Parrot Needs Good Home

Have you always wanted an Amazon Parrot (not sure exactly which species) but could not justify the approximatetly $1,500 to buy one? Here's your chance. This came in today from a fellow rehabber.


Had a call on the hotline yesterday, from a very sweet elderly lady who is caring for her dying brother. Her brother is concerned about finding a good home for his pet Amazon Parrot. If you know of anyone who would be interested, or have any suggestions, please let me know. I'd really like to help these folks out.

The parrots name is Petie! He is 17 years old. The man has had him 16 years. Petie likes chicken, pasta, bologna, coleslaw...all sorts of things. He talks a little, even says "go to sleep" when he's ready to call it a day!

Terrie

I'd take this parrot in a heartbeat. But we do live part-time to Greece and are hoping this year to be there even longer than usual, and next year to spend 6 to 8 months there...

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Smile for the Birdie(s)

There have been some new arrivals in my wild baby nursery: a nest of 5 House Finches and a lone baby Mockingbird. Of course I named the latter Tequila. It's not a very original name; I found it on the Internet. But it's fun to say Tequila Mockingbird!

They all get hungry about every half hour and start chirping for food. They get Exact, which is a special baby bird food formulated for caged birds, plus egg yolk ("Isn't that a little macabre?" asked my son, "Feeding eggs to birds, I mean!"), applesauce, strawberries, and soaked puppy chow kibbles cut into very small pieces. Plus bird vitamins.

Squirrels Isolde and Isabel, together with two other unnamed ones, are all in the outdoor cage now, in preparation for release. That will be in another week or 10 days.

Tiki the Mouse, who earlier this week was taking a whole cc of her formula, is now down to two-tenths of a cc three times a day. Reason? I put hamster mix in her cage now, together with water, and she eats so much of that she has little room left for formula. She still scampers right into my hand, though, whenever I lower it into her aquarium. And she looks adorable there, holding her "bottle" (a syringe) and sucking it, and then sitting up in the middle of my palm to clean her chin and whiskers.

As I was feeding her last night, a cousin of mine called from Michigan and said, "I have this orphaned baby mouse in my hand, and don't know what to do for it."

I said, "I have one in my hand, too!" and told her what to do.

I have no release plan for Tiki. My negligence! I intend to keep her for the rest of the summer if she stays as sweet as she is now. I hate the idea of having put so much heart and work into a critter that seems likely to be gobbled up by some hawk or owl within about 48 hours of being released.

Rebel and Reba Raccoons are down to two feedings a day, morning and evening, which makes it time to transfer them from my nursery to their Stage Two home. Randy has a very large outdoor pen where he will keep them, teaching them to climb and hunt. He will release them in September or October. He's leaving today on vacation, though, so it will be a week from Monday before they go.

Randy works, so can't take raccoons while they still need to be fed during the day. I don't have the outdoor facilities for them, so can't keep them once they are too big for a rabbit hutch. So this will be the 3rd year we've had this co-op arrangement.

Let's see: 6 birds, 4 squirrels, 2 raccoons, and 1 mouse. That makes 13 wild critters. More than twice as many as I intended to have at any given time! But really only the birds and raccoons are still being handfed.

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Cute Animal Pictures

Holy Handkerchief! (What Would You DO With One?)

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Now God worked extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, so that even handkerchiefs or aprons were brought from his body to the sick, and the diseases left them and the evil spirits went out of them. (Acts 19:11-12

What would you do with one of these aprons or hankies if it had come into your possession?

(I'll bet you wouldn't throw it away.)

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God's Law Never Killed Anyone

Yet again, this morning, I have read the assertion that the Law of God kills. Where does this notion come from? It isn’t Christian. It isn’t biblical. The biblical doctrine is that sin kills.

What the Law does is to make sin more clearly known to us. People already knew they were sinning, but they sometimes knew it only vaguely. The Law makes it clear.

Another effect of the Law is to render certain behaviors “forbidden fruit.” Then, because of our perversity, we lust after them even more than before they were forbidden. But the fault is in us, not in God’s perfect, holy, and good Law.

I would not have known sin except through the law. For I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, "You shall not covet." But sin, taking opportunity by the commandment, produced in me all manner of evil desire. For apart from the law sin was dead. I was alive once without the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died. And the commandment, which was to bring life, I found to bring death. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it killed me. Therefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good. Has then what is good become death to me? Certainly not! But sin, that it might appear sin, was producing death in me through what is good, so that sin through the commandment might become exceedingly sinful. (Romans 7:7-13)

(St. John Chrysostom’s very helpful commentary upon this passage is here.)

