You may encounter some news stories that mention a letter Archbishop Milingo sent to His Most Awesomeness B16.
The press accounts I’ve seen, as usual, tend only to give snippets and their own summaries of what it said and do not provide links to the original source. (The press is notiously bad about showing its work. They want us to trust them to get it right, y’see.)
So I tracked down the original.
Here ’tis (below the fold).
A reader writes:
I understand that Pope Benedict XVI presided today at a top-level consultation to discuss questions related to Catholic priests of the Latin rite who have married. One of the points on the agenda reportedly relates to requests for readmission of priests who left the ministry to marry:
"It seems that while many seek permission to return to active ministry, some requests come from priests who are now old and would like at least to be allowed to celebrate Mass once again, even if they cannot return to public ministry (SOURCE.)
I left the Priesthood during a debilitating struggle with Obsessive Compulsive disorder. It was only a few years later that I received effective treatment. I was civilly married also, was dispensed from priestly celebacy recently, and my wife and I have convalidated our marriage.
Here’s my question: is there any basis for me to hope that one day I might be allowed to exercise my Priesthood again? Perhaps in old age if I were a widower (my wife is older than I am)? I would be willing to go to the missions, a quiet monastery, or anything to be able to celebrate Mass and minister again.
God bless you, you are a top-notch Canon Lawyer and Apologist!
Thanks very much, only I should point out that while I do my best to answer canon law questions on occasion, I am not a canon lawyer. Just a simple, country apologist.
I also extend my sympathies regarding your debilitating bout with OCD, and I’ll do my best to answer your question, as well as try to answer questions that I know others are wondering about concerning the meeting Pope Benedict had.
First, let’s review the situation: The pope called a meeting for Thursday (yesterday) of the heads of the Vatican dicasteries (departments). This was the third such meeting he had called. The first one was sooper sekrit, but it is commonly reported that the subject was the possibility of reconciling the SSPX. The second, apparently, was about religious life. And an Italian news agency reported that this week’s was to be about the liberalization of permission for celebrating the Tridentine rite of Mass.
This was not the case, and to clear up confusion on this point, the Vatican press office released the following communique:
The Holy Father has convened for Thursday, November 16, a meeting of the
heads of offices of the Roman Curia to examine [a] the situation created
following the disobedience of Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo, and to
undertake a reflection on [b] requests for dispensation from celibacy as
well as [c] requests for readmission to priestly ministry presented by
married priests in the course of the most recent years. Other topics
are not anticipated on the schedule [SOURCE].
I’ve added the blue (a), (b), and (c) so that folks can see more clearly what the agenda items were.
The reason that these three items are grouped together–as many will surmize–is that excommunicated Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo (a.k.a. "the Mad Archbishop"–at least to me) has not only formed an organization called Married Priests Now! but he has also attempted the ordination of several married men as bishops, meaning that they could ordain other bishops and priests. This creates the basis of a potential schism, like that of the SSPX.
Milingo has denied the intention of creating a schism, but he’s not called "the Mad Archbishop" (by me) for nothing. You can’t trust that he won’t change his mind, especially if things don’t go his way. Then there’s the issue of the men he attempted to consecrate as bishops, which we won’t even go into right now.
The potential for schism here is great, particularly in light of this bit of information from the story that the reader links (which is one of the more insightful stories I have read):
The archbishop plans to hold a convention in the New York City area Dec. 8-10 with 1,000 married priests and their wives.
Now, if there’s one thing that popes hate worse than almost anything, it’s schisms. The pope’s job description involves being the ecumenical center of the Church that holds it together, and from the perspective of the occupant of Peter’s see, schisms are a Very Bad Thing. Popes–or conscientious popes–will go to extreme lengths to avoid them. Pre-16 watched in horror as the Lefebvrists went into schism (he was personally involved in the negotiations with them) and as B16, he certainly doesn’t want a new schism on his watch.
So it’s not surprising that he would hold consultations of how to solve the problem of Milingo. It’s a little surprising that they would release the agenda of this consultation given that it includes the eye-opening elements [b] and [c], and I suspect that if they hadn’t been blindsided by the Italian press that they might have kept the topic of this meeting sooper sekrit as well.
