The Catholic Church Pays its Book-Keepers Too Much

This astonishes me. Not because she’s an embezzling thief who stole $900,000 only, but because she was paid $124,000 a year for merely being a book-keeper!  And worst of all, her disgusting ‘rationale’ for stealing all that money!

A finance executive who linked her $900,000 embezzlement from the Philadelphia archdiocese to the church’s sex-abuse scandal was sentenced Friday to two to seven years in prison.  Anita Guzzardi, 42, said she succumbed to gambling and shopping addictions after feeling betrayed by the church over the priest sex-abuse scandal.  Guzzardi had worked at the Roman Catholic archdiocese since she was 20, and was making $124,000 a year as chief financial officer when she was fired last year.

She stole because she was mad because SHE felt betrayed?????  What about all the people SHE betrayed?!?!?!    Sickening.  And she couldn’t live on 124k a year?????  Please.  The Catholic Church has too much money and it pays people too much who don’t need to make huge sums of money.

Related articles

• Embezzler gets prison term (upi.com)
• Pa. church’s ex-CFO gets 2-7 years in $900k theft (heraldonline.com)

The Book of Isaiah in Contemporary Research

Christopher Hays writes

This article surveys scholarship on the book of Isaiah since roughly the start of the 21st century.Noting that theories of the book’s formation based on internal textual data have not commanded consensus, it calls for stronger methodological controls for models of composition and redaction,on the basis of comparative data from other ancient Near Eastern texts, especially prophetic texts.Although there has been an outpouring of scholarship from every angle, significant recent trends include centripetal / holistic approaches to the book and study of its reception history.

The Last Day at Azekah…

Of this year’s excavation season anyway.   Check out their beautiful photos here.  And think about joining them next year, July 14th, when the digging resumes.  And if you can’t attend, consider donating so that they can have more funding!  The poor kids have to eat plates of dirt at the end of the season!!!   Look for yourself!

Related articles

• Will You Be Excavating At Azekah? (zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com)
• A Plea to the Excavators at Azekah: Emergency Situation (zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com)
• The Cargill’s: Out To Reframe Azekah (zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com)
• Azekah Lecture Series (zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com)
• Israel Finkelstein Under Duress! (zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com)

In Christianity, No One Has Ever Been Influential if they Haven’t Been a Scholar/Writer

Ever since the Anabaptists, ignorance has been seen in some quarters of Christianity as a virtue.  Their ‘you don’t need learning, you only need the spirit’ mentality led them to the most incredible and nonsensical conclusions (and their only sensible leaders were persons who never fully embraced that lunacy: for even Menno was a learned man).

That sentiment still exists in various places to this very day.  It’s roots are in a bizarre and historically blinkered adoration of anti-intellectualism.  But there’s a serious problem with that: no one in the history of Christianity has been influential if they haven’t been a scholar/writer.

I realize that that’s quite a claim but I think if you ponder it for half an hour or so you’ll realize that it’s accurate.

For example- what would we know of the early Church were it not for the Fathers who were simultaneously scholars and writers?  What sort of theology would we have were it not for the writer/scholars who produced the Scriptures?  Those are written texts, you know.  You do know that, right?  And they weren’t produced by ignorant illiterates.  The very suggestion that they were is more than a little moronic.

Examples could be multiplied by the thousands and in every single instance those who have exerted any sort of influence; those who have really contributed to the faith and its promulgation, have been writer/scholars.  Others have come along and ridden their coattails but the real movement is always found in the written text.

Making a difference, making a lasting contribution, requires writing and writing requires scholarship.  Ignorance isn’t bliss in theological circles, it’s THE curse.

And yes, even Jesus wrote.  The fact that you and I have never read it makes no difference; he wrote.  He was a scholar/writer and so have been all the disciples of his who have followed in his train.

