Today I am dealing with three separate topics.
First:
“This year, or this month, or, more likely, this very day, we have failed to practise ourselves the kind of behaviour we expect from other people.” CS Lewis
A TEEN TEACHES WONDERLAND
Here is some background for today’s post. We at TWW have been blessed to have the friendships of a couple of teens who are regular readers. We met them due to a deep and close friendship with their parents. They also are part of the Wonderland story. If you go to our archives, you can read our “fact or fiction” posts on a dreadful set of circumstances in a “kingdom” far, far away. This kingdom has done a great job of “blaming” the victims and storytellers and, in so doing, caused some to flee the kingdom and obtain citizenship elsewhere. Lise is a young woman who saw some events unfold. She is brave, vulnerable, highly intelligent, and a darn good writer. She is also currently studying in Europe and comments from there. Lise, you are incredible!
We thought that our dear readers might find a comment Lise wrote interesting. Then, an anonymous reader with ties to Wonderland responded. Lise’s response is poignant. “Anonymous” then chimed in on Christmas night telling Dee to “Chill out” (which was promptly deleted – remember… it’s our blog!) Anonymous claimed that her own comment was a thoughtful question. Well, we leave it up to you to decide. Once again, we thank this individual for providing superb insight into the mindset of Wonderland.
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The Land of Shadow:
There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach. -The Return of the KIng -JR Tolkien
"Every uncorrected error and unrepented sin is, in its own right, a fountain of fresh error and fresh sin flowing on to the end of time." -C.S. Lewis -The Problem of Pain
"I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity."
— C.S. Lewis
"It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us; it is the very sign of His presence." — C.S. Lewis
"Some still complain that the entire crisis…was manufactured by the media and motivated by anti-Catholicism…but without the deeper crisis of the infidelity and negligence of bishops, the media could not have produced the public and, consequently, episcopal sense of crisis. The scandal was in the chanceries, parishes, and seminaries before it was on the front page or television news. Whatever their motivations…editors and reporters served a higher purpose."
“Too often, assumptions have been made that this problem is worse in the Catholic clergy than in other sectors of society. This report does not support this conclusion. Indeed, it shows that family members are the most likely to sexually molest a child. It also shows that the incidence of the sexual abuse of a minor is slightly higher among the Protestant clergy than among the Catholic clergy, and that it is significantly higher among public school teachers than among ministers and priests.” Scandal Time III, Richard John Neuhaus, First Things, August 2002