From a letter to the editor in the NYT (last one in the string):

To the Editor:

The Supreme Court has ruled that crowding in the California prisons violates the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Yet a previous court ruled that capital punishment does not violate the Constitution.

While I have never had to face prison crowding or capital punishment, I believe I could tolerate the former over the latter. Evidently, one can be put to death in California, but cannot be crowded into a cell.

GERALD BAZER
Toledo, Ohio, May 24, 2011

Just posted, our editorial on the John Jay study of the “causes and context” of the sexual-abuse crisis. It begins:

From the beginning, armchair social-scientists have floated any number of explanations for the Catholic Church’s sexual-abuse crisis. Conservatives blamed gay men. Liberals blamed celibacy. And everyone blamed the bishops.

Now we have a new report on the scandal’s “causes and context” [.pdf], whose results contradict most observers’ pet theories. That may be the report’s greatest value.

Read the rest right here. I realize this subject lends it self to heated debate, so please try to follow our commenting guidelines.

In a post below I mentioned returning to read Karl Rahner after some years of relative neglect. In a typically dense essay, “Christianity’s Absolute Claim,” (Theological Investigations, volume 21) from relatively late in his life, Rahner ends on a very personal note:

In the challenge of faith which I, too, think that I have experienced, one thing has always remained clear to me, has sustained me as I have held to it. It is the conviction that what has been inherited and received must not simply be consumed by the emptiness of everyday existence, of spiritual obtuseness, of dark and gloomy skepticism, but at most by what is more powerful and calls to greater freedom and more irresistible light. The faith I inherited was certainly always the faith that was challenged and could be challenged as well. But this faith was always experienced as that person who asked me: “Will you too go away?” and to whom one could only say always: “Lord, to whom shall I go?” It was experienced as faith that was powerful and good, which I could have given up only if the opposite had been shown. Therefore, until the opposite has been proved. And now: no one has proved the opposite to me, not even the experience of my own life.

In a comment on the original post Jean Raber refers to a painting, “The Crucifixion of Saint Peter,” by Luca Giordano. Rahner’s words might serve to exegete the painting.

NOTE:

Thanks to Mollie’s technical know-how, if you click on the image, and then click again, you can see an enlarged version.

Yesterday was Memorial Day, so some reflection on the state of the nation is in order. I offer for your review and comment the speech of Archbishop Charles Chaput to the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars last fall.  It is not, in my view,  a jeremiad, but the closely related form of biblical speech, a lamentation. While Chaput’s doctrinal commitments are always in line with Church teaching, his rhetorical style and sensibilities, in my view, are distinctly American–and in particular, deeply indebted to the American Puritans.

In this speech, as he has in other speeches in the past, Chaput invokes the Puritan founders of this nation–in particular, John Winthrop’s “Modell of Christan Charity.” We have, in his view, declined in our religious commitments, our commitment to the common good since that time. Many people would say the same thing. It is sad, but not surprising–it’s been nearly 500 years.

What is surprising, however, is the degree to which the idea of moral (and with it political) decline animated the spirit of religious leaders much closer in time to Winthrop’s “Modell.” The second generation of Puritan divines, distressed at the comparative lack of religious dedication in their peers, devoted a significant part of their sermonizing to castigating those who were falling away and lamenting the loss. For the Puritans, the loss of faith in God meant the loss in success in the country. For this “new Israel,” the twin blessings of fidelity to God and material prosperity were deeply intertwined.

Moreover, how many are there, that were born under the covenant as they grew up to years of discretion, doe not endeavor to prepare themselves to take hold on the Lords Covenant, but are such that if they should be put upon renewing their Covenant, they would but profane the holy Covenant. Some of them are grossly ignorant, others are of a scandalous conversation. Drunkards, Swearers, Sabbath breakers, disobedient to Parents, Lascivious, Theeves, Lyars. Such whilst they so continue be put upon mocking God, by they will be his Covenant Servants?

–Increase Mather, Renewal of Covenant the great Duty incumbent upon decaying or distressed Churches (Boston: J.F., 1677).

In his magisterial writings on the Puritans, Perry Miller calls into question whether the decline was as sharp and steep as the sermonizers made it out to be. He also points out, and I think this is important, that what they see as decline may simply be difference.  The hazy line between medieval thought and modernity can be drawn around the time of the second generation; Winthrop’s “Modell” embodied a medieval, corporatist view of society, whereas by the end of Increase Mather’s long life, that world was gone.