So please, can we have done with talk about the Law of God killing us? It's a slander of God's good, holy, Law, and it's especially disturbing coming from seminaries.

That is not the kind of God we Christians worship.

What kills us -- with or without the Law (Romans 5:13-14) -- is sin.

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God Reveals Himself in Life More than in Literature

Yet again, I urge you to read Fr. Stephen's latest post, which is on how God reveals Himself.

Here is an excerpt to whet your appetite.

...the answer is not a literary event, but a matter of a life lived. Christ so exegetes the Father that He can say, “If you have seen me you have seen the Father,” (John 14:9). God did not make Himself known by giving us words about Himself. Those who think the Scriptures are the revelation of God are sadly mistaken. Christians are not Muslims. Christ Himself is the Word of the Father and it is through Christ that we know God, not through the Bible. The Scriptures have their place of great importance and are an essential part of the life of the Church, but that place is precisely that of which I am writing.

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Update on Animals

Tiki the Mouse's eyes came unsealed Sunday! They are bright and beady, although I doubt they see much yet. Or maybe they do, as it has become noticeably easier to feed her, now that she can see the nipple which before was a blind target. She also, as I note from her gently nibbling me here and there in search of another nipple, has at least bottom teeth. I'll wait a couple of days more to put seeds in with her, and a wheel for her to run on, and a little cardboard tube that was once in the center of a roll of toilet paper, which I will line with soft cloth, for her to crawl into and sleep in.

She used to need feeding every 2.5 hours; now the time in between has stretched to 4 hours, which makes things easier on me, if not as much fun. I've started adding baby rice cereal to her formula.

Rebel the Raccoon's eyes are also opening; I expect the process will be complete by tonight and we shall be able to "meet" one another, eyeball to eyeball. Rebel and Reba as of Sunday went from four feedings a day to three. To their formula, made in a blender, I'm now adding soaked, kibbled puppy chow, which will become their staple eventually, supplemented by fruits and veggies and other treats.

I've wormed them once already, which is important both for raccoons and their care-givers, as they can have a certain roundworm which, in humans, goes straight to the brain and kills.

Yes, I do wear latex gloves when handling the raccoons, not only on account of that, but also as a precaution against rabies, which, in Virginia, raccoons carry more frequently than any other species. The incubation period for the rabies virus is unknown in raccoons. Oh, and rest easy; I've also had my own rabies vaccinations. (Pre-exposure shots are three in the arm, not the stomach.)

Squirrels Archie, Mozart, and Beethoven have all learned to prefer sleeping elsewhere than in the artificial nests I had constructed for them inside their outdoor cages. I suppose they sleep in trees. At any rate, they still come around my front door, looking for food, which I put out every day for them and shall, for as long as they want it.

My daily schedule up to now, which however relaxes as of today, has been:

7:00 a.m.: feed mouse and give her fresh bedding. Feed and burp raccoons and change their bedding. Go back to bed.

9:30: feed mouse and put out bowls of formula for squirrels

12:00 noon: feed mouse; feed and burp raccoons; change their bedding

12:30 p.m.: make fresh formulae for next 24 hours; retrieve bowls from squirrel cage; wash all dishes and implements in bleach and detergent.

2:30 p.m.: feed mouse

5:00 p.m.: feed mouse; feed and burp raccoons; change their bedding

7:30 p.m.: feed mouse; give squirrels fresh bowls of formula plus extra nibbles

10:00 p.m.: feed mouse. Retrieve squirrel bowls and wash them.

11:30 p.m.: feed and burp raccoons; change their bedding. Put fresh newspapers under squirrel cage, as they are now asleep in their hanging nest. Check their water bottle and bring them fresh nibbles for when they wake up in the morning.

12:30 a.m.: feed mouse and go to bed

3:30 a.m.: feed mouse and go back to bed

This schedule doesn't count things like shopping for some of their food (for ARK doesn't supply all of it) or doing all their laundry, separately of course, or just playing with them!