But given the sensitivity of the liberalization of the Tridentine rite (which they’ve been having trouble with the French bishops over lately), I guess they felt that it was the lesser of two evils to announce what they were really talking about, rather than let this meeting be portrayed in the press as the final consultation regarding the Mass (which would inflame the situation in France).
Also–and this could have been an even bigger factor in the decision to announce the agenda–they may have been trying to send Milingo a signal that he shouldn’t do anything precipitous (like announcing the creation of a new church–i.e., a schism) at his New York conference next month. More on that in a moment.
They thus had a three-hour meeting on Thursday, following which they released the following (in hindsight) entirely predictable communique:
COMUNICATO
PRESS OFFICE OF THE HOLY SEEThis morning, Nov. 16, in the Apostolic Palace, the Holy Father presided over one of the periodic meetings of the Heads of Dicasteries of the Roman Curia, for a common reflection.
The participants in the meeting received detailed information about [b] the requests for dispensation from the obligation of celibacy received in recent years, as well as [c] the possibility of readmission to the exercise of ministry from priests who at present find themselves in the conditions prescribed by the Church [i.e., for readmission].
[d] The value of the choice of priestly celibacy according to Catholic tradition was reaffirmed, and the exigency of a solid human and Christian formation was underlined, both for seminarians and for priests already ordained [SOURCE].
You’ll note that we have no mention here of item (a)–the situation created by Milingo–but we do have mention of (b) and (c), which are very important to Milingo and his Married Priests Now! group.
This combination (the removal of [a] but the inclusion of [b] and [c]) is a diplomatic move meant to not inflame the Milingo situation (by not mentioning him) and to calm it down if possible (by indicating that the Holy See is at least willing to think about changes regarding dispensations from celibacy and the readmission of priests who have attempted marriage).
We also have the addition of a fourth element–(d)–which is meant to keep the press from going completely hog wild and announcing that the pope is considering chucking the requirement of celibacy altogether (which he’s not).
So what to make of all this?
Well, B16 has always been more open to dialogue than JPTG (John Paul the Great) was. I suspect that this is partly due to their personal dispositions and partly due to the fact that JP2 came into office when the Church was in freefall. In 1978, everything was going to hell in a handbasket, and JP2’s pontificate played an enormous stabilizing role. One of the ways that happened was by him forcefully removing certain topics from discussion. Now that things have stabilized more, B16 feels more liberty to allow them to be cautiously discussed.
Thus during the pontificate of JP2 the question of clerical celibacy was most definitely off the table (because there were so many clamoring for it to be done away with en toto), but during last year’s Synod on the Eucharist, B16 allowed the bishops to take up the question and discuss it.
As the article the reader linked notes:
Even though the synod fathers heard a lot about the great shortage of priests in many countries, they still voted overwhelmingly (202 in favor, 28 against and 10 abstentions) to "affirm the importance of the inestimable gift of ecclesiastical celibacy" for priests in the Latin-rite church.
They also agreed that the proposal to have recourse to the ordination of mature married men "was considered a path not to be followed," a position Pope Benedict is expected to reaffirm in the post-synodal apostolic exhortation on the Eucharist, which he will promulgate in the coming months [maybe the next two weeks–ja].
Now, here’s the bottom line regarding Thursday’s discussions: If you’re pope, you don’t call a meeting to discuss things of this nature if you aren’t open at least in principle to making some kind of change. If you have absolutely no willingness to modify present discipline on these points, it makes no sense at all to call a meeting to discuss them–particularly in the present circumstances. Doing so would only raise hopes for a change that you have no willingness to make, and that’s always a Bad Thing (look at what happened with the commission Paul VI called on contraception).
I can only conclude, therefore, that B16 has at least some willingness–enough for him to think it worthwhile to consult with the dicastery heads and ask their opinion–to modify the Church’s current practices regarding requests for dispensations from celibacy and readmission to the priesthood of priests who have attempted marriage.
This is not surprising. He always showed more willingness as Pre-16 to consider questions of this sort. As John Allen (a.k.a. "The Other JA") notes,
In the 1997 interview that became Salt of the Earth, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger discussed the issue of celibacy at length. At that time, he said he did not anticipate married priests in the Catholic Church, “at least not in the foreseeable future,” as anything other than exceptional cases (such as converts from Anglicanism or Lutheranism).