So here are my questions/comments

1. Are Chaput and others constructing their own myth of modern Catholic decline–with the late forties and fifties being  the “Winthrop” generation and he and they being the equivalent of Increase Mather and his cohort? Does that myth reflect reality? Ought one to consider the defects of Catholic intellectual life and culture at that time as well as its benefits (I think about John Tracy Ellis and his article ab9ut Catholic intellectual life)? The Puritans, as it happened, were wrong about both the political and religious decline of the nation.  Scholars of American religious history have shown, for example the great infusion of faith in the country came long after they were dead, in the form of immigrants and revivals. The early Puritans wouldn’t have much liked the later religiosity–but it was religiosity nonetheless.

2.  Are we, like the second generation Puritans, at the end of age, and the beginning of another one?  I think the invention of the computer and the internet is about as big a revolution as the invention of the printing press, myself.

3. The American Puritan notion of decline was connected with New England’s particular “chosenness” by God, and the intertwining of material blessings and spiritual fidelity. While we deeply love our country, it seems to me that Catholics as such cannot endorse the Puritan view of American exceptionalism in an unqualified way. The word “Catholic” means universal.

4. Is there anything specifically “Catholic” about the myth of decline –or the myth of progress, for that matter? Nations may rise, nations may fall.  Individuals may progress or devolve.  But do we have any reason in our theological anthropology to think that human nature is getting better or worse as a whole over time?

Since Thursday evening there has been a slowly gathering flock of fire flies. Ticks galore (five now in captivity), noseeums, and a few mosquitos.

Mountain laurel full of buds, not yet flowering. Elderberry bushes flourishing along with forget-me-nots, and bleeding hearts. Ferns marching into all of the empty spaces left by everything else.

Two weekends ago: four deer, one turkey, one bear, and two racoons (rather impudent racoons).

On the post 51st: “State of our Union,” Jim P. asked @5/25: 1:35, “I’ve seen it stated that a still-existant Palestinian state was established at virtually the same time that modern Israel was established: the Kingdom of Jordan, which seemed to include, at the conclusion of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, the West Bank of the Jordan River.”

The story of Israel/Palestine and the origins of the current issues are indeed complicated. From my reading yesterday and today, the following background context is important:
1. Israel/Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire (now Turkey) and was a piece of the province of Syria. It was populated largely by Arabs who were Muslims (about 80 percent; Christians (a bit more than 10 percent; Jews (a bit less than 10 per cent). The province was a bit of a backwater. Jerusalem and surrounding Christian sites were no doubt the main interest of Westerners.
2. The Ottomans fought on the side of the Axis Powers (Germany, etc.) and were defeated in 1917 by General Allenby of the British Army. The end of the Ottoman Empire followed and for all intents and purposes the British were in charge until after WWII.
3. The British are central to the story from this point. The League of Nations divided up pieces of the Ottoman Empire, assigning this parcel to the British. The British had previously agreed in the Balfour Agreement to allow Jewish settlers (Zionists) to immigrate and settle there. The Zionists had actually been doing this from the end of the 19th century.
4. The British favored the Zionist settlement. First, because many of them were bible-reading Protestants who thought the Jews should return to “Zion.” And along with many Europeans, they thought this would settle the Jewish question by providing a homeland, a nation for them (in an era of high nationalist views).
5. In general the local population of Arabs were opposed to Jewish settlement both under the Ottomans and the British.
6. I think this is key: the Zionists were modernizers within their own Jewish community and certainly in contrast to the Arabs of Palestine who were largely an agricultural, herding society with several elite families more or less culturally and economically dominant. The Arabs were unprepared for the events that followed.
7. The Zionists, i.e., Jewish settlers bought up land from both the local elite and absentee landlords living elsewhere. This no doubt upset the local land usage practices and tenancy agreements.
8. Skip to WWII. The British having put down an Arab rebellion 1936-39 were deeply concerned about Arab loyalty and feared their alliance with Germany. To placate the Arabs, they banned Jewish immigration. Nonetheless, the Yushuv (Jewish community in Palestine) was well organized economically, politically, and culturally. Various Jewish military forces were organized to support the British giving the Yushuv well trained soldiers and various kinds of armaments of use in the 1948 war with the Arabs.
9. The end of the war and news of the Holocaust turned world opinion in favor of the establishment of the Jewish state.
10. The Arabs remained divided among themselves and were no match for the better organized Jewish community. When the British mandate ended, Israel became a state authorized by the UN; the Arabs protested mightily but seemed unable to either unite themselves or to effectively press their own legitimate claims to a state. While their “territory” was recognized in the UN ruling, it was actually to be part of Transjordan under the King–a plan the British favored.

What we have here is a struggle between the modern and not yet modern; between Jews with national aspirations and Arabs still existing in a quasi-feudal system. The Jews were favored by the West; the Arabs of Palestine had no effective support from the then nascent Arab League, formed after WWII.

