Friends:

Well no one wants the Lions of Judah destroyed- we can agree on that. So why the ad hominem attacks. If I think there is something problematic in Islam, I am attacked? That contributes to dialogue?

As an exercise, it would be good to avoid attacking the person and engage the message. Bigot, hater, religious bigot, rat bigot, ignorant bigot, etc. etc. There have been, I concede, some thoughtful comments but these are obscured by the attacks. Gosh, Jersey Mom, to think you have to live among us trolls.

OK, ok, I get it. You are all light years beyond me in moral and intellectual evolution and I don't belong on this board or even in this society. No dissent allowed! If the Lions of Judah are smashed, it is an innocent act of a peaceful cultivated egalitarian religion that is also really cool and a bit exotic still but not nearly as exotic as it was twenty years ago. And yes, jihad is nothing other than spiritual growth and struggle, like studying for your bar mitzvah or doing penance during Lent and the current war, the unending terror attacks, the resistance to assimilation, the degradation of women, the inability to separate the secular from the religious, the static sense of history- these are all accidents of Islamic culture cause by the evils of Christianity, Judaism, western Europe and the hegemonic US.

Now can I join your club?

Mao

Borsip:

Here! Here!

Publius

...except that Spain had been Catholic for five hundred years when the Muslims invaded in the 8th century. The Reqconquista started then and Christians never gave up...

I doubt the Baptists today would hack the Virgin Mary apart. Interesting. the Pentecostals who took over All Saints Church on Pacific left everything marvelously intact. Apparently, there was a debate and the image party won.

Dear Old School:

The building was never a Baptist Church was it?

Also, Islam targeted Christian churches with particular ferocity. There was a sort of cult aimed toward the take over of Hagia Sophia. Recently Isis has promised to take over St. Peter's basilica. The take overs historically have been dramatic and violent affairs.

Christians in the Mediterranean did take over pagan temples but when they were disused. In northern Europe the monk missionaries were more dramatic, e.g.Boniface cutting down an oak to show the power of Christ against the Druid god. In Mexico, the conquistadors destroyed the Temploy Major where the human sacrifices to the gods Huiztilopochtli and Tlaloc took place. That was aggressive- but what was taking place on those altars was horrific.

The Iconoclasts, whether of the 7th century Byzantine Christian Stripe, or of the Islamic stripe, or of the Protetant reformation type reserve a special fury for the destruction of Catholic and Orthodox churches and making them over without images.

It is better to discuss then to resort to name calling.Or maybe not.

Publius

lol, oh, well thanks for the well spoken bit at least.

Dear JCISHOME:

I suppose it is over the top.

But the destruction of images is a hallmark of jihad from the start. The artist loss alone around the Mediterranean basin, through the Iberian peninsula, and then in the other direction through India, to Indonesia cannot be overstated. Iconoclasm is violent- violence against images and usually against those who create or venerate images.

The congregation at that synagogue has been here now for almost 20 years. I don't ever recall it doing anything to protest the current Islamic excesses- whether here or there.

Even a calculating awareness of fostering good local relations would have had the mosque seek to remove the lions in a manner that preserves them rather than destroys them.

Yours,

Publius

Dear JCISHOME:

I suppose it is over the top.

But the destruction of images is a hallmark of jihad from the start. The artist loss alone around the Mediterranean basin, through the Iberian peninsula, and then in the other direction through India, to Indonesia cannot be overstated. Iconoclasm is violent- violence against images and usually against those who create or venerate images.

The congregation at that synagogue has been here now for almost 20 years. I don't ever recall it doing anything to protest the current Islamic excesses- whether here or there.

Even a calculating awareness of fostering good local relations would have had the mosque seek to remove the lions in a manner that preserves them rather than destroys them.

Yours,

Publius

Dear Papadage:

What is a rat bigot?

Your reference to the crusades, inquisition, and witch burnings suggest, however, a tendentious and illiberal spirit. Each of these are important and complex events. Perhaps the dominant consensus (and at the very least a respectable scholarly thesis) on the crusades is that they represent the re-assertion of Christian culture after being on retreat for 400 years. Moreover, the Crusades focused on Jerusalem and its environs (I don't think the Frankish state ever got much larger than say from Jerusalem to Antioch).

