We’re kicking off 2010 with our Interreligious Issue (full contents here). Online now for everyone to read:

* Pulitzer-Prize winner, Commonweal contributor, and once-Catholic Episcopalian Jack Miles’s take on Anglicanorum coetibus: “Trading Places”

* Jonathan Odell’s account of speaking to fundamentalist Christians as a “Southern gay Christian alcoholic”: “Coming Home”

* Author and funeral director Thomas Lynch’s trenchant take on church scandals in the United States and Ireland: “Preaching to Bishops”

* Film critic Rand Richards Cooper’s review of Up in the Air: “Traveling Light”

Subscribers can log in to read James L. Fredericks on the challenges, and necessity, of interreligious dialogue: “No Easy Answers“; Jerry Ryan on Iran’s surprising honor to a Catholic scholar: “A Christian & the Qur’an“; our editorial on the urgency of better financial regulations in the wake of the crash: “Too Bad to Forget“; Cathleen Kaveny’s column on the principle of “mental reservation,” and its misapplications in Ireland: “Truth or Consequences“; and a Last Word from Willard F. Jabusch: “Change in Chile.”

Plus, book reviews: Francis X. Clooney, SJ, on Luke Timothy Johnson’s Among the Gentiles; William Storrar on Bruce Gordon’s Calvin; and Lawrence S. Cunningham’s latest installment of “Religion Booknotes.” And letters!

Not a subscriber? It’s not too late to make supporting Commonweal your New Year’s resolution!

From Catholic News Service:

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Safety procedures worked perfectly and security personnel performed excellently the night Pope Benedict XVI was knocked down by the same woman who had attempted to get close to him a year before, a chief security officer said.

Salvatore Festa, the prefect in charge of coordinating the work of several branches of Italian security who protect the pope, said despite careful security measures, “it’s also clear that there are many other factors that come into play and many times these are random and unpredictable.”

He made his comments in an interview published Jan.7 in the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano.

“That night everything worked perfectly, according to the usual standards” of security, he said.

Apropos of the discussion a week ago about the Fox demand for larger fees from Time-Warner, this story about Fox’s chieftan, Roger Ailes is worth a read.

“Mr. Ailes is certainly making money. At a time when the broadcast networks are struggling with diminishing audiences and profits in news, he has built Fox News into the profit engine of the News Corporation. Fox News is believed to make more money than CNN, MSNBC and the evening newscasts of NBC, ABC and CBS combined. The division is on track to achieve $700 million in operating profit this year, according to analyst estimates that Mr. Ailes does not dispute.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/business/media/10ailes.html

Be sure to read to the end of the story, and catch the photo of adoring fans (couldn’t upload/download it).

Earlier this week, there were news reports about a study finding  that the threat of “homegrown” Islamist terrorism is often exaggerated. The study was funded by the Justice Department and conducted by researchers at Duke University and the University of North Carolina. Time reported:

Titled “Anti-Terror Lessons of Muslim American Communities,” the report says the community has successfully limited radicalization by policing itself. It cites denunciations of terrorism, internal self-policing, community building, government-funded support services and political engagement as some of the ways the community has limited the spread of radicalization. “Many community leaders have come to recognize that [tackling radicalization] is a matter of survival,” says Ebrahim Moosa, a professor of religion at Duke and a co-author of the report. “They know that radicalization threatens the community at large and are working hard to defeat it.” The researchers recommend that the government reinforce these efforts.

One interesting aspect not mentioned in the news coverage I saw is that the study urges better education in Islam for Muslims:

“Most of those who engage in religiously inspired terrorism have little formal training in Islam and, in fact, are poorly educated about Islam. At the same time, we have observed, as have others, an increased religiosity among Muslim-Americans. This is to be welcomed, not feared. Muslim-Americans with a strong, traditional religious training are far less likely to be radicalized than those whose knowledge of Islam is incomplete.”

