on Christmas Eve.  He wasn’t being an “exhibitionist.”

Seems like the theory here might need some refining.

Update: It’s wonderful to see that the Pope is treating this incident in a pastoral manner. Nonetheless, I think sending Msgr. Ganswein to visit in the hospital a woman who knocked over the Pope might create some incentives that the Vatican has not fully anticipated.

Interesting news from the annual survey by the American Historical Association, via Tom Heneghan at Reuters’ FaithWorld blog:

Religion has become the hottest topic of study for U. S. historians, overtaking the previous favourite — cultural studies — and pulling ahead of women’s studies in the latest annual survey by the American Historical Association. Younger historians are more likely than older ones to turn their sights on faith issues.

The proportion of U.S. historians working on religious issues now stands at 7.7%. If that seems low, compare it with the more traditional fields in the study of the past — political history (4.6%), military history (3.8%) or diplomatic history (3.8%). Cultural studies stood at 7.5% and women’s studies at 6.4%.

Tom’s tip of the hat to the Immanent Frame notes a reaction roundup at that august site, including this provocative observation from David A. Hollinger at Berkeley: “Religion is too important to be left in the hands of people who believe in it. Finally, historians are coming to grips with this simple truth.”

Source: New York Times

The New York Times carried a moving  story today about two hospitalized children – an Israeli boy severely wounded by a Hamas rocket, and a Palestinian girl paralyzed by an Israeli missile. I’m glad the editors gave the story the front-page display it deserves.

The children have befriended each other in an Israeli hospital; so have their families.  “I have never felt there was a difference among people — Jews, Muslims, Christians — we are all human beings,” the Palestinian girl’s father told Ethan Bronner, the reporter. “I worked in Israel for years and so did my father. We know that it is not about what you are but who you are. And that is what I have taught my children.”

The Israeli boy’s father was quoted as saying: “I was raised as a complete Zionist rightist. The Arabs, we were told, were out to kill us. But I was living in some fantasy. Here in the hospital, all my friends are Arabs.” And the boy’s mother gets the story’s last word: “Do we need to suffer in order to learn that there is no difference between Jews and Arabs?”

For me, these are the quotes of the day. The story says that reconciliation begins when people can see their supposed enemy’s humanity.

Our former vice-president weighs in with a statement to POLITICO:

Former Vice President Dick Cheney accused President Barack Obama on Tuesday of “trying to pretend we are not at war” with terrorists, pointing to the White House response to the attempted sky bombing as reflecting a pattern that includes banishing the term “war on terror” and attempting to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center.

“[W]e are at war and when President Obama pretends we aren’t, it makes us less safe,” Cheney said in a statement to POLITICO. “Why doesn’t he want to admit we’re at war? It doesn’t fit with the view of the world he brought with him to the Oval Office. It doesn’t fit with what seems to be the goal of his presidency — social transformation — the restructuring of American society.”

The past decade is all but gone, thankfully. Why is Dick still here?

At the conclusion of today’s audience, the Pope expressed his prayerful wishes:

Cari amici siamo giunti alla fine di questo anno e alle porte dell’anno nuovo. Vi auguro che l’amicizia di Nostro Signore Gesù Cristo vi accompagni ogni giorno di questo anno che sta per iniziare. Possa questa amicizia di Cristo essere nostra luce e guida, aiutandoci ad essere uomini di pace, della sua pace. Buon anno a tutti voi!

Dear friends, we have reached the end of this year and stand at the threshold of the New Year. My wish is that the friendship of Our Lord, Jesus Christ, will accompany you each day of this new year. May friendship with Christ be our light and guide, helping us to to be people of peace, of his peace. Happy New Year to all!

The complete Italian text of the catechesis, whose focus is the Medieval theologian, Peter Lombard, can be found here.

Several months ago, I picked up a dvd of the first season of Mad Men--about advertising men in New York in the very early 1960′s. It’s been such a busy semester, I never got around to watching it.

So I sat down to watch one episode during this nice week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, as a respite from grading== and got up three hours later–after I’d moved through the entire first disk.

UPDATE: Here’s a nice column  on the theology of Mad Men by Rev. Patrick Ward, an Episcopal  priest in Lincoln, Mass.

Maureen Dowd composing a Newmanian period … make that “question:”

If we can’t catch a Nigerian with a powerful explosive powder in his oddly feminine-looking underpants and a syringe full of acid, a man whose own father had alerted the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria, a traveler whose ticket was paid for in cash and who didn’t check bags, whose visa renewal had been denied by the British, who had studied Arabic in Al Qaeda sanctuary Yemen, whose name was on a counterterrorism watch list, who can we catch?

