In A People Adrift, I warned that the Catholic church in the U.S. faced “thoroughgoing transformation or irreversible decline.”  Yes, the gates of hell will not prevail but that did not guarantee the church’s flourishing or even existence in any given time or place.

In the latest issue of The Atlantic, Ross Douthat has raised the question even more bluntly: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/21010/07/the-catholic-church-is-finished/8159.

“For millions in Europe and America,” he writes, Catholicism is “finished” — “permanently associated with sexual scandal, rather than the gospel of Jesus Christ.”  Perhaps the sexual scandal is not the chief culprit, but church leadership’s  inability to respond adequately is certainly a symptom of something deep seated.  More and more I contemplate the possibility that Douthat may be right.  What do others think?

Abebooks.com has a notice about Penguin Books and how that company initiated the paperback revolution in book-publishing. Many of us will have trouble remembering when paperbacks were a novelty. Many books in Europe were published in paperbacks; but in the States, it seemed, they were only in hardbacks. The trend reached into Catholic publishing when Doubleday began its “Image Book” series in the early 1950’s, I believe. I remember a high school teacher being glad that important works were now being reprinted and made more popularly available, but that the price was so high: 65 and 75 cents a volume! I wonder if there is a list anywhere of the works published in that series.

(Not the hero dog, but just as small...)

Gotta give ‘em credit–ABC news reports that a Chihuahua jumped in front of two pit bulls who threatened her family.

A sad situation all around: two apparently unneutered pit bulls chewed their way out of their yard and ran into a neighboring apartment, where the door was open to barbecue dinner. The pits cornered a woman with her two children–a boy, 4, and a newborn. The woman whacked one dog with a TV remote, but the other kept coming. Their Chihuahua, Manchas, jumped between the pit bulls and the family, and the big dogs concentrated on attacking the little dog, carrying it out of the house.

In general, I like pit bulls rather a lot, (a lot more than I usually like Chihuahuas!) but they do need good training and reliable fencing. A pair of adult unneutered pits in this area also makes one wonder if they were used for fighting, or used to produce fighting dogs–they’re obviously not show dogs. I used to do a lot of dog training, including temperament testing. I would be skeptical of the story, except I have seen tiny dogs with a lot of courage before.

Good dog, Manchas! Rest in Peace.

Steve Martin and his friends the Steep Canyon Rangers give the folks at Jazz Fest in New Orleans something to cheer — and ponder: Namely, the great musical question, why “Atheists Don’t’ Have No Songs.” Hold the Christian triumphalism until you watch:

Hat tip to Jody Bottum at First Thoughts.

Senator Robert Byrd (D–W.Va.), who died this morning at 92, was born before Commonweal existed. But the earliest mention I could find of Sen. Byrd in our pages was a brief item in a “News and Views” roundup by John Deedy in the April 26, 1968, issue:

It is the type [of] comment to haunt the sensitive man to his grave, but perhaps not Senator Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia.

Taking the Senate floor after the March 28 rioting in Memphis, Senator Byrd addressed himself to Martin Luther King and the Poor People’s Campaign which Dr. King was to lead in Washington: “If this self-seeking rabble rouser is allowed to go through with his plans here, Washington may well be treated to the same kind of violence, destruction, looting and bloodshed” as Memphis.

Or, if you prefer, Senator Allen Ellender of Louisiana.

Asked during a radio interview what he thought of the assassination April 4 of Dr. King, Ellender snapped, “I’m not surprised.” Asked if he thought Dr. King’s death would mean passage by Congress of the pending civil rights bill, Ellender sighed. “I hope not. I hope not.”

There is no getting around Byrd’s racist past in accounting for his life in politics. His membership in the Ku Klux Klan, and opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, are the items most often mentioned. Neither those choices nor his badly timed attack on Dr. King ended his career in the Senate, and his name appeared in Commonweal from time to time in connection with his role as majority (and then minority) leader in the Senate and as head of the appropriations committee. Read the rest of this entry »

Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn of Vienna surprised many of us when he called for an “unflinching examination” of mandatory clerical celibacy as a response to the sexual-abuse scandals. He stunned even more people when he went after former Vatican Secretary of State Angelo Cardinal Sodano for having “deeply wronged the victims” of sexual abuse by apparently dismissing news reports of the scandal as “petty gossip.” Making matters more heated, Schoenborn then accused Sodano of blocking an investigation of allegations against Austrian Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer, who resigned in 1995 after he was accused abusing seminarians (he never admitted guilt). The cardinal who wanted to investigate Groer? Joseph Ratzinger–one-time professor of Christoph Schoenborn.

