Just posted as a Web exclusive: Don Wycliff’s take on l’affaire Wright. A snippet:

Whatever may have been Wright’s motives for speaking out now, he stands to earn a dubious distinction in American history: the man who torpedoed the presidential chances of the first African American with a genuine chance of winning that office. That’s not exactly the sort of thing you want your grandchildren to have to hear every Black History Month.

But political impact aside, what was it about Wright’s National Press Club appearance that got everybody so upset? From the beginning of the Wright drama, when snippets of his sermons began showing up on TV, I have thought that, with the exception of the dark suspicion that the government ginned up the HIV virus to kill blacks, Wright’s principal problem was that he was speaking what an old boss of mine used to call “vicious truths”—things that are true but that the audience would rather not hear.

Read the rest right here.

Talking Points Memo reports on some very suspicious robocalls being made in North Carolina. In the calls, a man identifying himself as Lamont Williams delivers the following message:

In the next few days you will receive a voter registration packet in the mail. All you need to do is fill it out, sign it, date, and return your application. Then you will be able to vote and make your voice heard. Please return your registration form when it arrives.

Paul Kiel writes:

Democracy North Carolina, a government watchdog, cried foul, saying that the calls went out to “black neighborhoods” and was evidently a vote suppression tactic since the registration deadline for the presidential primary has already passed. The North Carolina state elections board got involved and asked for the public’s help in determining the source of the calls, which apparently blocked caller ID from showing the number. You can listen to the call here (wav).

Now Facing South reports that a Washington nonprofit called Women’s Voices Women Vote is behind the calls.

(Read the rest right here.)

And what about that mysterious “voter registration packet”? Paul Kiel is on top of that, too.

            In my class today, teaching undergraduates who were born around 1988, I wandered off into a description for them of what it was like in 1989 to watch the sudden collapse of the Soviet empire.  After the decades of the Cold War, after the a-bomb and h-bomb tests, after the air-raid drills, after McCarthy and the Red Scare, after Hungary in 1956, after Cuba in  October1962, after Prague in the summer of 1968, after MAD, after the missile-defense system—after having lived through all that, and just presuming that the Cold War would go on and on and on, to see the whole thing disappear almost overnight!  To see it end, without war, without even much violence!  I had tears in my eyes watching the people celebrating in the ancient main square in Prague.

What an extraordinary experience that was!  Have we witnessed anything of greater world-historical importance?

Something much more important than Rev. Wright’s performances happened yesterday. Morris Davis, the DoD’s former chief prosecutor for terrorism, took the stand at Gitmo in defense of a terrorism suspect and declared in so many words that the U.S. military tribunal system is a sham. The Washington Post has the story:

Davis told Navy Capt. Keith J. Allred, who presided over the hearing, that top Pentagon officials, including Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon R. England, made it clear to him that charging some of the highest-profile detainees before elections this year could have “strategic political value.”

Davis said he wants to wait until the cases — and the military commissions system — have a more solid legal footing. He also said that Defense Department general counsel William J. Haynes II, who announced his retirement in February, once bristled at the suggestion that some defendants could be acquitted, an outcome that Davis said would give the process added legitimacy.

“He said, ‘We can’t have acquittals,’ ” Davis said under questioning from Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brian Mizer, the military counsel who represents Hamdan. ” ‘We’ve been holding these guys for years. How can we explain acquittals? We have to have convictions.’ “

Davis also decried as unethical a decision by top military officials to allow the use of evidence obtained by coercive interrogation techniques. He said Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Hartmann, the legal adviser to the top military official overseeing the commissions process, was improperly willing to use evidence derived from waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning. “To allow or direct a prosecutor to come into the courtroom and offer evidence they felt was torture, it puts a prosecutor in an ethical bind,” Davis testified. But he said Hartmann replied that “everything was fair game — let the judge sort it out.”

He also said Hartmann took “micromanagement” of the prosecution effort to a new level and treated prosecutors with “cruelty and maltreatment.” Hartmann, he said, was trying to take over the prosecutor’s role, compromising the independence of the Office of Military Commissions, which decides which cases to bring and what evidence to use.

Davis, who initially defended the commissions process, testified that he resigned his position as chief prosecutor late last year as senior officials increased pressure on him to make decisions he thought were inappropriate. He now heads the Air Force Judiciary and plans to retire. Hartmann declined to comment on the proceedings through a spokesman, Air Force Capt. Andre Kok.

Read the rest right here. More at TPM.

Someone suggested that the Egan v. Giuliani “Holy War” (the wood on today’s NYPost) is passe. Probably so. What is really galling is this: Notre Dame is trying to dictate terms to Rutgers over a six-game Big East football matchup. The Knights responded by telling the Fighting Irish (NOT Trojans!) to take a hike. If we can play in a rinky-dink Midwestern town like South Bend, then you can play in an unpronounceable Lenni Lenape Jersey town like Piscataway. But Notre Dame is acting like, well, the pope. Who says Notre Dame isn’t Catholic? Harvey Araton of the Times has the story…

For self-importance on the grandest of delusional scales, there is no entity in sports quite like Notre Dame football, winner of three games last season, routinely whacked like a piñata in recent bowl games and not a national championship to its name in 20 years, or since the Gipper was about to hand off the presidency of the United States to George H.W. Bush.

When the supercilious Allesandra Stanley and the serious Bob Herbert agree at opposite ends of the NYTimes about the Reverend Wright,  you have to wonder if we are not approaching the end times.

 Or…. maybe Al Sharpton has become Wright’s communication director.

Poor Obama–two crazy uncles loose in the media circus.

Update: Obama takes his distance:

“The person I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago,” Obama says of his former pastor. “His comments were not only divisive and destructive, but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate … if Rev. Wright thinks that that’s political posturing, as he put it, then he doesn’t know me very well. And based on his remarks yesterday, well I might not know him as well as I thought, either.”

