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Aug. 18--In the minutes before the farewell Mass for Archbishop Raymond Burke on Sunday, well-wishers hurried to find what few seats were left inside the St. Louis Cathedral Basilica. On the cathedral's steps, the Knights of Columbus, the Knights and Ladies of Peter Claver, the Knights and Ladies of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem and the Knights and Dames of Malta, lined up to begin the processional. Their swords gleamed in the afternoon sun. Sweat dripped below their white-tufted chapeaus.Inside, nuns in white and blue habits sat next to little girls with black lace head coverings....

KANSAS CITY - Congressman Kenny Hulshof defeated state Treasurer Sarah Steelman in Tuesday's Republican primary. Hulshof will take on Attorney General Jay Nixon in November's general election. Hulshof received 49.2 percent of the vote to Steelman's 44.7 percent - a margin of more than 17,000 votes.

ST. LOUIS, Missouri, JULY 28, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Three leaders of a former St. Louis parish who incurred excommunication for hiring a suspended priest have been reconciled with the Church. According to a statement last week from the Archdiocese of St. Louis, Bernice Krauze, Stanley Rozanski and Robert Zabielski, members of the Board of Directors of St. Stanislaus Parish Corporation, met in June with Archbishop Raymond Burke to be reconciled fully with the Church. "They are once again in full communion with the Catholic Church and are no longer under any censure," the archdiocese reported. The St. Stanislaus Parish Corporation is...

Breaking, big, news: The St. Louis Archdiocese filed suit today against the St. Stanislaus Kostka church in an attempt to regain control of the former Polish parish. Six parishioners, including three recent board members, joined the archdiocese in the suit. They are asking a St. Louis judge to void any changes to the St. Stanislaus' bylaws since 2001 and give the archbishop the authority to appoint a pastor and board there. Last month, the St. Stanislaus board voted 4-3 to dissolve itself and allow parishioners to elect a new board at its annual meeting in August. Eight St. Stanislaus...

Today brings the confirmation of the long-rumored appointment of Archbishop Burke to be the head of the Apostolic Signatura in Rome. From the Vatican website: NOMINA DEL PREFETTO DEL SUPREMO TRIBUNALE DELLA SEGNATURA APOSTOLICAIl Santo Padre ha nominato Prefetto del Supremo Tribunale della Segnatura Apostolica S.E. Mons. Raymond Leo Burke, finora Arcivescovo di Saint Louis. This position ordinarily carries a promotion to Cardinal as well, which is of some solace to those His Grace leaves behind in St. Louis.It is certainly a bittersweet announcement for those in St. Louis and around the world who have rejoiced in the Archbishop's...

What residents were hoping they could avoid has happened in St. Charles. As feared, part of the Elm Point Levee has burst and water is rushing through right now at a rapid pace. Authorities say that the levee burst in two spots around 1:30 a.m. on Tuesday. One of those holes is reportedly the size of a football field. Several homes and businesses in the area are now flooded. Officials say that residents in that area voluntarily evacuated before the breach.    Google map link

Archbishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis St. Louis, May 29, 2008 / 01:03 am (CNA).- The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has confirmed Archbishop of St. Louis Raymond Burke’s decree excommunicating the board of directors of a schismatic parish.  Archbishop Burke had excommunicated the leaders of the breakaway ethnically Polish parish for hiring a suspended priest to celebrate the Sacraments and sacramentals.  The priest could be defrocked for remaining in schism, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has warned.St. Stanislaus Kostka Parish had operated under a structure in which the pastor is subject to the...

St. Louis, Apr 7, 2008 / 10:53 pm (CNA).- An accomplished musician and authority on the Church’s musical heritage will move to St. Louis, Missouri to head the Archdiocese of St. Louis’ new Institute of Sacred Worship, the St. Louis Review reports.On Friday Archbishop of St. Louis Raymond L. Burke announced that Father Samuel A. Weber, OSB, is being appointed as the first director of the institute.The new sacred music office will, with Father Webb’s help, offer parish music directors and choirs several educational programs, including courses covering: Gregorian Chant; singing the Mass in English, especially the Entrance Antiphon, the...