The study offers a refreshing break from the claims so often made that Islam and  organized religion in general are a source of violence.

My last post was about the re-release of John Huston’s film of Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor.

This post is just to give y’all a heads-up about another film about another southern Catholic writer: Walker Percy  A new documentary is forthcoming. This preview looks very, very promising. I’ll post again when there’s more concrete information about when and where this might be seen. Of course, I’d love to see it on PBS.

Damian Thompson’s religion blog for The Telegraph has the story and videos of the disruption of a Mass in the diocese of Evreux, France, when the local bishop announced that as part of a reorganization of the diocese, he was removing the traditionalist pastor of some 23 years. The responses to Thompson’s blog are also interesting, indicating the passions involved, both in France and in England.  And here, in French, is a lengthy analysis that indicates the various elements that enter into the dispute.

That’s one of the phrases and pieces of advice in yet another story about how to keep your (my) aging brain agile. The story is from the NYT the other day and has predictably been buzzing around the Interwebs. But it is a good piece, with some comforting new research and handy mind excercises–including this:

Educators say that, for adults, one way to nudge neurons in the right direction is to challenge the very assumptions they have worked so hard to accumulate while young. With a brain already full of well-connected pathways, adult learners should “jiggle their synapses a bit” by confronting thoughts that are contrary to their own, says Dr. Taylor, who is 66.

Teaching new facts should not be the focus of adult education, she says. Instead, continued brain development and a richer form of learning may require that you “bump up against people and ideas” that are different. In a history class, that might mean reading multiple viewpoints, and then prying open brain networks by reflecting on how what was learned has changed your view of the world.

But my favorite bit is here:

Recently, researchers have found even more positive news. The brain, as it traverses middle age, gets better at recognizing the central idea, the big picture. If kept in good shape, the brain can continue to build pathways that help its owner recognize patterns and, as a consequence, see significance and even solutions much faster than a young person can.

The trick is finding ways to keep brain connections in good condition and to grow more of them.

“The brain is plastic and continues to change, not in getting bigger but allowing for greater complexity and deeper understanding,” says Kathleen Taylor, a professor at St. Mary’s College of California, who has studied ways to teach adults effectively. “As adults we may not always learn quite as fast, but we are set up for this next developmental step.”

It almost sounds like wisdom.

PrayTell is a joint venture of St. John’s Collegeville and the Liturgical Press. The blog features an impressive roster of contributors, including dotCommonweal regular Rita Ferrone (we trust she won’t abandon us). What can you expect? Take it away, newly knighted blogmaster Anthony Ruff , OSB:

Some people speak today of “liturgy wars.” (Maybe we should be grateful for such evidence of high interest in liturgy!?) Some talk of a “Reform of the Reform,” which apparently wants to undo the “damage” of the past 45 years. Some zealots on the Right have an unmistakable focus on the musical and archeological and ceremonial externals: east not west, propers not hymns, kneeling not standing, and so forth. [Full disclosure: I personally rather like Latin propers, and kneeling, and the eastward orientation of the Eastern churches.]  This blog arose from our sense that the conversation needs to broadened, deepened, redirected. Moderate and progressive voices need to be in dialogue with zealous traditional voices. The “spiritual import” which is the “real nature of the liturgy” needs to be reemphasized. The fundamental pastoral intent of the Second Vatican Council, and of the larger ecumenical liturgical movement of that era, needs to be restated, refined, defended.

Some will ask, Is this to be a liberal blog? Well, what else would you expect from Collegeville?! But more needs to be said than that. If liberal means open-minded, self-questioning, ecumenical, attentive to contemporary culture, and avoidant of romantic nostalgia, then we surely hope to be liberal. But if liberal means yesterday’s progressivism, yesterday’s ideals as if the culture and the churches haven’t changed dramatically since the 1970s or 1980s, then we hope to be not at all liberal. Those in the “old guard,” if there be such, can expect to be challenged and engaged.

