This is from
Sven's theologian quiz, which I took a couple of weeks ago and never got around to blogging:
You scored as Karl Barth. The daddy of 20th Century theology. You perceive liberal theology to be a disaster and so you insist that the revelation of Christ, not human experience, should be the starting point for all theology.
Karl Barth | | 87% | Augustine | | 87% | Anselm | | 73% | John Calvin | | 40% | Paul Tillich | | 40% | Jonathan Edwards | | 40% | Charles Finney | | 40% | Friedrich Schleiermacher | | 33% | Jürgen Moltmann | | 27% | Martin Luther | | 20% |
Which theologian are you?
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I don't know why it identified me as Barth, rather than Augustine of Hippo, my patron. The scores were the same. Sorry, Augustine!
BTW, Sven finally had to take the thing down because he was getting snotty e-mails from quiz-takers. For pete's sake, people, it's an Internet quiz! Some folks take this stuff way too seriously.
 You scored as Sacrament model. Your model of the church is Sacrament. The church is the effective sign of the revelation that is the person of Jesus Christ. Christians are transformed by Christ and then become a beacon of Christ wherever they go. This model has a remarkable capacity for integrating other models of the church.
Sacrament model | | 95% | Institutional Model | | 84% | Mystical Communion Model | | 61% | Herald Model | | 50% | Servant Model | | 28% |
What is your model of the church? [Dulles]
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The queen bee of the right-wing media hive gives us some reminders that John Roberts may not be the conservative we hope he is. Of course, he may not be the liberal lackey and NARAL running dog that she dreads, either. He's an unknown quantity, which means he stands a chance of getting past the Senate Cerberus. The only way a Supreme Court nominee could win the approval of NARAL and Planned Parenthood would be to actually perform an abortion during his confirmation hearing, live, on camera, and preferably a partial birth one. Still, I don't think Bush would have picked him if he didn't have at least a strong pro-life bent. And these days, we have to take what we can get.
Actually, the price was a lot: a chunk out of the lives of two little girls. My friend Patty, for whom I asked for prayers the other day, lost her initial bid this morning to keep her two little granddaughters. On the positive side, it looks like the father has gotten his [ manure] together since their last encounter, and they'll be well cared for. Meanwhile, Patty has a legal ace up her sleeve that I'm not in a position to disclose. All is not lost in this fight. Thanks to everybody who prayed, and if you can, do keep her on your list of people to pray for.
Gerry Thomas, the inventor of the TV dinner, has died of cancer at the age of 83. The first Swanson TV Dinner - turkey with cornbread dressing and gravy, sweet potatoes and buttered peas - sold for about $1 and could be cooked in 25 minutes at 425 degrees. Ten million sold in the first year of national distribution.
It was fast and convenient, and fit nicely on a TV tray in the living room, so that you didn't have to drag yourself away from your favorite television show. There will now be two to four-and-a-half minutes of silence in his honor, following which let us stand for another two minutes. Ding!
Remember I mentioned the Cthulhu-Chick tract parody that had been taken down after Chick publications threatened to sue? I found another copy, and I'll put it here (with the bad language Photoshopped out) until somebody tells me not to. Click on the image to see it in a more legible size.  H. P. Lovecraft was to horror fiction what Wells and Verne were to sci-fi: the seminal author that all the others in the genre pay homage to every time a book rolls off the press. His Cthulhu stories in particular have become classics, inspiring all kinds of parodies and knockoffs like Campus Crusade for Cthulhu. If you've never read his stuff, you won't really get the joke, but for fans, it's hilarious deadpan. Jimmy Akin, if you ever come in here, you need to see this. "That is not dead which can eternal lie..."
I don't usually do this, as I'm ashamed to admit I usually forget to pray for other bloggers' requests. But I'm going to go out on a limb anyway. A little background: My friend Patty lost her daughter to cancer a month ago. Kimmy was 30, and had four children, the oldest of whom is six, from three different fathers. Patty has been taking care of the children, as Kimmy had wanted her to. The kids were all close to Gramma in a way that only children of a single mother can be. Patty has reached an accommodation with one of the kids' fathers, and another is nowhere to be found and likes it that way. But yesterday morning, she was served with papers from the girls' "father," saying that he was coming out on Friday to take custody. She went to a lawyer here in town, who told her there was nothing she could do. Her family lawyer back in Minnesota called an old school chum of his here in Washington, who couldn't take the case in time himself but gave her a lot of good advice for how to present herself to the judge. So why does a diehard father's-rightsnik put "father" in sneer quotes? Well, not only was the guy violent – the reason Kimmy fled to Washington in the first place – but he's been out of the picture for five years. He's never even laid eyes on the younger girl. But apparently there's a little money in having them now that their mother is dead, and he wants his cut. So I'm begging y'all to pray. Pray hard. If you belong to a group or an order that prays together, ask them. And I'll be better about praying for the requests other folks post from now on, honest. Are you gonna pull those rosaries, or whistle dixie?
I read the AP wire at the office, so I usually get the stories a half-hour or so before they hit the Net. I might get in trouble for saying it, but just once I want to be the first blogger to break a story. 
Scotty been beamed up. UPDATE: I was just reading the trivia for James Doohan on IMDB. I didn't know he had been at D-Day. Lost a middle finger there. So tell me, what could he have done when he was cut off in a space lane by some jerk talking into his tri-corder?
