Legionaries’ acceptance

The Legionaries of Christ said on their Web site that they “embrance” Pope Benedict XVI’s May 1 plan for their future “with faith and obedience.” In addition they said:

The Legion of Christ today, May 1, received the statement of the Holy See regarding the apostolic visitation. The Legionaries thank the Holy Father and embrace his provisions with faith and obedience. We appreciate the hard work and dedication of the apostolic visitators. And we are grateful for the prayers of so many people of good will who have supported us at this time.

Spill baby, spill: BP oil blowout creeps toward Mississippi Delta: Updated

Tiny, nonprofit SkyTruth has been analyzing the satellite data and forcing changes in official underestimates of the catastrophe’s magnitude. The Los Angeles Times reports:

Saturday, the group updated its analysis to estimate that the slick contained more than 11.1 million gallons of oil, which would make it the largest oil spill in American history. John Amos, the group’s president, also revised the estimate of the rate of oil leaking to 25,000 barrels a day, saying it was a “rock bottom” figure. There are 42 gallons in a barrel of oil.

NASA’s Earth Observatory reported on April 29:

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured a natural-color image of the oil slick just off the Louisiana coast. The top image shows a wide-area view, and the bottom image shows a close-up view of the oil slick (outlined in white in the top image). The oil slick appears as dull gray interlocking comma shapes, one opaque and the other nearly transparent. The northwestern tip of the oil slick almost touches the Mississippi Delta. Sunglint—the mirror-like reflection of the Sun off the water—enchances the oil slick’s visibility.

BP advertising != reality

Death worship takes hold in Mexico

D.E. Campbell writes in Foreign Policy:

Mictlantecuhtli in the Codex Borgia

The barrio of Tepito, where it’s said that everything is for sale except dignity, has been one of Mexico City’s roughest neighborhoods since Aztec times. Famous for its black market and its boxing champions, Tepito is a place where residents learn to fight early and fight hard. These days it has also become the epicenter of Mexico’s fastest-growing faith: Santa Muerte, or Holy Death, a hybrid religion that merges Catholic symbolism with pre-Hispanic worship of the skeletal Mictlantecuhtli and Mictlancihuatl, Lord and Lady of the Dead.

I recently went there for an outdoor mass at one of Santa Muerte’s first public shrines, founded eight years ago by a great-grandmother named Enriqueta Romero. When I visited in November, Romero placed a necklace with skull pendant around my neck as some 5,000 worshippers surged toward the glass-encased skeleton outside her house. Clad in a faded housedress, she told me that Mexico’s Catholic churches stand empty while thousands of Holy Death shrines have spread across the country because “the church reprimands,” but Santa Muerte never does. “She accepts everyone, with faults and without.”

Catholic Bishops Conference of India gets it right: Accused priests would face criminal investigation

Catholic priests accused of sexual predation in India will face the police like everyone else if a Conference of Catholic Bishops in India (CCBI) proposal is approved by Pope Benedict XVI:

India’s Roman Catholic bishops are planning to institute a policy of reporting all abuse allegations against priests to the police for criminal investigations, rather than just handling the cases internally, a church spokesman said.

The Times of India reports:

With the clergy facing horrible child sex abuse charges in several countries, Catholic bishops of India have drafted guidelines for the clergymen across the world. From spelling out a general behavioural code for bishops and other priests to defrocking as the ultimate punishment for such crime, the guidelines focus on “wholesome safety of children in and outside our institutions“.

Bold face, ours.

Voyage of the Dawn Treader

The third Chronicles of Narnia film, based on the C. S. Lewis story for young people and rich in Christian themes, it is to be released in December:

We will re-post a trailer here when we find one which has no apparent copy right issues.