Priest Antonio Rungi wants beauty contest – for nuns
[Source] August 24, 2008:
An Italian Catholic priest is launching a beauty contest with a difference – it will be open only to nuns.
Father Antonio Rungi, from Mondragone in the province of Caserta, near Naples, said he expected at least a thousand nuns to enter the “Sister Italia” contest. It would at first run online, but he hoped it would then become a “real pageant” on the lines of the annual Miss Italy contest, complete with a parade and interviews.
Father Rungi, a moral theologian who has his own blog, said the nuns would not wear swimsuits or revealing outfits. He said what he valued most in a woman was “inner beauty”. Asked for his feminine ideal however, he replied “Well, I would say Sophia Loren”.
The contestants must be aged between 18 and 40, and can be either full members of an order or novices. Father Rungi said he expected many of those who applied to be young, attractive – and non-Italian.
“Do you really think nuns are all wizened, funereal old ladies?” he said. “Today it’s not like that any more, thanks to an injection of youth and vitality brought to our country by foreign girls”. He said there were nuns from Africa and Latin America who were “really very, very pretty – the Brazilian girls above all”.
Father Rungi, who has organised religious services on Naples beaches where sunbathers can say the rosary, said that photos of the contestants would appear on his blog at the beginning of next month so that readers could vote for their favourite.
The nuns can decide whether to wear their full habits, including veils, or let their hair down. Each photo will be accompanied by an account by the nun herself of her life, personality, daily activities and spiritual development.
“Nuns are women above all else, and beauty is a gift from God,” Father Rungi said. He told Corriere della Sera it was the nuns themselves who had suggested the idea to him while helping him to run prayer services on the beach. “Many have assured me they will take part”.
He said he realised he risked being seen as a publicity-seeker. “But you need a bit of courage to do something like this. Nuns deserve much more attention they they get”. He said nuns had both “physical and spiritual beauty”, and often did social, caring or hospital work in which an “attractive presence” was an advantage.
He said the “Sister Italia 2008″ contest was a way of showing that female beauty was “not just the plasticised beauty you see on television”.
“There is also such a thing as a chaste ideal, which comes from the heart and the soul, and has a beneficial effect on those who come into contact with it. After all, did not the Russian writer Dostoyevsky say that beauty would save the world?”.
He admitted that not all Catholics were in favour of the idea. “I have had some e-mails from Christians who perhaps have not grasped the evangelising spirit of the initiative, or the potential of the internet, which is a marvellous tool for spreading the Christian message. Unfortunately some people still have a closed mentality”.
There is no equivalent contest in Italy for priests – at least, not yet. However for the past four years a calendar featuring handsome young priests and seminarians posing against Rome landmarks has been a best seller at newspaper kiosks, selling 40,000 copies a year.
Jesus, Beer and Your College Kids
At last, a “brave” Christian who spoke the truth about Christianity and its long relationship with wine. Reda the following in this article by Doug Giles [Source]:
“Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to prosper.”
—Benjamin Franklin
As some of you know by now, I’m a Christian. As a believer I have no problem whatsoever with either you or me having a mug of beer, a glass of wine, or a snifter of brandy, enjoying in moderation what the good Lord has blessed us with. No, Spanky, I’m not a teetotaler…
In addition, I’m in favor of the legal drinking age being dropped from 21 to 18. I say if our young men and women can go off to war and face a real bullet they should be able to at least kick back a couple of Silver Bullets.…..
I was watching Christian TV the other day as this chunky, sweaty minister who was at least 150lbs overweight (at least!) lectured his flock/the nation on the “demonic evils” of enjoying a Bud Light. I’m sitting back thinking, “let me get this right, Jabba . . . Jesus gets perturbed when I have a 12oz bottle of beer, and he’s completely cool with you eating chicken by the bucket, hamburger by the pound and pizza by the foot?” How convenient, Pastor Man Breasts. And correct me if I’m wrong, Reverend Cletus Klump, but I believe the glutton and the drunkard are both condemned in Scripture. Google it and get back to me.