I didn't have time to blog on this yesterday, but as everybody knows by now, General William Westmoreland, the Army Chief of Staff during Vietnam, died yesterday. he was 91.  The really ironic thing about this is that yesterday was my dad's 62nd birthday. Or rather, it would have been, if he hadn't gone to Vietnam and served under Gen. Westmoreland. He died in 1994, probably from the aftereffects of Agent Orange. I'm not blaming the general for this; he did the best he knew how, and from what I can see, he was a helluva soldier and leader of soldiers. But it seems sad that the man who sent him to war lived to be almost twice as old as Dad did himself. I wish it had been the other way round.
John G. Roberts. He looks pro-life enough to torque off the Democrats in the Senate, but it may take years before we know what that translates to in practical terms. He's given some ambiguous answers on Roe v. The Human Race – he argued against it before the Court as a lawyer, but admitted that it was the established "law of the land" at his 2003 confirmation hearings. On the bright side of that, he was being interrogated by the Senate Judiciary committee, which has a history of snatching and snarling in cur-like fashion at any hint of respect for life. Here's hoping!
Apparently Islamofascism has infested the Blogosphere, as Chris Byrne the AnarchAngel has been honored with a fatwa for something he posted. His highly colorful response (edited slightly): TO ANY WHO WOULD HARM ME OR MINE
If you attempt to do anything to me, to my friends, to anyone I care about; I WILL KILL YOU. I will not simply defend myself, I WILL kill you, and while you are dying I will piss on you.
I have just rolled all my bullets in pig fat. I'm going to start carying around pieces of swine flesh with me; and I'll shove them into your wounds, then force feed them to you. Then I'll cut your [male parts] off and shove them down your throat.
I am heavily armed at all times, I have booby trapped my car and my home, and I am waiting for you. If you come after me or mine, you will die, and I will make damned sure you won't see paradise for all eternity you evil [oedipally-inclined persons]. You know, Americans are kind, generous people as a rule, but it doesn't pay to forget that we settled this country at the point of a gun. We're an ornery, cantankerous, often heavily-armed lot, who don't play nicely with others. Perhaps the Brotherhood of the Bomb Belt should stick to threatening somebody more civilized, like the Spanish. A/T to it comes in pints?.
Children's sports like T-ball are a game. They're meant to be for fun. It's not fun when you hire a player to bludgeon another player on your own team. No, really, it's not. A/T to Lance Salyers, who's a good sport all around.
...but if I'm going to have to work on a Sunday, I'm jolly well going to take a moment every so often away from the drudgery. This was too good an ego trip to pass up.
You Are Incredibly Logical |
(You got 100% of the questions right)
Move over Spock - you're the new master of logic
You think rationally, clearly, and quickly.
A seasoned problem solver, your mind is like a computer! |
My kids would be the first to dispute the result. Let 'em. Neener neener!
All I'm gonna say is this. You whiny, European Arabs better just cut the drama, people. It's quiet time for you.
All this concern that you're all going to be profiled, and singled out because a few repressed homosexuals in your broad religious category can't keep their smelly mitts off the exploding cummerbunds. Well you don't know profiling until you've been one of Me, mister.
See, I just finished eating a diabetic octogenarian with a MedicAlert bracelet. Quite frankly, the attack was totally unprovoked. But I've got a good case against my owner, and the ability to look like I've been daily threatened with a cutting torch. He's going down if there's any trouble. Sometimes you just want to jump to your feet and shout "Amen," at least until you remember that you're in a crowded office and would rather the boss didn't notice you reading blogs on company time. So read the whole thing when you get home. A cautious A/T to Protein Wisdom, whose author may or may not foam hilariously at the mouth, but I'm in no hurry to find out.
| You Are 71% American |  Most times you are proud to be an American.
Though sometimes the good ole US of A makes you cringe
Still, you know there's no place better suited to be your home.
You love your freedom and no one's going to take it away from you! |
I have to admit I fudged a bit on a couple of the questions. The Lee Greenwood song was a source of goosebumps the first thousand times or so that I heard it, but now I just want to pimp-slap the next person who plays it in a public place. And the cheese question was severely lacking. How is a good northwesterner supposed to refrain from singing the praises of Tillamook cheddar? Also, I wear an Akubra instead of a Stetson (and Mexican boots!), but the quiz thankfully didn't ask about that. And I don't care what they say, American beer – the mass-produced kind – reminds me more of hop-flavored pond water strained through the kidneys of a sick coyote. (Don't ask me how I know what that tastes like; it's not a pretty story.) A/T to Fr. Tucker, who probably only scored so low because he's a Confederate at heart.
A toddler whose father was using her as a shield was accidentally shot by the police. It's hard to blame the cops; the louse was shooting at them from behind his daughter. Maybe they should have handled it differently, maybe not, but it's not a decision I'd want to make in the heat of the moment. It was unclear who fired the shot that hit the girl, but officers were struggling with the thought that they killed a baby, McDonnell said.
"The officers are taking it very hard," he said. "Anytime you have a baby killed, it takes its toll." On the positive side, Planned Parenthood sent the officers a very nice congratulatory card and the promise of a cash bounty for future incidents of this kind.
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