I’ve long been fascinated by the relationship between language and thinking. A long article in the New York Times traces views on the matter from Benjamin Whorf’s deterministic theory through its general repudiation to the view that now prevails, a modified Whorfian thesis, that language does affect our perceptions of the world.  “‘Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey.’ This maxim offers us the key to unlocking the real force of the mother tongue: if different languages influence our minds in different ways, this is not because of what our language allows us to think but rather because of what it habitually obliges us to think about.” Illustrations are offered from differences in gendered and non-gendered languages, in the perception of color, and in spatial orientation. Fascinating.

If you haven’t seen The Big Lebowski, go get it –right now!
I think that the Coen brothers are among the best moralists we have today–Fargo is nearly a perfect movie.
And the Big Lebowski–well, the Dude abides.

Just posted to the homepage:

By insisting Tuesday evening that “it’s time to turn the page,” President Barack Obama was talking about more than the Iraq War, and doing much more than reviving one of his most effective slogans from the 2008 campaign.

He was also trying to turn the page on a period in which he has found himself on the defensive, his party in a perilous position for November’s elections, and his reputation for political mastery in doubt.

Obama’s speech was resolutely nonpolitical in form but profoundly political in its implications. To rescue his party, Obama had to begin rebuilding his own popularity, offer hope in a time of economic despair, and restore confidence in the course on which he has set the nation.

Read the rest right here.

In case you missed the address:

While we’re waiting to hear from the president on the end (sort of) of combat duty in Iraq, this seems as good a time as any to recall how we got there in the first place. The August 19, 2010 issue of The New York Review of Books featured an exchange of letters that deserves your attention: “The CIA and WMDs: The Damning Evidence.”

Fulton Armstrong was a member of the National Intelligence Council from 2000 to 2004. He wrote to the NYRB in response to a book review by Thomas Powers of Robert Jervis’s Why Intelligence Fails. Jervis had concluded that the Bush Administration and intelligence personnel made an honest error in promoting evidence of WMDs as a reason for invading Iraq. Armstrong wrote to say that the errors weren’t so innocent.

The National Intelligence Estimate produced by these [national intelligence officers] on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, with the participation of the CIA and other intelligence agencies, was not subjected to the customary “peer review” of the National Intelligence Council….

When we on the National Intelligence Council finally got a full read of the National Intelligence Estimate on WMDs, after its publication, a couple of us expressed grave reservations about the fatally weak evidence and the obsessively one-sided interpretation of what shreds of information it contained. (We were not told at the time that “Curveball” was a solitary source of obviously questionable credentials, nor that contradictory evidence was actually suppressed from the intelligence collection and dissemination process.) One colleague said it was clearly a paper written to provide a rationale for a predetermined policy decision to go to war.

Armstrong goes into great detail on how the erroneous report was created and promoted (and this in a letter that was cleared by the CIA!). He also notes that those responsible were never reprimanded:

The National Intelligence Council and director of central intelligence, George Tenet, gave the NIOs concerned with WMDs big cash awards for producing the NIE, and seven years later and seventeen months into the Obama administration they remain in the same or equivalent jobs.

Both Armstrong’s letter and Powers’s response are worth reading in full. Powers concludes by noting that, despite the evidence, the “honest mistake” theory is safer and easier than pushing for an investigation into what went wrong and who was responsible. Armstrong, for his part, lays out why we ought to care enough to get at the truth:

Covering up or ignoring the problem of politicization won’t make it go away. US intelligence will continue to fail again and again until we resolve it.

Something light for the last week of summer:  What was the last book you read that you couldn’t put down before finishing it?  Or great examples of the experience in your life.?

I vividly remember the experience with William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.  I couldn’t turn the last thirty or forty pages fast enough.  More recently, Ian McEwan’s Atonement came close. The only work of theology that met the test was Karl Rahner’s The Shape of the Church to Come, which kept me up late into the night.  (Now, of course, when I try to read in bed, I don’t get very far before the head nods and the book slips from my hands. The spirit is willing, but the flesh….)

