Today’s Spiegel on-line has a piece on the abilities of Google’s translating software at the moment and on future prospects.  I find it overly optimistic about present possibilities, but I wonder if others have had better experiences with it or with other translating software. 

I remember the fun one could have a couple of years ago by looking up what Google’s software did with translations into English of the Nicene Creed in German: “Mr Jesus drove into the sky”….  Perhaps I should try it again.

Reading this article by John Allen, an image of a  future struggle at a future Catholic nursing home popped into my head, as a Millennial liturgical director tries to force Boomer patients to learn more traditional music and ways of worship, depriving them of communion in the hand and  “On Eagles’ Wings.”

But I’m not sure about two points:  First, he says that people who are mildly religious at 35 are going to be more religious after 65–is that the case given this crisis?  Second, if most people, including Catholics, are becoming more broadly secularized, are they really going to want to put themselves in the hands of the more “distinctively Catholic”  Milennials–or will the latter just drive them crazy and drive them away?

There used to be room in the church for the B+ Catholic–who went to Church on Sundays, fulfilled his or her Easter duty, but who wasn’t into all the other stuff, such as retreats, Eucharistic Processions, etc. In fact, most people who went to Mass when I was growing up–the pre-Boomers and the older Boomers–were B+ Catholics.  I’m either a late boomer or an early Gen X.  Most of my cohort has wandered off.   They’re not conservative or  even “evangelical” –but they’re not interested in staying and fighting either for change, either, like the older Boomers.  I expect that’s the majority of the next generation too.

Will there be B+ Catholics in a church run by Millennials and ecclesiastical movements? If not, will the lack of B+ Catholics exacerbate the polarization between the “smaller, purer Church” and the rest of the increasingly secularized society?

Anyone here watch the Newshour? Anyone watching Margaret Warner at the Vatican? She interviewed Cardinal Levada the other evening. Thursday it was a selection of people; at least one of them, though not identified as such, was a priest of Opus Dei (Fr. John Wauck). What do you make of this coverage? It appears to be an effort to be balanced, but it also appears to be getting a degree of Vatican cooperation. Is this the beginning of a new communications policy?  Here in audio, video and transcript (scroll down).

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/religion/jan-june10/vatican_04-29.html

Most modern jobs have a bit of pointlessness to them from time to time.  But the most pointless job I think I ever had was when I worked in the commodity (or derivatives) markets; two years as a trader and two years as a “Research and Risk Manager” for a commodity fund.  As a trader I worked with a group of five “technical traders”.  We held positions for the long term, using a set of magic equations that at the time seemed to give us a little edge in the markets.  From our office on LaSalle Street in Chicago, in the shadow of the pagan goddess Ceres who watches over the Chicago Board of Trade, we traded in about 65 markets worldwide.  We traded all day like good Americans and all night in case something interesting happened in Australia.  The trading job consisted of checking our market calculations in the morning, then sitting for hours watching screens full of numbers winking brightly every few seconds as they recorded a trade on some exchange somewhere.

When I was trading, “screen traders” like us were becoming common.  But the heart of commodity trading was the speculator known as a floor trader.  Floor traders were the hard drinking, hard cursing, hard living folks who traded on the physical exchanges in what are called “The Pits”.  The Pit isn’t called The Pit for nothing.  It was a terrible place; a museum to Darwin in the form of a sort of hole in the floor where every iguana, turtle, finch, and beetle in the Galapagos was dumped every morning to see what would crawl out when the closing bell rang.  Hundreds of men (and a couple of women) shout and spray saliva on each other for hours while wildly waving their arms up and down.  They are almost nose to nose and it was no wonder that once or twice a year we would hear of exotic epidemics sweeping the pits, like tuberculosis.  These people were true speculators, which is as much a lifestyle as an occupation.  And the person who said that one can tell a Pit Trader by their two inch foreheads and the scabs on the backs of their hands from where their knuckles drag on the ground was not far wrong (although I of course exclude any traders that you might know personally). Read the rest of this entry »

MJ Rosenberg has an excited piece (also in need of proofreading–aren’t we all?) at TPM Cafe about the dual loyalty debate: “Neocons, Jews & Dual Loyalty.”
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/04/29/neocons_jews_dual_loyalty/#more

This is a tricky topic–one that Catholics have had to contend with (see, Kennedy’s speech to Protestant ministers, 1960). In our case the question was: who are you loyal to the president of the United States or the Pope?