Update: Uncle Al checks in:

 http://www.nypost.com/seven/04292008/news/regionalnews/sharpton_raps_obama_108577.htm

Bob Herbert in today’s New York Times is not overjoyed by Jeremiah’s tirade:

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright went to Washington on Monday not to praise Barack Obama, but to bury him.

Smiling, cracking corny jokes, mugging it up for the big-time news media — this reverend is never going away. He’s found himself a national platform, and he’s loving it.

It’s a twofer. Feeling dissed by Senator Obama, Mr. Wright gets revenge on his former follower while bathed in a spotlight brighter than any he could ever have imagined. He’s living a narcissist’s dream. At long last, his 15 minutes have arrived.

While Alessandra Stanley, the Times TV critic lays bare the real problem here:

Cable news commentators have focused on the damage the spectacle inflicted on the embattled Obama campaign. And while Mr. Wright’s behavior may not have been politic for Mr. Obama, it was politics as usual for the television age. In at least one way, Mr. Wright’s star turn may have helped defuse his importance in the long run. The pastor who was thrust upon the public consciousness as a caricature of the angry black man emerged after an exhaustive series of performances as a more familiar television persona: a voluble, vain and erudite entertainer, a born televangelist who quotes Ralph Ellison as well as the Bible and mixes highfalutin academic trope with salty street talk.

Mr. Wright, “voluble, vain, erudite … highfalutin academic trope” is, God help him, a professor!

From the AP:

Hillary Rodham Clinton criticized Barack Obama on Monday for opposing proposals to suspend federal gas taxes this summer, a plan she and Republican John McCain have endorsed. Obama didn’t take the bait. He ignored Clinton and focused on McCain.

“My opponent, Senator Obama, opposes giving consumers a break from the gas tax,” Clinton said at a firehouse. “I understand the American people need some relief,” she added, implying that Obama doesn’t get it.

Obama has said motorists would not benefit significantly from suspending the gas tax.  “This is his solution to the problems of the energy crisis and your gas bills,” Obama told several thousand at a noisy rally in Wilmington. “Keep in mind that the federal gas tax is about 5 percent of your gas bill. If it lasts for three months, you’re going to save about $25 or $30, or a half a tank of gas.”

Not to distract anyone from the other highjinks (and lowjinks) on the blog today, but an interesting smackdown is brewing between Rudy Giuliani and Cardinal Edward Egan over Giuliani’s decision to take communion at the papal mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on April 19. We were all surprised to see Giuliani–twice-divorced (once annulled), thrice-married, pro-gay rights, pro-abortion rights–receive, especially in such a context. Rudy hadn’t done this before, in my experience–neither at the Central Park Mass in 1995 with John Paul, nor at Cardinal O’Connor’s funeral in 2000. So to take communion in the cathedral at a mass celebrated by the pope was, well, Rudy being Rudy.

Now Cardinal Egan has reacted, with a very measured but direct statement released today:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 28, 2008

The following is a statement issued by Edward Cardinal Egan:

“The Catholic Church clearly teaches that abortion is a grave offense against the will of God. Throughout my years as Archbishop of New York, I have repeated this teaching in sermons, articles, addresses, and interviews without hesitation or compromise of any kind. Thus it was that I had an understanding with Mr. Rudolph Giuliani, when I became Archbishop of New York and he was serving as Mayor of New York, that he was not to receive the Eucharist because of his well-known support of abortion. I deeply regret that Mr. Giuliani received the Eucharist during the Papal visit here in New York, and I will be seeking a meeting with him to insist that he abide by our understanding.”

For all of Egan’s bad press, he was never one to pick a public fight with public figures. Indeed, he often said he counted people like Giuliani and Hillary Clinton as “friends,” an embrace that angered many in the church. But Rudy left him no choice here. He apparently abrogated a very judicious and pastoral private agreement with his bishop, and did so in front of Egan’s boss and under the full glare of the media klieg lights.

What was Rudy thinking? Here’s all we know, from his spokesperson:

STATEMENT FROM GIULIANI SPOKESWOMAN SUNNY MINDEL ON EDWARD CARDINAL EGAN.

“Mayor Rudy Giuliani is certainly willing to meet with Cardinal Egan. As he has previously said, Mayor’s Giuliani’s faith is a deeply personal matter and should remain confidential.”

“Deeply personal?” Not when you score a coveted invite to St. Patrick’s with the pope, and take communion. Then again, it is certainly true that Giuliani might have gone to confession beforehand. He has said that his spiritual confidante is a longtime friend, Alan Placa, a Long Island priest who has been suspended on allegations that he molested children. Giuliani gave Placa a job at his consulting firm.

I don’t think this signals any major change of approach by Egan or other bishops in the wake of the pope’s visit. Egan, like most bishops, has always played these things quietly, in confidence, and on a case-by-case basis. But you never know. This was a real in-your-face move by Giuliani, in front of the pope.

What is interesting, I think, is that Egan made no mention of Giuliani’s apparently irregular marital status as a cause for refraining from communion. Is that because Giuliani has regularized his status? Or perhaps Egan did not want to draw attention to a huge pastoral challenge for the church–namely, the communion ban for divorced and remarried (without benefit of annulment) Catholics, of whom there are so many–and so many of them faithful in every other way. It’s a pastoral headache priests, and bishops, generally like to avoid.

Samantha Bee from The Daily Show commenting on the Pope’s visit; she irreverently reminds us that it’s what we do, not what we say, that counts – no matter how reverently we say it.

Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek writes about John McCain’s recent foreign policy speech. McCain made some fairly radical proposals that have gone largely unnoticed as the press continues to focus on the Clinton-Obama contest:

In his speech McCain proposed that the United States expel Russia from the G8, the group of advanced industrial countries. Moscow was included in this body in the 1990s to recognize and reward it for peacefully ending the cold war on Western terms, dismantling the Soviet empire and withdrawing from large chunks of the old Russian Empire as well. McCain also proposed that the United States should expand the G8 by taking in India and Brazil—but pointedly excluded China from the councils of power.