How interesting, I thought at the time, that Schoenborn was going out on those limbs. He is, after all, supposedly close to the pope–and played a major role in Ratzinger’s election. Had he consulted with anyone in Rome before publicly airing his concerns about celibacy, about Sodano’s bad behavior? Apparently not.

Today, the Vatican press office released an unusually detailed statement (Italian only) describing a meeting between Schoenborn and the pope, who were eventually joined by Sodano and the current secretary of state, Tarcisio Bertone. Usually by this time Monday, the Vatican issues its English press release via e-mail. That hasn’t happened yet, so for the time being we’ll have to rely on Rocco Palmo’s translation (feel free to offer your own in the comboxes):

Read the rest of this entry »

In his New York Times column “About New York,” Jim Dwyer writes about Marie Ponsot (a former poetry editor for Commonweal): “After Stroke, a Poet Hunts for the Language Lost.” Her experience will sound familiar to anyone who’s seen a loved one go through temporary or permanent aphasia. But since language is Ponsot’s specialty, she is especially sensitive to the changes in her abilities — and especially eloquent in describing what it feels like, her impairment notwithstanding. A brief sample:

What, she asked, have I lost?

Of course she could not answer. “You can’t say what you don’t know,” Ms. Ponsot, 89, said last week. “So I thought, let me go back to the earliest thing I ever knew by heart.”

It was not a poem, but the Lord’s Prayer, which she had learned as a child in Queens. “I thought, Oh yeah, I’ll do it, Our Father,” she said. She did not get past the first phrase.

…She remembered that the Spanish mystic Teresa of Avila had written a meditation on the prayer. An image came to her of a page from the Roman missal; she could, she said, see the page’s border, but not the words. Then it arrived whole, in Latin: Pater noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum. She tried to translate the Latin to English, to reverse-engineer her memory, like a computer hacking itself. “It was getting sticky, until all of a sudden it popped into my head,” she said. “In English.”

The NYT has some links for you if you’d like to read more about Ponsot. So do I, of course: see this blog post from last year (when she received an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters), and be sure to read Lawrence Joseph’s review of Easy, her most recent collection of poems: “Between Silence and Sound.” Finally, PBS’s Newshour did a piece on Ponsot last year, when Easy was published, which you can watch on their Web site. They also have footage of her reading from her poems.

One of the poems in Easy, “Imagining Starry,” begins this way:

The place of language is the place between me
And the world of presences I have lost
—Complex country, not flat….

“If you’ve lost Rory Stewart, you’ve lost the war. Rory Stewart is a young British conservative, who once walked Afghanistan and later governed the Iraqi province of Maysan in 2003-2004 under Paul Bremer’s Coalition Provisional Government. He is now a Tory Member of Parliament and a junior member of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee in that body.” http://www.juancole.com/2010/06/public-souring-on-the-afghanistan-war.html

“The 36 Hours That Shook Washington,” Frank Rich: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/opinion/27rich.html

The folks who are doing the fighting: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/world/27battalion.html

What exactly are we fighting for? Dexter Filkins, reporter par excellence, talks to some of our friends in Aghanistan. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/world/asia/27afghan.html

And the always provocative Andrew Bacevich: “The responsibility facing the American people is clear. They need to reclaim ownership of their army. They need to give their soldiers respite, by insisting that Washington abandon its de facto policy of perpetual war. Or, alternatively, the United States should become a nation truly ‘at’ war, with all that implies in terms of civic obligation, fiscal policies and domestic priorities. Read the rest of this entry »

Ann Olivier would like a thread on God. So here are two classic texts on the Catholic Christian notion of God. The first from Augustine: ::

