Category: Current Affairs

UPDATE: The Vatican has apparently confirmed Milingo’s automatic excommunication.

GET THE STORY.
Further updates to come.

SECOND UPDATE: Here is the text of the Communique issued by the Holy See’s press office (NOTE: Since the press office does not have the authority to declare excommunications, I suspect there will be further documentation following from a competent dicastery):

   "With great concern, the Holy See has followed the recent activities of
Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo, emeritus of Lusaka, Zambia, with his new
association of married priests, spreading division and confusion among the
faithful.

  "Church representatives of various levels have tried in vain to contact
Archbishop Milingo in order to dissuade him from persisting in actions that
provoke scandal, especially among the faithful who followed his pastoral
ministry in favor of the poor and the sick.

  "Bearing in mind the understanding shown, also recently, by Peter’s
Successor towards this aged pastor of the Church, the Holy See has awaited
with vigilant patience the evolution of events which, unfortunately, have led
Archbishop Milingo to a position of irregularity and of progressively open
rupture of communion with the Church, first with his attempted marriage and
then with the ordination of four bishops on Sunday, September 24, in
Washington D.C., U.S.A.

  "For this public act both Archbishop Milingo and the four ordinands have
incurred excommunication ‘latae sententiae,’ as laid down in Canon 1382 of the
Code of Canon Law. Moreover, the Church does not recognize, nor does she
intend to recognize in the future, these ordinations and all ordinations
deriving from them; and she considers the canonical status of the four
supposed-bishops as being that they held prior to this ordination.

  The Apostolic See, attentive to the unity and peace of the flock of Christ,
had hoped that the fraternal influence of people close to Archbishop Milingo
would cause him to rethink and return to full communion with the Pope.
Unfortunately the latest developments have made these hopes more unlikely.

  "At times of ecclesial suffering such as these, may prayers intensify among
all the community of the faithful."

SNIP:

Tuesday night, Hale showed another photo taken by Atlantis’ crew of a second mystery object floating near the shuttle.

"While we have not definitively put this interesting little picture to bed, there is considerable thought that it is just a plastic bag that came from somewhere and got loose," Hale said.

I don’t get it.

Every space pirate worth his space salt knows that the shuttle always jettisons its trash just before going into hyperspace.

OH WELL.

Safe landing, guys!

Sigh.

How to put this delicately?

( . . . still waiting for inspiration.)

Okay, let’s not put it delicately.

Archbishop emeritus of Lusaka Emmanuel Milingo is out of control. (Actually, that was pretty delicate compared to what I’m tempted to write.)

Worse, he’s out of control and rampaging through the United States, campaigning for married priests with his own civil law wife (I have to be in the qualifier becaue he’s not really married to her; he is impeded from being able to validly contract a marriage due to his holy orders, so his union with her is automatically null–same thing goes for all the non-laicized priests who "left the priesthood" to get "married"; see Canon 1087), who was personally picked for him by the long-time lunatic and antichrist, Sun Myung Moon.

HERE’S GENERAL BACKGROUND ON MILINGO.

Now, to address the question posed in the title of this post: Just how do you deal with an enfant terrible like this?

I mean, if you’re B16, you’ve got to do something. You can’t just let him rampage through downtown Tokyo, detroying buildings left and right.

AND PRESS ACCOUNTS INDICATE THAT SOMETHING IS, INDEED, IN THE WORKS.

But preciesely what’s going on isn’t fully clear.

ED PETER HAS THE STORY.

Last weekend I started reading The
Last and First Men by Olaf Stapleton. The book is a future history written from the perspective of one of the last men in a far distant future age. The book doesn’t have a conventional plot but is written like a history book, telling you what happened in different ages.

The opening section–the only part I’ve gotten through just yet–makes for particularly interesting reading, because it covers the period between when the book was written (1930) and the present, so we get to see Olaf Stapleton’s imaginary history of our own period.

Of course, actualy history didn’t unfold the way that Stapleton envisioned–and he knew it wouldn’t before he started writing–but it’s fascinating to see how much he got right. Even if the elements didn’t come together in precisely the way he envisioned, he was at least playing with the right elements that actually did–and continue to–shape our history. For example, he predicted a period of wars in Europe, leading to its decline, followed by a period in which Russia, China, and the United States were the dominant global players, with Russia dropping by the wayside, leading to tension between China and America and and eventually America as a global hyperpower and an Americanized world culture, with America being intensely resented internationally. That’s pretty close to what did happen, only the Chinese conflict has yet to be fully engaged (expect that to happen in coming decades).

