Diocesan Priest Charged With Involuntary Manslaughter

Here is the sad and tragic story of Fr. Henry Krawczyk, a secular priest of the Diocese of Pittsburgh.

Look. I'm no saint. I'm not perfect. Far from either. I've made serious mistakes, and I've suffered because of serious lapses in judgement. What adult who's ever really lived hasn't?

But it seems to me that Fr. Krawczyk's has been a life of too much administrating and not enough pastoring; of too much socializing and not enough spiritualizing. Reading Presbyterorum Ordinis (especially Chapter III: The Life of Priests), as I have been doing lately, really brings to light what a mockery this man's life has made, not only of the Church's age-old understanding of the calling and role of the priest, but even of the teaching of Vatican II. Unfortunately, somebody else — University of Pittsburgh football player Billy Gaines — had to pay the price with his life.

Now his parents have filed a lawsuit in the wake of his death:

The parents of University of Pittsburgh football player Billy Gaines have filed a federal lawsuit seeking at least $75 million from the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh and the priest accused of giving their 19-year-old son alcohol the night he was fatally injured in a fall through a church ceiling.

William Samuel Gaines and his wife, Kimberly Ann, of Ijamsville, Md., filed the lawsuit last week in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia against the Rev. Henry W. Krawczyk, who hosted an all-night party for Gaines and several other Pitt players on June 17-18 at St. Anne Catholic Church in Homestead.

Others named in the lawsuit are the diocese, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, St. Maximilian Kolbe Parish in Homestead, St. Anne Church, Our Lady of Joy Parish in Plum where Krawczyk served in the 1980s, and 10 individuals named only as John Doe....

Gee. I think they missed some folks in that lawsuit. Where's Pope Pius IV? And Constantine the Great? And Ss. Joachim and Anne? Heck, why didn't they throw in Moses, too?

Ah, well. At least, $75,000,000 will bring back their son.

(Thanks, Amy.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 09/23/03 09:55:37 PM
Categorized as Religious.

"On the Obstetrical Interpretation of Perelandra"

That is, believe it or not, the title of my very first published work; it is referenced here, a chronological summary of the contents of the bulletin of the New York C. S. Lewis Society:

No. 185, March 1985
Panel discussion of "Lewis's Emancipation of Women" with Linda Bridges, James Como, Jane Cullen, Maggie Goodman, Hope Kirkpatrick and Greg Merchant as panelists, moderated by Robert Merchant. Essay: "On the Obstetrical Interpretation of Perelandra" by E.L. Core. Book Notes. Letter to Cynthia Donnelly. Notes. Letters. Eight pages.

I was writing in reply to the essay by Myra Hinman:

No. 183, January 1985
"Readings from Lewis" with Clara Sarrocco, Jack Haynes, Barbara J. Zelenko, William Eddy and Loretta Brooks as readers. Essay: "The Ritual Deaths and Rebirths of Elwin Ransom" by Myra Hinman. "Lewis and Friendship" by Matthew Borden. Notes. Letters. Eight pages.

I know I've still got a copy of my essay somewhere: the corresponding secretary at that time, Hope Kirkpatrick, sent me five copies, as was the custom when one had an essay being published. I'll blog it, if I can find it.

Hope also told me that she got a couple of complaints from other corresponding members who had apparently not read beyond the title of my essay. ;-)

(Thanks, David.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 09/23/03 05:00:51 PM
Categorized as Other.

Greeley on the Alleged Separation of Church and State

Fr. Andrew Greeley writes at The New York Daily News, yesterday:

.... Applied logically, the "wall of separation between church and state" should ban military chaplains, the motto "In God We Trust" and prayers before the meetings of both houses of Congress and even of the Supreme Court itself.

The high court thus permits for itself what it does not permit for children at public school graduations or football games.

Prayers at public school events are not exactly my cup of tea. However, if people want to have such prayers, there is nothing in the history of our republic that suggests it is illegal for them to do so....

(Thanks, Amy.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 09/23/03 04:41:48 PM
Categorized as Political.

"Media's Dark Cloud a Danger"

U.S. Rep. Jim Marshall (D-Ga.) of Macon, a Vietnam combat veteran and a member of the House Armed Services Committee, writes in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, today:

.... News media reports about our progress in Iraq have been bleak since shortly after the president's premature declaration of victory. These reports contrast sharply with reports of hope and progress presented to Congress by Department of Defense representatives — a real disconnect, Vietnam déja vu. So I went to Iraq with six other members of Congress to see for myself.

The Iraq war has predictably evolved into a guerrilla conflict similar to Vietnam. Our currently stated objectives are to establish reasonable security and foster the creation of a secular, representative government with a stable market economy that provides broad opportunity throughout Iraqi society. Attaining these objectives in Iraq would inevitably transform the Arab world and immeasurably increase our future national security....

