Just a month ago, I entered a post on whether the new Pope should retain “S.J.” after his name. It gave rise to a spirited exchange. While arguing that I did not think the Pope (or any bishop) should retain the identifying designation of his religious community, I certainly did not call into question the profound formation the individual had received in his religious community’s tradition. Indeed, I think it constitutes a continuing blessing.

In his homily for today, on his patronal feast of Saint George, Pope Francis shows the influence of Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises on his theological-pastoral vision:

Jesus Himself says in the Gospel:” But you do not believe, because you are not among my sheep.” If we are not “sheep of Jesus,” faith does not come to us. It is a rosewater faith, a faith without substance. And let us think of the consolation that Barnabas felt, which is “the sweet and comforting joy of evangelizing.” And let us ask the Lord for this “parresia”, this apostolic fervor that impels us to move forward, as brothers, all of us forward! Forward, bringing the name of Jesus in the bosom of Holy Mother Church, and, as St. Ignatius said, “hierarchical and Catholic.” So be it.”

The rest is here.

Rocco Palmo has posted Francis’ actual delivery of the homily this morning. It’s fun to watch his expressivity.

Update:

Cardinal Pell has given an interview in which he says:

What I think we have got in the Pope is the very best of the traditional Jesuit: faithful to Christ, faithful to the Church, going out to people – and not just to the powerful ones but to those on the margins, as Francis is urging us to do now. At its best, I don’t think there is any tradition in the Church to equal that of the Jesuits.

Now that Pope Francis has been said to have approved of same-sex civil unions during his time in Argentina, we begin to see other cautious voices chiming in. First was the “no, I didn’t mean THAT” from Vincezo Paglia, and now Archbishop Piero Marini observes “There are many couples that suffer because their civil rights aren’t recognized.”

Make no mistake: Francis spoke clearly and harshly against same-sex marriage, calling it a “destructive attack on God’s plan.” Francis also is fervently opposed to gay adoption, which he has said discriminates against children. (In fact, however, no reputable data shows harm to children from being raised in households headed by same-sex couples. Some studies show benefits.) It is not unreasonable to see his apparent openness to civil unions as a compromise stance. In fact, such a stance would seem to be in accord with Catholic doctrine in that civil law is answerable not to Church teaching but to the requisites of the common good, manifested in contemporary societies by recognizing the equal rights of all. Civil law neither prohibits all vices nor does it require the practice of all virtues. (This latter from that radical dude, Thomas Aquinas.)

This would be a shift from recent magisterial pronouncements. Pope Benedict spoke against civil recognition of same-sex relationships in 2003, not distinguishing civil unions from civil marriage. If Francis stays the course, it’d mark a sharp change from the views of his predecessor still living just across the way.

Echoing Benedict, the USCCB spoke against same-sex civil unions in 2009, calling them

a multifaceted threat to the very fabric of society, striking at the source from which society and culture come and which they are meant to serve. Such recognition affects all people, married and non-married: not only at the fundamental levels of the good of the spouses, the good of children, the intrinsic dignity of every human person, and the common good, but also at the levels of education, cultural imagination and influence, and religious freedom.

Interesting times. Will the USCCB find a way both to accede to Pope Francis’ apparent willingness to promote civil unions AND to continue to stand by its stated concern that society will fall into ruin as a result? Or will they act in defiance of the current Pope, (assuming, of course, that Francis doesn’t change his tune now that he’s changed his name)?

Or, as some have observed, has this ship sailed? The time to promote civil unions as an alternative to same-sex marriage may have passed. To many, now, it’s civil marriage all the way, with civil unions sounding too much like “separate but equal” to the American Catholic ear. (Indeed, Catholics lead other religious groups in their support of same-sex marriage.)

The latest from Catholic News Service:

LONDON (CNS) — Church leaders have told the British government that members of the royal family who marry Catholics under recently passed legislation will not be obliged to bring up their children in the Catholic faith.

Lord Wallace of Tankerness, speaking on behalf of the government, said he had been assured personally by Msgr. Marcus Stock, general secretary of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, that the canonical requirement of Catholics to raise their children in the faith was not always binding.

“I have the specific consent of Msgr. Stock to say that he was speaking on behalf of Archbishop (Vincent) Nichols (of Westminster) as president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales and can inform the House that the view taken by the Catholic Church in England and Wales is that, in the instance of mixed marriages, the approach of the Catholic Church is pastoral,” he said.

Do we all get that “pastoral” out? I’m not in a “mixed marriage” (and the kid does First Holy Communion this Sunday, white dress and all, so we’re clearly the real deal). But I didn’t know how negotiable this pledge to raise the kids Catholic was today. Times change. I wonder how flexible we can be on other things.

In any event, the real reason I posted this is because I couldn’t resist a story that cites Lord Wallace of Tankerness.

Kenneth Feinberg who oversaw the 9/11 victim’s compensation fund will do the same for the Boston One fund meant to provide funds to those killed or wounded in Boston on April 15. Feinberg seems to me an admirable and solomonic character. I wrote about him here at Commonweal last December “The Appraisal Czar,” drawing on his accounts of the many compensation efforts he has judiciously and successfully led (not without criticism, of course, often from the victims–this is America!).

He is a lawyer who specializes in arbitration though in today’s   Times report he remarked, “When people come to see me,” he said of disaster victims and their families, “I’d be better off with a divinity degree or a degree in psychiatry.” Perhaps Boston College could provide an honorary M.Div.

The first segment of the “Credo” series, using the Monreale mosaics, is now available on You Tube. It shows the 7 Days of Creation. I think it extraordinary. The theological and artistic commentaries are in Italian. But, if your Italian is rudimentary, you can still enjoy the mosaics, the gesticulating hands of the Camaldolese monk, and the melodic language of Dante.

