Do you know about Fr. Francesco Grimaldi, a Jesuit priest who discovered the diffraction of light? (here)

America Magazine Pushes Junk Global Warming Science

Scientists believe that the last time concentrations were this high was during the Pliocene epoch, around 3 temperatures were 5-7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than they currently are and sea levels were nearly 80 feet higher than they are today. Since that period, scientists believe that naturally changing ocean patterns may have contributed to the significant decrease of atmospheric CO2, and a subsequent decline in global temperatures. Whatever the cause of this CO2 reduction, atmospheric CO2 concentrations stabilized at around 280 parts per million around 10,000 years ago, and lasted until the dawn of the industrial revolution in the 1800s—the time when humanity began releasing unprecedented amounts of greenhouse gases as fossil fuels became the predominant form of energy.

million years ago, a time when the Earth’s average

Link (here) to full article at America Magazine written by  Daniel R. DiLeo and Daniel J. Misleh

For the real story on Global Warming go (here)

More on the fraudulent hockey stick model of climate change (here)

We are actually in a global cooling for the last 15 years (here)

The politics of "Global Warming" (here)

Financial Scandal Rocking The Maryland Province

J. Davitt McAteer

The affidavit identifies the university as the institution in Wheeling that was founded in 1954 between the Catholic Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston and the Society of Jesus of the Maryland Province. 

 Wheeling Jesuit University recounts its history the same way on its Web site. At least twice, the affidavit said, witnesses interviewed for the investigation warned both Mr. McAteer and the school that they were breaking the law. A consulting firm hired in 2008 also made similar warnings, the document said. "We will slowly work on making this right, but we can't afford to do it at this time," Mr. McAteer is said to have told top university officials in response to the consulting firm's conclusion, 

according to the affidavit. Documents the agent obtained indicate the school's board of directors deliberately circumvented federal spending rules "for the purpose of sustaining...its general, non-federal program educational areas." Mr. McAteer also is director of its National Technology Transfer Center and its Erma Ora Byrd Center for Education Technologies, which is named for the wife of the late longtime U.S. Sen. Robert C. Byrd. The technology transfer center does work on mine safety and health, missile defense, health technology and small business partnerships. The Center for Educational Technologies has housed the NASA-sponsored "Classroom of the Future" program since 1990. 

The space agency began construction of the center in 1993 and later helped build the educational technologies center. Between fiscal years 2000 and 2009, NASA gave Wheeling Jesuit more than $116 million, more than $65 million of that after Mr. J Davitt McAteer took over the school's Sponsored Programs Office in 2005. 

A finance manager in that office told the investigator that Mr. McAteer created the Combined Cost Management Service Center when he took over. Merging the billing of the two centers allowed him "to control and consolidate all the expenses, regardless of whether such expenses were related to the federal awards." The affidavit calls the handling of federal dollars at Wheeling Jesuit "arbitrary and fraudulent," and cites a 2007 incident in which the Missile Defense Agency "expressed outrage" that Mr. McAteer and others weren't working on the agency's program but were still billing 6 percent of the center's expenses to the grant.

Read more (here) at The Pittsburgh Post Gazette

Getting Clear On Climatology

I have to deliver a lecture next week in Minnesota on Catholic social thought on the environment ( a topic dear to me). Checking the weather reports for that area, I have noticed a high unseasonal warmth. But I know, of course, that climate is not weather. We can have overall global warming or cooling yet find, during a warming or cooling period, unseasonal opposite effects in some parts of the globe. Clearly, getting clear on climatology takes some careful parsing of data.

Link (here) to the full blog post by Fr. John Coleman, S.J. at America Magazine

Climate Gate (here)
More on Climate Gate (here) , (here) and (here)

Polar Bear population data (here) and (here)

The Bed Of Pestilence

In the same year the Plague, which decimated France, swept over Europe. It reached the Rhine. Scattering dismay, despair in every home, the exterminating angel sped apace—wailings in his ear, and shivering terror in his van. Men shunned each other: the ties of affection—the bonds of love, plighted or sworn, broke asunder: all fled from the bed of pestilence—except the Jesuits. At the call of their provincial, they came together; and at the same bidding they dispersed, and fronted the angel of death. In the pest-house kneeling—in the grave-yard digging—in the thoroughfares begging—the Jesuits con 

The Jesuits during the plague consoled the dying, buried the dead, and gathered alms for the living. Blessed be the hearts of these self-devoted men! They knew no peril but in shunning the awful danger.

