SSPX decision imminent - Fellay in Rome

Multiple sources are reporting that Bishop Fellay, the superior of the Society of St. Pius X, is in Rome to receive the formal response of the Holy See to proposals for the reintegration of the traditionalist religious order into the Roman Catholic Church. This appears to be decision day. Both in Rome and within the SSPX there have been groups strongly opposed to any accord and who have been working to scuttle a potential deal.

Rorate is posting reports as they become available.

Europe braces for Greek exit

Legal advice on capital controls, including limits on withdrawals from Greek bank accounts, and emergency border restrictions, has been provided by the European Commission to eurozone governments drawing up plans for Greece to leave the euro.

Commission officials confirmed on Tuesday that "these elements" of contingency planning for a Greek exit from the single currency have been discussed by the "euro working group" (EWG) of Treasury officials and junior finance ministers over the last six weeks.

"There are indeed discussions, and we are asked to clarify what is foreseen in the EU treaties," said a Commission spokesman. "Some people are working on scenarios. We are providing information on EU law as guardian of the treaties."

Greek newspaper Ekathimerini reported bank withdrawals in Greece have hit a rate of up to €500m per day, a level expected to accelerate in the aftermath of Greek elections on Sunday.

Read the rest here.

I am calling bullbleep on a web rumor (updated)

There is a story spreading like wildfire on the web that a major Italian bank (Bank Network Investments SpA (BNI)) has suspended payments and closed up for a 1 month "bank holiday" causing chaos. And further that there is some sort of news blackout going on. (See here.)

As of right now I suspect this is just an internet hoax that has gotten some traction. Not only can I not find a single reputable news source reporting the story, I also can't find a website for this alleged bank. A Google news search came up blank. But so did a subject search seeking any reference to this so called bank other than the web rumors being reported over the last 2 days or so. You would think even a small bank would have some kind of online reference to its existence... somewhere.

Pending evidence to the contrary I am calling bullshit on this story.

Update: See Michael's comment. I am still looking for more information. If the story checks out I will post a retraction.

Ecumenism done right

Metropolitan Hilarion, responsible for the external relations of the Russian Orthodox Church, pointed out the joint tasks of members of the Orthodox and Catholic Churches in a world characterized by materialism and consumerism at a meeting on Pentecost with the Executive President of the Pontifical Foundation Aid to the Church in Need (ACN).

“We must not wait for unity of the churches to take action,” stated Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev of Volokolamsk, who is Chairman of the Department of External Church Relations of the Patriarchate of Moscow. “The Eucharistic union will not come about within a few years.”

Today, however, there is already a “strategic alliance in fields of common interest,” said Hilarion at the meeting in Moscow.

Read the rest here.

HT: A blog reader.

Another 'vampire' skeleton found in Bulgaria

Another centuries-old skeleton of a man who was subjected to a ritual to stop him from turning into a vampire was unearthed in central Bulgaria Tuesday, archaeologist Nikolay Ovcharov said.

"The skeleton was tied to the ground with four iron clamps, while burning ambers were placed on top of his grave," Ovcharov told AFP.

The bones of a man in his thirties have yet to be dated but are at least several centuries old, said the archaeologist.

"This man is not a vampire but was subjected to this pagan superstition-driven ritual to prevent him from becoming one after his death," he explained.

The bones were found during excavations in a monastery courtyard in the central town of Veliko Tarnovo, where Ovcharov had already unearthed another skeleton with tied hands and subjected to similar rites a few years ago.

Read the rest here.

"This man is not a vampire..."
Well of course he isn't after they did all that stuff. Silly scientists...

Damning testimony in Penn State child abuse case

BELLEFONTE, Pa. — The young man identified in court documents as “Victim 1” sobbed in court Tuesday as he testified that Jerry Sandusky sexually assaulted him multiple times in the basement of Sandusky’s home.

The witness, now 18 and just five days removed from his high school graduation, said the abuse occurred when he was in middle school, and that Sandusky was enraged when he cut off contact.

Read the rest here.

I almost feel bad for the defense lawyers. This case is so lopsided it is the epitome of the term "open and shut case." Still even a sick @#$% like Sandusky is entitled to his day in court. But if the man had an ounce of decency he would have pleaded guilty and spared his victims from the trauma of having to recount his perverted crimes in an open court room. Purely on an emotional basis this makes me regret my opposition to capital punishment. It's not very Christian. But this creep is a walking advertisement for the gallows.

US: Russia is selling attack helicopters to Syria

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton accused Russia on Tuesday of selling attack helicopters to the Syrian government, asserting that Moscow was lying about the lethal support it provides to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

In an unusually direct rebuke, Clinton dismissed as “patently untrue” Russian claims that it is no longer providing the weapons used in Assad’s brutal assault against the country’s 15-month-old uprising.

Read the rest here.