This is a very capsule account. Corrections (real facts please!) welcome. This info is from three books:

Rashid Khalidi, The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood, Introduction, Chapters 1 and 2.

Benny Morris, 1948: The First Arab-Israeli War, Chapter 1.

Ilan Pappe, A History of Modern Palestine, Chapter 3.

The child pornography case involving Fr. Shawn Ratigan, 45, a priest in the Kansas City-St. Joseph diocese, under the direction of Bishop Robert W. Finn, was shocking enough in the first version, as reported by NCR– disturbing images of young children on Ratigan’s computer, a perfunctory, at best, examination of the material, a secret transfer of the priest to a convent, no subsequent action or notice when Ratigan attempted suicide last December, and no notification to the review board. And then only this month suspending the priest after extensive files of child pornography were discovered on his computer and he was arrested.

Now it turns out — thanks again to NCR (bravo, Joe Feuerherd!) — that a full year ago the principal of a Catholic elementary school wrote to Bishop Finn’s vicar general, the second-ranking diocesan official, with a clear warning about Ratigan’s suspicious behavior with children and detailed examples. Ratigan apparently received a talking to by a top chancery official, but nothing further was done and no one outside the chancery was alerted.

Finn’s spokesperson, Rebecca Summers, told NCR that the bishops 2002 charter says diocesan review boards should be convened only “when you have a specific allegation of abuse” by a priest or other person in diocesan ministry.

“We did not have that,” said Summers. “The charter did not address a situation such as this.”

Well, maybe common sense and concern for the welfare of children should have filled in those gaps in the charter. But this snowballing scandal, and under the watch of one of the more outspoken conservatives in the U.S. hierarchy, should certainly give the bishops impetus (if they didn’t have enough after the Philly grand jury revelations) to take some serious action when they meet next month in Seattle. That will require surrendering some degree of control. Can it be done, politically and theologically?

UPDATE: NCR reports that at a press conference today Bishop Finn said he was given a “brief verbal summary” of the principal’s letter by Father Murphy, the vicar general, a year ago and had only read it in its entirety for the “first time” last night. So he was aware of Ratigan’s problem months before he was told about the questionable photos of children on Ratigan’s computer. Father Murphy certainly doesn’t come off well, but the bishop knew about Ratigan’s history and there must have been a personnel file with this info when Finn made his first discreet inquiry to a police officer.

The then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger once remarked that he and Karl Rahner dwelt on different theological “planets.” Perhaps more has been made of this passing comment than is warranted. But, as I re-read Rahner, I am newly convinced that their planets circle the same Sun.

Pope Benedict has been offering a series of catecheses on prayer at his weekly audience. This past Wednesday he reflected on the famous account in the Book of Genesis of Jacob’s wrestling with the unknown stranger. The voice is Benedict’s, but the touch feels close to Rahner. Here is an excerpt:

The biblical text speaks to us of the long night of the search for God, of the battle to know his name and to see his face; it is the night of prayer that, with tenacity and perseverance, asks a blessing and a new name from God, a new reality as the fruit of conversion and of forgiveness.

In this way, Jacob’s night at the ford of the Jabbok becomes for the believer a point of reference for understanding his relationship with God, which in prayer finds its ultimate expression. Prayer requires trust, closeness, in a symbolic “hand to hand” not with a God who is an adversary and enemy, but with a blessing Lord who remains always mysterious, who appears unattainable. For this reason the sacred author uses the symbol of battle, which implies strength of soul, perseverance, tenacity in reaching what we desire. And if the object of one’s desire is a relationship with God, his blessing and his love, then the battle cannot but culminate in the gift of oneself to God, in the recognition of one’s own weakness, which triumphs precisely when we reach the point of surrendering ourselves into the merciful hands of God.

The rest is here.

Sad news from NCR:

Joseph Feuerherd, NCR editor in chief and publisher, died this morning after an 18-month battle with cancer. He was 48. Funeral arrangements are pending.

Feuerherd died at 8:41 a.m. Eastern time at the Montgomery Hospice’s Casey House in Rockville., Md. His family was at his side.

Read Arthur Jones’s appreciation of Joe here.

Thanks to Michael Peppard, who sent me this article from the New York Times on a new, non-partnership track for lawyers at big firms. They make less money, but also have less responsibility, and will not be required to bill an outrageous amount of hours.

I think this kind of development is all to the good. But I do have a couple of questions.  First, will the kind of work these non-partnership track lawyers get at big firms will be all that satisfying?  Heck, most of the work you do as a first- or second-year associate on a partnership track isn’t all that satisfying.  Due diligence document review (in corporate law) or discovery (in corporate litigation), or waiting around at the printers in the middle of the night for IPO books to be proofread (wait. . . I’m showing my age. . . there are no more IPOs. . . and maybe all proofreading is done via PDF now).  Second, is the idea of not having “two classes” of citizens expressed in the article practical?  I think of the academy, where there are definitely two classes of people, tenure-track and non-tenure track.

