ADIOS, AMIGO

From Robert Peston at the BBC:

Tony Hayward's departure as chief executive of BP has been inevitable for some weeks (see my note of June 20, "Hayward's departure: not if, but when").

That inevitability will be crystallised imminently: Mr Hayward is negotiating the terms of his departure, I am told by a senior BP source.

An announcement that he is going is likely to be made in the next 24 hours. And the strong likelihood is that he'll be replaced by his US colleague, Bob Dudley, who has been put in charge of the clean-up operation in the Gulf of Mexico.

One thing that we can all be sure of is that Hayward will walk away from BP a wealthy man. No worries about the dole for him. He'll be able to spend as much of his time as he likes watching his yacht race from the Isle of Wight, or anywhere in the world, without concern for his "image".

However, what will be bitter-sweet for Hayward is that evidence has emerged over the past few days that BP was less culpable for the disaster than many of its critics believe and that the charge of gross negligence against it may not stick.

The worst outcome for BP would have been proof that it cut corners in the design of well. But as I mentioned last week, the fact that the new cap on the well has staunched the flow of oil suggests that it is robust.

Peston paints a far rosier picture of BP's culpability than I'd accept. What would you call the decisions to skip a series of safety tests (not just one) and to ignore a series of warnings (not just one) that all was not right with the well, if not culpability? Let's not forget that 11 men died, and 17 were injured, and that oil gushed (not spilled!) into the Gulf of Mexico for over 90 days creating an enormous environmental disaster.

The blame game amongst the corporations continues, with BP blaming Transocean and Halliburton, and Transocean and Halliburton kicking the ball back to BP. Round and round the blaming goes, and where it will stop, nobody knows.

We'll see what kind of golden parachute Tony Hayward manages to negotiate before he jumps, or rather is pushed from the leadership of BP.

In the end, we can blame BP, Transocean, Halliburton, and the US government, but we must also look in the mirror and ask ourselves if we are ready to kick our addiction to dirty energy sources. What we are willing to give up to have clean energy?

UPDATE:



BP Gulf command center

Thanks to Lapin in the comments.

UPDATE 2:

The Telegraph gives us a hint as to what Hayward's severance package may look like.

The 53-year-old’s pension pot will pay out £584,000 a year when he turns 60, but the terms of his departure from BP could allow him to draw down the pension earlier.
The BP board is eager to avoid further political criticism but Mr Hayward is believed to want the severance deal to reflect his 28 years of service to the company, which could run into millions.

However will Tony make ends meet?

ORGANIZATIONAL CHART

From Doug.

URGENT PRAYER REQUEST

From Margaret at Leave It Lay....

LATER UPDATE FROM MARGARET:

Thank you all so very much for you prayers. Joel continues in stable but guarded condition in the ICU. They've brought out the big guns on the MG stuff. He is speaking--which is good. They are doing a scan of his chest later this evening. I'm okay --tired but unanxious... really. All shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.

UPDATE:

Joel is in respitory ICU. Nearly lost him overnight.... he is in stable but guarded condition.

I am okay.... numb --which I consider a mercy. Doing what comes next. I am grateful for your prayers.
--m

___________________

Joel is in the hospital. He had an acute onset of his myasthenia gravis... he couldn't breathe, swallow--kept choking.

Please keep him in your prayers.

"Heavenly Father, giver of life and health: Comfort and relieve your sick servant Joel, and give your power of healing to those who minister to his needs, that he may be strengthened in his weakness and have confidence in your loving care; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."

(Book of Common Prayer, p. 459)

O God of all comfort and strength, be powerfully present to our dear sister Margaret, as she watches and waits at Joel's side. Uphold her by your Spirit during this time of trouble and distress, and enfold her in your healing love. We pray in the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ, who lives forever. Amen

"POPE BENEDICT ORDAIN WOMEN NOW"

From the Guardian:

In a move designed to coincide with the pope's visit to Britain in September, London buses are to carry posters calling for the ordination of women.

The initiative, from the UK group Catholic Women's Ordination (CWO), will see buses carrying the slogan "Pope Benedict Ordain Women Now".

