Well, we're finally settling down here in Austin, and adjusting to the heat. It's been a long while since we checked in on current papal events, however, so here's a brand new Vaticanews for ya:
Vaticanews 06/11/09
BULLETINS:
Hokey Religions and Ancient Weapons Still no Match for a Good Blaster by Your Side
Close your eyes and imagine George Lucas. Then open your eyes to read this, and close them again to re-imagine George Lucas...as an archbishop! Looks awesome, doesn't it? Well, you're wrong, because we weren't talking about the beloved beard behind Star Wars, we meant sixty-year-old clergyman George Lucas, the newly-appointed archbishop of Omaha, NE. Same name, different legacy. Now close your eyes and imagine if it actually was George Lucas the director, and what a cathedral full of alien puppets might look like.
Special thanks to God, and Industrial Lights & Magic, for making this post possible.
(source= Vatican Radio)
Vatican Confesses its Displeasure with People's Displeasure with Confession
In an interview last week, Archbishop Mauro Piacenza lamented the fact that fewer and fewer Catholics are coming to confession. At first this seems like good news, because a drop in confessions might come from a drop in sinning. However, the most recent numbers on worldwide sin don't support this theory. Piacenza blames it on people confusing confession with "the couch of a psychologist or a psychiatrist," but this seems like an easy distinction for people to make. Priests never prescribe Prozac, for example, and therapists rarely wear collars. It's possible people are drawn to the comfort of a couch over cramped wooden confessionals, but that could be overcome with a few knee pillows. So now one question remains: is there room in the Vatican's budget for knee pillows? More on that as the story develops.
(source= Associated Press)
HEADLINES:
Even the Pope Confused by God's Choices
If there's one thing God is known for, it's His mysterious ways. Classic examples include the platypus, Carrot Top, why people have to die, and the box office success of Beverly Hills Chihuahua. But in a recent discussion with a group of 7,000 children, Pope Benedict XVI expressed his confusion over a smaller, more personal matter. He wondered why, out of all the people in the world, God hired him for the position of Pope.
Benedict's bafflement comes not from a lack of desire to be pontiff, but because he finds it surprising that he was even on God's radar at all. Growing up in a tiny German village, Benedict never dreamed he could be Pope. He and his childhood friends saw the Pope at the time, Pope Pius XI, as being "unreachable, almost of another world." Like an alien lord whose futuristic technologies they would never have access to.
Almost eighty years later, Benedict finds himself piloting the mothership. While he is, of course, honored, he says even today it's hard for him to understand why he was chosen. God has yet to release a statement explaining the decision, but then again, God hardly ever publishes anything official. If there's another thing He's known for, it's keeping His mysterious ways mysterious.
(source= Catholic News Service)
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