I hope you were able to follow Pope Francis’ advice yesterday at the general audience when he asked the faithful, in the square and around the world to dedicate one minute to “Prayer for Peace” today, June 8, at 1 pm. If you didn’t make it at 1 pm local time, I’m sure the Lord will hear your prayer now!
I posted the second story on my Facebook page today. For those who do not have FB, this article by Bishop Barron is just brilliant and perfectly defines today’s society vis-à-vis Kathy Griffin. This truly is a must read.
AN OWL IN VATICAN LIBRARY – ONLINE WINDOW INTO LIBRARY
I received the following email today from the Vatican Apostolic Library and want to share this exciting news with you. I have visited the Library only a few times over the years and have always been awed by its beauty, history, and amazing collections. It is not on the average Vatican tour and that is both good news and bad news. However, now there are several ways to go online and that will be a great help.
Dear Friends, With this brief message I would like to deliver you the link to OWL, Online Window into the Library, our newsletter, with which we would like to share facts, anecdotes, curiosities, insights on our historical Institution, so that it could be better known with its rich collections, its activities and initiatives, and people who made the Library great. I wish to invite you to follow us, to participate to the life of our and your Library, and to remain in contact with us, also through OWL.
https://www.vatlib.it/newsletter/201705EN.pdf
Msgr. Cesare Pasini
Prefect
KATHY GRIFFIN AND THE VANISHING OF ARGUMENT
By Bishop Robert Barron (auxiliary, Los Angeles Archdiocese)
By now the whole world has heard about comedian Kathy Griffin’s appalling staged-photo of herself holding a mock-up of the bloody, severed head of Donald Trump. Despite her rather pathetic apology, a firestorm of protest has broken out pretty much everywhere. To say that this stunt was in poor taste or, in the parlance of our times, “offensive,” would be the understatement of the decade. At a time when the most barbarous people on the planet are, in point of fact, decapitating their enemies and holding up the heads as trophies, it simply beggars belief that Griffin would have imagined this escapade as an acceptable form of social protest.
But I would like to situate what Griffin did in a wider context, for it is but a particularly brutal example of what is taking place throughout our society, especially on university campuses. Speakers of a more conservative stripe, ranging from serious academics such as Charles Murray and Heather McDonald to provocateurs such as Ann Coulter and Milo Yiannopoulos, have been shouted down, obstructed, insulted, and in extreme cases physically assaulted on the grounds of institutes of higher learning throughout the United States. Very recently, at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, a tenured professor was compelled to hold his biology class in a public park. His crime? He had publicly criticized a planned “Day of Absence” during which white students, staff, and faculty were coerced into leaving the campus, since people of color claimed they felt “unsafe” at the college. For calling this blatantly racist move by its proper name, the professor was, of course, himself labeled a racist and mobs of angry students shut down his classes, forcing him to lecture in the park.
Click here to continue: https://www.wordonfire.org/resources/article/kathy-griffin-and-the-vanishing-of-argument/5500/
Joan's Rome 