I’ve already bookmarked PrayTell. You should too. God help the poor souls who have to moderate its comboxes.

To follow up on the Epiphany thread  below, there is a piece on Epiphany traditions in Europe, with photographs, on today’s Spiegel.

Not to worry! Limbaugh the Lionheart is still okay. It’s his brain folks may have to worry about if he realizes the consequences of what he said after his hospitalization over Christmas in Hawaii (where Obama AND Pelosi were staying–hmmm…) for heartburn (or something).

“Based on what happened here to me, I don’t think there’s one thing wrong with the American health care system. It is working just fine, just dandy.”

At The New Republic, Anthony Wright, executive director of Health Access California, the statewide health care consumer advocacy coalition, explains why Rush was so happy (apart from having tons of money others don’t have):

Hawaii’s health care system is distinct from the rest of the country, in that they passed a version of health reform decades ago, in 1974. The Hawaii Pre-Paid Health Care Act includes a requirement for employers to provide health coverage to their workers. As you may know, a similar requirement on large employers is a key part of the reform now pending in Congress.

And the employer requirement seems, by and large, to have succeeded. It has increased coverage–just under 8 percent of the state’s population is uninsured, second only to Massachusetts–and access to care. At the same time, Hawaii still has some of the lowest health care costs in the nation, despite its high cost of living and without an apparent decrease in quality–as Limbaugh himself discovered…

Read the rest here.

I depend on Scott Horton’s “No Comment” blog at Harper’s to help me make sense of the complicated legal issues that keep popping up in political contexts. So I’ve been waiting for him to comment on the dismissal of the Blackwater case since I heard about it last week. Here’s the news as reported by the AP:

A federal judge dismissed all charges Thursday against five Blackwater Worldwide security guards accused of killing unarmed Iraqi civilians in a crowded Baghdad intersection in 2007.

…

[U.S. District Judge Ricardo] Urbina said the prosecutors ignored the advice of senior Justice Department officials and built their case on sworn statements that had been given under a promise of immunity. Urbina said that violated the guards’ constitutional rights. He dismissed the government’s explanations as “contradictory, unbelievable and lacking in credibility.”

The story quotes a Justice Department spokesman saying, “We’re obviously disappointed by the decision.” But according to Horton’s take, which comes via an interview with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, that disappointment isn’t so obvious:

There was plenty of evidence prosecutors could have used that they evidently weren’t prepared to, including eyewitnesses there. The decision to dismiss was taken as a punishment measure against Justice Department prosecutors based on the judge’s conclusion that they engaged in grossly unethical and improper behavior in putting the case together.

And specifically what they did is they took statements that were taken by the Department of State against a grant of immunity; that is, the government investigators told the guards, “Give us your statement, be candid, be complete, and we promise you we won’t use your statement for any criminal charges against you.” But the Justice Department prosecutors took those statements and in fact used them. They used them before the grand jury. They used them to build their entire case. And they did this notwithstanding warnings from senior lawyers in the Justice Department that this was improper and could lead to dismissal of the case. It almost looks like the Justice Department prosecutors here wanted to sabotage their own case. It was so outrageous.

I’ve seen a lot of decade-in-review commentary in the last few weeks, but most of it was holiday filler. This, on the other hand, strikes me as significant and sobering:

It was a decade of gross prosecutorial abuse. We saw lawyers at the US Department of Justice issue opinions attempting to justify torture and mistreatment of prisoners. That was adopted as a legal mantra of the department. We saw hundreds of politically motivated prosecutions being brought, one of which is already withdrawn. That was the prosecution of Senator Stevens of Alaska. But we have the Siegelman case, the Paul Minor case, many others, where notwithstanding now overwhelming evidence of misconduct by prosecutors, the Justice Department standing its ground. We have the Broadcom case only a few weeks ago, in which a judge out in California also found that there was gross prosecutorial abuse. And now this case.

