Sunday, June 09, 2019

Holy journalism, Batman!

Tired of Fake News?  Fed up with the Lying Media?  Ready to fight back against Enemies of the People?  You can't go wrong with Catholic Herald, where I have spent a delightful half-hour.  Oddly enough, it's British.  This week:

The Vatican has formally recognized the International Association of Exorcists, which does just what it says on the tin.  Catholics will no longer have to seek out back-alley exorcisms when they find themselves occupied by an unplanned stranger.  Women in places like Alabama and Missouri must be envious.

Fans of Fulton J. Sheen (even on black and white television his blue eyes rivaled Paul Newman's) will be pleased to know that his canonization efforts took a step forward.  The archbishop's ashes will be disinterred from St. Patrick's Cathedral and returned to his birthplace of Peoria, Illinois, where supporters are hoping to line up the number of miracles needed to put him over the top.  If you were thinking of having your bone spurs cured, or something similar, head for Peoria, the Lourdes of the Midwest (as nobody calls it).

Father Herman Geissler, whoever he is, has been cleared of the charge of "solicitation in the confessional," whatever that is.  I suppose it's easy to jump to the wrong conclusion when the guy on the other side of the screen says, "You can say a thousand Hail Marys or we can go back to my place and talk about this."  I'm guessing here, the article is short on details.  If there's a canon law about this, it must have happened before, yes?

My favorite:  Vatican Radio's Italian service has begun a weekly podcast called "Hebdomade Papae," which of course means "the pope's week."  I love that it's in Latin, at a time when fewer people understand Latin than at any point in the past two thousand years.  A lot of their terminology is necessarily of recent invention.  For instance, "UFO investigator" is "rerum inexplicatorum volantium studiosus."  So somebody who spent years beavering away at the old hic-haec-hoc has a job in radio, which is also dying but that's a story for another day.  Exultate jubilate, friend, you earned it.




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