While the old gray lady (not Maureen) breathlessly catches up to dotCommonweal:

Let us be clear: the system did not work.

Following on Molly’s suggestion for reading tips (and stealing an idea from David Brooks in this week’s NYT) I wonder if anyone has any favorite articles, in Commonweal or elsewhere, from the year?

I’ll scan my Commonweals later and see if I can choose a favorite without offending anyone.   Another  favorite (if a sobering one) is Timothy Snyder’s look at how we should view the Holocaust, the Gulag and what he terms the European killing fields of the mid-twentieth century. I also thought Steven Brill’s dissection of the “rubber room” where New York city’s worst public school teachers while away the hours while still on full salary a superb piece of investigative journalism. It’s not that universities with tenure can throw too many stones (I say this as a dean.) But still.

Back in June I asked about your summer reading plans and got lots of interesting responses. So I thought I’d try again: what’s on your reading schedule for the holiday, and for 2010? Did Santa bring you any books — or an e-reader that you’ll need to fill? Perhaps you received (or gave) something our Christmas Critics recommended? (I’d also like to know how those of you who laid out your summer reading lists in June have kept up with your plans. The one thing Santa didn’t bring me is more time to read!)

I’ll get the ball rolling: a week before Christmas I traveled by train to Boston, and finished Eamon Duffy’s Faith of Our Fathers (excellent) on the way there. I stopped into a used books store in Cambridge and picked up a copy of Evelyn Waugh’s Decline and Fall to keep me company on my way home. You don’t need me to tell you to read that, but it was a very good choice. I had to suppress many laughs along the way (so as not to alarm my seatmate), and I made it to the last page just as we were approaching Penn Station.

I’ve been working my way through another used-books-store paperback, George Eliot’s Scenes of Clerical Life. It ‘s a collection of short stories/novellas reputed to appeal only to Eliot completists — I think that’s unfair, but I am a little obsessed, so I may not be the best judge. Still, it’s far more entertaining than its title suggests, and I’d recommend it to anyone daunted by the length of, say, Middlemarch or Daniel Deronda. I’m halfway through the last of the stories, “Janet’s Repentance” — another grim title, but I am pleased to report I’ve been laughing out loud just as much as I did reading Waugh. (I’m reading the Penguin Classics edition, edited by David Lodge, another writer who’s always good for a laugh.)

A few weeks ago I went with my sister to the Jane Austen exhibit at the Morgan Library. One of the things I learned there was how much Austen admired and was influenced by the eighteenth-century novelist Frances Burney. Among the items on display is an early copy of Burney’s Cecilia, open to the page near the end where the phrase “PRIDE and PREJUDICE” appears. Well, I received my very own (non-antique) copy of Cecilia as a Christmas gift from my godson (I suspect my sister, his mother, did his shopping!), so it looks like that will be my big reading-for-fun project for 2010.

How about you?

If Christmas is for home and hearth, New Year’s Eve is for bright lights and big cities–and no city is bigger and brighter than New York  City.  So Happy New Year to  all Commonweal’s New York denizens and workers and natives –including bloggers Joe K. and Bob I. and David G.–and all of us who benefit from the life and energy and hope of that city.

Here’s Alicia Keys on New York–with America’s fastest rising suburban rapper–Stephen Colbert.

Pardon this interruption of our irregularly scheduled discussions, but having been occupied by work and holiday fun and various viruses for a while now I am just now catching up on my dotCommunications and marveling yet again at how remarkable this space is. I find myself bookmarking posts for later reading, and checking in on past threads and generally wasting more time than I should–though to great profit, personally and professionally. The variety of posts, on matters spiritual and political and theological and just plain funny, is such a fine blend. And the commenters–sparring partners and friends or both–add just as much. So a year-end thanks to one and all.

Apparently unions–or at least that’s the way Dems would portray the GOP’s approach to airport security. Politico’s Ben Smith has interesting stuff on the blame game over the recent airliner terrorism attempt:

Perhaps the largest impediment to change at the [Transportation Security Administration]: South Carolina Republican Sen. Jim DeMint has a hold on the appointment of a TSA chief, over his concern that the new administration could allow security screeners to unionize.

Republicans have cast votes against the key TSA funding measure that the 2010 appropriations bill for the Department of Homeland Security contained, which included funding for the TSA, including for explosives detection systems and other aviation security measures. In the June 24 vote in the House, leading Republicans including John Boehner, Pete Hoekstra, Mike Pence and Paul Ryan voted against the bill, amid a procedural dispute over the appropriations process, a Democrat points out. A full 108 Republicans voted against the conference version, including Boehner, Hoekstra, Pence, Michelle Bachmann, Marsha Blackburn, Darrell Issa and Joe Wilson.