The Inquisition and witch burning are part of the history of Christianity, East and West, and continuing even in some more intense forms in Protestantism. The present a fair apologist for the Church with a challenge, indeed. The fact that large gnostic movements were challenging the Church's hegemony does not excuse its excesses. Politics, of course, also figured in- the most problematic of all the inquisitions being the Spanish which was a department of the Spanish state. Indeed, the Papacy was often a force for the ratcheting down of these processes around Europe. The canon law of the church making efforts to ban for example trial by ordeal as it forged the concept of "due process."

However, the victims of the crusades and witch burning over seven hundred years and over the entire Western Hemisphere does not exceed $10,000 deaths. In comparison, the cvictims of Marxist Lennism or National Socialism are staggering beyond belief. The greatest massacre ever imputed by the government of one sovereign against the government of another is 26.3 million Chinese during the regime of Mao Tse Tung between the years of 1949 and May 1965. The Walker Report published by the U.S. Senate Committee of the Judiciary in July 1971 placed the parameters of the total death toll in China since 1949 between 32 and 61.7 million people. An estimate of 63.7 million was published by Figaro magazine on November 5, 1978.

In the U.S.S.R. the Nobel Prize winner, Alexander Solzhenitsyn estimates the loss of life from state repression and terrorism from October 1917 to December 1959 under Lenin and Stalin and Khrushchev at 66.7 million.

Finally, in Cambodia "as a percentage of a nation's total population, the worst genocide appears to be that in Cambodia, formerly Kampuchea. According to the Khmer Rouge foreign minister, more than one third of the eight million Khmer were killed between April 17, 1975 and January 1979. One third of the entire country was put to death under the rule of Pol Pot, the founder of the Communist Party of Kampuchea. During that time towns, money and property were abolished. Economic execution by bayonet and club was introduced for such offenses as falling asleep during the day, asking too many questions, playing non-communist music, being old and feeble, being the offspring of an undesirable, or being too well educated. In fact, deaths in the Tuol Sleng interrogation center in Phnom Penh, which is the capitol of Kampuchea, reached 582 in a day."

Comparisons are odious, but I just don't think that throwing the crusades, the inquisition, and witchburning at anyone sympathetic to Christianity is fair.

Yours,

Publius

Dear Cat Dog:

Good question. And I don't really know the answer. As Christianity dies in our culture, is it better to have the ruins around to remind people? Like sort of the pieces of ancient Roman and Greek temples around the Mediterranean. I suppose so. On the other hand, it seems so sacrilegious to me. These are sanctuaries built to the glory of God from the poverty of our forefathers.

In France during the Third Republic, the anti clerical state was seizing Churches again and was putting them to secularize use. Proust wrote an impassioned article in Le Figaro in 1904. Proust likens derelict churches to hollow sea shells on the coast where we can barely hear the music that was once performed:

Ce qui importe, c?est qu?elle reste vivante et que du jour
au lendemain la France ne soit pas transform?e en une
gr?ve dess?ch?e ou de g?antes coquillages cisel?s
sembleraient comme ?chou?es, vid?s de la vie qui les
habita, et n?apportant plus ? l?oreille qui se pencherait
sur eux la vague rumeur d?autrefois, simples pi?ces de
mus?e, mus?es glac?s elles-memes.5

Once resurrected from the deep and lifted into the light of
day, Debussy?s cathedral teems with organ, chant, and
5 Giuseppe Girimonti Greco, Quaderni Proustiani, (2012), op. cit. p. 49. The almost identical passage can also be found in Marcel Proust, Pastiches et M?langes (Paris, Gallimard, 1919,
1947), p. 181. Peter Houle ? A musical analogue www.LaRecherche.it

For Proust the liturgy is one with church
architecture. A church is alive only when the liturgy can be
performed:

Quand le sacrifice de la chair et du sang du Christ ne
sera plus c?l?br? dans les ?glises, il n?y aura plus de vie
en elles. La liturgie catholique ne fait qu?un avec
l?architecture et la sculpture de nos cath?drales, car les
unes commes les autres derivent d?un m?me
symbolisme.