Vatican tight lipped on meeting with dissident nuns

ROME - What do American nuns do when they are accused of being radical feminists? They respond as radical feminists might: by challenging the male authority face-to-face. 

Sister Pat Farrell, head of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), the umbrella group that represents 80 percent of the U.S.'s 57,000 Catholic nuns, traveled to Rome to confront accusations that her organization promotes "radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith."

Farrell met American Cardinal William Levada, head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, on Tuesday.  The gathering was aimed at reconciling their differences, but it has the potential to permanently alienate many American nuns from the Holy See.

Read the rest here.

Fifty Years Ago; The great escape from Alcatraz

ALCATRAZ ISLAND, Calif. — For 20th-century crime buffs, few capers match the intrigue and ingenuity of the "Escape from Alcatraz," the 1962 prison break that three inmates pulled off with stolen spoons, dummy heads and a raincoat raft. For Marie Widner and Mearl Taylor, the fabled flight from the Rock is all about family.

The two Florida women are the younger sisters of John and Clarence Anglin, who along with fellow prisoner Frank Morris, disappeared from the federal prison on Alcatraz Island 50 years ago. Whether the three men perished in chilly San Francisco Bay, as prison officials and federal agents insisted at the time, remains a subject of hot speculation because their bodies were never found.

Out of the 36 Alcatraz inmates who tried to flee before the prison was closed in March 1963, the three are the only ones who remain unaccounted for, according to the U.S. Marshals Service, which maintains active arrest warrants on Morris and the Anglins.

Read the rest here.

One New York Judge Is Holding Her Ground Against The Biggest Names In Government

On May 16 U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest upheld her decision to block the controversial indefinite detention provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2012, and the Obama Administration made a request for a more detailed explanation.

The defendants — Barack Obama, Leon Panetta, John McCain, John Boehner, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell and Eric Cantor — argued that the order only stopped the government from indefinitely detaining the journalists and activists who brought the lawsuit.

But Judge Forrest has now clarified the injunction in a 8-page memorandum released Wednesday so as to "leave no doubt" that U.S. citizens cannot be indefinitely detained without due process.

Read the rest here.

Report shows carnage downturn caused to families' net worth

WASHINGTON -- Americans suffered a record decline in wealth between 2007 and 2010 as home values tumbled, according to a Federal Reserve report on Monday that underscored the severity of the recent recession.

The median family's net worth dropped 38.8 percent during the three-year period, the Fed said in its latest report on changes in U.S. Family Finances, derived from a survey of consumer finances. Fed economists told reporters that this was the biggest drop in net worth since the survey started in 1989.

The median net worth, which is the value of assets minus debt, plunged to $77,300 in 2010 from $126,400 in 2007. Net worth in 2010 was at levels last seen in 1992.

Read the rest here.

Sci-Fi and the campy world of 1970's TV

Ray Bradbury passed away this week. He was in many respects one of the founding fathers of modern science fiction. When I was growing up sci-fi was very popular both in movies and on TV. After reading articles on his influence I had sudden flashbacks to the 1970's when our lives seemed to revolve around TV to a degree that most parents would find laughable today. A lot of it seems corny now but back then how could we know that silver mini-skirts and purple hair were not going to be the fashion in 1980...

Nor could we know that platform shoes and bell bottom pants would not still be around in 1999...


Battlestar Galactica made the near annihilation of the human race seem like a grand adventure unlike its recent remake which was much darker and brilliantly acted...


Of course none of those shows gained the cult like following of Star Wars or Star Trek. But I remember them and for a kid they seemed pretty cool at the time. And to my mind it beat The Dukes of Hazzard.

In Maine an independent and moderate leads in Senate race

...With the balance of power in the Senate so tenuously decided, King’s unwillingness to commit to one side or the other has scrambled the calculus in Washington and brought him a lot of attention.

“I’ve come to realize that an unencumbered U.S. senator is a profound threat to the whole system,” he said. “It’s somebody that they can’t put in a box and say, oh, well, we know how this guy is going to vote. That has raised the stakes, frankly.”

And the stakes were already pretty high.

On Tuesday, six Republicans and four Democrats will face off in Senate primaries for a chance to represent their party this November. But polls show the independent King with a wide lead over any of his potential challengers in the race to succeed the retiring Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe.

Read the rest here.

From the you can't make this up file...

A jury has awarded a Georgia woman $3 million over her husband's heart attack, finding that his doctor should have warned the Atlanta cop against strenuous activity like the three-way sex he was having at the time he died, WXIA-TV reports.

William Martinez, a 31-year-old Atlanta police officer, collapsed and died while he and a male friend were having sex with a woman who was not his wife at an Atlanta airport motel in 2009.

Read the rest here.

Santorum braces for convention battle with Ron Paul

Rick Santorum plans to lead a strong pro-Romney effort at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., that can serve as a counterweight in case Representative Ron Paul and his supporters “are looking for a platform fight,” he said in an interview that was broadcast on Sunday.