What then are you, my God? What, I ask, but the Lord God? For who is the Lord but the Lord? Or who is God but our God (Ps 17:32). Most high, utterly good, utterly powerful, utterly omnipotent; utterly merciful and utterly just; utterly hidden and utterly present; utterly beautiful and utterly strong; constant and incomprehensible; unchanging but changing all things; never new, never old; making all things new and leading the proud into old age without their knowing it (see Job 9:5); always active, always resting; gathering though needing nothing; sustaining and filling and protecting; creating and nourishing and completing; seeking even though you lack nothing [quaerens cum nihil desit tibi]. You love, but not hotly; you are jealous but without anxiety; you repent but without remorse; you grow angry but remain calm; you change your works but do not change your plan; you take back what you find, though you never lost it; you are never in need but rejoice at your gains; you are never greedy, but demand profits (Lk 15:17). People pay you more than you require (see Lk 10:35) so that you may be in their debt, but who has anything that is not yours? Owing nothing, you repay debts; you pay off debts and you lose nothing.

And what have we just said, my God, my life, my holy sweetness? Or what does anyone say when he speaks of you? Yet woe to those who do not speak of you, since those who speak most say nothing! [Vae tacentibus de te quoniam loquaces muti sunt. ] (Augustine, Confessions, I, 4:4)

The second is from the First Vatican Council:

The Holy, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church believes and acknowledges that there is one true and living God, creator and lord of heaven and earth, almighty, eternal, immeasurable, incomprehensible, infinite in will, understanding and every perfection. Since he is one, singular, completely simple and unchangeable spiritual substance, he must be declared to be in reality and in essence distinct from the world, supremely happy in himself and from himself, and inexpressibly loftier than anything besides himself which either exists or can be imagined. (Vatican I, Dei Filius, ch. 1)

When I read these sentences in a graduate class one day, a Muslim student came up to me afterwards, very excited that this is what Catholics believe about God: “This is what we Muslims believe!” he exclaimed.

The Vatican is stepping up its condemnation of an extraordinary raid by Belgian law enforcement authorities to search for evidence that clergy sexual abuse was covered up. Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone said that the detention of bishops for questioning smacked of communist governments’ practices. The Belgian police were also faulted by church authortieis for searching  the graves of two archbishops in the cathedral crypt, apparently on a tip that documents were hidden in the tombs. “It looks like police were searching for the Da Vinci code,” Archbishop André-Joseph Léonard reportedly said.

Thursday’s search created these scenes: police with dogs sealed off the archbishop’s palace; investigators confiscated the personal computer of Cardinal Godfried Danneels; bishops were detained and questioned; a mountain of documents was seized from a church commission investigating 450 cases of alleged sexual abuse.  Authorities said that they also raided St. Rumbold’s Cathedral, seat of the Mechelen-Brussels archdiocese, acting on an informant’s tip  that documents were hidden there. (Nothing was found.)

According to news reports from Belgium, the search was based on allegations from several witnesses that church officials deliberately withheld information on sexual abuse. The search signals that prosecutors evidently suspect that the church’s investigative  commission is holding back evidence from them – they seized all of the panel’s records. The head of the church commission, child psychiatrist and Professor Peter Adriaenssens, responds that the confiscated records include information meant to be confidential.

Was there a long-standing cover-up? Even Archbishop Léonard said recently that the Belgian church would “turn over a leaf from a not-very-distant past when such matters would pass in silence or be concealed.”

I’ve followed this news with the current column from Brooklyn’s Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio in mind. He comments, referring to clergy sexual abuse in the United States, that it’s wrong to say that church authorities took part in a cover-up. He writes that “the term `cover-up’ is inappropriate to describe the phenomena because in most instances the abuse was unknown and never reported.” He adds:

The public perception by members of the Church is that somehow the bishops engaged in a cover-up of crimes in the past or even in the present and were unresponsive to the needs of victims. We must all work to change this perception since it is not accurate. This can be done by each individual priest, deacon, religious and lay person in the Diocese of Brooklyn and Queens. Knowing the facts will go a long way toward changing the perception inside and outside of the Church.

Grand juries from Philadephia, Suffolk County, N.Y., and elsewhere would certainly disagree with the claim that there was no cover-up.  I would agree with one point the bishop makes: that “knowing the facts” is important. What must be done, short of desecrating graves, to confirm the facts so that bishops and lay people will share the same perception of what occurred?