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What God's Love for Sinners Does Not Mean

You can google, “Does God Hate Sinners” and find hundreds of writings by people, mostly very ignorant people and many quite hostile people, who believe He does. Reading some of these, it occurred to me that a very good paradigm for us in thinking about the subject is alcoholism (or any other form of addiction). This is because most of us are able to see in alcoholism a multi-dimensional problem. Most of us realize it is not a purely moral problem, but primarily a disease. On the other hand, alcoholism is not merely a disease, either, and to fail to see its moral aspect is to take too shallow a view of it. Well, the same things are true of sin in general. The disease model is the best, most accurate one, yet it alone is insufficient, for sin does also have a moral dimension.

I once had a co-worker who confided to me that she was a binge drinker who attended AA “every night but Tuesday.” She met a very nice man there and they got married and had a daughter. So far as I know, they have been living happily ever after.

But let’s do a thought experiment and say they didn’t. Let’s suppose she fell back into drinking heavily. She failed as a mother and failed as a wife. Her husband divorced her and got custody of the child. She lost her job. Eventually, she landed on the street, homeless, most likely prostituting herself in order to eat and to support her addiction.

Suppose this woman is your sister, with whom you have always been close. Suppose further that you are mature person and a Christian. What will your attitude toward her be?

You will hate her drinking. You will hate the smell of alcohol on her breath. You will hate the way she slurs her words when drunk, and loathe the sight of her staggering. You will hate that she has become a drunk, a street person and a prostitute. And yes, you will be angry with her for having let all this happen, and for continuing to drink, and not having the fortitude to stop.

But note, all your displeasure and anger will arise from the fact that you love her! If she were a nobody to you, just another anonymous whore, you wouldn’t have these feelings. You might feel pity, you might feel compassion, but if she weren’t anybody you cared about, you wouldn’t be angry. (Unless, of course, you were simply a hostile person, showing it in the form of moral indignation.)

It’s like that with God. If He hates our sin and He hates what we have done to ourselves and He is angry with us, all these are not contradictions to His infinite love, but expressions of it.

So what does it mean that God loves you always, no matter what? And what does it not mean?

1.) It doesn’t mean you get a free ride. Yes, God will be patient with you, will treat you with unfailing kindness, will cherish you, in whom, after all, He still sees His own image, however disfigured. But all sin is like alcoholism or drug addiction: it ruins you. All by itself, without any help from God, it destroys you. Other forms of sin may do so more subtly than alcoholism, less visibly, but just as surely. That’s the very reason God hates it. Sin is self-punishing, in other words. You don’t get a pass.

2.) It doesn’t mean God is pleased with you. But it does mean He sympathizes, empathizes, has most tender compassion. When He took upon Himself our fallen human nature, yet without sinning, He took all of our frailties upon Himself, as well, as if He had been an alcoholic, yet without ever losing His sobriety. He has been tempted in all points the same as we have been, although without sin. He knows what it is like. He knows our frailty. He understands not from the outside, but from the inside, what being human is like.

3.) It doesn’t necessarily mean you are going to be saved. Yes, He will save every alcoholic in the sense that eventually He will bring each one to a “place” beyond the grave where there is no alcohol, but whether any given alcoholic will be grateful for that or be tortured by it remains to be seen. He will bring you and me to where there is no sin, but whether we feel delivered or deprived, indeed destroyed, depends upon us.

4.) Does God love you so much as to accept you as you are? Well, let’s put it this way: He loves you as you are. But a person who truly loves a drunk will never be content to see that person stay as he or she is. If you really love an alcoholic, you do not give him a drink no matter how he begs, or weeps, or curses. Yes, God loves you as you are, but He also loves you too much to leave you as you are. He always wants better for you.

5.) His unconditional love for you doesn’t mean God winks at evil. He corrects evil. But correcting evil does not mean being hateful about it, being spiteful, vengeful, retaliatory. Sin itself, like alcoholism, already heaps misery upon misery on us; there is no need for God to add yet more. Correcting evil means changing it into good. You correct illiteracy not by not by beating a person, but by teaching him to read and write. Alcoholism is corrected not by jailing the drunk, but by, for example, his learning to follow the Twelve Steps.

6.) God’s eternal, unfailing love means His is always on your side. Now an alcoholic who begs you for a drink may not think you are on his side when you refuse to give him one. He may be unable to see it that way. But it is still so. That God is always on your side does not mean He is not actively opposing all you do. Being on your side means working in your true best interest. Even if God sees fit to shorten your life because of your sin, it is because He knows this is for the best, not only for those you are harming, but also even for you. You will have less to regret forever and ever.