Reading Stapleton’s analysis of the various forces shaping this history was quite interesting, and it made me want to read a similar analysis of what really did happen in world history.

Lo and behold, yesterday I ran across THIS ESSAY that does just that–or does a lot of it at least. It’s not an analysis so much of recent history as a whole, but it analyzes the major wars of the 20th century and what led to them.

The author–a Harvard history professor–seeks to look past the conventional explanations that are given for why large scale conflicts happen and identify the factors which really did lead to them.

For example, the author sets aside the canard that the 20th century was so bloody because we had bigger and better weapons, pointing out that many of the bloodies conflicts were fought not with WMDs but with individual and even primitive weapons.

(He also doesn’t do much more than touch on this, but at some point soon I plan on blogging about the fact that your chance of dying in a war has actually gone DOWN in the developed world–way down compared to what it is in primitive societies. The development of more powerful weapons does not–or at least has not yet–led to an increase in the percentage of people who are killed in war. Just the opposite. Thus far it’s correlated with a dramatic decrease in the likelihood that you’ll get killed in one.)

By questioning why the wars of the 20th century occurred when and where they did–as opposed to other places or the same places in other decades–the author identifies three factors that at least in recent history seem to have led to large scale wars:

1) Ethnic disintegration (that is, the falling apart of multi-ethnic societies such that the different ethnic groups become alienated from one another),

2) Economic volatility (not the same thing as poverty; he’s talking about dramatic fluctuations in the local economy, both down and up), and

3) Empires in decline (since the empire that previously kept peace in the area loses the interest or the ability to keep peace there)

Then, like Stapleton, he dusts off his own crystal ball and looks at where the next series of major conflicts are likely to errupt.

IT AIN’T PRETTY.

The difference is we probably won’t have to wait 75 years to see if his future history is right.

REMEMBER.

LEARN.

ACT.

I’m writing this Monday night so I won’t have to blog on Tuesday’s holy day, so this all may be moot now, but here goes . . .

What happens when tyrants die?

Well, being tyrants, they aren’t well liked by their people (however much their people have been forced to act otherwise) and so as soon as the guy who’s ruled the land with FEAR for so many years kicks the bucket there can be a . . . y’know . . . popular uprising. People go out and celebrate, drink too much, shoot guns up in the air (if they have them), kill all the former dictator’s family and friends. That kind of thing.

So what do you do if you’re one of the family and friends?

In fact, what if you’re the tyrant’s baby brother and heir apparent?

If there’s a popular uprising, you’re going to be Target #1 to bump off.

So what do you do?

Do you . . . y’know . . . try to keep the people from finding out that the tyrant is dead? At least until you can consolidate your control on power? Do you try to make it sound like your brother–who is actually dead–is really sick so that you kind of ease the populace into the idea of him not being here any more, while you visibly rule the country, smoothing the transition into your own reign so that they get used to being afraid of you the way they were afraid of your brother?

Sounds like something that belongs in the Evil Overlord Rules.

Of course, word will leak out that your brother is not just dead but really most sincerely dead, and so you’ll need to fabricate evidence that he’s alive, like photoshopped pictures of him recuperating in the hospital and notes written in his name talking about the fact that he’s not dead. But those are small things.

Which brings us to the picture above.

What’s up with those shadows coming off of Castro’s brotherHugo Chavez? Y’know . . . the shadows that ain’t coming off Castro himself.

Certain quarters in the blogosphere LIKE HERE and HERE have been speculating that the recent recuperative photos of Castro have been faked in some kind of photoshoppy Caribbean version of Weekend At Bernie’s.

I haven’t really been following that beat (in fact, I haven’t read the two sites I just linked with any thoroughness, so there may be bad words or something on them, so caveat lector), and I haven’t seen anything that’s knocked me out as proof that the recent Castro photos are fake, but . . . DUDE! Where’s your shadow!

We’ve got two strong light sources causing Chavez to throw some crisply defined shadows. . . . Why ain’t Castro doing the same thing?

Of course, even if evidence emerges of Photoshop fakery (BTW, let’s try to use the word "Photoshop" as a generic term as many times as possible just to annoy the Adobe corporation; it’d be good revenge for their evil file format, .pdf) it wouldn’t mean that Castro’s dead. It might just mean that he looks like hades and they’re trying to keep the populace from realizing what horrible shape he’s in.

