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Predictions for 2010
Here are ten predictions with a Catholic America twist for 2010.
1. The changes in the liturgy will upset the celebration of the Mass everywhere. Those who bet their bishop a nickel for every "And with you, too!" instead of the new "And with your spirit" will have enough money to fly to Las Vegas for a weekend.
2.Vice President Joe Biden will march in the St. Patrick's Day Parade and receive Holy Communion in his hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania.
3. The Apostolic Visitation of American Religious Women will end in a whimper with a watered down report and no clear actions taken.
4. Prominent bishops will continue to sign public "ecumenical" declarations that undercut, deny or reject stated positions of the official United States Catholic Conference of Bishops (USCCB). Some pastoral-minded bishops will start to do the same, but with progressive groups on the issue of immigration reform legislation that will be proposed by the Democratic Congress and President Obama. Each bishop will deny that the USCCB is divided.
5. Several outspoken bishops will retire prematurely (as did Bishop Martino of Scranton). This will be the result of coordinated campaigns of letters from laity and offended clergy claiming "odium populi" [hatred from the people] as grounds for removal.
6. More than a hundred poverty neighborhood Catholic schools will become charter schools in an effort to save Catholic education for Latinos and Latinas. The bishops involved will be accused by some of "watering down" Catholic education, but religious orders will support the tendency and organize dedicated laity to commit to the change-over.
7. First Lady Michelle Obama will visit a retirement home for women religious and call for greater attention to their financial and medical burdens. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will announce plans to draft legislation to reward years of church service by the sisters (and women of all faiths) with compensatory Social Security payments equal to what should have been paid by male ecclesiastics during all those years of service.
8. Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York will be named a Cardinal in 2010. He will wear a Yankees' T-shirt under his robes during the consistory.
9. Pope Benedict XVI will be petitioned by bishops, clergy and laity to enforce the provisions of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy that give authority over all translations to a national council of the bishops. The pope will allow suspension of the new liturgy and continuance of the current one in selected parishes for "pastoral reasons."
10. Catholics in dioceses where a bishop refuses to send funds to the Campaign for Human Development will be offered the chance to send money directly to the CHD. An online telethon for that purpose will include a message from CHD alumnus, Barack Obama, stating how important faith is in the public square and praising the social justice teachings of the Catholic Church.
Here are seven things that will NOT happen in 2010.
1. The President of the Catholic League, Dr. William Donohue, will praise President Obama for moving in the direction of Catholic social justice teaching by achieving health care reform and reducing the number of persons dying in the United States every day from lack of insurance.
2. Sally Quinn of the Washington Post will become a Catholic.
3. In light of Pope Benedict XVI's statements of Catholic teaching on protecting the environment, George Weigel will urge that communion be denied to Republican Catholics voting against Cap and Trade.
4. The National Catholic Reporter will launch a new column by Catholic convert Newt Gingrich entitled, "Fair and Balanced Catholicism."
5. Former Senator Rick Santorum will publicly disclose his status within the Opus Dei.
6. Christopher Hitchens will be asked by the Vatican to serve as Devil's Advocate in the canonization process of Pope Pius XII.
7. Notre Dame's football team will finish 2010 ranked #1 in the BCS.
(Read other religion-related predictions for 2010.)
By Anthony M. Stevens-Arroyo |
January 4, 2010; 9:29 AM ET
| Category:
Catholic America
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Posted by: samxstreampools | January 7, 2010 7:46 PM
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11. Bishops, Archbishops, Cardinals and the Pope will continue to hold their middle fingers up to US Criminal Justice by hiding and abetting pedophile priests while they judge and condemn gays from the pulpit.
Posted by: coloradodog | January 7, 2010 5:27 PM
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IF SO, MORE WILL VOTE WITH THEIR FEET.
Posted by: usapdx | January 6, 2010 12:44 PM
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Hell will freeze over.
Posted by: darling_ailie | January 5, 2010 1:49 AM
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Predictions for 2010 in no special order:
- US taxpayer investments in banks, brokerages and the auto industry will help pay off the national debt.
- President Obama and his family will become (if not already) “Crossanized” Christians.
- Religions will continue to converge and be downsized as historical/archeological analyses, common sense and reality spreads amongst the “pew sitters and bowers”.
- The killing rate of womb-babies in the USA will remain at one million/yr but the rate will become more difficult to ascertain as RU-486 becomes more available without prescription.
- The rate of STDs/yr in the USA will remain constant at 19 million per year.
- Oil prices will moderate as the world turns more towards nuclear, wind/wave power and natural gas to generate energy.
- The globe will continue to get a bit hotter not because of green house gases but because of the small by continuing increase in the size of the Sun which will consume the Earth in about four billion years.
- The Federal Government will become more dominated by the people as e-mails to Senators and Representatives become the driving force for Congressional voting.
Posted by: ccnl1 | January 4, 2010 5:36 PM
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“The tendency to turn human judgments into divine commands makes religion one of the most dangerous forces in the world.”
~Georgia Harkness~
“God has no religion”
~Mahatma Gandhi~
“The church is always trying to get other people to reform; it might not be a bad idea to reform itself a little, by way of example”
~Mark Twain~
“Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is.”
~Mahatma Gandhi~
“The problem with writing about religion is that you run the risk of offending sincerely religious people, and then they come after you with machetes.”
~Dave Barry~
“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.”
~Seneca~
“Many have quarreled about religion that never practiced it”
~Benjamin Franklin~
“When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said, 'Let us pray.' We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.”
~Bishop Desmond Tutu~
“Religion is what keeps the poor man from murdering the rich”
~Napoleon Bonaparte~
“Priests are no more necessary to religion than politicians to patriotism”
~John Haynes Holmes~
“A soul you say? Give my pocketwatch to a savage and he'll think it has a soul.”
~Napoleon Bonaparte~
“All Bibles are man-made”
~Thomas Alva Edison~
“We all remember how many religious wars were fought for a religion of love and gentleness; how many bodies were burned alive with the genuinely kind intention of saving souls from the eternal fire of hell”
~Karl Popper~
“I won't take my religion from any man who never works except with his mouth.”
~Carl Sandburg~
“Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.”
~Arthur Schopenhauer~
“Religions are all alike -- founded upon fables and mythologies”
~Thomas Jefferson~
“My feeling is religious insofar as I am imbued with the consciousness of the insufficiency of the human mind to understand more deeply the harmony of the Universe which we try to formulate as "laws of nature”
~Albert Einstein~
“A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge.”
~Dr. Carl Sagan~
“If the freedom of religion, guaranteed to us by law in theory, can ever rise in practice under the overbearing inquisition of public opinion, then and only then will truth, prevail over fanaticism”
~Thomas Jefferson~