In his later ?En M?moires des Eglises Assassin?es? Proust
eloquently projects the same sense of mystery and awe we
find in Debussy:

Les sculptures et les vitraux reprennent leurs sens, une
odeur myst?rieuse flotte de nouveau dans le temple, un
drame sacr? s?y joue, la cath?drale se remet ? chanter.

So I don't know, churches and synagogues as bars and restaurants or nightclubs. I just don't know but it breaks my heart.

Publius

I don't believe that it was ever a church. I believe that Yvonne is correct. It was a struggling synagogue, sold with deed restrictions that it not be used for religious purposes (presumably other than the Jewish religion). Briefly, there was a flurry that it was to be an event site/banquet hall. I remember I walked in distressed as everything was being dismantled and I met a guy who looked like Tennessee Williams' brother. I said- "Ok if I look?" He said sure go ahead and added "I loath religious buildings." I said: "What are you going to do with it?" He coughed out "banquet hall."

Two weeks later there were Muslims on ladders hacking at the lions of Judah. A brouhaha ensued and an order was obtained to stop them.

I was surprised, actually. I was told that Fr. Schiller, priest was involved in the drafting of the ordinances in thr early 1980s which expressly exempt Churches from the restrictions. Pere Schiller is preternaturally prescient. As a partner in Connell Foley and a political insider (how tight he is with McGreevy, I would not want to know but McGreevey did launch his gubernatorial campaign with Schiller at his side on the steps of St. Patrick's Church) Schiller gets things done. So Schiller today is actually personally involved in the sacrilegious destruction and conversion of these temples into condos. He was involved with the sale of All Saints School (soon to be All Saints Condo) to an Israeli developer. Not sure if he had any role in the sale of St. Boniface now cheap condos. As we speak, St. Bridgets is being sold.

However, Schiller sens cum ecclesiam (thinks with the Church) here as the contemporary church which is autodemolishing itself now at breakneck speed under Francis resists any restrictions by the government. It went all the way up to the US Supreme Court where when the church wanted to renovate a 400 year old church in Texas. I think the church won on First Amendment grounds (free exercise). However, if a parish actively seeks landmark status, then it is protected, .e.g St. Anthony of Padua on Monmouth Street.

So I have to say that I suspect there is little legal recourse for these lions. I think that we should seek to have them removed reverently and preserved elsewhere. Also, public opinion should be brought to bear on the congregation, though it is probably fruitless. Somehow, coming the day after the massacre in the Israeli synagogue and with all of the rising Islamic violence around the world, this destruction in the heart of our city is especially troubling.


???? ???? ??????
????? ??????


Rogate pacem Hierusalem sit bene his qui diligunt te

Well Pebble-

You are certainly on point about the hypocrisy of the priests and bishops. I mean come on: since the sexual revolution, the one unforgivable sin is to preach repression- of sex outside of more less restrictive traditional Judeo Christian norms. But then the massive and eternal Catholic church sits there and says: no nothing has changed. And its priests and nuns continued to be "eunuchs for the kingdom of God." Except that they don't continue to be Christian ascetics. They turn the seminaries and chanceries into pink palaces or get a mistress on the side. The Catholic clergy as a whole are about as narcissistic and self indulgent as one can imagine. Endless sermons by priests about themselves. And complaints about over working etc. Corruptio optimi est pessima!

But I do disagree with you to the extent that you assert in other contexts, institutions are responsible and the criminal law is brought to bear. If you track back to the study on the public schools, the problem is mostly ignored- though I think this is changing. There have been a slew of stories about in grained sexualization of the relationship between adolescent actors and film directors, etc. And of course, there is Penn State.......

Our society is returning in many ways to the wild world of sexual freedom, polymorphous perversity, and predation that was the norm before the Jewish ethic became universal through Christianity. The movement to lower the age of consent to allow sex between adults and adolescents is making headway in northern Europe and I think I read of some support here. Funny, the priest scandal seemed to stop this trend for a while...but I suspect only for a while.

Anyway, I just want to save a beautiful church building. And even if you hate the Church you got to admit that buildings like Chartres Cathedral and Hagia Sophia made the soul soar. St. Bridget's partakes however slightly of this same numinous spirit.

Cheers!