The people I know who have made successful, happy careers as permanent associates at big firms were people with highly technical skills not easily taught to others–one was an expert in Medicare rate appeals, another was an expert in ERISA law.  They didn’t start out as permanent associates, they went that route after gaining their expertise as partnership-track associates and then deciding to take a detour. Will the permanent associate track work for garden variety lawyers?  Will the firms invest in training them–or will they be doomed to endless document review and discovery, with slightly more responsibility than paralegals?

I hope it does work out.  There is a lot at stake.

For approximately 15 years Karl Rahner was the contemporary Catholic theologian most influential upon my own theological understanding and development. Perhaps the earliest work of his I read was the evocative “Encounters with Silence.” I greatly resonated with the cosmic vision of his “Theology of Death.” And I can still remember the place and time when I first read, with excitement, his essay “The Concept of Mystery in Catholic Theology.”

His influence upon me faded when I found myself in new teaching circumstances and when I found myself less happy with the use made of his thought by some of his North American “disciples.” Though they appealed to Rahner, they also lamented his “excessive Christocentrism” which they felt had to be “transcended.”

It is, therefore, with some delight that I’ve begun to read Karl Rahner again, in particular the essays in volume 18 of the “Theological Investigations.” In the essay, “What Does It Mean Today to Believe in Jesus Christ?”, he concludes:

If we love Jesus, quite personally and directly, if in our love we allow his life and his fate to become the inner form and entelechy of our own life, then we learn that he is the way, the truth, and the life, that he leads us to the Father, that we may and can call the incomprehensible God “Father” despite his namelessness, that God’s namelessness and pathlessness can be our own home, bringing us not extinction, but eternal life.

We must love Jesus in the unconditional acceptance of his life’s fate as our own norm of existence, in order to experience serenely and joyously our own existence as finally redeemed.

THE DEAD IN EUROPE

After the planes unloaded, we fell down
Buried together, unmarried men and women;
Not crown of thorns, not iron, not Lombard crown,
Not grilled and spindle spires pointing to heaven
Could save us. Raise us, Mother, we fell down
Here hugger-mugger in the jellied fire:
Our sacred earth in our day was our curse.

Our Mother, shall we rise on Mary’s day
In Maryland, wherever corpses married
Under the rubble, bundled together? Pray
For us whom the blockbusters marred and buried;
When Satan scatters us on Rising-day,
O Mother, snatch our bodies from the fire:
Our sacred earth in our day was our curse.

Mother, my bones are trembling and I hear
The earth’s reverberations and the trumpet
Bleating into my shambles. Shall I bear,
(O Mary!) unmarried man and powder-puppet,
Witness to the Devil? Mary, hear
O Mary, marry earth, sea, air and fire;
Our sacred earth in our day is our curse.
                                              — Robert Lowell

PM Netanyahu addressed the fawning U.S. Congress this morning (May 24):”Making his second appearance before a joint meeting of Congress, Mr. Netanyahu entered to prolonged applause, accompanied by a hefty delegation of supportive senators and representatives. And practically every paragraph he spoke was met with more applause.”

The Times’s account includes this line: ““I am willing to make painful compromises to achieve this historic peace,” he said, adding that it would not be easy, because “in a genuine peace, we will be required to give up parts of the ancestral Jewish homeland.”

Ancestral? If that’s the standard, what about the Canannites, Phoenicians, Edomites, etc?

UPDATE: Better than the Onion: Flash! Israel declines annexation of the United States.

“In an impassioned speech today to the western (trans-Atlantic) branch of the Knesset, Prime Minister Natanyahu warmly accepted the 36 standing ovations of the US Congress, but stated firmly that in spite of Mormon claims to the early settlement of North “America” by the lost tribes of Israel and recent archaeology that the LDS church cites in support of that “fact,” Israel could not in conscience accept the offer to merge the United States with Israel under the Israeli Basic Law.  Such a merger, he said would be traumatic for those “Americans” who could not claim Israeli citizenship under the Israeli “Law of the Return.” Bravo Pat Lang!

Haaretz on Netanyahu’s speech to U.S. Congress: “The prime minister will return home from the United States without major developments to show for himself. He is leading Israel and the Palestinians into a new round of violence, along with Israel’s isolation and deep disagreement with the American administration. The time has come for the large numbers of those in Israel who seek peace to be heard. Israel deserves a different leader.”

M.J. Rosenberg: “Congress to Palestinians: Drop Dead.” “If anyone had any doubt about whether the Palestinians would declare a state in September, they can’t have them now.” And much, much more from a supporter of Israel.

