The religious orders will soon be virtually nonexistent in the United States. For example, in 1965 there were 5,277 Jesuit priests and 3,559 seminarians; in 2000 there were 3,172 priests and 389 seminarians. There were 2,534 OFM Franciscan priests and 2,251 seminarians in 1965; in 2000 there were 1,492 priests and 60 seminarians. There were 2,434 Christian Brothers in 1965 and 912 seminarians; in 2000 there were 959 Brothers and 7 seminarians. There were 1,148 Redemptorist priests in 1965 and 1,128 seminarians; in 2000 there were 349 priests and 24 seminarians. Every major religious order in the United States mirrors these statistics of decline. "High Schools: Between 1965 and 2002 the number of diocesan high schools fell from 1,566 to 786. At the same time the number of students dropped from almost 700,000 to 386,000. There were more private Catholic high schools in 1945 than in 2002. There were more than twice as many diocesan high schools in 1945 as in 2002. "Parochial Grade Schools: There were 10,503 parochial grade schools in 1965 and 6,623 in 2002. The number of students plummeted from 4.5 million to 1.9 million. There were more parochial grade schools in 1930 than in 2002. "Sacramental Life: In 1965 there were 1.3 million infant baptisms, in 2002 there were 1 million. There were more infant baptisms in 1955 than in 2002. (In the same period the number of Catholics in the United States rose from 45 million to 65 million.) In 1965 there were 126,000 adult baptisms — converts — in 2002 there were 80,000. In 1965 there were 352,000 Catholic marriages, in 2002 there were 256,000. There were more Catholic marriages in 1950 than in 2002. There were extremely few annulments in the U.S. in 1968. In 1968 there were 338 annulments, in 2002 there were 50,000. Jones quotes the highly respected canon lawyer Edward Peters from his November, 1996 Homiletic and Pastoral Review article Annulments in America: "According to the 1994 Catholic Almanac, 59,220,000 American Catholics make up 6.2% of the world's 949,578,000 Catholic population. In 1991, the U.S. accounted for 63,900 (79%) of the world's 80,700 annulments." "Mass attendance: A 1958 Gallup poll reported that 74 percent of Catholics went to Sunday Mass in 1958. A 1994 University of Notre Dame study found that the attendance rate was 26.6 percent. A more recent study by Fordham University professor James Lothian concluded that 65 percent of Catholics went to Sunday Mass in 1965, while the rate dropped to 25 percent in 2000." Jones points out that "Mass attendance of U.S. Catholics fell precipitously in the decade following the liturgical changes and has continued to decline ever since." "This decline" he writes, "is not an isolated phenomenon, confined solely to the Church in America. In England and Wales, the time pattern of Mass attendance has been just as bad, perhaps even worse." Jones' next point is critical: "Church attendance of Protestants, in contrast, has followed a much different path. For most of the period it was without any discernable trend, either up or down. In recent years it has actually risen. The notion that the Catholic fall off was simply one part of a larger societal trend, therefore, receives absolutely no support in these data." But these sad statistics may even miss the worse news. That news is that the actual spiritual state of the remaining "Catholics" may be even more weakened than these miserable, falling numbers reveal. That is because those reduced numbers of "Catholic" people are still baptizing their fewer babies, are still going to deficient Novus Ordo Masses, and are still following the graduates of homosexualized seminaries. They are led by priests and religious who probably do not, doctrinally, believe what the Catholic Church requires them to believe. In other words, even these positive numbers — drastically reduced though they are — may be extremely soft because these positive "Catholics" may be practical Protestants, or even profoundly non-Christian in their beliefs. Only 10 percent of lay religion teachers, Jones writes in citing a 2000 Notre Dame poll, accept Catholic Church teaching on artificial birth control. Although even Vatican II taught that the Eucharist was the source and summit of the Catholic faith, a New York Times/CBS poll revealed that 70 percent of Catholics age 18-44 believe the Eucharist is merely a "symbolic reminder" of Jesus. How ironic that the post-Vatican II freefall from the faith even left behind what good Traditional teaching could be gleaned from the sometimes ambiguous Council documents. Jones presents the following data compiled from the National Catholic Reporter of October 29, 1999:
1999 Without going to Church every Sunday: 77 Without obeying Church teaching on birth control: 72 Without obeying Church teaching on divorce and remarriage: 65 Without obeying Church teaching on abortion: 53 Without believing that in the Mass the bread and wine actually become the Body and Blood of Jesus: 38 Without their marriage being approved by the Catholic Church: 68 Without donating their time or money to help the poor: 56 Without donating their time or money to help the parish: 60 Without believing that Jesus physically rose from the dead: 23