During the conventional part of this conflict, embedded journalists reported the good, the bad and the ugly. Where are the embeds now that we are in the difficult part of the war, now that fair and balanced reporting is critically important to our chances of success? At the height of the conventional conflict, Fox News alone had 27 journalists embedded with U.S. troops (out of a total of 774 from all Western media). Today there are only 27 embedded journalists from all media combined.

Throughout Iraq, American soldiers with their typical "can do" attitude and ingenuity are engaging in thousands upon thousands of small reconstruction projects, working with Iraqi contractors and citizens. Through decentralized decision-making by unit commanders, the 101st Airborne Division alone has spent nearly $23 million in just the past few months. This sum goes a very long way in Iraq. Hundreds upon hundreds of schools are being renovated, repainted, replumbed and reroofed. Imagine the effect that has on children and their parents.

Zogby International recently released the results of an August poll showing hope and progress. My own unscientific surveys told me the same thing. With virtually no exceptions, hundreds of Iraqis enthusiastically waved back at me as I sat in the open door of a helicopter traveling between Babylon and Baghdad. And I received a similar reception as I worked my way alone, shaking hands through a large crowd of refinery workers just to see their reaction....

Vietnam II: I really do think that's what a lot of mainstream media is dreaming about. Reporting only negative, negative, negative is a way, perhaps, to help to make that dream come true. Intentionally? I don't know.

[Follow-up: You Heard It Here First.]

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 09/23/03 11:16:04 AM
Categorized as Media.

Arafat Needs to Go

One way or another.

Ion Mihai Pacepa tells some of Yasser Arafat's story at WSJ, yesterday:

The Israeli government has vowed to expel Yasser Arafat, calling him an "obstacle" to peace. But the 72-year-old Palestinian leader is much more than that; he is a career terrorist, trained, armed and bankrolled by the Soviet Union and its satellites for decades.

Before I defected to America from Romania, leaving my post as chief of Romanian intelligence, I was responsible for giving Arafat about $200,000 in laundered cash every month throughout the 1970s. I also sent two cargo planes to Beirut a week, stuffed with uniforms and supplies. Other Soviet bloc states did much the same. Terrorism has been extremely profitable for Arafat. According to Forbes magazine, he is today the sixth wealthiest among the world's "kings, queens & despots," with more than $300 million stashed in Swiss bank accounts....

In 1972, the Kremlin put Arafat and his terror networks high on all Soviet bloc intelligence services' priority list, including mine. Bucharest's role was to ingratiate him with the White House. We were the bloc experts at this. We'd already had great success in making Washington — as well as most of the fashionable left-leaning American academics of the day — believe that Nicolae Ceausescu was, like Josip Broz Tito, an "independent" Communist with a "moderate" streak.

KGB chairman Yuri Andropov in February 1972 laughed to me about the Yankee gullibility for celebrities. We'd outgrown Stalinist cults of personality, but those crazy Americans were still naïve enough to revere national leaders. We would make Arafat into just such a figurehead and gradually move the PLO closer to power and statehood. Andropov thought that Vietnam-weary Americans would snatch at the smallest sign of conciliation to promote Arafat from terrorist to statesman in their hopes for peace....

The KGB file on Arafat also said that in the Arab world only people who were truly good at deception could achieve high status. We Romanians were directed to help Arafat improve "his extraordinary talent for deceiving." The KGB chief of foreign intelligence, General Aleksandr Sakharovsky, ordered us to provide cover for Arafat's terror operations, while at the same time building up his international image. "Arafat is a brilliant stage manager," his letter concluded, "and we should put him to good use." In March 1978 I secretly brought Arafat to Bucharest for final instructions on how to behave in Washington. "You simply have to keep on pretending that you'll break with terrorism and that you'll recognize Israel — over, and over, and over," Ceausescu told him for the umpteenth time. Ceausescu was euphoric over the prospect that both Arafat and he might be able to snag a Nobel Peace Prize with their fake displays of the olive branch....

On Oct. 23, 1998, President Clinton concluded his public remarks to Arafat by thanking him for "decades and decades and decades of tireless representation of the longing of the Palestinian people to be free, self-sufficient, and at home." The current administration sees through Arafat's charade but will not publicly support his expulsion. Meanwhile, the aging terrorist has consolidated his control over the Palestinian Authority and marshaled his young followers for more suicide attacks.

See "People Burned Like Torches".

(Thanks, Charles.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 09/23/03 10:59:19 AM
Categorized as International.

A Fall Bouquet of Poetry

In celebration of the first day of Autumn.