7.) God’s infinite, unchangeable love does mean He is always and forever good to you. Not necessarily gentle, but always good, even when, for your benefit, it’s a harsh goodness. He will never mistreat you. Even if you are in hell, it will be not because He is retaliating against you, but because you are incapable of heaven, incapable of returning His boundless, unfathomable love which is heaven.

I think many people misunderstand one or more of these points about God's love, and those misunderstandings are one factor in their belief that God hates some people some of the time. They think if He didn't, He would be unjust. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

God is love.

God is light.

In Him is no darkness at all.

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Note From my Daughter

This brought me to tears. I am so pleased!

So we did the Race for the Cure (breast cancer) yesterday and there were between 10,000-12,000 people who had registered for this race and probably even more people who just came. I don't know how many people did the timed 5K race (lots of people just walk) but I came in second place for my division (females, 35-39 years)! I couldn't believe it! I got a medal!! YIPPEE! The first mile was BRUTAL--mostly uphill, but the last quarter mile of the race was a WONDERFUL downhill stretch and I kicked it as fast as I could, keeping Barbara's face in my head the whole way! The bad news is the Jeff pushed Sydney in the stroller with all of our stuff and he STILL beat me! But only by a few seconds. I beat out marathon runners (Susan and one of her friends), for instance, and even a fitness instructor at the Y who is a young 20-something male! Unlike the second place winner of the Derby yesterday, I'm alive and well! (Did you hear about the poor filly who crossed the finish line in second place yesterday and then broke both ankles and had to be put down? So sad!)

The awards ceremony was pretty awesome. There was a large group of breast cancer survivors, all wearing pink T-shirts who came up and each received a pink flower (rose?) and LOUD cheers from the crowd! How I wished I could've seen Aunt B up there!

Kentucky Derby

I watched it because Barbara always did. I was rooting for Eight Belles just because she was the only filly.

But I have to admit, Big Brown is one magnificent horse, and he certainly had an awesome win!

Go, Big Brown! Let's see you get that Triple Crown.

And my dear Eight Belles, you, too, had a championship race, beating all those colts but Big Brown. I do not believe God will let you (or any part of His creation) simply perish and be forever gone.

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Does God Hate Sinners?

Tragically, many people think He does.

Pastor Snyder teaches that God hates sinners.

He can cite some passages of Scripture to “prove” it, too, such as Psalm 5:5 and Jeremiah 12:8.

Just today I had an exchange with someone who seems very, very nice, but listen to who He believes God is.

He wrote, "The Father loves us on account of Christ and always listens to His Son’s pleas for His people."

I replied, “But surely the Father always loved us, before Christ came, from the foundation of the world, eternally even, which is why He sent Christ in the first place. Yes?”

He answered, “…He loved the world in such a way that He sent His Son Christ to take care of what would actually cause the Father to hate us all... sin.”


Dear pastors, and everybody else, I have excellent news for you, wonderful, joyous news for you: God can be perfectly just (and is!) without hating anybody, ever.

To show how this can be, I’d like to remind you of three basic principles upon which, I expect, we can all agree.

1.) Christ is the Light of the World (John 8:12, 9:5, 14:6)

He is the perfect, definitive, ultimate revelation of God. Therefore, we interpret absolutely every thing in life in His light. That includes the Old Testament. “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” We must understand the Father first and foremost in terms of Jesus Christ, not first and foremost by the comparatively feeble light of the Old Testament.

Not that the Old Testament is a feeble light, either! I said, “comparatively,” compared to the revelation in Christ. Yet, another thing we must always remember is that, according to the Fathers, it is always Christ who speaks in both Testaments. Therefore, if God in the Old Testament says He hates us, it is Christ speaking.

So what do we learn from the Jesus, the Word Incarnate, about God’s attitude toward sinners?

"You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax collectors do so? Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.” (Matthew 5:43-48; see also Luke 6:27-36.)

God blesses the good and the evil alike with rain and sunshine. We are to imitate His goodness, loving our enemies as He loves His. We are to love your enemies, bless those who curse us, do good to those who hate us, precisely for the sake of being like our Father in heaven.

2.) God is Immutable

"Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." (James 1:17)

That God is immutable means He never changes. It doesn’t mean He cannot vary His actions toward us, in response to innumerable changes of circumstance. But it does mean He does not change His disposition toward us, His attitude toward us. He is not fickle, but constant and true. “His mercy endures forever” is a phrase that occurs 41 times in Holy Scripture. “God is love,” and nothing we do could ever change almighty God, even in the slightest, and it is downright presumptuous to suppose we could.

