A funeral for death by violence

Last week, I presided at a funeral liturgy for two murder victims.

Pope Leo at the Sagrada Familia

 This is one of many videos available of the light show in Barcelona.  It is not as long as some, but shows the highlights. Unfortunately there is an ad first, but it’s not long.    I saw the cathedral once - many decades ago, when I was 19.  There has been a great deal of work finished on it since then.  I hope to see it again later this year when I visit my son and his family.  To say it is totally unlike any other cathedral I’ve ever seen is. a serious understatement. It is unique. The light show is fascinating.This clip only shows a small portion of it. I don’t agree with Barron about much, but I do agree with him that the Roman Catholic Church does beauty best.  Is this cathedral beautiful?  Not in my personal opinion, at least not in the conventional sense.  But it is magnificent.  We don’t watch the news but my Barcelona-bound son sent me a link.  I didn’t use that one because of length (it was from a Spanish organization) .  This one is about 5 minutes. So, in case you missed it, here is a brief clip.

https://youtu.be/I_-lGSGOi8I?is=-rTBA-FY7HmEqJyS

On Celebrity Exorcists

It has been in the news lately that Cardinal Robert McElroy has removed Msgr. Stephen Rosetti from the post of exorcist for the archdiocese of Washington, DC., after some comments he made about UFO sightings and demons: Washington archbishop removes priest as exorcist after comments on UFOs and demons | National Catholic Reporter

"The archbishop said Rossetti's statements "linking UFOs to demonic presence and the Center's recent use of social media gravely undermine the Church's very precise teaching on the devil, demons and exorcism."

So I thought it might be useful to explore what the Church's teaching on exorcism and exorcists actually is. From the USCCB site on that subject: Exorcism | USCCB

The 250th Anniversary of the US—celebrate or mourn?

To me, this before-and-after photo of the White House and grounds this week perfectly symbolizes the destruction of our country by Trump and his MAGA minions, a destruction aided and abetted by tens of millions of “christians”— 81% of evangelicals and more than 60% of white Catholics.  The second photo was taken just a few days ago. You can see glimpses of the East Wing corridor in the left-side photo through the trees in the first photo. The construction of a CAGE for an MMA fight on the White House lawn on trump's birthday, is even more of a travesty than the "military" parade he put on last year, which few attended. This year he's degraded himself and our country and the White House itself by using taxpayer money to put on one of the most violent "sports" around-- to "celebrate" the nation's 250th anniversary.  This year trump co-opted the planning from the official planning organization ( non- partisan) to impose his own partisan stamp on it - to honor himself, and not the country.  The "prayer rally" on the Mall cost a million of taxpayers' dollars. It was an evangelical form of christianity, and non-evangelicals were barely visible. Of course, Barron was there along with evangelical ministers who refer to the Pope as "satan" and Catholicism as a "satantic cult". Hegseth's "pastor" (invited to speak to military staff at the Pentagon) was there. This article in The Atlantic "Holy Warrior" by Missy Ryan) reveals what a fine person he is.   https://tinyurl.com/43e5sc7h 

Summer Reading

 What has everyone been reading lately? I have a few selections that I liked.

One of them is Work in Progress, by Father Jim Martin, SJ. It is a coming of age memoir, telling the story of the jobs he worked before becoming a Jesuit priest, starting with the one where he worked in an ice cream parlor as a young teen in 1976. Of course everything was about the bicentennial then. It sounds like he was having more fun in his hometown of Quaker Meeting, PA, in the bicentennial year than we are having now.  He had a bunch of other young people starter jobs, and one bigger one working for General Electric before he decided to become a Jesuit at, I think, the age of 29. 

Pope Leo Warns of Risks From A.I. in 42,300-Word Encyclical (Excerpt from The New York Times)

Pope Leo XIV on Monday set out a sweeping vision for corporate executives, politicians and individuals who will shape and be shaped by the future of artificial intelligence, warning leaders to safeguard humanity from A.I.’s most disruptive effects.

Leo’s declaration came in the form of a papal encyclical, an open letter to “all people of good will” that ran to roughly 42,300 words in its English version. It outlined his desire to protect human dignity and agency in an age in which technology threatens to replace humans in many professional and social roles. He presented it alongside Christopher Olah, a co-founder of Anthropic, a major A.I. developer, in a symbolic gesture of dialogue between leaders of the spiritual and technological worlds.

While emphasizing that “technology should not be considered, in itself, as a force antagonistic to humanity,” he wrote that “the pursuit of greater profits cannot justify choices that systematically sacrifice jobs.”

Among other things, Leo called for:

• government regulation of the private companies that are driving the development of A.I.

• protection and retraining for workers whose jobs are threatened

• education to help students think critically about the technology

• action to protect children from violent, hypersexualized or fake information online that is often generated by A.I.

• safeguards to ensure that humans, not artificial intelligence, remain responsible for all decisions regarding the use of weapons.

Nature as Cathedral

 I subscribe to the NYT newsletter called “ Believing”   I wish I were young enough, and healthy enough, to visit the place she describes. As I have often mentioned (apparently shared by visitors to this remote place) I feel,God most powerfully when in nature. The little church sounds like the epitome of Christian hospitality - cookies all through the night and waffles after the evening service . Open to all, no matter what their belief system is - or isn’t .

The fringes of things

By Lauren Jackson

There is a small wooden chapel at the edge of the world. It sits on Svalbard, an archipelago high in the Arctic Circle, where the vast ice sheet of the North Pole melts into rock.