But until we’ve got video of Castro that is of unambiguously recent vintage, I’m going to have a question in my mind about whether Fidel is really still among us.

BTW, credit where credit is due . . .

PEGGY NOONAN CALLED THE "CASTRO MAY BE DEAD" THING TWO WEEKS AGO–EARLIER THAN ANYBODY ELSE I KNOW.

Also,

WIKIPEDIA’S ON THE BEAT.

And

HOW ABOUT THIS ALLEGED AUGUST 13TH NOTE FROM CASTRO.

PRE-PUBLICATION UPDATE: Late Monday night Drudge reported that Cuban TV has aired video of Castro that at least seems to be of recent vintage. (Conclusive proof of that didn’t seem to be mentioned, though.) Best guess is that Castro is still alive as of Monday night. Thought I’d let this post go up, though, since (a) the new video doesn’t prove that the Castro photos aren’t Photoshopped (take that, Adobe!), (b) it shows that even tyrant kid brother wannabes are waking up to the fact that photos aren’t enough anymore (though single-source video won’t be for long; soon you’ll need multiple free-world-accredited cameras rolling due to the possibility of a Lucasfilm fake; take that, Lucasfilm!), and (c) it provides a run-through for what this dictatorship (or any other) might do when the time fore Fearless Leader’s passing finally comes.

MORE ON THE VIDEO.

Sigh.

EXCEPTS:

The creators of The Muppets and Sesame Street are staging a puppet show that is strictly for adults only.

Miss Piggy would blush over the antics in "Jim Henson’s Puppet Improv" which spearheads a renaissance of puppet shows for grown-ups at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe arts festival.

Every afternoon at the Fringe, an anarchic troupe of puppeteers led by the late Jim Henson’s son Brian do an improvisational show for kids.

Every evening the air turns blue as the show takes off into surreal flights of fancy dictated by the audience.

But would Brian’s father have approved?

"I think he would have loved it because of how outrageous I get. My Dad really believed in community and sweetness but the other side of him was incredibly naughty."

Based on my (limited) knowledge, I also suspect that Brian is correct.

I have to question this, though:

So does Henson, director of the Muppet Christmas Carol and Treasure Island movies, feel puppeteers around the world are trying to redress the balance so adults get a look in?

"Yes, absolutely," he said.

"The Americans are more action-oriented. They want to see the puppets beating each other up.

"British audiences are more intellectual. They like to see it sick and twisted, but in an intellectual way."

A lot of British humor doesn’t strike me as all that intellectual (some is, sure, but then so is some American humor). I find this particular juxtaposition ironic given the prominence in British culture of

PUNCH AND JUDY.

Anyway,

GET THE STORY.

Oh, and

THAT’S NOT THE ONLY MISCHIEF AT THE EDINBURGH FRINGE FESTIVAL.

I don’t find it in myself to write about the latter at the moment.

Okay, two scary stories from the terrorism front.

First (EXCERPTS),

Eleven Egyptian students who were supposed to travel to a Montana university after flying to JFK airport late last month disappeared in New York, spurring federal authorities to issue a nationwide alert, officials said yesterday.

Montana State University Provost David Dooley said 17 Mansoura University students signed up for a 32-day cultural-exchange program to intensively study English, learn about Montana history and go on several field trips.

They arrived at JFK on a flight from Egypt on July 29, but only one managed to clear immigration in time to make a connecting flight, Dooley said.

By July 31, five others had arrived in Bozeman, but the rest were unaccounted for.

Dooley said the ones who showed up "were not certain about the status of their fellow students and why they haven’t made it."

MSU alerted federal Homeland Security and Mansoura officials and notified the students via e-mail they had 24 hours to show up in Bozeman. None of them did, Dooley said.

And for the least credible line in the story:

[FBI Special Agent] Kolko said there is no reason to believe the missing students, all men around 20 years old, represent a threat.

I’m sorry, but I agree with the congressman from Long Island:

Rep. Peter King (R-L.I.), who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, said the situation "has to be taken very seriously."

"Having a number of students from an Arab country arriving on student visas and disappearing is cause for concern," he said.

GET THE STORY.