If you aren’t a scholar/writer it’s ok.  I don’t mean to imply that you don’t matter- you clearly do very much.  It’s just that you will never exert any lasting influence or make any lasting contribution to Christianity.  You can’t.  Because when you die, you will lay aside your works and your reward will go with you to Eternity.  It’s only the written word that lasts.  In the beginning was the Word.  And the same Word will be there at the end.

Megan Lochte (Ryan’s Sister) Is a Foul Mouthed Racist

Unbelievable.  (And edited for content because of Ms Lochte’s potty mouth).  After noting a video clip, our essayist writes

In this four and a half minute clip — shot after the Olympic Games in Beijing — Cucchiella says to Megan, “Let’s talk about China. How long were you there?” Megan replies:  We were there for over a week. China was chinked out.  She then proceeds to use the word “chink” five more times, describing China as:  Chinks, everywhere.  Cucchiella suggests Megan not use the word “chink,” and Megan argues: But it, like, fits them, because they’re like, chinks!

In what seems to be a feeble and horrifically offensive attempt at comedy, Megan also says that Chinese people “drive like ninjas.” When Cucchiella points out that ninjas are Japanese, Megan says:  They’re whatever we want, they’re Asian.  As if things could not get worse, the sister of gold medal winner Ryan Lochte describes the Great Wall thusly:  The Great Wall is misnamed. [It should be called] like, … huge OCD fence.

She also says “I don’t know about the commies over there.”  FYI, Megan’s Facebook page claims that she attended the University of Maryland in Baltimore, where she studied “Multicultural Marketing.”  Her family, her school and her professors must be so proud.

She’s as witless as her brother.  And Americans look up to them?  Color me sad.

Related articles

• Ryan Lochte’s mystery woman is actually his sister (stltoday.com)

The Pastor’s Duty: According to Heinrich Bullinger

I’m appreciative of Bullinger’s phrasing, it’s evocative-

The pastor’s duty verily is rightly to mow the word of truth (2 Tim 2:15), and aptly to give the fodder of life unto the Lord’s flock.

Lemche’s Dictionary: A Video Book Recommendation

UPDATE: NPL informs me that there’s a paperback edition available under the title ‘The A to Z of Ancient Israel’ and that a revised edition is in the works for publication next year.

Don’t Settle Your Dispute Like a Human Being, Grab a Gun and Shoot

Yes, it has happened again.

At least 10 people were shot Friday in front of the Empire State Building, according to the New York Office of Emergency Management.  The gunman was shot and killed by police, the New York Police Department reported.  Authorities converged on the building around 9 a.m. after reports of gunfire.  Police have closed several streets around 5th Avenue and 34th Street in Manhattan.  New York resident Max Kaplan, 22, said he heard at least nine gunshots. He said several ambulances have arrived at the scene.  “We’re all very shaken up at the office,” he said.  The Empire State Building is one of the most famous skyscrapers in the world, and one of New York City’s best-known tourist attractions.

Two things will now happen:  1- people who love guns will say ‘if someone there had had a gun they could have taken him out before he shot that many people’ and 2- those same people will say ‘New York has tough gun laws and it didn’t stop this’.  Because, in America, we prefer to settle our disputes violently.  It’s in our DNA.  We won’t help ourselves, it’s just who we are- from the top of the Government to the lowliest grocery clerk and everyone in between.  ‘Grab a gun and shoot’.  That’s how American’s resolve all disputes.

Today With Zwingli

On the 24th of August, 1528, Huldrych Zwingli published the forward to a new volume by Caspar Schwenckfeld of Ossig, Zwinglis Vorrede zu Schwenckfelds ‘Anweisung’.  In it he congratulated Schwenkfeld on his good work and his insightful comprehension of the meaning of the Lord’s Supper.  After all, Schwenkfeld wrote, among other things, that

The Holy Spirit is not bound to any earthly word.  Rather, Christ, the True Word of God, gives himself in the Holy Spirit apart from external mediation to the believing children of God.