We have spent months debating Barack Obama’s suggestion that he might, under some circumstances, meet with Iranians and Venezuelans. It is a sign of what is wrong with the foreign-policy debate that this idea is treated as a revolution in U.S. policy while McCain’s proposal has barely registered. What McCain has announced is momentous—that the United States should adopt a policy of active exclusion and hostility toward two major global powers. It would reverse a decades-old bipartisan American policy of integrating these two countries into the global order, a policy that began under Richard Nixon (with Beijing) and continued under Ronald Reagan (with Moscow). It is a policy that would alienate many countries in Europe and Asia who would see it as an attempt by Washington to begin a new cold war.

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright is back in the news, delivering some fiery (the indispensible adjective with the Rev. Wright) rhetoric yesterday at the close of a meeting of the NAACP’s Detroit branch. Wright’s unrepentant talk and prophetic style are likely to make you smile if you are a black Christian or Hillary Clinton, and if they make you wince then you may well be Barack Obama or…Roman Catholic.

Yes, many have traced Obama’s difficulties in attracting blue-collar Catholic “Reagan Democrats” to his lack of working-class elan (that silver-spoon-fed Hillary can out-maneuver a community organizer from urban Chicago is a tribute to her political machine) or, more disturbingly, his race. The Pew Forum’s resident politics-and-religion mandarin, John Green,  explores Obama’s uphill battle with white Catholics in this Q&A, noting that Obama lost the Catholic vote by more than 2-1 on Pennsylvania, and Indiana next week could be more of the same.

A couple points to make: One is that Obama is having trouble attracting all regular church-goers, which is odd given that he is the only regular church-goer among the three remaining candidates, a man who remains loyal to his congregation (where Wright was pastor until recently) and his denomination, the largely white UCC. But Green also turns the question around, asking whether Clinton has an “African-American problem” or an “unaffiliated problem”–two groups she’ll need to win the nomination, and the general election.

In that vein I would also ask whether the Catholic Church has an “African-American problem.” In other words, is part of the problem for Catholic voters that the Catholic Church is on the white side of the racial-religious divide–which Wright noted last night, an indisputable point–that marks American Christianity? There are just 2.5 million black Catholics out of more than 65 million American Catholics, and many of those are Caribbean or African immigrants with little in common with the Southern, Protestant, and slave-era heritage African-Americans of Wright’s congregation. Indeed, one reason there are so few black Catholics is that the American hierarchy, fearing a schism like those that afflicted other churches during the Civil War, did not speak out with one voice against slavery.

Black Catholics are a remarkable community, and one that could and should inspire the rest of the American church. Yet they are often overlooked in the focus on our enormous Latino growth, and they are often alienated by the shift back toward a more strait-laced, Old World liturgy. It is a shame that Pope Benedict could not have attended a black Catholic liturgy during his visit–now that is the holy rolling Spirit. Among other things, Hurricane Katrina also inflicted a devastating wound on the black Catholic community concentrated in New Orleans, an issue I explored, along with the history of black Catholics in the U.S., in this Wall Street Journal column.  

In short, American Catholics find black Christian rhetoric completely “foreign” for all sorts of cultural and demographic reasons. They never hear this kind of preaching, and one wonders whether they should listen more closely; they might hear some familiar notes. Such as the insistence on communal spirituality and solidarity, one of the principal themes of Benedict’s own homilies this month. Or the focus on social justice–a tradition and teaching that has been so crucial to lifting up our own Catholic forebears. Or the powerful laments–jeremiads one might say–that characterize the preaching of our own Catholic leadership, albeit it in a different key.

For a good context, read Father John Kavanaugh’s insightful column on the two Jeremiahs (biblical and contemporary) in the April 14 edition of America. An excerpt:

The problem with much preaching in Christian churches is that we apply the prophetic indignation easily to our enemies, but rarely to ourselves, our church, our nation. But if we think Jeremiah and Jesus are not addressing us, we have nothing to learn from either—at our peril. Was the Reverend Wright speaking in this tradition when he gave his infamous talk after the evils of 9/11? I think so. His sermon was a commentary on revenge and the violence that returns to those who do violence, especially against the innocent. Wright recounted our national history of killing children, from the Sioux to the Japanese. All just causes, one might sincerely think. But all horrific. And this is where the preacher talked about the “chickens coming home to roost.” As Wright continued, he pointed out that violence and hatred beget violence and hatred. And then the preacher turned to something that possibly no one is aware of from the YouTube clips. Having been in New Jersey on that September day of “unthinkable acts,” Jeremiah Wright was drawn to examine his own relationship to God, his lack of prayer, his honesty. “Is it real or is it fake? Is it forever or is it for show?”

One needn’t agree with Wright, or like him, or his words, or his tone. But every Catholic could ask themselves why it is that so few African-Americans find a lasting spiritual home in our church. Pope Benedict urged the American bishops to continue the church’s educational mission to urban areas, where Catholic schools have been a lifeline to many black children. Yet those schools, like all Catholic schools, labor under severe financial strains. Even so, many African-Americans graduate from Catholic schools, and appreciate their education. But they don’t become Catholic. Why?

None of these questions will be answered in time to help Barack Obama, I suspect. But perhaps if he is the nominee, and if he wins the general election, Obama could build a bridge to the Catholic community based on the principles they already share. And perhaps Catholics could walk across it.

Two final thoughts: Apropos of Paul Moses’ post below on the Debbie Almontaser story and Peggy Steinfels reference to the New Yorker piece on Nadia Nabu El-Haj at Barnard, we should keep in mind that between 10 and 15 percent of voters still think Obama is a Muslim–and this after all the furor over the pastor at his church. Also check out this Bill Moyers’ interview with Wright, the pastor’s first since the brouhaha erupted. 