FENTON, Mo. (AP) — With more than a dozen people killed by floodwaters and rivers still rising, weary Midwesterners on Thursday weighed not just the prospect of a sodden cleanup but the likelihood that their communities could be inundated again. Families in some areas have been forced from their homes multiple times in the past few years, making the routine of filling sandbags and rescuing furniture into a familiar drill. The first day of spring brought much-needed sunshine to some flooded communities, but many swelling rivers were not expected to crest until the weekend in Arkansas, Missouri, southern Illinois, southern...

Specialist Robert Terrio and his wife, Kary, thought they had avoided a dangerous deployment a few months ago when he learned that his Missouri National Guard unit would do a tour in Kosovo instead of Iraq or Afghanistan. "There's a certain amount of relief that we weren't being deployed to an active war zone,'' Robert Terrio said. Then, last month, Kosovo declared independence from Serbia, a move Serbia refused to recognize. Suddenly, Kosovo started to look a little more dicey. Demonstrators torched the U.S. Embassy in the Serbian capital of Belgrade, mobs attacked several United Nations border posts, and gun...

ST. LOUIS - Comments made by Saint Louis University menb's basketball coach Rick Majerus have him in hot water with Archbishop Raymond Burke. Burke said Tuesday that he will ask officials of SLU to take "appropriate action" against its basketball coach, who said in a television interview that he supports abortion rights. One of the game’s winningest coaches, Majerus made the comment at a weekend rally for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton. Burke declined to say what the action against Majerus should be, saying that was a decision for the Jesuit university. But he said the coach is a...

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) — A small-town mayor and church pastor was in jail Monday on charges of soliciting sex over the Internet from a police detective posing as a 13-year-old girl. Allen Kauffman, 63, was arrested Friday on four counts of felony enticement of a child in the latest sting orchestrated by a police detective in another southwest Missouri town, Diamond. Prosecutors alleged in court filings that Kauffman believed he was communicating with a 13-year-old girl from the Joplin area in a Yahoo chat room last November and December. In online messages, Kauffman allegedly asked the girl for sex and...

ST. LOUIS — Archbishop Raymond Burke has begun the process of defrocking the pastor at St. Stanislaus Kostka Catholic Church. Rev. Marek Bozek, 32 and a native of Poland, said Monday that he received a letter from Burke last week, informing him that he should present himself before the archbishop for "canonical admonition." In the letter, Burke said he's begun the process of laicization, or being "dismissed from the clerical state," for Bozek. The letter cited Bozek's participation in schism at the church that has been locked in a battle with the archdiocese over control of its assets and his...

Two Roman Catholic female priests who were recently ordained co-pastored their first mass Saturday night in the central west end.Rose Marie Hudson and Elsie McGrath led the service at the first Unitarian church of St. Louis.About one hundred people showed up.The service was held in the church's Hope Chapel.The pastor of the church says it was a fitting place for an event where hope and understanding were very much alive.The Roman Catholic Church does not recognize the ordination of Hudson and McGrath that was conducted by an organization called Roman Catholic Women Priests.

Having given fair warning to the women who are planning an "ordination" ceremony this weekend, Archbishop Burke is now doing his best to preserve the faithful of the St. Louis archdiocese from the confusion that event will cause. Maybe a deft editor could improve on the archbishop's statement, but it wouldn't be easy. He hits all the main points-- hard-- and yet he writes with charity; his genuine pastoral concern is unmistakable. Archbishop Burke makes it clear that he cannot fail to speak out, because his silence would be dereliction of his duty as spiritual leader. He feels the...

St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke has warned two Roman Catholic women that they will be excommunicated if they proceed with a planned ordination Sunday.The two women -- Rose Marie Dunn Hudson of Festus and Elsie Hainz McGrath of St. Louis -- are set to be ordained as part of the Roman Catholic Womenpriests movement that began in 2002.Only men are ordained priests and deacons in the Catholic Church. The Womenpriests and the advocacy group, the Women's Ordination Conference, are among Catholics pressing to change that tradition.Both women said they will ignore Burke's warning."It's a typically hierarchical form of intimidation, and...