“One ought not to declare that any custom of the Church’s life, no matter how deeply anchored and well founded, is wholly absolute,” Ratzinger said then.
“To be sure, the church will have to ask herself the question again and again … But I think that given the whole history of Western Christianity and the inner vision that lies at the basis of this whole, the church should not believe that she will easily gain much by resorting to this uncoupling [of priesthood and celibacy]; rather in any case she will lose if she does so.”
He said all this, mind you, during the reign of his predecessor, when the topic was most definitely off the table, which says something about his own willingness to reconsider the matter, as does the fact he allowed it to be discussed at the Synod on the Eucharist before the Milingo crisis even happened.
So, if B16 is willing to consider making changes in these matters, what might those changes be?
There’s zero chance that he’d chuck the whole system of celibacy. But what about nibbling around its edges?
Regarding dispensations from celibacy, what is most likely being referred to is the laicization of priests who wish to marry–not giving priests who are still functioning as priests permission to marry.
According to the article the reader linked:
Vatican sources calculate that an average of 300 such requests have
arrived annually in recent years, almost one a day. But the same
sources reckon that the number of priests who actually leave the
ministry each year is much higher than 300, as many do not bother to
seek dispensation.Pope Benedict is well aware of the history and the actual procedure
for the granting of such dispensations, because the Congregation for
the Doctrine of the Faith, which he headed as prefect for 24 years
until his election as pope in April 2005, had responsibility for this
up to February 1989.After that, the task was
handed over to the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline
of the Sacraments, until the responsibility was transferred again on
Aug. 1 last year to the Congregation for the Clergy.The
consultation provides an opportunity for top Vatican officials to
reflect together on the current situation regarding requests for
dispensations from celibacy, and could lead to proposals for changing
the procedure or even decentralizing it, as some bishops have suggested
in recent years.
Note that B16 has already made one change in the handling of laicizations–charging the Congregation for Clergy with handling them rather than the CDW (HERE, scroll down). That of itself may speak of a mindset that views the granting of these dispensations as a more pastoral matter concerning individual members of the clergy rather than a matter that needs to be handled by the CDF or the CDW. He might be willing to go further, either streamlining the process or allowing them to be handled outside the Vatican, such as by the local bishops.
What about the question that most interests Milingo–the readmission of priests who have attempted marriage to some form of priestly service? The article states:
Vatican sources say the number of such requests for readmission has
increased in recent times, and some suggest it has even reached an
average of approximately 1,200 over the past few years.It
seems that while many seek permission to return to active ministry,
some requests come from priests who are now old and would like at least
to be allowed to celebrate Mass once again, even if they cannot return
to public ministry.
Permission to celebrate Mass privately might be among the things the pope is considering allowing–a return to private ministry could be the kind of "readmission to the exercise of ministry" that B16 is considering–but this isn’t what Milingo and his associates are after: They want the ability to return to public ministry after having left the priesthood and attempted marriage.
If the pope were to start granting their requests, there would no doubt be significant conditions attached–such as the priests either separating from their spouses or regularizing their marriages via convalidation (most such priests are only civilly married)–and the granting of the request would not be automatic. Some of the individuals who left to attempt marriage are so problematic theologically and pastorally that they should never be allowed in public ministry again.
To prevent scandal or the wonderment of the faithful, they also likely would be required to be placed in positions other than the pastor of a parish–the way that married ministers from Anglicanism and Lutheranism who are ordained are generally assigned to administrative, educational, or similar roles as priests.
At a minimum, there would need to be a bishop willing to vouch for such candidates to the extent of incardinating them. If a priest couldn’t find a bishop willing to accept him in the diocese then the priest would not be returned to public ministry. The situation would thus be like that of ministers converted from Anglicanism or Lutheranism, who need to find such a bishop.
But it wouldn’t be quite the same.
A very real problem that bishops willing to sponsor a priest in making his peition–and a problem that is certainly on the pope’s mind right now–is the fact that returning a priest to public ministry could be seen as a reward for bad behavior. The message that could be sent to his brother priests in the diocese could be "Break the rules and we’ll reward you by letting you be both married and a priest"–a message that would not be good for morale or discipline.
