Thursday, July 05, 2007

There were bells on the hills. . .

but I never heard them ringing, no I never heard them at all, til ...

Nach Hamburg wollen in den nächsten Wochen Niedersachsen und Baden-Württemberg ihre Gesetze verabschieden. Dort soll die Gastronomie sogar schon am 1. August rauchfrei werden. Das Hamburger Gesetz tritt erst in der kommenden Silvesternacht in Kraft - wie in den meisten anderen Ländern. Dort wurden die Gesetze ebenfalls schon von den Regierungen abgesegnet. Jetzt müssen nur noch die Landtage darüber abstimmen.

Following Hamburg, authorities in Lower Saxony and Baden-Württemberg want to pass their [anti-smoking] laws in the coming weeks. It is expected that restaurants and bars there will be smoke-free as early as August 1rst.


All that and the Motu Proprio in one week. Pretty cool. The article has a lot of the usual blah blah "The reactionaries are coming; the reactionaries are coming!" to it. For purposes of disclosure, I am not a huge fan of the Traditional Mass in practise, but I have lived plenty of places where there was demand for it and the bishop thought that once a month on Thursday night was "generous" permission. I also have friends I'd like to see more clearly at home in Rome and this might help. And isn't there something ironic about the bishops being circumvented because there was a problem complaining. If he thought you were correct in your assessment of the situation Your Eminance, there wouldn't be a motu proprio to issue in the first place, so put a sock in it.

This I didn't know and will have to look into:
An indult was granted in 1971 by Pope Paul VI after a group of English luminaries - including Graham Greene, Kingsley Amis, Agatha Christie, Kenneth Clark, William Rees-Mogg, Malcolm Muggeridge, Ralph Richardson, C Day Lewis and Iris Murdoch - complained to him about the loss to civilisation and culture that the suppression represented.


** The Agatha Christie Indult - Huh,who knew? The kids at The Shrine, no doubt, but really, wow. Your religon may have cool meditation techniques (not that Catholicism doesn't), or encourage a healthier diet, or do Liturgy better (high church Anglicans), but until you've got an Agatha Christie Indult, you are missin' out.

It is pouring AGAIN. Not that it's better in the States. My sisters chat status = "humidity". She cracks me up.

1 comment:

Paul Smith Jr. said...

Ann, Ann, Ann, didn't we discuss this the last time we saw each other? Laws like this are just another death knell for freedom of choice.

I almost certainly hate cigarette smoke more than you, but this sort of law is unwarranted when covering private property.

By the way, not humid here. Other than rainstorms last night and late the night before, it's been 70s-80s with realitvely low humidity recently. Bee-you-tiful. Ends tomorrow though as heat and humidity return.