Any thoughts on this?

Kenneth L. Woodward, the former religion editor of Newsweek, has written a piece for us about the New York Times‘s religion problem. It is, Woodward explains, a question of rival magisteria:

No question, the Times’s worldview is secularist and secularizing, and as such it rivals the Catholic worldview. But that is not unusual with newspapers. What makes the Times unique—and what any Catholic bishop ought to understand—is that it is not just the nation’s self-appointed newspaper of record. It is, to paraphrase Chesterton, an institution with the soul of a church. And the church it most resembles in size, organization, internal culture, and international reach is the Roman Catholic Church….

[L]ike the Church of Rome, the Times exercises a powerful magisterium or teaching authority through its editorial board. There is no issue, local or global, on which these (usually anonymous) writers do not pronounce with a papal-like editorial “we.” Like the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the editorial board is there to defend received truth as well as advance the paper’s political, social, and cultural agendas. One can no more imagine a Times editorial opposing any form of abortion—to take just one of that magisterium’s articles of faith—than imagine a papal encyclical in favor.

The Times, of course, does not claim to speak infallibly in its judgments on current events. (Neither does the pope.) But to the truly orthodox believers in the Times, its editorials carry the burden of liberal holy writ. As the paper’s first and most acute public editor, Daniel Okrent, once put it, the editorial page is “so thoroughly saturated in liberal theology that when it occasionally strays from that point of view the shocked yelps from the left overwhelm even the ceaseless rumble of disapproval from the right.”

You can read the whole piece here.

There is a curious reference to an unnamed “liberal Catholic magazine” in the May 3 Weekly Standard. It comes a few pages into a lengthy article by Joseph Bottum, the editor of First Things, about the current wave of sex-abuse revelations and allegations and the attending “hysteria” (“Anti-Catholicism, Again“):

Liberal Catholics see the scandals as a chance to discredit conservatives, and conservatives as a chance to discredit liberals…. The left-leaning National Catholic Reporter declares it “the largest institutional crisis in centuries, possibly in church history,” and another liberal Catholic magazine demands theological reform, to be achieved by arraigning “Benedict in the Dock.”

Emphasis mine. A quick Google search might lead one to suspect the “liberal Catholic magazine” in question is Commonweal, since we recently used the phrase “Benedict in the Dock” as the title of an editorial on the sex-abuse scandal. The only problem is that nothing else in that half-sentence matches Commonweal‘s position in the slightest. Neither that editorial nor anything else we’ve published called for the pope to be arraigned, even metaphorically. Is it possible for a reader to mistake our headline as a call to “[Put] Benedict in the Dock”? If so, simply going on to read the editorial (or even just the first sentence) would certainly correct that impression. As for “demand[ing] theological reform,” you won’t find that in our editorial either. (I double-checked!)

Last June, Bottum wrote in the Standard about Notre Dame’s decision to invite President Barack Obama to be its commencement speaker. That essay contained several similar mischaracterizations and distortions regarding Commonweal and this blog. Here’s hoping it won’t happen again.

What’s next?  Gold stars? (Oops, just violated Godwin’s Law.)  Of course, that’s out of line because this immigration debate has nothing to do with race…

Two energizers for the exhausted conversation:

A Frenzied Pace for Lawyer Behind Vatican Suits
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/28/us/28lawyer.html?hpw

Paying for the Sins of the Fathers, and of Others, Too
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/28/nyregion/28about.html

Cornell Clinical Law Professor and conservative blogger William Jacobson argues that the Az. immigration law is not racist and does not encourage racial profiling.  He says:

The law does not authorize unlawful stops, but only permits verification of immigration status once a lawful stop has been made (emphasis mine):

11-1051 B. For any lawful contact made by a law enforcement official or a law enforcement agency of this state of a law enforcement official or a law enforcement agency of a county, city, town or other political subdivision of this state where reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States, a reasonable attempt shall be made, when practicable, to determine the immigration status of the person, except if the determination may hinder or obstruct an investigation….

Of course, to say that the law “only permits verification … once a lawful stop has made” is true, as long as, by “permits,” you really mean “requires.”  (The law says that, once a reasonable suspicion arises, a reasonable attempt “shall be made” to determine immigration status.  And failure to comply with the law opens local law enforcement agencies up to citizen lawsuits.)