Consequently, only a comparatively small number of priests would likely be admitted to public ministry–certainly not enough to help in any appreciable way with the priest shortage.
But maybe enough to head off a schism.
That’s what B16 is wondering right now.
To deal directly with the question that the reader asks, whether there is hope that he might one day be allowed to exercise his priesthood again (apart from emergency circumstances, such as when someone is dying), I can only say that the answer is yes.
The reader asks specifically about exercising his priesthood should his wife pass on before he does. Actually, canon law already provides for that possibility. Canon 293 states:
A cleric
who loses the clerical state cannot be enrolled among clerics again except
through a rescript of the Apostolic See.
The Holy See does allow for the potential readmission to the clerical state of priests who have been laicized, which explains the 1,200 applications that the article mentioned. In fact, a lot more than 1,200 priests have been readmitted under canon 293 over the years. According to Zenit:
According to data from the Vatican Congregation for Clergy, every year about 1,000 priests leave the priestly ministry.
The congregation also published data on priests who have returned to priestly ministry between 1970 and 1995. They undergo a rigorous procedure, carried out case by case. Their number varies greatly from one year to another. In those years, a total of 9,551 returned 9that’s an average of 367 a year–ja].
Under present praxis, a return would be possible (conceivable) in the case of a laicized priest whose spouse had died.
At present the Holy See seems to be handling these cases on an ad hoc basis. It had not, as of the year 2000 (the most recent info I have) established a formal procedure for handling such cases, but they have talked about doing so, and an informal procedure has already developed, whereby one finds a bishop or religious superior willing to accept the priest, following which there are a whole bunch of documents and interviews and, if the Holy See is favorable to the readmission, the priest spends a period of formation in an institution such as a monastery or religious house in preparation for his return to ministry, following which a rescript may be granted.
If you’d like to read more about this, see pp. 292-293 of the green CLSA commentary (i.e., New Commentary on the Code of Canon Law, edited by Beal, Coridan, and Green [Paulist Press, 2000]) or the article "Return to Ministry of Dispensed Priests" by M. Souckar in The Jurist 54[1994], 605-616.
I would urge the reader to be careful about how he regards this possibility, however. As a married man, his duty is to wish for and strive for the good of his wife. Also, women live longer than men. They may not be as physically strong (on average), but in compensation they have longer lifespans (on average, which to my mind means that they’re getting the better side of the deal on this one).
I would therefore counsel the reader to view the possibility that he might one day be able to again exercise his priestly ministry as a potential gift–something to be grateful for if it happens but not something to be anguished about if it doesn’t.
That gift also might come if B16 decides to broaden the cases in which canon 293 is applied, in which case it should–again–be regarded as a potential gift.
Like the priesthood itself.
Okay, this is really sick.
EXCERPTS:
Fox plans to broadcast an interview with O.J. Simpson in which the former football star discusses "how he would have committed" the slayings of his ex-wife and her friend, for which he was acquitted, the network said.
"O.J. Simpson, in his own words, tells for the first time how he would have committed the murders if he were the one responsible for the crimes," the network said in a statement. "In the two-part event, Simpson describes how he would have carried out the murders he has vehemently denied committing for over a decade."
The interview will air days before Simpson’s new book, "If I Did It," goes on sale Nov. 30. The book, published by Regan, "hypothetically describes how the murders would have been committed."
So O.J. Simpson has a book coming out in which he talks about how he would have killed his wife and her friend "If I did it." Note the tense: "If I did it," suggesting that he might have, not "If I had done it," suggesting that he didn’t.
This is simply unimaginable.
What kind of man whose wife was brutally murdered and who didn’t kill her writes a book to cash-in on her death by describing how he would have killed her–if he was the one who committed the crime?
No faithful husband who wants to honor the memory of his late wife does anything remotely like that. You couldn’t pay a husband who loved his wife enough money to do that kind of monstrous thing. A genuinely bereaved husband–no matter how much time had passed–would throw a publisher’s money back in his face and then denounce the publisher in public for even making the offer.
Even someone who was not a loving husband wouldn’t do that. Only a monster would do that kind of thing.
This is sick and disgusting.