Another wonderful sermon of Newman’s is entitled “A Particular Providence as Revealed in the Gospel.”  Here are two paragraphs to tempt you in:

How gracious is this revelation of God’s particular providence to those who seek Him! Read the rest of this entry »

From the Seattle Times. (The story doesn’t say he’s a Sikh, but I’m assuming that’s what the turban means.  Pretty much every time conservatives ramp up the Islamophobia, a few Sikhs get beat up.)

Apropos of the earlier discussion on flood relief in Pakistan, the Brookings Institution has a detailed comparison of the differences between Haiti and Pakistan, between earthquakes and floods, between relief pledged and individual donors. Here is just one piece of their report. Haiti is in second column; Pakistan the third. 

For those following the troubles a helpful assessment of the whys and wherefores: http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/rc/papers/2010/0826_earthquakes_floods_ferris/0826_earthquakes_floods_ferris.pdf

Sandro Magister has published this morning an anguished and bold letter from a priest of the Legion of Christ to the Legion’s Director. Here is an excerpt:

I address myself to you again with sorrow and shame. The sorrow is increased by the knowledge that sending you this letter will again be a useless effort, as have been other letters and other suggestions to you and to other superiors. But [my] silence would not be a good choice, because it would make me an accomplice of the one who abused and plundered the lives of our brothers.

In these days, I have had the honor of visiting some houses of the Legionaries (and of being received with great charity). I have witnessed with my own eyes that in most of them there are still photos of the village of Cotija, of the house in Cotija, and, incredibly, in three places (San Salvador, Cancún, and Canada) there are photos of Fr. Maciel surrounded by the first followers or by the first groups of Legionaries.

How is this possible, Fr. Álvaro? What message are we sending to Fr. Maciel’s victims? Is this the way to accept the [Vatican] statement of May 1, 2010? Fr. Álvaro, for the love of God and for the honor of those who suffered the horror of abuse, the agony of disdain and disregard, I beg you to order the removal of the photos of the author of the abuse from the home in which he was born, from the village in which he was raised, and from the institution in which those acts were committed, wounding the innocent and casting so much discredit upon the holy Church.

I likewise beg you to order that all of the spiritual retreats in Cotija take on a tone of reparation, that Fr. Maciel’s body be moved from the central altar to one of the crypts to the side in which other Legionaries are buried (so that only Christ may be at the center).

I propose that the home of the deceased be turned into a home of reparation and perpetual adoration, and that the museum be turned into a museum to commemorate his victims and guarantee that they never be forgotten.

Finally, I propose that the house in the mountains (CCI) be given to the diocese to be used as a seminary or retreat house, or even as a place of rehabilitation for priests in the grip of alcohol or other vices.

In this way, we will make a gesture of reparation to the Church of Mexico, so discredited on our account.

The rest is here.

The question raised about the ICC center at 51 Park Place goes further.
At the request of Bob Nunz, take a look at money flowing into other projects:

Here’s Frank Rich in Sunday’s NYTimes: “The Billionaires Bankrolling the Tea Party”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/opinion/29rich.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

And from Saturday’s Times: “Financier’s Largess Shows G.O.P.’s Wall St. Support” (also a swift boat supporter).
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/28/us/politics/28singer.html?ref=politics

Since money is speech in our polity, they have a right to do what they do with their moola. Of course, if we had a fairer tax system, they’d have less to do it with.

St. Mary's Church in downtown New Haven.

I’d like to continue the discussion of parallels between 19th century attacks on Catholicism and current Islamophobia by pointing to the history of the New Haven, Conn., church where Father Michael J. McGivney founded the Knights of Columbus.

A reader sent me a copy of a July 28, 1879 article in which The New York Times, playing the Fox News role, offered a scathing history of St. Mary’s Church under the title, “An Unprofitable Church: Roman Catholic Troubles in New-Haven.” The church on one of New Haven’s finest residential streets had been dedicated five years earlier, but only after a struggle in which the pastor was pressured to accept an alternate site.

As The Times put it, “When the residents of this aristocratic avenue discovered that they were in danger of seeing a Roman Catholic church spring up among them, with all that the establishment of such a church implied, they bestirred themselves to oppose the project. The wisest of the Roman Catholics here did not favor it, and St. Mary’s was induced to exchange the lot for a good one in some other locality.” But that site was also deemed “too good” for Catholics, so a lesser lot was found. The pastor refused this, according to The Times, and built the church as originally planned on wealthy Hillhouse Avenue.