Now for scary story #2:

Islam expert Bernard Lewis has an op ed in the Wall Street Jounral that forcefully makes the case why Iran must not be allowed to get The Bomb–if it doesn’t have it already. EXCERPTS:

There is a radical difference between the Islamic Republic of Iran and other governments with nuclear weapons. This difference is expressed in what can only be described as the apocalyptic worldview of Iran’s present rulers. This worldview and expectation, vividly expressed in speeches, articles and even schoolbooks, clearly shape the perception and therefore the policies of Ahmadinejad and his disciples.

Even in the past it was clear that terrorists claiming to act in the name of Islam had no compunction in slaughtering large numbers of fellow Muslims. A notable example was the blowing up of the American embassies in East Africa in 1998, killing a few American diplomats and a much larger number of uninvolved local passersby, many of them Muslims. There were numerous other Muslim victims in the various terrorist attacks of the last 15 years.

The phrase "Allah will know his own" is usually used to explain such apparently callous unconcern; it means that while infidel, i.e., non-Muslim, victims will go to a well-deserved punishment in hell, Muslims will be sent straight to heaven. According to this view, the bombers are in fact doing their Muslim victims a favor by giving them a quick pass to heaven and its delights–the rewards without the struggles of martyrdom. School textbooks tell young Iranians to be ready for a final global struggle against an evil enemy, named as the U.S., and to prepare themselves for the privileges of martyrdom.

A passage from the Ayatollah Khomeini, quoted in an 11th-grade Iranian schoolbook, is revealing. "I am decisively announcing to the whole world that if the world-devourers [i.e., the infidel powers] wish to stand against our religion, we will stand against their whole world and will not cease until the annihilation of all them. Either we all become free, or we will go to the greater freedom which is martyrdom. Either we shake one another’s hands in joy at the victory of Islam in the world, or all of us will turn to eternal life and martyrdom. In both cases, victory and success are ours."

In this context, mutual assured destruction, the deterrent that worked so well during the Cold War, would have no meaning. At the end of time, there will be general destruction anyway. What will matter will be the final destination of the dead–hell for the infidels, and heaven for the believers. For people with this mindset, MAD is not a constraint; it is an inducement.

Now for the kicker:

Mr. Ahmadinejad and his followers clearly believe that this time [the end times] is now, and that the terminal struggle has already begun and is indeed well advanced. It may even have a date, indicated by several references by the Iranian president to giving his final answer to the U.S. about nuclear development by Aug. 22. This was at first reported as "by the end of August," but Mr. Ahmadinejad’s statement was more precise.

What is the significance of Aug. 22? This year, Aug. 22 corresponds, in the Islamic calendar, to the 27th day of the month of Rajab of the year 1427. This, by tradition, is the night when many Muslims commemorate the night flight of the prophet Muhammad on the winged horse Buraq, first to "the farthest mosque," usually identified with Jerusalem, and then to heaven and back (c.f., Koran XVII.1). This might well be deemed an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and if necessary of the world.

GET THE STORY.

In an e-mail titled "Mel Gibson," a reader writes:

Come on, Jimmy, drop the hammer on this hypocrite!

I don’t drop hammers on people who are displaying signs of contrition, which at the moment Mr. Gibson is doing.

The reason I don’t do so is that Jesus didn’t. The people he verbally "dropped hammers" on were individuals who were convinced of their own righteousness and who thought they had no need of repentence. He invariably showed compassion toward those who acknowledged their sins and sought forgiveness.

Of course, contrition can be feigned, and Jesus would be in a position to look into a person’s heart and see if they were faking it, but I’m not Jesus and I can’t do that. As a result, I am called as a Christian to look charitably on expressions of remorse and–unless I have good evidence of insincerity–to deem them credible and treat the person accordingly.

That does not mean ignoring what the person did. As a rational being I am also called to incorporate what I know about the person into my appraisal of him and his history.

READ GIBSON’S FIRST APOLOGY (SCROLL DOWN).

READ GIBSON’S SECOND APOLOGY.

That said, I can share the following thoughts:

1) I had not known about Mr. Gibson’s battle with alcoholism–which he has apparently had for some time. He also (if you visit the link) is reported to have battled drug abuse, bipolar disorder, and suicidal impulses. According to his own admission, he had a relapse of alcohol abuse and according to some reports he was near suicide on the night of his drunk driving incident. According to the previous link:

A source close to the star told Deadline Hollywood that Mel “felt he was helpless to alcohol and didn’t know what to do about it.”

