Good: Madonna to give millions to Malawi orphans:
Madonna plans to raise at least $3 million for programs to support orphans in Malawi, and is giving $1 million to fund a documentary about the plight of children there, Time reports.
The singer, who plans to visit Africa in October, credits her faith in Kabbalah with shifting her priorities.
"One of the main precepts of Kabbalah is that we’re put on this Earth to help people," she says. "And your job is to figure out how you can help, and what it is that you can do."
Bad:
The so-called Queen of Pop brings her show to Rome on Sunday, and Roman Catholic leaders are furious at part of her performance in which she wears a crown of thorns and is apparently crucified.
Cardinal Ersilio Tonino, speaking with the Pope’s approval, said: "This is a blasphemous challenge to the faith and a profanation of the Cross. She should be excommunicated. To crucify herself … in the city of popes and martyrs is an act of open hostility. It is nothing short of a scandal and an attempt to generate publicity."
Another Vatican official, Bishop Velasio De Paolis, said: "How this woman can take the name of the mother of Christ, I don’t know. Her show represents the rotten fruit of secularism and the absurdity of evil."
Meanwhile, in an interview with the Italian edition of Vanity Fair, Madonna said a bad riding accident last year had brought her closer to God. "It made me look at life in a new way … I promised God: ‘I am never going to complain, moan or grumble or be ungrateful again’. "
Because, you know, Catholicism says not a word about the poor and stuff.
If this woman only knew how many people, for some odd reason called Christian charity, pray for her. I’m thinking it’s …a lot.
And just a note here – it’s not "Tonino" – it’s "Tonini" – here is his bio. He is quite elderly, retired Archbishop of Ravenna, and was only given the red hat in 1994.
Here is a lovely interview with him from 30 Days:
Who wouldn’t like to have a bigger heart?
TONINI: Perhaps we don’t notice that in the first article of the Creed («I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth») we are recalling the birth of the world and our own birth. I think that the morning prayers on which our mothers were very keen were the salvation of the Church. We must get them back, re-launch this program (if we bishops were to launch this program instead of the big gatherings…): morning prayers. Which means waking up and being reborn like the first time. I wake up and I want to shout: I am, I see, I feel! I’m still not used to being here. It was my mother who taught me about surprise. Sometimes when I put on my socks, I look at my veins and say:«Just look at that». When I’m washing my head, ever since I’ve known that the human brain contains 40 billion neurones, I say to myself: «In here there are forty billion neurones!» Those splendid pages of Péguy’s Véronique! I’d like the whole world to know those opening pages. Look at birth. I always say to parents: «Is it true or not that when a child was born to you, born from you but not made by you, it was the greatest spectacle in the world?» We’ve lost the appreciation, the surprise of being.
One last thing: hope, what Péguy calls the childlike virtue. Childlike virtue because the child is hope, the child trusts totally. At the moment in which we trust totally in God, as a child, then we have the greatest honor imaginable and it is what most touches the heart of God. The prodigal son, when he comes back, has hope mixed with fear, which the father belies immediately, because he makes him understand that having him back is a gain, not a loss. To believe in this love of God who considers me one of his glories… On the other hand it’s certainly not poetry, it’s Jesus who says so in chapter seventeen of John’s Gospel. Teilhard Chardin used to say that every time one picks up the Gospel there are two things to do. First, to remember that facts are true. Second, that the stake is you. When I’m consecrating at mass I say: «This is my body», and I do it as something mechanical without being aware that I am there in the middle, I’m a … servant, nothing more.
Another delicate question, which has to be well set out so that it doesn’t cause argument, is the place of the hierarchy. I’m afraid that because I’m a cardinal people will think of me as a success. I’m immensely afraid of that, since I’m here to bear witness instead. The Lord has given me a great grace, but if I’m a bishop it is not that I’ve succeeded more than others. I have more responsibility, that’s for sure. Even if, as things are, because of the increasing importance of the mass media, there’s no point in being a cardinal if you only come out with banalities. A cleaning woman could say things that touch the spirit more than a cardinal. But beyond that, careerism is a very dangerous thing in the character of a pastor, of a bishop and upwards. And where it insinuates itself it destroys everything. Saint Augustine says that «he who seeks in the Church something that is not God, is a mercenary». We are witnesses. We should rather see to it that there is always a capacity to love, the desire to say of every person that I meet: «This is a son of God, what can I do for him?»
God bless her for using some of her resources for helping the poor. Still, I’d rather listen to the good Cardinal, who retains such a wonder for life and a generous heart.
How’s that for a meandering post?
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