On the Approach of Autumn

Farewell! gay Summer! now the changing wind
   That Autumn brings, commands thee to retreat;
It fades the roses which thy temples bind
   And the green sandals which adorn thy feet.
Now flies with thee the walk at eventide,
   That favoring hour to bright-eyed Fancy dear,
When most she loves to seek the mountain side
   And mark the pomp of twilight hast'ning near.
Ah then, what faery forms around her throng!
   On every cloud a magic charm she sees:
Sweet Evening these delights to thee belong,
   But now alas! comes Autumn's chilling breeze
And early night attendant on its sway
Bears in her envious veil, sweet fancy's hour away.

Amelia Opie
A Century of Sonnets (1999) #95
ed. Paula R. Feldman and Daniel Robinson

To the Fringed Gentian

Thou blossom bright with autumn dew,
And colored with the heaven's own blue,
That openest when the quiet light
Succeeds the keen and frosty night,

Thou comest not when violets lean
O'er wandering brooks and springs unseen,
Or columbines, in purple dressed,
Nod o'er the ground-bird's hidden nest.

Thou waitest late and com'st alone,
When woods are bare and birds are flown,
And frost and shortening days portend
The aged year is near his end.

Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye
Look through its fringes to the sky,
Blue—blue—as if that sky let fall
A flower from its cerulean wall.

I would that thus, when I shall see
The hour of death draw near to me,
Hope, blossoming within my heart,
May look to heaven as I depart.

William Jennings Bryant
The Treasury of American Poetry p. 65
ed. Nancy Sullivan

Indian Summer

'Tis said, in death, upon the face
Of age, a momentary trace
Of infancy's returning grace
   Forestalls decay;

And here, in Autumn's dusky reign,
A birth of blossom seems again
To flush the woodlands fading train
   With dreams of May.

John Banister Tabb
The Poetry of Father Tabb p. 89
ed. Francis A. Litz, Ph.D.

After Apple-Picking

My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn’t fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.

Robert Frost
Poetry pp. 68f
ed. Edward Connery Lathem

Mater Dolorosa

Again maternal Autumn grieves,
As blood-like drip the maple leaves
   On Nature's Calvary,
And every sap-forsaken limb
Renews the mystery of Him
   Who died upon a Tree.

John Banister Tabb
The Poetry of Father Tabb p. 91
ed. Francis A. Litz, Ph.D.

To Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
   Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
   With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
   And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
      To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
   With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
   For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
   Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
   Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
   Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
      Spares the next swath and all its twinèd flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
   Steady thy laden head across a brook;
   Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
      Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
   Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barrèd clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
   And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
   Among the river sallows, borne aloft
      Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
   Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
   The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;
      And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

John Keats
The Oxford Book of English Verse #627
ed. Arthur Quiller-Couch

Written in Autumn

O Autumn! how I love thy pensive air,
   Thy yellow garb, thy visage sad and dun!
   When from the misty east the laboring Sun
Bursts through thy fogs, that gathering round him, dare
Obscure his beams, which, though enfeebled, dart
   On the cold, dewy plains a luster bright:
   But chief, the sounds of thy reft woods delight;
Their deep, low murmurs to my soul impart
A solemn stillness, while they seem to speak
   Of Spring, of Summer now for ever past,
   Of drear, approaching Winter, and the blast
Which shall ere long their soothing quiet break:
   Here, when for faded joys my heaving breast
   Throbs with vain pangs, here will I love to rest.

Mary Tighe
A Century of Sonnets (1999) #279
ed. Paula R. Feldman and Daniel Robinson

The Wild Swans at Coole

The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine and fifty swans.

The nineteenth Autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold,
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.

But now they drift on the still water
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake's edge or pool
Delight men's eyes, when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?

W. B. Yeats
Collected Works: The Poems # 143
ed. Richard J. Finneran

Written in a Shrubbery Towards the Decline of Autumn

See, o'er its withering leaves, the musk-rose bend,
   And scarce a purple aster paints the glade;
Yet, cease awhile, ye ruffling winds! to rend
   This variegated canopy of shade.
Here, autumn's touch the rich dark brown bestows,
   There, mixed with paler leaves of yellow hue,
The shining holly's scarlet fruitage glows,
   And crimson berries stud the deep-green yew.
Thou radiant orb! whose mild declining ray
   Now gilds with gayer tinge this loved retreat,
Yet, lingering, still prolong the golden day.—
   How vain the wish! no more thy glories meet
My dazzled eye; but from the lakes arise
Blue mists, and twilight gray involves the blushing skies.

Mrs. B. Finch
A Century of Sonnets (1999) #198
ed. Paula R. Feldman and Daniel Robinson

(See also A Spring Bouquet of Poetry: In celebration of the first day of Spring.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 09/23/03 08:32:03 AM
Categorized as Literary & Most Notable.