The conference bill included more than $4 billion for “screening operations,” including $1.1 billion in funding for explosives detection systems, with $778 million for buying and installing the systems.

“Starve the beast” has been the GOP approach to government since the Reagan era (though Republican budgets show kitty is getting some pretty hefty scraps under the table). Problem is that starving beasts are more likely to bite back.

Sunday’s New York Times featured an innovative “year in review” roundup, with a short essay on each of the last ten years written by a “noted author.” I thought the concept was more appealing than the execution (and I noticed that their writers all happen to have recently published books to promote). My favorite of the contributions was the last one, on 2009: “The End,” by Mary Karr. (I reviewed her now-in-stores memoir Lit in October.)

Karr reflected on a recent visit to her former pastor — the man who baptized her years ago, who is now terminally ill. She was taken aback by his suffering, and impressed by his fortitude. The experience inspired muted hope for the coming decade:

2009 has been a colossal bummer. Yet just as the Depression recalibrated American values for the better, so might our current hardships lead us closer to Father Kane’s sense of charity, his joy. Then, any flower we lay on next year’s altar will offer an occasion for delight, our own dwindling coffers be damned.

Yesterday I learned that a priest I admired — my pastor when I was a little girl — had died at 93. He too suffered greatly in his last years, but he never stopped ministering, and by all accounts he was alert to the very end. I received a Christmas card from him just weeks ago. (He was also a Commonweal reader to his last days, I’m told.) Thinking of him, and reading Karr’s essay, reminded me to be grateful for teachers in the faith who show us not only how to pray, but also how to suffer, and how to meet death.

From the Miami Herald

“St. Thomas Aquinas takes third place in wrestling tourney.”

Who placed first and second?

From today’s New York Times:

Obama administration officials scrambled to portray the episode, in which passengers and flight attendants subdued Mr. Abdulmutallab and doused the fire he had started, as a test that the air safety system passed.

“The system has worked really very, very smoothly over the course of the past several days,” Janet Napolitano, the Homeland Security secretary said, in an interview on “This Week” on ABC. Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, used nearly the same language on “Face the Nation” on CBS, saying that “in many ways, this system has worked.”

Update:

Putting things in context:

Ms. Napolitano said Monday on NBC’S “Today” that her remark the day before — “the system has worked really very, very smoothly over the course of the past several days” — had been taken out of context. “Our system did not work in this instance,” she said. “No one is happy or satisfied with that. An extensive review is under way.”

With the announcement that Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE) had become the 60^th vote in favor of the Senate health care reform bill, analysts on both sides of the abortion issue scrambled to interpret the language that was inserted to win Nelson’s support.  Within the pro-life community, the reaction was strongly negative.  The U.S. bishops, for their part, issued a more muted statement where they congratulated Senators Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Bob Casey (D-PA) for their efforts, but regretfully concluded that the bill language was still inadequate to win their support.

One can hardly blame the bishops for taking a firm stand, since every other legislator and interest group seems to be taking the same approach to the bill.  Nevertheless, if the bishops remain serious in their commitment to the passage of comprehensive health care reform, they might want to consider taking a second look at what we might call, for lack of a better term, the “Nelson Amendment.”  While the Stupak Amendment in the House bill is more far reaching in terms of achieving pro-life goals, a closer look at the Nelson Amendment suggests it could meet the USCCB’s stated test that health care reform be “neutral” with respect to current law on abortion.

First of all, pro-life advocates would do well to realize how far they have come on this legislation.  Under earlier versions of the House and Senate bills, the federal government could have mandated that all insurers cover abortion services.  That is no longer the case, although insurers are not prohibited from offering policies that cover abortion.

The Capps Amendment to the House bill, while stating that abortion could not be included as part of the standard benefits package, weakened this by requiring all of the health exchanges to offer at least one plan that covered abortion.  This provision, too, has now been eliminated by the Stupak amendment. 

The sticking point is whether there are any circumstances under which individuals who purchase coverage—subsidized or not—through the exchanges would be able to purchase a policy that covered abortion.  In the House’s reform legislation, the Stupak amendment would appear to prevent anyone obtaining federal subsidies from purchasing a policy that covered abortion.  However, it also appears that individuals who use their own funds to purchase a policy through the exchange would still be able to purchase coverage for abortion. 

