“Maureen Dowd is on vacation” says the notice at the bottom of the op-ed page of today’s New York Times. (Lent discourages any unseemly display of joy!).

In Maureen’s little pond Stanley Fish swims this month. Professor Fish has an engaging column today entitled, “Religion without Truth.” No poaching on this pond, however: it is available only to subscribers to Times Select.

Fish comments on Time Magazine’s cover story about teaching the Bible in the schools. To appease the multi-culturalists assurances are given, in the story, that the Bible will be taught simply as a secular text, with truth claims securely bracketed.

The cantankerous Fish will have none of that. He comments: “The truth claims of a religion — at least of religions like Christianity, Judaism, and Islam — are not incidental to its identity; they are its identity.”

And he concludes with a splash: “Teaching the Bible in that spirit may succeed in avoiding the dangers of proselytizing and indoctrination. But if you’re going to cut the heart out of something, why teach it at all?”

If that last bears some slight resemblance to the thought of the current occupant of the Chair of Peter, perhaps Ms Dowd could be persuaded to prolong her vacation, and the editors of the newspaper of record might try to land an even bigger Fish.

Bill Cork has a post on the rumored universal indult for the Tridentine Mass that put me in mind of Cathy Kaveny’s phrase describing those who are eager for the “restoration” but don’t know Latin, or–as Bill points out–don’t want to learn Latin.

A dear friend alerted me to a blog that I had not been aware of. It is entitled Vultus Christi, and is part of the spiritual ministry of Father Mark, a Cistercian monk at the Abbey of the Basilica of Santa Croce in Rome.

Today’s post reflects on the spirituality of John Henry Newman. He quotes from a booklet on Newman that speaks of “the three kinds of divine presence in which Newman’s prayer unfolded: the presence of the indwelling Trinity, the Real Presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, and the presence of Christ in Sacred Scripture.”

And Father Mark adds one of his favorite prayers of Newman:

O my God, my whole life has been a course of mercies and blessings shown to one who has been most unworthy of them.
I require no faith, for I have a long experience,
as to Thy providence towards me.
Year after year Thou hast carried me on —
removed dangers from my path —
recovered me, recruited me, refreshed me,
borne with me, directed me, sustained me.
O forsake me not when my strength faileth me.
And Thou never wilt forsake me.
I may securely repose upon Thee.
Sinner as I am, nevertheless, while I am true to Thee,
Thou wilt still and to the end,
be superabundantly true to me.

The recent conversation on the Catholic Blogosphere’s at St. Joseph’s is up on Busted Halo. Featuring our very own blog moderator, Grant.

So, dotCommonwealers, is this what we’re doing?

Nicaragua’s Supreme Court heard from a contingent of the Catholic Church last week as the court considers the constitutionality of a total ban on abortion passed last October.

The Catholic News Agency also carried the story Monday and has links to related stories. I last posted some thoughts on Nicaragua’s abortion ban Dec. 15.

The court is expected to rule on the case sometime in May.

Since the court began considering the constitutionality of the ban in January, a variety of groups around the country have offered testimony. Doctors opposed to the ban on “therapeutic” abortions, previously legal, have weighed in; women’s groups have testified; and now the Church is having its day in court.

Groups opposed to the abortion ban have staged demonstrations outside the court building. None of the reports I’ve read indicate that any violence has occurred on either side as the court considers the issue.

What strikes me, as an American, as particularly interesting is how expeditiously the court has moved to consider the matter–within just a couple of months of the bill’s signing–and is giving all sides a chance to air their views. The court hearings seem be almost a re-debate of the ban, a debate the ban’s critics complain wasn’t adequate last fall when the National Assembly passed it.

Critics of the ban–including some foreign groups that do business in or operate NGOs in Nicaragua–said that the legislation was timed to coincide with national elections, and that candidates supported the bill in order to win endorsements from Church leaders.