St. Anthony wrote:

God is good, dispassionate, and immutable. Now someone who thinks it reasonable and true to affirm that God does not change, may well ask how, in that case, it is possible to speak of God as rejoicing over those who are good and showing mercy to those who honor Him, and as turning away from the wicked and being angry with sinners. To this it must be answered that God neither rejoices nor grows angry, for to rejoice and to be offended are passions; nor is He won over by the gifts of those who honor Him, for that would mean He is swayed by pleasure. It is not right that the Divinity feel pleasure or displeasure from human conditions. (Philokalia, Chapter 150, St. Anthony the Great)

It is not possible for God to feel wrathful toward us at one time and compassionate another. There’s no such thing as, “It’s time to have compassion,” if that implies there was ever a time for not having compassion. God does not change!

Some people teach that unless God changed, we would be consumed, but Scripture tells us the very opposite: it is because He never changes that we are not consumed. “[It is of] the LORD'S mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.” (Lamentations 3:22) “For I [am] the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.” (Malachi 3:6.)

Of old You laid the foundation of the earth,
And the heavens are the work of Your hands.
They will perish, but You will endure;
Yes, they will all grow old like a garment;
Like a cloak You will change them,
And they will be changed.
But You are the same,
And Your years will have no end.
(Psalm 102:25-27; Hebrews 1:10-12)

3.) God’s love is infinite

There is no such thing as a border on God’s love. There is no boundary we can cross, such that God will cease loving us and hate us instead. God is infinite. And God is love.

Infinity also implies there is nothing else, nothing that is not love, countering or balancing or modifying God’s love. He does not love us and hate us at the same time. He is not schizoid. There is no polarity, no tension between opposites. “This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.” (I John 1:5)


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So what are we to make of such verses as Psalm 5:5, which says, “The boastful shall not stand in Your sight; You hate all workers of iniquity.” Or how about Jeremiah 12:8? “My heritage has become to me like a lion in a forest. She has given forth her voice against me – therefore I hated her.”

First, we are to remember that we must see all things by the Light of Christ, “For the law was given by Moses, [but] grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” (John 1:17) Christ Himself is the context for all Scripture. When we look by the light of Christ, we see a Father who no more “hates” than He has hands or feet or eyes or a mouth, all of which Holy Scripture also speaks of His having.

Yet Scripture speaks truth, even if not literal truth, in describing God in all these ways. For example, when we speak of God’s eyes, we mean He knows everything. When we speak of His hands, we mean His power. His face denotes His presence, and so forth. His “hatred” refers to two things. One is that He does chastise sinners, and the other is that He does act to limit sin or to put a stop to it. These two facts, combined, give an appearance of hatred.

But, to take chastisement first, what do we see about it in the light of Christ?

"My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord,
Nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him;
For whom the Lord loves He chastens,
And scourges every son whom He receives."

If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom a father does not chasten? But if you are without chastening, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons. Furthermore, we have had human fathers who corrected us, and we paid them respect. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live? For they indeed for a few days chastened us as seemed best to them, but He for our profit, that we may be partakers of His holiness. Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. (Hebrews 12:5-11)

We don’t even have to go to the New Testament for part of this; verses five and six quote Proverbs 31:11-12. (See also Deuteronomy 8:3) But here, in Hebrews, we get an exposition of the Proverb. And the exposition here tells us that God’s chastisement does not stand in contradiction to His love, but is actually a function of that very love. It is “for our profit.”

The other factor that makes hatred an apt metaphor for God’s response to sin is that He always works at cross-purposes to the schemes of sinners. He defeats their wicked plans. He thwarts their enterprises. “The LORD brings the counsel of the nations to nothing; He makes the plans of the peoples of no effect.” (Psalm 33:10)

Again, He does this for the ultimate good of all concerned. This is true even when He employs violence to do it. He delivers the oppressed from the tyrants. He gives an example to the survivors (for fear is edifying). He cuts short the careers of the wicked, who would otherwise have to appear before Him at the final judgment with even more sins on their hands, even more crimes to torment them forever. For all concerned, then, He is loving them in the ways appropriate to each.

