simonzelotes

You got the Way International...The Boy Scouts..The Catholic Church...The Second Mile, founded by Jerry Sandusky...Even Alcoholics Anonymous has been coming under fire lately for the sexual predatory nature of some of the "13th steppers" targeting new, vulnerable members... What of the people who were helped by these organizations and made it through unscathed?....Lucky or still victims nonetheless?....The Second Mile will more than likely not survive this tragedy...Yet there have been testimonies from boys who are now adults who were extremely grateful for the help and direction they recieved from the charity....Their testimonies will probably have little effect in keeping Sandusky from being behind bars for the rest of his life, but they have to cope with the fact that the charity that helped them so as a youth was founded by a predatory monster...Some may go the denial route, but many will be left ferreting out how so much good and so much evil can be delivered by the same man...

The man who witnessed Sandusky sodomizing the young boy was a graduate assistant---about 22,23 years old at the time...More than likely, he held the coaching staff, and anything affiliated with Penn State football in high regard...To walk in on such a dastardly act was more than shocking, to say the least..I'd like to think I'd know what I'd do in his situation, but never having been, I can't say for sure what I would have done facing such horror and shock...He was the age of many of Wierwille's victims of sexual abuse, where adulation for one's mentors and the moral right path can conflict with eachother... What he saw, and what the Penn State administrators 'heard' were two different stories according to the Grand Jury report..."Sodomizing" and "horsing around" are not the same thing....There is no excuse IMO, for everybody from Joe Paterno on up the Penn State administrative ladder to not directly find out exactly what the grad assistant "saw"...Sexual abuse allegations are dead serious---you don't take a vague accusation and pass it along to you're superior unless there's some substance to it...Paterno spoke to the eyewitness---he had the first duty to find out exactly what the eyewitness saw...Why report to your superior something you're vague or unsure about?...The eyewitness went to his father first---distraught...Why would his father tell him to 'sugarcoat' what he saw, rather than just tell him to not go to Paterno in the first place?... Along with the fact that many other victims have been abused by Sandusky after this incident, it's sad to see an icon brought down by not doing the morally right thing, when morality was his supposed calling card...Overall this has been and will continue to be a tragedy of epic proportions....

I think my interest in the topic is mainly getting an understanding if VPW "went south" in his life and teachings or if he started out there or precisely when he did go south or if there was a trigger, like power corrupting or what...Perhaps to understand more of his doctorate, it would be good to know why he pursued one to begin with...According to VPW, he went to Lakeland College in Sheboygan because his father told him he was going to go there, since his father had donated money to their church throughout the years...After recieving his Masters at Princeton Theological Seminary, he got a job in Van Wert...Usually people pursue higher education and degrees in order to obtain a better job...Not being very familiar with protestant denominations, I'm not sure how the smaller, independants recognize degrees and such amongst themselves...Obviously, an ordained minister from a Catholic seminary would have a difficult time getting hired as a Southern Baptist pastor...I would think, though, that when VPW pursued his higher education, his target 'audience', if you will, were the smaller, less mainstream denominations...Perhaps his doctorate gave him more marketability as a pastor in the Church of his choosing? Anyway, it's doubtful to me his initial intentions were to get the quickest credentials possible so he could pursue his dream of founding a cult...By the time I joined on, he marketed his credentials as one who completed everything the establishment had to offer, and his version was better and more genuine...To tell you the truth, I don't think his 'product' started out half bad...Church in the home, more abundant life, giving,loving and so forth are pretty good messages to live by...But when money and power became centralized and the cultism rooted itself to where the organization took over it's purpose,it may have been then that the evil found it's way into the door...Perhaps.

The 1967 edition of "Recieving the Holy Spirit Today" had "Victor Paul Wierwille, TH.D" as the author on it's cover....I had imagined that that stood for Dr. of Theology....I suppose "Dr" in front of his name sold a few more books, even though most of them were part of the package when one paid their PALF donatation...