Mao

Well the Church is pretty corrupt these days as it has conformed itself to society. The fact that illegal sexual contact occurs with greater frequency between adults and adolescents in public schools, in Protestant churches, and in things like youth sports (swimming, hockey, baseball) and institutions like the Boy Scouts, etc, is beside the point. Estimated sexual abuse in public schools is 100x that in the Church.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/has-media-ignored-sex-abuse-in-school/


But I get it. Priests are called to be an alter Christus. Everyone some how gets the special status of a priest. So the betrayal of the Catholic people by their priests and bishops is beyond belief.

I don't quite understand, however, why non Catholics or former Catholics get so agitated about it while ignoring the activity elsewhere.

Yvonne I think you've drunk the cool aid of the Archdiocesan "New Energies" committee that is liquidating the patrimony of the local church (Orwell would approve of the moniker). The urban trends would account for cities that did not recover from the 1960 and 70s- like Camden etc. But even in many of these cities, white flight was followed by Hispanic influx and Filipino immigration- both Catholic populations.

By 2050, the population of Jersey City is projected to top 450,000- that's will be an all time high. However, it is likely that there were the city will only have 10 Catholic churches rather than the 23 it had at the height (I think I have that number about right). And in the heyday, these churches were filled with Mass goers to standing room only for five Masses each Sunday.

The reason these churches are closing is because of the massive loss of faith by the people. The biggest cause of the loss of faith is decadent and worldly clergy- from many of our parish priests to virtually every bishop. Good and holy priests are not promoted and are sidelined while the worst pull the shots. Francis is right out of this mold. The world is delighted but he is greatly accelerating the auto demotion of the Church.
e, the flight of the white folks was

Well there is resistance building to at least make an outcry about the sale of these buildings. For believers, these buildings are temples built by the sacrifice of our ancestors. They are impressive and at times beautiful. They will not be easily recreated in this civilization. The Archdiocese needs to reconsider the role these buildings can have in maintaining an evangelical presence in the community.

For non believers, these buildings also are part of your heritage too. Like a frescoe by Giotto or a Mass composed by Palestrina, these churches are an essential part of Western Culture and of Jersey City.

Anyone interested in helping to make this argument public, please PM me

Yvonne, it is true that Charters were the death knell to parochial schools which had already suffered from the decline in the religious orders and the catholic community. However, it seemed to me (and others) that the mega parish model was just a prelude to church closings. Treat the parishioners like kulaks and make them go here and there and destroy their loyalty to their parish. Then when a church closes, the outcry is hardly heard. I looked at Holy Rosary the year before it closed for my oldest son and it was a thriving school- St. Peters and Resurrection and St. Mary's never impressed me. I think Holy Rosary could have survived with creativity and commitment.

Landshark- who told you about St. Brigit's? Is that official? Is it public knowledge?

What a crying shame if its true. So there it is: the population of downtown triples over the last twenty years but Catholic churches go from ten churches to five. New Energies! Springtime of Vatican II!



Church Going, by Philip Larkin

Once I am sure there's nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence.

Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new -
Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don't.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
'Here endeth' much more loudly than I'd meant.
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
When churches will fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

Or, after dark, will dubious women come
To make their children touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dead one?
Power of some sort will go on
In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;
But superstition, like belief, must die,
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,

A shape less recognisable each week,
A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative,

Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation - marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these - for which was built
This special shell? For, though I've no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;

A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognized, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.

Good question! The Archdiocese sort of strong armed the school out of the hands of Holy Rosary and into the control of Fr. Studerus then pastor of the now suppressed mega parish of the Resurrection and it became part of that parish school. Now that Resurrection Parish is no more, and the survivors are reconstituting themselves as the parish of St. Michael and the parish of St. Mary, I wonder what happened to the school. I assume like most other Catholic schools it is defunct. Perhaps Holy Rosary school reverted to Holy Rosary and it is being made condos to finance the spending spree that the parish has engaged in.

Respectfully, Your Honor. The County does not have an "absolute right" to seize five acres north of the current court house which would result in taking good property in an area rapidly redeveloping and making it non taxable.

The law of eminent domain actually requires two things: taking for a public purpose; and that the public taking is necessary. See State v. Lanza 48 362.