The Senate bill takes a different approach.  For starters, states can now choose to prohibit abortion coverage in any policy purchased through the exchange.  I believe this is actually stronger than Stupak’s language, but I welcome other interpretations.  In states that do not choose this option, abortion coverage is still treated differently from other benefits.  Insurers must bill enrollees separately for the cost of this coverage and the funds from those payments must be segregated from other premium payments and from any subsidies the enrollee may receive under the bill.  The legislation contains enforcement provisions for these requirements.

As noted earlier, many pro-life advocates object to the Senate language.  They argue that the accounting requirements are a legal fiction and that federal funds—ultimately co-mingled with the insurer’s other funds—will find their way into the pockets of abortion providers.  They also object to the fact that all individuals who enroll in a plan that covers abortion services will have to pay the surcharge to cover those services, even if they are morally opposed to abortion.

The argument continues to turn on what constitutes “neutrality” with respect to abortion.  Pro-life advocates argue that “neutrality” demands that the principles of Hyde should apply whenever the federal government pays, indirectly or indirectly, for health care services.  Defenders of this point to how the Hyde principles have been applied to the Federal Employees Health Benefit Plan and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which are both cases where the federal government is subsidizing the purchase of private insurance.

The problem is that health care reform bill will do more than merely pay for insurance.  It will also restructure the insurance market.  The exchanges are poised to become the de-facto source of insurance coverage for individuals not covered by their employers or other public plans.  Pro-choice advocates are concerned that insurers who currently offer abortion coverage in the individual market will no longer do so because the vast majority of those using the exchange will be receiving federal subsidies and thus be unable to purchase abortion coverage.  Offering supplemental abortion coverage for the small number of unsubsidized individuals who use the exchange may not be economically viable for many insurers.  Thus, what seems neutral in the law may result in changes in insurance practice that tilt in a pro-life direction.

Given that the vast majority of individuals we are talking about are uninsured, however, I’m not sure how large this problem is.  These individuals, at least, are not losing any coverage that they currently have.  Only individuals who currently purchase policies in the individual market that cover abortion would be at risk of losing any of their current coverage.  It would be useful to have an estimate of how many individuals would fall into this category.

One of the objectives of the Senate language is to render it more economically viable for plans that cover abortion to continue to do so once they participate in the exchanges. If you take the pro-choice concerns raised above seriously, this is an effort to remedy a bias in the private insurance market created by the language that prevents federal subsidies from being used to fund plans that cover abortion.  If you are on the pro-life side, you probably see this as an effort by the federal government to promote abortion coverage.

For what it’s worth, though, my opinion is that the Nelson Amendment does not violate the principles embodied in the Hyde Amendment, i.e. that federal funds should not be used to pay for—either directly or through insurance—abortion.  I believe this for two reasons.  First, I see the point of the language allowing individuals who obtain subsidies to purchase abortion coverage with their own funds as pertaining to the federal government’s role in structuring the insurance market rather than subsidizing the purchase of insurance per se.  While the principle of neutrality demands that the federal government not subsidize abortion, it also demands that the federal government not structure insurance markets in such a way as to significantly change the business calculations of insurance companies with respect to the provision of abortion coverage for those who currently have it. 

A second reason why I don’t feel the Senate bill subsidizes abortion coverage is that I do not agree with those who see the Nelson Amendment’s language requiring the segregation of funds as meaningless.  I would suggest that those making this argument have little actual experience with generally accepted accounting principles and how businesses actually respond to federal and state regulations that impact their accounting.

A personal example may help make the point.  In my company, my department is funded by a trust fund that was established pursuant to a collective bargaining agreement currently in force.  All employees covered by the agreement contribute a small amount from every paycheck to the trust fund, which is jointly governed by a board of union and management representatives.  Federal law imposes restrictions on how these funds can be spent and the board reviews fund expenditures to ensure we remain in compliance with that law. I can assure you that we take the restrictions imposed by the law very seriously.

Almost any large organization—governments, businesses, not-for-profit entities—faces situations in which some of the funds coming in the door are restricted for a particular purpose.  I can easily imagine insurers setting up a dedicated cost center on the expense side for payments to abortion providers and a similar cost center on the revenue side for the abortion-surcharge payments from enrollees.  If the costs on the expense side exceed the funds received on the revenue side, then a subsidy is occurring.  If that is not happening, then the subsidy isn’t happening.  Anyone who thinks this is only a gimmick has obviously never had to explain to their superiors why there is an overage in one of their cost centers!