Cross-post from Beliefnet

The Times’ Andrea Elliott has a strong piece on the controversy surrounding an Arab-themed public school in New York City, describing the anti-Muslim media campaign that drove out the woman who was supposed to be its first principal, Debbie Almontaser. (As noted in a post last month, Almontaser, a Muslim educator well known for working closely with Jewish and Christian leaders to encourage tolerance in Brooklyn, received an award from Pax Christi Metro New York that recognized her as a peacemaker.) According to the article:

“The conflict tapped into a well of post-9/11 anxieties. But Ms. Almontaser’s downfall was not merely the result of a spontaneous outcry by concerned parents and neighborhood activists. It was also the work of a growing and organized movement to stop Muslim citizens who are seeking an expanded role in American public life. The fight against the school, participants in the effort say, was only an early skirmish in a broader, national struggle.”

As the article indicates, Almontaser was forced out because city officials couldn’t take the heat this “growing and organized movement” was able to generate through its alliance with a significant portion of the New York media, primarily The New York Post and New York Sun.

I would like to add something to that: A big part of the problem was that The Times’ voice was so muted. The coverage that accelerated Almontaser’s ouster appeared on August 6, 2007. The Post hammered at the story all week, while The Times didn’t cover the story until Aug. 11, when it reported that Almontaser had resigned.

Today’s article is a fine one because it sets the school controversy into a much broader context, as part of a larger attempt to limit the influence of American Muslims in the public square. Its placement on page one indicates how important the paper’s editors think it is. But as events developed last year, the story of Debbie Almontaser was ceded to the Post and Sun; things might have worked out differently if the public had been given a more thorough picture at the time of both Almontaser and her critics.

The Times has established a context that will aid in understanding similar disputes in the future. But there is another lesson to be drawn from Debbie Almontaser’s experience: In this era of Web-driven news, a few strident voices can create a sense of public outcry very quickly. News organizations and others with a responsibility to inform the public need to weigh in sooner, rather than later, so that more thorough information is available as opinions are formed.

A view from the Tablet‘s Rome correspondent:

“Before he became Pope, Joseph Ratzinger was known as a very staunch Catholic,” said one of New York’s local TV personalities. The reporter said Benedict XVI had shown that “he really is a ‘people person’, and that he is very open to change”.

The “gentle Bavarian visitor” (as one Wall Street Journal commentator called him) charmed the fickle American media and even converted some of his longstanding critics within the Catholic Church during a dozen public events in Washington and New York City. Fr James Martin, acting publisher of the Jesuit magazine America, boldly confessed in the New York Times that he “was one of those (many) liberal Catholics who was disappointed by (Benedict’s) election”. But he said last week’s visit left him “feeling real admiration – and even affection” for the Pope.

Whether or not it was a planned strategy, Benedict disarmed his critics. He coupled his preaching of the hard moral “truths” of conservative Catholicism with the Gospel message of love and hope. Even papal vestments and his softly spoken and distinctively accented English seemed to enhance his religious authority and impress ordinary Americans, most of whom were getting their first long look at the Pope. “Americans love anyone whose first name is ‘the’,” said a former Washington priest who tried to explain the Pope’s unexpected appeal.

But image was only part of the allure. Benedict XVI won points from nearly everyone for expressing “deep shame” over the clerical sex-abuse scandal and, even more dramatically, for meeting several of the victims – a private encounter that the Franciscan Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston helped arrange. The Pope admitted that the sex-abuse problem was “sometimes very badly handled” by the US bishops, though he later said they were now dealing with it “effectively”.

The overall effect of his repeated references to the abuse crisis throughout his time in the United States was a sign for many Catholics that “the Pope gets it”. Before the visit many wondered if he really did. Even leaders of Survivors’ Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), the group that has been most critical of church authorities for the way they have handled this issue, voiced appreciation for the Pope’s words and gestures, while also demanding further action be taken against bishops who reassigned the abusing priests.

You can read the rest right here.

Sunday and Monday cives Romani will go to the polls to elect a new mayor. The candidates are Francesco Rutelli, a vice-premier in the outgoing government of Prodi, the noblest Romano of them all, and Gianni Alemanno who belongs to Silvio Berlusconi’s Center-Right coalition.

In the midst of a heated final debate on TV, Rutelli launched this bombshell, thinking to score big: «Tu, caro Alemanno, dipingi la nostra città cupa, nera, come se fosse il Bronx».

Vergogna forbids me from translating. But rest assured: he’s not praising my home borough.

Mayor Bloomberg take notice. This is the same guy who brought the mighty Met to its knees and reclaimed the purloined pottery. Come va finire?

Elliot Morris’s “documentary” film, “Standard  Operating Procedure” opened yesterday in New York. The focus is on Abu Gharib and the soldiers who were convicted for abuse. I went late afternoon so I could write something for Commonweal, the print version.

A good deal has been written by and about Morris’s techniques (he also did Fog of War, a long, very long, interview with former Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara) and his policies (he has paid some of the soldiers who appear in SOP). I don’t think I will recommend the movie to you, but if anyone has seen it or will see it anyway, I’d be curious to have your take on it.

Recently, I wrote about the powerful effect made by the images of the Pope during his visit to the States. I drew particular attention to his meeting with children suffering from disabilities and to his encounter with survivors and family members at Ground Zero. Indelible images for those who witnessed them.

But the challenge now before the Church in the United States is to ponder and take to heart the rich texts he has left us. Peter Nixon in his post, “Veritas,” (below) has insightfully initiated this meditation. Now Peter Steinfels, in today’s New York Times, offers his own reflection.