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney says that "100 percent of the credit" for his money-raising success in Missouri goes to a few key fellow Republicans — notably Gov. Matt Blunt and state House Speaker Rod Jetton. (emphasis added)Romney has raised almost $1 million in Missouri, more money than any other candidate for president regardless of party, according to the latest figures from the Federal Election Commission. Blunt and his brother, lobbyist Andrew Blunt, accompanied Romney at a news conference at Spirit of St. Louis Airport on Monday, held before Romney's latest fundraising event here. The candidate had just flown in...

CARTHAGE - My siblings and I call it "The Asian Invasion." Every summer during the first weekend of August, tens of thousands of Vietnamese Catholics flock to the small southwest Missouri town of Carthage for a four-day festival to celebrate the Virgin Mary. Vietnamese refugees credit the Catholic icon for their protection and rescue from Vietnam as they fled the country after the Vietnam War. The Marian Days celebration began in 1978 with only a few hundred people. It takes place every year on the 28-acre campus of the Congregation of the Mother Co-Redemptrix, a Vietnamese order of priests and...

ST. LOUIS, Missouri, JULY 17, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Since structural weaknesses forced the Vatican library in Rome to close for three years of renovation, researchers are finding assistance at a U.S. university. Gregory Pass, the current librarian of the Knights of Columbus Vatican Film Library at St. Louis University, told ZENIT that since the announcement was made about the closure of the Vatican Library, his offices have gotten busier. "We have seen a rise in the number of inquiries regarding the availability of our microfilms and of space in our reading room, as well as a rise in the number of...

New York, Apr 30, 2007 / 11:23 am (CNA).- The St. Louis media seems to be running a campaign against the Catholic Church, following Archbishop Raymond Burke’s protest of abortion-activist Sheryl Crow’s performance at a Catholic hospital fundraiser. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch and KMOV (CBS affiliate), in particular, have invited the public to voice its opinion over the archbishop’s decision.Catholic League president Bill Donohue says the “voyeuristic posture assumed by these two media outlets is not legitimate.According to Donohue, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch “is inviting non-Catholics to opine about an internal matter of the St. Louis Archdiocese, beckoning the bigots...

Last year, more than 7 million American people -- that’s about one in every 32 adults -- were behind bars, on probation or parole. The United States has, for years, imprisoned more people than any other country in the world. Yet, we don’t have the highest literacy rate.... (snip) Inner-city schools fail half of their students, and jobs are removed from communities, replaced with guns and drugs, resulting in incarceration, if you’re lucky; death if you’re not. Nonetheless, many U.S. states have cut their education budgets to compensate for rapid growth in prison populations and prison construction. The misguided priorities...

CHICAGO, Dec 13 - Philip Morris USA said on Wednesday it was raising prices on all its cigarette brands by 10 cents per pack as of Dec. 18, a move that had been expected by analysts.The price increase was accomplished by lowering promotional discounts the company offers on its Marlboro, Virginia Slims, Parliament and Basic brands, while raising list prices on other brands, a spokesman for the unit of Altria Group Inc. <MO.N> said.Since changes in promotional discounts are typically passed on to consumers, the move could raise the average price a smoker pays for a pack of top-selling Marlboro...

Man... per CNN, with 80% reporting, Talent is at 799,007 while McCaskill is at 813,003...

ST. LOUIS (AP) - Four priests suspended by the Archdiocese of St. Louis amid allegations that they sexually abused children have been laicized, or permanently removed from the priesthood, the archdiocese said yesterday. Among the four is Bryan Kuchar, 41, who was released from jail in August after serving three years for molesting a 14-year-old boy. Also laicized were James Funke, James Gummersbach and Michael Seidel. The effort to remove the men began with a request from Archbishop Raymond Burke and required approval from the pope. The moves mean they are forbidden to function or represent themselves in any way...

