Jose, spot on. Most of the stuff one reads about OD is negative, even Paul Collins called the organization "reactive". The Carroll book promises to be a bit more balanced. I am interested in politics generally. Politics is about who gets what,why, when and how (and those who don't, and why they don't - money, privelege, power &c &c). And politics occurs in the secular as well as religious spheres - hence my interest, which is, incidentally, purely personal, not professional.

Doug
The molten lava from the abreactive volcano definitely outdid itself. with a broadside tirade against Sydneysiders, the harbour bridge and even Paul Keating[and then last but not least the 'unpriestly' over-inflated priest[actually i have lost 65Kilos in 3 years] a 'parody-priest' who just will not agree with you as do your lefty priest friends--great lot of good theyve done for you on this issue--though they are obviously really nice relevant meaningful guys who tell you what you want to hear--otherwise 9 on the richter scale.....
Anyway sit down on your psychoanalytic couch with a good cuppa and monte carlo and put your feet up. I on the other hand will brush off the molten dust from my black archconservative cassock and go seek in my wheelchair another lost sheep in the thickets since you have broken off all diplomatic communications in one mighty volcanic seismic eruption--ash everywhere! and i have seen some mighty churchquakes in my 30 years of priesthood here and in philippines
regards to the Goddess 'Christine Keeler'[your authority on 'obiter dictas']..

doug
a parting salvo! Since reading some years ago 'the Decline and Fall of the Freudian empire by Hans J Eyesenck[also his encyclopaedic Dictionary of Psychology] i have wondered about Jungian and Freudian insights and their therapeutic praxis and the need to subject their fundamental psychoanalytic insights to the scorching scrutiny of experimental and scientific methodology of the behaviourist schools--lest Freud and Jung be uncritically accepted just because the psychoanalytic guru gaggle approves[based merely on anecdotal sacred tradition and dogma]-perhaps this scud may entice you a jungian psychoanalyst of 20 years experience out of your self imposed 'exile'.
yours
the 'over-inflated' priest["oh not him again", he murmers!]

Doug,
Aristotle wrote some good material about politics and the like. His book, Ethics, is a good starting point to get an idea of his exegesis on that area.

the following relates to my posting of october 7 above:
Officially Proclaimed
Italian Woman Cured of Heart Trouble in 1952
[ROME, NOV. 15, 2005] - An archbishop in Italy has officially proclaimed the "miraculous cure" of a long-suffering woman who went to the shrine at Lourdes, France, in 1952. [all indicates the willingness of the church to accept only well investigated miracles subject to medical scrutiny.

The patient, Anna Santaniello of Salerno, now 94, suffered from childhood from a cardiac malformation, declared incurable by doctors.

At age 40, her health deteriorated severely and, despite the opinion of her doctors and family, she decided to travel to Lourdes.

Her malformation hindered her ability to walk and speak clearly. It also caused cyanosis in her face and edemas in her lower extremities.

Salerno's La Città newspaper explained that the patient said she could "scarcely breathe anymore" and told her brother that "my last desire is to go to Lourdes," where she arrived "alive but on a stretcher."

Restored

Nuns lowered her into the pool and "the water was freezing," Santaniello recalled.

"But I immediately felt something boiling in my chest, as if my life had been restored to me," she said. "After a few seconds, I got up on my own and began to walk, refusing the help of the stretcher-bearers, who looked at me in disbelief."

On her return home, Santaniello asked for an appointment with a well-known cardiologist, who "told me I didn't have anything, that I was very healthy and that he couldn't understand all the certificates and examinations that had previously been made."

Santaniello has returned on subsequent occasions to the Marian shrine at Lourdes to offer her service as a volunteer in assisting the sick.

She and her family and friends attended the ceremony to proclaim the miracle, held in the John Paul II Metropolitan Seminary in Pontecagnano.