“No one’s really asking questions about his state of mind. That’s why he was driving around 90 miles an hour. This was a death wish. If that cop hadn’t stopped him, this guy was going to be wrapped around a pole.”

If that is the case, Mr. Gibson has been in a really, really dark place that I wouldn’t wish on anybody. For what it’s worth, his apparent remark that "My life is F’d" is consistent with a suicidal bout since being a Hollywood celebrity who has a DUI does not amount to having one’s life or career ruined. This remark suggests a deeper issue than simply getting caught driving drunk and it could be indicative of a suicidal incident.

Even if the source is wrong, though, I wouldn’t wish a history of alcohol abuse, drug abuse, bipolar disorder, and suicidal tendencies on anybody. The kind of suffering that this complex would involve is enormous, and my heart goes out to anyone who has had to endure that kind of suffering.

When my wife died, I went through enormous personal suffering, but I never wanted to kill myself, and so I can only think of what a suicidal person is going through as orders of magnitude greater than what I went through, which is enough to make me cringe.

Upon learning all this about Mr. Gibson, I find myself moved to compassion and prayer.

At the same time,

2) His apparent anti-Semitic remarks are revolting and I find them utterly despicable.

The question is how they are to be viewed in light of his medical condition and past history.

I don’t know enough about bipolar disorder to understand what kinds of thoughts it may put into a person’s head when they’re in a depressive phase. I know in a manic phase it can cause a person to think bizarrely paranoid things that he would not think when in his right mind, but I don’t know if that happens in the depressive phase of the illness, nor do I know what the severity of the illness may be for Mr. Gibson. I therefore have a question mark in my mind regarding what role his reported bipolar disorder may have played in generating his anti-Semitic remarks.

PRE-PUBLICATION UPDATE 1: LEARN MORE ABOUT BIPOLAR DISORDER (I HAVEN’T HAD A CHANCE TO THOROUGHLY READ THIS ONE YET, BUT I ASSUME IT’S USEFUL).

PRE-PUBLICATION UPDATE 2: According to Wikipedia’s article on bipolar disorder (EXCERPTS):

Severe depression [due to bipolar disorder] may be accompanied by symptoms of psychosis. These symptoms include hallucinations (hearing, seeing, or otherwise sensing the presence of stimuli that are not there) and delusions (false personal beliefs that are not subject to reason or contradictory evidence and are not explained by a person’s cultural concepts). They may also suffer from paranoid thoughts of being persecuted or monitored by some powerful entity such as the government or a hostile force. Intense and unusual religious beliefs may also be present, such as patients’ strong insistence that they have a God-given role to play in the world, a great and historic mission to accomplish, or even that they possess supernatural powers. Delusions in a depression may be far more distressing, sometimes taking the form of intense guilt for supposed wrongs that the patient believes he or she has inflicted on others.

By the same token, research by Kay Redfield Jamison of Johns Hopkins University and others has attributed high rates of creativity and productivity to certain individuals with bipolar disorder.

People with bipolar disorder are about twice as likely to commit suicide as those suffering from major depression (12% to 20%).^{[citation needed]} Individuals with bipolar disorder tend to become suicidal, especially during mixed states such as dysphoric hypomania and agitated depression. Suicidal symptoms include:

• Feeling hopeless, [e.g., the "My life is F’d" quotation–ja] that nothing will ever change or get better
• Putting oneself in harm’s way, or in situations where there is a danger of being killed [e.g., driving 90 in a 45mph zone–ja]
• Abusing alcohol or drugs

If Wikipedia’s article is accurate and if Mr. Gibson has a significant case of bipolar disorder then the above complex of symptoms could significantly explain his recent behavior, as well as his demonstrable cinematic creativity.

When it comes to the role alcohol may have played, my impression is that when intoxicated people say strange things, the strange things generally fall into one of two classes: (1) things they really believe but self-censor when not intoxicated and (2) things they are inclined to believe but don’t fully endorse when non-intoxicated.

Mr. Gibson’s two apologies are meant to convey the impression that it was not (1). In his first apology, Gibson said that "I . . . said things that I do not believe to be true and which are despicable." In his second apology, Gibson said that "The tenets of what I profess to believe necessitate that I exercise charity and tolerance as a way of life. Every human being is God’s child, and if I wish to honor my God I have to honor his children. But please know from my heart that I am not an anti-Semite. I am not a bigot. Hatred of any kind goes against my faith. . . . I am in the process of understanding where those vicious words came from during that drunken display, and I am asking the Jewish community, whom I have personally offended, to help me on my journey through recovery."