It’s really quite a mountain of evidence now pointing to serious misconduct by Justice Department prosecutors. And there’s very little evidence—although most of this occurred on the watch of the Bush administration, there’s very, very little evidence that Eric Holder has realized the gravity or severity of the situation or taken any appropriate measures to deal with it.

There’s more: read (or watch, or listen to) the whole interview.

Somehow, this “mountain of evidence” hasn’t troubled Newt Gingrich, who went on The O’Reilly Factor last night to claim that the personnel in the Justice Department, including the attorney general, “start every day with a presumption that the rights of terrorists are more important than the lives of Americans.” Memo to the GOP: the “rights of terrorists” stump speech is losing its zing. Try attacking the justice department for corruption and incompetence instead — in other words, less “expert” analysis based on guesses about what people are thinking when they wake up, and more based on findings of misconduct that undermines the integrity of our justice system and our success in bringing democracy to Iraq. Sure, Cheney won’t like it if you go down that road. But that kind of opposition might do more than score a few political points — it might do some good.

There’s Pope Benedict on religious indifferentism. And then there’s Comedy Central. (John Oliver, at the end, by the way, is spoofing the movie Avatar-which gets put on the same level as the great world religions in the sketch–or does it?.) What does evangelization look like in THIS culture–high pop culture ? Is it even possible?

I’m currently engaged in the onerous, humbling, instructive task of reading applications for Boston College’s doctoral program in systematic theology. Onerous because all is done on-line and sifting through countless links to documents that number many pages is taxing on aging eyes and limbs. Humbling because of the evident gifts and commitment of those applying who are far more than names and numbers, but aspiring and generous fellows in the exhilarating enterprise of faith seeking understanding. Instructive because in their twenty page writing samples there is an abundance of knowledge and wisdom from which one derives great profit.

As in a paper on the early Church father, Origen, which closes with a quote that I found moving and which I would share with others, thus widening the circle beyond the applicant/reader.

This from Origen’s Homilies on Leviticus:

If the delight does not seem to be complete for you who are a member, if another member is missing, how much more does our Lord and Savior, who is the head and originator of the whole body, consider his delight to be incomplete as long as he sees one of the members to be missing from his body.

And for this reason, perhaps, he poured out this prayer to the Father: “Holy Father, glorify me with that glory that I had with you before the world began.” Thus he does not want to receive his complete glory without us, that is, without his people who are his body and his members.

An article in yesterday’s Washington Post examined an apparent uptick in movies dealing with religion, “spirituality” and….all that kind of stuff. The reporter defines the motif rather broadly. Still, the article contains some interesting insights.  (I particularly like the observation that the movie “Up in the Air” is in some ways a modern “Christmas Carol.” Rather a gloomy modern “Christmas Carol,” I’d say…)

Well, I guess it’s not completely self-promotion, since the book is co-authored, but I wanted to alert dotCommonweal readers to the publication of my (our) first book, Property Outlaws, which is now available at Amazon and directly from Yale Press.  Needless to say, Sonia and I are both very excited.  Although it does not focus on religion, I think at least some dotCommmonweal readers will find it of interest.  We talk quite a bit about civil disobedience and the 1960 lunch counter sit-ins, whose 50th anniversary is next month, and the importance of disobedience (and not of the politically inspired variety) to the health of tangible and intellectual property law.  Here’s the publisher’s description:

Property Outlaws puts forth the intriguingly counterintuitive proposition that, in the case of both tangible and intellectual property law, disobedience can often lead to an improvement in legal regulation. The authors argue that in property law there is a tension between the competing demands of stability and dynamism, but its tendency is to become static and fall out of step with the needs of society.

The authors employ wide-ranging examples of the behaviors of “property outlaws”—the trespasser, squatter, pirate, or file-sharer—to show how specific behaviors have induced legal innovation. They also delineate the similarities between the actions of property outlaws in the spheres of tangible and intellectual property. An important conclusion of the book is that a dynamic between the activities of “property outlaws” and legal innovation should be cultivated in order to maintain this avenue of legal reform.