Most Nicaraguans supported the ban, though the national obstetrical and gynecological association said it left them a legal Catch-22–liable for punishment if they let mothers die and liable for punishment if they terminated pregnancies for any reason. Church officials offered to discuss the issue with doctors, but doctors rejected the offer, saying that it amounted to a debate between religion and science.

Whatever the courts decide may encourage the National Assembly to clarify how doctors may treat women with life-threatening pregnancies in a country where not all hospitals have modern diagnostic tools, and where not all expectant mothers have quick and affordable access to any hospital at all.

The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed piece today that I found intriguing. Unfortunately, it is available on-line only to subscribers; but the gist is here:

The ‘Genocide Olympics’
By Ronan Farrow and Mia Farrow

“One World, One Dream” is China’s slogan for its 2008 Olympics. But there is one nightmare that China shouldn’t be allowed to sweep under the rug. That nightmare is Darfur, where more than 400,000 people have been killed and more than two-and-a-half million driven from flaming villages by the Chinese-backed government of Sudan.

That so many corporate sponsors want the world to look away from that atrocity during the games is bad enough. But equally disappointing is the decision of artists like director Steven Spielberg — who quietly visited China this month as he prepares to help stage the Olympic ceremonies — to sanatize Beijing’s image.

The authors go so far as to evoke the memory of Leni Riefenstahl’s notorious filming of the 1936 Olympics.

I would be interested in reactions from dotCommers.

This discussion from US News, is interesting for any number of reasons, not least because of the suggestion by the spokesman for Focus on the Family that anyone who is not an “evangelical” Christian, no matter how reliably conservative on issues that matter to evangelicals, will have a hard time “connect[ing] with the Republican Party’s conservative Christian base.” In other words, he is applying a very narrowly defined religious litmus test (presumably on top of a fairly rigid ideological test) for “conservative Christian” support in the Republican presidential primary. This strikes me as something genuinely new, at least in its explicitness, but maybe I just wasn’t paying enough attention to past Republican primaries.

Also interesting, particuarly for those who continue to support a conservative political alliance between Catholics and evangelicals, is how Catholics are clearly excluded by the aforementioned religious litmus test. Now, it’s possible that Dobson does not speak for most “conservative Christians” on this, but he is certainly an influential figure in that community and we should probably take him as reflecting (or affecting) the sentiment of a significant portion of those voters. This obviously bodes ill for Rudy, although my sense is that being Catholic is the least of the problems the pro-choice, pro-gay rights, thrice married former mayor — who is occasionally prone to cross-dressing — will have with the “Republican Party’s conservative Christian base.”

Anyway, here’s the excerpt from the story in US News:

Focus on the Family founder James Dobson appeared to throw cold
water on a possible presidential bid by former Sen. Fred Thompson while
praising former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who is also weighing a
presidential run, in a phone interview Tuesday. “Everyone knows he’s conservative and has come out strongly for the
things that the pro-family movement stands for,” Dobson said of
Thompson. “[But] I don’t think he’s a Christian; at least that’s my
impression,” Dobson added, saying that such an impression would make it
difficult for Thompson to connect with the Republican Party’s
conservative Christian base and win the GOP nomination.

Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Thompson, took issue with Dobson’s
characterization of the former Tennessee senator. “Thompson is indeed a
Christian,” he said. “He was baptized into the Church of Christ.”

In a follow-up phone conversation, Focus on the Family spokesman
Gary Schneeberger stood by Dobson’s claim. He said that, while Dobson
didn’t believe Thompson to be a member of a non-Christian faith, Dobson
nevertheless “has never known Thompson to be a committed
Christian—someone who talks openly about his faith.” “We use that word—Christian—to refer to people who are evangelical
Christians,” Schneeberger added. ” Dr. Dobson wasn’t expressing a
personal opinion about his reaction to a Thompson candidacy; he was
trying to ‘read the tea leaves’ about such a possibility.”