Moreover, Jacobson’s assurance that the “law does not authorize unlawful stops”  is only comforting if you ignore the breadth of the category of “lawful stops.”  It is perfectly lawful for a police officer to simply approach  you on the street or in the grocery store  or enter a bus you are riding and, for no apparent reason, engage you in conversation.  Once he does, anything you say or do that gives him “reasonable suspicion” that you are an illegal immigrant requires him to force you to show your proverbial “papers.”  And, once that occurs, if you can’t demonstrate with the documents you have on your person that you are a lawful immigrant, so much the worse for you, as this story seems to show.  No, a drivers’ license is not enough.

More importantly, neither the law (nor Jacobson) makes any effort to explain what exactly would constitute “reasonable suspicion” that a person is an illegal immigrant apart from (or at least not in addition to) phenotype and accent.  To argue that this law is not an open invitation to racial profiling of Latinos without offering an explanation of how else a reasonable suspicion of illegal immigration status might arise is not much of a defense at all.

Um, no.  The University of Notre Dame is a private institution.  And whatever you think of the University’s strategy about the pro-life protestors, arguing that it is no more permitted to engage in viewpoint discrimination than, say, Indiana University strikes me as a very odd thing indeed for the St. Thomas More Society to argue.

I think it’s a very dangerous strategy, because it can easily be used by those who oppose the University’s mission.  In fact, I can see the protests in my mind’s eye now.  The Pro-Euthanasia Society.  Act Up.  The Richard Dawkins Fan Club.  Everyone opposed to Catholic teaching on anything will want to protest here.

Whether Notre Dame acted the right way with respect to these protestors is certainly a debatable question.  But to argue that it does not have the right to exclude protestors based on viewpoint strikes me as an argument that is likely to be turned around in ways that the St. Thomas More Society would find deeply problematic.

Pinch-hitting for Cardinal Castrillon-Hoyos, who bowed out of the role of celebrant of the Traditional Latin Mass at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC, Bishop Slattery of Oklahoma gave a sermon that is being widely praised in the conservative quarters of the Catholic blogosphere extolling the virtue of obedience.  The Cardinal was replaced as celebrant because reports had surfaced that he had praised a bishop who had protected a priest accused of abuse from the police.

I’m not sure that in this context, the replacement was much better.  At the very least, I wish there had been a bit more nuance and qualification in the sermon, given the times we live in.  Bishop Slattery talked about obedience to Christ–which is laudable, beautiful, and difficult.  But the practical question is who interprets the will of Christ, and how should an individual proceed when a religious superior or the magisterium or a parish priest interprets it differently from the individual himself.   The call to obedience always has to be contextualized and limited by some recognition that human authorities –in both church and state–can wrongfully call for obedience  to actions that do not in fact instantiate the will of Christ.

Soldiers have a duty to obey orders–but not if those orders are to shoot civilians.  Priests should obey their superiors–but not if the order is to cover up criminal activities.  Given the revelations about the Legionnaries of Christ, which was in essence turned into a criminal conspiracy protecting Maciel by making use of the vows of obedience, I think it would have been prudent for the Bishop to put a few more qualifications in his sermon about how obedience operates in this sort of situation–qualifications that the Church itself recognizes.

But here’s my radical question:  Why is obedience to another human being an intrinsic virtue, rather than an instrumental virtue?  I set aside here all forms of instrumental obedience: the obedience of a child to a parent;  of a soldier to a superior; of an employee to a boss, or of a patient to a physician.   I also set aside charitable deference.  You want to go to dinner for Mexican food, I want Japanese, I defer to your wishes–I want to be nice and make you happy.  That’s not obedience, unless it’s required a priori in some way.

I want to consider a pure case.  Why is it good for one adult human being to OBEY another adult human being–when one knows as much as he or she does about the topic at hand?

And just to be clear:  I don’t see a good argument for pure obedience– I’m looking for one, and skeptical that it could be found.

In recent months, legal disputes on both sides of the Atlantic have made plain what a tortuous path the wall separating church and state traces. The Supreme Court of the United States heard arguments on Monday in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez. The Christian Legal Society (CLS), a student group at Hastings College of the Law in California, limits its voting membership to persons willing to sign an affirmation of orthodoxy and renounce sexual activity outside heterosexual marriages. Since 2006, Hastings has denied CLS institutional support, claiming that its membership requirements run afoul of California law and a university policy denying taxpayer-funded support to any group or institution that discriminates on the basis of race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation. CLS sued Hastings, claiming this denial amounts to religious discrimination and violates the group’s First Amendment free-speech rights by requiring members to keep their consciences private or lose public recognition.