A fair-minded observe would look at this and say that it smells like O.J. Simpson is taunting the public with how he got away with murder.
Which makes my mind wonder if there is a legal way he could be criminally prosecuted again, double-jeopardy laws notwithstanding.
GET THE STORY.
The U.S. bishops meet twice a year, and we’re currently in the middle of their November meeting. This time they have a rather full agenda, and they’re in the process of cranking our documents.
Given how these things normally go, I was a bit surprised to discover PDFs of these documents appearing on the USCCB web site in a fashion that was actually and pleasantly timely.
However, the USCCB has a tendency to only put up documents for a short time and then yank them (try finding a version of the the U.S. edition of the GIRM on their web site these days; it used to be there, but t’ain’t now).
I’ll have some commentary about some of these, but for now, get ’em while you can.
BISHOPS’ PRESIDENT’S STATEMENT ON IRAQ
MARRIED LOVE AND THE GIFT OF LIFE
Let’s take a look at the president of Iran, Mahmood Ahmadinejad:
That’s Mr. Ahmadinejad on the right. The question is: Is it also him on the left?
The man on the left is reported to be one of the Iranian hostage takers from 1979-1981, and it has long been rumored that Mr. Ahmadinejad was one of the hostage takers.
He has denied this. Understandably. It would severely inflame the U.S. public against him if it were confirmed that we were dealing with one of the people who took our diplomats hostage twenty-eight years ago. It would significantly strengthen the national will to go knock over his regime.
Now the Russian press has unearthed the photo on the left, which bears a striking resemblance to Ahmadinejad.
DANIEL PIPES HAS THE STORY (CHT: Powerline).
As curious as I am to know whether Ahmadinejad is one of the hostage takers, I have questions about the picture. Specifically:
1) What is its provenance? How did the press get it? Was it published at the time it was taken? Can we look at hardcopies of it that date from that era? How do we know it’s not a fake? Apropos of that . . .
2) What can Photoshoppers determine about this? Has Ahmadinejad’s face been pasted onto the body of a hostage-taker? Does the angle of his face match up with the angle of his head? Ahmadinejad would have been 23 in 1979. Does the gun-toter on the left look 23? If he did have bags around his eyes like that back then, why doesn’t he look a whole lot worse today?
3) If the picture isn’t fake, what can be determined by biometrics about whether he’s the same guy as Ahmadinejad?
4) If the picture is fake, who faked it, and what game are they playing?
A reader writes:
I was surveying commentary on the Widow’s Mite and ran across one
commentary indicatiing the most serious problem is that, while the story
can be made to relate to a number of other sayings of Jesus on trusting,
detachment, poverty, etc., it is not consistent at all with Jesus’ Corban
statement. He proclaims in Mark (7:10 -13).Furthermore, it would seem that the only way out of these acute
difficulties is quite simply to see Jesus’ attitude to the widow’s gift as
a downright disapproval and not as an approbation. The story does not
provide a pious contrast to the conduct of the scribes in the preceding
section (as is the customary view); rather it provides a further
illustration of the ills of official devotion. 11 Jesus’ saying is not a
penetrating insight on the measuring of gifts; it is a lament, “Amen, I
tell you, she gave more than all the others.” Or, as we would say: “One
could easily fail to notice it, but there is a tragedy of the day—she put
in her whole living.” She had been taught and encouraged by religious
leaders to donate as she does, 12 and Jesus condemns the value system that
motivates her action, and he condemns the people who conditioned her to do
it.I am interested in your commentary on these remarks.
I’m inclined to disagree with them. First, though, let’s start with the passage itself:
Mark 12
41: And he sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the multitude putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums.
42: And a poor widow came, and put in two copper coins, which make a penny.
43: And he called his disciples to him, and said to them, "Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury.
44: For they all contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, her whole living."
It is not immediately clear how the widow’s mite would be a violation of Jesus’ teachings regarding the corban rule. When Jesus critiqued the use that was being made of corban, he pointed to some individuals’ use of it to circumvent the need to care for one’s parents, which is not in view here.
One could, however, construct a parallel argument to the effect that just as one owes a certain amount of money to the care of one’s parents so that they aren’t reduced to destitution, one also owes a certain amount of money to the care of oneself, and to donate this money to the temple would be wrong.
