Seen and Unseen - Catholicus

Here's a question for you (well two).  How come traditional standard sized biscuits of shredded wheat are so delicious, and yet bite-sized shredded wheat are so vile?  It's a mystery.

Here's another one.  How come, given the above, that this very night in the family cereal cupboard there are NO boxes of shredded wheat, and yet there are, not one, not two, but yes, THREE BOXES OF BITE SIZED SHREDDED WHEAT?
And that's not counting the hideous stuffed with blueberry version.

As you will know if you regularly compare brand name cereals with the generic types from Aldi and Tesco, while Rice Crispies can only be called Rice Crispies if manufactured by Kelloggs, and Sugar Puffs can only be called Sugar Puffs if manufactured by Big Bear t/a Honey Monster Foods, anybody can market their Shredded Wheat as Shredded Wheat.  You can read about why in the case of Kelloggs vs. Nabisco.

Basil Rathbone made a crazy amount of ads, by the way - have a google sometime.

I was thinking about whingey women Catholics and their powerlessness and undervaluedness etc.  And Florence Nightingale came to mind.

You know she came close to becoming a Catholic.  She found the Church a very attractive place for women - she wrote:

"I dislike and despise the Church of England.  She received me into her bosom.  But what has she ever done for me?  She never gave me work to do for her, nor training to do it, if I found it for myself.  You think it would be a sacrifice to me to join the Catholic Church, a temptation to remain where I am.  If you knew what a home the Catholic Church would be to me!  All that I want I should find in her.  All my difficulties would be removed....The Daughters of St Vincent would open their arms to me.  They have already done so, and what should I find there?  My work already laid out for me, instead of seeking it to and fro and finding none; my home; sympathy, human and divine."

Unfortunately Manning recommended she visit Ireland.  She did.  Belfast in 1852.  She wrote:

"Of all places that the eye of me would not have visited I think Belfast is the one.  Imagine a new commercial, Orange Presbyterian town, a cross between Geneva and Manchester, inhabited by that anomalous animal, an Irish Protestant, with Infirmaries, Poorhouses, all on the model of London.  I have had moments of intense discouragement in my life, but never anything like this."

I was listening to the radio the other evening.  I was driving from Letterkenny to Drogheda.  There was a programme discussing discrimination against same sex attractants (homosexuals) in homes for the elderly.  The very earnest presenter, who kept referring to the GLBT community (she obviously hasn’t had the feminist wing complaining that it should be LGBT) as if it were, you know, a community, came up with the astounding statistic that “they are two and a half times more likely not to have any children to care for them”.

That’s amazing – I wonder why that would be the case.

Oh wait, we have the answer – because they can’t adopt due to intolerance.  Glad they cleared that up because I couldn't figure out any other possible reason.

Mc Camley's Third Law was "when people say 'it's not about the money', it is".  An alternative version is "when people say they don't want power, they do".

I was thinking of this last nigth watching Would You Believe on RTE, yet another RTE programme about how awful the Church is and how wonderful it would be if only liberals ruled the Church as well as the world.  There was a panel of about twenty.  The programme opened with a five minute filmed section about how awful the Church was and how wonderful it would be if liberals ruled it and then went straight to Bishop John McAreavey who wasn't asked a question but simply to respond, an almost impossible task.  Bishops have no chance on these programmes because they feel unable to come out and say the things that need to be said:  Christ founded the Church on a hierarchical basis with the Pope, bishops etc.  The Pope is infallible.  Women can't be ordained and it's heresy if you say otherwise.  Homosexual acts are gravely sinful.  Instead they feel forced into rather pious structural speak which invariably misleads.  They suspect there will be structural changes after the visitation - but what they fear is the abolition of their dioceses.  So they talk about parish councils.  In the circumstances Bishop McAreavey and Bishop Kirby did their best.  while Bishop Willie Walshe did his best to undermine them. 

The rest of the panel comprised three orthodox Cahholics who were each allowed to speak once, and fifteen liberals who were allowed to spout forth endlessly.  Some at least were clear in that they wanted the Church to abandon it's two thousand year teaching on the inability of women to receive holy orders and homosexuality.  Others, Baroness O'Loan and Mary O'Rourke, wittered endlessly about listening, and opening and women, and change and structures - but with nothing concrete to propose.  In both cases I got the feeling we had women who had exercised high office in their chosen field and resented not being able to do the same in the Church.  And of course we had the tremendous hypocrisy which saw the Holy Father being attacked for exercising his office - "it's supposed to be about service and love and Jesus - not about power and authority" and in the next breath, "women are powerless".  But it's not about power.

As usual the so called journalists were among the worst - Patsy McGarry and Michael Kelly, the Irish Catholic deputy plagiarist.

The silliest gimmick was getting four of the liberals to write to the Pope with their ideas.  "I wonder will they get the courtesy of a response".  Well in the case of the Jesuit I hope he gets a slap.

If only Otto Preminger's Cardinal could have appeared in full pontificals.  Really going on the back foot doesn't work with these people.  You can't apologise and you can't explain.

On a trivial note, wikipedia claims that Ratzinger had some official role in the filming of The Cardinal.

Joe Sheridan is the new Thierry Henry.

And the referee and the umpires are blind, don't know the rules, or in the pocket of Meath.

Speaking of things totally unjustified, spiteful, jealous, mean and probably untrue in its principal premise, have you seen this story about Bishop Donal McKeown's latest attack on Catholic grammar schools.

He is "shocked and disappointed" at the "blinkered and defensive" tone they have adopted.

He's also referred to their document as a "martyr text".

One can only hope, in the interest of multiculturalism, it's the Islamic sort of martyr.

I'm not a particular fan of Christine Bleakley, and by that I don't mean in that Hiberno-English way of saying I don't like her.  I think she's grand.  I'm not fond of the North Downish twang that every female from Belfast seems to adopt on television, while repeating "very much so" in answer to every question.

But I did think this hatchet job in the Daily Mail was totally unjustified, spiteful, jealous, mean and probably untrue in its principal premise.  It's entitled:

Ten shameless steps to stardom - the Christine 'Look At Me' Bleakley way.

Gosh, I haven't blogged on The Left Hand of Darkness for ages.  It really was like shooting fish in a barrel for so long, the compassion in me wouldn't allow it.

But then we hear that Obama didn't, you know, realise there might be some hurricanes coming, and this might be interfere a little with the Gulf clean up.

And try this little test now.  You know NASA?  The National Aeronautic and Space Administration?  Okay, so you're the head of Nasa and the President calls you up.  He wants to tell you what his priority is.  You stand up - this is a stand up moment - this is like when Jack Kennedy said "we will put a man on the moon before the end of the decade or me and my brothers die tragically, whichever happens first".  You're the director of Nasa - the President is about to tell you that America is going to Mars.  No, maybe that's too good, we're going back to the moon.  God this is brilliant.  And then you hear the immortal words, delivered in that ever so dull modulation:

"I want you to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with predominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering."

So I spent the best part of an hour last night doing an informative and interesting post on the Civil Partnership and Certain Rights and Obligations of Cohabitants Bill and as I hit "upload" an "error" message appeared and the post disappeared.  Sigh.  It was most annoying.  And of course impossible to recreate.

But I'll try again later.

I think I had two points.

People keep saying to me, "why are you not posting, why are you not posting?"

Well, my wife is the webmistress of the website of The Fraternity of St Genesius and she's recently launched a blog and that means she commandeers the computer for hours on end.  Which is fine at the moment with the world cup on - thank God Germany are out - but we may be having conflicts "going forward" - bit like the French and the English.

Speaking of football - check out this goal from Mervue United.