Here’s Ethan Bronner’s report (May 25) on Israeli reaction: “JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel returned from Washington on Wednesday to a nearly unanimous assessment among Israelis that despite his forceful defense of Israel’s security interests, hopes were dashed that his visit might advance Palesinian peace negotiations.”

Andrew Sullivan has a cri de coeur on our subject.

From a friend: “Bibi and the Yo-Yos” (referring to our Congressional representatives) by Uri Avnery, Israeli commentator and peace maker.

In response to a request on another thread, here’s your chance to suggest agenda items for the up-coming bishops’ meeting this June. (Actually, I hear there’s a panel of lay people who actually DO suggest agenda items for the bishops, but I have no idea who they are, or how to get in touch with them, or how they make their decisions. If you do, recommend this thread…)

How about this–describe your agenda item according to the criteria for a Twitter post–140 characters or less. An example–”Guys! Dump obligatory celibacy! Keeps people from Eucharist, harms priests, fuels clericalism and clerical culture! Call BenXVI NOW!!”

That is, if you don’t equate ballet with spinach:

Men who enjoy taking in the ballet or browsing art museums are more likely to be happy with their lives and satisfied with their health than men who don’t enjoy the finer things in life, a new study finds.

And although greater enjoyment of cultural activities is associated with higher income, the arts have a beneficial effect regardless of other factors that might influence health and happiness, including socioeconomic status.

The results suggest that encouraging cultural participation may be one way to encourage healthfulness, the authors reported online May 23 in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

“There has been a focus on physical activity as an instrument to promote good health in the last decades, but who is sure that all people are equally capable of doing five days a week of intensive training?” said study author Koenraad Cuypers of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in an email to LiveScience. “I doubt it! Studies suggest that 50 percent of leisure time is spent in other activities than physical activity, so we aimed at investigating whether participation in cultural activities would also be associated with good health/good satisfaction with life/low anxiety and depression.”

Be like Popeye. Go to the museum.

PS: “Church attendance and going to sports events were linked to increased life satisfaction in women.”

[Read part one and part two of the full interview.]

Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, the recent past president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, was in New York last Thursday to talk about his latest book, God in Action: How Living with God in Faith Can Help Us Meet the Challenges Facing Us Today. I sat down to speak with him in a conversation that ranged over a variety of topics, and we’ll have the rest of that interview in the near future.

But I asked him about the John Jay report, released a day before, and want to share his responses given the immediacy of the topic. The exchange speaks for itself, though I thought it notable that it seems the bishops will be talking about tightening up review board procedures when they gather for their spring meeting June 15-16 in Seattle:

Q: Have you read the study?

A: I’ve read the executive summary; I’ve looked at the study. I haven’t read it.

Q: What do you think of it? Do you think it rings true?

A: Yes, I think it rings true. It’s not a whitewash. It shows where the bishops were derelict in attending to the full scope of the tragedy. I think what it points to is in the beginning years of this – I wasn’t a bishop when it began, I became a bishop in 1990 and there was already a sub-committee [of the USCCB] dedicated to this. They did begin the discussions in the 80s.

But what was missing, often, was the voice of the victim. They [the bishops] talked to the priests. They tried to come to terms with what had happened, more or less in the therapeutic era, treating it not just as a moral failing – they knew that – but as a psychological sickness, forgetting that there is a justice issue here, vis-à-vis the victim, who was often crushed. The longstanding consequences of this are things we are still trying to come to terms with as we try to speak to victims and help victims.

I have found that is the voice that has to be brought forward. Because when I listen to it I am always grateful and always pray for the grace of conversion to stay with that voice as the primary voice in this whole conversation. That’s new, and I think the bishops do attend to it now. I hope so. But the analysis of the years when this was most prevalent rings true to me. I was gone from this country during those years. I lived in Rome [1974-1987] and when I came back I had a sense that something had happened but I didn’t understand very well – not about this but about a lot of things.

The report hasn’t received a lot of attention, and in some ways that is surprising, unless it doesn’t say what people want it to say. Because there’s a meta-narrative in all this. It’s the usual meta-narrative: individuals harmed by institutions and authority, particularly religious authority, that is a priori oppressive. That’s a media mandate, sort of, for every story. And while there are elements of truth to that story, that’s not the whole story. Facts that don’t enforce that story, don’t corroborate it, tend not to be reported.