I am willing to concede that opponents of Nelson may be able to make an argument as technical as this one in the opposite direction.  What that suggests to me, though, is that we have clearly left the realm of general moral principles and entered a place where individual Catholics acting in good conscience can come to different prudential judgments.  For this reason, I think it would be advisable for the U.S. bishops to make clear—as they have done on other contested public policy issues—that their negative opinion of the Senate bill reflects their own collective judgment, but is not a statement of Catholic teaching to which individual Catholics necessarily owe assent.

This brief letter to the editor appeared in today’s local newspaper:

Do you remember Barack Obama’s campaign slogan, “Yes, we can”? Well, it has changed to “No, I can’t.” How very sad and disappointing.

Is this premature?

This from the Washington Post (Dec. 26) takes up the issue of who will run the U.S. Afghanistan policy: Obama or McChrystal. Chandrasekaran is the author of The Emerald City about the war in Iraq where he was a correspondent for the Post. The whole story is obviously a series of leaks meant to send messages between the White House and the Pentagon. Well worth a read.

OBAMA’S WAR EXIT VS. VICTORY
Civilian, military planners have different views on new approach to Afghanistan
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
…”A ‘dramatic change’?
“Although senior-level civilians in the administration emerged from the review process thinking the mission had been circumscribed, senior military officials continue to have a different view. The result, as they see it, is that the White House has embraced McChrystal’s original plan.
“We had already been pretty focused that we wouldn’t try to clear and hold things more than we needed to,” said a senior commander involved in the war. “It wasn’t a dramatic change by any means.”
“White House officials have cited a meeting among NSC staff members and McChrystal in which the general displayed a slide stating that his mission was to “Defeat the Taliban,” which some civilians deemed overly ambitious because it suggested that every last member of the Taliban would have to be killed or captured. The officials said the mission was redefined to avoid the term.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/25/AR2009122501923.html?hpid=topnews

HT: Pat Lang http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2009/12/men-on-horseback.html

Adam Nagourney has this analysis of Obama and the Left-wing of the Democratic party in the Times (December 26). In reading it, I was reminded of all the reasons I voted for Obama, and yet I am not surprised by the way he is governing. Nagourney’s take is inside DC politics; but there is something very Chicago about Obama’s manner of governing. Is there any way to govern the U.S. except from the middle? Analysis here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/26/health/policy/26dems.html

This advertisement appeared in a December 1944 issue of The Commonweal:

(You can see the full color version of this design — and a century’s worth of Christmas Seals — at the American Lung Association Web site.)

Merry Christmas to you and yours!

Where is Mary from? From Adam. Where is Adam from? From the earth. If Mary is from Adam and Adam is from the earth, then Mary also is from the earth. But if Mary is from the earth, then let us recognize what it is we are singing: “Truth has sprung out of the earth.” What benefit did it bring us? “Truth has sprung out of the earth, and justice has looked down from heaven” (Ps 84:12)…. How can man be just? By himself? What poor man can give himself bread? What naked person can cover himself unless he receives a garment? Where does justice come from? What justice is there without faith? “The just man lives by faith” (Rom 1:17). Anyone who without faith says that he is just is lying… If he wishes to speak the truth, let him turn toward the truth. Far away was the truth which has sprung out of the earth. You were sleeping; he came to you. You were sunk in a deep slumber; he awakened you. In himself he made a way for you so that he would not lose you. Therefore: Truth has sprung out of the earth because Christ has been born of the virgin; justice has looked down from heaven so that by this justice they might recover their senses who by their injustice had lost their minds.

Christ the Lord, who was with the Father without beginning from all eternity, has a birthday. …. Let his mercy be accomplished in our hearts. His mother bore him in her womb; let us bear him in our hearts. The virgin was pregnant by the incarnation of Christ; let our hearts be pregnant by our faith in Christ. The virgin gave birth to the Savior; let our soul give birth to salvation, let us also give birth to praise. Let us not be barren. Let our souls be fruitful for God. (Sermon 189, 2 and 3; PL 38)

However joyful the angelic host of the midnight hours, however contemplative the shepherds’ simple gaze of dawn, the full scope of Incarnation is only glimpsed in the noon light of the Johannine “Prologue.” God’s Word dwells in our midst, has become fully incarnate, in the life, death and transfigured humanity of the Messiah.

Incarnation, then, is a process that embraces the fullness of human existence and desires the transformation of all humanity.

Paul powerfully proclaims Incarnation’s magnitude and hope:

“The risen Christ must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. And the last enemy to be destroyed is death … When all things are subjected to Christ, then the Son himself will also be subjected to the one who put all things in subjection under him, so that God may be all in all” (1 Cor 15: 25, 26, 28).