Steinfels’ thoughtful and  respectful column requires careful reading. But here is his conclusion:

Will addressing the God crisis, perhaps with the pastoral sensitivity Benedict demonstrated on his visit, spontaneously generate responses to the church crisis? Or is addressing the structural dimension of the church crisis a prerequisite to successfully addressing the God crisis?

The lasting impact of Pope Benedict’s visit may hang on the answers to those two questions.

What I find myself pondering, however, is a third “crisis” which may actually underlie the two which Peter identifies. Call it “the Jesus crisis.”

One cannot read a homily or a pastoral address of the Holy Father without sensing that the proclamation of Jesus as “Lord and Messiah” is the very heart of his message. Let one example, from his address in Washington to the Representatives of other religions, suffice:

Confronted with these deeper questions concerning the origin and destiny of mankind, Christianity proposes Jesus of Nazareth. He, we believe, is the eternal Logos who became flesh in order to reconcile man to God and reveal the underlying reason of all things. It is he whom we bring to the forum of interreligious dialogue. The ardent desire to follow in his footsteps spurs Christians to open their minds and hearts in dialogue.

But Benedict does not merely bear witness to this. He, in season and out of season, invites Christians to enter into ever-deeper relation with their Savior. Again, but one example — from his address to young people at St. Joseph’s Seminary, Dunwoodie:

Dear friends, truth is not an imposition. Nor is it simply a set of rules. It is a discovery of the One who never fails us; the One whom we can always trust. In seeking truth we come to live by belief because ultimately truth is a person: Jesus Christ. That is why authentic freedom is not an opting out. It is an opting in; nothing less than letting go of self and allowing oneself to be drawn into Christ’s very being for others.

We can argue ceaselessly about why there is something rather than nothing or about the ultimate foundation for human rights. We can passionately debate structural reform in the Church. But in the quiet hours of early morning or late night do we not ultimately wrestle with the question: do I love him?

In the New Testament, a rich, but sometimes neglected text is the First Letter of Peter. We are, of course, reading it during this Easter Season at Sunday Eucharist. Peter joyfully exults in the faith of his (newly baptized?) hearers: “Without having seen him, you love him!” (1 Pet 1:8).

Is Peter’s successor posing this to us as a question: “Without having seen him, do you love him?”

If so, the Lord himself provides the precedent: “Simon Peter: Do you love me?”   Peter, dense like us, had to be asked three times (Jn 21:15-19).

My preferred era of historical study began with the Renaissance and moved on from there, in other words, modern history. But I have over the years grown increasingly taken with the medieval period (though in church history and spirituality I am in some sympathy with Benedict XVI, who is a thoroughgoing “primevalist” in his love of the Church Fathers and the early centuries of Christianity). I am, of course, hardly alone in my neo-medievalism. As a Baby Boomer I actually have no free will; I find anything I do is determined by my demographic cohort, most of whom have already been there by the time I wake up to what I thought I wanted only to realize I am just part of a trend. Now David Brooks, in a column called “The Great Escape,” confirms my ovine nature with an encomium to the Middle Ages.

Yet as much as I appreciate Brooks’ instincts, I think he falls into the usual dichotomy by  idealizing the period to the point of caricature:

As many historians have written, Europeans in the Middle Ages lived with an almost childlike emotional intensity. There were stark contrasts between daytime and darkness, between summer heat and winter cold, between misery and exuberance, and good and evil. Certain distinctions were less recognized, namely between the sacred and the profane.

Material things were consecrated with spiritual powers. God was thought to live in the stones of the cathedrals, and miracles inhered in the bones of the saints. The world seemed spiritually alive, and the power of spirit could overshadow politics. As Johan Huizinga wrote in “The Autumn of the Middle Ages,” “The most revealing map of Europe in these centuries would be a map, not of political or commercial capitals, but of the constellation of sanctuaries, the points of material contact with the unseen world.”

While Lewis and Tolkien and others up through Rowling have tapped into this sensibility, Brooks’ view seems to me to gloss over the great intellectual flowering of the Middle Ages, the embrace of reason to undergird faith, the rise of universities, the professionalization of academia and other pursuits (like the law and religion) that Brooks swats with a (predictable) swipe at Obama. (Hey, he has to justify his role as a political columnist.)

The letters in response to Brooks generally fall on the other side of the divide, casting the Middle Ages as a benighted era of Crusades and Inquisitions. But not all. An emeritus professor of medieval history at Harvard notes that in response to the violence of earlier ages, the original medievalists “invented government to serve the public interest, together with the taxes required to support it.”

But I liked the letter from a Texas geologist, Leon E. Long, a nice defense of the enchantment that is still possible in the modern world:

Doing science, whose essence is to understand nature, inspires awe. As a geologist, I plant one foot (metaphorically) in the present day and the other foot in Deep Time. Yonder sandstone cliff was once the bed of a great flowing river. Imagine that! I wasn’t there then, but the evidence says it literally was so. Real science is more bizarre, more full of possibilities than medieval people could have imagined. We scientists are just as passionate, romantic and as awe-filled as they were.

And, of course, crusades and inquisitions still happen. I find solace, not despair, in the parallels.

In an interesting dispatch from Nairobi, the Zenit news agency describes a speech in which Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran outlined Pope Benedict XVI’s new direction in interreligious dialogue. He said  that previous popes have built “bridges of understanding” to other religions, and that now is the time to cross those bridges and speak more frankly about differences.

The time for dealing with theological differences was postponed, the cardinal said, but “in the pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI, that future is now.” The previous method “highlighted the common elements we share,” the cardinal said, adding that the pope ” wants to emphasize, by use of reason, the distinctiveness of the Christian faith.”

The speech spells out the pope’s approach to interreligious dialogue more fully than I’d seen before (and is similar to what Benedict said in St. Joseph’s Church in Manhattan concerning interfaith relations).