He frustrates the devices of the crafty,
So that their hands cannot carry out their plans.
He catches the wise in their own craftiness,
And the counsel of the cunning comes quickly upon them.
They meet with darkness in the daytime,
And grope at noontime as in the night.
But He saves the needy from the sword,
From the mouth of the mighty,
And from their hand.
So the poor have hope,
And injustice shuts her mouth.
(Job 5:12-16)

In fact, this is what we mean when we pray, each day during Holy Week, “Bring more evils upon them, O Lord, bring more evils upon them that are glorious upon the earth.”

Now if we go back to Jeremiah and read all of Chapter 12, we can see that Jeremiah is praying the same prayer, in different words, and receiving an answer. Both these factors, chastisement and putting a stop to evil, are what is really going on there, under the term, “hate.” David is praying a similar prayer in Psalm 5, too.



God doesn’t love you because Jesus causes Him to. God doesn’t just love you for Jesus’ sake (as if there were some discrepancy between the feelings of Father and Son!) but for His own. “I, [even] I, [am] he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins.” (Isaiah 43:25)


For My name's sake I will defer My anger,
And for My praise I will restrain it from you,
So that I do not cut you off.
Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver;
I have tested you in the furnace of affliction.
For My own sake, for My own sake, I will do it;
For how should My name be profaned?
And I will not give My glory to another.
(Isaiah 48:9-11)

God loves you with an infinite, unchanging, unconditional, perfect love. He always has, He still does, and He always will. The love you see in Jesus not only reflects but literally IS the love of the Father as well, for "He who has seen Me has seen the Father."

“Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and today, and for ever." (Hebrews 13:8)


UPDATE: Fr. Stephen has a discussion on his blog with more about interpreting Holy Scripture by and through Jesus Christ.

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Fortune Cookies

The trouble with Chinese fortune cookies is, they aren't really honest. I mean, they never tell you the stuff you really need to know, such as that tomorrow you are going to be fired.

My Internet friend, s-p, once told me he and his wife had a Chinese New Year party, and they doctored the fortune cookies they served there, much to the surprise of their guests.

Right, s-p! Give people information they can use!

Scam! A Puzzle for You

Some con artist tried to scam a Lutheran pastor in New Jersey out of his tickets to a concert. Fr. Anthony Iovine quotes the e-mail he received:

Dear Father Iovine,

I was searching the internet looking for people who have Billy Joel tickets and I came across your blog where you mentioned that you bought tickets for his July 18th concert at Shea Stadium. My girlfriend and I have tickets for the July 16th show, but we can’t make the concert because of a previously scheduled arrangement.

What I am proposing is swapping tickets. Our seats are in the upper deck down the right field line. You mentioned that your tickets are on the field. You can send your tickets to me at (address deleted by me). I will send my tickets to you when I receive yours.

Thank you very much.

The reason this grabbed my attention is twofold. First, I'm not sure I would have spotted that it is indeed a scam! Fr. Iovine would simply have lost his tickets and never received any in return. Second, I have a sort of personal vendetta against all con artists, stemming from when my then husband was totally taken in by one such crook, and we came very near to losing everything.

So when a dear friend from church came to me one day with the scheme that had been presented to her husband, which was severely tempting him, I put my all into unmasking the fraud. Trouble was, we could both see this program had to be a scam, but what puzzled us was to see just where the scam lay. Can you?

The deal went like this. It was billed as a Christian Ministry, helping Christian families by lending them money on extremely favorable terms. The first month, after your processing and entry fee of $300 was received, you would borrow $100. The interest was high, 10%, or $10, but never mind, because the next month you would get $200 and only owe 10% of the total outstanding balance, or $29. Every month after that the amount you would borrow would double, and you'd owe 10% of the total accumulated balance. Thus, on the following months you would receive and owe as follows:

Receive........Owe
400............57.10
800............114.29
1,600..........228.57
3,200..........457.14
6,400..........914.29
12,800........1,828.57

and so forth, until by the 15th month, you would borrow a million dollars in that month alone, and at the end of 2 years, you would have borrowed a cumulative total of over a 1.6 billion dollars, and would have paid back less than two hundred forty million of it.

In addition, from your interest payments, 1% was to be deducted, with which the ministry would buy a life insurance policy for you. That way, you wouldn't have to worry about your debt being inherited by your family; in the event of your death, the policy would pay it all off for you.

