so says Doctor Lina Pavanelli.

Recalling the Vatican’s medical reports during John Paul’s last days, Pavanelli writes: “I’m surprised that I myself failed to critically examine the information. I let my perceptions conform to the hope of recovery and the official version, without confronting the clinical signs that I was seeing.” While the Vatican had expressed most of its concern about breathing difficulty, which was alleviated with a tracheotomy, Pavanelli says a readily apparent loss of weight, and an apparent difficulty to swallow, was not being addressed. “The patient had died for reasons that were clearly not mentioned. Of all the problems of the complicated clinical picture of the patient, the acute respiratory insufficiency was not the principal threat to the life of the patient. The Pope was dying from another consequence of the effects on the [throat] muscles from his Parkinson’s Disease… not treated: the incapacity to swallow.”

The Vatican quickly fired back this week. John Paul’s longtime doctor Renato Buzzonetti, who now monitors Pope Benedict XVI, said that doctors and John Paul himself all acted to stave off death. “His treatment was never interrupted,” Buzzonetti told the Rome daily La Repubblica. “Anyone who says otherwise is mistaken.” He added that a permanent nasal feeding tube was inserted three days before the Pope’s death when he could no longer sufficiently ingest food or liquids. Buzzonetti did not specifically respond to Pavanelli’s claim that John Paul needed a tube weeks, not days, before he eventually died.

This could simply be an example of doctors having different opinions on procedure (when to insert the feeding tube).  Or it could be…

Here are the readings for this Sunday.

  No servant can serve two masters.
He will either hate one and love the other,
or be devoted to one and despise the other.
You cannot serve both God and mammon.”

This is a super-famous quote from our pal, Jesus.  What does it mean?  Well, duh, you can’t serve money and God at the same time, so choose one.

How trite is that?  And it’s totally useless too.  I mean, I suppose we could all become totally ascetic, give up everything, live in cardboard boxes, etc.,  but how else are we going to get rid of money?

So then there’s the medium position: well, we use money, but in the service of God and God’s work.  We make money our means and God our ends.  And that sounds wonderful, but what does that mean?  Again, we’ll have a lot of homilies this Sunday that extol the virtues of money-in-the-service-of-good, but how are we ever sure of that?

Augustine said that moderation is always more difficult than abstinence, and he’s right.  And he’s especially right in reference to money.  Because the basic fact is, as some conservatives like to say, we can both do well and do good.  But then we can also be greedy bastards, committed only to our own gain, pride, and vanity.  And while most of us think we’re doing good, how do we know?  Well, there are the standard answers: we follow the teachings of the Church, the examples of the saints, the accountability of our community.  Yet we all know how we can enable each other, how one’s temptation is another’s motivation.  So.  So.  So.

So this is the ultimate question of our faiths: how do we know we’re actually worshiping God?

And here’s the answer: We never do.  So drop the self-righteousness.  All of us are ten-thousand idols away from our God.  It could be money.  It could be work.  It could be social justice for you.  It could be Church for me.  Whatever it is, it’s not God.

We do see through a glass darkly.   Our lives.  Our selves.  Our loves.  We hope we strive to serve God.  But who do we actually serve?  Eh.

From Newsweek.

Psychologists have been exploring this question, and more specifically a possible link between tenacity and both physical and mental health. It would seem on the face of it that persistence would be tonic over the long haul; hanging tough should increase the odds that you’ll succeed, and personal success is closely linked to well-being. But what if the goal is extremely unlikely? Like an infertile couple conceiving a child? Or an average high-school sprinter becoming an Olympic gold-medalist? Is there a point of diminishing returns beyond which one failure after another takes a health toll? When does an admirable trait like perseverance start to look more like beating your head against the wall?

Weird.  Possibly wrong.  Certainly weird.

The opening segment of the first episode may be the only pioneer shock that kids and viewers alike ever experience on Kid Nation. And it is a shock, not just because of the city’s desolateness, but because we know there are cameras everywhere, and these kids, for heaven’s sake, have gone through an elaborate application and recruitment process to get here. They’re not delinquents being sent to boot camp; they’re child-star wannabes out to generate buzz. Yet, like many reality TV show participants, they weren’t told what would actually transpire, and they seem totally unprepared: You could almost imagine they’d been dragged from their beds by their parents. The four leaders, flown in by helicopter, look as genuinely clueless as the 36 others who tumble out of a school bus. Greeted by a cursory introduction from the show’s host, Jonathan Karsh, they are left to their own devices. They drag heavy carts down a long road, encounter ramshackle buildings, and face the challenge of serving up macaroni (which no one knows how to cook) to a famished group that is losing patience. The camera crew, whom the kids are too weepy and exhausted to notice, doesn’t step in to help. The kids retreat to thin mattresses in misery.

But, well, it makes sense.  Apparently, if school is more interesting, kids stick around.

There’s something to be said, of course, for kids be in school to learn something, and a societal expectation that we don’t only do what’s fun.  But that’s hard in today’s era, etc.

But what’s not hard is to believe that kids stick around because they know it’s important and that their teacher cares.  Even if that doesn’t show up in surveys because it’s mostly subconscious.  So I would wager, as a former teacher, that if a teacher/administration/staff communicates, hey, I know it’s boring, but we care about you and we want you to do well, and this is important, then the kids would stick around.

But then, I’m not the BBC.

You’re going to get fired!

So, as as Amazon addict myself, I know well the possible temptations of the internet–and the problems to your credit card, car payments, rent, long-term relationships, job, study-habits, plant-water schedule, exercise-regime.  It’s all going to hell, and I blame the internet.

Seriously, between Facebook, this here bloggedy-do, various news sites, and Amazon/E-Bay/Craigslist, etc.  Who works?

I guess the people who run those sites do.   Maybe.  But I bet they’re all reading each other too.

Anyways, in England, if you don’t get on the ball, you get fired.  Stay away from the e of bay!

Racism doesn’t exist anymore, right?  Of course not.

Except, well, everywhere.  But besides that.

The Jena 6–while obviously potentially overblown–is an example of structural and sometimes intentional, personal racism at work.  And it’s great that we raised attention, partially from facebook.

Trust me.  It works just like Hard Out Here for a Pimp.

Seriously.  Anyways, Tough times for James Dobson.  Who’s to like?  Not Fred T.

James Dobson, one of the nation’s most politically influential evangelical Christians, made it clear in a message to friends this week he will not support Republican presidential hopeful Fred Thompson.

In a private e-mail obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press, Dobson accuses the former Tennessee senator and actor of being weak on the campaign trail and wrong on issues dear to social conservatives.

And nobody else either:

Earlier this year, Dobson said he wouldn’t back John McCain because of the Arizona senator’s opposition to a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.

Later, Dobson wrote on a conservative news Web site that he wouldn’t support former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani should he win the Republican nomination. Dobson called Giuliani an “unapologetic supporter of abortion on demand” and criticized him for signing a bill in 1997 creating domestic-partnership benefits in New York City.

A fantastic and thoughtful response from Ron Rosenbaum.