Meanwhile, British Jews are coping with their Supreme Court’s December ruling that a publicly funded Orthodox school, JFS, unlawfully discriminated on the basis of race in its admission policy. The Orthodox standard of Jewishness employed by JFS favors those born to Jewish mothers, regardless of observance, over those born to non-Jewish mothers, who must meet stringent standards of doctrinal and ritual observance to be considered Jewish. Because British law permits publicly funded faith schools to use religion as a criterion of admission but categorically forbids discrimination on the basis of race, the decision hinged on whether JFS and the Office of the Chief Rabbi (OCR) could articulate a principled distinction between an applicant’s religion and his race. It could not, and the majority opinion declared that “by definition, discrimination that is based upon [the matrilineal] test is discrimination on racial grounds” and therefore illegal.

Orthodox faith schools had to discard the 3500-year-old matrilineal standard of Jewishness and devise tests of observance to determine applicants’ religious status without regard for ethnicity. Understandably, some commentators have expressed disappointment and unease at this ruling, believing it an unprecedented and possibly threatening incursion of the state into matters of faith. Several conservative commentators have connected the ruling to anti-Semitically motivated charges that Israel is a racist state. But the British judges took pains to distance themselves from the claim that Judaism is racist in the common, derogatory sense, insisting that they were simply applying the law as written without undue empathy for those affected, as liberal jurisprudence demands. Indeed, this case is a perfect example of the way that the liberal state’s “blind” application of the law frequently fails to bear equally upon all. While it is true that no other religions running faith schools are allowed to discriminate racially, it is equally true that British Orthodox Jews are being denied the right, enjoyed by other religions, to define their own membership criteria.

Read the rest of this entry »

Chapter One, in which a bunch of white conservatives talk about how a law empowering police offices to harass anyone who looks Latino is not such a high price to pay to protect us from illegal immigration.

According to the New York Times, the economy is looking up–albeit rather bashfully.  How do things look from the perspective of your friends and family?

In a blog post titled “Streetwalkers,” the New Yorker‘s George Packer laments that, after a brief hiatus, the brain drain to Wall Street seems to be back underway:

Why shouldn’t the graduates of America’s élite universities flock to Wall Street again, now that the market is clearing up? The acceptable answer is that there’s no reason they shouldn’t. Nothing wrong with making money. …

Why do we need a financial sector whose share of gross domestic product has doubled over the past several decades? Is it healthy for financial services and investment to dominate our economy as they do, and to consume the talents and advantages of astounding percentages of our élite graduates? Are long-term growth and shared prosperity ever to be found in an economy that depends so heavily on electronic transactions rather than production? Is social cohesion in a democracy possible when the gap in incomes between investment bankers and doctors, let alone teachers, let alone fast-food workers, is as enormously wide as it is today?

Investment bankers like to say that what they do makes the rest of the economy work. But the synthetic products that helped create Goldman’s record-breaking profits, drove the financial system close to collapse, cost millions of Americans their jobs and houses, and led to a civil suit against the firm have no economically redeeming aspects whatsoever. They have as little to do with productive activity as high-stakes blackjack. A Wall Street career is becoming indefensible, and yet large fractions of the graduates of America’s best universities can think of no better use for their intelligence and degrees than a job that has become less socially useful than prostitution, and a lot more harmful.

I was wondering when the public editor at The New York Times, Clark Hoyt, would deal with the avalanche of criticism over the paper’s stories that examined Pope Benedict XVI’s handling of clergy sexual abuse cases. Now, he has. He concludes:

Like it or not, there are circumstances that have justifiably driven this story for years, including a well-documented pattern of denial and cover-up in an institution with billions of followers. Painful though it may be, the paper has an obligation to follow the story where it leads, even to the pope’s door.

Hoyt focuses on the article that attracted the most controversy, a March 25 story on the case of the Rev. Lawrence Murphy, the Milwaukee priest who admittedly molested dozens of deaf boys and possibly as many as 200.

I largely agree with Hoyt’s response to those who assailed The Times (although, as I posted earlier, I do think there were some journalistic problems with the March 25 story).

The column lacks Hoyt’s usual nuance, though. While The Times has been effective in examining then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s role in a number of individual cases, it has not done well at putting those cases into the context of his overall handling of the issue. Ratzinger did begin to respond to the sexual-abuse issue at a certain point, so the early cases go only so far in following the story “to the pope’s door.” This is something Hoyt might have picked up on.