 For humanity—and, through humanity, for God—be that the stirring trumpet, whose echoes are deeds too great to be estimated, too great to be rewarded by the gold of Mammon or the voice of Fame. 

And yet Jacques Cretineau-Joly, the last Jesuit historian, professing to copy " unpublished and authentic documents," bitterly tells us that "this charity of the Jesuits, by day and by night, gave to their Order a popular sanction, which dispensed with many others,"—and that "the people, having seen the Jesuits at their work, called for them, to reward them for the present, and solicited their presence, provident of the future." 

Was it then for the Order's glorification that, in obedience to the superior's command, such self-devotedness was displayed? Was it only to gain a "popular sanction?" God only knows! but the doubt once suggested, and that too by a strong partisan, troubles the heart. We would not willingly deprive these obedient visitors of the pest-stricken, buriers of the dead, and feeders of the living, of that hearty admiration which gushes forth, and scorns to think of motives when noble deeds are done. At least to the subordinate Children of Obedience be that admiration awarded, if we must doubt the existence of exalted motives in the Jesuit-automaton ; if we must remember that at Lyons the Plague gave them a college, and in Germany "a popular sanction."

Link (here) to A History of he Jesuits

Jesuit On Myrrh

Myrrh is for death
Myrrh is a resin (really an aromatic oleoresin, a natural blend of oil and resin) which can be extracted from various trees native to Africa, Arabia, and India. Myrrh resin is a natural gum and, like frankincense, could be burned as a type of incense. 

In ancient times, myrrh was so valuable as to be as or even more precious than gold. Beyond being used as incense, it was used also as perfume, and medicine. Most specifically, myrrh was commonly used (especially in Egypt) in the process of embalming. 

The last great Jesuit biblical scholar, Fr. Cornelius a’ Lapide, states: “The bodies of the dead are buried with myrrh, that they may remain incorrupt. Myrrh has the property of drying up moisture, and preventing the generation of worms.”

Link (here) to New Theological Movement blog

Only-begotten Son, True God And True Man, To Become True God And True Martian,

Jesuit George Coyne, an astronomer and former director of the Vatican Observatory, has some thoughts about the topic in an interview that will appear in the February issue of U.S. Catholic:

Is there anything special about us in this enormous universe?

We are very special to God, and there’s no doubt about it. I mean, God sent his only Son to us. Being special as a piece of material in the universe is one thing; being special in knowing religious history and living a faith-filled life is another. But it’s still a challenge. As material objects in the universe, it would be difficult for me as a scientist to defend that we’re special. Our history as human civilization certainly makes us special.
But what if there is another civilization out there that is intelligent and spiritual, that has a special relationship to God? What would that do to us? 
I’m going to leave that to theologians. But could God send his only-begotten Son, true God and true man, to become true God and true Martian, or whatever it is? Well, I find that very difficult to accept. But I can’t exclude it. I don’t know enough to exclude it, and I can’t limit God. This is getting into science fiction, but in the end if God treated another spiritual civilization in a very special way, does that detract from his treating us in a very special way, however he dealt with them in the concrete? I’m one of 10 kids. If my mother decided to buy me a new pair of pants, does that make my brother less special to my mother? I can’t imagine that discovering an intelligent, spiritual civilization that God loves in his own way would detract from God loving us.