Again, respectfully, seizing land is not necessary. There is already a huge public parcel adjacent to the Administration (where the jail had been) and which is used as parking now. Build it there if you must. (But as I said, better to rehab the exisiting building and, pace to Yvonne, on another post who said she was afraid of prisoners being transported when she was on jury duty. This was the norm in every courthouse prior to say 1990 when a state wide building binge of ugly huge courthouses all over the state took place. And come to think of it, I can never remember a single incident where a member of the public was menaced let alone injured by a prisoner being taken to court. The fact is that civil dockets are way way down due to tort reform. It is true that family court has probably greatly increased. But that does not require an entirely new building.
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KeyCite History



State by McLean v. Lanza
48 N.J.Super. 362, 137 A.2d 622
N.J.Super.L. 1958.



. So instead of ratables in what is finally an improving area, the project will cost the County probably 100 million when all is done and said (if not more) and then will preclude income from that area in perpetuity.

And for

The Administration Building is like 40 years old. Our population has not changed. There are far fewer cases tried because of tort reform than there used to be. So what is the need for a new building. Granted the existing building is ugly and uncomfortable- but so is most modernism. At least the people rose up to stop the demotion of the beautiful old court house. And nickles to donuts, Bariso lives out of County so doesn't have to worry about our increasing County taxes.

Btw, why does no one complain about County taxes?

Here's a link to listen to the Mass. We'll be having an orchestra too!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XATBP_VWGoQ

Cantantes in Cordibus (CIC) the mixed choir that sings at the Latin Mass at St.Anthony's downtown every Sunday continues to welcome new voices- especially altos and sopranos!. Rehearsals are every Wednesday evening from 7:00 to 8:30 PM. Come by and introduce yourself to our very talented and congenial director, Simone Ferraresi (http://home.simoneferraresi.com/). Ability to sight read is preferred but is not a prerequisite. One needs only the ability to blend in and contribute to our sound. We are currently practicing for Christmas Eve when we will sing a short concert at 8:30 PM followed by 9:00 PM Mass which will feature the ordinary setting of Mozart's Missa brevis No. 10 in C major, K. 220/196b. The mass is called the Sparrow Mass (or Spatzenmesse) on account of "the violin figures in the Hosanna" of the Sanctus,[1] repeated after the Benedictus, which "recall the chirping of birds."[2] It may have been performed on 7 April 1776, during a celebration of Easter Mass at the Salzburg Cathedral.[3] A copy was loaned to the Heiligenkreuz Monastery the following year. The Sparrow Mass is the first of five Mozart wrote in the same key, C major, as if he was setting himself a compositional challenge.[4] Furthermore, Mozart wrote four other missae breves in C major.[5]Karl Geiringer notes that K. 220 was one of the models S?ssmayer used when completing Mozart's Requiem K.

Singers are welcome to just join us for Christmas or, even better, to join us for each Sunday.

PM me or call Dan at 201 406 9960 for more information.

Fantastic news! ?????

Anyone want to join in a class suit against United Water and the MUA if I file suit (I'm a laywer)?

I have been arguing with them over a bill on my house from two years ago. Instead of the usual $225, it came in at $2500. It made no sense. There was no leak, etc. So after spending two years arguing about it, they tell me that they will remove interest and let me off the hood for $3500! (I have been paying my bill in the meantime).

You can PM me if you are interested.

There should be no fee since this case would, I think, come under the Consumer Fraud Act which provides for treble damages and counsel fees.

hmm, some interesting figures and arguments folks.

Monroe, you have a point that my formula of valuing the golf course as if it were brownstones is problematic. I think you told me I was an idiot or something. It is true that the land is valued and then the improvements are for the total assessment. But just calling it unimproved land doesn't make sense either.

In some of your posts, Monroe, you go on about the relative assets of different towns... So I think that unimproved land sold at Exchange place for like 14 million an acre when the last empty Colgate lots were sold. So empty lots can fetch quit a lot around here.

And I'm more or less a Von Hayek conservative and not against golf clubs- I even thing they should be free to say no women allowed- though I'd never join one. But my question was- is it being fairly taxed? I don't know that its not- but I wonder. There's this thing about it that is sort of like a fantasy of Paul Fireman. It's kind of cool- but its a ghost course. No one is ever on it. Maybe the city needs to raise the taxes so the place is used, so that they can hire kids as caddies and greens keepers etc.