Read the rest of this entry »

These were the themes of the Commencement Address given by Secretary of Transportation, Raymond LaHood, at Boston College this morning. And though he recognized these values as a present challenge, he was far from idealizing the past. As a matter of fact he said:

No one doubts that this is an age of acrimony in United States politics. Yet, it’s worth remembering that partisan animosity is as old as the republic itself. Americans have been fighting about their public affairs since they first sent delegates to the Continental Congress during the 1770s.
In 1776, John Adams arrived in Philadelphia, after a 300 mile journey from Braintree on horseback – a mode of transportation slightly faster than the B-Line. Just days later, Adams wrote: “There are deep jealousies here. Ill-natured observations and incriminations take the place of reason and argument.”
From there, the “jealousies and incriminations” only got worse. The 1780s were marked by riots and rebellions in the streets.
In 1798, one congressman spit tobacco juice in the face of another. He responded by attacking his assailant with a pair of fire tongs. All on the floor of the House of Representatives. As you might expect, they were both New Englanders.
Just a few years later, the sitting Vice President of the United States shot and killed the former treasury secretary, Alexander Hamilton, in a duel. That’s one way to settle a debate over the national debt.

The rest is here.

The Guardian poses that question on its Web site today. My response, based on the John Jay Causes and Context report, is here.

While you’re there, also check out Andrew Brown’s assessment of the report, which I found quite useful.

I am. And so is Harold Camping, who is apparently “flabbergasted” that his prophecy didn’t come true and the Rapture didn’t happen on Saturday at 6pm (which would have spared us from hoping for another Triple Crown shot in the Preakness). Some of his followers, who dispensed with their cash and assets, may be described by other adjectives.

But Mitch Daniels is gone, alas. Did the man who wanted to declare a truce on GOP’s culture wars to focus on the economy wind up being the only true believer? Well, he’s also a family man, having heeded the counsel of his wife and daughters to spare them the campaign gantlet.

Gary Laderman at Religion Dispatches has five lessons to be learned (“2. The Christian Fundamentalists are not alone in this religious obsession”) from the world’s apparently false sell-by date, and at First Things, Anthony Sacramone writes that this episode is evidence of the “cult of personality” that can plague evangelical Protestantism, but not so much the churches of the Great Tradition. (We have other issues, I guess.)

And for those of you who were banking on being taken up into the clouds (a staple of preaching in my Scofield-bible youth), Slate replays the cognitive dissonance theory of Leon Festinger, which is a must-read since Oprah won’t be around to help you cope.

In any case, we seem to be stuck with each other, and with the joys and hopes, griefs and anxieties, wars and rumors of wars, and natural disasters, and blogs. So be nice.

Before AIPAC’s annual conference President Obama repeated his statement of Thursday:

“Let me repeat what I actually said on Thursday,” Mr. Obama said in firm tones at one point, “not what I was reported to have said.”

“I said that the United States believes that negotiations should result in two states, with permanent Palestinian borders with Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, and permanent Israeli borders with Palestine. The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.” Report Here.

M.J. Rosenberg: “Obama Scores Big at AIPAC.” Let’s hope so.

Michael Tomasky: “Bibi’s Whitehouse Tantrum.” Maybe not such a good idea.

Joe Nocera, the people’s choice, is now on the Times’ op-ed page. Today he has a column on this week’s LinkedIn I.P.O., and he’s not celebrating. The stock more than doubled in price on the first day; but there’s a catch:

For a small company with less than $16 million in profits last year, $352 million in the bank sounds pretty wonderful, doesn’t it? But it really wasn’t wonderful at all. When LinkedIn’s shares started trading on the New York Stock Exchange, they opened not at $45, or anywhere near it. The opening price was $83 a share, some 84 percent higher than the I.P.O. price. By the time the clock had struck noon, the stock had vaulted to more than $120 a share, before settling down to $94.25 at the market’s close. The first-day gain was close to 110 percent.

I have no doubt that most everyone at LinkedIn was thrilled to see the run-up; most executives at start-ups usually are. An I.P.O. is an important marker for any company. And, of course, the executives themselves are suddenly rich. But, in reality, LinkedIn was scammed by its bankers.

The fact that the stock more than doubled on its first day of trading — something the investment bankers, with their fingers on the pulse of the market, absolutely must have known would happen — means that hundreds of millions of additional dollars that should have gone to LinkedIn wound up in the hands of investors that Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch wanted to do favors for. Most of those investors, I guarantee, sold the stock during the morning run-up. It’s the easiest money you can make on Wall Street.

As Eric Tilenius, the general manager of Zynga, wrote on Facebook: “A huge opening-day pop is not a sign of a successful I.P.O., but rather a massively mispriced one. Bankers are rewarding their friends and themselves instead of doing their fiduciary duty to their clients.”

Here’s the rest. But it’s also worth checking the “Comments” for some further takes on the story.

