Waiting for Godot to Leave

There was a potential murder mystery client that I was hoping to land.  He had worked with every other murder mystery company around, and at that time there were three or four others in St. Louis.  They all told me the same thing, "The man is impossible to work for."  None of them lasted more than a few years performing at his venue. "But I can do it!" I said to myself.  "They can't work with him, but I can work with him!  After all, I'm more intelligent and sensitive than they are.  I do well with difficult people.  I'll win him over, get him to like me.  I can succeed where all others failed!" We lasted three months.  He was a monster.

Edward Pentin, Rome correspondent for the National Catholic Register It pains me to point out that National Catholic Register, once a fairly solid and trustworthy publication, has become the only mainstream journal (to my knowledge) to buy into the trad hysteria over the removal of one of the worst bishops in the world.

I continue to celebrate, in my own quiet way, 25 years of performing murder mystery dinner theater shows . This is from an email I wrote to a former actress in January of 2006 *** Tonight my actress Linda and I had two shows at a winery in Nashville, Illinois.  The winery only seats fifty people, so I talked them into doing two shows - a 5 pm show and an 8 pm show.  I am hiring a new guy and we had him meet us at the winery to see the early show. Well, the early show was magical, just a blast.  The guy was very impressed and really wants to work for me.  "Do they always go this well?" he asked.  "Oh, this is pretty typical," we answered, which is true.  "Do you ever have problems with drunks?" he asked.  "Not that we can't control," we replied - also true. Then he left (between shows) and I turned to Linda and said, "I think we've got this small-venue problem solved.  For wineries that can only seat fifty, we'll jus...

Bishop Livieres, looking like a kindly Lex Luthor. Below is the press release from SNAP on the Bishop Livieres issue.    It had appeared as if Livieres had been the first and only bishop removed from office since the Sex Scandal broke over ten years ago.  And even though his case was particularly egregious - making an accused child molester his vicar general, even after being warned by other bishops that the man was a danger to others, and then lashing out against the Vatican publicly - still this appeared to be good news.  It appeared as if Pope Francis was setting the bar very low, but at least he was setting the bar.  After all, if you won't sack a bishop for making an accused child molester and scam artist his vicar general and allowing him continued access to boys, then how serious are you about reforming the very worst element in the Church? And indeed for the first time since the crisis, the Vatican seemed to be getting serious about the problem,...

The Buenos Aires Herald reports ... Pope sacks Paraguayan bishop accused of protecting abuser priest Pope Francis has dismissed a conservative Paraguayan bishop who was accused of protecting a priest suspected of sexually abusing young people in the United States, the Vatican said today. The Argentinian-born pontiff has vowed zero tolerance against Roman Catholic clerics who sexually abuse minors after a series of scandals hit the Church in a number of countries around the world over many years. Last May, Francis called such abuse an "ugly crime" and likened it to "a Satanic mass". A statement said the pope had removed Bishop Rogelio Ricardo Livieres Plano from his post as head of the diocese of Ciudad del Este and named another bishop to run it as an administrator for the time being. The pope's sacking of the bishop came after a Vatican investigation of the bishop, the diocese and its seminaries, said the statement, which gave no details. Vatican sour...

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Today is the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, in my opinion the most beautiful of Marian feasts. In today's Mass, there is an optional sequence to be sung or prayed.  It is the Stabat Mater,   a 13th century hymn, whose stanzas are made up of rhyming couplets followed by a third line that rhymes with the next stanza's third line: AA B, CC B - like so ... At the Cross her station keeping , Stood the mournful Mother weeping , Close to her Son to the last . Through her heart, His sorrow sharing , All His bitter anguish bearing , Now at length the sword has passed. This is from the 19th century translation by Edward Caswall of the original Latin hymn. But in the official version of Caswall's translation, the United States Council of Catholic Bishops have placed on their website some very odd changes, such as this ... Let me mingle tears with you , Mourning him who mourned for me , All the days that I may live. What the hell???   The off...

Rabbi David Kaye, from To Catch a Predator There's an episode of To Catch a Predator, the reality show in which men try to have sex with underage boys and girls, and are then recorded in a confrontation with the show's host who reveals that they've been caught on video and that the whole set up is a law enforcement sting - there's an episode where a Jewish Rabbi " essentially tried to rape a 13-year-old boy " and is caught red handed. Though clearly guilty, the rabbi blames the show's host and pulls a " how dare you suggest such a terrible thing about me!  I'm a religious leader! " pose.  The rabbi's attitude is exactly the sort of thing you see from people who not only abuse positions of power, but who feel entitled to positions of power.  I've been dealing with it in the Catholic Church, sometimes on a personal level, for all of my 14 years as a Catholic. In fact, a prominent bishop whose history shows a repeated tendency ...

One of my Facebook friends can't quite understand why I think this paragraph from the Mission Statement (such as it is) of the so-called Culture Project is drenched with sex (called "chastity" on the Project's impossible to load website) ... "The experience was the same, though in different forms, textures, and places around the world. It was savoring a glass of red wine under the New York City skyline or trekking through the paths of the Pocono mountains; it was sitting in an old church or walking along the oceanside; it was reciting poetry or crafting a piece of music or falling in love; it was the personal experience of pressing against reality and finding deep questions and longings aroused. Among the raw questions and desires, one thing remained certain – they had fallen in love with something greater than themselves." Perhaps if I changed some of the phrasing into pick-up lines it might help. Hey, beautiful, I'd like to press against ...