UPDATE: I’ve modified the language of this post and fleshed it out a bit to make more clear what I think is interesting about Dobson’s remarks.

UPDATE II: Andrew Sullivan weighs in.

UPDATE III:  Faithful Democrats has some concerns about Dobson’s pick as the authentically “Christian” candidate in the Republican primary.

Novelist Rumer Godden would have been 100 years old this year. She was born in England, lived much of her life in India, and died at age 91, having converted late to Catholicism.

Godden wrote numerous novels, but the ones about nuns remain her most famous. “Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy” and “In This House of Brede” have been re-released in the Loyola Classics series.

Both these books are about middle-aged women with “pasts” who find themselves called to a vocation that demands energy, action and self-honesty.

“A convent is not a place for broken hearts,” Sister Marie Lise, murderess and former prostitute, muses in “Five for Sorrow.”

Both books delineate the ironies of monastic life–abundance through poverty, freedom through discipline and obedience, love through chastity. Perhaps the best part of the novels are the backstories–or hints of stories–that Godden offers about individual sisters. These are not sugar-coated holy women, though some reach holiness. Others get only partway there. Some fail altogether.

The Loyola series doesn’t include “Black Narcissus,” which depicts the gradual breakdown of discipline that befalls a convent trying to operate in a former harem in the Himalayas. It is to nuns what “Lord of the Flies” is to adolescent boys. It is a less inspiring picture of monasticism, to be sure, but no less a revealing one.

In re-reading “Five for Sorrow” last week, I noticed some similarities between Godden’s nuns and some of the heroines in today’s popular chick lit, especially the ones in “The Nanny Diaries,” “Citizen Girl,” and “The Devil Wears Prada.” Fed up with materialism, the toxic workplace, and the devaluation of love and friendship, those girls, like Godden’s nuns, deliberately turn their backs on conventional notions of success to save their, well, souls. Though religion isn’t the language of the chick lit novel, I think Sisters Marie Lise and Phillippa would have recognized the impulse.

This past weekend I attended the Catholic Peace Fellowship conference in South Bend, Indiana, “Neither Left nor Right: The Heart of Christian Peacemaking.” It was a quietly powerful event.

It was moving to hear CPF cofounders Jim Forest and Tom Cornell talk about gospel non-violence, working with Thomas Merton and Dorothy Day to start Catholic Peace Fellowship, and the fundamental contradiction of loving one’s enemies with one hand while killing them with the other.

Several of the conference attendees went on to protest the military presence at the University of Notre Dame. Within minutes they were disbanded by university police.

about many things, including the polarization in the Catholic church.

USAToday reports on efforts by cities to regulate the distribution of food to the homeless:

Cities are cracking down on charities that
feed the homeless, adopting rules that restrict food giveaways to
certain locations, require charities to get permits or limit the number
of free meals they can provide. Orlando, Dallas, Las Vegas and Wilmington, N.C., began enforcing such laws last year. Some are being challenged. Last
November, a federal judge blocked the Las Vegas law banning food
giveaways to the poor in city parks. . . .

“Going
after the volunteers is new,” says Michael Stoops of the National
Coalition for the Homeless. “They think that by not feeding people, it
will make the homeless people leave.” City
officials say the rules were prompted by complaints about crime and
food safety. Some say they want control over locations so homeless
people can also get services such as addiction counseling and job
training.

“The feedings were happening
several times a week” in parking lots and sidewalks downtown, says
Dewey Harris, director of Wilmington’s Community Services Department.
“A lot of the merchants said, ‘We feel uncomfortable when you have all
these homeless being fed downtown when we’re trying to attract
tourists.’ “

Grant and Fr. Robert have re-ignited the discussion about Fr. Jon Sobrino below, so it will be interesting to see where that goes.

But I want to pose a slightly different question. How should the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith exercise its role of doctrinal oversight? Or if you want to ask the question more broadly, how should the Church make clear what its doctrinal boundaries are?