One other point: Hoyt refers erroneously to the “archbishop of Brooklyn.” The head of the Brooklyn diocese, Nicholas DiMarzio, is a bishop. During the chrism Mass, he had called on priests to “besiege The New York Times. Send a message loud and clear that the Pope, our Church, and bishops and our priests will no longer be the personal punching bag of The New York Times.” It was a poor choice of words.

Sacred Heart Church, Newton Centre, is an imposing red brick building, constructed in basilica style. Its corner stone dates from 1896 and the construction was the work of Irish immigrants, led by their pastor, Father Whooley, whose frowning portrait “graces” the front parlor of the rectory. Father Whooley’s brother led the team of masons who decorated the church’s intricate ceiling, which both recalls and surpasses that of the roughly contemporary Symphony Hall in Boston.

The brick building behind the church, once the home of  Whooley’s horse, now houses the present pastor’s Honda. Traffic on the busy Centre Street, fronting the church and rectory, is so continuous and offensive to pious ears that one yearns for the more tranquil, if no less odoriferous days, of Betsy the horse.

However, a scant two city blocks away is the bucolic oasis of Crystal Lake, known in the horse and carriage era as “Baptists’ Pond” (for obvious reasons). Sitting beside the lake, with the newly  budding branches showing the uniquely soothing coloration of late April green, conjures atavistic memories of prelapsarian harmony (save for the honking of postlapsarian Canadian geese and their far-flung droppings).

Watching the play of sun on the blue of the lake and filtered through the gossamer greenery, one can all but visualize Dante Alighieri (of course, it is he!), emerging not from Baptists’ Pond, but from Eunoe’s stream:

Io ritornai da la santissima onda/ rifatto sì come piante novelle// rinovellate di novella fronda/ puro e disposto a salire a le stelle.

From that most holy water I returned remade, as new plants are renewed with new-sprung leaves, pure and ready to rise to the stars.

A message from Judge Richard Goldstone to Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun.

“I am happy to inform you that after being approached this morning by the Jewish communal organizations, the following statement was issued by the Director of the South African Board of Deputies, Wendy Kahn:

“The SA Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) is pleased to announce that, following consultation between all the parties involved, an agreement has been reached confirming Judge Richard Goldstone attending his grandson’s forthcoming barmitzvah ceremony.

“It was agreed that a meeting hosted by the SA Zionist Federation would take place between Judge Goldstone and leadership of the SA Zionist Federation and other Jewish Communal representatives to discuss the Jewish community’s response to the report of the Commission chaired by Judge Goldstone last year and for Judge Goldstone to give his perspectives on the issue.

“It was further confirmed that Judge Goldstone would attend his grandson’s barmitzvah and that there would be no protests associated with the barmitzvah.

“The SAJBD respectfully requests, in light of the agreement reached, that all parties immediately desist all public activities on this matter so that the young man’s barmitzvah celebration can be returned to the privacy and dignity that it deserves.”

Judge Goldstone said that “I am delighted that I will attend the barmitzvah of my grandson.”"
I need hardly say how happy our family is that I will be attending the synagogue services.
Thank you again for your tremendous and much appreciated support. I am moved beyond words by the honor that you have announced [the Tikkun Award to be given in 2011 to Judge Goldstone during our 25th anniversary celebration/conference]. I look forward to being with you on joyous occasions.
Warmest regards,
Richard [Goldstone]

[from Judge Goldstone who authored the U.N. report on human rights abuses by both Israel and Hamas before and during Israel's invasion of Gaza in 2008-2009]

Great efforts are still in course to restore the precious works of art damaged by the earthquake that in 1997 devastated Assisi. Among them are the Giotto’s paintings of the life of St. Francis.  As part of the effort, a virtual display has been prepared that compares the present state of the paintings to what they looked like when first painted.  You can read about the show here and find examples at the end of this article in Corriere della Sera.

The historian Anthony Grafton has posted a short appraisal of Pope Benedict XVI’s strength’s and weaknesses on the blog of the New York Review of Books. The judgments are equitable; the tone, remarkably equable. He describes Benedict as a man of qualities — as, among other things, “probably the greatest scholar to rule the church since Innocent III” — but he also argues that Benedict’s best qualities may not be the ones most needed in the wake of a scandal. Grafton ends by hinting that Benedict himself may know this. Among the pope’s many virtues, Grafton suggests, is a lucid awareness of his own limits, and an understanding that the church needs saints more than it needs popes.