This is, indeed, something that often strikes people when they read this passage: They wonder what the widow was going to live on if, as Jesus said, she gave her whole livelihood.
It would be wrong to starve oneself to death by giving away all the money one has so that one is unable to care for oneself, but I don’t think that we can infer from this fact that Jesus disapproved of the woman’s action. The obvious interpretation of the passage is that he approved of what she was doing. The plain sense of Jesus statement that "Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For they all contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her
poverty has put in everything she had, her whole living" is that he is favorably comparing what the widow did compared to those who put in larger amounts but had larger amounts of money that made their gifts less sacrificial.
If needed, I can go into detail about why this is the likely interpretation, but for most readers I assume that it will be obvious that this is the natural sense of the text.
If we then accept that (a) Jesus was saying something favorable about the woman in comparison to others and (b) that it would be immoral to starve oneself to death by giving away all one’s money then that allows us to infer (c) that the woman was not starving herself to death by giving away all her money.
What might she have been doing?
Hypothetically, she might have had another source of support lined up and was expecting new money to come in soon–perhaps a small business she had or from a relative.
Or perhaps she really was at the end of her financial rope and, rather than spend her last two lepta on herself, she decided to give them to God in an act of faith, asking him to provide her with a new source of income so that she could keep living.
Or Jesus was using hyperbole.
Hyperbole–or exaggeration to make a point–is an extremely common feature of the biblical language, and my strong suspicion is that Jesus was using it here. In other words, the woman really wasn’t giving "everything she had, her whole living." Jesus uses these phrases in order to forcefully underscore the value of what she did put in relative to what she had. It wasn’t literally all that she had, but it was enough of what she did have that it made the use of hyperbole warranted when comparing what she gave to what those who were rich gave.
Incidentally, the picture above is of the front and back of a first century BC coin that is the same type as the widow used (though the pictures on the coin may have been different by the time she made her offering).
A reader writes:
I listen to a radio show called People to People and the commentator, Bob George states that we never have to ask for forgiveness because, it has already been given. We just have to give God thanks for forgiveness.
Callers confront Mr George with 1 John 1 :9 which says, If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us [our] sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Mr George states that in the Greek, the real translation would be in the “past tense” not the present, so the verse should read, “ he has been faithful to have forgiven us our sins. “
He uses this to support his claim that we do not have to ask for forgiveness since it has already been given.
Could you please shed some light on if he is right or not. In the Greek does it really use the past tense and not the present?
I haven’t heard Mr. George’s claims, so I can’t comment on them directly, but if he has said what you report then he is flatly in error.
First, Greek does not have a past tense. It has several tenses that can refer to the past: the pluperfect, perfect, imperfect, and (often) the aorist.
Here’s a so-literal-it’s-klunky-English translation of 1 John 1:9 with the relevant verbs (and one other important word) emphasized:
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just that he would forgive us the sins and would cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
The first verb in this that describes God is "is" (estin). It’s an ordinary, present-tense "is." Nothing special about it; nothing past-tensy at all. In context, it tells us that God is faithful and just, not that God has been faithful.
But John has something particular in mind when he says that God is faithful and just, so he clarifies what he means by introducing the clause beginning with "that," which I’ve put in red.
In Greek the word corresponding to "that" is hina, which is often found at the beginning of clauses where the verbs are in the subjunctive mood. That’s what we have here. The verbs in this clause aren’t in the indicative mood but the subjunctive mood, which is why I’ve translated them as "would forgive" and "would cleanse." They tell us what God would do if we confess.
Now, these two verbs are in the aorist tense, and the aorist tense usually indicates an action occurring in the past–if the aorist is in the indicative mood–but in the subjunctive mood the aorist tells you nothing about time. It just refers to the occurrence of an event without telling you whether it is past, present, or future. Since we’re in the subjunctive mood here, one cannot appeal to the aorist as showing that God has already done something.
So if Mr. George has been claiming what is reported about the Greek in this passage, he is making some elementary (first year Greek) mistakes, including not recognizing the correct tense of "is" and/or not recognizing that the aorist doesn’t point to the past in the subjunctive.