Link (here) to the US Catholic

“What Is The Nature Of This Reality”

Consider the following: in the known universe, there could be up to one million million galaxies, each containing one million million stars, which itself might constitute 4% of a much larger unseen universe (if theories of dark matter and dark energy are true), the totality of which might have any number of dimensions -- between 4 and 57, depending on which theory is invoked. According to current theory, this universe came into existence in a Big Bang 14 thousand million years ago at what is taken to be the beginning of time, and it may be one of an infinite number of universes. From the smallest scales (microscopic aspects) of our universe which confront us with quarks as fundamental building blocks of matter (as we know it at the moment), to the possible existence of the Higgs Boson (the ‘God’ particle), to notions of quantum foam and virtual particles in a quantum vacuum, to the large-scale structure of the cosmos which presents us with exotic objects such as black holes, the reality which we call the cosmos provokes wonder and leads to fundamental questions which affect every human being: “What is the nature of this reality”, “what does it all mean”, “what is my place in this cosmos”, “what is the origin and fate of what I behold”, “what is the meaning of life”, and, simply, “why”. 

Link (here) to the full essay by Fr. David Brown, S.J. at The New Jesuit Review

Fr. Robert Busa, S.J.

Fr. Robert Busa, S.J..

If you can read this article, typed using a computer keyboard, it is greatly thanks to him. If PC and notebook have left the typewriter permanently on the sidelines, if we can compose and decompose texts, perform analysis and researches at the click of a mouse, if we increasingly communicate through virtual messages, this is all greatly thanks to him. Father Roberto Busa, a Jesuit, inventor of computer language, forerunner of the active hypertext on the Web fifteen years earlier than American scientists, editor as well of the monumental Index Thomisticus, died of old age on Tuesday evening at the Aloisianum institute in Gallarate. He withdrew here decades ago, where he also found his friend and co-brother Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini. He would have turned 98 this November and until a few weeks ago he was still very active and engaged in new projects.

The computer was born as a machine for making calculations. Immediately after the last World War, this enterprising Jesuit started working on a colossal job which involved analyzing the St. Thomas’ “opera omnia”, consisting of about nine million words. He had painstakingly drawn, by hand, ten thousand boards, all dedicated to the inventory of the preposition “in”, which he considered essential from a philosophical point of view. Father Busa had a bone to pick: he wanted to connect together expressions, phrases and quotes and compare them with other available sources. This is why in 1949 he knocked on the door of Thomas Watson, the founder of IBM, who received him in his New York studio, listened to him, and finally said: "It is impossible for the machines to do what you are suggesting. You are claiming to be more American than us." The Jesuit did not give up and slid a punched card bearing the multinational company’s motto, coined by Watson himself, under the nose of IBM’s boss: "The difficult, we do it immediately, the impossible takes a little longer.” Busa gave the card back to the founder of IBM without hiding his disappointment. Watson felt provoked, and changed his mind: "All right, Father, we will try. But on one condition: you must promise that you will not change IBM’s acronym for International Business Machines, into International Busa machines."

Link (here) to Vatican Insider

Jesuits Are A Cross Between The U.S. Marines And Hippies

Jim Ryan gave the medicinal history of quinine, the characteristic ingredient in tonic, detailing how Jesuit missionaries learned from South American tribes in the mid-1600s to use the bark of "the fever tree," or cinchona, as a cure for malaria. 

Ryan, who attended a Jesuit high school, described the Jesuits as a cross between the U.S. Marines and hippies, which made them "open-minded and curious" toward this New World cure. 

Their involvement in fever-tree bark earned it the nickname "Jesuits' Bark" or "Jesuit powder." At this point, audiences sampled a thick red sludge - a quinine solution made of one part cinchona bark powder, six parts water. Ryan then spoke about how misunderstandings about the bark coupled with extreme anti-Catholic sentiment prevented quinine from being used in Europe in the late 1600s. The cure was finally resurrected by French scientists in the 1800s following decades of wandering Bolivian jungles and pleading for research money.

Link (here) to NOLA to read the full article.

