However, in an unprecedented move, Pope Benedict XVI has issued an 8-page pastoral (i.e. open) letter talking exclusively about the matter.

A Vatican taboo has been broken.

For sure people will flock to it like it’s some kind of outdoor décor and dissected, analysed, the works.

Key excerpts.

Full text.

There’s a growing chorus asking Pope Benedict XVI to resign over the Catholic sex abuse cases. If he did, he’d be the 3rd Pope in history to do so.

Who were the other 2?

The first one was Pope Celestine V (1209-1296) in 1294, only 5 months into his reign. He first issued a decree declaring it permissible for a pope to resign, then then did so himself, explaining it as such:

… the desire for humility, for a purer life, for a stainless conscience, the deficiencies of his own physical strength, his ignorance, the perverseness of the people, his longing for the tranquility of his former life.

He then lived 2 more years, then later declared saint.

The second was Pope Gregory XII (1326 – 1417), who reigned 1406 – 1415 resigned in order to end the Western Schism i.e. there were 3 popes who all claimed to be the one true pope, including one so-called Antipope.

Source
The BBC

She has resigned as bishop.

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24 Feb 2010

Margot Käßmann (or Margot Kaessman), 51, was appointed the head of Germany’s 25-million-strong Protestant Church in October 2009, the church’s first ever female leader. In 1999 she became Germany’s youngest bishop.

On 20th February 2010 she drove a VW belonging to her church past a red light in Hanover’s city centre while her blood alcohol level being 3 times over the legal limit.

She has admitted drink driving.

If previously she’d have no problems getting cheap auto insurance quotes from sites like www.carinsurancelist.com, that’s all in the past now.

She told a local paper:

I am shocked at myself that I could have made such a grave error.

She has been controversial for some time, being Germany’s first bishop to divorce 2 years ago. She was married to her husband for 26 years. She has 4 daughters.

Source
The BBC, 23 Feb 2010

As on 19th February 2009 Bishop Williamson has been ordered by the Argentinian government to leave the country within 10 days or face expulsion.

Earlier this month he was removed from his post as the head of a Roman Catholic seminary in Argentina.

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In November 2008 Bishop Richard Williamson, 48 said to Swedish TV, which was aired on 21 January 2009:

I believe there were no gas chambers. I think that two to three hundred thousand Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps but none of them by gas chambers.

As expected, it outraged Jews leaders the world over.

This is a video of the controversial interview, very gripping indeed:

Click here to view the embedded video.

He was one of the appointees of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1988, who was possibly the most controversial member of senior Roman Catholic clergy ever.

To add insult to injury, Williamson was recently reinstated into the Church by the Pope because he had “affirmed his willingness to accept Church teachings and papal authority.”

The Vatican then said it didn’t know what Williamson had said about the Holocaust by the time of his reinstatement.

Mordechai Lewy, Israel’s envoy to the Vatican said:

We have no intention of interfering in the internal workings of the Catholic Church, however, the eagerness to bring a Holocaust denier back into the Church will cast a shadow on relations between Jews and the Catholic Church.

Tensions esclated on 28th January 2009 when the Chief Rabbinate of Israel terminated “indefinitely” official ties with the Vatican in protest.

In damage control mode, the Vatican has distanced itself from those remarks; its spokesman Rev Federico Lombardi said:

This act regards the lifting of the excommunications, period. It has nothing to do with the personal opinions of a person, which are open to criticism, but are not pertinent to this decree.

Before the dust has even settled, another member of the clergy from the same Society of St Pius X as Bishop Williamson, Father Floriano Abrahamowicz basically said the same thing.

He was quoted to have said, on 29th January 2009, by Italian newspaper La Tribuna di Treviso:

I know gas chambers existed at least to disinfect, I can’t say if anybody was killed in them or not.

What’s going on? Are all SSPX members Holocaust deniers?

Source
The BBC, 24 Jan 09
The BBC, 30 Jan 09

In contrast, the appointment of the self-declared celibate Dr Jeffrey John (born 1953) of the Church of England was announced on 20th May 2003 but he stood down before his ordination due to the controversy the news generated.

Gay bishops could’ve been around forever but for secrecy – apparently in the 11th century Ralph, the Catholic Archbishop of Tours installed his gay lover as Bishop of Orléans. Pope Urban II and his successor Pope Paschal II apparently knew about it but did not strip them of their titles.

Then there’s the case of Episcopal Bishop Otis Charles, bishop in Utah 1971-93 who announced his homosexuality after his retirement. Or Bishop Mervyn Castle who was made a bishop in Cape Town in 1994. Or Bishop Arthur Mervyn Stockwood who was bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Southwark. Or Bishop Terry Brown of Malaita in the Solomon Islands. Or Bishop Derek Rawcliffe who came out in 1995 after his retirement.

Okay, back to Gene Robinson.

He attended seminary (training institution for would-be priests) in 1969 and received his Master of Divinity degree in 1973 and was ordained priest the same year.

He married Isabella “Boo” McDaniel in 1972, and “privately acknowledged” his gay tendencies to her a month before they married, but decided to go on with the marriage.

They had 2 daughters, Jamee (born 1977) and Ella (born 1981).

He publicly acknowledged his homosexuality, then divorced his wife, in the 1980s.

In 1987 he met his current partner, Mark Andrew. The next year, Robinson and Andrew moved into a new house which was blessed by Douglas Theuner, a bishop. He was married (perhaps the politically correct term is “legally joined”), in a civil union and religious ceremony, to Andrew in June 2008.

He was elected bishop of the Diocese of New Hampshire in the Episcopal Church of the USA in 2003, by delegates to an Episcopal convention, 62 to 45.