But I think some bridge inspectors should be called in before too much weight is put on these structures of supposed interreligious friendship. In particular, the bridge to Islam has corroded in the last three years. The chief engineer, Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, the Vatican’s top expert on Islam, was moved from his key post and dispatched to Egypt. The pope then famously insulted Islam in his Regensburg lecture. And he upset Muslims again by giving such a high profile to the conversion of a Muslim journalist who criticized Islam, baptizing him in St. Peter’s at the Easter Vigil.

In short, much of the good will that John Paul II built up is being lost. There is reason to be concerned with this new direction.

I agree that religious freedom should be addressed in Christian-Muslim dialogue. But how is that best done? Islam has a long tradition of respect for holy and humble Christian monks, dating to the faith’s earliest days and reflected today in the ability of some Franciscans to relate to Muslims. This is the face of the Catholic Church that Muslims are historically receptive to, and Benedict needs to listen to those who’ve engaged Muslims on that basis.

Once again Leon Wieseltier has found something useful to say about a fairly useless controversy:

“You’d think he’d do other believers the courtesy of assuming they’ve also thought about their beliefs,” Kristol remarks about Obama. Auf keinen Fall, Genosse! American religion may be the most unreflective religion in the world. It is unreflective almost as a matter of principle. The most significant American contribution to theology–the merry dismissal of thought known as “the will to believe”–lifts the soul up with probabilities and risks, with a vaguely economic calculation that the profit is worth the gamble. In recent years “studies have shown” that religion is even good for your health. What if it is good for your health, but false? And what if it were bad for your health, but true? It would be wonderful one day to meet an American whose God has made his life harder, not easier. But here belief is relief. It is “elitist,” I know, to expect philosophy of every man and woman: whether or not all intellectuals are God’s children, all God’s children are not intellectuals. Still, Christians in America care more about what Jesus would do than about what Jesus would think. This accounts also for the wild politicization of religion. Obama, remember, champions mainly “the Social Gospel,” and first entered the church in Chicago for the purpose of community organizing. But the Social Gospel is about benevolence, not transcendence; and there is no moral difference between the good works of believers and the good works of unbelievers. May the world be improved by whoever can improve it! As for Obama’s neoconservative critics: they are second to none, and close students of Machiavelli, in their insistence upon the usefulness of religion to society as an authority and a principle of order, and also upon its usefulness to their candidates. They, too, hunger for the benefits, and not for the mysteries.

Over the top? Maybe. But not by much. The problem of pragmatism in American religion is old and many-rooted, connecting phenomena that would seem to have very little in common. As Wieseltier says, it shows up in a certain kind of Social Gospel Christianity, but also in the kind of Christianity that can sing with Janis Joplin — and without embarrassment — “Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz?” Of course, Christians believe that there is nothing wrong with acknowledging our need, and our neediness. But we also believe that Christ is the truth, and that, after the Fall and before the Last Judgment, the truth is not always “useful,” or comfortable. Real consolation is a grace, and not to be rejected, but the hunger for consolation is not always as finicky as it should be. To reduce religion to its psychological or social utility is finally to turn it into a kind of idol.  I doubt Wieseltier would ever want to be compared to Simone Weil, but on this question at least they aren’t far apart. Describing her own religious struggles, Weil wrote:    

For it seemed to me certain, and I still think so today, that one can never wrestle enough with God if one does so out of pure regard for the truth. Christ likes us to prefer truth to him because, before being Christ, he is truth. If one turns aside from him to go toward the truth, one will not go far before falling into his arms.

Karl Barth famously enjoined the preacher to mount the pulpit with “the Bible in one hand and the daily newspaper in the other.” For forty years I have tried to follow Barth’s counsel, but the object of choice, held lightly in my left hand, is not the newspaper, but (chauvinist that I am) The New Yorker.

The current issue offers a striking essay by Daniel Mendelsohn on a new edition of Herodotus’ Histories. The central drama recounted by the “father of history” is the double invasion of tiny Greece by the military prowess of Persia, led first by King Darius and, ten years later, by his son, Xerxes. Here is Mendelsohn’s resume:

And yet, for all their might, both Persian expeditions came to grief. The first, after a series of military and natural disasters, was defeated at the Battle of Marathon, where a fabulously outnumbered coalition of Athenians and Plataeans held the day, losing only a hundred and ninety-two men to the Persians’ sixty-four hundred. (The achievement was such that the Greeks, breaking with their tradition of taking their dead back to their cities, buried them on the battlefield and erected a grave mound over the spot. It can still be seen today.) Ten years later, Darius’ son Xerxes returned to Greece, having taken over the preparations for an even vaster invasion. Against all odds, the scrappy Greek coalition—this one including ultraconservative Sparta, usually loath to get involved in Panhellenic doings—managed to resist yet again.

But, Mendelsohn, preacher-like, is not content merely to recount, he is intent to press the moral. So, at the end of a longish, but always stimulating, homily, we hear:

the contemporary reader is likely to come away from this ostensibly archaic epic with the sense of something remarkably familiar, even contemporary. That cinematic style, with its breathtaking wide shots expertly alternating with heart-stopping closeups. The daring hybrid genre that integrates into a grand narrative both flights of empathetic fictionalizing and the anxious, footnote-prone self-commentary of the obsessive, perhaps even neurotic amateur scholar. (To many readers, the Histories may feel like something David Foster Wallace could have dreamed up.) A postmodern style that continually calls attention to the mechanisms of its own creation and peppers a sprawling narrative with any item of interest, however tangentially related to the subject at hand.