It seems unquestionable that there are times when making those boundaries clear is absolutely necessary. It is hard to see, for example, how Gnosticism or Arianism could have been tolerated as legitimate theological opinions without deforming the faith that had been inherited from the apostles.

It is also unquestionable that there have been times when the boundaries have been drawn too narrowly or prematurely. The actions taken in the mid-20th century against theologians like Henri de Lubac, Yves Congar, and John Courtney Murray could serve as examples here.

Since the reorganization of the CDF in 1965 (which included changing its name), it has used a variety of means in making its point. The most dramatic cases involve sanctions against individual theologians (e.g. Kung, Curran, Haight). In other cases (e.g. Sobrino, Dupuis) notifications have been issued about the theologian’s work, but sanctions have not been imposed. The CDF has also issued statements—like Dominus Iesus—which do not mention theologians by name, but which seek to define the boundaries of legitimate theological debate on an issue. In some cases, an even higher teaching authority is invoked for this purpose, as when Pope John Paul II issued his encyclical Veritatis Splendor, which was clearly an effort to narrow the range of permissible views within the domain of moral theology.

Needless to say, none of these approaches has proved particularly popular. No doubt there are many aspects of the CDF’s procedures that could be improved. The fact that theologians who have devoted their lives to the Church emerge from the current process so uniformly embittered should give us pause. The experience of de Lubac, Congar and Murray also suggests that real harm to the Church can come from attempting to suppress theology that threatens merely because it challenges settled ways of thinking about things or the personal views of persons in authority. One must also note the irony that taking action against individual theologians almost always gives them a much broader audience for their work than would otherwise have been the case!

But at some point, the critics of any system must face the inevitable question: what would you do if you were in charge?

There are a few, no doubt, who would echo Voltaire in crying Écrasez l’Infâme! Such a proposal is about the same intellectual level as calls for the abolition of the CIA or the Defense Department and should be taken about as seriously.

But most of us, if we are honest with ourselves, realize that there are dangers that must be faced. I have not read Fr. Sobrino, and cannot comment on his theology. But there is no question that there are trends in contemporary Christology (both Protestant and Catholic) that stand in severe tension with beliefs that are at the core of Christian faith. I, for one, would prefer not to wake up one morning and discover that seminarians and lay ministers in formation are learning their Christology from Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan.

So the question is one of means and the effective calibration of those means. My own inclination would be to rely more on statements like Dominus Iesus than on actions taken against individual theologians. As the discussion between Grant and Fr. Robert about Fr. Sobrino makes clear, the interpretation of the work of an individual author is always going to be fraught with ambiguity.

I also wonder whether the CDF could—to use a set of terms borrowed from the foreign policy field—rely more on “soft power” than on “hard power.” There must be ways to shape the theological debate that do not require the explicit exercise of ecclesiastical authority.

I don’t have a detailed set of answers and I know that this discussion has been going on for 30 years or arguably even longer.  But I think we need some creative thinking. What say the rest of you?

The March 24 edition of the Tablet of London contains reader responses to Robert Mickens’s article on Jon Sobrino’s “notification” by the CDF. The full letters pages are available only to subscribers, but here’s an excerpt from the best of the bunch.

We used to have a complex system of “Theological Notes”:
criteria for assessing the soundness or unsoundness of theological opinions and
the weight with which they had been taught or disapproved of – all the way from
dogmatic definition, through “probable opinion” and “offensive to pious ears”,
to heresy. The structure became ludicrously cumbersome, but we need to remember
the principles that it enshrined. According to the CDF, “the aforementioned works
of Father Sobrino contain notable discrepancies with the faith of the Church”.
Is he being accused of heresy or merely holding opinions unpopular in Rome? The same sloppiness
is evident in the Notification’s use of “authorities”, as if passages in the
Catechism had more or less the same doctrinal weight as deliverances of general
councils.

