Tuesday, April 17, 2007

We're all Hokies now



Requiem aeternam dona eis Domine
et lux perpetua luceat eis.


Telegram from the Holy Father:
THE MOST REVEREND FRANCIS X. DILORENZO
BISHOP OF RICHMOND (U.S.A)

DEEPLY SADDENED BY NEWS OF THE SHOOTING AT VIRGINIA TECH, HIS HOLINESS POPE BENEDICT XVI HAS ASKED ME TO CONVEY THE ASSURANCE OF HIS HEARTFELT PRAYERS FOR THE VICTIMS, THEIR FAMILIES AND FOR THE ENTIRE SCHOOL COMMUNITY. IN THE AFTERMATH OF THIS SENSELESS TRAGEDY HE ASKS GOD OUR FATHER TO CONSOLE ALL THOSE WHO MOURN AND TO GRANT THEM THAT SPIRITUAL STRENGTH WHICH TRIUMPHS OVER VIOLENCE BY THE POWER OF FORGIVENESS, HOPE AND RECONCILING LOVE.

CARDINAL TARCISIO BERTONE
SECRETARY OF STATE.
VT's page with updates.

CNS story.

The aftermath: Godbless VT blog with updates on missing people.

:: UPDATE :: Facebook is buzzing with all kinds of stuff related to the VT tragedy. One of the groups, "A tribute to those who passed at the Virginia Tech Shooting" has added nearly 200,000 people, from around the world, in just over a day. This is a record for Facebook, and despite some technical difficulties, they've kept it going. There are links to Youtube videos of the vigil, and so on. (In the 15 minutes since I first surfed to the page, some 2000 joined the group.)

Online Memorial, including brief profiles of those killed.

More disturbingly, it seems that nutjob Fred Phelps, is planning a protest at the students' funerals! I'm all for free speech, but aren't there limits?

5 comments:

Dogwood Dell said...

Thank you for sharing this info online.

Please note that the spelling of Hokie is incorrect on your site.

masalai said...

There was a recent not dissimilar episode at an Australian university, with an Asian student snapping under the stress of the language difficulties and attacking everyone in sight. Fortunately the gun laws here obviate anyone taking it as far as this poor wretch did. And it sounds as though it wasn't language difficulties that were at play here. But what am I saying: I have three university-age children of my own and the thought of them running afoul of a maniac in the classroom of all places is truly terrifying. What on earth is the fellow's fool of a creative writing teacher saying -- confidentiality forbids her releasing his troubled diarising indeed: the boy is dead, for heaven's sake.

But President Bush appears to have handled the matter gracefully and with a light touch: I should think that his thoughtful words of comfort would at the very least be not unhelpful. Unlike the university, allowing the pernicious grief counsellors to descend like the wolf on the fold. There is a fascinating body of literature developing which demonstrates that those who were traumatised by the World Trade Centre attacks who were allowed to get on with coping managed far better than those who were afflicted by the fools of grief counsellors. When will we learn?

Fr. Gaurav Shroff said...

It's such an American thing, throwing counselors at everything, bringing in the expert to fix something as if it were a broken pipe. It's like prefab housing. I've no idea about how effective they are and so on, but, yes, I share the skepticism.

masalai said...

Oh, I wouldn't say there's anything especially American about this (or indeed many other lunacies that are blamed on America). Certainly it's well established in all anglophone countries I know of. I wonder if the Germans, French and Italians do this.

masalai said...

As to crocks and freedom of speech (which is in any case always constrained by "such limits as may be justified in a free and democratic society," so why hasn't someone gone after Phelps & Co for villification of his various bêtes-noire, I wonder), note the email I sent you privately on a Palestinian friend facing scandalously adverse comments from neighbours in a Montreal doughnut shop, and his remarkably phlegmatic reaction.