I have been to two movies in the theater in the past two weeks (foreseen and intended side effect of living two blocks from the theater).  SPOILERS AHEAD

The first was Toy Story 3, the last installment in the beloved Disney Pixar animated saga. I know this is going to be heresy, but I didn’t like it very much–it was too frightening.  There was an evil “boss” of the day care who initially appeared avuncular and kind to the protagonist toys, but who was the model of unredeemed evil.  (Even after the toys save his life, he betrays them.) And at one point, all the toys hold hands, as they contemplate what seems to be certain, gruesome death by fire.  The seven-year-old with me was fine–she said, “Don’t worry–it’s just pretend!”  But of course, it’s not–it’s all too real, for too many people.  It should be rated G for kids, and R for adults.  Somehow, it’s more frightening because it’s done with toys.

The other was Knight and Day–the Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz movie about a Boston old car restorer on her way to her sister’s wedding who gets mixed up with a secret agent.  Now that was “just pretend” in all the right ways for a summer flick.  Witty dialogue, romance, fantastical car chases, no gruesomeness, and bad guys that get theirs in the end.  Plus great shots of Boston and the Pacific Coast and Salzburg.

Yes — I do know that my reaction is exactly the opposite of pretty much every one else to both films.

I’ve just read the Rolling Stone article that lost McChrystal his job. There’s a lot more in it than a bunch of military hooligans bad mouthing their bosses. I think they think this war can’t be won, and Michael Hastings, the author, manages to convey why. Worth a read, if you haven’t:

“But facts on the ground, as history has proven, offer little deterrent to a military determined to stay the course. Even those closest to McChrystal know that the rising anti-war sentiment at home doesn’t begin to reflect how deeply fucked up things are in Afghanistan. “If Americans pulled back and started paying attention to this war, it would become even less popular,” a senior adviser to McChrystal says. Such realism, however, doesn’t prevent advocates of counterinsurgency from dreaming big: Instead of beginning to withdraw troops next year, as Obama promised, the military hopes to ramp up its counterinsurgency campaign even further. “There’s a possibility we could ask for another surge of U.S. forces next summer if we see success here,” a senior military official in Kabul tells me.” http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/119236?RS_show_page=0

UPDATE: Here’s Ron Paul (for heaven’s sakes!):

“’That McChrystal thing is just a symptom of what we won’t face up to, which is that it’s a totally failed policy,’ Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) told POLITICO. ‘If we were on the verge of a great success, do you think we’d fire the general? So it was an absolute confirmation of the failed policy and yet the policy doesn’t change. They should have changed the policy and kept the general.

“’Maybe that would have been better,’” Paul said, before going on to say that it is the policymakers — not the military brass — who are to blame.

According to this article in the New York Review of Books, Pope John Paul II was cooperating in the efforts to make the founder of the Legion of Christ’s mother a saint.

Three things strike me:

1) For many people, it was about appearances: The Legion looked wholesome and holy. The appearance of holiness is not holiness. Furthermore, neither is the appearance of wholesomeness.

2) For the Vatican, it seems to have been about the money and the power.

3) John Paul II’s involvement in this really needs to be sorted out.  These accusations are serious.  The idea that he was simply “duped” is not plausible given the facts available to us now  –it may be true, but if so, we need more information to see how it is true.

In the meantime, we all need to re-read the great reversals of the beatitudes–and of the Gospels themselves..

Read about them with Tony Judt. Two ideas from the essay I like:

1. In the Britain of the 1950s  it was difficult to distinguish smart conversationalists from polished ones.
2. The rise of obscurantist theory in the humanities has spawned its opposite: ill-informed “experts” chattering away for hours on television.

Kathy kindly sent me the site at which one can find the prayers and the reading for the Divine Office for the memorial of Blessed John Henry Newman. The prayer alludes to Newman’s best-known (but not best)  hymn, “Lead, Kindly Light,” and to the words he wished inscribed on his tombstone: “Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem.” The reading is from the final chapter of Newman’s intellectual and spiritual autobiography, the Apologia pro vita sua.

O God, who bestowed on the Priest Blessed John Henry Newman

the grace to follow your kindly light and find peace in your Church;

graciously grant that, through his intercession and example,

we may be led out of shadows and images

into the fulness of your truth.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,

who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

one God, for ever and ever.

