Newspaper Page Text
Southern Cross, Page 2
Headline Hopscotch
Thursday, July 23, 2020
Flannery O’Connor is seen in this undated photo. “Flannery,” a
documentary about the life and writings of Catholic writer O’Connor,
opens in select virtual cinemas nationwide July 17, 2020. The Catholic
News Service classification is A-lll - adults. Not rated by the Motion
Picture Association. (CNS photo/courtesy 11th Street Lot)
Update: Ahead of third
execution, church leaders
urged clemency or delay
WASHINGTON (CNS)
Prior to the July 17 execu
tion of Dustin Honken, a
52-year-old man from Iowa,
Catholic leaders, includ
ing the bishops of Iowa,
Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin
of Newark, New Jersey, and
the Benedictine priest who
had been Honken’s spiritual
adviser for 10 years, plead
ed for a lesser sentence or at
least a delay. Iowa’s Catholic
bishops wrote a July 1 let
ter to President Donald
Trump, requesting clemency
for Honken and three other
men facing federal executions
this summer; two of these
inmates were since killed by
lethal injection at the federal
penitentiary in Terre Haute,
Indiana, the week of July 12.
Honken, a meth kingpin, was
killed by lethal injection July
17 at 4:36 EDT. He was con
victed in 2004 for the murder
of five people in 1993, includ
ing two children, in an effort
to thwart his prosecution for
drug trafficking. He is the
first Iowa defendant to be
put to death since 1963. Anti
death penalty activists gath
ered on the side of the road
about a mile from the Indiana
prison to pray for Honken and
express their displeasure with
the country’s use of the death
penalty. Group members wore
shirts with anti-death penalty
messages.
Priest's love of math,
baseball helps him develop
new stat measures
WASHINGTON (CNS)
WAR, what is it good for? For
Edwin Starr, the answer was
“absolutely nothin’” - although
“somethin’” might be a better
answer, since he had a No.
1 hit with the tune in 1970.
But for Dominican Father
Humbert Kilanowski,
he’s got a different answer,
because he’s asking a different
question. Father Kilanowski,
a mathematics professor at
Providence College in Rhode
Island, has been a baseball
stats guy since his freshman
year in high school, when he
was a student manager of
his school’s baseball team. “I
played up to eighth grade,
but I wasn’t any good,” he
confessed. Back then, he
remembered, the new big-deal
stats were WHIP and OPS.
For the uninitiated, WHIP
stands for walks plus hits per
inning pitched, a measure
of a pitcher’s ability to keep
runners off base. OPS stands
for on-base percentage plus
slugging percentage; the for
mer gauges how often a player
gets on base per plate appear
ance, and the latter calculates
how many bases the batter
collects per at-bat. Ordained
in 2018, Father Kilanowski
not only teaches, but helps
out with campus ministry
and with a Dominican Third
Order group in Rhode Island.
He also learned, to his delight,
the order has a house on Cape
Cod, which gave him a chance
to see about a dozen games
last year in the Cape Cod
League. The league is one of
several “collegiate” leagues
around the United States
where college ballplayers who
think they have a chance
in pro ball spend a couple
of months in the summer to
sharpen their skills. It also
gives hitters experience with
wood bats; virtually all school
and amateur baseball today
is played with less expensive
and longer-lasting alumi
num bats. Which brings us to
WAR, which stands for Wins
Above Replacement. In the big
leagues, its computations are
meant to judge a player’s skill
over that of his replacement -
typically a minor leaguer who
would need to be called up to
take his spot on the roster.
But WAR wouldn’t work right
in the amateur ranks. For
one thing, they haven’t even
played in the minors, let alone
have a chance to get called up
to the majors. With Cape Cod
League statisticians supplying
him the 2019 season’s data,
Father Kilanowski made some
modifications to account for
the level of skill and the short
er season, among other things.
His results were published in
in early July in the Baseball
Research Journal, the annual
publication of the Society for
American Baseball Research.
Ex-Salvadoran officer says
witnesses lied in his trial for
Jesuits' murders
MEXICO CITY (CNS
Inocente Orlando
Montano, the former
Salvadoran army colonel
accused of participating in
“the decision, design or exe
cution of the killings” of six
Jesuits in 1989, testified in
his Spanish trial that no order
was ever given to eliminate
the priests. He also disputed
claims that senior military
men wanted to sabotage the
peace process for ending El
Salvador’s civil war — a
motive presented by prosecu
tors for the slayings — saying
the army was tired of fighting,
too. Montano even professed
his personal Catholicism and
expressed condolences for
the priests’ deaths. “I swear
before this tribunal and before
my God that I am not lying. I
never participated in a meet
ing in which it was said or
an order was given to kill the
priests,” Montano said July
15 in a Madrid courtroom.
“At no time was it mentioned
in the meetings that we had
that the priests had to be
killed,” he continued. “What
was said is that the leaders of
the subversion had to be con
trolled.” The testimony capped
Montano’s trial in Spain,
where the trial was held
because several of the Jesuits
murdered were Spanish citi
zens. Montano, 77, sitting in
a wheelchair and wearing his
facemask around his neck,
spoke calmly and without
notes for 14 minutes.
Southern Cross
(USPS 505-680)
is published bi-weekly,
26 issues per year.
Periodicals Postage Paid at
Savannah, GA and at
additional mailing offices.
POSTMASTER:
Send address changes to
Southern Cross,
2170 East Victory Drive,
Savannah, GA 31404.
Publisher: Most Rev. Stephen D.
Parkes, Bishop-elect of Savannah
Communications Project Director:
Jill Parks
Editor: Michael J. Johnson
Reporter: Donnell Suggs
Telephone: 912-201^1054
Email: editor@diosav.org
Online: southemcross-sav.org
Subscription Price: $15.00 per year
Address & Subscription Changes:
Contact your parish
Office: Southern Cross
2170 East Victoiy Drive
Savannah, GA 31404-3918
©Southern Cross/Diocese of Savannah
Office for the Protection of Children
and Young People:
Toll free reporting hot line:
(888)357-5330