This picture actually has to do with the story and it not merely gratuitous .  Read on! This is a true story told to my actress and me by one of our friends on the road last week.  I have changed the names to protect the innocent, and also because I don't remember the actual names, anyway. Larry was married to Ruth, and one day Larry found out that he needed a new kidney or he'd die.  Ruth prevailed upon her brother Steve, who agreed to donate one of his good kidneys to Larry. Larry received his brother-in-law's good kidney, and it saved his life.  But Larry started having an affair with the recovery room nurse from the hospital where he received his transplant .  Within two weeks, Larry moved out and dumped his wife, whose brother had just saved his life. The brother-in-law and the wife sued Larry, claiming that there was an implied contract involved, and that the implication at a minimum was that Larry would be faithful to his wife and stay with ...

If atheists are right, and there is no God, then let's burn down all the churches, for they're all monuments to lies.  If Catholics are right, and there is a God and He is who He says He is, then when He says, "Know the truth, and the truth shall set you free" ( John 8:32 ) we'd better realize He means it.  That much, at least, Catholics should have in common with atheists: a devotion to the Truth. But if we are too scared to be loyal to what is True, then we will also fail in being faithful to what is Beautiful and what is Good.  The prince of Lies and the God of Truth don't really mix that well. I write a lot about Unreality on this blog, by which I mean a religious attitude that is divorced from the reality of life.  Unreality is a form of idolatry, of using the things of God for your own small-minded purposes, of leaning on the Church to support your tottering house of cards, of being contrived and artificial, of adopting airs and affectations, o...

Catholic World News reports that the Vatican has suspended all priestly ordinations in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay. If this is true, it's an indication that something far more sinister has been brewing down there than just the elevation of an alleged child molesting homosexual cult leader to the position of Vicar General.  This, after Bishop Martino of Scranton, PA made it clear that this man (Fr. Carlos Urrutigoity), who had been operating in his diocese, was not fit for ministry.  The Diocese of Scranton states (my emphasis) ... Bishop Martino clearly expressed his reservations concerning Father Urrutigoity, who was identified as posing a serious threat to young people. Bishop Martino also carefully and consistently expressed his grave doubts about this cleric’s suitability for priestly ministry and cautioned the Bishop of the Diocese of Ciudad del Este, Paraguay to not allow Father Urrutigoity to incardinate into his diocese . Despite these serious cautions, Bishop Rogel...

Dick Cheney's stunt double, Bill Donohue of the Catholic Defense League. Refusing to address a single one of the facts whistle blower Jennifer Haselberger has revealed in her deposition, in her interviews, and in the abundant documentary evidence that supports Haseblberger's claims about the scandal in St. Paul, Catholic Defense League's Bill Donohue instead goes after Haselberger personally. And why not?  This is a tactic demagogues of all shapes and sizes have used throughout history.  Avoid the evidence, don't engage on the issues, instead use personal attacks to discredit your opponents.  It may not be the most Catholic or Christian thing to do - but hey, it's us vs. them , so anything goes, right? Now if Donohue wanted to come after me or pretty much any other Catholic I know, and if he did his digging, he could find a ton of embarrassing and incriminating details that would make it hard for any of us to show our faces in public again.  I have yet to...

An anonymous commenter responded to my post here , with at least one question that I answered here.   And yet he or she claims I'm dodging the points he or she has made. So let me address them below: 1. Anonymous claimed that the sexual scandal in the Church is over.  This was the point I responded to in my follow up post : It most emphatically is not .  Bishops are still enabling sex abuse, and getting indignant when the press or the courts point this out.   2. Anonymous takes issue with the number of pedophile priests that are or have been active in the Church (reports range from 4 to 10%).  But the number of abusers is not the point.  The point is how the bishops continue to enable such abuse.  Even if the number is half what Pope Francis suggests - i.e., only 1% - the point is not that number.   The point is what should be done once a crime against a child is committed.  This is what can easily be fixed, and this is what the b...

Tolkien's amazing letter to his son Michael deserves a closer look.  Here it is again, with some commentary by me in boldface .   *** A man's dealings with women can be purely physical (they cannot really, of course: but I mean he can refuse to take other things into account, to the great damage of his soul (and body) and theirs); or 'friendly'; or he can be a 'lover' (engaging and blending all his affections and powers of mind and body in a complex emotion powerfully coloured and energized by 'sex').  Tolkien is setting up here three possibilities in relations between men and women:  1. A man can relate to a woman merely for the sake of physical pleasure (though really this can never happen, for we can never separate our bodies and our souls, and great harm of some sort comes to those men who try to do this; great harm also comes to the women involved) 2. A man can be "friends" with a woman (before old age, this is...

Eros - looking more like himself than the domesticated Cupid he later became. One of the things that has caught my attention the last week or so has been a remarkable essay by D. C. Schindler on Pope Benedict XVI's Deus Caritas Est , in which Schindler points out the Holy Father's Magisterial assertion that Love is One (as God is One) and that Eros - the love that is jealous, interested, invested, eager, lively, passionate, a love that possesses and that takes pride in its object - and Agape - the love that is disinterested, self-effacing, self-sacrificing, altruistic, condescending (in the best sense of the word) - are simply two sides of the same coin, two aspects of the same unified thing: Love, viewed from different angles.  Indeed, Eros without agape becomes demanding and destructive; but Agape without Eros becomes clinical, dehumanizing and condescending (in the worst sense of the word). I am convinced that a deep mystery is here, one that offers a key to much of o...