Both the Old and the New Testament are rife with celebration (feasts) in which alcohol was involved. Alcohol was a part of the God-ordained festivities. And it wasn’t for medicinal purposes, or because the water was rancid and they didn’t have any Evian, and it wasn’t a non-alcoholic grape drink like Welch’s or Juicy Juice; it was a buzz-generating knock back just like the stuff we drink today. Period. End of discussion. Deal with it.
Y’know, I hate to bring the Bible into this, but one of the first snapshots we have of Christ in John’s gospel is Jesus at the wedding feast of Cana turning water into wine. Now, you do know that he could have turned water into anything he wanted to, right? Why? Well, he’s God, for God’s sake. He could have turned water into soy milk, orange juice, a banana smoothie, a wheat grass shake, Yoo-Hoo, Coca-Cola, Dr. Pepper, Mountain Dew, a No-Foam-Half-Decaf Skinny Latte, or a Red Bull—but he didn’t. He chose wine—alcoholic wine. And that would be 12 vats of the fruit of the vine. And . . . and . . . that was after all the people had already swilled down the initial 12 mondo jugs of the stuff.
Yes, Jesus filled the wine vats back up, but this time with better vino. This really screws with some Christians’ minds because: A.) Jesus is actually enjoying himself at a party with alcohol and not fasting, weeping, or holding a rabbit like all the paintings depict poor Jesus doing, and B.) when there is a lull in the soirée because the partiers have floated their keg, Christ works a miracle (obviously completely cool with the Father and the Holy Spirit) and keeps the party hopping with fresh and better brew. At that moment he demonstrated his deity not by healing a cripple, not by turning a napkin into a dove, not by making Oprah skinny once and for all, but by turning water into wine.
So, what’s my point? My point is this: If the Son of God drank wine and God “gave wine to make the heart merry,” and if your kids are going to be offered it sooner or later, then you’d better get busy teaching them how to get pleasure from it without going Lindsay, if and when they decide to drink….
* (If you’d like a couple of great books which cover the topic of Scripture and spirits, get: Drinking with Calvin and Luther: A History of Alcohol in the Church, by Jim West, and God Gave Wine: What the Bible Says About Alcohol, by Kenneth Gentry).
Disgraced pastor Michael Guglielmucci a porn addict
[Source]:
THE father of disgraced pastor Michael Guglielmucci has revealed his son has been addicted to pornography since the age of 12.
Danny Guglielmucci – whose high-profile preacher son last week week admitted his two-year battle with cancer was fake – said the “severe addiction to pornography” was part of a bizarre double life his son had been leading.
Mr Guglielmucci, who established Edge Church International, an Assemblies of God church in Adelaide, said Melbourne-based Michael had made a full confession to his family about his past, including revelations about the 16-year porn obsession and the lies over his supposed battle with terminal illness.
In an exclusive interview with Adelaide’s Sunday Mail this week, Mr Guglielmucci also revealed:
HIS son has been suffering “mystery illnesses” since the age of 12.
DOCTORS gave his parents the option of admitting him to a psychiatric ward for assessment as a child over the ongoing “illnesses”, but they refused.
THE family’s “absolute shock” at discovering Michael was not terminally ill.
Mr Guglielmucci said he and wife Sharonne – who founded Edge Church International with him – were struggling to comprehend what their son had done.
They are expected to address the church’s Adelaide congregation today to explain his actions.
“When (Michael) rang me last Tuesday, I was on my way to New Zealand,” Mr Guglielmucci said.
“He said, ‘Dad you’ve got to come and see me’.
“I said to my wife, ‘Maybe the doctors have told him he’s only got a few weeks to live’.
“So we cancelled everything and jumped on the plane and went to see him in Melbourne, and that’s when he told us the story.
“We were just in absolute shock and we still are. We haven’t had time to get our head around it. He said, ‘I don’t have cancer. I’ve had two lives that I’ve lived’.
“His wife (Amanda), who has been with him for seven years, found out the day before we did and she’s had no idea.
“Michael has had a severe addiction to pornography. The addiction to pornography started when he was 12.
“It’s horrendous because we don’t have that sort of stuff around. He was raised in a Christian home; we’ve never brought that stuff into our home.”