From the writings of Blessed John Henry Newman, Priest

 From the time that I became a Catholic, of course I have no further history of my religious opinions to narrate. In saying this, I do not mean to say that my mind has been idle, or that I have given up thinking on theological subjects; but that I have had no variations to record, and have had no anxiety of heart whatever. I have been in perfect peace and contentment; I never have had one doubt. I was not conscious to myself, on my conversion, of any change, intellectual or moral, wrought in my mind. I was not conscious of firmer faith in the fundamental truths of Revelation, or of more self-command; I had not more fervour; but it was like coming into port after a rough sea; and my happiness on that score remains to this day without interruption.

Nor had I any trouble about receiving those additional articles, which are not found in the Anglican Creed. Some of them I believed already, but not any one of them was a trial to me. I made a profession of them upon my reception with the greatest ease, and I have the same ease in believing them now. I am far of course from denying that every article of the Christian Creed, whether as held by Catholics or by Protestants, is beset with intellectual difficulties; and it is simple fact, that, for myself, I cannot answer those difficulties. Many persons are very sensitive of the difficulties of Religion; I am as sensitive of them as any one; but I have never been able to see a connexion between apprehending those difficulties, however keenly, and multiplying them to any extent, and on the other hand doubting the doctrines to which they are attached. Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt, as I understand the subject; difficulty and doubt are incommensurate. There of course may be difficulties in the evidence; but I am speaking of difficulties intrinsic to the doctrines themselves, or to their relations with each other. A man may be annoyed that he cannot work out a mathematical problem, of which the answer is or is not given to him, without doubting that it admits of an answer, or that a certain particular answer is the true one. Of all points of faith, the being of a God is, to my own apprehension, encompassed with most difficulty, and yet borne in upon our minds with most power.

People say that the doctrine of Transubstantiation is difficult to believe; I did not believe the doctrine till I was a Catholic. I had no difficulty in believing it, as soon as I believed that the Catholic Roman Church was the oracle of God, and that she had declared this doctrine to be part of the original revelation. It is difficult, impossible, to imagine, I grant;—but how is it difficult to believe? …

I believe the whole revealed dogma as taught by the Apostles, as committed by the Apostles to the Church, and as declared by the Church to me. I receive it, as it is infallibly interpreted by the authority to whom it is thus committed, and (implicitly) as it shall be, in like manner, further interpreted by that same authority till the end of time. I submit, moreover, to the universally received traditions of the Church, in which lies the matter of those new dogmatic definitions which are from time to time made, and which in all times are the clothing and the illustration of the Catholic dogma as already defined. And I submit myself to those other decisions of the Holy See, theological or not, through the organs which it has itself appointed, which, waiving the question of their infallibility, on the lowest ground come to me with a claim to be accepted and obeyed. Also, I consider that, gradually and in the course of ages, Catholic inquiry has taken certain definite shapes, and has thrown itself into the form of a science, with a method and a phraseology of its own, under the intellectual handling of great minds, such as St Athanasius, St Augustine, and St Thomas; and I feel no temptation at all to break in pieces the great legacy of thought thus committed to us for these latter days.

(Apologia Pro Vita Sua, Chapter V: Position of My Mind since 1845, London 1864, pp. 238-239, 250-251)

General McChrystal has been relieved of his command.  A precursor to the end of the U.S. in Afghanistan?

Obama: “A change in personnel, not a change in policy.” We’ll see.

[Update from GG: We just posted E. J. Dionne's column on l'affaire McChrystal.]

More update from MOBS: Thomas Ricks formerly military correspondent for the WashPost has a piece about how often general used to be fired for not getting the job done: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/24/opinion/24ricks.html?ref=opinion

And More: Juan Cole has this   “Lessons of Petraeus’ Iraq for Petraeus’ Afghanistan” -not wholly encouraging on the strategy. http://www.juancole.com/2010/06/lessons-of-petraeus-iraq-for-petraeus-afghanistan.html

More: David Brooks has a solid historical/cultural analysis of how McChrystal did himself in; sounds about right. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/25/opinion/25brooks.html?ref=opinion

You’ll recall the controversy surrounding Bishop Olmsted’s announcement that Sr. McBride had excommunicated herself owing to her participation in a decision to approve an abortion to save the life of a mother. (We discussed it here and here last month.) If you’ve been struggling with the challenges posed by such a hard case, worry no more. The American Life League has produced a video that makes it all crystal clear. The piece is a touch long, and we’re all busy people, so I’ve trimmed it to the essential bits, which I present here for your edification. You’re welcome.