It seems unlikely that Benedict is the man to transform the Church, so that it freely and frankly confronts what many priests have done to the children in their charge, and what many of their superiors did to conceal their crimes. Still less does he seem likely to remake the church into an institution that not only worships in an orderly, beautiful and theologically clear way, but also ministers to the world as it is now. But he is a great scholar, with a mind as crisp and deep as Innocent’s. He knows that the church, whatever its resources, needs its saints, and has often found them far outside the Curia. History matters to the Pope, and that gives some reason to hope that he is not looking for another Dominic, since he himself has played that role so well, and that he too will recognize the Francis or the Angela Merici of our time when he or she appears before him.

The BBC reports today that Roger Vangheluwe, bishop of Bruges, Belgium, has resigned because of his own sexual abuse of a boy, abuse which continued into his episcopacy. The report also mentions another bishop who resigned last year, admitting abuse, and lists those bishops who have resigned for reasons other than direct sexual abuse themselves.

It strikes me that there are really three different phenomena going on: sexual abuse of minors (itself divisible into subgroups according to the age of the victims,) physical abuse of minors, and the cover-up of sexual and physical abuse of minors by Church leaders.

I fear that without careful parsing:
1. there will continue to be much sound and fury about direct abuse of minors, but little will be done to address the institutional structures of power that encouraged, enabled and enforced the cover-up.
2. we will fail to recognize the differing factors that lead to different kinds of abuse. For example, invoking the inclusion of women in authorized leadership in the Church as “the solution” fails to recognize that women as well as men participate in abuse of personal power, while women are much less likely to be sexual abusers than men. Also, questions around celibacy and clerical culture are related to the three kinds of abuse in different ways. More subtlety is needed.

Also, I wonder if any of the US bishops who were promoted to their own dioceses as a reward for their faithful participation in the cover-up will be shamed into resigning by the example of others who have done so.

The core of the institutional problem, I believe, is the cover-up and the institutional structures that fostered it. Even canning bishops who abuse won’t address that fundamental issue. It’s like removing the damaged wood from a house without doing anything about the termites that did the damage–the effect is fixed, the cause is ignored.

“New York Senator Chuck Schumer harshly criticized the Obama Administration’s attempts to exert pressure on Israel today, making him the highest-ranking Democrat to object to Obama’s policies in such blunt terms.

“Schumer, along with a majority of members of the House and Senate, signed on to letters politely suggesting the U.S. keep its disagreements with Israel private, a tacit objection to the administration’s very public rebuke of the Jewish State over construction in Jerusalem last month.

“But Schumer dramatically sharpened his tone on the politically conservative Jewish Nachum Segal Show today, calling the White House stance to date “counter-productive” and describing his own threat to “blast” the Administration had the State Department not backed down from its “terrible” tough talk toward Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0410/Schumer_Obamas_Counterproductive_Israel_policy_has_to_stop.html
Other news and comments:
Juan Cole: http://www.juancole.com/2010/04/netanyahu-commits-to-colonizing-east-jerusalem-first-palestinian-expelled-under-new-policy.html
Steve Clemons: http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/2010/04/has_chuck_schum/ Clemons has the radio transcript from Schumer’s remarks

Since I know not all wheelers share these views, I will be happy to add alternative interpretations (reasonable and gramatically correct that is).

Here is MJ Rosenberg’s take on Schumer’s comments: http://mediamattersaction.org/blog/201004230002

Commentary weighs in: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/rubin/283176   HT: Patrick Molloy

Richard Cohn (NYTimes)  has this: ”I think what is really bothering Israelis, the root of the troubles, is that Obama is not buying the discourse, the narrative. Instead of standing shoulder-to-shoulder with little Israel against the jihadists, he’s talking of how a festering Middle East conflict ends up “costing us significantly in terms of both blood and treasure.” Instead of Iran, Iran, Iran — the refrain here — he’s saying Iran, yes, but not at the expense of Palestine. Instead of Israeli security alone, he’s talking of “the vital national security interests of the United States” and their link to Israeli actions.”  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/23/opinion/23iht-edcohen.html?hp

This from the Jewish Daily Forward: http://forward.com/articles/127441/

While the anonymous essay “Sins of Admission,” in our latest issue, has been attracting lots of readers to the site, another Commonweal essay that touches on Christianity and homosexuality has gotten some attention elsewhere. “Coming Home” by Jonathan Odell, which you may have read in our January 15 issue, is reprinted in the May-June Utne Reader.

