Sunday, September 29

A review of the San Francisco Opera's production of Messiaen's Saint Francis

Elsewhere, though, "Saint Francois" achieves a kind of divine grace. The third tableau, titled the Kissing of the Leper, is an eminently theatrical episode. The encounters with the Angel are beautiful and mysterious. And the seventh tableau -- The Stigmata -- is as riveting a coup de theatre as any you'll ever see onstage.

There have, as you've noticed, been lots of attacks on Christians in Pakistan recently. The press says it's about "the West," not religion.

Not quite, says this piece from the WSJ

This approach is typical. After the massacres at a Pakistani Christian school and hospital in August, Reuters headlined its story "Pakistan attack seen aimed at West, not Christians," while the BBC said: "The attack appears aimed at Western interests, rather than Pakistan's Christian minority." The Associated Press argued that the assaults were "directed against western interests."The people believed to be behind the attacks, though, have made their motives plain. Members of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, the terrorist group claiming responsibility for an October 2001 massacre in a Christian church, said that "they planned to kill Christians" in revenge for Muslim deaths in Afghanistan. The men who claimed responsibility for attacking the school in August announced that they "killed the nonbelievers." Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter kidnapped in Pakistan in January, was killed not only because he was a Westerner but also because he was Jewish, as his murderers made explicit.

In covering the arrest of the Lackawanna Six in Buffalo, the Toronto Sun published a photo of what they said was the Yemeni mosque in Buffalo.

Uh...no. It was Our Lady of Victory Basilica

From the Globe, an interview with Governor Keating
LA Archdiocese eliminating some campus ministries in their budget-cutting