Excellent post, Geisha, as well as raising some very good questions on the topic.. People can get confused with words like "accredited", "authorized", "certified", "bona " fide" "legitimate" and so forth...Doing a little digging,at least currently, it seems that the State of Colorado is limited to "authorizing" religous institutions, i.e. seminaries,to grant degrees in higher education according to their own doctrinal standards....Colorado only requires that the institution be "bona fide", that is, that it mainly fits in the framework of tax exempt status...Seminaries cannot, at least in Colorado, confer secular degrees, such as in liberal arts and so forth...Accreditation, at least as of this time, is done through 46 various, private accrediting institutions....I have no idea how accrediting institutions recieve their accreditation.... A degree in Theology is not the same as a degree in Philsophy....A doctorate in philosophy,would have to fit in the framework of the government's oversight on higher education... A doctorate in theology would only have to fit in the frmawork of the institution granting the degre...Martin Luther King had a doctorate in philosophy....VPW's was in theology....As far as I know, MLK's doctorate would qualify him to teach at Harvard or Yale, VPW's would not---no matter how accredited.... Good seminaries may choose not to be accredited because among other things, it is an expensive process...A theologion from an accredited Catholic seminary may teach courses on " more adventurous traveling through St. Jude" or "How to cut your purgatory time in half" and still fit within the framework of his or her particular denomination's degree granting guidelines...If you think about it, it wouldn't make sense for a government entity to oversee degree-granting guidelines for religous organizations---separation of Church and State and all that... The question should be, not whether VPW's doctorate is phoney or not--as long as he fulfilled his particular seminary's guidelines, it is a doctorate...How cheap it was is certainly open for debate...To your later point, I believe he was well educated and versed in the scriptures---enough so that had his life continued on a Christian path would have earned him the title of "Dr."....Were there such a thing as defrocking a doctorate, that may have even been a call to vote on...

We were actually members of the Way Credit Union longer than we were members of the way itself---back in the days when they still issued loans...I suppose the WCU is more of a convenience thing for staffers and such, considering how the way feels about credit and all that...

I think keeping GSC open as a static site seems like a good idea at this point...Virtually everything in this temporal world has a limited life expectancy...Things simply ride out their course...Nothing in the mission statement of GSC indicates any isms, doctrines or credos to be adhered to and passed along from generation to generation...I've thought of the cafe as more of a transitional place, ....a stepping stone,...perhaps a halfway house or a twi detox center...Certainly not a permanent residence...Although, I can certainly understand and appreciate the permanent and maybe not so permanent relationships that have developed here... I,myself have trivialized the work and effort Pawtucket and the moderators have put into the cafe by referring to it as simply a "place to reconnect"...But it's been much more than that...In many ways, we were like adolescents, walking down the sidewalk with a baseball bat on our shoulder and a glove attached to it---looking for a field and some others to play ball with...I would like to thank Pawtucket, here, for groundskeeping the field and the members for playing ball...Where else can you get ten, twenty or a hundred ex-wayfers in the same 'room', so to speak, and discuss all things way 'til your heart's content?... I think there comes a time in everybody's life, whether it's leaving the way, GSC closing, finishing college, becoming an empty-nester or whatever, when one feels like one of those runners following Forrest Gump, out in the middle of nowhere, when Forrest decides he doesn't feel like running anymore, and one runner asks "Now, what are we supposed to do?".... Thanks, again, Pawtucket, for making greasespot happen...For it, you should be proud....

I don't know, I'm not that put off by the Fox broadcasts...Then again, I'm often doing something else as well when I tune in a ball game so I may not grasp every word McCarver and Buck say...I think there may be some listeners who have their own prejudices, and well, it is Fox, which could be spelled Faux,and nothing good could possibly come out of that broadcasting company.... My favorite to listen to is Jon Miller and Joe Morgan...Especially during the season---Sunday Night Baseball,...meaningless (to me) game, two calm, knowledgeable, smooth voices working off eachother reminding me of why I tuned in the game in the first place----to kick back and relax...I heard them a little bit on the radio during the W. S., but it wasn't quite the same with the stakes being so high...My son and I like to mimic the way Miller says "fow-ull" on a non-fair ball... Radio broadcasts seem to take on their own flavor...Often more "homeric" than the tv guys ( you oughta hear Ron Santo on the radio when the Cubs blow a game,...you'd think his old lady just left him), they do have to paint a different picture...I think there's two kinds of radio listeners---the old-timers in the chair next to the radio taking in every word....and the listener who has the game on because, well, they're playing, and they have to keep up with the action as it happens, and even though may also be busy doing something else, when the radio announcer yells and the crowd screams, they momentarily stop sweeping, or hammering, or wrench twisting, or typing and point their ear a little closer to the radio to fully take-in what just happened,...pump their fist a little, utter "Yes!" and resume doing whatever it is they were doing... I don't think you could avoid the east coast bias in any live sports coverage...Prime time in NYC is five o'clock in San Francisco during the summer...Plus, you got more people in NYC than Milwaukee, Cincinnati,KC, Frisco and probably also San Diego combined...Seems like when eastern teams are in the playoffs, they start the games later to draw in the neutral west coast viewers, and when it's western teams they start earlier to draw in east coast viewers...by the time I tuned in most games this Series, they were already in the third or fourth inning...