According to Fr Sobrino (the Congregation charges) the “major
Councils of the early Church … have moved progressively away from the contents
of the New Testament”. A little later: “Although he does not deny the normative
character of the dogmatic formulations, neither does he recognise in them any
value except in the cultural milieu in which those formulations were developed”.
Not only is no evidence offered, in either case, in support of these
contentions, but the passages that are cited from Jon Sobrino’s work suggest
that both charges are incompetent and possibly malicious misreadings of his
theology. “Father Sobrino”, we are told, “reflects the so-called theology of
the homo assumptus, which is incompatible with Catholic faith.” Moreover, the
Congregation disapproves of Fr Sobrino speaking of the “faith” of Jesus,
because: “If Jesus were a believer like ourselves, albeit in an exemplary
manner, he would not be able to be the true Revealer showing us the face of the
Father”. The issues here are complex, but that assertion is, to say the very
least, questionable and its formulation tendentious.

 I chose those last two examples because readers of The
Tablet might care to turn to pages 327-8 of Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of
the Lord, Volume I: Seeing the Form, where von Balthasar insists that “the man
Christ” is “a human being who has been assumed into God” and that he possesses “archetypal
faith”.

(Professor) Nicholas Lash

It’s been a long time since I left a movie theater believing I had seen a great American film, but that’s exactly what was buzzing around my head as I walked out of Zodiac, David Fincher’s brilliant, obsessive recreation of the hunt for the serial killer who terrorized northern California in the late 1960s. Those familiar with Fincher’s work (Alien 3, Seven, The Game, Fight Club, Panic Room) may be surprised by the restraint shown in this film, easily his best. No flamboyant camera work. No non-linear narrative to cope with. It’s not even a conventional thriller. Two-thirds of the picture are taken up with puzzling out the identity of the Zodiac. Making that sort of story compelling without leaning on visual trickery or telegraphic musical cues (a la Oliver Stone’s JFK) is a major cinematic accomplishment. All the movie relies on is its smart writing, superior performances (by the entire sprawling cast), and–it must be said–costume and set design (the film spans nearly a decade). The next time you have a few free hours, check it out.

The New York Times has a profile of Fr. Benedict Groeschel, confessor to the late Terrence Cardinal Cooke, founder of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, perennial critic of the media’s coverage of things Catholic, and well-known defender of the poor and unborn. There was a tidbit about Fr. Groeschel’s involvement in the civil rights movement that I found interesting:

“Probably the most beautiful and moving thing I’ve been involved in was the civil rights movement,” he said. “It was the most interesting and creative period of my life.”

Father Groeschel and a rabbi in Croton-on-Hudson had raised the money to buy the blue station wagon that Michael Schwerner was driving when he, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman were kidnapped and later killed by the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi in 1964.

Father Groeschel remembers going to a civil rights march with his friend Nate Schwerner, Michael’s father, before the young men were found and Mr. Schwerner’s saying to him, “I think they are dead.”

Commenting on the way that his diverse commitments don’t fit well into the usual ideological categories, Fr. Groeschel described himself as a “conservative-liberal-traditional-radical-confused person.”

When I come across an article whose author is David Remnick of The New Yorker, I immediately hasten to read it, because I’m sure of finding intellectually stimulating fare (even when he writes about sports!). One may not always agree, but one is enriched by the contact.

For me another such author is Edward Rothstein of the New York Times.

In today’s Times, Rothstein dissects an exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York on Facing Fascism: New York and the Spanish Civil War. According to Rothstein the exhibit uncritically celebrates the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and “deviates little from what would have once been called the party line.”

Here is more of his reflection:

By 1937, after the show trials in Moscow, it was apparent to many
devoted idealists that the party’s high moral proclamations were not
what they seemed. This is what George Orwell fitfully recognizes in his
“Homage to Catalonia.” First he fights in an independent Marxist
division that was apparently kept deliberately undersupplied. Later he
fears for his life in Barcelona — Republican-held territory — as the
party begins a planned purge, including killings and torture. Some
recent research has suggested that even members of the Lincoln Brigade
— some of whom “disappeared” — were not immune.