I have had to fly to Seattle from Newark and back twice in the past two weeks or so. In addition to affording the opportunity for uninterrupted work, these transcontinental flights also offer the opportunity for guilt free web-surfing (thank you GoGo–the airline internet!).

In catching up up on the papal transition, I came across an article by Dr. Tracey Rowland–the Dean of the John Paul II Institute in Melbourne, Australia, entitled “The Pope and the Philistines.”  Written before the election of Pope Francis, it is clear that she wanted–even, say, expected, someone more like Benedict, about whom she’s written a great deal. Cardinal Bergolio was not listed as an example  of the kind of  “hero-cardinal” she wanted to see assume the papacy after Benedict.

Piqued by her dismissal of “loopy interpretations of Vatican II,” I poked around further, to see what she said about Gaudium et Spes.  This is what I found; I realize, of course, that I’m dealing with material for the popular press, not an academic book.  But I think it frames the questions I want to ask those who are more expert in this area than I am:

How do you think FSJ’s  interpretation of Gaudium et Spes will differ from JPII’s and B16′s? –Will Dr. Rowland consider him “loopy”? Or is there a third way?  Is it significant that FSJ did his doctorate on a theologian who was also extremely influential on B16:  Romano Guardini. If so, how?

Our new issue is now live.

From Alice McDermott’s piece on the faith of a Catholic novelist:

I suppose it’s an occupational hazard of mine—after more than thirty years in this writing business—to apply writing metaphors to any number of things, but lately I have felt the urge to ask my fellow Catholics who are so clear about their various and complex opinions regarding abortion, torture, religious freedom, even charity, the question I often ask myself—and my writing students—when a creative effort threatens to implode under the weight of its own complex plot or loquacious characters or entangled prose: What is at the simple heart of all this palaver? What is it that you believe to be true?

One of the most successful writing assignments I ever gave was to an intelligent class of imaginative and well-read adult students whose circuitous narratives kept spooling away from them. Write a short story, I told them, that begins with these three words: The point is….

After all this time as a Catholic, I begin to fear that our politics, our opinions, our complex arguments and arrangements and attitudes have allowed our beliefs to spool away from us too. Like muddled writers, we forget the simple heart of what it was we wanted to say.

From Margaret O’Brien Steinfels’s column on the use of drones:

Some have suggested that drones provide a great tactical advantage without really changing the ethical calculus of warfare. After all, they argue, in a war zone it makes no difference whether terrorists are killed with a bullet from a machine gun or a missile launched from a drone overhead. A dead terrorist is a dead terrorist.

In fact, the new technology does make a difference. Compared to boots on the ground, drones are cheap, durable, and they don’t complain. What’s more, the man or woman who actually pulls the trigger in a drone strike is thousands of miles away and therefore in no danger of being killed or injured. And there’s this plus: Drones will never require pensions or health-care benefits. That may be one reason the U.S. government has also come to think of drones as the lesser of many evils. So far, drones are estimated to have killed somewhere between 3,000 and 4,700 people—some of them terrorists, some not.

Also: reviews of Sonia Sotamayor’s My Beloved World and Alice Munro’s Dear Life, plus an interview with novelist Richard Ford. See the entire table of contents here.

…of Women!!??

Since I never watch TV except for the news, I am amazed to have found two terrific programs all in one evening: “Call the Midwife” and “The Bletchley Circle.” Both are set in early fifties London. Ration books are still in use. Babies are delivered at home. And “Call” the midwife seems to require running to the nursing convent where they live because people have no phones. The women sleuths in “Bletchley” are in the process of regathering their experience as wartime “decoders” to solve a case of serial murder.

Without going into plot details, let me suggest that the overall impression (on one sitting) is that the women in both dramas are smart, resourceful, energetic and terrific. Naturally there are overtones of male chauvinism which hardly deters them–they smile indulgently. Since there are few expectations by their betters that they are as smart, resourceful, etc., as they actually are, they are free to act without fear of failing, achieving, etc., or having a graduate education.

Since these are current 2011-12-13 productions, I am impressed that the filmmakers are conceptually and dramatically able to imagine liberated women before there were any–officially! Sunday evenings on PBS.

On May 10, 2006 I posted on dotCommonweal the following:

On the fourth ballot this morning (requiring only a simple majority, in contrast to the two-thirds needed on the first three ballots), the eighty year old former Communist, Giorgio Napolitano, was chosen as Italy’s eleventh president.

It would require only a minimum of editing to aggiornare the post. Yes, so desperate and convoluted is the Italian political scene that, despite his own serious reservations, the now eighty-seven year old Napolitano has been elected Italy’s twelfth (eleventh-bis?) president.

This time the dysfunctional right and clueless left united against the upstart comedian-turned-demagogue, Beppe Grillo. Grillo and his minions are gathering today for a rally in the Piazza dei Dodici Apostoli to protest what they are calling a “coup d’état.”

There is always the potential that these mass rallies can turn ugly, with clashes between protesters and police or among political factions. Happily, near the Piazza is the Ristorante Abruzzi, one of Rome’s popular eating places. Given the choice between protest and pranzo, my compari might well choose the latter.

As Papa Francesco would say: “buon pranzo!”

At Thursday’s Interfaith Prayer Service held in Boston’s Holy Cross Cathedral, I thought the clergy participants fair, but rather bland. By contrast, the three public officials who spoke, Mayor Menino, Governor Patrick, and President Obama, were superb, each in his own way.