Then, there is the story itself. A great power sets its sights on a smaller, strange, and faraway land—an easy target, or so it would seem. Led first by a father and then, a decade later, by his son, this great power invades the lesser country twice. The father, so people say, is a bland and bureaucratic man, far more temperate than the son; and, indeed, it is the second invasion that will seize the imagination of history for many years to come. For although it is far larger and more aggressive than the first, it leads to unexpected disaster. Many commentators ascribe this disaster to the flawed decisions of the son: a man whose bluster competes with, or perhaps covers for, a certain hollowness at the center; a leader who is at once hobbled by personal demons (among which, it seems, is an Oedipal conflict) and given to grandiose gestures, who at best seems incapable of comprehending, and at worst is simply incurious about, how different or foreign his enemy really is. Although he himself is unscathed by the disaster he has wreaked, the fortunes and the reputation of the country he rules are seriously damaged. A great power has stumbled badly, against all expectations.

Except, of course, the expectations of those who have read the Histories. If a hundred generations of men, from the Athenians to ourselves, have learned nothing from this work, whose apparent wide-eyed naïveté conceals, in the end, an irresistible vision of the way things always seem to work out, that is their fault and not the author’s. Time always tells, as he himself knew so well. However silly he may once have looked, Herodotus, it seems, has had the last laugh.

Update: 

Once again dotCommonweal shows the way. Since dotCom declared Herodotus rehabilitated, the New York Review of Books can only echo the verdict. In its current issue Peter Green examines the new translation and commentary, and concludes:

The neophyte reader will certainly get a very great deal, even allowing for its gaps, from The Landmark Herodotus: an up-to-date translation, a superb analytic index, several background essays by experts (on Egypt, Sparta, Scythia, and the Black Sea especially) that are the last word on current scholarship, intelligent illustrations geared to the text, running lessons in Mediterranean geography, occasional useful notes, and a handy glossary. But it is a volume to consult, in study or library, rather than carry around; the latter purpose is still best served—faute de mieux, and despite its highly un-Herodotean translation—by John Marincola’s new 2003 annotated edition of the translation published by Aubrey de Sélincourt in 1954. So there remains a help-in-trouble gap to be filled, for students and common readers alike—and, of course, Herodotus’ workshop still has secrets in plenty waiting to be solved. His rehabilitation has only deepened the enigma. [Emphasis added]

The New Republic recently posted a Q&A with Philippe Sands, the author of an important new book on the role of lawyers in the Bush administration’s so-called coercive interrogation techniques. A snippet:

One of the lawyers you focus on is Doug Feith–though he makes clear in his interview with you that he was not functioning in the Pentagon as a lawyer. The exchange you record with Feith suggests he was distant from the decision process, and that he had a high opinion of and supported application of the Geneva Conventions. I remember speaking with military lawyers in 2003 repeatedly and hearing of their concern about Feith: his heavy hand, his pressure tactics, and his contempt for the Geneva Conventions and anyone who attempted to stand up for their application. What’s your assessment of Feith and his claims?

In our system of modern democratic societies, lawyers have a key role to play. They are the guardians–the gatekeepers–of legality. The rule of law requires lawyers to exercise independent judgment, and to give dispassionate, professional advice. That did not happen, at least in the upper echelons of the administration, in the Departments of Justice and Defense. Politically appointed lawyers–not the military, not the career civil servants–could be relied upon by the politicians to do what was needed, reflecting an unhappy convergence of ideology, incompetence, and weakness. Doug Feith is a lawyer, although he was not serving the administration in that capacity. He has a helpfully dodgy memory. During our conversation he spoke with pride of his role in ensuring that none of the Guantánamo detainees should be able to rely on Geneva. He also recalled only having become involved in the new interrogation techniques late on, when Haynes’ memo reached Rumsfeld. I pointed out to him that the memo itself said that its author had already consulted Feith. His reaction? Merely to point out that I had mispronounced his name. Following a lengthy conversation–which was recorded and makes remarkable listening because of his well-developed sense of self–my perception was clear: Doug Feith was deeply involved in the decision-making process, fully supported it, and failed to address the basic questions that one would have expected the Pentagon’s head of policy to be preoccupied with.

It’s well worth reading in full, no matter what your preoccupations.

In case the melodrama in New Haven has escaped the notice of those preoccupied with Pennsylvania, here is a brief summary from today’s New York Times:

Last week, Yale officials announced that Ms. Shvarts had admitted that her project, her senior thesis, was a fiction, and that she had neither inseminated herself nor self-aborted. But they said later that she had contradicted the denial. They said her project could not be shown unless she submitted an unambiguous written statement saying she did not inseminate herself or induce miscarriages.

On Tuesday, Gila Reinstein, a Yale spokeswoman, said Ms. Shvarts had not signed a statement. Ms. Shvarts has declined repeated requests for an interview.

The whole dreary spectacle with various antecedents is laid out in fuller detail in the whole story.

But, on the First Things site, a student at the Yale Divinity School reflects upon the absence of a moral language with which to articulate one’s positions, even those of  distaste and outrage. Here is his final paragraph:

If Aliza Shvarts did what she says she did, I think her actions were morally repugnant. If she didn’t, her “art” is still faddish and hackneyed, and it paints a picture of a sharp young mind woefully corrupted. But the distressing thing is that, in her moral and aesthetic commitments, Shvarts is a genuine product of America’s elite culture. My classmates and teachers at Yale rightly recognize, on some level, the moral recklessness of the actions Shvarts describes, but the moral and aesthetic visions to which they are, for the most part, committed give them no rational grounds on which to condemn Shvarts’ performance. She is, if you will, a reductio ad absurdum, carrying contemporary artistic and moral ideologies past the point of politeness but not past the point of internal consistency. The Yale community is, understandably, unable to make sense of its own anger. It is a cause for sadness that, while the best and brightest of my generation can express their “outrage, shock and disgust,” they cannot think about why Shvarts was, and is, wrong.

But the entire post is well worth reading.

I posted this earlier, but am afraid we were distracted by the walkability issue.  So excuse my posting this again. Virtually everything reported in this article is unconstitutional, illegal, and unethical. Sober up!