If Mr. Gibson is being honest in these statements, then (1) would not be the case. However, he may be dishonest.

At a minimum, I would be inclined to regard his statements as stemming from the kind of situation described in (2): that he at least has anti-Semitic tendencies that–under the influence of alcohol or bipolar disorder–can turn into at least temporary anti-Semitic convictions.

This is further corroborated by the fact that his father is a known anti-Semite and that anti-Semitic views are common in the Rad Trad circles in which Mr. Gibson apparently moves.

The strength of his anti-Semitic tendencies are apparently not so extreme that they would prevent him from casting a Jewish woman as the Mother of Christ in The Passion of the Christ, but the remarks he made are utterly despicable and are the apparent product of anti-Semitic tendencies that I am very dismayed to have confirmed.

This leads me to . . .

3) How I’ll have to view his work in the future.

I’ve never been a Mel Gibson fan, and I don’t follow his work closely. The movie of his that stands out most in my mind, of course, is The Passion of the Christ, which was subject to numerous charges of anti-Semitism when (and especially before) it came out. After seeing the movie, I felt that many of these charges were unfounded, which was a view affirmed by many in the Jewish community, including Michael Medved.

Nevertheless, I also felt that there was one element in the film in particular that was subject to criticism on this score: the film’s treatment of the high priest Caiaphas.

Gibson created a portrait of Pontius Pilate that was sympathetic and nuanced, and the film cried out for him to do the same thing for Caiaphas. Indeed, the Gospel of John gives one all the fodder one would need to portray Caiaphas in a sympathetic light, given his fear (chronicled in John 11) that if Jesus wasn’t put to death that he would become a revolutionary Messianic leader that would start a war with the Romans and cause the Romans to invade and kill massive numbers of Jewish people.

Given the fact that the gospels also portray Pilate as having ambivalent feelings about the crucifixion, the blindingly obvious artistic choice was to portray them both sympathetically, with both feeling that they had to do what they did regarding Jesus for reasons that the viewer could understand. In other words, the tragedy should have been one of "Father, forgive them for the know not what they do" in the cases of both men.

Gibson delivered that for Pilate and utterly ignored it for Caiaphas, who simply comes across as a fanatic in the film.

At the time I said (in conversations with film critic Steven Greydanus) that this artistic blindspot on Gibson’s part could be due either to an anti-Semitic tendency or due to the random blindspots that all artists suffer from. Given Gibson’s disavowals of anti-Semitism and his involvement of Jewish individuals in the project (casting a Jewish woman as the Mother of God is no small thing if you’re an anti-Semite), I hoped to be able to give him the benefit of the doubt on this one, but in light of his recent anti-Semitic tirade, I have to re-evaluate.

It now looks probable to me that the blindspot was due to his anti-Semitic tendencies.

While I still consider The Passion of the Christ to be an extraordinary film, I now find it tainted in this respect.

I also will have to view Gibson’s future projects in light of what is now known.

All of which makes me sad.

I am glad to see, though, that in his apologies Mr. Gibson has acknowledged personal culpability and is seeking to make amends to the Jewish community. I hope he is sincere.

I cannot offer him forgiveness for what he said, however. There is a principle in Jewish thought–which I think is theologically valid if properly understood–that to the extent a sin is against another person, only that person can forgive it.

All sins also contain an offense against God, and only God can forgive that, but to the extent a sin is committed against another person, only that person can extend forgiveness for what was done.

Since I am not a member of the Jewish community, I therefore have no forgiveness to offer Mr. Gibson.

I am glad that he is seeking forgiveness and to make what amends he can. I hope he is sincere, and I hope that he takes this incident to heart and reforms his life and his views.

What he did was vile–it was a dramatic exposure of the face of evil–and I hope that he can find the personal conversion and redemption and healing that he–and  we all–need.

Like many, I’ve been following the current events in the Middle East with significant concern.

I don’t know where this is all going. I just hope we can avoid a major war breaking out.

If you know less about the current situation than you’d like,

AMERICAN PAPIST HAS A GOOD OVERVIEW OF THE SITUATION WITH LINKS TO FURTHER RESOURCES.