“it’s clear that the people at the top are simply closed minded and are not listening” Ben Sharaz Arial said. 

Arial continued “98% of us don’t want to go to the promised land. When will the leadership wake up and listen to who really counts, like all of us in the majority”

Moses’ move has drawn considerable criticism especially after food and water has grown increasingly scarce. 

“Unless this guy (Moses) can figure out a way to have food come from heaven or water come from rocks this decision will certainly mean the end of Israel as we know it” Arial went on to say. 

The move has also come under fire from women’s groups in camp as well “I’m not about to let a group of men tell me what is best for me. If I want to go back to Egypt then that’s my choice” Ruth Hanan said. 

It is clear that this contentious debate will go on for the foreseeable future. 

In a celebrity and sports obsessed culture we often reserve the word greatness for actors and athletes.  But when their greatness is on display, whether on the silver screen or in an arena, it doesn’t impact humanity much more than propelling the actor or the athlete to great fame.  They entertain us for a while and then we get back to “real” life.  In the case of Steve Jobs, his greatness changed our world.  Permanently.

There is a multitude of accomplishments to Steve Jobs credit that, if he were to only have accomplished one of them, we would be lauding him as a visionary. That one man could have achieved all of them, in a life that was too short, the word for that is revolutionary.

We have a way of letting nostalgia get the best of us after someone passes; of sometimes inflating their contributions and successes.  In Jobs case you must wonder if we will not be guilty of the opposite.  He was that prolific. He was that influential.

The passing of Jobs should be a wake-up call for all of us to realize what extraordinary times we live in.  We are in the midst of a revolution that just isn’t for gadget enthusiasts and “techies”, but rather a revolution that literally is changing the face of the earth. The way we work, the way we play, the way we interact with one another – every relevant activity that man takes part in has been completely revolutionized in the last 40 years.  And one man has had his hand in almost every aspect of that.  And he is gone now.  At the age of 56.

Early on in the life of Apple they used the marketing slogan “Think Different.”  Today the world does think differently because of Steve Jobs.  And the world is now dimmer because his light has been snuffed out.  How profoundly sad.  God bless you and keep you Mr. Jobs.  You will be sorely, sorely missed.

Unfortunately when we try to brush our crosses off, when we try to rationalize them away, we tend to not receive all the grace that God has for us.  We tend to not unite ourselves fully to Christ.  And we fail our testing.

It pains me to say that many bishops are going this course when it comes to the sex abuse scandal.  When you get right down to it, who wouldn’t want to put it behind us?  Who doesn’t want to just make it go away?  It’s a natural instinct, but it’s an immature move.  In his latest blog post, Archbishop Timothy Dolan is trying to do just that.  And the results are disastrous.

Archbishop Dolan is trying to address those who would leave the Church due to the absolutely disgusting witness of sexual abusers in the presbyterate.  This, obviously, is an important pastoral concern.  There are many barriers to faith – and the sex abuse scandal is a large one. The pastoral heart of Abp. Dolan shines through for those who are scandalized by the overwhelming ineptitude of the hierarchy to snuff out this problem.  But, in focusing on those who would leave the Church due to the scandal, Abp Dolan does what a pastor should never do – he reduces the suffering of those who have actually been affected by the abuse first hand.   Certainly Archbishop Dolan probably didn’t mean to do so, but it’s clear that he does.

This type of reductionist language is tantamount to putting your hand over your ears when you hear something you don’t like and yelling “nah nah nah nah I can’t hear you.”  It may be effective short term, but in the long run you just kind of look really silly.  It pains me to say that archbishop Dolan comes off as incredibly silly in this blog post.

Here Abp. Dolan compares the witness of the early disciples who scattered at the arrest of Jesus with the failings of sexually abusive priests and “lax” bishops who reassigned these priests and caused more damage.  But is this really an apt comparison?  Can we really compare cowardice with sex abuse?  Do we really want to make such a comparison?  Furthermore, does Abp. Dolan not really know better?  This man is the president of the USCCB and is described as the “American pope.”  Surely he knows the difference between men who cowardly tried to save their own life when it appeared they may suffer the same execution that their rabbi would, and men who raped scores of children, shattered their souls, and then were reassigned into areas where they could continue the same carnage.