Patrick and Obama had wonderful content, cadence, and articulation. Menino, by contrast, sounded like Demosthenes — or at least Demosthenes who had forgotten to take the practice pebbles out of his mouth. But he was the most effective, because affective of them all. His love for his City on a Hill was palpable.

The Mayor had checked himself out of the hospital on Monday to go to the site of the bombings. He appeared at the news conference that night and on subsequent days. And, to deliver his brief remarks at the Cathedral, Menino insisted on rising (with evident effort and some pain) to stand at the ambo.

Scott Simon praised him on NPR this morning:

You could see a big streak of Boston when Mayor Tom Menino stood up to speak at this week’s prayer service. He had just signed himself out of the hospital where he was recovering after surgery. The mayor still had a hospital bracelet strapped around his wrist. He had hospital machines that kept him going, cloaked by a sheet on his lap and he was steered to the podium by his son, a Boston police officer, who had been at the finish line of the marathon.

But the mayor of Boston insisted on getting out of his seat to stand at the podium and tell his city in a hoarse, husky voice that crackled like the wheels of one of Boston’s T trains when he said, “We are one Boston.”

You can see Simon’s celebration of Boston here.

A voice I used to hear a lot on Sundays belonged to Pat Summerall, the play-by-play man for NFL telecasts on CBS and Fox (as well as for tennis and golf), who died last week at eighty-two. If the morning was Mass and CCD, the afternoon was Summerall, whose accounting of the action—in a clear and calmly authoritative manner—commanded our attention for most of the remaining day.

Tributes have included words like “quiet” and “understated” to describe Summerall’s style, but dignified is the way I remember it—a necessary counterpoint to the voluble performances of color-analyst partners like Tom Brookshier and, famously, John Madden. Summerall also had a way of conferring that dignity on whatever proceedings he described, especially Giants games, which beginning in the early 1980s he seemed to be doing more and more of. It was a sign, in a Giants family like ours: The presence of “the voice” meant renewed legitimacy for a once-proud team that was then decades removed not only from its last championship, but also competence. Summerall, just by being in the booth, heralded renewed glory.

Our belief was equal parts sentiment, devotion, and a willingness to see things others didn’t. Summerall had been a Giant himself, his place in lore cemented by a game-winning field goal against the Browns in 1958, in a snowstorm at Yankee Stadium. The owner of the Giants was Wellington Mara, a graduate of Fordham University, where Vince Lombardi—later to witness Summerall’s kick as a member of the Giants’ coaching staff—was one of the famous Seven Blocks of Granite. My father and my uncle grew up outside the gates of Fordham, which they eventually attended (as would I), and then my uncle even spent a few weeks at Giants training camp as a quarterback and punter.

Clearly, all of these connections meant something. But they also confirmed a quietly held conviction that, as Giants fans of that time, we were part of something larger: fellow guardians of a tradition shaped by the church and New York City, a community composed largely of second- and third-generation Italian and Irish whose entry into a range of professions proved that hard work paid off—and more importantly, could maybe help you buy season tickets.

Never mind that Summerall was from Florida. He’d go through his own trials too, and come out the other end healthy and humbled and able to help the fellow afflicted, including Mickey Mantle. But before that, on a Sunday in January 1987, it was his voice that documented what, no matter those professed beliefs, had seemed impossible just a year or two earlier: A Super Bowl victory for the Giants, their first ever.

On Justice Stevens’s birthday, I suppose it is appropriate that there is an article in the New York Times that, to my mind, highlights the wisdom of his 2000 dissenting opinion in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale.  In that case, the Supreme Court held that the First Amendment prohibited the state of New Jersey from enforcing its antidiscrimination laws (which prohibit discrimination against gay people) against the Boy Scouts.  The Court (in an opinion by Justice Rehnquist) reasoned that instilling a view that homosexual conduct is immoral was a part of the Boy Scout’s purposes as an expressive association and that, as a consequence, enforcing the antidiscrimination laws against them was unconstitutional.

In his dissenting opinion, Justice Stevens expressed doubt that condemnation of homosexual conduct was really part of the Boy Scout’s self-understanding — as opposed to a convenient stance adopted for the purposes of litigation:

The only policy written before the revocation of Dale’s membership was an equivocal, undisclosed statement that evidences no connection between the group’s discriminatory intentions and its expressive interests.  The later policies demonstrate a brief — though ultimately abandoned — attempt to tie BSA’s exclusion to its expression, but other than a single sentence, the BSA fails to show that it has ever taught Scouts that homosexuality is not ‘morally straight’ or ‘clean,’ or that such a view was part of the group’s collective efforts to foster a belief.

Today, the New York Times reports about the Scouts’ proposal to change its policies to allow gay members.  The group’s leadership has proposed to allow gay scouts, but not gay scout leaders.  (This is interesting to me in part because I’m curious to see how church groups respond to it.  Some have already begun to criticize it, though the key Mormon and Catholic constituencies do not appear to have commented.  Will those interested in Catholic scout groups really insist that exclusion of young boys who identify as gay is required by Catholic teaching on homosexuality?  I tend to doubt it, but we’ll see.)

But back to Justice Stevens.  Towards the end of the story, we see that the text of the proposed resolution includes this telling little passage:

[S]couting is a youth program, and any sexual conduct, whether homosexual or heterosexual, by youth of scouting age is contrary to the virtues of scouting. . . . The Boy Scouts of America does not have an agenda on the matter of sexual orientation, and resolving this complex issue is not the role of the organization, nor may any member using scouting to promote or advance any social or political position or agenda. 

Happy 93rd Birthday, Justice!  You have always been at least 10 years ahead of your time.

If you’re seeking a respite from the news, stop by our website, where we’re currently featuring a lot of new material.

