Perpetual Thursday: Dropping My IQ

Perpetual Thursday Ramblings, Rantings, Nonsense, and Bunk

Dropping My IQ
Wednesday, May 10, 2006

My IQ just dropped about 11 points, and I place the blame completely on Pepsi. They make a soda called Pepsi NEX. Pepsi NEX has an offical game. You can play this game at: http://www.pepsi.co.jp/special/game.html
This game is the reason for my lowered IQ. If you play it, you'll see why. You'll also win this neat little banner to show you won:

It's a.... diffrent... game... thing.

Ok, onto something else. Hmmm... Something else... Ahh! Here is something. The Da Vinci Code. Now I'm sure you've all already heard plenty about the Da Vinci Code. I know I certianly have heard a lot. But have you heard that people are starving themselves to death over it? Yup. From an article at BREITBART.COM:
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A Catholic group called on Christians to starve themselves to death in protest at the release of "The Da Vinci Code" at cinemas in India as others burned copies of the novel.

The Catholic Secular Forum said it hoped thousand of people would attend a protest Wednesday in Mumbai to burn effigies of Dan Brown, the author of the best-selling novel.

"It's to show the extent that our feelings have been hurt," said the group's general secretary Joseph Dias, speaking of the "fast unto death" call if the government fails to take action.
--
Read the full article. Now I'll be completely honest here. That's may not be the dumbest thing I've ever heard, but it fits up in the top 100. No offence intented.

Next I'd like to applaud Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Mo. From an article in the National Catholic Reporter, entitled Extreme Makeover: the Diocese:
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Perhaps nowhere in America has the transition from a church focused on social engagement and lay empowerment to one more concerned with Catholic identity and evangelization been more dramatic, or in some ways more wrenching, than in the Kansas City-St. Joseph, Mo., diocese since the appointment of Bishop Robert Finn.

Finn has brought the diocese, for decades a model of the former category of church practice, to a screeching halt and sent it veering off in a new direction, leaving nationally heralded education programs and high-profile lay leaders and women religious with long experience abandoned and dismayed...

...

Finn, 53, a priest of the St. Louis archdiocese and a member of the conservative Opus Dei movement, was named coadjutor of the Kansas City-St. Joseph diocese in March 2004. The diocese comprises 130,000 Catholics in 27 countries of northwest Missouri. He succeeded Bishop Raymond Boland as ordinary on May 24, 2005. Within a week of his appointment he:

Dismissed the chancellor, a layman with 21 years of experience in the diocese, and the vice chancellor, a religious woman stationed in the diocese for nearly 40 years and the chief of pastoral planning for the diocese since 1990, and replaced them with a priest chancellor.
Cancelled the diocese’s nationally renowned lay formation programs and a master’s degree program in pastoral ministry.
Cut in half the budget of the Center for Pastoral Life and Ministry, effectively forcing the almost immediate resignation of half the seven-member team. Within 10 months all seven would be gone and the center shuttered.
Ordered a “zero-based study” of adult catechesis in the diocese and appointed as vice chancellor to oversee adult catechesis, lay formation and the catechesis study a layman with no formal training in theology or religious studies.
Ordered the editor of the diocesan newspaper to immediately cease publishing columns by Notre Dame theologian Fr. Richard McBrien.
Announced that he would review all front page stories, opinion pieces, columns and editorials before publication.

By most accounts, he reached these decisions without consulting any of the senior leadership of the diocese or the people in the programs affected. Virtually no one on the chancery staff knew of the changes until they were announced at a news conference two days after his appointment. Many parish staffs and priests would first learn of the changes when they read about them in the local or diocesan newspaper...

...The new bishop “came with an agenda,” said Fr. Richard Carney, a priest for more than 50 years and a respected leader in the diocese. “He didn’t ask us who we are and what we are about. He looked at it from the vantage point of a coadjutor bishop and made decisions of what he was going to do about us. … Well, we’re not used to that kind of authoritarianism,” he said. “It didn’t show much respect for prior bishops who established it that way,” Carney said. “We feel beaten up.”
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Read the full article. Thank God for Bishops like this one. I couldn't help but laugh as I read this article. Funny how the whole diosese seems to think they have been betrayed. Controlled. "Oh dear, isn't it horrible, we've got a bishop who has choosen to exercise his authority!" (Not an actual quote.) It seems more and more people have forgotten that the bishop is in charge. It's his job to do what he tinks best for those under his care. Albert de Zutter, editor of the newspaper for that diocese, complains of being "censored."
He says: "Bishop Boland must have said a hundred times, 'If you want a catechism, go buy a catechism. A newspaper is not a catechism.' " Well, a secular newspaper may not be a catechism, but a newspaper published by a Catholic diosese, should, logicially be a Catholic newspaper. As such it should be a catechism, to an extent. It certianly shouldn't publish anything that might be damaging to the souls of members of the diosese (such as the articles by Fr. McBrien of Notre Dame, which were being published before Bishop Finn put a stopp to them).
Let's be honest, the diosese is run by the Bishop, and he has a right to do what he thinks is right and in accordence with church teaching. Regardless of what others think.

Ok, now for some bragging on my part. Check out http://www.alternative-internet.com/fileprojectstudios/ The new offical page of The File Project Studios, the branch of DDS/AI behind the Captian Happy Show and News of the Future. It a rather cool looking web page. One of my better designs. So I'm showing it off.

Labels: Religion

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Comments:
The Da Vinci Code is some of the most egregious garbage ever to be published, and I do think that there should be serious protests concerning it, but I agree with you that protests like this one, where people go as far as to starve themselves to death, are nothing less than insane. Seriously, there are WAY more constructive ways to protest than something like this, like, say, boycotting the company responsible for putting out the film.
Posted by

Anonymous at 9:38 PM

I worded that last sentence badly, and made the meaning slightly ambiguous. Allow me to rephrase:

Seriously, there are WAY more constructive ways to protest, like, say, boycotting the company responsible for putting out the film.
Posted by

Anonymous at 12:21 AM

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