This comparison is absolutely preposterous when you think about it.  Yes, priests are human.  Yes, priests will fall.  And yes the GATES OF HELL WILL NEVER PREVIAL AGAINST THE CHURCH.  But please, do not talk to the people of God like they are some two-bit nitwits.  They happen to be learned professionals.  They are intelligent, deep thinkers.  They are, to put it bluntly, adults and they see right through blog posts like this.

This “priests are only human” shtick works for the anecdote Abp. Dolan closes his post with.  Sure there’s priests who rub you the wrong way, who might not lead the way you want, who might not say the right things, or who forget your name.  Yes, they are fallible.  Yes they are human.  Yes they will let you down.  This comparison works just fine in cases like this.  But please do not tread so lightly on the souls of those who have been destroyed by sexual abuse.  Do not walk away from their cross, or minimize it by reducing it to “human fallibility.”   Do not trivialize the fact that men and women have had to live parts of their lives looking at the hands of consecration while remembering them as hands of molestation.  It simply is not fair to those who have been so damaged by such a great evil.

In our time we need bishops who are courageous against evil.  We need bishops who will stand with those who are hurt.  Who are an advocate for the suffering.  Who give us hope for our ability to carry our crosses  Not men who simply wish the crosses away.  There’s no grace there – and this is the exact line of thinking that got us into this mess in the first place.  Archbishop Dolan I must respectfully disagree with you.  This problem is not solely due to fallible humans and “lax bishops.”  There’s something bigger going on here.  Each and every serious Catholic and, indeed, the ENTIRE CHURCH has been handed a cross through the absolute wretchedness and corruption of the system that allowed this crisis to spiral out of control.  We need bishops who are less concerned about minimizing the damage and more interested in discerning for the people of God “why, and how Lord, did we get here?  And how Lord do we carry such a cross?”   Anything less, and we fail this test.  Anything less and we walk away from our cross.  Anything less and we are doomed to fall so miserably again.

The last few years I always made it a point to listen to a few more Cubs broadcasts than I normally would.  We all knew that Pat and Ron wouldn’t be together for much longer.  We knew Ronnie’s body was failing him again and again.  With each road trip he missed, we started to catch a glimpse of what life without Ron on the radio would be like, and I’m certain that’s only making the grieving harder today.

There’s a lot of people who don’t understand our love for This Old Cub.  They would poke fun at his on-air shennanigans, his forgetting a name, a team, or simply melting down along with the club.  But it was those Oh No’s, the Oh Geeezzz’s, and the periods of extended silence that made us love Ron Santo.  Ron Santo loved the Cubs, and we loved Ron Santo for it.  Ronnie spared nothing in his love and devotion to the Cubs, and in doing so exemplified the hearts, hopes, wishes, pain, and disappointment of generations of Cubs fans.  He was a voice of our joys and our miseries.  But more than that, he felt the way we desperately want all of our athletes to feel.  We want them to love the team the way we love the team.  We want them to hate the other team when they beat us.  Above all, we want our athletes to care.  Ron did.  And that’s why we care so much about his passing.

If this was all we lost, the mourning and grief would be great.  But Santo was more than just the Cubs biggest fan.  He was also a man who heroically endured overwhelming suffering.  This made his love and passion even more poignant.  Santo battled diabetes since the age of 18, and eventually lost both of his legs to the disease.  A Major League Baseball season is long and grueling, even for the media who covers it.  For the last 8 years of his life, Santo persevered through a 162 game schedule (plus a few more) on two prosthetic legs.  That, in and of itself, is amazing.  But he didn’t stop there.  He also walked for a cure of diabetes, which we were reminded of every time a Cub walked too.  (We thank Walgreens for that).  As I write this I’m certain I’ll probably burst into tears after the first Cub gets walked next season.