If you haven't seen or heard the ad, actor Michael J. Fox apparently manipulated his Parkinson's medication so he could do a pro-stem-cell-research ad for a Missouri Democratic candidate, demonstrating what a Parkinson's patient without treatment looks like. In the ad, Fox implies that stem-cell research is the only hope for "millions of Americans -- Americans like me." As a Parkinson's patient myself, I know that claim to be hogwash. There are drug and non-drug therapies that ameliorate Parkinsonism for millions of patients. There apparently is even one that allows Fox to work as an actor -- without the physical...

The Missouri Supreme Court struck down the state's new voter identification law Monday that would have required voters to show a photo ID at the polls. A lower judge ruled last month that the ID requirement was an unconstitutional infringement on the fundamental right to vote. The state Supreme Court agreed in a 6-1 opinion. The new law would have required voters to show a photo identification card issued by Missouri or the federal government before they could cast a ballot. Voters lacking the ID this fall would be allowed to cast a provisional ballot, but after that, only the...

WARRENSBURG, Mo. -- Sen. Jim Talent is not responsible for $3-a-gallon gas or the Iraq war, but many voters here are linking him to an unpopular commander in chief and say they will punish him at the polls because he is a Republican. Mr. Talent faces a significant re-election challenge in November, with Democratic state Auditor Claire McCaskill essentially running even with him in the polls. Voters in the increasingly frustrated electorate here, especially in economically challenged rural Missouri, say they likely will seek a change, even though they may disagree with the Democrats. Most voters interviewed said life "could...

Forgive me if it's inappropriate to post this here (I wasn't sure where else to post it), but I was wondering if anyone had an idea of where one could get a professionally done print or a replica statue of this: The piece is by Mattheus van Beveren, and represents the triumph of Christianity over islam. I think it would be an awesome piece to have. The soource of the article is here.Thanks for any help.

CHICAGO (MarketWatch) - The Florida Supreme Court has thrown out a $145 billion punitive damage award against cigarette makers - and decertified the case as a class action -- in a huge victory for the tobacco industry. "We unanimously conclude that the punitive damages award is excessive as a matter of law," the court said in a ruling handed down in the Engle case on Thursday. The news sent shares of No. 1 tobacco company Altria , +6.6%) up 5.5% to $77.44 while Reynolds American (RAI : reynolds american 119.21, +4.85, +4.2%) gained 4.8% to $119.79. ) U.S. stocks boosted...

CLINTON, Mo. -- Several people were injured when a three-story building collapsed Monday night in downtown Clinton. Officials said about 25 people are trapped in the Elks Lodge, which collapsed at about 7:30 p.m. Monday. Paramedics told KMBC that at least eight people have been taken to local hospitals. It is not clear what caused the collapse, but witnesses told KMBC there was an explosion and fire at the building, which is located in the Historic Square District. According to the Elks Lodge Web site, the lodge was scheduled to hold its bimonthly meeting Monday night. A Clinton resident told...

A tighter race is looming in the battle for the United States Senate. GOP incumbent Jim Talent trailed democrat Claire McCaskill by a slim 3 points in January. Now, McCaskill's lead is six points and McCaskill's edge mirrors Nixon’s in the governor’s race. She leads among women by 13%, and independent voters by 14%. McCaskill leads big in St. Louis City, and has a 12% edge in St. Louis County.

Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City-St Joseph -- a favorite here eons before anyone else knew who he was -- ordained his first crop of priests for the Missouri diocese last week. The message: "In your priestly apostolate, allow God to make you an instrument of justice and peace," Bishop Finn said in his homily, shortly before ordaining Father Stephen E. Hansen, Father Justin E. Hoye and Father Steven C. Rogers at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception packed with their families and friends. "Promote the dignity and respect for all human life from its inception until natural death,"...

I would just like to further introduce my blog to the scene. I welcome any advice or criticism, and thank you for taking the time to read my blog. I am a student at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. I am attracted to blogging about social conservative issues relating to DC and the Catholic Church, but I also write about St. Louis and Missouri politics when I'm feeling homesick--and anything else I think is worth my time and yours. Let me know what you think. Welcome to PP&P!

