Level Wise

“The story is told of Cardinal Kaspar, who heads the Vatican Congregation for Dialogue with other religions. He recently attended a Greek Orthodox service. Some of you may know that their services go on for a very long time. Afterwards the celebrant said to him, ‘I hope that you were not bored’. The Cardinal replied, ‘no, not at all’. ‘It did not go on too long for you then? Perhaps you think we might modernise it or make it simpler’, the celebrant asked. ‘No’, replied the Cardinal. ‘It should stay exactly as it is. It is very beautiful’. So the celebrant said, ’so why did you do all that you have done to your Mass then’? And it is quite true of course, that many people now look towards the east to recover that sense of the mysterious and spiritual in a religion that has sometimes been stripped bare to its essentials and sometimes even beyond. That’s why we need the traditional liturgy…”

The submission of wives to their husbands has got to be one of the least popular teachings of the Catholic Church today — and the case can be made that the Catholic Church isn’t teaching this today at all. The folks at Heart, Mind, and Strength are busy finessing this doctrine into oblivion where it shall die the Death of a Thousand Nuances. For instance, Greg Popcak writes:

“BUT, when the man stops listening to the voice of God speaking through the needs of his wife and children, he becomes not a leader, but a despot. And obedience to such a husband would not be Christian obedience, but rather, idolatry … A husband can only claim authority to the degree that he is aware of the specific needs God has written on the heart of his wife and children and spends his days finding godly ways those needs can be fulfilled.”

How disappointing. To appease his anti-Catholic critics, it appears that Mel Gibson has decided to depart from the Gospels where the Jews are shown in a less than favorable light see. :

“Paul Lauer, marketing director for Gibson’s Icon Productions company, said Gibson has edited the film to show more ’sympathetic’ Jewish characters who were not calling for Jesus to be crucified. ‘We believe we have softened the story compared to the way the Gospel has told it,’ Lauer said in an interview. He pointed to Matthew 27:25, in which the Jewish mob calls for Jesus’ blood ‘to be on us and on our children.’ ‘That’s in the Gospel,’ he said. ‘It’s not in our film.’”

“Time to calibrate your gaydar, because Bravo’s ‘Boy Meets Boy’ (Tuesdays at 9 p.m.) is finally here. America’s first gay dating show isn’t just a dating show, you see. It’s a sexual shell game in which a mix of gay and straight suitors compete for ‘one exceptional gay man’ and, oh yeah, a secret cash prize. Of course James, The Exceptional Gay Man (TEGM), doesn’t know that half the men are straight — boy, won’t it be a hoot when he finds out? — which makes his earnest enthusiasm for his role as the gay bachelor all the more heartbreaking.”