Santo’s heroic spirit in the face of such suffering is why more than Cubs fans should be mourning today.  Cubs fans lost his voice, and the rest of the world lost his soul.  We can thank God, however, that Ronnie’s body, which always failed his incredible spirit, is finally at rest.  May we all share a firm hope that Ronnie is clicking his heels once again.  Goodbye number 10. Though you never got a plaque in Cooperstown, your memory will always be in our hearts.  Isn’t that the best way to be immortalized anyway?

A while back I posted on the Pope’s comments regarding Aids, Africa, and Condom use.  By now you’ve probably read that the Pope has “softened” the stance on condom use for sexual relations between two people where the risk of HIV infection can occur.  I could go on to talk about how this really, in no way, changes Catholic moral theology on contraception.  I can note the nuance in the Pope’s argument considering he was using the example of a male prostitute when calling condom use an option.  But I’m not going to touch on the theology.  I want to talk about the staggering and unacceptable deficiency of the Church in regards to communicating with their faithful, and the world at large.

As Pope Benedict has declared, one of the first roles of the Church is to Proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ.  If this is the case, can we go as far as calling the Vatican’s inability to properly communicate in this new age of media as sinful?   Look at the websites of the major dioceses in this country (or even the Vatican’s site) to show that the Church simply doesn’t get it when it comes to new media.  This ineptitude has real consequences for the image of the Church, but most importantly, for the effectiveness of the Gospel of Christ from being shared to this and future generations.

This HIV / condom issue is an excellent case study on the Church and its inability to handle the media.  Why must the faithful, and even connected people in the Church, hear about the Pope’s comments from the Associated Press?  And how could the Vatican be so obtuse as to not realize the media storm that these comments would create?  What is it?  Is it staggering ineptitude?  Is it unacceptable ignorance?  Or is it, as I fear, a stubborn and haughty arrogance?  ”We’re going to do and say as we want, consequences and your perception be damned.”  This is the conclusion that many in the media, the watching world, and even some of the faithful have come to and to a certain extent I can’t blame them.  There really are only two conclusions to be drawn: complete incompetence or total arrogance.  I genuinely hope and pray that it’s the former.  Whatever the reason is, it needs to change, and now.  I, for one, am getting sick and tired of sticking up for the Church in this regard.  It’s becoming tiring and is taking us away from the important things, like bringing the Gospel of Jesus Christ to a sick and hurting world.

Come, Holy Spirit, Come.

While I’ve heard of this reference before, Cardinal George really does a great job of drawing it out and it ended up helping me put words to observations I’ve had myself.  Specifically, how much of what we see on television is about violence, murder, and death.  So I did a little research and went through the primetime lineups of the Big 3 broadcast networks (ABC,CBS,NBC).

All told they program 45 hours of primetime Monday through Friday.  I ended up looking at all of their primetime programming and looked at programs where murder was at the heart of the plotline for the show.  For this research I actually looked at the plot synopsis for the show as listed in the directv.com channel guide.  These results also include 20/20 and Dateline, as those two shows were planning on shows about murder.

All told 31% of all primetime broadcasts (14 hours) deal with murder.  If you make death a broad term and add in medical dramas which often deal with patients dying, that number goes to 35% (16 hours).

If you single out the 9pm CST hour, where 15 hours of “dramatic” programming is found that number jumps to 40% (6 hours) For 9pm the percentage is 53% when factoring in medical dramas (8 hours).

Don’t forget these numbers don’t include shows that deal with other extremely violent situations such as rape (there were two other hours of Law and Order and an episode of Medium that dealt with rape).  When you start to add those shows in over half of what you see on the big 3 in primetime deals with extreme criminal violence and murder.  Those numbers are incredibly eye opening.

There is a certain tone and tenor to most blog posts who are against Apple’s decisions.  They seem to all say some of the same things.  There seems to be two crowds here.  The “flash is ubiquitous, therefore you should support it” crowd.  And there’s the “Apple has no right to control what goes on my device” crowd .  Here’s my response to both crowds.