According to the weekly Catholic magazine the Tablet, CWO has paid about £10,000 for the posters to appear on 10 buses for a month from August 30.

The pope will be in the UK from September 16, spending two days in the capital, and the posters will appear on routes that go past Westminster Cathedral and Westminster Hall. Both venues feature on the papal itinerary.
....

Buses have become the preferred vehicle for believers and nonbelievers to promote their cause to the wider public. The trend started in January 2009, when a group of atheists arranged for an "upbeat and positive" message to counter slogans of hellfire and damnation from some churches.

The ad campaign by the Catholic Women's Ordination group will counter the Vatican's recent classification of women's ordination as a delicta graviora (more grave crime) against church law.

As expected, the Vatican also updated its list of the "more grave crimes" against church law, called "delicta graviora," including for the first time the "attempted sacred ordination of a woman." In such an act, it said, the cleric and the woman involved are automatically excommunicated, and the cleric can also be dismissed from the priesthood.

I predict that delicta graviora will soon become household words. "Stop tracking mud into the house! That's a delicta graviora!"

Thanks to Ann v. for the link.

UPDATE: Erp in the comments points out that ads appeared in buses as early as 2007 for the Christian Alpha Course.

The commercial will appear on screens in hundreds of bars nationwide and hundreds of buses in London and Birmingham.

QUOTE OF THE DAY - ARCHBISHOP DESMOND TUTU

"Marrying Leah was the best decision I made in my life. Now I will have the time to serve her hot chocolate in bed in the mornings, as any doting husband should."

Husbands, take note. The only question is, "Coffee, tea, or chocolate, my love?"

From The Christian Post.

Photo from The Mail.

Thanks to Ann for calling my attention to the quote.

"DON'T CRY FOR ME, ARGENTINA...

...Cry For the Catholic Church"

From Mary E. Hunt at Religious Dispatches:

Two women drinking coffee together in a Buenos Aires café during the dictatorship (1973-1983) could have been arrested merely for being together. Today they can marry. What a difference a few decades can make. Eva Peron was right in her address to her people from the balcony, as crooned memorably by Madonna in the movie Evita: “The truth is I never left you/All through my wild days/My mad existence/I kept my promise/don’t keep your distance…”

Argentina delivered same-sex marriage on July 15, 2010 (the bill was officially signed into law on July 21) after a bitter but decisive legislative battle. President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’s supporters backed it and some commentators have alleged that the 33-27 vote in the Senate was less a sign of major cultural change than a way for the president’s husband, Nestor Kirchner (former president of Argentina hankering to run again), to look liberal enough to be reelected in 2011. That may well be, but it misses an important religious angle; namely, that the Roman Catholic Church was defeated as soundly as the political opposition on this one. Maybe it is a sign of things to come in Latin America—on abortion, for example—and around the world as the institutional church fritters away its symbolic capital.
....

The institutional church was notoriously silent on much of the so-called “Dirty War.” It left to groups like Servicio Paz y Justicia (whose head, Adolfo Perez Esquivel, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1980) to defend human rights. They did so along with the Mothers and the many secular and ecumenical groups that worked heroically to bring Argentina back to democracy. They pressed for the prosecution of those guilty of kidnapping and/or killing many young people.

God calls all Christian churches to be at the forefront of such battles against injustice and oppression. Leaders, take as your example Saint Óscar Romero. Ah, but look what happened to him. The archbishop was martyred for his courageous stand with the poor and oppressed against the government in El Salvador.

Or take as your example the living saint, Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, for his brave stand against aparthied, who recently announced his retirement from public life. I will miss his voice terribly, if he does not continue to speak out. The good archbishop says:

“On the whole, I will shut up. Sometimes I m-i-i-ght find I can’t resist,” he said, with his trademark chuckle.

I hope he can't resist.

And the followers amongst us must join the fight and urge our religious leaders on in the battle against injustice and oppression and even goad them, if necessary.

MAKE NO PEACE WITH OPPRESSION!

Thanks to Ann V. for the link.