One of my favorite Christmas reflections is “Into the Dark: A Christmas Meditation on the Incarnation, for a Troubled World,” by Hans Urs von Balthasar.

Here’s an excerpt:

“Thus the word that the shepherds want to see is not the angel’s word. This was only the proclamation (the kerygma, as people say nowadays); it was only a pointer. The angels, with their heavenly authority, disappear: they belong to the heavenly realm; all that remains is a pointer to a word that has been done . By God, of course. Just as it is God who made it known to them through the angels.

“So they set off, heaven behind them, and the earthly sign before them. But, Lord, what a sign! Not even the Child, but a child. Some child or other. No special child. Not a child radiating a light of glory, as the religious painters depicted, but on the contrary: a child that looks as ‘inglorious as possible. Wrapped in swaddling clothes. So that it cannot move. It lies there, imprisoned, as it were, in the clothes in which it has been wrapped through the solicitude of others. There is nothing elevating about the manger in which it lies, either, nothing even remotely corresponding to the heavenly glory of the singing angels. There is practically nothing even half worth seeing; the destination of the shepherds’ nightly journey is the most ordinary scene. Indeed, in its poverty it is decidedly disappointing. It is something entirely human and ordinary, something quite profane, in no way distinguished , except for the fact that this is the promised sign, and it fits.”

The whole meditation is well worth reading. Find it here.

It is of some comfort to a preacher today to discover that St. Augustine also repeated himself in the various Christmas homilies that have survived. One of the favorite tropes is that the one who rules the stars sucked at his mother’s breasts. Another one is various reflections on the Word who becomes speechless, where he plays upon the two meanings of the Latin noun infans, which first means one incapable of speech and then refers to a child in that state. He began Sermon 185 with this sentence: Natalis Domini dicitur, quando Dei Sapientia se demonstravit infantem, et Dei Verbum sine verbis vocem carnis emisit (Sermon 185, 1): “We call the Lord’s birthday the day when God’s Wisdom showed itself (1) as incapable of speech, or (2) as a child, and God’s Word without words uttered a voice of flesh.” The second part is translated very literally. Other versions I’ve seen render it: “and God’s Word expressed itself in a human voice without words.” But I incline to the more literal version because as Edmund Hill points out, there are places in which Augustine seems to be saying that the humanity of Jesus was the voice that the Word of God assumed in order to communicate with us human beings. In more than one sermon he draws an analogy: Just as the inner word of one’s understanding remains entire in oneself even when communicated to others, so the eternal Word of God remains with the Father even when expressed in the voice of his humanity. If there is a reminiscence of that here, then the second clause could be translated: “and God’s wordless Word uttered the voice of his flesh,” that is, the voice that was his flesh, his human existence.

In any case, here is another variation Augustine played on the theme:

“What praise of the love of God we should express! What thanks we should give! He loved us so that he through whom all time was made for our sakes came to be in time; he who in his eternity is older than the world became younger in age than many of his servants; he who made man became man; he was created from a mother he created; he was carried by hands he shaped, sucked breasts he filled, and the Word without which human eloquence is dumb squalled in a manger, dumb, unable to speak [in praesepi muta vagiret infantia Verbum , sine quo muta est humana eloquentia].

“See what God became for your sake; learn the lesson of such great lowliness, learn it even from a teacher not yet able to speak. Once, in paradise, you were so fluent that you gave names to every living thing (Gen 2:19-20); but for your sake your Creator lay speechless, unable even to call his mother by her name. In that broad estate of fruitful trees you lost yourself by failing to obey; he obediently came as a mortal into a very narrow lodge in order by dying to seek you who had died. Although you were man, you wished to be God, and you were lost; he, although he was God, wished to become a man so that he might find what was lost. So deeply did human haughtiness press you down that only divine lowliness could raise you up. [Tantum te pressit humana superbia, ut te non posset nisi humilitas sublevare divina.]” (Ps. 188, 2-3; PL 38, 1004)

An intriguing article in today’s New York Times about a Cheryl Lins who is distilling absinthe in the Catskills:

Since 2007, when the Treasury Department relaxed its position on the sale of absinthe, 13 American distilleries have begun producing the spirit legally, according to the Wormwood Society, a consumer education and advocacy group. Ms. Lins, 56, is the first in New York State, making two versions at Delaware Phoenix, her micro-distillery here. (Another absinthe, distilled in Gardiner, N.Y., and called Edward III, will go on sale next week.)