If you read it in Utne, in print or on their Web site, you’ll see that they describe Commonweal as “a vibrant, thought-provoking opinion journal and a 2010 Utne Independent Press Award nominee for spiritual coverage.” The award winners will be announced this weekend in Washington D.C. But it’s an honor just to be nominated, in a category that includes such magazines as Geez, Lilith, Portland, Resurgence, Shambhala Sun, Sojourners, and Tricycle. The curious can find links to all those publications in the official Utne list of nominees.

Senior editor Jeff Severns Guntzel elaborates on the choices here. I’m not sure what to make of his assessment of Commonweal‘s history — “pacifism” doesn’t exactly capture our approach to World War II — but his judgment that we are “a beacon” I won’t dispute. Our thanks to Odell, and Anonymous, and everyone else who keeps our pages “vibrant.” That includes you, our supporters and subscribers. And if that doesn’t include you? No time like the present to sign up!

If you’re like me, when you read a newspaper artcle about bans on air travel in Europe or the sex-abuse scandal in the church, you may find yourself wondering, “What would the actor Matthew Modine think about this?”

Thanks to New York’s Metro, we now know. Metro, a free daily, asked Modine to “guest-edit” the paper for Earth Day, because Modine is an enthusiastic environmentalist and a famous actor, and because, well, someone ought to edit it.

In case you’re wondering what a guest editor does, perhaps I should explain that Modine’s photo appears several times in this edition of Metro, as does a column he’s written about the joys and sorrows of bicycling in the city. But his most impressive contribution is the series of opinions he offers on the big stories of the day. These opinions are presented as sidebars. Next to a story about how the air-travel ban is affecting Europe’s air quality, for example, there’s a box with a headshot of Modine and, under the words ”Modine’s View,” the following aperςu:

The planes not flying has shown how much we consume from other parts of the world…. We realize what we can do without. Not to disrespect the French, but does anyone outside France need to drink water from France?

I hadn’t thought about it that way. Modine is even more perspicacious about the sex-abuse scandal:

Since the child molestation thing has come up, once again, the pope appears to wilting [sic] like a flower lacking water. I cannot imagine the pressure and responsibility of being the head of a church with a long and painful history of child abuse.

Yes, there are things not even a celebrity can imagine.

This is probably as good a place as any to announce that we’ve invited Bill Donohue to guest-edit the August issue of Commonweal — on the condition that he turn off his fax machine for all of that month. You know, for the environment.

Building on Cathleen Kaveny’s post below about the Legionaries, I’d like to ask for feedback about penance, in particular the communal aspect of penance, which is frequently cited by the pope and bishops as regards the sexual abuse scandal. To wit:

English, Welsh bishops ask Catholics to do penance to atone for abuse

By Simon Caldwell
Catholic News Service

LONDON (CNS) — The bishops of England and Wales are asking Catholics to carry out acts of penance each Friday in May to help atone for clerical abuse crimes.

In a statement to be read at all parishes April 24-25, the bishops assured Catholics that effective child protection procedures are in place. However, they said, it is “time for deep prayer and reparation for atonement” of the sins of priests and other Catholics who have abused children.

“We invite Catholics in England and Wales to make the four Fridays in May 2010 special days of prayer,” the bishops said in their statement, released April 22.

They recommended visiting the Blessed Sacrament to pray for victims, their abusers and for church leaders who mishandled cases.

Benedict XVI asked much of the same of the Irish in his letter in March, and he has seemed to include himself when referring to “the Church” as needing to do penance for the abuse scandal.

Questions: How does this work? That is, what are we doing penance for, and who are we doing penance for? And can we do penance for those who have not recognized their sins? Or is it penance for ways in which we ourselves failed? And does this lack of specificity tend to gloss over the actual sins and the individuals responsible? Yes, I think of the pope and the hierarchy, who can issue such calls — but they smack of submerging larger questions of personal responsibility in calls for communal penance. And does communal penance also connote a form of general absolution (uh-oh) down the line?

I am baffled, not for the first, or last, time.

PS: Fr. Jim Martin discusses some of these issues at the HuffPo.

In anticipation of the Pope’s visit there in May, the Vatican Information Service released today the following profile of the Church in Portugal.