CARAVAGGIO - "PENITENT MAGDALEN"

Caravaggio, "Penitent Magdalen", c. 1596-97, Doria Pamphilij Gallery

As I searched for a painting to illustrate my post on the feast day of Mary Magdalen late yesterday, I found the painting pictured above. Although Caravaggio is one of my favorite artists in the world, I didn't use the painting, because the Gospel for the feast tells of Mary seeing Jesus at the tomb after his Resurrection, and the penitent Magdalen did not illustrate the story.

But I chose not to use the painting for another reason, because the painting puzzled me. Something seemed to be missing. Was Mary looking down at someone/something that had been painted over? Her pose suggests that of Mary in Michelangelo's "Pietà", and I wondered whether Caravaggio had not painted Mary holding the dead Christ and then overpainted, or perhaps he means to suggest something of the sort.

The source of the picture above is Philolog at Standford University's website. In the commentary which accompanies the picture at the site, no mention is made of overpainting, so I suppose my initial thought is without foundation. And, very likely, I'll never know for certain if Caravaggio meant to suggest something that is not explicit in the painting or what that something was.

Counterlight! Calling Couterlight! Doug's (aka Counterlight) recent post on Caravaggio, with illustrations and commentary, is excellent and well worth a look.

WHO ARE THE WELFARE CHEATS?

From the AP via Yahoo:

The Treasury Department's pay czar said Friday that 17 banks gave their top executives $1.6 billion in lavish payments while they were receiving billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded bailouts.

Kenneth Feinberg said he did not have the authority to ask the firms to repay the money that was handed out during the financial crisis. But he said they should develop new rules on compensation that would allow them to slash compensation payments in future crises.

If the federal government does "not now have the authority to ask the firms to repay the money that was handed out during the financial crisis", then before handing out any more of our tax money as welfare for the rich, the feds should damned well get the authority.

FEAST OF MARY MAGDALENE

Noli Me Tangere (1524), by Hans Holbein the Younger

Jesus Appears to Mary Magdalene

But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping?" She said to them, "They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him." When she had said this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping? For whom are you looking?" Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away." Jesus said to her, "Mary!" She turned and said to him in Hebrew, "Rabbouni!" (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, "Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, 'I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'”

John 20:11-17

Why did Jesus tell Mary not to touch him? In my search for an answer, I found this article in The Smithsonian Magazine, titled "Who Was Mary Magdalene?" by James Carroll, who writes a regular column in The Boston Globe.

The multiplicity of the Marys by itself was enough to mix things up—as were the various accounts of anointing, which in one place is the act of a loose-haired prostitute, in another of a modest stranger preparing Jesus for the tomb, and in yet another of a beloved friend named Mary. Women who weep, albeit in a range of circumstances, emerged as a motif. As with every narrative, erotic details loomed large, especially because Jesus’ attitude toward women with sexual histories was one of the things that set him apart from other teachers of the time. Not only was Jesus remembered as treating women with respect, as equals in his circle; not only did he refuse to reduce them to their sexuality; Jesus was expressly portrayed as a man who loved women, and whom women loved.

The climax of that theme takes place in the garden of the tomb, with that one word of address, “Mary!” It was enough to make her recognize him, and her response is clear from what he says then: “Do not cling to me.” Whatever it was before, bodily expression between Jesus and Mary of Magdala must be different now.

After his Resurrection, Jesus has a body. He is the same Jesus, but, at the same time, he is different, and his physical relationship with his disciples had to be different.

Carroll's entire piece is worth reading as a counter-story to the nonsense floating around about Mary Magdalene.

Reposted from Easter of 2007 late on the Magdalen's feast day.

NADA TE TURBE

Nada Te Turbe

Nada te turbe
Nada te espante
Quien a Dios tiene nada le falta
Solo Dios basta
Todo se pasa
Dios no se muda
La paciencia todo lo alcanza

Let nothing disturb you,
nothing afright you.
Whom God possesses
in nothing is wanting.
Alone God suffices.
All things are passing.
God never ceases.
Patient endurance attains all things.

Spanish lyrics from Margaret and English lyrics from Paul the BB.

Reposted from two years ago, because it's so beautiful.