According to the Times, the parish fell into debt (its parishioners being mainly “servant girls”). “The result shows how foolish were those who persisted in building the church on the spot where it stands,” The Times concluded. “How much spite had to do with it cannot now be ascertained, but the complete history of the negotiations would be very interesting. The edifice was erected beyond the boundaries of the parish, and it invaded the most exclusive homes of wealth and culture. It is an eye-sore on the avenue, a source of annoyance and injury to neighboring residents, and a complete failure as a business enterprise.”

Today, it is a thriving community run by the Dominicans, who came to the parish in 1886.  It holds a place in the history of  American Catholicism for, as noted on its Web site, Father McGivney, who served in the parish for seven years, organized the Knights of Columbus in its basement  in 1882.

Much is contained in the Times’s phrase “with all that the establishment of such a church implied,” for it signifies that the writer was able to simply assume that the paper’s readers were already well aware of the Catholic Church’s supposed evils.

Pressure to “compromise” on a site … bias against the religion of an immigrant community …  hostile media coverage. There is nothing new under the sun.

I would love to hear what Old Testament /Hebrew Bible scholars make of this. . . .
is there a psychological connection between perception of physical cleanliness and commitment to moral cleanliness?

The moral issues they discussed could each be argued to involve a certain amount of pollution –smoking, illegal drug use, pornography, profane language, littering and adultery. In one of the best books I’ve ever read, Joel Feinberg’s Offending Others, he argues that there is a distinct class of judgments called “charientic judgments” that get at an “ick factor” produced by, say, bodily fluids, small squishy bugs, every single episode of CSI, etc. One wonders whether, although these are moral issues, the target study group was more concentrated on their charientic aspect.

I wonder whether there is a connection with moral issues that don’t have that a charientic connotation, such as theft, or embezzlement, etc.

HT Daily Dish

Jonathan Mayhew (1720-66), was a Puritan clergyman whose arguments for religious and political liberty were harbingers of arguments made in the Revolutionary War.  In his “Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission,” he defends revolting against religious and political tyranny-and Catholics are presented as the central case. The sermon, preached on the hundredth anniversary of the execution of Charles I, lamented the fact that the anniversary was treated as an occasion for fasting and humiliation–Mayhew would rather have celebrated it as a day of thanksgiving, since  he viewed Charles as a tyrant sympathetic to Catholicism who disgracefully attempted to curb both religious and political liberties of his subjects.

Here’s a passage from the preface:

Civil tyranny is usually small in its beginning, like “the drop of a bucket,” till at length, like a mighty torrent, or the raging waves of the sea, it bears down all before it, and deluges whole countries and empires. Thus it is as to ecclesiastical tyranny also-,–the most cruel, intolerable, and impious, of any. From small beginnings, “it exalts itself above all that is called GOD “and that is worshiped.” People have no security against being unmercifully priest-ridden, but by keeping all imperious BISHOPS and other CLERGYMEN who love to “lord it over God’s heritage,” from getting their foot into the stirrup at all. Let them be once fairly mounted, and their “beasts, the laiety,” may prance and flounce about to no purpose: And they will, at length, be so jaded and hack’d by these reverend jockies, that they will not even have spirits enough to complain, that their backs are galled, or like, Balaam’s ass, to “rebuke the madness “of the prophet.”

(Jonathan Mayhew, A Discourse Concerning Unlimted Submission (Boston: Fowle and Gookin, 1750), preface.)

Would someone like Mayhew look at, say, Archbishop Chaput and Cardinal George and their attempt to rally Catholics to particular political purposes by exercising their religious authority and say “You know what. . .  I told you so”?  Would he have shivered in fear at the presence of six Catholics on the Supreme Court–and not a single Protestant?

I think he would.  But does what Mayhew and his cohort would have thought matter?

And what would we say to him in response?

And how does what we say to him affect how we ourselves consider the emerging place of Muslims in our community today? Can we imagine a future, two hundred fifty years from now, where six Muslims sit on the US Supreme Court–and not a single Christian, Catholic or otherwise? And in what sense does what we think matter? That world is likely to be as different from ours as ours is from Mayhew’s.

