{"id":17333,"date":"2016-08-17T08:54:49","date_gmt":"2016-08-17T13:54:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=17333"},"modified":"2016-08-17T09:20:03","modified_gmt":"2016-08-17T14:20:03","slug":"more-competition-for-709","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=17333","title":{"rendered":"More competition for 709?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was about to link this post to the DNT story of how Duluth&#8217;s Catholic Arch Diocese is investigating the start up of a K-12 school system in Duluth. But when I began linking the first story I found online about the Diocese it was a story about how its attempting to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.duluthnewstribune.com\/news\/4095834-diocese-seeks-time-work-out-settlement-victims\">avoid compensating families<\/a> whose children had been abused by Diocesan authorities. <\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.duluthnewstribune.com\/news\/4095774-group-mulls-new-unified-catholic-school-duluth\">the story<\/a> I was looking for about a rival school system.<\/p>\n<p>Its hard to know quite what to make of the idea of an expanded Catholic school system considering the self-inflicted travails of the Church. It is likely a good faith effort by loyal Catholics to rehabilitate the Church&#8217;s reputation. How they will fund such an enterprise as they undergo bankruptcy is hard to fathom. Certainly the self inflicted travails of Duluth&#8217;s public schools seems to give the Diocese an opening but its hard for even me to regard the effort as anything other than a little delusional. If they succeeded under these straightened circumstances it would be a sorry testament to the colossal miscalculations of the Red Planners . <\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll share one personal reflection on the state of Catholicism. My brother married a fervent and loyal Catholic wife. There was no question that any children would be brought up Catholic. For years during their marriage my sister-in-law went to Church and evening masses regularly and by herself. Because my Brother was raised a protestant like me and is as casual in his theology that was no problem. <\/p>\n<p>For a long time it looked like there would be no progeny but then there was a miracle. I was asked to be my surprise niece&#8217;s God Father, an idea a little remote from Protestant practice, that came with the expectation I would raise her as a Catholic in the event of her parent&#8217;s untimely demise. I stood by my brother&#8217;s side at my niece&#8217;s christening and again at a ceremony to welcome a five-year old into the Church. <\/p>\n<p>In the last ten years I have heard almost nothing but grim disapproval of the Church&#8217;s handling of a growing and infamous scandal and cover-up of institutional pedophilia from my sister-in-law. Its as though the Church is dead to her. But maybe in Duluth that reaction is not so common. Time will tell.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, and here&#8217;s a picture from 2005 of my brother and niece after I paid a surprise March 17th visit. Its a leprechaun;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.snowbizz.com\/images\/SnowSculptures\/LydiasLeprechaun_2.JPG\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>She is heading off today to become a Hoosier at the University of Indiana. She&#8217;s joining the swim team as a breast stroker. She&#8217;ll have stiff competition. One of her new team mates, Emily King, just took gold in the 100 meter breast stroke. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was about to link this post to the DNT story of how Duluth&#8217;s Catholic Arch Diocese is investigating the start up of a&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,47,20],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17333"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17333"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17342,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17333\/revisions\/17342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}