“As for the
newspaper talk about this being a ‘war for democracy,’ ” Orwell wrote,
“it was plain eyewash. No one in his senses supposed that there was any
hope of democracy.”

None of this can be learned from the show,
and to all of it, our heroes of the Lincoln Brigade were blind — or
worse. The Hitler-Stalin pact, which followed Franco’s victory by a few
months, also hardly seemed to have affected their allegiances. Last
week, in The New York Sun, Ronald Radosh, author of “Spain Betrayed:
The Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War,” quoted a speech by Milton
Wolff, one of the exhibition’s Lincoln fighters, made in 1941 while the
pact was still in effect. For Wolff, Franklin D. Roosevelt
had become the nascent fascist menace; no Lincoln Brigades would be
needed against Hitler. “We fight,” he proclaimed, “against the
involvement of our country in an imperialist war.”

Orwell said that no one could spend “more than a few weeks in Spain without being in some degree disillusioned.”

But even the fair-minded and judicious Rothstein makes no allusion to the thousands of priests and religious savagely murdered by elements of the left. For that I recommend turning to Michael Burleigh’s recent Sacred Causes.

According to Newsweek:

$351 billion has been spent or appropriated between 2003 and 2007 [for the war in Iraq], and
the president’s additional budget request of $68 billion in 2007 will
bring that to $419 billion, if it passes, according to estimates by the
Congressional Budget Office (these figures include U.S. military
expenditures, expenditures for Iraqi security forces, and spending for
foreign aid and diplomatic operations in Iraq). With another $113
billion predicted for the 2008 budget, the total direct cost of the war
will by then top half a trillion dollars, $532 billion in all. That
naturally does not even begin to take into account indirect costs, from
veterans’ care to oil-price rises.

The Washington Post is reporting that Zimbabwean archbishop Pius Ncube is ratcheting up the pressure on President Mugabe in response to an escalation in state violence aimed at democracy activists.

Mugabe’s opponents reported that a hospitalized activist had died of injuries suffered when police fired tear gas, live ammunition and water cannons to stop a March 11 prayer meeting protesting his rule. Police did not confirm the death of Itai Manyeruki, who would be the second activist to die as a result of violence. Gift Tandare, 31, was fatally shot as the meeting was dispersed.

Archbishop Pius Ncube told a gathering of clerics, pro-democracy activists and mostly Western diplomats in Harare on Thursday that, “We must be ready to stand, even in front of blazing guns.”

“I am ready to stand in front,” he said. “The biggest problem is Zimbabweans are cowards, myself included. We must get off our comfortable seats and suffer with the people.”

Britain’s Catholic magazine The Tablet interviewed Ncube in 2004.  Click here to read it (registration required). 

Yesterday I saw the superb film, “Into Great Silence.” Superlatives fail, and, in some sense, are unfitting to a film that lives on a different plane from our habitual, often unthinking, verbal excess.

One of the biblical quotes that appear from time to time on the screen is the famous epiphany to Elijah in 1 Kings: the Lord was neither in the wind, nor the earthquake, nor the fire; but then Elijah heard “a still small voice” and “wrapped his face in his mantle.”

The film maker delights in the texture of things — the dishes carefully scoured, the fabric of the robes, the mysterious solidity of buttons. He clearly has sat in the school of Cezanne.

But it is the faces of the monks which most intrigue him. And here Picasso came to mind. Because so often the camera focuses upon the ear, as if the monks were all ear, straining to catch the whisper of the Holy One.

When words are chanted, or, rarely, spoken, they come as revelations of (in Hopkins’ words) “the dearest freshness deep down things.” And the final gently shattering words of the blind monk send one forth with mind and heart cleansed and renewed.

The almost three hour film is, in some ways, a Lenten exercise, but it culminates in paschal joy.