Michael Guglielmucci was one of Australia’s highest-profile Christian preachers, inspiring hundreds of thousands around the world as he performed his hit song Healer with an oxygen tube in his nose.
He was a pastor with Planetshakers, a Christian youth movement that began in Adelaide and has grown into an international ministry.
But that all came crashing down this week when his deception became public.Mr Guglielmucci said his son finally confessed after the guilt of his lies and addiction became overwhelming.
“He lived the two lives and he would get sick as a result of the guilt,” he said.
“He was feeling like he was letting God down, letting his family down, his church, his friends.
“He’s been living this for so long, feeling like he’s had these two lives and now he’s the one that’s come out in the open. He confessed it, he didn’t get caught.
“To deal with the guilt he would pour himself into doing good work. He’s touched the lives of young people all over the world. Now they are all affected by this.
“He hasn’t done this for any reasons that have been portrayed that he’s a fraud.
“It was either keep pretending or come out with the truth and tell everything. He’s come out with everything but now we’ve got the consequences of it all.
“We have to accept it. We’re hoping to share with our congregation how it all started and how it got where it is.
“We understand people’s anger, we understand their questioning.
“There’s so many questions.
“An addiction like this is not going to be fixed overnight. You can’t have a 16-year problem and fix it in a week.”
Mr Guglielmucci said his son was undergoing psychiatric assessment with Adelaide doctors.
“They have said to me that he is very ill. They are assessing where reality stopped and fantasy kicked in and what’s caused all this,” he said.
“The doctor believes that at times Michael was totally convinced that he had this sickness.”
Mr Guglielmucci said his son had a long history of “mystery illnesses”, starting in childhood.
“When he was about 12 he did vomit all the time, he’d get really really sick,” he said.
“He was in the Adelaide Children’s Hospital for seven weeks at one stage; he didn’t eat and we thought we were going to lose him.
“They took out his appendix, thinking that it might be that, but they realised that it wasn’t.
“They gave us the option of putting him in a psychiatric ward to see if there was something psychological but we felt uncomfortable with that at the time.
“We signed him out from hospital and then he would go a few months and then he would get sick again.
“We’d always take him to hospital; we’d always do the proper thing but they couldn’t get to the bottom of it until now.”
Mr Guglielmucci said he and his wife were in “absolute shock” to discover their son was not terminally ill.
“We have watched our son go through what we thought was cancer,” he said.
“My wife and I, over the past two years, have watched him vomit in buckets, having nosebleeds, and even his hair fell out in clumps at one stage.
“Every time we saw him, we saw symptoms. He stayed with us for a while where we had to put a special air-conditioner in one of the rooms because he would heat up so much in the middle of winter.
“He had this cold air-conditioner blowing on him to try to keep the heat down. As a professional minister I’ve stood in front of my congregation and cried and said to pray for my son.
“I’ve travelled the world asking people to pray for him. Can you imagine what a horrible thing it would be if I was playing a game?
“To be honest, I ask myself as a father, ‘What did I miss, what did I not do? What could I have done better?’ ”
Mr Guglielmucci said Michael’s wife was “getting really good counselling”.
“She’s not made any decision at this point,” he said.
“It’s happened so quickly. There’s so many questions.”
Save our churches: A congregation of 200 ‘is not viable’
[Sorce] 23 Aug 2008:
Thriving churches are being closed down by the Catholic Church under plans to reduce costs and raise income from the land, worshippers claim.
Up to half of parishes in some areas will be left without any services as a result of a radical nationwide reorganisation by dioceses.
Some of the churches already earmarked for closure have congregations of as many as 200 people, and worshippers have accused the Church of “putting cash before Christianity”.
The most vociferous protests so far have been triggered by plans drawn up by the Rt Rev Arthur Roche, Bishop of Leeds, to shut down seven churches in his diocese this month as part of a large scale closure programme.
Worshippers have appealed to MPs and heritage bodies to step into the row, written to the Charity Commissioners to argue that the diocese has neglected its duties as trustees of the churches, and last week served the bishop with legal papers claiming his behaviour breaches canon law.
