Habemus Napam

Your humble correspondant is proud to announce that his world travels have taken him somewhere that a career at the Marquette Tribune never did. . .the front page of the Trib.

The picture from the World Youth Day article hasn't yet been posted online, but anyone with a paper copy can see me napping facedown in a maroon t-shirt and blue jeans. My roommate is three sleeping bags down, also sleeping.

Edit: Further investigation has shown that the napping figure is not your humble correspondant. It is, in fact another member of Marquette's World Youth Day group. We apologize for the mix-up.

Not the George Ringo They Wanted

It's official: the editors of the Marquette Tribune disapprove of the selection of Pope Benedict XVI.

This group of about a dozen 19, 20 and 21 year old journalism students considers itself a better judge of Cardinal Ratzinger's qualifications for office than a group of 117 Church officials who each have decades of theological study. But besides that fact, the article makes accusations about the new Pope that are unwarranted.

The editorial spends the first five paragraphs claiming that a European Pope will fail to care for non-European Catholics, such as Africans, Asians and Central Americans. This ignores the fact that Jonh Paul II was a European who still managed to speak out about the AIDS epidemic in Africa, violence in the Middle East and other worldwide issues.

The editorialists write:

However, his record as John Paul II's confrontational head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith indicates that he may not prioritize the true crises in the Catholic Church right now.

His former job was to enforce the correct teaching of Catholic faith and morals. In that role, he had no reason to become involved in any official way with other issues. There are other Vatican offices to deal with those. As a new international figure, Benedict will be forced to face issues around the globe. This is similar to accusing President Bush of not facing the issue of high federal taxes while he was governor of Texas. It was not within Ratzinger's jurisdiction.

At this point, the writers pause for a moment. "Perhaps we are rushing to judgement." With that qualifier out of the way, they continue on with their next accusation.

Cardinal Ratzinger's comments Monday indicated his vision for the future church is an all-out culture war machine in Europe and North America that is the rough equivalent of Don Quixote attacking a windmill. . . In a Western marketplace of ideas, intellectually intricate doctrinaire Catholicism cannot compete with the instantaneous self-gratification of secular humanism. This calls for a change in emphasis that the church just refused to take.

Western Europe, the traditional homeland of Catholicism and the birthplace of most Protestant denominations, has become one of the least Christian areas of the world. Church attendance is dropping and fewer and fewer people classify themselves as Christian.The Catholic church's goal should be to win back the millions who have fallen away from their faith.

It may be a lofty goal, but that doesn't make it foolish or pointless. To suggest that Catholicism should change its beliefs to fit whatever the modern person wants to hear is deadly. The Church is supposed to be a beacon of a morality that remains, in spite of the turbulence of the rest of the world. If the Catholic church simply becomes reflection of what the Western Modernist mind wants to believe, it will no longer serve any purpose at all. What the Church needs is not to change, but to remain strong and explain its beliefs clearly to the masses. Cardinal Ratzinger was considered one of, if the the greatest, theologians in Catholicism today. That makes him qualified like none other to show the modern (wo)man how the Church remains relevant to the world today.

DPS Report of the Week

Perusing the DPS Reports in Tuesday's Tribune turned up this story.
http://www.marquettetribune.org/319542647605522.bsp

DPS searches for camera, finds 'green, leafy substance' instead
Feb. 18
At 3:32 a.m., DPS responded to a call about a missing camera in South Hall. Officers searched the rooms of 18-year-old and 19-year-old male residents of South Hall and did not find the camera, but instead found a three-inch smoking pipe, a small digital scale and one bottle filled with a green, leafy substance. MPD was contacted, and the 18-year-old was taken into custody for possession of a controlled substance and a state charges of possession of drug paraphernalia and schedule two narcotics without a prescription.

The Irritable Bowel Thief Strikes Again

All year, Marquette has been losing toilet paper. Nearly every week, the Marquette Tribune's Department of Public Safety crime blotter mentions that several rolls of toilet paper have gone missing.