This year marks the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of Frédéric Chopin. Today’s Wall Street Journal has a fine article by David Dubal on Chopin’s “Preludes.” Dubal writes:

Most of the 24 Chopin Preludes were sketched out between 1837 and 1838. They are the ultimate miniatures. In an age when the symphony and sonata still held sway, writing these aphoristic Preludes was revolutionary. All except two contain a single musical idea, each boiled down to its essence. Never had brevity been so brief. Ten are under a minute in length; nine last just over a minute. Only the celebrated No. 15, the so-called “Raindrop Prelude,” attains the length characteristic of a small piece, clocking in at 4½ minutes.

Fourteen of the Preludes are full of light, gaiety, serenity and a kind of happiness. Seven contain anguish, rage and fury. Three are simply sorrowful. No matter how tiny, the Preludes loom large musically. Each one is a masterpiece of compressed emotion blended with an unequaled pianistic ingenuity and originality. Many of them are horribly difficult to play. When Robert Schumann read them, he proclaimed Chopin to be the “proudest poet soul of the age.”

Until I read the article, I had not realized Chopin’s inspiration was Bach:

As a child in Warsaw, Chopin was nourished on the then practically unknown preludes and fugues of Johann Sebastian Bach, composed in each of the major and minor keys and collectively known as “The Well-Tempered Clavier.” Chopin was one of the rare pianists of his time who played most of them, and Bach remained his ideal. During the creation of the Preludes he was particularly obsessed with Bach, and took “The Well-Tempered Clavier” with him on a vacation to Majorca in November 1838, where the Preludes were refined and polished.

The rest is here.

The late Catherine LaCugna wrote often of the doctrine of the Trinity as an eminently “practical” doctrine. Its native soil is the Church’s liturgical celebration; and it is “soul-stretching” in its pastoral and personal implications.

Few theologians and pastors in the tradition of the Church have been as deeply aware of this as the saint whose feast we celebrate today, Augustine of Hippo.

After pondering the Mystery of the Triune God for the fifteen books of his de Trinitate, Augustine concludes with a prayer that always deeply moves me. What he prays should be, of course, the common prayer not only of theologians and pastors, but bloggers, pundits … and each of us as we conclude each day:

When the wise man spoke of You in his book, which is called Ecclesiasticus, he said: “We say many things, and yet fall short; and the sum of all our words is: God is all.”  But when we shall have come to You, these many things that we speak, and yet come short, will cease; and You will remain One, and “all in all.”  And we shall say one thing without end, in praising You as one, we ourselves made one in You.

O Lord the one God, God the Trinity, whatever I have said in these books that is of Yours, may they acknowledge who are Yours; if anything of my own, may it be pardoned both by You and by those who are Yours. Amen.

A short piece by Scott Appleby and myself on the mosque controversy…..I see now that we’ve been thinking along similar lines as Mollie O.  and Paul Moses.

Everyone will be there:  “Anniversary of WTC Attack To Prompt Rallies Amid Holy Days”  Let’s see what  the NYPD has to say. http://forward.com/articles/130707/

And the developer speaks: “Islamic Center Also Challenges a Young Builder”  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/27/nyregion/27build.html

In a recent talk in Eastern Europe, Archbishop Charles Chaput criticized increasing ant-Christian sentiment in the West. He gave as an example the police raid of the Cardinal’s residence, which he characterized as being conducted without due process.

It seems to me the only question to be asked is whether the Belgian police followed the established procedures they would have followed if investigating any other suspects of child pornography and child abuse.  (Belgian due process applies–not American.)  And that question, it seems to me, should be asked. The procedures seem very rough. But I don’t know the answer–maybe they are always very rough. I’ve only seen FBI raids on television.

If this is the way the police proceed in every case, then it seems to me there is no question of discrimination against Christians–though there may or may not  be separate reasons to call into question police procedures. Law enforcement officials should proceed the same way when investigating bishops, priests, rabbis, imams, and lay people of all stripes. We are all equal under the law. No one is above the law. There is no “benefit of clergy,” so to speak.  (There also should be no “benefit of celebrity, “—but that’s a separate blog post.)