Amazing how little it takes to get Bibi Netanyahu in a lather. All President Obama did Thursday was speak the obvious and the truth: that the territorial boundaries of a future Palestinian state and Israel must be based, in general, on Israel’s borders before the 1967 six-day war. Nothing new. Nothing not obvious. Nothing not fundamentally fair.

But Netanyahu went ballistic, declaring that a return to 1967 borders would render Israel “indefensible.” And on Friday, following his two-hour meeting with Obama, Bibi made no secret of his disdain for Obama’s peace proposal and, it was clear, for Obama himself.

Given the modesty and the utter lack of novelty of Obama’s proposal, what can explain Netanyahu’s vehement reaction?

The best explanation, I suspect, is that Obama actually dared to say what he said without Israeli permission. In years past, the kind of fulminating that Bibi reportedly did with Secretary of State Clinton on Thursday before Obama’s Mideast policy speech would have  caused an American president to hastily amend his planned remarks so as not to offend the Israeli government. Indeed, under George W. Bush there would have been no need even to fulminate, since Bush’s notion of what ought to happen in Israeli-Palestinian relations was whatever the Israelis said it ought to be.

Obama, however, has always had a mind of his own on this most intractable of American foreign policy challenges. This American president has always believed–mirabile dictu!–that a Palestinian might actually have some rights that an Israeli is bound to respect. And on Thursday, in his extremely modest speech, he dared to say as much.

Bibi may not have appreciated it. His Amen corner here in the United States may not have appreciated it. But by declaring the United States’ diplomatic independence from Israel on Thursday, Obama may taken the first and most necessary step to create a genuine new peace process. As long as the U.S. was Israel’s vassal, there could be no progress. With a diplomatically independent U.S. committed to Israel’s security and a fair deal for the Palestinians, peace may have a chance.

In case you missed President Obama’s speech yesterday on the Middle East with  mention of Israel, Palestine, and 1967 borders, here are some details on how that’s working out.

M.J. Rosenberg, “The Fake Outrage of the Israel Firsters” offers lots of details even though he doesn’t  think the speech was all that good. He points out apropos of the WSJ story linked below that the vast majority of American-Jewish voters (78 percent) cast their ballots for Obama; the donors are a very small number.

The Wall Street Journal points to part of the problem: “Jewish Donors Warn Obama.” Oy! the stereotypes!

And the WSJ’s take on PM Netanyahu’s visit to his friend President Obama, “Netanyahu Rejects White House Proposal.”

In the middle of an editorial in yesterday’s paper regarding the recent Vatican guidelines for response to sexual abuse (“The Vatican Comes Up Short”), the New York Times editorial board dismissed the just-released John Jay Report Causes and Context (pdf) in two sentences:

The directive came two days before a new study of the abuse problem that cites the sexual and social turmoil of the 1960s as a possible factor in priests’ crimes. This is a rather bizarre stab at sociological rationalization and, in any case, beside the point that church officials went into denial and protected abusers.

The intention here is plainly to charge the U.S. bishops with attempting to dodge responsibility by blaming clergy sex-abuse on the ’60s. Perhaps the editorial said that outright before the fact-checkers got their hands on it and adjusted it for accuracy. But with all those modifying terms in place, the assessment of the report as “a rather bizarre stab at sociological rationalization” doesn’t stand up. The study wasn’t produced by the bishops — so is it the researchers who are being accused of attempting to rationalize the abuse? I don’t see that in the report. What I do see is a laying out of data that shows a dramatic spike in abuse during the 1960s and ’70s, followed by a sharp dropoff, and an attempt to investigate possible explanations for why and how that occurred. One can certainly quarrel with the researchers’ methods and conclusions, but given all the circumstances, and the careful way the report frames its findings, I think it would be bizarre if they hadn’t considered the social context as “a possible factor” in the increased incidence of reported abuse.
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Robert Mickens has news in The Tablet of further Vatican big-footing on Caritas Internationalis:

EXCLUSIVE Timothy Radcliffe dropped as speaker at Caritas summit
Robert Mickens in Rome – 20 May 2011

The Vatican has dropped Fr Timothy Radcliffe OP, the internationally renowned former head of the Dominicans, from giving the keynote address at next week’s Caritas Internationalis (CI) general assembly in Rome, The Tablet has learned.

Fr Radcliffe was originally scheduled to deliver the opening address on Monday morning and speak about the theology that undergirds the work of Caritas. He had already prepared a 45-minute talk. Instead, that slot has been given to Capuchin Fr Raniero Cantalamessa, the charismatic preacher of the papal household, followed by Cardinal Peter Turkson, head of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.

The former Master of the Dominicans is one of several speakers and panellists who have been removed from the week long meeting’s programme in order to “accommodate” the demands from the Secretariat of State that Holy See officials be given the major speaking roles, a CI spokesman told The Tablet on Friday adding that it would now be more like a “Vatican-style retreat”.