Congrats, Socks....It must have been a fun ride...Savor it while you can, before they start bringing up talk about spring training...

Bumgarner was great---and in an AL park, to boot---so he was facing nine hitters in the game counting the DH...I probably would have sent him out there in the 9th---give him a chance to throw a complete game shutout...He only threw 106 pitches, and he'll probably not pitch again 'til next spring...If he can't get the first two guys out then bring in Wilson...Something about gathering around the mound to congratulate a pitcher after he throws a shutout that I like...

Missed the entire game...had a friend in need...I suppose had the planets been in alignment, and sickness and sorrow had been eliminated, and the Big Bang had reoccurred to prove it's own theory, and the federal deficit was eliminated, and the lion layeth with the lamb, and all the children came together singing on the mountain, and men could understand women,---and with all that the Cubs were playing in the World Series---I'd a probably asked my friend "can this wait?" and took in the game.... Enjoying your perspective, Socks, not really being too familiar with the Giants team until the last few weeks...Looking forward to tonight's game, in spite of all the interruptions from ghouls and goblins...

I had to leave shortly after Kinsler's near miss in the fifth inning yesterday with the score tied 0-0...I wasn't really surprised to find out the Giants blew it open and won 9-zip...An almost physics defying moment---a potential homerun ball arcing to the top of the outfield wall, somehow reversing it's momentum and bouncing back onto the field of play, leaving the hitter with a two-bagger, where he stayed stranded due to some excellent pitching, seemed to take what little wind there was out of the sail of the Rangers...Definitely a game-changing moment---question will be, will it be a Series changing moment?...First one to reach four gets the ring...

What can you say?...The Giants came to play...I don't think Lee was necessarily off his game---just that whatever he served up, the Giants were hitting...Great two-strike, two-out hitting team (ya hear that, Ryan Howard?)...I was really impressed with the Giants lineup...Both pitchers got smacked around a little---Linsecum could have easily been charged with 6 runs if his two inherited runners had scored...This could end up being one of the higher scoring series in recent memory....I wonder if Texas will think of starting Lee in game 4 since he didn't throw that many pitches...Game one had to have been a nightmare for him---I'd want him back on the mound as soon as physically possible to redeem himself and get his confidence back...Texas needs him if they're going to have a prayer.,..A-a-a-and---I was very impressed with Tony Bennett---still nailing a good tune at 84.....

Yeah, I had fun channel surfing last year between the Stanley Cup finals to the baseball game of the week...It was like switching from a 'Bullitt' car chase scene to a painting of the Mona Lisa... I wonder if they ever thought of having a pitch clock behind home plate, sort of like the play clock in football...Within 15 seconds or so, the pitcher has to start his windup... Although, I remember, I think it might have been last year or so, when in a very crucial part of a World Series or League Championship game, Jorge Posada must have jogged out to the mound on about eight straight pitches...As annoying as it was becoming to the fans, umpires and opposition, it made me think about what I admire about the Yankees---they play a series like they've been there before, and knowing that a potential sign-stealer was on second base and that particular at-bat being the likely pivotal point in the game, they were going to get it right---regardless of how long it took... I think the slowest between pitches hurler I've seen was Julian Tavares---who looked like he was posing for his Topps card after every pitch...

I've sat in the nose bleed sections of ballparks and would be somewhat amused at the hometown fans screaming "C'mon, Blue!" on a non-favorable ball or strike call to the home team,...as if their view from the third deck in foul territory was better than the guy's standing six inches behind the catcher...I guess part of the fun of baseball is to have somebody to exact your inner wrath on---most likely who's also out of earshot... One thing you won't see on Baseball Tonight or ESPN is a playback of the three hundred or so pitches in each of the 16 daily games where the plate umps mostly got it right...Is the system really broken?...Do you trust photo radar?...They finally did away with it out here because it sucked and was too flawed... One ump told me the strike he will never call is the nasty curve ball that crosses the plate at the knees and bounces in the dirt...Sure it's a strike, but everybody in the ballpark saw the ball hit the dirt---no way is he gonna look like a fool... From the time a kid is in pee-wee league on up he's taught to protect the plate with two strikes on him...Expand the strike zone...One of the roles of the lead-off and number two hitters is to go deep in the count--not only to get a look at the different pitches the pitcher is throwing, but to also get an idea whether the plate ump has a tight or expanded strike zone...Any player will tell you that all they ask from the blue is a consistent strike zone---for both teams...I think the umps do a pretty good job...