It's best for everyone when we all live together- super rich, middle class and poor. I remember a sociological study that showed that as long as 10% of the residents of an neighborhood were professional but the other 90% working poor or welfare idled, it hung together. As soon as it went below that figure the neighborhood became unlivable.

I always thought one of the problems with places like SHort Hills is that they outsourced their Mt. Laurel obligations for affordable housing by putting it in Jersey City or Newark. This was really the last thing Jersey needed then (in the 1970s).

The education establishment, sorry teachers, is just so problematic. It is a pity that charters have been the death knell for Catholic schools which did a pretty good job with very little. Vouchers would provide opportunity for the poor and would increase efficiencies. Strangely enough, one of the big things that shot Brett Schundler down when he ran for governor a decade ago was an alliance of the teacher's union and the suburban soccer moms in Short Hills. They did not want the education status quo opened up- so Schundler actually lost in many monied towns in the suburbs.

Anyway, still would like to know what the golf course pays.

Dear Monroe:

What does the fact that JC got a tax abatement from "other Jersey taxpayers" have to do with this issue. I raised an issue about property tax equity. The half billion is taken, I think, from income taxes. True this is a bit of a redistribution. On the other hand, there are a lot of people employed on the Jersey City waterfront so JC provides a business environment where these taxed wages occur. Personally, I am for school choice (vouchers!) so that the biggest drain on the budget (schools) is more efficient.

You make a point about the fact that the golf course does not generate the need for services- but still the fact is that the land could alternatively have been developed as very nice housing. Also, new wealthy construction is relatively light on the services you describe- fire, police, schools.

Why would you not want the golf course taxed equitably. I suppose it could make it uneconomical. But lots of things are uneconomical in different places.

If Liberty National got an abatement fine. That gives a developer predictability to allow the investment. However, the abatement sunsets and then an equitable rate needs to kick in. Liberty National opening in 2006 so if it got a ten year abatement, which would have been reasonable at the time, it should be about to start contributing to the tax base.

If's its $212k that's less than a single block, two acres pays downtown.

I had googled "golf courses" "farm assessment" and NJ. I got cases from other states and articles about controversies around the country- but nothing here.

I googled the MRGC (my ancestral course in Brielle, NJ) and the results seemed to indicate that it was tax expempt as a charity. That shocks me because it is the least charitable institution I have ever encountered, lol and because the taxes in Brielle are outrageous. But it may be all wrong as you can't believe everything you read, etc. etc.

Liberty National Golf Course is about 160 acres. An acre contains on average 9 city lots , I thnk. So that's 1,440 city lots. If one is very modest and calculates basement tax bill for each lot at say $7k per lot, that would be $10,080,000. That's a big number but small compared to the municipal budget of 560 million. (I know that the property tax is split between, Board of Ed, city, and county - but I was unable to find a figure for the total generated annually by property taxes in JC).

I am curious. What does Liberty National actually pay? I was in the tax assessor office once and the course seemed to be broken up into hundreds of parcels so I could not readily find a figure. Also, remember while there was cleanup involved here, it is waterfront property adjacent to a state park and a National Park.

It irks be sometimes. I have heard that in the suburbs some courses get farm assessment on the basis that the courses preserve green space. However, now that we know that golf courses actually pollute the water and the soil because of the intense fertilizing, this seems like bad public policy- on top of the fact that golf courses are exclusionary.

Now don't get me wrong- I believe in private enterprise and private association. I only resent if it is unfairly subsidized by the rest of us. If the golf course is under taxed, that means that the rest of us are paying extra.

I have wondered these questions over the year- particularly as the course is hostile to locals (I have tried in vain for instance to get them to donate a foursome for local charter schools). Now with Paul Firestone allying himself with Fulop as it is proposed to place casinos just outside the course, my interest is piqued.

Do I have my figures above more or less correct? Does anyone know what the golf course pays?

Here's some background on the course which, I have to admit, is pretty cool and nice to look at.


http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenber ... -5-5-million-in-series-a/

Dear Dtjc:

LOL recognizing the trance like effect of Mass and that it shares some functional similarity to therapy. Sometimes people talk about it as left brain functioning as opposed to right brain functioning (which rushes ahead rationally and spoils the end of the movie). Ritual is pretty universal in human societies and gives meaning to life. Traditional christian liturgy is heavily indebted to the ancient Jewish liturgy- both in the temple of Solomon, the synagog, and the home. Protestant worship is much more linear and non ritualistic and non symbolic. Post Vatican II worship is very Protestant in nature.