As Commonweal’s editor, Paul Baumann, prepares to move into a glamorous new office (one with a door and a window), he has slowly been excavating his old office. This morning he unearthed an ancient photocopy of an editorial comment from an ancient issue of New Blackfriars. The piece is dated February 1967 and signed “H.Mc.OP” — that’s Fr. Herbert McCabe, the great Irish Dominican who was then in charge of the journal. The comment was written in response to the news that the English theologian Charles Davis had decided to leave the Catholic Church, an event McCabe describes as “the most important thing that has happened in the Catholic Church in England for half a century.” That may have been an overstatement, but McCabe’s sense of the event’s significance spurred him to write a few trenchant paragraphs on the “dialectical tension” of a historical church. Here are two of them:

[W]e must look more closely at this phrase, ‘insitutional Church.’

Consider a few institutions: Spode House, the Newman Theology Groups, the Union of Catholic Students, the Young Christian Workers, University Chaplaincies, the Catholic press including even New Blackfriars. None of these are exclusively for Catholics but no sociologist would hesitate to describe them as Roman Catholic institutions. It is within institutions such as these that a great many Catholics nourish their Christian lives. It is not merely because the dynamic of their lives is not derived from sermons or ‘religious education’ that it therefore comes from outside the institutions of the Church. To think so would be to betray a clericalist view of what counts as a Catholic institution. If there is a group which is characteristically on the fringe of the institutions of the Church in this sense, and which largely ignores them, it is the Bishops. Nonetheless without the overall and relatively impersonal structure of the hierarchy these Roman Catholic institutions could not exist. Nobody in England expects to be guided and encouraged in his Christian life by pastoral letters — it is a matter for gratified astonishment when these have any theological content at all; this is not what we have come to expect of our Bishops. Perhaps in some more adequate Church we could ask for more, but at the present time in England they provide merely an administrative context within which the really vital and immediately relevant institutions can exist. That the established hierarchy is also a hindrance to these gorups is only too obvious and only to be expected. A dialectical tension between the framework of the Church and its points of growth seems to be a condition of Christian existence.

It is one thing, however, to talk of a dialectical tension implied in the very idea of an historical Church, and quite another to excuse the corruptions and follies that are peculiar to our own time and place. What does not need to be endured indefinitely is the special irrelevance of so much of the behaviour of Church officials. Alongside the actual agony of growth in the Church there seem to be these men playing a private game amongst themselves in which the moves are directives and prohibitions and the players score points for formally going through the motions of docility or of repeating the orders correctly. It seems to me that we should treat this game as we do the phantasies of adolescence of any of the other ways in which men escape from reality; we should combine a firm determination to get rid of it eventually with a certain tolerance of it while it is being played. While Church authorities are occupied with these domination games they are neglecting their true role. It would be quite unrealistic to expect them to be sources of enthusiasm and original thought but it is their basic task to be the link between such sources, the framework within which they are kept in balance. To maintain this balance they must, of course, speak with authority, the real authority that comes with understanding and concern and listening to others; the authority that sees itself not in terms of power but as a service to the community, the channel of communication by which each part of the community is kept in touch with the whole, a whole that extends through time as well as space.

But why do we even need these official channels of communication? McCabe had a good, short answer, one that explained his unwillingness to follow Davis out the door, in spite of the fact that he agreed with many of Davis’s criticisms of the English hierarchy.

It is because we believe that the hierarchical institutions of the Roman Catholic Church, with all their decadence, their corruption, and their silliness, do in fact link us to areas of Christian truth beyond our own particular experience and ultimately to truths beyond any experience, that we remain, and see our Christian lives in terms of remaining, members of this Church.

How dare they play shuffle-board! The Puritans wouldn’t approve! My big issue: Who knew shuffle-board could be so rowdy!

I just came across this passage from the Laws and Liberties of Massachusetts, 1648.
Gaming.

That no person shall henceforth use the said game of Shuffle-board in any such house, nor in any other house used as common for such purpose, upon payn for every Keeper of such house to forfeit for every such offence twenty shillings: and for every person playing at the said game in any such house, to forfeit for everie such offence five shillings: Nor shall any person at any time play or game for any monie, or mony-worth upon penalty of forfeiting treble the value therof: one half to the partie informing, the other half to the Treasurie. And any Magistrate may hear and determin any offence against this Law.