A search of the Marquette Tribune's website for the words "toilet paper" turns up 24 articles dating from March 2004 to present. There have been three incidents reported in the Tribune since the beginning of the spring semester.

I'm not sure which part of this bothers me the most:

1. That someone is so determined in their theft of toilet paper that they have kept it up for almost a full year.
   
2. That no one has caught a person walking out of a bathroom with several rolls of toilet paper stuffed into his shirt. Almost all the incidents have involved more than 3 rolls, and once as many as 17 were taken.
   
3. The fact that the toilet paper's estimated value is $5 per roll. In the most recent incident, in which three rolls were stolen, the Tribune reported that the value of property lost was $15.
   

Five dollars for a roll of toilet paper? This isn't Charmin Ultra Soft by any means. The paper the university supplies us with is only a grade softer than the paper bags you put your lunch in. Maybe we could cut that $1400 tuition hike or supply more financial aid if we bought cheaper paper. I know that O'Donnell Hall has at least 6 bathrooms with 5 stalls in each. Each stall has 2 rolls of paper. That's 60 rolls of toilet paper just in this building. I'm not sure how long each roll lasts, but I'm willing to make a conservative estimate that each stall uses one roll a week. That means O'Donnel goes through 30 rolls of paper per week. That's $150 per week, just for O'Donnell. And O'Donnell only has three floors, about 300 residents. McCormick, with it's 11 floors and roughly 800 residents, must go through a lot more than that.

EDIT: One "Peter Rizzi" seems to have caught on. See his Viewpoint from the March 10, 2005 Tribune.

Angels Owners (We Have Heard) Are High

The Anaheim Angels (formerly known as California Angels) have now changed their name to The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. This just doesn't make sense to me on several levels.

• They aren't in Los Angeles. They are, in fact, in Anaheim. (As the latter part of their name might suggest.)
  
• There is already a baseball team in Los Angeles. They are known as the Dodgers and have been in their current city since the 1950's.
  
• Los Angeles and Anaheim are entirely different cities.
  
• "Angeles Angels" is just asking for spelling and pronunciation problems. There's a reason we don't have the Phoenix Phoenixes. Or the Tucson Tuscan Raiders.
  

At least they aren't playing at "Oriole Park at Camden Yards."

ESPN.com funny link.

Remembering Dr. Griffiths

Marquette announced through email yesterday that Dr. Griffiths passed away after a heart attach last week. The email read as follows:

Dr. T. Daniel “Dan” Griffiths, vice provost for research and graduate programs, died today.  He had been hospitalized since suffering a heart attack on Thursday.  He was 57.

“Dan was a valued member of our senior leadership team, and he will be greatly missed.  The prayers and sympathy of all of us here in the Marquette community are with Dan's wife, Barbara, and all the other members of the Griffiths family,” said Marquette President Robert Wild, S.J.

Griffiths joined Marquette in 2003 after serving at Northern Illinois University as a faculty member from 1981 to 2002 and acting vice provost for research and dean of the graduate school during 2002-03. At NIU he helped to establish a new Ph.D. program in biological science.  Active in his research specialties in radiation biology and the biology of aging and vision, he was awarded nearly $1 million in federal grants.

“Dan had a passion for research. In him, we have lost a fine researcher, but more so we have lost a gentle, kind man. He was dedicated to building the research enterprise at Marquette. This is his legacy,” said Provost Madeline Wake. 

His achievements at Marquette include increasing the number of Ph.D. graduates, increasing funds for internal research awards to faculty, and establishing the Marquette Research Institute, a faculty development program, with an inaugural conference scheduled for January 12, 2005.

Griffiths was an active member of the Milwaukee Quaker Friends Community.

He is survived by his wife, Barbara, and sons Michael, Eric, and Justin.  Memorial arrangements are pending.

Condolences can be sent to the Griffiths family at:

1852 W. Brantwood Ct.
Milwaukee, WI 53209

Please remember the Griffiths family in your prayers.

Welcome

This is the Inane Asylum. All kinds of good stuff will be coming up here, once my co-contributor James and I get it completely up and running.

Keep checking back.