I read this book in high school and it still has power:
http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Ritual-Chr ... -Alan-Watts/dp/0807013757


I think Watts sort of lives off of greats like these:

The Idea of the Holy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Otto

Sacred and Profane
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mircea_Eliade

Ciao

Mao

Dear Monroe:

Yes, indeed, Dan Brown. He has laughed all the way to the bank for sure.

But for the record, I am not now nor have I ever been a member of Opus Dei. Too bad, too, because it probably would have spared me from some of my misspent youth.

Btw, I am a big proponent of traditional Catholic forms- the parish, sodality, oratory, monastery, and order- as opposed to these new ecclesial movements which too often have cult like qualities. This is much truer of movements like St. Edigo Community, Neo Cats, and Legionnaires of Christ (whose founder, Maciel, was the Devil himself).

Thanks though for the info on the use of Latin by members. Always good to hear. I knew they say "Serviam" upon waking, as in "I will serve [the Lord], from a psalm of David.

Pax by the way, is peace. You know, shalom, salaam, etc. It is most often used in my experience by ex priests and nuns or catholic activists in things like the Catholic Worker or Pax Christi (the pacifist no nukes movement no capital punishment). I think of it as a shortened version of Pax et bonum, the hello/good bye phrased used by St. Francis of Assisi (peace and goodness (or salvation).

Anyway, as I said in the original post, I did not really buy in to the thesis of the article. It is correct in that the Latin Mass movement has its biggest supporters from Catholics in their 20s and 30s. The older ones have just adjusted or given up for the most part. Hipsters I think cultivate a certain retro sensibility, though in an ironic fashion. That also might justify the conceit.

But the post was not trying to be secret or esoteric. It was the opposite, you dope! It is to try to get the message out of our little ghetto. And I post all the time here in very clear terms life for tomorrow.:

FEAST OF CORPUS CHRISITI. MASS AND PROCESSION AT 9:00 AM, ST. ANTHONY's CHURCH. HADYN's MISSA BREVIS.

Also, my handle had been "Publius" but somehow, through an ironic adminstrator, I think, it became, Mao, that bloodthirsty commie!

Yes, Pope Francis is a 1970s style Pope. He prefers tango masses to Palestrina. Monty Python can no longer parody the current church because one can't tell the difference. Yes, the Holy Father is right when he decries the materialism of our age but unfortunate that he does not seem to offer an antidote. He is right to give an example of doing with less in his life. Yet our prayers can never be maimed but should be our best offering.

But traditionalism has nothing, nothing to do with a backlash against Francis, who is merely a starker expression of the day in day out papacy since 1970. Our hope is in the Name of the Lord who made heaven and earth. Catholicism by its nature is traditional. Revelation came to end when the last apostle died. The successors of the apostles, the bishops, preserve and articulate this revelation. The liturgy itself is the rule of faith.

So, DTJC, please come to the Feast and drink ye of the cup of immortality (as the Russian Orthodox communion verse goes).

Pax et bonum,

Mao

Dear wishful thinking:

Good points all. Part of the point of ritual after all is that it consists of actions that are sort of second nature and that are meaningful. So you're right to warn of preciousness of it. Related to this, liturgy, according to liturgists and anthropologists, is supposed to have an organic quality. That is the big criticism of the Novus Ordo- that it was a fabrication of the 1970s by an academic committee. Also, one remembers Screwtape in the book by CS Lewis where the little devil is instructed to make his charge into a liturgy critic. I think Robertson Davies book the Cunning Man in its portrayal of a high Anglo Catholic parish is a pretty entertaining treatment of these dangers (in the book the rector is poisoned so that he dies at the high altar- I think by the curate in order to further his cult of personality).

The first time I went to a Latin Mass was sort of by mistake. I was in Paris and wandered in to a Lefebrist church. In those days, I considered them schismatic (I don't now), and really thought it was an impossible idea that they were clinging to forms the rest of the Church had disgarded. But after like my third time, it suddenly felt more organic, more ritualized, more prayerful than the way I had been praying all my life.

Mao