Mr. Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator, had sharp differences with Mitt Romney when both were seeking the presidential nomination, but since bowing out of the race, Mr. Santorum has thrown his support behind the presumptive nominee and has papered over their differences.

The same cannot be said of Mr. Paul, the Texas libertarian who is still technically a candidate and who will be bringing  more than 200 delegates to Tampa. Mr. Santorum, appearing on the ABC News program “This Week,” suggested that fireworks with the Paul group were a distinct possibility.

Asked about his own interest in influencing the Republican platform, Mr. Santorum said, “I like the platform that we have right now.”

He then added: “I’m concerned that Ron Paul and some of his supporters out there are looking for a platform fight. And I want to make sure that we have strong, principled conservatives there who stood with me in our primary fight to go there and counterbalance the effect of the Paul folks.”

Mr. Santorum, who often sparred with Mr. Paul in the Republican debates, did not elaborate on what shape a platform fight might take.

Read the rest here.

Commerce Secretary Accused in Hit and Run Accident

Police are investigating two traffic collisions allegedly caused by U.S. Commerce Secretary John Bryson that left him injured and unconscious, authorities in the Los Angeles area said Monday.

One of the crashes was under investigation as a felony hit and run, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's department and the San Gabriel Police Department said.

Jennifer Friedman, director of public affairs for the Department of Commerce, confirmed that Bryson was involved in a traffic accident over the weekend and said he had "suffered a seizure."

Bryson was taken to the hospital for examination and remained overnight for observation, Friedman said. He was released and has returned to Washington. 

Read the rest here.

Pledges forgotten, local governments repurpose federally funded parks

The government promised that the public would get parks where citizens could exercise and stay strong – shared open spaces that would be theirs forever, places that would inspire and invigorate.

But one park became a Las Vegas hotel. Another was almost turned into a beachfront McDonald’s. Another is being converted into an upscale private resort in Oklahoma.  And in New York City, the National Park Service allowed the New York Yankees, the nation’s richest baseball franchise, to build a parking garage atop public ball fields that needy kids at the local schools didn’t see replaced for six years.

Forty-eight years after Congress and President John F. Kennedy promised parks to the public, the budget-battered National Park Service program that awarded $3.9 billion-plus to state and local governments to buy or improve those parks has routinely allowed the land to be converted to other uses. Frequently, critics contend, these transactions violate federal law and regulations requiring that federally funded recreational acreage be replaced by lands of equal value.

Read the rest here.

A golden idea to save (or doom) the euro

 

Gold is back in the news, big time, and not just because the price may be on the verge of another upswing or that Peter Munk is turning Barrick, the world’s biggest gold company, into a CEO meat grinder. It’s because Germany, it appears, wants to make gold the effective currency of the euro zone before the region plunges to the bottom of the seas like a concrete U-boat.

The weakest euro zone countries are tapped out financially and economically. But a few of them are brimming with gold reserves. Take Italy, the euro zone’s third-largest economy. The Italians love gold and it’s stashed everywhere, in their central bank and in their jewellery and safe deposit boxes. (I once saw a religious-festival parade of children in a mountain town, with each child groaning under the weight of heavy gold necklaces and other baubles). At last count, the central bank had 2,451 tonnes of gold, valued at close to €100-billion ($128-billion). That’s not a fortune compared to Italy’s €1.9-trillion national debt, but it’s not bad when Rome is raiding the pantry to pay its ever-rising debt.

Germany’s idea is coyly named the European Redemption Pact and it is nothing if not creative. While details are scant, here is roughly how this gilded baby would work. Countries with debts greater than 60 per cent of gross domestic product – the (ignored) limit under the European Union’s Maastricht Treaty – would transfer those debts into a redemption fund, which would be covered by joint bonds. The scheme has been called “euro bonds lite.”

Here’s the catch. Countries using the scheme (most would, including Germany, because of generally high debt-to-GDP ratios) would have to cover 20 per cent of their debt with collateral, payable in gold or currency reserves. Default on the payments and you lose your gold. The “sinking” fund would retire the debt over 20 years.

Read the rest here.

Quote of the day...

I am fond of saying that they should take Vatican II out into the woods with a shovel and a pistol, then tell everyone it went to live on a farm. By, this, I mean undo the changes, but do it quietly and discreetly, without a lot of fanfare that will make the old libs want to march out for one last Donnybrook. From what I read, that seems to be BXVI's approach, too.

-An anonymous comment from here.

A Friendly Response To Metropolitan Jonah

A friendly response to Metropolitain Jonah who apparently suggested to the ACNA Provincial Assembly today that we “fix” the western Creed by removing the filioque clause:

Your Beatitude, we’ll reconsider the filioque clause when the Orthodox Church in America affirms the doctrines of original guilt, sola fide, sola scriptura, and “fixes” its calendar.

-Matt Kennedy from here.
HT: Dr. Tighe

Well, I agree with him about the calendar... ;-)