At their twice-yearly meetings, rather than address the obvious loss of faith among their flocks and the eternal destination of souls, the American bishops prefer to play Congress as they debate immigration reform, economic policy, nuclear weapons and many other popular liberal political issues they lack both the competence and the authority to change. Then, after doodling up silly political documents that no one will take seriously, if they are ever even read at all, they return to their comfortable gay-friendly, Tradition-intolerant, and Democratic National Committee-inspired chancery offices to "consolidate" parishes and close down more schools. Of course, they might focus on some diocesan-wide teaching initiatives. Unfortunately these initiatives all too often have nothing to do with the teaching of Traditional Catholic theology and a great deal to do with the sex education of children in their dioceses — the same children they have so terribly failed to protect from predominantly clerical homosexual abuse. A relative few American bishops might worry about the vocation crisis and the best ones might even ordain a small number of seminarians each year. However, usually a relatively small subset of these ordained seminarians will be heterosexual and not suffering from what even the post-conciliar Catechism of the Catholic Church called, in paragraph 2357, "an inherently disordered condition." Even fewer will hold a Traditional Catholic theology that Pius XII or even John XXIII would have approved of. The future is bleak. All in all, there is very little to inspire a faithful Catholic heterosexual young man to enter into one of the remaining seminaries in America these days. Of course, the few men fitting that description would probably not make it past the liberal feminist, pro-homosexual woman who is the seminaries' gate keeper. Assuming by some fluke the good man gets through the admissions process, he is likely to be forced out at other points before ordination lest he might inspire more young men to pursue his faithful kind of priesthood. We should not be surprised. The elimination or suppression of the faithful clergy has been Satan's plan since the beginning. Since martyrdom tends to make more, not less, faithful priests, the preferred tactic by the Evil One is to make priests appear effeminate, ineffective, uninspiring and unnecessary. That approach has been working well for him lately. Without priests the sacramental nature of the Church will disappear. Then the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church will become, save for a few faithful Traditional remnants, just another Protestant church without the sacraments. Such a weakened, sickly entity occupying what little real estate it has not already sold off, torn down or abandoned will easily fit into the mosaic of a one world, Masonic religion that is anything but holy, anything but life-giving, and anything but sanctifying. May God help the remnants of Christ's true Church.
Related link: "The teacher, with the knife, in the (Catholic) parish school?" © Matt C. Abbott
Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. | |
| On Native Ground - American Reporter Posted: 18 Jan 2010 09:05 PM PST On Native Ground | MY BACK PAGES: WATCHING MY CRAFT CHANGE OVER 30 YEARS by Randolph T. Holhut American Reporter Correspondent Dummerston, Vt.
Printable version of this story DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- I got my first job in journalism at the age of 18 in the spring of 1980. I was a freshman in college and landed a night shift gig at WSPR, a radio station in Springfield, Mass. News came over an Associated Press teletype machine at 65 words a minute. Changing the heavily inked ribbons was always a chore, not to mention making sure the paper didn't run out. Stories were typed on battered old manual typewriters that dated back to the 1940s. Computers? Still a new-fangled technology that hadn't yet seeped down to this level of the business. The Internet? There were only a few hundred people using it. If you needed to look up an address, you got a phone book or a city directory. If you needed to confirm a stray fact, you pulled out The World Almanac. They were still using reel-to-reel tape recorders, and a razor blade and Scotch tape were your tools for editing audio. It was still an analog world, with dials and meters and black telephones with dials. In the fall of 1985, when I started working in newspapers, video display terminals were cutting edge technology. Two years later, I went out and got my first computer - a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 100 laptop. With its built-in 300 baud modem, I could file a story anyplace I could find a pay phone. Cellphones? That was as futuristic as the communicators they used on "Star Trek." There were still a few smokers in the first city room I worked in. The barroom downstairs was still a place where you could find reporters between shifts. The building also shuddered just a little from the giant presses when they fired up, and the stairwells were coated with a thin film of ink. That first newspaper company I worked for - the Worcester (Mass.) Telegram and Evening Gazette - had four morning and six afternoon editions and a dozen bureaus in the county it published in. There were two separate news staffs, and even though they worked for the same company, the competition was still fierce. One of my several jobs was working in the morgue - the newspaper's