Random Musings

I keep seeing signs in grocery store parking lots that warn you not to move their shopping carts outside of the parking lot or the wheels will lock. Call me a vandal, call me a miscreant, but I have a a burning desire to move as many carts as I can to just outside the lot.

But with my luck I'll find out that this is just a ruse designed to keep people from stealing carts and instead of a hundred carts with locked wheels I'll create a 35 car pileup on the street which is cool to see at the Indy 500 and not so cool on Ventura Boulevard.

If you are Catholic you may be offended by my next few comments, or maybe not. But when I read this story it made me shake my head for a variety of reasons. The story is regarding a probe that the church is making regarding homosexuality and the church.

"The newspaper said a Vatican document prepared to guide the process and given to The New York Times by a priest, surfaces as Catholics await a Vatican ruling on whether homosexuals should be barred from the priesthood.

American seminaries are under review as a result of the sexual abuse scandal that swept the priesthood in 2002, the year the probe which is now starting was announced.

In a possible hint of the ruling's contents, the American archbishop supervising the seminary review said "anyone who has engaged in homosexual activity or has strong homosexual inclinations," should not be admitted to a seminary.

The Times said Edwin O'Brien, archbishop for the United States military who is supervising the seminary review, told The National Catholic Register that the restriction should apply even to those who have not been sexually active for a decade or more.

O'Brien was once the rector of the North American College, a seminary for Americans studying in Rome and has familiarity with both the Vatican and the U.S. Church.

The issue has been in the spotlight because a study commissioned by the Church found last year that about 80 percent of the young people victimized by priests were boys."

Being gay is not equivalent with being a pedophile and it seems to me that the more important and more pressing issue is handling those issues as opposed to engaging in a witch hunt for men who like other men. I don't understand this thought process.

In other news I perused various news sources who used the AP report about the current Three Day summit at the UN where Vlad Putin called for the UN to be a leader in the fight against terror. I also found this section of the article to be of particular interest.

"In his speech, Bush broadened the terrorism fight beyond the military arena, saying world leaders have "a solemn obligation" to stop terrorism in its early stages.

Declaring that poverty breeds despair and terrorism, he challenged leaders to abolish all trade tariffs and subsidies to promote prosperity and opportunity in poor nations, a move that would be worth billions of dollars.

"Either hope will spread, or violence will spread, and we must take the side of hope," he said.

This approach and Bush's support for achieving development goals such as halving extreme poverty by 2015 was welcomed by many leaders.

Geldof, who organized the Live Aid concerts and campaigns against poverty, said he was sitting in the General Assembly chamber with U.N. anti-poverty chief Jeffrey Sachs and they couldn't believe what they heard.

"I think he's really throwing down the gauntlet. It's a very bold move," Geldof said of Bush's trade tariff proposal, adding that he was impressed with the president's acknowledgment that terrorism "comes from despair and lack of hope."

I think that the war on terror has to be a combination of diplomacy and force and this could go a long way in helping to curb terror and support for it, but it must also be remembered that a large portion of the war on terror is being fought for ideological reasons.

These are disagreements that are not based upon levels of wealth but upon ideas and that is a significant point that cannot and must not be overlooked. This must be given attention or the war will fail.