William Galston looks at Brian Leiter’s Why Tolerate Religion:

In the broadest sense … we must understand the U.S. Constitution as positive law. Rational analysis might lead us to conclude that there is nothing special about religion—that religion is a specific instance within a more general category of belief or commitment. But a philosophical question is not just the same as a constitutional question. The Constitution might explicitly affirm, or implicitly reflect, propositions that philosophical reflection would reject.

Leiter’s main concerns are philosophical, not jurisprudential. He begins with what he calls the “central puzzle in this book”—why the state “should have to tolerate exemptions from generally valid laws when they conflict with religious obligations but not with any other equally serious obligations of conscience.” A satisfactory answer would have to show, first, that there is a distinction between religious and nonreligious conscience, and, second, that this difference is such as to warrant disparate state treatment.

Leiter’s point of departure is the proposition that “if there is something morally important about religious belief and practice that demands legal solicitude, it is connected to the demands of conscience that religion imposes upon believers.” Other scholars are not so sure that this is the only such feature of religion, and neither am I. But that it is at least one such feature seems clear.

Paul Moses writes on Lucky Guy, a play by Nora Ephron starring Tom Hanks as New York City tabloid columnist Mike McAlary:

I worked with McAlary at New York Newsday, the setting for early scenes of Lucky Guy. Reviewers, publicists, and Ephron herself, before her death last June, portrayed the play as a love letter to the journalism of a bygone era. But beneath its nostalgic surface—the foul-mouthed newsroom repartee, wafting cigarette smoke, and late nights at the bar—the play poses serious moral questions about journalism and its place in the quest for celebrity.

McAlary was self-effacing, quietly funny, and ever helpful when we worked together in the paper’s Queens and City Hall bureaus. He was also ambitious—as we all were. Most of the reporters New York Newsday hired after it opened in the early 1980s were in their late twenties, so the staff was naturally imbued with youthful energy. McAlary had two assets that set him apart. He knew how to get cops to talk, a crucial skill that eluded nearly all of us but which our tabloid competitors excelled at. And he was an especially good writer.

Rand Richards Cooper reviews the documentaries The Gatekeepers and The House I Live In, one outlining the history of Israeli security agency Shin Bet since the 1967 Six-Day War, the other examining “our nation’s inaptly named corrections industry.”

On The Gatekeepers:

This film will surprise Americans on several fronts. First and foremost is the candor of these men: their willingness to reflect on the moral ambiguity of their work and of Israeli policies; their frank assessment of the brutal—and brutalizing—nature of political violence; and most of all their capacity for self-scrutiny and doubt. It is impossible to imagine such candor and moral perspicacity—such wisdom, really—issuing from an equivalent collection of CIA and FBI directors. As for their assessment of Israel’s actions in the West Bank and Gaza, the six chart a position well to the left of, say, Barack Obama. Referring to the Palestinian intifada, one ex-chief asserts that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter,” while another remarks that “Israel has lost touch with how to coexist with the Palestinians,” and states, simply, “We’ve become cruel.”

Also, the editors comment on the sabotaging of financial reform and whether President Obama will be able “to protect and fortify the still-fragile legacy of his first term.” And, if you haven’t gotten to it yet, see Michael W. Higgins’s piece on G. K. Chesterton.

Finally, make sure to visit the website on Monday, when we’ll be posting stories from our Spring Books issue.

One of the Boston marathon suspects is dead and the other is on the run. (Graphic: NTN.)

Michael Sean Winters of the National Catholic Reporter suggests that “the announcement Monday that Pope Francis had reaffirmed the doctrinal assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious forces those on the left to reconsider their expectations.” Winters thinks those who are dismayed should give the Vatican the benefit of the doubt: “Maybe there really are doctrinal difficulties at the LCWR. I gotta tell you, they lost me with that choice of a keynote speaker who wants to ‘move beyond Jesus.’”

That line led to a flurry of “fraternal correction” from readers, according to Winters, who wrote a follow-up post today (though he forgot to include a link to the post that started the trouble). Winters now says he regrets his “inadequate characterization of Sr. Laurie Brink’s keynote address at an LCWR conference” but, after reading the talk itself, has concluded that “it is even worse than my mischaracterization suggested.”

I read Brink’s talk (.pdf) last year, when the CDF’s citation of it first surfaced, and I posted about it here at dotCommonweal. My judgment was that the CDF seemed to be badly mischaracterizing Brink’s address, perhaps because they were misreading the purpose and character of the talk in general. I’d say Winters is making a similar error now.

I can’t do much better in response to Winters’s take on Brink’s talk than to point to my own take all over again. And while I don’t think her point of view, or her manner of expressing it, is beyond criticism, I do think that criticism ought to consider whom she was addressing and to what purpose. To be frank, I still feel somewhat uncomfortable picking over Brink’s talk, given its original venue and purpose: to stimulate discussion among LCWR member congregations about the difficult choices facing them in an uncertain future. That Brink did not unequivocally denounce any life choice that would lead one away from Christ might be troubling to myself or Winters or the CDF, but this was not a catechetical lecture or a public statement of general belief or an address to pilgrims at World Youth Day. She wasn’t addressing myself or Winters or Catholics in general, and she likely did not see the need to qualify her intentionally provocative remarks just in case someone looking for evidence of heterodoxy decided to examine them later. As I wrote last year, “Remember that she was not talking to elementary school students, but to fellow members of religious congregations, whom she was inviting to frankly consider what sort of choices and commitments lay before them as communities.”