Friends, Please vote in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch online poll for Sen. Talent. (Although unscientific, these polls do make an impression on the public and the self- indulgent press this early in the campaign, so showing a good performance is important.) To vote, click the link below and scroll down, the poll is on the right. http://www.stltoday.com/news

Perhaps nowhere in America has the transition from a church focused on social engagement and lay empowerment to one more concerned with Catholic identity and evangelization been more dramatic, or in some ways more wrenching, than in the Kansas City-St. Joseph, Mo., diocese since the appointment of Bishop Robert Finn.Finn has brought the diocese, for decades a model of the former category of church practice, to a screeching halt and sent it veering off in a new direction, leaving nationally heralded education programs and high-profile lay leaders and women religious with long experience abandoned and dismayed.The competing tensions in the...

WASHINGTON - Nobody expects to get a letter from a member of Congress that ends with an expletive. But that's what happened when Rep. Jo Ann Emerson (news, bio, voting record), R-Mo., recently corresponded with a resident of her southeast Missouri district. The letter ended with a profane, seven-letter insult beginning with the letter a — "i think you're an. ..." Emerson says she can't explain how the offensive language made it into the letter, which otherwise reads like a typical response to a citizen's question about last year's testimony of oil executives before the Senate Commerce Committee. "There is...

Are potential Islamic terrorists trying to get commercial driver's licenses (CDLs) and hazardous materials hauling certificates? You bet, they are. In droves. The latest, as reported by Kansas City media, is the South Central Career Center Truck Training Program in West Plains, Missouri, in South Central Missouri. A whopping 60% (SIXTY PERCENT!) of those who took a CDL test there from May 2004 to December 2005 had Mid-East names. Hello? . . . And, as usual, your tax dollars probably paid the bill. That particular truck driver's school is run by Missouri's West Plains public school district, as part of...

Legislative Policy Forum When: Monday, March 20, 2006 9:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m. Where: Electric Cooperatives Building 1 Cooperative Way Arkansas Who: Jennifer Crawley (501) 372-7301 Legislative Candidate Reception When: Monday, March 20, 2006 6:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. Where: Little Rock Club 400 W Capitol Ave # 2435 Arkansas Who: Jennifer Crawley (501) 372-7301 http://www.fairus.org/site/PageServer?pagename=research_mar06nl13&JServSessionIdr010=8mn39cqen1.app6a Immigration Conference Coming to Kansas City The Impact of Illegal Immigration on State and Local Governments Source: Immigration Report FAIR’s highly successful series of regional immigration reform conferences is coming to Missouri. State and local law enforcement, and elected officials from across the region...

(3/12/06 - WASHINGTON) - Seven months after President Bush said Texas showed its great compassion by taking in half a million Hurricane Katrina evacuees, the state is uncertain it will be sufficiently reimbursed for its neighborliness. Bush lauded Texas a month after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast and the day Hurricane Rita slapped the Texas coast. "It made me so proud to be from the state of Texas, to see the Texans rise to the occasion," Bush said while visiting a shelter for Katrina refugees in San Antonio on Sept. 24. But the president's latest emergency funding request for...

TOWN AND COUNTRY, Mo. - Behind the turreted brick walls of Christian Brothers College High School is a clean-cut student body of about 1,000 boys in collared shirts and dress pants. Tuition for freshmen at the private school in suburban St. Louis will be $9,500 next year, including the cost of a new laptop computer. There is also the chance all parents will be charged another $60 to help pay for mandatory drug tests for students, a rare program hailed by the White House but disparaged by civil libertarians. "I know a lot of people are worried about privacy concerns,...

New Planned Parenthood Head Faces Home State Clinic Cuts By Randy Hall CNSNews.com Staff Writer/Editor January 20, 2006 (CNSNews.com) -- The Planned Parenthood Federation of America is marking the 33rd anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision on Jan. 22 with a new president. However, even as Cecile Richards takes the reins of the nation's most frequent provider of abortions, the organization may be forced to curtail services and even shut down clinics in an ironic location: her home state of Texas. The likely cutbacks are the result of amendments to the two-year budget passed in 2005 by the Texas...