He denied that the Vatican’s main intention in changing the programme was to block Fr Radcliffe from speaking. “We’re not reading it that way,” he said. At least six Roman Curia officials will have major speaking roles at the 22-27 May general assembly, unprecedented in the confederation’s 60-year history.

[snip]

People associated with the Caritas confederation have been careful not to make too much of the Vatican’s recent moves to gain greater control over the organisation, fearing that any protests would only make the situation worse.

Radcliffe?! Oy vey.

House Republicans have released an exchange of friendly letters between Rep. Paul Ryan and Archbishop Timothy Dolan, trying to make it appear as if the GOP budget proposal for 2012 is in sync with Catholic social teaching.

Some news accounts from Washington have fallen for the spin and reported that Dolan had written that the GOP budget plan takes Catholic social teaching into account. But if you actually read the letters instead of the press releases, it’s clear that Archbishop Dolan is non-committal on the Republicans’ budget proposals. Instead, he politely commends Ryan for the values he claims to hold in his April 29 letter.

There is no indication, for example, that Dolan accepts Ryan’s claim that his proposal for Medicare is consistent with the preferential option for the poor. Dolan writes that he appreciates Ryan’s assurances that his budget would protect the poor, then adds, “While appreciating these assurances, our duty as pastors will motivate our close attention to the manner in which they become a reality.”

Ryan’s letter cites the church’s position on subsidiarity, quoting the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church (No. 186) that “it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do.” He asserts: “In American political terms, this is the same purpose as `federalism.’ ” Ryan also cited a passage in Pope John Paul II’s encyclical Centesimus Annus (No. 48) opposing the “Social Assistance State.”

Dolan, responding in his role as president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, did not let this go without comment. He noted in his letter that the principle of subsidiarity is interrelated with the principle of solidarity, and quoted Pope John Paul II as writing in Centesimus Annus that the higher order community must support the lower one in case of need and help to coordinate its activities with the rest of society, “always with a view to the common good.”

I remember that years ago, then-Senator Al D’Amato (R-N.Y.) called Catholic social teachings “wacky” in a broadcast interview. More recently, Glenn Beck advised Christians to “run” from any church that preaches social justice. So it is refreshing to see Speaker John Boehner (smarting a little from the controversy some Catholic academics raised over his adherence to Catholic social teaching?) and Ryan (both Catholics) frame their policies in terms of the preferential option for the poor. But, to borrow a phrase from Dolan’s letter, it will be interesting to see “the manner in which they become a reality” – and how other Catholic voices respond to Ryan’s analysis of his budget in light of Catholic social teaching.

Republicans are threatening to try to filibuster Goodwin Liu’s nomination to the Ninth Circuit.  My memory of the Democratic filibuster of some of Bush’s most extreme judicial nominees was that, thanks the echo chamber, the supposed illegitimacy of using the filibuster in that context became a major topic of political conversation for a significant period of time.  I doubt we will hear nearly as  much from the Democrats or the media on Republicans’ use of the same tactic.  If Goodwin’s nomination goes down to a Republican filibuster, it will be another lesson in how much better the right in this country is than the left at getting their message out.   Note that I’m not complaining about using the filibuster to block judicial nominees.  I think it is pretty much fair for a minority party to use whatever levers are available to them to foster their agenda, and, in addition, turnabout is fair play.  On the other hand, Goodwin is really not nearly as far to the left — temperamentally or ideologically — as the right-wing nominees blocked by Democrats during the Bush years.  But that’s just another lesson in how much better the right is at playing the game, and its why the federal bench is as conservative as it’s been in several generations.

You can find the full text right here [PDF]. Archbishop Dolan’s statement here.

We’ve all heard about the Australian bishop who was removed from office by the Pope.  Here is an article about the bishop’s termination in the Australian It features commentary by Fr. Frank Brennan, SJ who is an extremely prominent human rights advocate and law professor in Australia.  Here is a link to a sermon Fr. Brennan gave on the topic.

I feel a little silly asking this, because it is so obvious that I’m sure it’s already been addressed (either in the John Jay report itself or elsewhere).  But, based on the news accounts, the report seems to make a great deal of the spike in reported abuse after the 1960s, using it to attribute the sexual abuse problem — at least in part — to cultural shifts occurring in the broader society.  But isn’t it possible that those cultural shifts — which, besides introducing more permissive attitudes towards sex, encouraged greater questioning of authority — led more people to report instances of clerical abuse rather than to an increase in the abuse itself?  I’m not even sure how to disentangle the two at such a great temporal distance.  In any event, I’m looking forward to reading the  report later today.  I hope it will answer my question.