Do see it (even if this requires a journey/pilrimage), and share your thoughts.

P.S. In the theater where I viewed the film, one of the previews (rated PG) that preceded the showing was of a film by Quentin Tarantino, filled with the usual chaos and violence. The contrast could not be more patent. I was reminded of that other great epiphany from the Book of Deuteronomy: “This day I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse: choose life!”

Today’s New York Times reports on the conclusion of the meeting of the Bishops of the Episcopal Church.

Responding to an ultimatum from leaders of the worldwide Anglican Communion, bishops of the Episcopal Church
have rejected a key demand to create a parallel leadership structure to
serve the conservative minority of Episcopalians who oppose their
church’s liberal stand on homosexuality.

The bishops,
meeting privately at a retreat center outside Houston, said they were
aware that the stand they were taking could lead to the exclusion of
the Episcopal Church from the Anglican Communion, an international
confederation of churches tied to the Church of England.

They
said they had a “deep longing” to remain part of the Communion, but
were unwilling to compromise the Episcopal Church’s autonomy and its
commitment to full equality for all people, including gay men and
lesbians.

“If that means that others reject us and communion with
us, as some have already done, we must with great regret and sorrow
accept their decision,” the bishops said in a statement released late
Tuesday night. The bishops’ recommendations will be taken up next by
the church’s executive council, which is expected to generally agree.

The bishops also called for an urgent “face to face” meeting in the
United States with the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, the archbishop of
Canterbury and leader of the Church of England, as well as a committee
of the church’s primates, who head the international provinces. The
primates, at their meeting in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, last month,
issued the ultimatum to the Episcopal Church, and imposed a deadline
for a response of Sept. 30.

The rest of Laurie Goodstein’s article may be found here.

The following e-mail went out to the Ave Maria University community this afternoon:

To the Ave Maria University community: I have been asked to resign my position as provost and leave the campus immediately.

I will miss Ave Maria and the many of you whom I hold dear.

Fr. Joseph Fessio, S.J.

More coverage here. (H/T Whispers in the Loggia.)

Update: Rocco is all over this:

The hourlong general session of faculty and students took place 90
minutes after a meeting of the new campus’ senior staff, at which the
university’s official statement (found below) was hammered out. A
standing-room crowd packed a hall that seats around 300, as university
president Nicholas Healy and other top officials offered their
reflections. As with the earlier demonstration, the crowd was largely
pro-Fessio, with two standing ovations given the absent former provost
– the first of which came following a question from the audience
asking for his reinstatement.

A senior university official said
that one crux of the “irreconcilable differences” cited as the reason
for the requested resignation was a divergence on liturgical tastes;
Healy and other top officials take their cue from the evangelical
Charismatic school of the Franciscan University of Steubenville (to
which they maintain close ties), while Fessio’s crowd gravitated toward
a more solemn manner of ritual. The Jesuit’s Latin Masses — Novus Ordo, celebrated ad orientem
– were reported to have drawn large crowds, while similar crowds were
had for monthly Healing Masses celebrated by priest-in-residence Fr. Richard McAlear, a member of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate.

Are divergent liturgical tastes really to blame for the dismissal? What else?

Update 2: This site, regretably run by an anonymous reporter, hosts a lot of information on the travails of Ave Maria University.

Update 3: Apparantly Fessio is being brought back on board. If true, this is bizarre. And amateurish.

Fr. Daniel McCormack will have his day in court after all. From the AP:

And: the Archdiocese of Los Angeles responds to news coverage about Cardinal Mahony’s differing statements about an accused priest. Here’s the initial L.A. Times story. And the AP account. And the archdiocese’s response.

HT BoingBoing:

Thwarted in her attempt to enjoy a cup of a
coffee at her favorite spot, Louise Kilborn unwittingly found herself
at the center of a social debate that’s been brewing for years.