I think how you read this talk says a lot about how you think about Catholic nuns. Brink was speaking to an audience of peers — adult women who, let us remember, had all at some point gone through a serious process of spiritual discernment that led them to take vows dedicating their lives entirely to Christ and his church. That’s what we mean, or what we should mean, when we refer in general to Catholic sisters, and when we think about their place in the church or the propriety of their speech we should remember that they are grownups and individuals with agency and complexity and not either obedient or errant children. Did Sr. Brink need to spell out explicitly for her audience that a renewed commitment to Christ and his church is the only orthodox path to holiness? I imagine she assumed her fellow LCWR members were aware of that basic premise of Catholicism. Read the rest of this entry »

Now up on the homepage is Michael Higgins’s “Larger than Legend: Saving Chesterton from the Chestertonians,” which laments the simplification of GKC’s thought by some of his most ardent admirers. He was called the Prince of Paradox for a reason. Or rather, for a couple of reasons. For Chesterton, the paradox wasn’t just a rhetorical device (though of course it was that too—and that too often in some of his later work). He was a paradoxical thinker. Higgins writes:

[Chesterton's] biographies of Blake, Dickens, Robert Browning, and others amply demonstrate his ability to weave a big tapestry—of work, life, and legacy—that introduces us afresh to figures we thought we already knew. But Chesterton’s true métier, his genius really, was to probe, prod, and prognosticate. His analysis of the unchecked damage inflicted by market capitalism and Socialist statism looks impressively prophetic after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 and the global economic collapse that continues to afflict us. In The Well and the Shallows Chesterton makes clear the reasons for his detestation of capitalism: it undermines the family unit, corrupts domestic values, corrodes morality, usurps the right order of relationships by making the employer more important than the parent, and encourages “for commercial reasons, a parade of publicity and garish novelty, which is in its nature the death of all that was called dignity and modesty by our mothers and fathers.”

In the wake of yesterday’s disappointing Senate vote that failed to break a filibuster on the proposal of universal background checks for gun sales, don’t miss Gabrielle Giffords’s opinion piece in today’s New York Times: “A Senate in the Gun Lobby’s Grip.” Lots of people are calling the senators who voted “no” cowards, but few have the authority of Giffords when it comes to both legislative cowardice and courage in the face of gun violence.

The senators who voted against background checks for online and gun-show sales, and those who voted against checks to screen out would-be gun buyers with mental illness, failed to do their job.

They looked at these most benign and practical of solutions, offered by moderates from each party, and then they looked over their shoulder at the powerful, shadowy gun lobby — and brought shame on themselves and our government itself by choosing to do nothing.

They will try to hide their decision behind grand talk, behind willfully false accounts of what the bill might have done — trust me, I know how politicians talk when they want to distract you — but their decision was based on a misplaced sense of self-interest. I say misplaced, because to preserve their dignity and their legacy, they should have heeded the voices of their constituents.

The failure of the Manchin-Toomey bill is particularly galling because it was not exactly “voted down”: the vote was 54-46 in favor. But 60 votes were needed to defeat a threatened filibuster. Here’s Jonathan Bernstein with a helpful explainer of how that is: “The correct thing to say about this is that the amendment was defeated by filibuster,” he writes. “It’s a little tricky, but that’s the essence of it.” Sean Sullivan of the Washington Post has another good account of how and why the filibuster killed this bill, including the role that poison-pill amendments played in guaranteeing that the Senate would agree to the 60-vote threshold in the first place.

“This blocking, by the minority, of a hugely popular and quite modest gun control measure ought to encourage the mainstream political press to perhaps interrogate the legitimacy of the 60-vote threshold a bit more critically,” says Salon’s Alex Pareene, “but probably we will just move on to budget stuff again.” For a similarly frustrated and discouraging (but clarifying!) account of how Senate procedures prevented majority will from prevailing, see Jonathan Chait on “How America’s Crappy Political System Killed Background Checks” (with a follow-up explaining to Rich Lowry et al. that no, the factors Chait cited are not the inevitable legacy of our Founding Fathers’ vision for this nation).

Our editorial after the Newtown massacre supported expanded background checks and other reforms that were defeated yesterday. “A strengthened assault-weapons ban ought to be reintroduced in Congress,” we said. “Let those who would oppose it defend their votes.” Thanks to the normalization of obstructionism in the Senate, they didn’t have to.

Pope Francis sent his regrets to the plenary meeting of the Argentinian episcopate. He can’t be present due to unforeseen events. But he shared some thoughts with them:

In a letter sent to the group, which will remain in closed session until April 20, the Pope begins by ‘apologizing’ for his absence noting that ‘recent commitments’ have impeded his attending. He then urges them to reflect on the theme ‘Into the Deep’ in light of the great missionary document of Aparecida, launched following the V General Conference of the Bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean. A document the then Cardinal Bergoglio helped draft.
“Mission” he notes, “is key to ministry”. “A Church that does not go out of itself, sooner or later, sickens from the stale air of closed rooms”. Pope Francis went on to concede that at times, like anyone else, in going out the Church risks running into accidents. But he added “I prefer a thousand times over a Church of accidents than a sick Church”.

Pope Francis said that the Church typically suffers from being self-referential, of only looking to and relying on itself. He spoke of a “narcissism that leads to a routine spirituality and convoluted clericalism” and prevents people from experiencing the sweet and comforting joy of evangelization.

The full letter, in Spanish, is here.

I’ve posted the latest installment of Un cammino attraverso la Commedia over on the Verdicts site. As you’ll see, I’m interested in how the Inferno ends by not ending. We’re onto the Purgatorio! As always, comments welcome.

Charles Pierce reflects on a week that began with a bombing and has since seen the release of a report confirming the United States engaged in torture after 9/11, as well as the successful effort by a minority in the U.S. Senate to block a motion on cloture and thus prevent an up-or-down vote on a minor extension of federal background checks on gun purchases that nine out of ten Americans support.