Jesuit On Planetary Conjuncture

If the planets are sending a message at all from the cosmos, it’s that earthlings should stop worrying and just relish the show. The conjunction of Earth’s heavenly neighbors—Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter—is a regular phenomenon attributed to their normal orbit around the sun, not a cosmic conspiracy that signals the end of the world as doomsayers fear, according to Dario dela Cruz, officer in charge of the Space Sciences and Astronomy Section of the Pagasa weather bureau. To 81-year-old Fr. Victor Badillo, a Filipino Jesuit astronomer who has spent 30 years studying the firmament at the Manila Observatory, the cosmic phenomenon is just one among the many amazing sky shows to enjoy. “There are so many wonderful things [in the sky] for us to enjoy than to worry about,” Badillo said by phone from the Jesuit Residence Infirmary at the Ateneo de Manila University. Instead of treating this event as a harbinger of doom, it must be considered “something beautiful to behold,” just like the meteor storm in 1999 that marked the night sky with dazzling lights, he said. Confined at the infirmary for seven years now, Badillo keeps himself busy blogging on his favorite topics ranging from astronomy and physics to theology.  “What [doomsayers] are saying is not true. You will just see the planets close to each other this month. They are visible to the naked eye before sunrise, best at 4:30 a.m. and 5:30 a.m. on the eastern side,” Dela Cruz told the Inquirer. “People should just enjoy it. Just wake up early to see it,” he said.

Scientific Jesuit

The Chilean strawberry is a native and paler version of the traditional strawberry, but no less sweet. In fact, some call it “pineapple strawberry” because its taste is similar to that of the tropical fruit. The first to try this type of berry were the Mapuche and Picunche peoples of the central and southern zone of the country. The first European to taste it was the Jesuit chronicler Alonso de Ovalle, who found this fruit in the countryside in the south of the country. For this reason he baptized it Fragaria chiloensis, or strawberry from the Chilean island of Chiloé. It is a very juicy and aromatic strawberry that is currently cultivated from the west of North America to the southernmost parts of Chile and Argentina. There are red, yellow and white varieties.

Link (here) to Exotic Fruit

Craters And Jesuits

The Bible contains real history. The Gospels, for example – biographies of the life of Jesus, who truly lived and died and rose again on planet earth. The Acts of the Apostles – the history of the early Church. There are, of course, many historical books of the Old Testament as well. A key to biblical interpretation is this: understand the genre that you are reading. You don’t read poetry (Like the Song of Solomon) as you would a historical narrative. The problem with Genesis is that it is a hybrid of history and poetry (the first three chapters on Creation). Catholics don’t run into the same sort of problems that some non-Catholic Christians do in dealing with creation from a scientific perspective (i.e. the young-earth theory, creation in six literal days, etc.). We see no conflict between faith and science. Some of the greatest scientists in the world were Catholics. A great number of craters on the moon, for example, are named for Jesuit scientist-priests who discovered them.

Link (here) to read the article on Creation at the blog entitled, The Faith Explained by Cale Clarke

Jesuit Legal Council Was UFO Expert

Daniel Sheehan

Grant Cameron, one of the foremost UFO scholars in the world, directs the online project known as “The President’s UFO Website” (www.presidentialUFO.com). The website has UFO-related studies and materials dated from every presidential administration starting with Franklin D. Roosevelt. Cameron’s article titled “President Carter, Daniel Sheehan, and Donald Menzel: The Congressional Research Service UFO Studies for President Jimmy Carter” describes the role played by (GO HERE>) Daniel Sheehan in examining the classified sections of the U.S. Air Force’s 1969 study of UFOs known as Project Blue Book, which was never released for public distribution. ( “The Marcia Smith Story — The President’s UFO Study.”) 

Sheehan, with whom I have met and discussed his UFO work, is a Harvard Ph.D. and law graduate who served as general counsel to the U.S. Jesuit National Headquarters — National Office of Social Ministry in Washington, D.C. In 1976, he also served as a consultant to Marcia Smith, an analyst in science and technology with the Congressional Research Service. 