Surely, Archbishop Chaput cannot be saying that members of the hierarchy deserve preferential treatment at the hands of secular law in the matter of investigating child abuse? Can he?

UPDATE:  The search was ruled illegal–but it’s not clear why.

Here’s an interesting account of jury duty from the Chicago Tribune.
“Blagojevich holdout explains vote”
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-blagojevich-jury-20100827,0,7458628,full.story

Not the one Joseph Komonchak has been providing, but the liturgical one. It seems that it will be set for October 9th.

The Catholic Herald also reports on the booklet being prepared for the papal visit:

The announcement of the feast day forms part of the Pope’s Declaration of Beatification, which has been published as part of the Magnificat booklet for the Papal visit.

The booklet also contains prayers of preparation for the visit, texts for daily Mass from September 12 to September 29, including the Masses of the papal visit.

The booklet also has forewords by Cardinal Keith O’Brien, Archbishop Vincent Nichols, Lord Patten of Barnes and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams.

The booklet also contains essays by leading Catholics such as Newman scholar Fr Ian Ker, Bishop Malcolm McMahon of Nottingham, and the current British Ambassador to the Holy See, Francis Campbell.

Any way of obtaining a copy in the colonies?

Headliner: Jackie Mason at Empire State Building protest.

About a thousand people attended today’s Catholic League demonstration  against the owner of the Empire State Building for his refusal to illuminate the skyscraper’s famous spire in honor of Mother Teresa’s centennial. I was impressed by the attendees’ courtesy, attention, and overall calmness. And plus, people looked good in the light-blue and white colors Catholic League President Bill Donohue asked people to wear in Mother Teresa’s honor.

I can’t give such high marks, though, to the long line of speakers who addressed the crowd from atop a flatbed truck parked on 34th Street across the street from the Empire State Building. There were high points, of course – my heart melts every time I see Detective Steven McDonald, the paralyzed cop who forgave the assailant who shot him.

But a lot of the sentiments expressed in Mother Teresa’s behalf were hardly worthy of Mother Teresa. This explains why no bishop or even a priest could be found among the speakers. Nor did anyone from Mother Teresa’s order, the Missionaries of Charity, take part.

That is just as well because if they had come, they would have heard comedian Jackie Mason, the first speaker. “If she was a Muslim, they would put up a mosque in her honor,” he shouted. He added: “Where is the schmuck?” apparently referring to the building’s maligned owner, Anthony Malkin. “Where is the f______ … who is against Mother Teresa?” He proceeded to attack Mayor Michael Bloomberg for supporting construction of an Islamic community center near the World Trade Center but not showing up at the Mother Teresa demonstration.

Mason got rousing applause, and I heard someone in the crowd add, “Amen.”

Celebrity divorce attorney Raoul Felder noted that the Empire State Building has suffered through some bad news this week – a report about bedbugs, a City Council decision to allow a skyscraper that will block its view, and now this. “The moral of this is don’t mess with Mother Teresa,” he said. To which Donohue added, “If you don’t believe in Divine Providence after this, Anthony Malkin, I don’t know what it takes.”

Now that it was established that the beloved nun brings divine retribution on those who won’t honor her, another speaker, State Sen. Ruben Diaz, prompted the crowd to a chant of “Shame, shame, shame, shame, shame.”

A man named Lionel spoke a possible word of truth when he said that the reason the building’s owner wouldn’t light up the tower for Mother Teresa – when he had previously honored the Salesian Sisters – was his “deep seated enmity for this man.” He gestured at Donohue, who laughed heartily.

Beth Gilinsky, founder of the Jewish Action League and one of the leading opponents of the Islamic center, returned the focus to the so-called Ground Zero mosque – oddly, since Mother Teresa might better be remembered by quotes like this: “There is only one God and He is God to all; therefore it is important that everyone is seen as equal before God. I’ve always said we should help a Hindu become a better Hindu, a Muslim become a better Muslim, a Catholic become a better Catholic.”

Gilinsky coupled the refusal to honor Mother Teresa and the plan for the Islamic center in lower Manhattan and declared, “We are not going to let the ruling class smash everything we hold dear.”

“She’s a firebrand, isn’t she?” said Donohue, who praised her effusively.