There is a strong, coherent bloc … that believes that a certain level of violence is so inherent in this country that it is shielded absolutely by the Constitution, and that it is so essential to who we are as a people that to try to control it — let alone eliminate it — weakens our national institutions and blights our national character. There is nothing Machiavellian about this. It is what people believe is part of what makes America what it is. It is an essential article of faith. It is unshakable. It is implacable. And it is triumphant.

Aside from what this week has seen so far, it also marks the anniversaries of the Virginia Tech shootings, in which thirty-two people died (April 16, 2007); the Oklahoma City bombing (April 19, 1995), in which one-hundred-sixty-eight people were killed; and the Columbine High School shootings (April 20, 1999), in which thirteen people were killed.

Back to Pierce:

Make no mistake. … There is a barbarism in the American soul and we must protect some of it by law. To root it out is to endanger our lives on the one hand, and our liberty on the other. We must tolerate the barbarism of the black sites to stay alive, and we must tolerate the occasional mass shooting in order to maintain our liberty. We will find the barbarian who killed and maimed the people along Boylston Street in Boston because his barbarism was not sanctioned, nor was it sanctified by law. That is the simple basic equation of where we are right now. 

Gabrielle Giffords was told this. The families of the children of Newtown were told this. The 91 percent of the American people who want something that they now have no hope of getting were told this, The president of the United States, fairly shaking with impotent anger in the Rose Garden, was told this. We are a violent people. We are an armed people. We are a people intent on permitting mayhem and slaughter. We are a people intent on providing the means for mayhem and slaughter. And because of all of this, we are a free people.

In many ways the Boston Marathon on Patriots’ Day—preceded by the reenactment of Paul Revere’s Ride and the Battles of Lexington and Concord that launched the American Revolution, along side the Boston Red Sox playing major league baseball’s only morning game of the year at nearby Fenway Park—is the biggest small town parade in the country, stretching as it does for 26.2 miles with hundreds of thousands of spectators along the route.  It’s no exaggeration to say that most of the region’s 4.5 million residents have some direct connection with the day’s public rituals.  And just as tragedy in a small town has a way of weaving its way into the lives of virtually all the inhabitants, so too have Monday’s bombings touched Bostonians near and far, those who’ve lived in the city all their lives as well as many who lived here only a short time, or just passed through as visitors.

There is a brusqueness to the local culture.  It’s not exactly that Bostonians are rude.  It’s actually quite common to see young people give up seats on the subway to their elders, or bus riders offer a helping hand to a pregnant mother with her young children and groceries.  What’s far less common is to see Bostonians graciously accepting thanks for their small kindnesses.  They’re more likely to wave it off, treat it as no big deal (because that’s what you’re supposed to do), and be on their way to the next thing.

So when hundreds of citizens joined police, fire, rescue and medical professionals in rushing to the aid of those hurt by the explosions, as well as those suddenly with no place to go because their home or hotel was now part of a 15 block cordoned-off crime scene, it was no surprise.  Neither was their general reaction when asked about it later:  “I just did what anybody else would do in that situation.”

Some of that same attitude was present in the announcement Tuesday morning, less than 24 hours after the blasts, by the Boston Athletic Association (sponsor of the Marathon) which ends,  “Boston is strong. Boston is resilient. Boston is our home. And Boston has made us enormously proud. The Boston Marathon is a deeply held tradition – an integral part of the fabric and history of our community. We are committed to continuing that tradition with the running of the 118th Boston Marathon in 2014.”

After all, no small town cancels an annual parade just because something bad happened one time.

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Here are links to just a few of the beautiful and powerful reflections published in recent days.  I don’t know whether or to what extent any of these writers and performers still consider themselves Catholic, but it seems to me that there’s something distinctively Catholic (and Bostonian) in what each of them has to say.

“The Redemption of the Man in the Cowboy Hat” by Brandeis professor and former Boston Globe columnist Eileen McNamara.

“Messing with the Wrong City” by author Dennis Lehane.

“On Newbury Street, a Defiant Homecoming” by Boston Globe columnist Kevin Cullen.

“The Marathon“, by Grantland’s Charlie Pierce.

“Whoever Did This Did Not Know S*** About the People of Boston“, by comedian Stephen Colbert.

I have only seen the Cathedral of Monreale in Sicily once, many years ago. But it remains one of the most striking memories I have. Those who have seen it know that the resplendent twelfth century mosaics have brought the Bible to life for generations of Christians.

Sandro Magister reports on a project that will be televised, beginning this Sunday, and then made available on You Tube, using the Monreale mosaics as portals to a deeper understanding of the Church’s faith.

Senate Resolution 65 from the Foreign Relations Community, introduced by Lindsay Graham and Robert Menendez, has 79 co-sponsors making it likely to pass the full body. With many “Whereas-es” enumerating the sins of Iran, the resolution goes on to expresses full support for Israel (whatever you want, Bibi).  Number 8 “urges that, if the Government of Israel is compelled to take military action in self-defense, the United States Government should stand with Israel and provide diplomatic, military, and economic support to the Government of Israel in its defense of its territory, people, and existence.”

That sounds like, “you start a war, we’ll finish it.” Except for the next and last line of the resolution: “Nothing in this resolution shall be construed as an authorization for the use of force or a declaration of war.”

Hmmm?! Does the U.S. Senate continue to recognize Executive authority in declaring war? Or is this a shot across Obama’s bow as Benny Gantz, head of the Israeli Defense Forces, announces that Israel can go it alone, especially if he understands that the U.S. Senate will swoop in to help.