A column by Mike Downey of the Chicago Tribune got me thinking on this subject of web sites dedicated to firing coaches. Fire Joe Paterno.com, the subject of Downey's wrath, has backed down a bit from its "noble" cause, and the domain owner has reserved the domain name "Keep Joe Paterno.com." Too bad the board of directors at Penn State didn't reserve it first. My first foray into internet activism was Blue States for Bush. I got some hate e-mails, which I expected. The e-mails I got that really troubled me usually followed this line of logic. "Your site sucks...

On this special day, the Radio Equalizer can't think of a better place to spend time than at Mike Anderson's 1969 Vietnam memories site, found here. Anderson, a Vietnam vet, former St. Louis radio personality and current publisher of radio information site STLMedia.net, has hundreds of photographs and stories from his 1969 tour. "The memories will be a constantly updated part of the website," Anderson notes. "Thirty-six years after the fact, it's not unusual that not everything comes immediately to mind." Putting the site together wasn't so easy, he admits....

Apostle’s Greatest Miracle Was Sex -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By Ayesha Ahmed 2005/09/18 Apostle’s greatest miracle was not the Quran. It was his capacity for lovemaking. Allah had given him libido of 30 men. Most infidels don’t even consider the Quran to be a big deal. They say a village idiot can come up with such a book. They claim that any book is better than the Quran. But I ask them, can anyone match the apostle’s lovemaking prowess? Can they at the age 60+ make love to 10 young women in a single night? Yes, the apostle could do it. That is...

How's the spring talk radio ratings picture shaping up? Quite clearly: some properly-managed conservative stations are holding up well, while others are greatly suffering, with agonizing mistakes going uncorrected. Liberal talk still isn't taking off, even if there are faint signs of life, giving leftists false hope for the format's future. Not exactly a work of art, is it?

Toronto-- The April 20 "temporary" leave of absence from his post as top United Nations envoy to North Korea became a permanent one for Canadian tycoon Maurice Strong yesterday. UN spokesman Marie Okabe said in response to a reporter’s question that Strong’s contract expired last week "and has not been renewed". The admission came amid questions about Strong’s connection to a well-publicized suspect in the ongoing UN oil-for-food scandal. (See: 'The Maustro' admits connection to `Koreagate Man') In the politically correct, neutered lexicon of the UN, Strong, chief architect of the Kyoto Protocol, "has not been renewed". To the outside...

Toronto-- In the true life stranger than fiction category, Cantor Fitzgerald Securities and its subsidiary eSpeed network are one for the books. Cantor Fitzgerald’s New York office, on the 101st-105th floors of One World Trade Center, lost 685 employees in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks–more than any other employer. Its e-Speed electronic bond-trading network lost 125 souls. Happily for the disciples of "Kyoto Mo" (Canadian Maurice Strong), who argues that global climate change is driven by anthropogenic gases emitted by inhabitants of the Anglosphere, a six-member eSpeed carbon-credit trading team escaped death. Their annual one-day fishing trip had to...

"I feel sorry for the poor devil who will be nominated," said former Sen. John Danforth (R-Mo.), referring to anyone chosen to succeed Rehnquist. Danforth shepherded the nomination of Clarence Thomas through the Senate in 1991 and called it "the worst thing I ever lived through. Just awful."When historians trace the origins of how Supreme Court nominations became a flash point of culture wars and how brutal, bare-knuckle politics came to dominate the confirmation process, their search will lead them to Missouri. In the steamy trough of the Mississippi River valley, the seeds of the current culture wars were sown--court...

If You ain't here after what I'm here after, You will likely be here after I'm gone! I signed up to be a Republican because I believe in a Republic! I signed up before a lot of You were born, I ain't likely to run from the Republican Party, as much as some of You are running away from Me!

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