Obviously you would be on Easy Street forever, including when you figure in the tax implications. Except you could never get off this treadmill, but why would you want to?

So where's the fraud? How is anybody making any money off this, if you never pay off any principal, just interest? How are the providers of all this money getting any profit out of it? I even called the "ministry" and asked if I could get in not on the borrowing end of it, but as an investor, and I asked how that would work. The woman who spoke with me was totally confused by this question and after some hemming and hawing, said, "Well, we'd like you to be in the program for a while first and then we can consider your becoming an investor."

It took this thick head three days to figure out what ought to be obvious. Can you find it sooner? Scroll down if you need a hint.


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It's a variation of the same scam Fr. Iovine was smart enough to avoid.

Semper Reformanda?

If you make it an article of faith that your articles of faith are correct, or if you are required to confess that your confessions are correct, then isn't semper reformanda (the church reformed and always to be reformed) pretty much ruled out, at least as far as doctrine is concerned?

All that can be reformed, far as I can tell, is practice.

But a creedal error cannot be admitted or corrected. Whatever the Reformers didn't catch in time is now locked in. Am I missing something here? Or can something still be done to make a more thoroughgoing job of the Reformation?

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More Papal Doctrines

In an earlier post, I wrote about what I call, "papal doctrines," explaining that by this term, I mean a doctrine, usually an error, whose effect is to enhance papal power. I cited five such doctrines: the Catholic version of the Communion of saints, Purgatory, In Persona Christi Capitis, the Filioque, and the doctrine on religious freedom.

This morning, three more have come to my attention.

1.) That God requires punishment for sins. I do not mean this idea originated with the pope; we all know that it has its roots in the Old Testament. One of the uses of the Law was to be "our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ." (Galatians 3:24) Thus, threats of punishment and promises of reward were issued to keep Israel in line. Fear edifies. But after the coming of Christ, and after Pentecost, we do not need the carrot-and stick approach any more, if indeed we walk by the Holy Spirit. It was the Pope who retained the threats and the promises, because that is the only way he can rule. Unlike the Holy Spirit, he cannot rule from within the hearts of the faithful.

2.) That God's forgiveness is for sale. It is the pope, not God, who sells forgiveness. At the time of the Reformation, he was selling it for cash. Today, he sells it for "good works" such as visiting Lourdes during 2008, for cash only indirectly (you have to visit all the religious venues in and around Lourdes, where you are bound to drop money for tickets, souvenirs, meals, and so forth) combined with repentance and confession, which in the Catholic context means resubmission to the pope; receiving communion; and "prayer in keeping with the intentions of the Holy Father."

God, on the other hand, gives His mercy away. Even Christ cannot earn it, because it's already on offer. There is no need for anyone to buy it or barter for it, for cash, for good works, or even for faith. Or for pain or for suffering or for blood. God's forgiveness is not for sale, period. There is nothing we could offer Him that He needs, no gain He requires for Himself. He isn't in it to profit for Himself, but for pure, outgoing, selfless, freely offered love.

3.) That guilt or innocence is transferrable. This doctrine obviously benefits the pope, who claims to have administrative authority over a mythological "Treasury of Merits" of the saints, which he can give to you under certain conditions, see above.

Guilt is not transferrable. Perish the thought! Only think how thoroughly unjust, unfair, and arbitrary it would be for anybody to be made guilty of anybody else's sins! We are not guilty because Adam and Eve sinned, but because we ourselves every moment repeat their sin. Christ was not guilty for our sins, either, and not accounted as such. He bore our sins in the sense of voluntarily bearing the responsibility to free us from them, a cosmic feat which involved waging war against the devil on the devil's own turf: Hades. That is one reason He had to die, to fill the grave with His immortal Life, to flood death's darkness with His Light, to fill the void with His Love, thereby transfiguring death beyond all recognition.

Innocence is not transferrable, either, for the same reason: this would amount to another mockery of justice.

God does not (1) attribute Christ's innocence to us and (2) accept us on that basis. As mentioned above, He needs no "basis" upon which to forgive us; His infinite, unconditional Love is more than all-sufficient.

Instead, what God does is graft us into Christ in Holy Baptism, where we share and feed from and grow in Christ's holiness.

It's such a pity the Reformers didn't catch on to the fact that these and so many others are papal doctrines; i.e., distortions to prop up the power and authority of popes, and didn't correct them. Oh, well, semper reformanda, yes? By that theory, it isn't too late.

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