The chief executive of the All England Lawn and Tennis Club wants Wimbeldon competitors to grunt more daintily, if they must grunt at all. According to the Daily Telegraph: He blamed younger players, whom he said suffered from an “education problem” about the issue. On the first day of the SW19 championships, Victoria Azarenka, of Belarus, a player often criticised for her wails, edged towards record noise levels as she made her debut on Court No 2. “We are one... Read more
Deacon Greg Kandra does a splendid of of explaining why John Corapi’s attitude toward the priesthood could stand a little fine-tuning. (He quotes Herman Melville, too, which I think is pretty cool): Of all the bizarre comments contained in John Corapi’s rambling speech on Monday, there was one that struck me as especially strange, and particularly sad. Near the beginning, when he makes clear that he’s not actually leaving the priesthood, but only suspending his public work as a priest... Read more
I hesitate to post more news about priests who, depending on the reader’s point of view, have either done wrong, or are being wronged. But this Kansas City Star profile of Fr. Shawn Ratigan, the elementary-school chaplain charged with possessing child pornography, is so gripping, I had to share it. What’s remarkable is that Ratigan — even as portrayed by the Church-baiting media, where Satan himself reigns as editor-in-chief — comes across as an admirable guy, in many ways. For... Read more
In my teens, I was an obsessive reader of Bill James’ Basebal Abstract. Anyone who’s familiar with the book will know that James doesn’t content himself with number-crunching — although he does more of it than any six accountants I know. No, for James, fanboy that he is, no detail relating to the National Pasttime is beneath dissection — not changes in the uniforms, not trends in nicknaming, not even the looks of the players. In the 1985 edition, he... Read more
I’m taking it for granted that most people here had perfect parents. Well, today in Salon, Matt Zoller Seitz praises Hollywood for imagining the unimaginable — bad dads. Some of his picks are perdictable: Darth Vader (duh!); Jack Torrance, from The Shining; and the perverted Paters from Happiness, Chinatown and Natural Born Killers. Only at the very end of the list does Zoller Seitz show hints of more refined judgment, because that’s where he includes… 10. Dwight Hansen, “This Boy’s... Read more
I’ve got to hand it to John Anthony Corapi — once called ”Father,” now, as he announces today, no longer to be involved in public ministry as a priest — he knows how to keep ’em guessing. In a voiced-over video running just shy of nine minutes, which appears on blacksheepdog.us, apparently his new website, Corapi is both effusive and coy, magnanimous and accusatory. He claims that the canonical investigation into allegations of his sexual misconduct with a former employee... Read more
Today in Slate — which, as Elizabeth observed, must owe me money for all the clicks I’ve gotten them — Dahlia Lithwick defends Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s decision in JDB v. North Carolina. At issue in the case was whether a law-enforcement officer, having removed a 13-year-old from a classroom and escorted him to an interrogation room, is obliged to remind him that he has the right to terminate the interrogation, even when a reasonable adult would already know... Read more
Once, when I was a teenager (right after the Visigoths swept through Rome on spring break), a friend yelled at me for drinking Coca-Cola. It seems Coca-Cola held investments in South Africa, which was still a few years away from ditching Apartheid. At least I think that’s what the problem was. Anyway, loath to be morally bullied, I went right on drinking Coke. The idea that I was contributing somehow to a gross injustice continued to gurgle in my stomach,... Read more
A good part of the media played up the Vatican’s recent Apostolic Visitation of American women religious like the sisters’ gallant last stand against overwhelming force. They were the Communards of Paris, the Jews at Masada, General Wainwright’s “battling bastards” at Corregidor. No one came right out and said they were going to go down gloriously, but then, nobody offered a very detailed picture of what post-Visitation religious life would be like. There was always the dark, if irrational, insinuation... Read more
Yesterday evening, on the Deacon’s Bench, the lovely and talented Deacon Greg Kandra announced that Fr. John Corapi’s company announced that Fr. John Corapi himself will soon announce something “very important.” Fr. Corapi was placed on administrative leave in March — on Ash Wednesday, in fact — pending a canonical investigation tnto allegations of sexual misconduct with a former employee. The e-mail Greg quotes sounds distinctly hopeful; there’s every possibility Corap could be preparing to declare his own re-instatement. But... Read more
Diary of a Wimpy Catholic
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