library - where we still clipped stories out of each day's edition and filed them away in envelopes. When a reporter or editor needed background on a subject, my job was to retrieve the right folders with the right clippings in a room filled with hundreds of cabinets with files that went back decades. Pneumatic tubes brought pictures up to the composing room, and page proofs came down to the copy desk the same way. The darkroom was just that, a dark room filled with a dozen photo enlargers and photographers rushing make prints on deadline. I eventually learned how to do darkroom work and how to go from taking the film out of the camera to producing a finished print in under 30 minutes. The photos from the AP came one at a time from a LaserPhoto printer, in 8 minute intervals. Waiting for photos was a constant hassle. The old photographers I encountered then were old enough to have used Speed Graphics - the bulky, hard-to-focus 4 x 5 inch cameras that were the newspaper standard from the 1920s to the 1960s. The old compositors I encountered then were old enough to remember linotypes and the smell of melting lead. The old editors I encountered then were old enough to remember pastepots and black pencils and making and remaking a newspaper on the fly with a few written instructions and a lot of teamwork in the mechanical departments. Pagination - making a pages on a computer - was just starting to creep into use. I remember the first such unit - a Mac Plus - which was used to make graphic. Within 10 years of seeing that Mac for the first time, I would be making pages on a computer. The compositors - the wizards with Exacto knifes that could do just about anything you asked, just don't touch the type, please - were out of a job. Automation changed lots of things. I was replaced by a computer terminal in the paper's morgue. Indexing was now done with a few keystrokes, not with a heavy steel straight edge tearing pages. Digital photography made the darkroom obsolete. The teletype printers disappeared, and wire service news came flying into the mainframe computers at thousands of words a minute. And now I feel as ancient as the people I met when I started out, the tribe that started out in the 1940s and 1950s, when newspapers were king and the work that reporters did was the stuff of movies. Twenty years ago this month, I went through my first buyout. The T & G had been sold two years before, and changes were in the works. Being a junior member of the staff who lashed three part-time jobs into something of a living, I was thrown overboard immediately. But I was struck by how many people, the elders of the paper that I looked up to and learned from, chose to take a buyout and leave than stick around and face an uncertain future. Most of that generation left, and I got my first education on the harshness of the newspaper business. The morning and evening papers merged the following year. The T & G's bureaus started to disappear. The presses moved out of the hulking old building on Franklin Street and went to a remote site a few miles away. The papers were sold again, this time to The New York Times Co. They eliminated zoned editions this year and the paper is struggling to survive. Since that bleak Yuletide two decades ago, I've been through three more newspaper sales. I've become an elder, talking about the old days of afternoon papers, pasting-up pages, teletypes and darkrooms to a generation that Googles phone numbers and needs MapQuest to find an address. And I've watched my profession go from fat and sassy to threadbare and dying in one generation. I'm still young enough to be a bridge between the analog and digital eras, and still looking forward to the shape of journalism to come. The tools we have now to tell stories were barely dreamed of when I started out, but I recognize how important they are and working to master them. We just have to remember that the need to tell stories is primal, and that storytellers will always be needed. What will the young reporters I work with now be saying when they look back at their careers 20 years from now? Will they be talking about that gruff and crabby gray-bearded editor they had as their first mentor? The rickety first-generation iMacs that they have to use to write their stories on? The lack of reliable Internet and cellphone service? Or will they talk about working in newspapers at a time when they became quaint relics of a bygone age? My love for the printed page is still abiding, but it's hard to remember what it was like before the Internet, before desktop computers, before digital cameras and voice recorders, before the avalanche of data that pours from the Web each day, before the 24-hour news cycle, before all the changes that I have seen in nearly three decades of broadcast, print and online journalism. The past is a nice place to visit, but the future is still the place I hope to see. Randolph T. Holhut has been a journalist in New England for nearly 30 years. He edited "The George Seldes Reader" (Barricade Books). He can be reached at randyholhut@yahoo.com.
Copyright 2010 Joe Shea The American Reporter. All Rights Reserved.
Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| You are subscribed to email updates from Almanacs - Bing News To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
0 comments:
Post a Comment