Sally Potter on Margaret Thatcher in n+1:

I discovered it was possible to contain at least two attitudes simultaneously: on the one hand, revulsion toward and criticism of her ideas, the policies of greed, selfishness, brutal colonialism and militarism, and, on the other hand, a grudging admiration of her ability to gate-crash her way to power as a female, continuously enduring personal attacks—the endless references to her hair, her handbag, her voice, even the angle of her head.

George Scialabba on Albert Camus and the Algerian crisis:

In late 1954, the FLN launched a guerrilla offensive, to which the French government responded by escalating its repression. In August 1955, the FLN massacred 123 French and Muslim civilians, and the French Army (along with paramilitary groups of pieds-noirs) went on a rampage, killing thousands of guerrillas and Arab civilians. The Algerian War had begun in earnest.

Camus was distraught, not least because his family, including his elderly mother, and many close friends, French and Arab, were caught between two armed forces employing indiscriminate violence.[...]

Moral imagination is not to be expected, perhaps, from politicians or military commanders. But even the intellectuals of Paris and Algiers failed to respond, preferring partisan commitment. Camus was profoundly discouraged, and moreover bore many scars from earlier Parisian polemics. Further ridicule was in store: At a press conference in Stockholm after the Nobel ceremony, Camus made a statement widely misreported as “I believe in justice, but I will defend my mother before justice.”… What he said was: “People are now planting bombs in the tramways of Algiers. My mother might be on one of those tramways. If that is justice, then I prefer my mother.” He was not sentimentally exalting his mother above justice; he was rejecting the equation of justice with revolutionary terrorism.

Adam Gopnik on National Geographic and its academic critics (subscription required):

National Geographic didn’t propagandize for a Western view of the world in the guise of something else; it argued openly for it, in issue after issue. The belief in the superiority of Western civilization covers over a tremendous amount of suffering—the Belgian Congo genocide seems nowhere mentioned—but it is no crazier than beliefs we hold just as dear. The National Geographers might have been wrong in their self-regard, but they were hardly sneaky. Meanwhile, historical criticism, which is ostensibly about trying to understand things as they were seen then, too often spends its time hectoring the dead about not having seen things as we do now. The cultural-studies approach to the creators of the old National Geographic is like nothing so much as an article in the old National Geographic about an alien tribe—no less condescending, certainly, if a good deal less generous.

The hallmark voice of the Billy Graham crusades has passed at 104, after an amazingly full life. His rendition of “How Great Thou Art” is a madeleine of my evangelical youth. My first visit to Madison Square Garden (after the circus) was to a Billy Graham rally, featuring Bev Shea, Cliff Barrows, Ethel Waters and the rest. Video below — and first thoughts: would that booming voice and tinny piano resonate with today’s evangelical culture, where Broadway-style production values are the norm? RIP, indeed.

UPDATE: David Neff on the story behind the hymn:

George Beverly Shea’s first contact with “How Great Thou Art” dates to 1954. But the song itself dates to 1885, when Swedish pastor Carl Gustav Boberg was caught in a thunderstorm.

Though we’re all understandably wrapped up in other breaking news, there’s a report in the New York Times today that shouldn’t be overlooked:

A nonpartisan, independent review of interrogation and detention programs in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks concludes that “it is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture” and that the nation’s highest officials bore ultimate responsibility for it.

The Times‘s Scott Shane calls the 577-page study (which you can download as a PDF here) “the most ambitious independent attempt to date to assess the detention and interrogation programs.” The report itself says, “We believe it is the most comprehensive record of detainee treatment across multiple administrations and multiple geographic theatres—Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo and the so-called ‘black sites’—yet published.” Why is this (still) important? Because, as the report’s authors say, unless we know what was done, how it happened, and what resulted, there’s nothing to stop us from doing it again.

The use of torture, the report concludes, has “no justification” and “damaged the standing of our nation, reduced our capacity to convey moral censure when necessary and potentially increased the danger to U.S. military personnel taken captive.” The task force found “no firm or persuasive evidence” that these interrogation methods produced valuable information that could not have been obtained by other means. While “a person subjected to torture might well divulge useful information,” much of the information obtained by force was not reliable, the report says.

And for a reminder that what happened immediately after 9/11 has present-day repercussions, see this op-ed published in yesterday’s Times, which offers testimony from a hunger-striking detainee at Guantanamo. Carol Rosenberg, a reporter for the Miami Herald on the Gitmo beat, wrote a helpful account of why and how prisoners are hunger striking (45 of them at last count, according to her updates on Twitter). To put it simply: they want to remind the world they’re there. They are a living legacy of the decisions made and standards set aside in the early days of the “war on terror,” and the nation can never just look forward—as President Obama famously said he would prefer to do—while their fate remains in limbo.

Pope Francis had some inspiring words about our fear of the stirrings of the Holy Spirit, to me the most neglected aspect of the Trinity among Catholics — even as it moves millions of other Christians to holiness in other parts of the Christian world. As Vatican Radio reports on today’s homily, his words were in the context of embracing the changes pushed by the Second Vatican Council:

Pope Francis’ homily at the mass was centred on the theme of the Holy Spirit and our resistance to it. It took its inspiration from the first reading of the day which was the story of the martyrdom of St. Stephen who described his accusers as stubborn people who were always resisting the Holy Spirit.

Put frankly, the Pope continued, “the Holy Spirit upsets us because it moves us, it makes us walk, it pushes the Church forward.” He said that we wish “to calm down the Holy Spirit, we want to tame it and this is wrong.” Pope Francis said “that’s because the Holy Spirit is the strength of God, it’s what gives us the strength to go forward” but many find this upsetting and prefer the comfort of the familiar.