From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, another reason to always double-check the “to” box of your email before you hit “send”!

JERUSALEM (JTA) – An Iranian soccer federation official reportedly resigned after his office sent New Year’s greetings to Israel.

Mohammad-Manour Azimzadeh, who heads the Iran Football Federation’s foreign relations office, quit over the gaffe, and the federation’s president apologized, according to reports.

The foreign relations office had sent New Year’s greetings to all members of FIFA, soccer’s global federation, but forgot to omit Israel, which is called the “Zionist entity,” from its list.

Israel’s soccer federation replied positively to the message, according to reports.

Ah, Iran. It’s not like the soccer offical sent greetings on Rosh Hashanah, the real New Year.

BTW, on a more serious note, Andrew Sullivan and the Daily Dish have been all over the Iran protests, which I think is indeed one of the major stories of the year, and one of the most stirring ones as well–a portrait of the “other” Islam, if you will. I’ll try to gin up a post on it, but it’d be great to see more mainstream coverage.

A nice article on Father Jenkins–the “priest-president.
UPDATE:
Thanks to Jean Raber, we have a live link.

Even if you didn’t know it:

Here’s an interesting development: ”Last fall, the American Law Institute, which created the intellectual framework for the modern capital justice system almost 50 years ago, pronounced its project a failure and walked away from it.”

“… the institute voted in October to disavow the structure it had created “in light of the current intractable institutional and structural obstacles to ensuring a minimally adequate system for administering capital punishment.

“That last sentence contains some pretty dense lawyer talk, but it can be untangled. What the institute was saying is that the capital justice system in the United States is irretrievably broken.

“A study commissioned by the institute said that decades of experience have proved that the system cannot reconcile the twin goals of individualized decisions about who should be executed and systemic fairness. It added that capital punishment is plagued by racial disparities; is enormously expensive even as many defense lawyers are underpaid and some are incompetent; risks executing innocent people; and is undermined by the politics that come with judicial elections.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/05/us/05bar.html?hp

One of the most important professional societies for me is the Society of Christian Ethics, which is meeting this week in San Jose, California. One of the fruits of the broader, ecumenical conversations that took place after the Second Vatican Council was the participation of Catholics in this meeting, which was originally directed at Protestant seminary professors. Many Catholics have been president of the SCE, or have served in other leadership roles. Meeting alongside it are the Society of Jewish Ethics and the newly formed Society of Muslim Ethics.

Here’s a link to the program, if anyone wants to poke around.

In most dioceses of the US, I believe, Epiphany is celebrated today and not, as tradition would have it, on January 6th, the twelfth day of Christmas.  It is the more important feast in the eastern and oriental Churches.  When I was growing up, the pastor of our Slovak national parish in Haverstraw, NY, would visit and bless the homes of parishioners. Before he left he would write three letters on the lintel of the front door: GMB, standing for the names of the three kings: Gaspar, Melchior and Balthasar. 

Other traditions?

The San Francisco Chronicle reported yesterday that a group of 20 “renegade” Catholic priests have left the RC Church because of celibacy requirements. The article states that the group consists of both of men who have married and those who want to be free to marry. What strikes me is the men’s openness and willingness to leave because of this issue. In areas where celibacy is seen as a harmful counter-cultural value, the rate at which men take de facto wives and raise families is quite high. These guys could almost certainly have lived any way they wanted and gotten away with it. Perhaps instead of calling them “renegade,” the report should call them “honest.”

Given the widely-reported adverse effects of imposed celibacy (see Cozzens, e.g.,) the rate at which celibacy is observed in the west (Sipe reports what, 50% the US?) the counter-witness of men keeping mistresses and fathering children but ducking legal responsibility for them, and of course the worsening shortage of priests (a problem which ending celibacy wouldn’t solve, but would certainly alleviate,) can’t we finally have a real conversation in the Church about making celibacy optional? Or will we continue to push people out of ministry, or, in the case of these men, out of the Church entirely, to uphold a discipline whose time, arguably, is past?