I wrote: “A stellar piece of investigative journalism by David Barstow on how the Pentagon sold the war in Iraq and has continued to sell it, including on the Times’s own op-ed page. The sell includes those distinguished retired military men who turn up as military analysts on network and cable news shows, who have been ‘briefed’ by the Pentagon, taken to Iraq, Guantanamo, etc., and most of whom are seriously into the military contracting business.  Incredible.”

And let me add: Do not miss the media’s failure to enforce their own conflict-of-interest rules! 

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/washington/20generals.html?ei=5070&en=0bbccd0a3fa119ec&ex=1209441600&pagewanted=all

Update: more on the military, the media, and mendacity; elsewhere people have commented on how little attention the Times story has gotten from TV. Thank goodness, we’re paying attention. Here is Glenn Greenwald with some observations. http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/04/23/brown/index.html?source=newsletter

The Washington Post has an article today about the targeting of Christian priests by Islamic militants in Iraq. It describes a young priest, Father Abdal, saying Mass while Church members guard the church with AK 47 rifles. Here is the chilling ending of the article:

“Now there is no kidnapping,” Abdal said. “There is killing.”

Pope Benedict XVI has gone home after a spectacularly successful visit to the United States, but we American Catholics are still making news. Today is the Democratic primary in Pennsylvania, and the “Catholic vote” is widely perceived to be important in determining this outcome. The numbers suggest that Senator Clinton is doing well in this demographic block in Pennsylvania. But this doesn’t begin to answer the question who will best be able to appeal to Catholics in the general election in November.

I am a member of Senator Obama’s National Catholic Advisory Council. And as I watch tonight’s returns, I will keep three things in mind:

1. The Catholic vote is not monolithic  As EJ Dionne has noted, “Despite a certain convergence of views among Catholics‹a concern for social justice, a collective dedication to the value of the family. Catholics haven’t voted as a bloc since the early 1960s, when they solidly backed America’s one and only Catholic president, John F. Kennedy, and his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson. Catholics’ loyalties are unpredictable and in flux.”

2. Getting to know Senator Obama. Senator Clinton is already well-known to voters. But as voters have come to know Senator Obama, he has been slowly but steadily gaining ground among Catholics, as they come to see who he is and what he stands for. Many Catholics are responding to his vision of the common good and his values on issues such as ending the unjust war in Iraq, providing decent jobs, ensuring affordable healthcare for all, and working for comprehensive immigration reform. Many have also been inspired by his life choices, especially his decision early on to work as a community organizer with parishes in the South Side of Chicago.

3. Hope is Contagious. For Pope Benedict, hope is quintessentially a theological virtue, along with faith and charity. But hope also has a place in the worldly realm, where it is quintessentially the virtue of the young, who communicate it to their elders almost as a gift. What impresses me is the commitment of younger Catholics to Senator Obama’s candidacy. The younger members of Catholics for Obama United have recently launched a Facebook site, which has already surpassed in two weeks the number of members Senator McCain was able to sign up in two months.

He is clearly giving them hope. He is giving me hope too.

Just as we learn that the Wall Street Journal‘s managing editor is expected resign after less than one year in the position, news comes that Rupert Murdoch has agreed to buy yet another New York-area paper, Newsday.

Selling the paper would be key to Tribune Chief Executive and Chicago real estate magnate Sam Zell’s plans to help slash debt at the company, which he took private in an $8.2 billion buyout last year.

The Newsday deal is expected to wipe out as much as $50 million in annual losses that News Corp now incurs on the Post, with the combined Newsday-Post operation earning roughly $50 million, one person familiar with the situation said, according to the Journal.

Regulatory issues could slow the sale, particularly media ownership issues that could restrict the number of properties that News Corp and Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch could own in the New York Area.

An announcement of a deal could be some time away, one person said.

And what about that editor?

Since December, when Mr. Murdoch’s News Corporation bought Dow Jones & Company, publisher of The Journal, he has immersed himself in the newspaper’s daily operations and quickly made changes in its shape and style. Friends and colleagues say that Mr. Brauchli has been frustrated with some changes, and with the sense that he did not have the control over the newspaper that he was promised.

Paging Professor Moses…

Even the Boston Globe was impressed! After the requisite detour through Hitler youth and Panzer-Kardinal, today’s editorial ends rather (for the Globe) upbeat:

Many Americans weren’t quite sure what to make of this pope. In 2005, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he arrived with heavy baggage, including a compulsory stint with the Hitler Youth more than six decades earlier. A critic of modernity, he was known as the “battle tank cardinal” who had little use for the soft stops on the church organ. But his visit to New York revealed a compassionate leader who prayed for an end to hatred at the site of the Sept. 11 attack; stressed unity while making the first papal visit to a Jewish house of worship in the United States; and made people happy while celebrating Mass at Yankee Stadium.

It’s not every visitor who stays less than a week and leaves his hosts thinking about a kingdom of justice and peace.

P.S. I have heard second-hand reports that during his trip the Pope quietly visited the ailing Cardinal Avery Dulles at Fordham. Can anyone confirm this?

Update:

Alan Mitchell’s comment below deserves to be featured in the post:

Fr. Imbelli:

I can confirm that Cardinal Dulles was taken by car from Fordham to Dunwoodie, where he had a private meeting with Pope Benedict. Here is a link to the Fordham web page with the information:

http://www.fordham.edu/Campus_Resources/Public_Affairs/topstories_1210.asp

There was much nonBenedict news this week-end. You may have missed the Green Issue of the NYTimes Magazine (let us not inquire into that carbon footprint, or even its bs footprint). But amazingly enough, there is a long set of short pieces about what we can all do to “save the planet.” It’s here: http://www.nytimes.com/pages/magazine/index.html

My favorite so far is a site  that will tell you about the walkability of any address in the U.S., including your home, or the home you are thinking of buying, or where you go on vacation, etc. Try it:  www.walkscore.com