Having been a Mac OSX user for over two years right now I can tell you, flat out, Flash on Mac OSX is terrible.  Patently, patently terrible.  It’s a resource hog.  It’s a powerhog on my MacBook.  And it’s buggy as all get out.  And I experience this on high quality, high viewership sites.

Flash is ubiquitous, you say.  I need it on my (fill in Apple OS device here)!  True, flash is ubiquitous.  But why?  The fact is one large need for Flash can really be traced back to IE’s dominance in the late 90′s and early 00′s.  Internet Explorer set the web back many, many years.  IE was slow to adopt new standards, and the ones they did adopt were often implemented poorly.  However, Flash also did fill holes that web standards didn’t really have the capability to implement.  Among them are: Site animations and interactivity, web video, and Flash specific applications, be they games, uploaders, etc.  HTML 5 and Javascript (including open source JS libraries like JQuery, JQueryUI et al) are allowing developers to easily add slick animations, transitions, and awesome functionality to their UI’s without using Flash.  HTML 5 also now has really slick support for video and audio.  And, as far as Web “applications” are concerned, well on mobile devices native App’s are boss, leaving that last segment unnecessary for someone like Apple and the iPhone OS.  All told Apple’s bet on HTML5 and JavaScript to provide the functionality and user interfaces that users have come to expect is smart, savvy, and feeds right into their “just works” mantra.  Apple customers have come to expect to be able to open up their browser and watch a web video.  When Flash underwhelms on Mac OSX the general public doesn’t say “man, Flash really sucks on Mac” they say “My Apple computer doesn’t allow me to watch web videos.”

There are very real growing pains however.  Right now for Apple, the Flash problem is a real problem.  It’s going to take a while for the general public to update their browsers to HTML 5 browsers, and even those browsers that do fall into that category, their support still isn’t where it can, and needs to be.  So while the first, second, and maybe even third generation of (say) the iPad will experience some severe growing pains, Apple betting on open standards is definitely understandable and an incredibly smart bet.  Not only for the end user, who will have an experience based on open standards, but for a developer as well.  The fact is, it’s not cheap developing in Flash.  It costs anywhere between $500 and $2000 to own all the Adobe software you need to properly develop in Flash (note I said properly.  Yes there are other IDE’s out there, but they’re nowhere near Adobe’s).  Everytime the IDE changes, and a new CS release happens, you have to re-up on that investment.  For those who want to develop using open standards, that cost is zero.  Zilch.  Nadda.  It costs NOTHING for developers to program using open standards.  But developers experience growing pains too.  Sure, they can go HTML5 and JS but, what happens when 70% of their site’s traffic is using IE6?  Or FF2?  Flash, for now, does provide great cross-platform convenience, but how long should this go on?  In Apple’s mind, the time is now.  And oh, they’re carrying an installed base of 70 million users.  So those worrying about market share, well Apple is already making a convincing case there.

Of course there’s that other crowd.  That crowd that screams “Apple shouldn’t have control over my body device!  I should get to choose!”  Well, Apple DOES have control over your device, period.  And in doing so, it’s a consumer friendly and smart move.  They want their devices TO WORK.  Again, Apple lives by the mantra “It just works.”  Let’s be clear here friends, Adobe has yet to ship a clear, good, and reasonable full mobile version of Flash.  Apple already sees the miserable performance of Flash on Mac OSX and they’re simply saying “No, our consumer laptops and desktops can handle this, but our mobile devices can’t.” And I think it’s absolutely the right move.  It’s annoying when Flash causes a browser crash in OSX, it’s going to be downright maddening when it brings down your entire phone OS.  Ultimately no one is FORCING you to buy an Apple iPhone.  Or an iPad.  Or an iPod Touch.   If you don’t like Apple’s decision, then let your money do the talking.  But don’t claim this is about openness, because it’s simply smoke and mirrors.  Web standards are open, paying a company hundreds of dollars to develop on their platform every 3 years IS NOT OPEN.  Period.   Apple is not saying “we don’t want users to view web videos on our device” That would be closed.  They’re saying “when a user views a web video on our device, we want it to be a seamless customer experience”

