Siegfried & Roy had a van full of tigers stolen many years ago, and they went on all the media begging the thieves not to hurt the cats. The van was eventually recovered in an ally after an anonymous call to the police.

Your honor, my understanding is that Jesus is only required to forgive if the person in question is sorry for their sins. I submit that they are not sorry, and therefore there is no requirement for forgiveness.

But Jesus asked God to forgive those who crucified him, even though, "They know not what they do."

Jesus is allowed to go above and beyond his obligation I guess.

I can't even read any of those articles about the massive cruelties of multiple dioceses across the country. It's all barely recognizable to me as the same church as the crunchy Northern California post-hippie social justice spiritualitycakes covered in Vatican II sauce I remember from my childhood. It's just scary angry people saying and doing things that sound like the complete opposite of everything I thought I knew and loved. Just about every fuzzy inclusive rights-and-justice-expanding lefty principle I hold dear is, for me, directly and deeply tied to what I believe the founder of my faith expects of me in this life, in this world. These people running the Church make me feel like either I'm an insane space alien or they are.

At least it makes me feel good for the first time in forever for being so poor -- I haven't contributed to anything but emergency funds to fix the roof or buy books for the schoolkids in my tiny local parish since probably 2003, so at least I know I'm not funding these assholes. Though I'm scared that it also means that it doesn't matter if I write angry letters threatening to leave; they're just going to shrug and say, "Ehn, no skin off our noses" and go on doing just what they were doing before.

Was the link of dogs greeting their returning soldier humans here or in Bitches? I can't view it at work, and I want to send it home.

Or am I hallucinating that it was here at all?

Ah, you people with your seasons. We have one of those. It involves rain.

Flanders & Swann describe English weather thus: [link]

Have there been large splits in the Catholic church like in the SBC splitting off and the recent Episcopalian splinters? Because really? I could see a significant number of US Catholic churches splitting off. Every new member group to our church is mostly RCC leavers.

I haven't been in a while, but I remember my Unitarian Universalist congregation having a number of former Catholics, including at least one priest.

I'm not sure the Catholic Church has a mechanism for splitting. If you're not with the Vatican, they kind of tend to excommunicate you.

But Jesus asked God to forgive those who crucified him, even though, "They know not what they do."

But these people know exactly what they were doing.