It went on like this, sometimes with nasty attacks on Malkin’s character. In the end, Donohue declared victory over Malkin. “We won this war, people,” he said. “He lost the PR war.”

Afterward, I asked Donohue why no high-ranking church officials took part in his rally – he is always fond of listing the bishops who support him. He pointed out that one of the speakers was a deacon (and principal of Xaverian High School in Brooklyn).

What about bishops or priests? I asked. I had seen extremely few priests even in the crowd.

“Do bishops really belong in a setting like this?” he responded. “The bishops have more of a holy role to play.”

He also acknowledged that the Missionaries of Charity did not want to take part.

One of the TV reporters asked what Mother Teresa would have wanted. “I understand her humbleness, but frankly,” Donohue said, “this goes beyond Mother Teresa.”

Indeed.

Perhaps it’s a foolish thought: Is this an issue on which dotCommonwealers of all persuasions and none might agree– apart from the story’s amusing aspects?

““General Motors did not set out to become a benefits agency that occasionally built a car,” said Arnold L. Punaro, a retired Marine Corps major general and head of an independent board appointed by Mr. Gates to examine Pentagon spending. “We don’t want the Department of Defense to become a benefits agency that occasionally kills a terrorist.”…“When you have a head dog, you also have a deputy dog, then a deputy deputy dog, and a deputy deputy deputy dog,” said General Punaro. “The layers are suffocating the bureaucracy.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/27/us/27generals.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp

Spiegel online today has an interview with French philosopher and feminist Elisabeth Badinter on women and motherhood in France and Germany today. She doesn’t like what is happening.  Are there any similarities to what’s happening in the USA?

After his death, Newman’s prayers and meditations were collected and published as Meditations and Devotions.  Here is part of a meditation that he composed in 1848 on God as Creator.  It reflects long-standing aspects of Newman’s personal spirituality.  He almost died of typhoid fever while travelling alone in Sicily in 1833.  He clung to the hope of recovery with the conviction that God had a work for him to do in England.  After his recovery and while aboard ship on the Mediterranean, he composed his most famous poem, “The Pillar of the Cloud,” better known as the hymn “Lead Kindly Light.” Several lines express themes often urged in his sermons (e.g., “Remembrance of Past Mercies“) and reflected in this meditation composed fifteen years later. Read the rest of this entry »

The Onion reports on Time magazine’s newest venture.

TIME Announces New Version Of Magazine Aimed At Adults

Sounds great! I just hope they have a source of funding that isn’t dependent on print ads.

“Here’s a thought,” Jonah Goldberg announces at the beginning of his latest opinion column for the Los Angeles Times:

The 70% of Americans who oppose what amounts to an Islamic Niketown two blocks from ground zero are the real victims of a climate of hate, and anti-Muslim backlash is mostly a myth.

“Thought” may be an overstatement there, as Alex Pareene has already pointed out over at Salon’s War Room blog (beginning with the obvious question: what in heaven’s name is an “Islamic Niketown”? And is it bad?). But because I’m pretty certain I’ve seen some recent expressions of irrational fear directed at Muslims in terms that would ordinarily be outside the realm of acceptable discourse, I’d like to look more closely at how Goldberg makes his case that Islamophobia is “a myth.” Read the rest of this entry »

Last night Michael Bloomberg spoke again, convincingly, on Park51. Bear with me as I quote at length from the superb address:

There are people of good will on both sides of the debate, and I would hope that everyone can carry on a dialogue in a civil and respectful way. In fact, I think most people now agree on two fundamental issues: First, that Muslims have a constitutional right to build a mosque in Lower Manhattan and second, that the site of the World Trade Center is hallowed ground. And the only question we face is: how do we honor that hallowed ground?

(…)

After the attacks, some argued – including some of those who lost loved ones – that the entire site should be reserved for a memorial. But we decided – together, as a city – that the best way to honor all those we lost, and to repudiate our enemies, was to build a moving memorial and to rebuild the site.

We wanted the site to be an inspiring reminder to the world that this city will never forget our dead and never stop living. We vowed to bring Lower Manhattan back – stronger than ever – as a symbol of our defiance and I think it’s fair to say we have. Today, it is more of a community neighborhood than ever before, with more people than ever living, working, playing and praying there.