Spiegel-on line today has a piece on the German debate on whether modified plants and animals may be patented. This strikes me as a very important debate, but I don’t recall the issue’s getting much attention in the USA. In any case, might we get a discussion going here?

And not even Catholic? Oy vey. The magazine of Reform Judaism has a piece by Michael Posner, titled “Unmasking Shakespeare.” (Yet again, I might add.) Posner sums up the apparently growing arguments that the Bard was Amelia Bassano Lanier (1569-1645), daughter of a Venetian-born court musician and converso.

A feminist of her day, Bassano composed Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (Hail God, King of the Jews), a 3,000-line book of original poetry. Its appearance in 1611 made her the first woman to have published a work of original verse in the English language. Andrée Brooks (who has written about this period) points to a poem in which Bassano writes of “evil disposed men who forgetting they were borne of women, nourished of women, and that if it were not by the means of women, they would be quite extinguished from this world.” Certain men, Bassano declares, “have tempted even the patience of God himself.”

The Bassano authorship theory’s principal proponent is John Hudson, a graduate of the Shakespeare Institute at the University of Birmingham, England. Hudson has spent the last seven years poring over Shakespeare texts and scholarly material as well as mounting productions of the plays with his New York–based troupe, the Dark Lady Players. He’s also written an 800-page manuscript in support of his contention that if Amelia Bassano did not author all of the works, she was a major collaborator, influenced them all, and contributed their underlying allegorical plots.

Much more here.

Why not release the tape of Cardinal George’s remarks?

http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/helen-osman-accuses-cna-of-fabricating-report-on-cardinal-george-and-cha/

A sign of the broader impact of the sex abuse crisis on the Daily Show. . .”Goldman Sachs is losing a PR war to the Catholic Church. . . and that’s hard to do. . . ”

Conservative Catholics worry that the crisis has impeded the Church’s ability to speak out on abortion. Liberal Catholics can see here that it impedes the ability of the Church to speak out on issues of social justice, too.

I thought I’d open a thread on EJ Dionne’s new column on the webpage.

This story about Fannie and Freddie has many interesting details (including the cost of cutting foreclosed lawns in AZ). Among those details is that the two entities (taxpayer supported) continue to favor ownership over rentership with taxpayer support–even beyond interest deduction. A good policy of redistribution? A doubtful policy of good money after bad?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/business/20foreclose.html?hp

Read the rest of this entry »

Reporting in: thousands of fire flies in the meadow. Remember when they were reported almost extinct (especially from children capturing them in Mason jars)?

An eye-opening story from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

The standard used to vet clergy sex abuse cases involving children in the Catholic Diocese of La Crosse appears to violate church law and may be putting young people at risk, a canon lawyer and high-ranking priest of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee said Thursday.

Vice Chancellor James Connell, who serves on the Milwaukee archdiocese’s sex abuse review board, said La Crosse’s policy dictates a high burden of proof that may have caused the diocese to return abusive priests to ministry, and he called on church officials there to re-examine all cases in which it was used.

Connell went public with his concerns in an open letter to Catholics on Thursday after three months of trying unsuccessfully to persuade state and national church officials, including Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki, who last served in La Crosse, to change the standard.

“Sometimes we’ve got to bring our problems to the Christian laity,” said Connell, who cited a canon law provision that allows, and at times requires, church officials to make public matters of importance to the church.

La Crosse officials said the concerns were “unfounded” but the incoming bishop was going to conduct a review. Diane Knight, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ National Review Board on clergy sex abuse issues, told the newspaper that  Connell raises “cause for concern,” but that her board did not have the authority to impose policy changes on a diocese.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO), responding to a request from a number of representatives and senators, has produced a tally showing that six organizations that perform or promote abortion received nearly $1 billion in taxpayer dollars in fiscal years 2002 through 2009.

That period, for those with short memories, generally corresponds to the two terms of a certain President George W. Bush, who has been depicted in many quarters as a pro-life champion and defender of of Catholic values. And Republicans controlled Congress for most of that stretch. Hmmm….

CNS has the story here.

John Allen reports at NCR on the status of the USCCB’s dispute with the Catholic Health Association over the latter’s support for the health-care-reform bill the bishops opposed. His story includes an interview with the USCCB president, Cardinal Francis George, and the results are discouraging.