At the beginning of the Carter administration, Smith was asked by the U.S. House Science and Technology Committee to undertake two major investigations:

• To determine whether extraterrestrial intelligence existed in our galaxy.
• To determine what the relationship of UFO phenomena might be to extraterrestrial intelligence

Link (here) to the full story at The Columbia Tribune

The Stargazer And The Society

Galileo

Christopher Clavius

The largest and ablest collection of mathematicians in Italy belonged to the Society of Jesus.  When he started serious study of mathematics, Galileo sought and obtained the advice and approval of their leader, Father Christopher Clavius.  He had to break off relations in 1606, when the Venetian state expelled the Jesuits from its territories.  Galileo restored the connection soon after returning to Florence in 1610 as “Mathematician and Philosopher to the Grand Duke of Tuscany.”  Again he had an urgent need for Clavius’s endorsement.  The astonishing discoveries he had made in 1609/10 by turning his telescope on the heavens challenged credulity.  By the end of 1610 he had the confirmation he wanted.  Clavius’s group of mathematicians invited him to their headquarters in Rome to celebrate the “message from the stars,” as Galileo had entitled the book in which he had announced his discoveries, and to toast the messenger.

Link (here) to History News Network to read the full story.

Were Still Trying To Figure Out .......Environmental Justice

A solar power project at Santa Clara University

Santa Clara University, a private Jesuit school in California’s Silicon Valley, is using solar to get it closer to its net-zero carbon goal. The University installed a new 1-megawatt system on the roofs of its event center, a recreation center and a parking garage late last month. The school just received its first bill since the system went in, said Joe Sugg, who heads up the University’s energy program. “So we’re still figuring out how much this will save us,” he said. The University has made a pledge to be carbon-neutral by 2016, just five years off, Sugg said.“It’s not so much an investment in solar,” Sugg said. “It’s an investment in environmental justice, and it’s an investment in our core values as a Jesuit institution.” Sugg said the university is aggressively going after its goal to reduce its carbon emissions in order to meet its goal.

Link (here) to read the full story

Jesuit Mathematician On The Astronomer Galileo

Father Cristoforo Griemberger, mathematician at the Collegio Romano, this Jesuit uttered the following precise words: 

'If Galileo had only known how to retain the favour of the fathers of this college he would have stood in renown before the world, he would have been spared all his misfortunes, and could have written what he pleased about everything—even about the motion of the earth.'

. 

Link (here) to the book entitled, Galileo: His Life and Work

The Jesuits On The Moon

Map by Jesuits Giambattista Riccioli and Francesco Grimaldi

When Galileo first turned his telescope to the Moon 400 years ago and saw its mountains and craters, he too wondered whether the dark spots were oceans. In Sidereus Nuncius (The Starry Messenger), published in 1610, he wrote that the Moon's "brighter part would represent the land surface while its darker part...the water surface". Thirty-seven years later, after painstaking observations, Johannes Hevelius published the first lunar map and painted large swathes of the surface blue. Four years later, Jesuit astronomers published a map of the Moon  (Giambattista Riccioli and Francesco Grimaldi) that cemented the nomenclature still in use, calling the depressions maria or seas. 


Link (here) to the full article at the Times of India

Link (here) to more information on the Jesuit map

Jesuit On The Possibilty Of Life On Mars

NORMALLY filled with theology students, the creaking classroom seats of the Pontifical University of St Thomas Aquinas in Rome were crammed with planetary scientists and astronomers from all over the world.

Mars Rover

Overhead screens flashed slideshows of planned space missions and colourful graphs as dozens of speakers and nearly 600 participants shared their latest discoveries and dreams of finding extraterrestrial life in the universe.

"Mars is still a very intriguing object with a high probability of life being somewhere under the surface or some traces of life remaining," Jesuit Father Pavel Gabor told Catholic News Service on September 21.

The Czech priest works at the Vatican Observatory in Tucson, Arizona, United States, and was one of a number of Vatican astronomers who took part in the European Planetary Science Congress from September 19-24 at the university.

Link (here) to the full article at The Catholic Leader.

Alien Evangelist

A senior astronomer at the Vatican Observatory has embraced the idea of finding extraterrestrial intelligence. Guy Consolmagno, who speaks at the British Science Festival in Birmingham on Saturday, told journalists: “I’d be delighted if we found intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.” 

Brother Guy, who is an American Jesuit priest and a researcher into meteorites and asteroids, said Catholic theology had no problem with the idea of aliens with souls. “God is bigger than just humanity. God is also the god of angels,” 

he said. “Any entity – no matter how many tentacles it has – has a soul.”

Link (here) to the full article at The Financial Times