Nowadays, he went on, “everybody seems happy about the presence of the Holy Spirit but it’s not really the case and there is still that temptation to resist it.” The Pope said one example of this resistance was the Second Vatican council which he called “a beautiful work of the Holy Spirit.” But 50 years later, “have we done everything the Holy Spirit was asking us to do during the Council,” he asked. The answer is “No,” said Pope Francis. “We celebrate this anniversary, we put up a monument but we don’t want it to upset us. We don’t want to change and what’s more there are those who wish to turn the clock back.” This, he went on, “is called stubbornness and wanting to tame the Holy Spirit.”

Some could easily read that as a contradiction of Benedict XVI’s view of the council, which emphasized taming the “spirit” of the council and undoing changes through a “reform of the reform.” I doubt Francis necessarily intended to tweak his predecessor on the ex-pope’s 86th birthday, an event Francis also noted and prayed for.

In any case, I think this portrait of Benedict, a birthday tribute that Greg Kandra points to, is the real insult to His Other Holiness. It’s meant as a nice thing, from the German Embassy to the Holy See. I’m no art critic, but really now…

Posted on our site today, E. J. Dionne Jr. on what the current gun debate is really telling us, and Rand Richards Cooper on the documentaries The Gatekeepers and The House I Live In.

From E. J.’s piece:

Because the accounts from the Sandy Hook families have been so moving and so wrenching, it is common to say that a gun bill is being carried along “on a wave of emotion.” There is nothing wrong with honest emotion, but the implication is that we are acting on guns in a way we would not act if our judgments were based on pure reason or a careful look at the evidence.

This has it exactly backward.

The truth is that the Newtown slaughter has finally moved the gun debate away from irrational emotions, ridiculous assumptions, manipulative rhetoric — and, on the part of politicians, debilitating terror at the alleged electoral reach of those who see any new gun regulations as a step into totalitarianism. These bills are being taken seriously precisely because we are finally putting emotion aside. We are riding a wave of reason.

Read it all here. 

Cooper, writing on The Gatekeepers, a documentary splicing interviews with archival footage outlining the history of Shin Bet since the 1967 Six-Day War and the contours of Israeli policy vis-à-vis its Arab nemeses: 

This film will surprise Americans on several fronts. First and foremost is the candor of these men: their willingness to reflect on the moral ambiguity of their work and of Israeli policies; their frank assessment of the brutal—and brutalizing—nature of political violence; and most of all their capacity for self-scrutiny and doubt. It is impossible to imagine such candor and moral perspicacity—such wisdom, really—issuing from an equivalent collection of CIA and FBI directors. As for their assessment of Israel’s actions in the West Bank and Gaza, the six chart a position well to the left of, say, Barack Obama. Referring to the Palestinian intifada, one ex-chief asserts that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter,” while another remarks that “Israel has lost touch with how to coexist with the Palestinians,” and states, simply, “We’ve become cruel.” In the United States, such views would be considered anti-Israel and, by some, anti-Semitic. 

Read the whole thing here.

One of the many things that make the trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell interesting  is that if convicted of murdering any of seven newborns allegedly delivered live in his West Philadelphia clinic, he would face the death penalty. Indeed, capital punishment  plays an important part in the case since the district attorney allowed cooperating witnesses – those who admit killing their tiny victims with scissors — to plead guilty to lesser charges that don’t carry the death penalty.

Would Dr. Gosnell’s execution by lethal injection be a concern for those who call themselves prolife? It turns out that the answer is yes — at least for one prominent anti-abortion advocate, Princeton University Professor Robert P. George. In a post at First Things, he writes:

Kermit Gosnell, like every human being, no matter how self-degraded, depraved, and sunk in wickedness, is our brother—a precious human being made in the very image and likeness of God. Our objective should not be his destruction, but the conversion of his heart. Is that impossible for a man who has corrupted his character so thoroughly by his unspeakably evil actions? If there is a God in heaven, then the answer to that question is “no.” There is no one who is beyond repentance and reform; there is no one beyond hope. We should give up on no one.

It will be interesting to see the reaction George gets, including from the substantial number of Catholic bishops who hold his conservative views in high esteem. A call to spare Gosnell’s life would make a powerful prolife statement, steeped in gospel values. George’s column anticipated resistance to that:

I do not myself believe that the death penalty is ever required or justified as a matter of retributive justice. Many reasonable people of goodwill, including many who are strongly pro-life (and whose pro-life credentials I in no way question), disagree with me about that. But even if the death penalty is justified in a case like Gosnell’s, mercy is nevertheless a legitimate option, especially where our plea for mercy would itself advance the cause of respect for human life by testifying to the power of mercy and love.

I do not expect my request to be met with universal acclaim.

The comments on his post so far attest to that — most are thumbs down for sparing Dr. Gosnell’s life.

A big question for me in assessing the new Pope’s performance is whether the admittedly dramatic (and, in my opinion, hopeful) differences between Francis and Benedict are simply matters of style or whether they portend some substantive change in direction for the bureaucracy.  One of the litmus tests I set for myself was Francis’s treatment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (“LCWR”).  The first reports are now coming in on that front, and style seems to be edging ahead of substance.  Today, the Vatican issued a statement that the leadership of the LCWR had met with Cardinal Muller (prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) and Archbishop Sartain (Seattle), the man appointed by the Vatican to keep the nuns in line.  According to the Vatican’s statement, “Archbishop Müller informed the Presidency [of the LCWR] that he had recently discussed the Doctrinal Assessment with Pope Francis, who reaffirmed the findings of the Assessment and the program of reform for this Conference of Major Superiors.”  It is admittedly still early, and the Vatican statement leaves a lot of room for a future change in direction.  It is worth keeping an eye on this in coming months.