Allen doesn’t have any trouble understanding the CHA’s position. The CHA has explained it very plainly, and they do so again in his report:

“We would not have supported the legislation if it were inconsistent with our values as a ministry of the church,” said Colleen Scanlon, a lay medical professional and chair of the CHA Board of Trustees, in remarks opening the assembly.

The association, she said, “firmly believes that the enacted law meets this fundamental, non-negotiable priority — no federal funding for abortion.”

And Sr. Carol Keehan says, again: “We did not differ on the moral question, or the teaching authority of the bishops.” Pretty clear. But Cardinal George still seems confused about the nature of the disagreement.

“This may be a narrow disagreement, but it has exposed a very large principle,” [George] said….

“If the bishops have a right and a duty to teach that killing the unborn is immoral, they also have to teach that laws which permit and fund abortion are immoral,” George said. “It seems that what some people are saying is that the bishops can’t, or shouldn’t, speak to the moral content of the law, that we should remain on the level of abstract principles.”

“Some people” may be saying that, but the CHA most definitely isn’t. (That’s not what Commonweal has argued, either.) The bishops’ “right and duty…to teach that laws which permit and fund abortion are immoral” has not been challenged by the CHA — in fact, it has been endorsed. The CHA (and Commonweal) supported the law because it met the standards set forth by the bishops, in their (our) judgment. In other words, they (we) felt the bishops were wrong about whether the final bill met the standards they had laid out. As has been pointed out many times by now, that difference of opinion about the details of the legislation is not a challenge to the bishops’ teaching authority or moral pronouncements. How has this distinction failed to penetrate the defenses of the USCCB?

For Mark Silk, the lesson is plain: “So now we know: The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops cares more about its authority than being right.”

The June 18 Commonweal has an editorial on this subject, “Catholic Unity.” Like Silk, we noted some conflict between what (some) bishops are saying now and the principles expressed in Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship. Bishop Robert Lynch (of St. Petersburg) seems to have noticed a similar problem:

“I’ve been associated in one way or another with the episcopal conference of the United States since 1972,” said Bishop Robert Lynch of St. Petersburg, Fla. “I have never before this year heard the theory that we enjoy the same primacy of respect for legislative interpretation as we do for interpretation of the moral law.”…

“I think this theory needs to be debated and discussed by the body of bishops,” he said.

You may recall that Lynch, who sits on the CHA board, found himself awkwardly caught between the USCCB and the CHA back in March. Perhaps he learned from that to examine the conference’s claims more closely. Would that his brother bishops might do the same. Cardinal George seems to be holding out hope for “reconciliation” without any concessions on the part of the USCCB:

George said there’s an “immediate area” of possible collaboration with the CHA, which is the bishops’ desire to insert stronger anti-abortion language, based on the Hyde Amendment, into the new health care law.

“If we can jointly support that change to the law, it would go a long way to fostering reconciliation,” he said.

Perhaps. But the bishops’ taking the time to correctly interpret the positions of the CHA and other Catholics who supported the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act would go a lot further to rebuild damaged credibility and trust.

At Theolog, the blog of the Christian Century, the magazine’s executive editor, David Heim, notes the 25th anniversary of the journal Modern Theology, which has an issue featuring several essays on theological developments over the past quarter century. Heim welcomes the fact that the journal has catalogued a move since the early 1980’s from what “seemed a sterile standoff between modernists and fundamentalists” to something deeper today:

Without losing their engagement with philosophy and the social sciences, modern theologians of the Modern Theology type have drawn eagerly on premodern thinkers. As Nicholas Lash writes, quoting Kevin Hughes, this return to the sources of faith “is not a nostalgic retreat to the theological safety of premodern Christendom. Rather, it is a vital struggle for the proper diagnosis of our present condition.”

Furthermore, whatever a modern theologian is these days, it is usually someone who regards the liturgical and sacramental life of the church as a vital ingredient of theological reasoning. Perhaps most striking of all for a Protestant of 1980 perusing Modern Theology is the extent to which “modern theology” has become a catholic and Catholic enterprise.

As a layman with very much an outsider’s view, that strikes me as true, and a good thing for both Protestants and Catholics, upper and lower case. Yes? No?

PS: I haven’t read the 25th anniversary edition, not that I’d understand enough to alter my judgment one way or another.