Customers like Astor Wines & Spirits and the bar Louis 649 seem to find her lack of self-promotion sometimes amusing and mostly refreshing. Justin Chearno, manager of the wine store Uva in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, said: “When she walked into the store, I saw she had that thing natural winemakers have — an authentic, obsessive thing. When she said she was selling absinthe, not wine, I was, like, ‘You’re kidding!’ Then I tasted. Her flavors and tastes were just as alive.”

Ms Lins not only grows some of the herbs, she also designs the bottle labels, and delivers her product to market. She travels twice a month from her base in Walton, New York (familiar to some dotCommers) to stores in THE City. She explains:

“A century ago this town was prosperous with its piano, light bulb and cigar factories,” she said. “We had a strong connection with New York City life. Part of my idea was to recreate that link. Selfishly, though, I wouldn’t be doing this if I wasn’t obsessed with absinthe in the first place.”

I’ve never tried absinthe, don’t know why it had been banned in the U.S., but Ms Lins seems to be on to something. Perhaps it sips well with Augustine’s Christmas sermons: Salute, e buon Natale!

Word of God before all time, Word made flesh at the appropriate time; maker of the sun, made under the sun; disposing all the ages from his Father’s bosom, consecrating this day from his mother’s womb; remaining there, coming forth here; the creator of heaven and earth born beneath heaven on earth; wise beyond words, wisely incapable of speech [ineffabiliter sapiens, sapienter infans]; filling the world, lying in a manger; ruling the stars, sucking at a breast; so great in the form of God, so small in the form of a slave, that the greatness was not diminished by the smallness, nor the smallness overwhelmed by the greatness. (Sermon 187, 1; PL 38, 1001)

Twenty-five years ago today, on December 22, 1984, when I was in my second month as a reporter for New York Newsday, I was sent out to check on a report from police that four people had been shot on the subway. There were several detectives in the subway station where the train stopped, and I was among a few reporters who peppered them with questions. The detectives seemed to be bursting to tell what had happened: that a well-dressed “golden haired” white man had shot four black youths who may have tried to rob him.

There were maybe three detectives there – at least one was black – and they told us that the shooter was “a Charles Bronson-like character.” My more inventive colleagues at the Daily News and the New York Post quickly dubbed him “the `Death Wish‘ gunman,” after a movie in which Bronson plays a vigilante who shoots thugs. TV news, talk radio and UPI picked up that line and made it a refrain. It took more than a week for police to arrest Bernhard Goetz, and in that space of time, the mysterious subway gunman had become a folk hero. When police asked the public for help in solving the shooting, it yielded hundreds of phone calls from people praising the gunman.

The police commissioner and Mayor Koch called for the public not to glorify vigilantism, to little avail. Gradually, actual facts began to come out: that the youths had in fact asked for money ($5),  upon which Goetz drew his unlicensed handgun and shot them.  Goetz fired a second shot into the back of one of the fleeing youths, supposedly telling him, “You don’t look so bad. Here’s another.” He was paralyzed from the waist down at age 19. Goetz was ultimately acquitted of attempted murder and convicted of illegal possession of a weapon, for which he was sentenced to six months in jail.

Up until my last week as a reporter at Newsday – the week of Sept. 9, 2001 – I had never covered a New York story that drew as much attention and controversy as the Goetz case did. I recall one TV “news” interview that aired in which a reporter, having followed Goetz from a court hearing, interviewed someone in a diner where he had eaten and breathlessly asked what kind of sandwich he had eaten.

I’ve been wondering what  the reaction would be today to such a case. Have racial fears in the age of Obama and violent crime calmed enough that such a gunman would not be turned into a hero even before his name was known?

Federal data released today show a very sharp increase in the number of criminal immigration cases the U.S. Department of Justice is prosecuting – up 16 percent in fiscal year 2009. As a result, federal prosecutions overall are at an all-time high.

An analysis from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse – a non-profit at Syracuse University that routinely wrests data from the federal government through the Freedom of Information Act – shows how much federal law enforcement priorities have shifted during the decade now drawing to a close.

Although there are more federal prosecutions than ever, there are only a third as many securities fraud cases as in 2002 and a quarter of the corporate fraud cases brought in 2003.

Of the 91,899 criminal immigration cases in FY 2009, just 8 cases accused employers (at 13 companies) of felony charges of hiring undocumented workers, and 24 cases accused 36 individuals of knowingly hiring undocumented immigrants. Almost all of the criminal immigration cases – 9 out of 10 – charged undocumented immigrants with illegal entry into the country. (Note: These data are for criminal cases, not civil deportation cases.)