The claim that we shouldn’t ask God for forgiveness but should only thank him for receiving it is particularly absurd because Jesus built into the model prayer for his followers the petition "forgive us our debts." That "forgive" is in the imperative mood which, in Greek, is used to ask for things (among other things), and here it is being used to ask for forgiveness.
Unless one is going to say that the Lord’s Prayer is not for Christians, you’re going to have to say that Christians have an ongoing need to ask for forgiveness.
This is just wrong.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, WRONG!!!
I was horrified a while back when I was in a bookstore and saw on the shelf that there was an actual crossover novel between Star Trek: The Next Generation and the X-Men.
UGH!!!
This is the literary equivalent of KFC’s Infamous Stomach-In-A-Bowls!
I have nothing against Next Gen.
I have nothing against X-Men.
But I don’t want them jumbled together like this!
Yes, I know, in fits of unmitigated geeky uncoolness, fans of various series have produced reams and reams of fanfic doing franchise mashups like this.
That’s why God created the Internet.
How else would young teenagers explore the question of whether Worf or Wolverine would win a fight?
(I’m guessing that’s a prominent scene early in the book . . . and I’m guessing that they manage to fight each other to a draw . . . big surprise.)
But to have one of these things escape from the wild and actually make it into print . . . WHAT WERE THE RIGHTS-HOLDERS THINKING???
Particularly the rights holders for the Star Trek franchise. It strikes me that this stands to cheapen their brand more than Marvel Comics’.
Perhaps it was to indulge Michael Jan Friedman, who apparently writes many of the Star Trek novels and may be an X-Men fan on the side.
I don’t mind commercial tie-in literature based on popular media franchises. The stories in these series are usually non-canonical (though not in Babylon 5 or Firefly). People enjoy them, and I respect that.
I don’t mind fanfic. I don’t read it, but I don’t mind that it’s out there. In fact, a lot of the stories told in world history have been the equivalent of fanfic–non-professional storytellers doing their own take on popular stories. I don’t know how many folks sitting around the fire have spun their own tales about Gilgamesh or Ahikar or Odysseus or Jason or Aeneas any of the other heroes of literature. All that’s fine and part of the human experience–a testimony to human creativity.
I don’t even mind crossovers, as long as they’re well done. I would not mind, for example, reading a novel in which Dracula met some other 19th century literary character, like Sherlock Holmes or the Invisible Man. (In fact, Alan Moore did a whole comic book series based on that idea, though I haven’t read it.)
But there has to be a "fit" between the two things you’re crossing over–at least if you’re intending to play the story for something other than laughs. Sure, Bambi meets Godzilla can give you a chuckle, but I really wouldn’t want to read a serious detective story in which Sherlock Holmes solves crimes alongside characters from Beatrix Potter’s universe.
And that’s the problem here.
The X-Men inhabit a comic book universe that plays by comic book rules, where only the slightest gesture is made toward real-world science and physics and character development and Star Trek . . . uh . . . well . . . um . . . nevermind.
I just hope they don’t make a movie out of this thing.
How would you tell Captain Picard and Professor X apart?
A while back I told everyone about A FEEL-GOOD FILM FOR TH WHOLE FAMILY (whose trailer is now on YouTube).
Now I’d like to let you know about what looks to be a chilling thriller of the first rank . . .
(CHT: Southern Appeal.)
IT’S TRUE!!!
Okay, not Pope Benedict, but Nick Pope, former head of the UK’s Ministry of Defense’s project to investigate UFOs.
During his time as head of the Ministry of Defence UFO project, Nick Pope was persuaded into believing that other lifeforms may visit Earth and, more specifically, Britain.
His concern is that "highly credible" sightings are simply dismissed.
And he complains that the project he once ran is now "virtually closed" down, leaving the country "wide open" to aliens.
Mr Pope decided to speak out about his worries after resigning from his post at the Directorate of Defence Security at the MoD this week.
"The consequences of getting this one wrong could be huge," he said.
"If you reported a UFO sighting now, I am absolutely sure that you would just get back a standard letter telling you not to worry. ”Frankly we are wide open – if something does not behave like a conventional aircraft now, it will be ignored.
"The X-Files have been closed down."
Well . . . if aliens do attack, there’s only one thing to do,