During his ordination as bishop, he wore a bulletproof vest. His parents, sister, daughter and their families and his ex-wife Boo all attended. Bishop Frank Griswold presided with 6 co-consecrating bishops. Apparently 48 bishops in all attended.

Indeed his life has not been easy. Some have held him responsible for the split in the 400-year old Anglican network. For example, on 13th July 2008 he was heckled by a long-haired man while giving a sermon at a church in London, who jabbed his finger and shouted, amongst other things, “repent, repent, repent” and “you preached the Gospel but departed from it.” After the man was escorted out, the Bishop asked the congregation to “pray for that man.”

This is the Metal Mass, or Metallimessu in Finland’s Lutheran Church, the state religion.

Inside church buildings, worshippers scream out hymns as lead singers headbang onstage to extremely loud live heavy metal music, with the pastor and altar, both in white waiting on the sides.

Probably this kind of church service is only available in that country, the land where heavy metal is more mainstream than in others. In Helsinki, the capital, there are many heavy metal karaoke bars, clubs, live concerts and festivals. The radiowaves are filled with heavy metal songs. The Finnish Eurovision Song Contest and the Finnish Idol competition were won with heavy metal songs.

Good thing too, since this has caused churches there to be packed with young people.

Not to say all churches there are like this or in favour of it. Some are dead against it, while some heavy metal fans outside the church accuse the church of using their music to boost church attendances. But mostly response has been encouraging.

The first Metal Mass in the country was held in 2006 at the “Tuska” (in English, “Pain”) festival in Helsinki.

Here are some videos to showing a Metal Mass in action:

An introductory video (in Finnish):

Click here to view the embedded video.

Amateur videos of an actual peformance during church service taken by a member of the congregation:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Source
Yahoo News, 16th Sept 2008

It is a wooden sculpture done by the late German artist Martin Kippenberger in 1990. He died in 1997.

However, the museum said after after voting, it was decided that:

It was a work of art and would stay. It’s a self-portrait illustrating human angst.

An art expert defended the decision to display the work:

Art must always be free and the artist should not have any restrictions on freedom of expression.

The Vatican, in its letter, said:

The work wounds the religious sentiments of so many people who see in the cross the symbol of God’s love.

Franz Pahl, president of the regional government who opposed the sculpture was so outraged that he went on a hunger strike until he was so sick and had to be sent to hospital. He said:

Surely this is not a work of art but a blasphemy and a disgusting piece of trash that upsets many people. This decision to keep the statue there is is totally unacceptable. It is a grave offence to our Catholic population.

Source

The project has been suspended.

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Reverend Father Antonio Rungi is an Italian Roman Catholic priest, based in the southern city of Naples.

He wants to organise the world’s first beauty pageant for nuns, dubbed The Miss Sister Italy.

Why? In his own words:

I want to erase a stereotype of them as being old and dour. Nuns are above all women and beauty is a gift from God. This contest will be a way to show there isn’t just the beauty we see on television but also a more discreet charm. You really think all nuns are old, stunted and sad? This isn’t the case anymore. Plus, the idea of staging such a contest had been suggested by nuns themselves!

But forget about your fantasies of nuns parading in bathing suits, the furthest they’re expected to go is uncover their heads.

Of course we can always look forward to nuns who look like actress Sophia Loren who played a nun in the movie White Sister (1972) which incidentally is Fr Rungi’s “feminine ideal.”

Rev Fr Rungi’s modus operandi:

1. Ask nuns to send their photos to him, complete with the nun’s own account of her life, personality, daily activities and spiritual development. He expects at least 1,000 nuns to respond, many of them non-Italian. He said there were nuns from Africa and Latin America who were “really very, very pretty. The Brazilian girls above all.” However, contestants must be between the ages of 18 and 40. They can be either full members of an order or novices.

2. Conduct the contest entirely online via his blog (currently down), starting September 2008, then ask internet users to choose the winner.

Source
The BBC
The Times UK

Then, Big Crosby, 73 is Mr White Christmas himself, the most straight-as-a-ruler, mainstream, 1940s whitebread crooning musician of his generation, while David Bowie, 30, the avant-garde “androgynous Ziggy Stardust” & glam rocker is the total opposite: the most offbeat musician of his generation.

The idea to pair the unlikeliest duet ever belongs to Bing Crosby’s Christmas TV Special producers, Gary Smith and Dwight Hemion.

But when the producers asked Bowie to sing “The Little Drummer Boy” on 11th September 1977, a few hours before shooting was sopposed to start, he refused, because he hated the song.

So what did they do? A team of songwriters worked frantically for 75 minutes to create an original melody and lyrics that could be sung together with “The Little Drummer Boy.” They called it “Peace on Earth.” Fortunately, Bowie liked it, and actually SANG it.

With less than an hour of rehearsals, Bowie and Crosby nailed it.

In the following years, from being a cult classic, it became a holiday staple.

It was first released as a single in 1982, and still sells today.

Poignantly, a month after the video shoot, Crosby died of a heart attack. The program was then first on CBS a month later.

Folks, Unconventional World Records wishes you A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Source
Washington Post, 20th Dec 2006

It was from her cousins in Alma, Nebraska.

After 93 years, it finally arrived at its destination, in perfect shape. Too bad Ms Martin was by then already passed on.

The card in postcard format shows a colour drawing of Santa Claus and a young girl.

The front: [pic source]

The back: [pic source]

As to where it spent the most of the 20th century is still a mystery. Indeed, it’s surprising that it never got thrown away and somehow someone found it and placed it inside another envelope with modern postage for the trip to Oberlin.

The original 1-cent postage stamp, the original cost of postage when it was first sent would not have been enough.

The card is now with Bernice Martin, Ethel’s sister-in-law. After it was featured in the media, she said she’d received calls from as far away as Japan and Iraq, even offers to purchase the card.

Source
CNN, 14th Dec 2007