I don’t know anything else about this group of priests–perhaps there are other good reasons for them to leave. But if it’s only celibacy–can’t we talk?

Don’t miss the final installment of Peter Steinfels’s New York Times column on religion, which wraps up twenty years of “Beliefs.”

At his “Spiritual Politics” blog, Mark Silk offers a tribute and a farewell — “As an arbiter of the passing religious scene, ‘Beliefs’ was without peer. I’ll miss it.” But Peter’s column suggests there will be much to look forward to:

Assuring that well-founded traditional stances obtained a public hearing free of stereotypes and snap judgments was certainly a satisfying role, but also an uncomfortable one. Because I sometimes agreed with those stances and sometimes did not, I often longed to be more direct.

…It is partly to regain such freedom that, having left the regular staff of the paper in 1997, I have decided to bring Beliefs to a close. I look forward to being less limited to “900-word thoughts” and to being more personal, more direct and, when needs be, more political.

A happy prospect for 2010!

This is a minor and local complaint (in the face of war and mayhem), but I was very sorry to see that Fox and Time-Warner Cable have agreed to a contract in which T-W subscribers (we are one) will be shoveling more money to Rupert Murdoch and his idiot enterprise.

“In tense negotiations with Time Warner Cable, Fox had demanded about a dollar a subscriber per month, far more than other stations have received. Time Warner Cable thought 30 cents was more reasonable, said people briefed on the talks who insisted on anonymity because the specifics of the talks were confidential.

“Most likely, the two companies reached a compromise on the price, but both refused to comment Friday on the figure.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/02/business/media/02cable.html?hp

While expiating on the subject over the holiday, questions like, “What about the Simpsons? What about college foorball?” were lobbed back. My riposte: “give it up!”

Update: In Monday’s Times: “Next Up on Cable TV, Higher Bill for Consumers.” Read all about it: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/business/media/04cable.html?hp

And here you can read the comments of irate New Yorkers: http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/business/media/04cable.html

from today’s New York Times:

It will be up to the pilots on those flights to decide whether to restrict passenger movement or the use of blankets or other items often held on passengers’ laps during the last hour of flight. Some airlines are turning off in-flight audio and video navigation programs that let passengers know the status of the flight.

The T.S.A. also issued a last-minute extension to hundreds of pilots authorized to carry firearms under the Federal Flight Deck Officers Program.

One airline captain said that before his flight left a European airport recently, he walked down one aisle of the airplane and back up the other, greeting each passenger.

“I wanted to have a bit of two-way interface about who was on board,” said the pilot, who did not want to be identified because he was not permitted by his airline to speak to the press. “I wanted to see who wanted to make eye contact and see that everyone is acting vaguely normal.”

Who, then, can be saved?

David Gibson gives us a helpful analysis of the recent reports of tensions between the Catholic hospitals and Catholic bishops.

I think, however, there is a tangential and deeper  issue.  What is the role of Catholic hospitals in a pluralistic society?  That’s going to affect the lens through which one views the health care reform proposal.  Some people–such as the philosopher Germain Grisez — think they should consider going out of the acute care business entirely rather than accept the inevitable material cooperate with evil that goes along with participating in a broadly secular health care system.  He doesn’t really see the point in Catholic health care at the acute level.  I myself think his approach is the wrong approach on two counts.  First, I think Catholic health care still provides an important witness that acute health care is not simply a service like any other, but always is also a work of mercy.  Second, I also think that ability to bring about real change depends upon having an ongoing stake in the system.  You can only quit once.

But I do wonder:  How prevalent is Grisez’s attitude in the Church, and at the bishops’ conference in particular?  I also wonder:  What do Peter Nixon and Unigidon think, since they’re in the industry?  What is the role of Catholic health care in a post-health-care reform society?