The data are for the year ended Sept. 30, which means that the period spanned the Bush and Obama administrations. As the analysis notes, many of the cases filed during the Obama administration may have been in the pipeline before Obama took office.

When Attorney General Eric Holder outlined the Justice Department’s priorities before the Senate Judiciary Committee last month, he didn’t use the word “immigration” once – he talked about terrorism, international organized crime, economic crime and narcotics as his priorities. The truth, though, is that most of his criminal cases are against people whose aim is to work hard at a job in the United States.

One of the blessings we’ve enjoyed this Advent is introducing a form of the “O” antiphons into our prayer before evening meals. Since our children now know the hymn “O Come, O Come Emmanuel,” we decided to sing the verse corresponding to that evening’s antiphon, after which we recited the Magnificat, with each family member taking a verse.

This has worked out far better than I expected. Rather than doing this grudgingly as a way of indulging dad’s odd liturgical obsessions, the kids have really embraced it. My nine-year-daughter had a friend over for dinner last night and went on at length to her about the antiphons, including a discussion of the Latin titles.

My 11-year-old son, for his part, seems to enjoy the reading of the Magnificat, particularly the line “he has cast down the mighty from their thrones and has lifted up the lowly.” As befits a fan of movies like Star Wars and Pirates of the Caribbean, he reads the line with great drama, conveying the climax of an epic battle between good and evil.

Which, of course, it is. The Gospel of Luke is a story of reversals that, to use the old phrase, “afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.” Not for Luke is Matthew’s pious sounding “blessed are the poor in spirit.” “Blessed are the poor,” he records Christ bluntly declaring and—in case you have missed the point—follows it up with “woe to you rich, for you have received your consolation.”

Mary’s Magnificat anticipates and summarizes Luke’s narrative. While the coming of the Messiah is an ambiguous event—to put it mildly—for those of us who enjoy power and privilege, it is Good News for those at the margins: the widow, the orphan. Today we might add: the unborn, the undocumented, the uninsured.

For someone like myself who lives in relative comfort, the daily reading of a prayer like the Magnificat can be—if I let it—a terrifying experience. It calls into question everything that I have achieved, everything that my daily actions suggest that I truly value. A new world is coming, one for which my life of bourgeois respectability may not, in the end, have adequately prepared me. Faced with such a future, is my prayer “Come, Lord Jesus!” reflective of a deeply held desire or is it mere pious sentiment? If I search my heart, would I find that I truly prefer that the Lord not come, or at least not anytime soon?

I have to say, I really don’t get it.

It’s not okay for the University of Notre Dame to ask a pro-choice politician to give a commencement speech, and receive an honorary degree, because abortion is the new Holocaust. . . and we shouldn’t honor in any form those who who acquiesce in its legality, claiming that this is the best we can do realistically and pragmatically.

But it is okay for the Roman Catholic Church to advocate the cause of sainthood for Pope Pius XII, who was at best lukewarm in his opposition to Nazism and the original Holocaust, and Pope John Paul II, whose apparent negligence in failing to investigate the charges against Maciel and the Legionaries will not be investigated as part of his cause–thanks to changes in the canonization process made by the selfsame Pope John Paul II,who eliminated the Devil’s Advocate.

Saints don’t have to be perfect.

And in canonizing Pope Pius XII, the Church really doesn’t mean to endorse his approach to  Nazism. And in canonizing Pope John Paul II, the Church really doesn’t mean to endorse his handling of the Maciel case.  But their whole lives cannot be reduced to one position, one action, one set of judgments, as John Allen carefully explains to us.

Mmm.  I thought that was essentially the argument made by Notre Dame about the commencement invitation–rejected by many of those who are likely to support the canonization of Pius XII and JPII.

Oh. . . but it’s there’s a difference.  Obama was a commencement speaker –not a candidate for sainthood.

Saints don’t have to be perfect.  But commencement speakers apparently do.

Update: Let me make it entirely clear: I think the standards for being a saint ought to be higher than the standards for being a commencement speaker. And I think we need a Devil’s Advocate.  Otherwise, how can the faithful trust that making saints isn’t a process of pure expediency?

UPDATE: Needless to say, I am aware of the dispute about Pius XII’s role with respect to the Holocaust. There are studies of questionable merit on both sides of the issue–more study is needed.  What I found quite striking–and helpful–is this summary of the status questionis.

Note that the question for the detractors of Pius XII are very much the same as those who now oppose abortion.  Was the Holocaust such a monumental evil that he was bound to speak out against it?

And hence my analogy.