Some of the protesters – including women in their 80s – have even chained themselves to the church railings in protest at the closures, which they claim will devastate the communities.
Their bid to keep the buildings open follows a campaign by The Sunday Telegraph to secure more government money to preserve historic churches and keep them as a focal point for community use.
More than 7,000 people have signed the Save Our Churches campaign which has been backed by politicians, celebrities and church leaders, including Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales.
Parishioners in the Leeds diocese have been backed by Lord Lofthouse, the Labour peer, who attacked Bishop Roche for “putting finance before Christian teaching”.
The closure of churches in the Wakefield and Pontefract deanery will mean that 12 have been lost in the past year, which amounts to a tenth of the whole diocese.
Worshippers have accused the bishop of “acting like a dictator” in failing to respond to any of their letters, which proposed solutions to the problem and expressed concern over the damage that the action would have on communities.
Dozens of them travelled to the Bishop’s residence last week with letters asking them to listen to their case and sent a petition delivering a vote of no confidence in him.
Many of the protesters have attended Mass at the churches for decades and have been baptised or married there.
Maureen Walsh, who has worshipped at Holy Family church Chequerfield for 44 years, said: “We have been shattered by this. People were crying last Sunday realising that we will no longer be able to come here.”
A Polish priest has offered to take over from the current incumbent, who is due to retire this year, to enable the church to continue, but the proposal has been rejected by the bishop.
The church has a congregation of around 200 people and has been a focal point for the community, staging concerts and holding a lunch club for pensioners, according to the campaigners.
Anne Dyer, chair of governors at Holy Family and St Michael’s Primary school, said that the closure of the church will affect everyone in the area from the children to their grandparents.
Pupils sent Bishop Roche letters asking him to change his mind.
“I have a very special memory that happened at this church,” one boy wrote. “It would be such a shame if you do close the church.”
Mrs Dyer said that the bishop has acted “as if he is ruling in the dark ages” in the way that he has ignored their pleas.
“This area is crying out to be supported, but we feel that he has treated us like peasants rather than listening to what we have to say,” she added.
A few miles away, at St John the Evangelist Church, in Allerton Bywater, large banners hung on the outside walls make clear the congregation’s displeasure.
“Bishop Roche doesn’t care about our sick and old,” says one. Another reads: “It’s cash before Christianity.”
Malcolm Brumwell accused the bishop of breaking church law in his treatment of the parish and had denied worshippers access to a traditional Mass and removing the priest without offering him a new parish.
“He has been grossly negligent in regard to running this parish,” said Mr Brumwell.
He said that a legal challenge has been issued to Bishop Roche, which he must send to Rome for a decision. It would set a precedent for bishops’ freedom to close churches if it is found that he has acted inappropriately.
A letter has been sent to the Charity Commission by Our Lady of Lourdes church in Ackworth, which has nearly 200 worshippers.
It says that the diocese “has failed to act in the interests of the charity and its beneficiaries (the parishioners and clergy)”.
Bishop Roche has argued that congregations of less than 200 people are no longer viable and that the churches are being closed because there are not enough priests to serve the parishes. The number of priests in England and Wales has slumped by nearly a quarter in 20 years, from 4, 545 in 1985 to 3,643 in 2005.
Catholic churches in north-west England are under particular pressure, with a severe shortage of priests and a sharp fall in attendances at Mass. In the diocese of Liverpool, the number of priests has almost halved in the past decade, from 240 in 1998 to 166. The diocese of Lancaster is forecast to lose half of its 108 parishes in the next 10 years, a move which would see dozens of churches closed.
Campaigners in Leeds diocese hope that their efforts will bring them a last minute reprieve, but a spokesman for the bishop said that the fate of the churches could not be changed.
“Closing these churches is the last thing that the bishop wants to do, but he had no choice,” said John Brady, the bishop’s press secretary.
“We have had a consultation, the case was put to them, and that’s it. Congregations of 200 aren’t viable any more.”
Mr Brady said that the closures were part of a “rolling programme” that had already seen another seven churches shut down in the last 18 months.