But if we say that a mosque or a community center should not be built near the perimeter of the World Trade Center site, we would compromise our commitment to fighting terror with freedom.

We would undercut the values and principles that so many heroes died protecting. We would feed the false impressions that some Americans have about Muslims. We would send a signal around the world that Muslim Americans may be equal in the eyes of the law, but separate in the eyes of their countrymen. And we would hand a valuable propaganda tool to terrorist recruiters, who spread the fallacy that America is at war with Islam.

Islam did not attack the World Trade Center – Al-Qaeda did. To implicate all of Islam for the actions of a few who twisted a great religion is unfair and un-American. Today we are not at war with Islam – we are at war with Al-Qaeda and other extremists who hate freedom.

Read the rest of this entry »

Over at the Huffington Post’s religion page, Jim O’Grady has some ideas on how Archbishop Dolan might contribute to the Islamic cultural center debate. O’Grady writes that the archbishop is “uniquely qualified to…promote understanding and help tamp down an incendiary issue by telling the story of Irish Catholics in America.” He recommends in particular the example of the nineteenth-century archbishop of New York John Hughes, who fought back against the claim that Catholicism was an enemy of democracy by proclaiming, “I am an American by choice, not by chance…. I know the value of that civil and religious liberty which our happy government secures for all.” O’Grady:

Since I’m scripting Archbishop Dolan’s press conference, I would also have him look into the cameras and say solemnly: “I’m confident that those principles espoused by Bishop Hughes are today held by an overwhelming majority of Muslim Americans. And that is why, when this cultural center and house of worship is built, I will travel downtown to pay my respects to my fellow Americans, Imam Faisel Rauf and Daisy Kahn.”

Of course, it could be dangerous to start quoting Hughes under the circumstances. He wasn’t exactly the “sensitive” type. On the question of Catholics’ threat to the American project, he announced in 1850 that Roman Catholicism

will convert all Pagan nations, and all Protestant nations, even England with her proud Parliament…. Everybody should know that we have our mission to convert the world — including the inhabitants of the United States — the people of the cities, and the people of the country, the officers of the navy and the Marines, commander of the Army, the legislatures, the Senate, the Cabinet, the president and all.

O’Grady also brings a new analogy into this discussion in recalling Cardinal John O’Connor’s reaction to the outcry against Salman Rushdie.

Meanwhile, another situation ripe for analogy has presented itself in Northern Ireland. The BBC reports that, according to a new police-department probe, in 1972 “the police, the Catholic Church and the state conspired to cover up a priest’s suspected role” in an IRA bombing that killed nine people. On one level, it’s the same dynamic we’ve seen revealed in the sex-abuse scandal applied to a different crime. But it’s also the real-life illustration we didn’t know we were looking for on the question of how much responsibility ordinary believers ought to take for the worst atrocities committed in the name of their religion. After all, the Catholic church wouldn’t tolerate, let alone harbor, terrorists. Certainly not terrorists implicated in the death of eight-year-old girls. Would it?

How long can you be angry? How far is far enough? Those questions seem to have few answers when it comes to 51 Park Place, former Burlington Coat Factory store, and future Islamic Cultural Center.

Clyde Haberman, intrepid NYTimes columnists, went on Sunday to observe the protest by opponents of the ICC. He asked a simple question: How far should the ICC be from the WTC site? He got varying answers from a few more blocks to ….

This response says it all for the Center’s most ardent opponents:

“Even those locations are too close for Debra Burlingame, who has been a voice of rage since her brother, an airline pilot, was killed on Sept. 11. “I’ve been angry for nine years,” she told the crowd at the rally. She urged it to “stay angry.”

“Ms. Burlingame had no use for the imam behind Park51, who she said was not the moderate “he passes himself off as.” To the question of “how far is far enough away” from ground zero, Ms. Burlingame’s answer was blunt. “When it comes to this imam,” she said, “there isn’t a place far enough.”

What are we to make of someone who has been angry for nine years?  Obviously intends to stay angry? And urges us to be as angry as she is?

Here’s Haberman’s column: “Ground Zero: Its Boundaries Are Elastic”  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/24/nyregion/24nyc.html?ref=clydehaberman