Unfortunately Schwenkfeld had asked Zwingli to write the forward to his volume without telling him that he (Zwingli) would soon himself be the target of his (Schwenkfeld’s) attack.  In short, Schwenkfeld deceived, and used Zwingli and then stabbed him in the back.

The wretch was rightly driven from his home in 1529 and lived the rest of his days wandering, unwelcome, from town to town.  And it was a right long wandering, since he didn’t die until 1561, despised by Reformed, Lutheran, and Catholic.

Searchnu, You’re Annoying: Or, How To get Rid of Searchnu

I was downloading a utility the other day and didn’t notice in the download suite (that’ll teach me) the little mention that something called ‘searchnu’ would be installed as well as the default search engine and home page.  What Dreck it is.

It was no problem resetting the home page but getting rid of the monstrosity when a new tab opened was a pain (sort of like persuading a pseudo-academic from South Korea named Tee to shuffle along to greener pastures, like to Joel’s blog… but I digress…).  Until I happened to find this gem.  Users of Internet Explorer (are there any?), Firefox, and Chrome are guided by the hand through the process of ridding themselves of this tick of a redirect.

Today in Reformed History: The Massacre of the Hugenots of Paris

Our friends at Refo500 remind us that it was on the night of August 23-24, 1572 that the horrific ‘St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre’ took place.  Heinrich Bullinger composed his De Persecutionibus Ecclesiæ Christianæ in the aftermath of that horrific slaughter of over 100,000 Hugenots (‘Confederates’ – the name given to the Reformed in France who adhered to the reformation of Zwingli and Calvin).

The Catholics were overjoyed at the destruction of the Reformed in Paris. As Schaff notes-

The horrible massacre of St. Bartholomew (Aug. 24, 1572) was sanctioned by Pope Gregory XIII., who celebrated it by public thanksgivings, and with a medal bearing his image, an avenging angel and the inscription, Ugonottorum strages

‘Art’ as Blasphemy

An artist in Germany has stirred outrage with a poster which I’m not going to translate.  Suffice it to say, it’s just another example of so called ‘art’ which is nothing more than anti-Christian scurrilous and vile blasphemy.

Our friends at Ref.ch report

Ein Werbeplakat mit einer Jesus-Karikatur in Kassel ist nach Protesten der Kirchen abgehängt worden. Das Plakat für die Caricatura-Ausstellung sei auf Wunsch des Künstlers Mario Lars von der Aussenwand entfernt worden, berichtet der evangelische Pressedienst (epd) am 24. August. Die Zeichnung werde in der Ausstellung aber weiterhin zu sehen sein. Die Karikatur zeigt Jesus am Kreuz mit einer Sprechblase aus dem Himmel, die zu ihm sagt: «Ey … du … Ich habe deine Mutter gefickt.» Die Arbeitsgemeinschaft Christlicher Kirchen in Kassel hatte laut epd gegen die Karikatur protestiert, weil es dabei um den Kern des christlichen Glaubens ging. Der Künstler habe eine Grenze überschritten.

Sickening.

Related articles

• Christ-on-cross cartoon provokes Christian outrage (theweek.co.uk)

‘Famous Archaeologists’? Really? Because That’s not Eric Cline in that Photo!

Joe Zias told me about this strange little website – called ‘Great Archaeology‘.  Hmmm….  So I thought I’d look around.  You know, see what I could see.  So I thumbed through and first off noticed that they list archaeologists alphabetically by first name, not by last.  Then I noticed that they listed James Tabor as a ‘famous archaeologist’.  But of course he isn’t an archaeologist at all.  Then I noticed that they didn’t list Oded Lipschits!  What?  No list of archaeologists is complete if he is absent.  But see for yourself, look at the “O’s”-

And then, best of all, they have Eric Cline listed… but I’ve met Eric, and unless he has had sexual reassignment surgery in the last year, that isn’t Eric!

Oh boy.  I mean oh girl…  Oh my.  If you’re going to have an archaeology page, you really should get the facts right.