The
70-year-old Lisle woman was kicked out of the Starbucks in downtown
Glen Ellyn a few weeks ago. She claims it was because employees mistook
her as a homeless person, part of a purge the store waged to mollify
customers who complained that the coffee shop was overrun with the
homeless.

Despite an apology from the
Seattle-based coffee giant, Kilborn says she isn’t looking for one. She
wants something done to address the circumstances that prompted her
removal in the first place.

“The issue
here is not that I was asked to leave Starbucks,” Kilborn said. “It is
the treatment of the homeless who are singled out.”

This story reminds me of an excellent law review article by Jeremy Waldron from a few years ago about the particularly acute problem faced by homeless people within a society structured around private property protected by a robust right to exclude. In recent years, the problem has become even more oppressive as public property has become increasingly hostile to their presence, as evinced by the growing popularity of laws prohibiting loitering, sleeping in public, etc.. (Interestingly, a number of courts have held the enforcement of such laws unconstitutional because they result in cruel and unusual punishment since the homeless simply cannot avoid the practices from which they are prohibited in engaging if they are to remain living, physically embodied human beings.) The homeless need to be somewhere, in a very literal sense of that word, but they have no place to go.

Charles Taylor is 1.5 million dollars richer as of last week. For what it’s worth I argue here that Taylor and Alasdair MacIntyre are the postwar era’s most influential Anglophone Catholic intellectuals. Taylor spoke at Notre Dame just before receiving the award and I was able to attend. He discussed his forthcoming book on secularization, emphasizing the importance of the 1960s in this process even as he resists any linear line of secularization a la Max Weber. MacIntyre introduced Taylor by noting that to read Taylor’s Sources of the Self and the books discussed therein, is to receive a better liberal arts education than that offered by most colleges. (He didn’t exclude Notre Dame!)

A characterisically measured — but gloomy — assessment of the state of religion in eastern and central Europe.  And a reminder of how  basic questions about religious freedom still animate religious life in much of the region.

Jonathan Rizzo, a graduate of Boston College High School, was stabbed to death in July 2001. His parents and two younger brothers were devastated by their loss. There the newspaper stories generally end.

But today’s Boston Globe recounts how Jonathan’s younger brother, Nick, is transforming grief into gift for others, taking a leave from Harvard to work in Rwanda. His mother, Mary comments:

“After Jonathan’s death, I was petrified that Nick and Elliot (younger
brother) would be bitter or angry or cynical to the world,” says Mary
Rizzo. “But they aren’t. That’s what I’m most proud of, that they’ve
continued to share their hearts. They continue to believe that
kindness, compassion, and knowledge can make an important impact”.

Read more here.

If you’re in the Philadelphia area, you may want to drop in on this event tomorrow night.

Update: By the way, please feel free to share your ideas about the subject of tomorrow’s panel discussion. What intrigues you about the blogosphere–Catholic and otherwise? What worries you?

Post-event update: Thanks for all the comments below, and a special thanks to those who braved the parking nightmare surrounding Hawk Hill to attend the event. Fr. Dan Joyce and the Office of Mission were superb hosts. And it was great to chat with fellow bloggers Amy Welborn and Rocco Palmo in person (imagine that)–with the help of our excellent moderator, Bill McGarvey–before an engaged crowd who offered excellent questions and comments. This is the kind of public conversation we should have more often. I’m told video of the summit will be available in the near future. Doubt I can bring myself to watch it, but if you’re interested, I’ll post a link.

Bill Mazzella, over on the “Swallowing the Gnat” post, suggested that we start another thread on Sacramentum Caritatis.

Bill noted: ”Despite some good points, [Sacramentum Caritatis] appears like a backward attempt to nullify some valid points of renewal. For example, there is a whole paragraph on the Eucharist as food and then it summarily dismisses the term “banquet” saying Christ nullified that since he said, “Do this in memory of me.” I suppose this made sense when Catholics were not allowed to think.”

Let the comments begin.

More proof that Stephen Colbert is the best TV interviewer working today.