Today's Public Service Announcements from me

Here are my 2 PSA for the day.

1. If you have a Roadrunner account for your email, migrate now. Some people still have my old columbus.rr account because of group chats. At first (August) I could get it, but with some delay. Now, not at all. Don't use it. New Spectrum users don't get it at all, some older ones are spotty, but mine was probably from the old Time-Warner days and it's totally gone. Unfortunately, for some people my record of your email address is gone too because I can't get into my old archived e-mails.

2. Don't pay any attention to the on-line gossip about celebrities; especially Erika Kirk. And she should also stop defending herself online or on talk shows like Fox's Outnumbered. Not that she'll take my advice. It just fuels the fires under the folks who hated Charlie. And the mainstream media are probably as unbiased as the latest "influencer." 

You noticed I hope that TDS used to be BDS and anyone who supported W used to be a Nazi or racist. Now they love Bush.

Calumny and detraction--what's the difference?

Today I was reading about the strange case of Fr. John Corapi, a Catholic priest I used to hear occasionally on the radio.  He was an excellent, challenging speaker, yet one day in 2011 he just disappeared.  Is his case calumny or detraction? Frankly, I don't know that I still understand the difference, and no one seems to know what has happened to Father Corapi.

"To put it in simple terms, calumny is the telling of a lie about someone, almost always with malicious intent—for instance, to damage his reputation. Detraction, on the other hand, is the telling of the truth about someone to a third party who has no right to that truth. Detraction is often done with malicious intent as well, but not always.

In more common terms, most of what we call gossip is detraction; most of what we call backbiting is calumny. The Catechism of the Catholic Church classifies detraction and calumny as "offenses against the truth" (and specifically, as the venerable Baltimore Catechism notes, both are violations of the Eighth Commandment). Both are sins, which can be either venial or mortal, depending on their intent and effects. Even when committed carelessly, without malicious intent, detraction and calumny can cause grave damage to the person being discussed, and the person guilty of detraction or calumny has an obligation to try to repair the damage done by his action."