Portugal …  has a population of 10,610,000 of whom 9,368,000 (88.3 percent) are Catholic. There are 21 ecclesiastical circumscriptions and 4,830 parishes. Currently there are 52 bishops, 3,797 priests, 6,007 religious, 594 lay members of secular institutes and 63,906 catechists. Minor seminarians number 279, and major seminarians 444.

A total of 129,230 children and young people attend 900 centres of Catholic education, from kindergartens to universities. Other institutions belonging to the Church, or run by priests or religious in Portugal include 34 hospitals, 155 clinics, 799 homes for the elderly or disabled, 663 orphanages and nurseries, 55 family counselling centres and other pro-life centres, 462 centres for education and social rehabilitation, and 168 institutions of other kinds.

Two things to remark. First, doing the math reveals that 99.999% of the Catholics in that country are lay people, a figure that reinforces the need for an ecclesiology that never forgets that the clergy and vowed religious are a tiny minority of the Church and for the recognition that to assess the health of a Church in any place, the most important thing to study is the health of the laity. Statistics won’t tell us that. Second, the second paragraph, after statistics on Catholic education, lists an impressive number of other institutions run by members of the Church, something that might help us to keep in mind the many and often overlooked ways in which the Church is an effective institutional presence in the wider society.

Nothing against the Christian Brothers…But if this run-scoring play — which is the viral video of the day — during a remarkable comeback win against Iona doesn’t define “Jesuitical,” I don’t know what does:

Here’s the game summary.

H/T: Chait.

PS: And yes, Grant, I know it’s not Mark Buehrle’s flip a couple weeks ago. But it’s college, okay?

This from Politico:  “Anti-abortion groups are poised to launch a multimillion-dollar offensive against a collection of former allies — House Democrats who also oppose abortion — in an effort to discredit their credibility with anti-abortion voters and oust them from office.

Four separate campaigns are in the works, aimed at anti-abortion House Democrats who voted for the health care bill and designed around the notion that those Democrats signed on to legislation that lacked restrictions ensuring that federal funds would not be spent to provide coverage for abortions.

Some of the targeted members — largely, though not exclusively, vulnerable and junior Democrats — voted for the bill after Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) cut a deal with the White House that President Barack Obama would sign an executive order ensuring that the bill would not provide such funding.  Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0410/36173.html#ixzz0lqKZMcNr

Actually if you add up the amounts mentioned in the story multi-million dollars seems a stretch. Now that the Democrats have gotten the news that they have pro-life politicians in their midst and pro-life voters, it would be nice if the DNC  and the rest of us came to the rescue of some of these folks. My particular favorite, not mentioned in the story, is Tom Perriello (VA-5th District)

Father James Martin was at the Convention of the National Federation of Priests’ Councils where he heard a remarkable address by the Archbishop emeritus of San Francisco, John Quinn. He immediately asked the Archbishop for permission to print the address in “America.” Here is part of what the Archbishop said:

And so, I come back again to the question, “Why would a modern man want to become or to remain a priest today?” The deepest and most enduring reason why a modern man would want to become and to remain a priest is the person of Jesus Christ. In the depths of every authentic priest echoes the word, “Do you love me more than these?” These times and our situation lead us in a powerful way to confront that question. In some ways, it is the only question that really matters. If our love for Jesus Christ is truly genuine, then there must stir within us the desire to be like him. We see this in Paul, “My one desire is to know Christ Jesus and the power of his resurrection, and to share his sufferings in growing conformity with his death.” (Phil. 3:10) St. Augustine said that the essence of religion is to imitate him whom we adore. To love is to be like.

We priests and the Catholic Church are in a moment of humiliation and some degree of helplessness. We are that man in Psalm 63: “O God…I seek you, my soul thirsts for you…as in a dry, weary land where there is no water.” This is why I firmly believe that this is one of the best times to be a priest. It is a time for us, like the Apostles in Acts, to give thanks that we are counted worthy to suffer something for Christ.  It is not a time for us to be the martyr-victim but the martyr-witness. If anything is emphatic in the Gospel of John it is that the Lord Jesus freely, knowingly and willingly invested himself in the Mystery of the Cross. This is surely a time when every true priest is invited to freely and humbly embrace what Christ Our Lord freely accepted. We priests and the whole church are being called to evangelical humility and to a purer faith. It is time for us to embrace this providential call with robust generosity and with a solidarity that binds us together as priests in a uniquely difficult period of our history.

With deep thanks to Archbishop Quinn and Father Martin: the rest is here.