And you know what, Apple has every right to do that.  As designer, developer, and producer of the hardware they’re well within their creative right to decide what can get baked into their OS.  They also have the market and intellectual capital to make this decision as well.  Let’s face it, I think most people in the blogospehere have a short term memory what cell phones were like before the iPhone revolution.  Do you remember trying to get on the internet via your phone?  No?  You couldn’t?  Well do you at least remember what it was like to do simple tasks, like syncing your contacts to your computer?  Couldn’t do that either?

The fact is Apple was the first one to do mobile browsing correctly.  I trust that that is what guides this decision, and I fully support it.  Deal with the growing pains now, and the mobile web will be better for it.

Below are passages that I really just think are all out offensive (emphasis mine):

Maybe the Catholic Church should be turned upside down.

Jesus wasn’t known for pontificating from palaces, covering up scandals, or issuing Paleolithic edicts on social issues. Does anyone think he would have protected clergymen who raped children?

Pretty self-explanatory as to why this is pretty offensive.

….notable not for the grandeur of their vestments but for the grandness of their compassion.

There’s an implied sense that the Pope, Cardinals, and other Vatican members are essentially self-righteous hypocrites. Unfortunately later you’ll see he doesn’t quite have the courage to say that out right, but rather do so in veiled language.

As I’ve noted before, there seem to be two Catholic Churches, the old boys’ club of the Vatican and the grass-roots network of humble priests, nuns and laity in places like Sudan.

There’s just this overwhelming sense, going back to his earlier comment about protecting child rapists, that all the Vatican really is are a bunch of chauvinistic NAMBLA members who just want to make sure children keep getting raped.

No organization has done more to elevate the moral stature of the Catholic Church in the United States than The Boston Globe.

This is just, well it’s just silly.

Catholic kids are safer today not because of the cardinals’ leadership, but because of The Boston Globe’s.

Again, completely silly. Did the Boston Globe start Virtus? Did the Boston Globe open up support groups for victims of ANY type of sexual abuse, not just clergy? In a recent conversation I had with Cardinal George, he mentioned that many of these support groups were initially meant for those who were victimized by clergy, but it turned out those who have been abused in other circumstances (families, school, etc) would show up because they would claim there was nowhere else to go.

It may be easy at a New York cocktail party to sniff derisively at a church whose apex is male chauvinist, homophobic and so out of touch that it bars the use of condoms even to curb AIDS.

Again, he just doesn’t have the courage to come out and say these things, he uses hypothetical conversations to say it.

Anybody think he’s a self-righteous hypocrite?

This is the quote I referenced earlier. He uses the great example of a preist doing good work to basically call the Pope a self-righteous hypocrite.

Sister Cathy would like to see more decentralization in the church, a greater role for women, and more emphasis on public service. She says she worries sometimes that if Jesus returned he would say, “Oh, they got it all wrong!”

It may be slightly unfair to put this on Kristof, considering it is from Sister Cathy’s mouth, but considering he provides a summation of her stance, without providing any quotes to back up what she might have really been saying I’m still going to rack it up as a bit of an “attack.”

She would make a great pope, too.

Mr. Kristof may be many things, but stupid is not one of them. He has to know suggesting a woman become Pope is simply just being petty and provocative.

I understand why many Americans disdain a church whose leaders are linked to cover-ups and antediluvian stances on women, gays and condoms

Again, self explanatory, but again reeks of cowardice. Why place this feeling on Americans? Why not just come out and say it?

And unless we’re willing to endure beatings alongside Father Michael, unless we’re willing to stand up to warlords with Sister Cathy, we have no right to disparage them or their true church.

It’s just really insulting to say “this is the true church.”

All told there are about 17 paragraphs in this piece, and the quotes above are from 9 of them (or about 52%)